Considering Marriage

Like most of you, I’ve thought a fair bit about marriage over the last decade.

When I went off to school and started developing a more libertarian mindset, I formed the opinion that the state shouldn’t have anything to do with marriage. It should be left up to the church.

Then, attending school in California, I was confronted with Prop 8. Since the state wasn’t leaving marriage alone, how should I vote? I voted Yes on Prop 8 because we are not free to define marriage contrary to God’s Word, but I still wasn’t convinced the state should be involved.

But then I began learning more about reformed theology and history and realized that the reformation took marriage out of the church (where Rome made it a sacrament) and placed it in the hands of the civil authorities. In fact, some colonies went so far as to defrock any minister who attempted to perform a marriage.

I never got around to finishing that study, but thankfully I’ve found a series of posts I can say summarize my current view of the matter:

• Considering Marriage: Part One
• Considering Marriage: Part Two
• Do “Civil Liberties” Demand that Christians Support Same-Sex Marriage?
• Considering RC Sproul on Marriage

The Current Justification Controversy (on sale $3.98)

I’m never eager to re-post D.G. Hart, but he provides a helpful quote from Cornelius Venema regarding Mark Jones and Norm Shepherd: Flattening Will Get You Nowhere

All that to simply say that if anyone has not read O. Palmer Robertson’s account of the controversy at Westminster with Norm Shepherd, now is a good time to do so. It’s on sale for $3.98, and so is The Companion to the Current Justification Controversy.

Another good resource is Samuel Waldron’s PhD dissertation: Faith, Obedience, and Justification.

See also Samuel Waldron’s lecture Whatever Happened to the Covenant of Works.

Richard Barcellos also has several lectures on An Objection to the Covenant of Works.

I contacted Mark Jones and asked “Pastor Jones, can you please write a post explaining what is wrong with Norman Shepherd’s theology and where you disagree with it? Thanks” His secretary responded “Good evening Brandon, I spoke with Mark, and at the moment he is not taking any requests for writing as he is focusing on chapters for his next book. I hope you are blessed by his other articles and teaching. Thanks,”

Apparently there is time to blog about Shepherd so long as it serves the purpose of promoting his new book, otherwise, he’s busy.

Update: “In fact, if people ask (tell?) me to do things (e.g., write against the errors of Norman Shepherd) I’m likely to do the opposite. Coming soon: “Norman Shepherd: An Appreciation” by Mark Jones.“

The Republication Debate Gets Muddy

Mark Karlberg wrote an article explaining that the current Republication debate in the OPC is a debate between Meredith Kline’s covenant theology and Richard Gaffin’s (note: Not between Kline and Murray).

Mark Jones responded, in scorn. But Jones’ reply was revealing, and it confirmed exactly what Karlberg said.

To clarify, there are at least 3 different groups involved in the debate:

Group	Adamic	Mosaic	WCF
1	meritorious works	grace through faith	correct
2	meritorious works	meritorious works (for typological land)	incorrect
3	grace through faith	grace through faith	incorrect

So when Karlberg says this is a debate between Gaffin’s view and Kline’s view, and he says Kline represents historic reformed orthodoxy, he is correct (in part). Gaffin’s view that the Adamic covenant was not meritorious is not orthodox. (However, some of Kline’s particulars on the Adamic covenant are also not representative of WCF: see comment box)

But Karlberg is incorrect if he means that Kline’s view of the Mosaic covenant represents WCF. It does not.

Jones:

“It was not a meritorious covenant… Adam clearly could not merit (eternal) life… In my view, the only person who can merit anything before God is Christ because of the infinite value of his person and work… let’s say the Mosaic covenant has a meritorious element. Does that make it a republication of the covenant of works? Not necessarily. After all, you would have to re-define the covenant of works to make it a meritorious covenant.”

Karlberg is correct when he says:

“In terms of the doctrine of New School Westminster, the real question, however, is whether perfect, meritorious obedience was required of the First Adam inaccordance with the probationary test given him in the original Covenant of Works at creation. As leading spokesmen, Gaffin and Shepherd vehemently deny this to be the case. Had Adam kept covenant with God, not yielding to the temptation of Satan in assuming equality with God (specifically in regards to the knowledge of good and evil), he would not have “earned” or “merited” divine blessing, so Gaffin and Shepherd contend. Only the Second Adam, we are told, can merit the reward of the covenant made with his Father on behalf of God’s elect by his own obedience. Hence, Gaffin and Shepherd’s [and Jones’] renunciation of the Reformed-Protestant law/grace antithesis, what is essential to teaching concerning the Gospel of justifying grace. The Gaffin-Shepherd contention is nothing other than the dogma of Neo-orthodoxy, now one of the doctrinal planks in New School Westminster.”

Here’s what Sam Waldron says:

“[T]here is no place in Shepherd’s theology for anything like the dichotomy between law and gospel that lays at the foundation of justification sola fide for the Reformation. If there is no such thing as meritorious works, if Christ’s work was believing obedience, if the obedience of faith is the righteousness of faith, then we are clearly dealing with a system of doctrine that has no way to express the Reformation’s contrast between law and gospel. Such a system cannot consistently affirm the justification sola fide squarely built on this contrast.

Allegiance to The Westminster Confession is often understood as subscription to its “system of doctrine.” The Westminster Confession accurately represents the Reformation system of doctrine when it grounds its soteriology on a contrast between the law (“the covenant of works”) and the gospel (“the covenant of grace”). Shepherd has no place for such a structure in his theology and cannot, therefore, affirm consistently the “system of doctrine” taught in the Confession he cites so often in his writings.

-Faith, Obedience, and Justification: Current Evangelical Departures, p. 186″

 

Related:

• The Emperor Has No Clothes

• Norman Shepherd: What’s All the Fuss?

Ebola Virus (Curable-?, Reversible-?, Preventable?)

Excerpt from a 2011 book:

Ebola Virus (Curable-?, Reversible-?, Preventable?)   Due to news coverage in recent years that seems designed to induce fear that a new, uncontrollable killer virus has suddenly appeared, Ebola virus is now generally well-known throughout the world. Ebola is probably the best known of a class of viruses known as hemorrhagic fever viruses. In fact, Ebola virus was initially recognized in 1976. Other less known but related viral syndromes include yellow fever, dengue hemorrhagic fever, Rift Valley fever, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Kyasanur Forest disease, Omsk hemorrhagic fever, hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, Venezuelan hemorrhagic fever, Brazilian hemorrhagic fever, Argentine hemorrhagic fever, Bolivian hemorrhagic fever, and Lassa fever. The Ebola virus infection, also known as African hemorrhagic fever, has the distinction of having the highest case-fatality rate of the viral infections noted above, ranging from 53% to 88%.

 

These viral hemorrhagic fever syndromes share certain clinical features. The Cecil Textbook of Medicine notes that these diseases are characterized by capillary fragility, which translates to easy bleeding, that can frequently lead to severe shock and death. These diseases also tend to consume and/or destroy the platelets, which play an integral role in blood clotting. The clinical presentation of these viral diseases is similar to scurvy, which is also characterized by capillary fragility and a tendency to bleed easily. Characteristic skin lesions develop, which are actually multiple tiny areas of bleeding into the skin that surround the hair follicles. some cases even include bleeding into already healed scars. In the classic form of scurvy that evolves very slowly from the gradual depletion of vitamin C body stores, the immune system will be sufficiently compromised for infection to claim the patient’s life before the extensive hemorrhage that occurs after all vitamin C stores have been completely exhausted. Ebola virus and the other viral hemorrhagic fevers are much more likely to cause hemorrhaging before any other fatal infection has a chance to become established. This is because the virus so rapidly and totally metabolizes and consumes all available vitamin C in the bodies of the victims that an advanced stage of scurvy is literally produced after only a few days of the disease. The scurvy is so complete that the blood vessels generally cannot keep from hemorrhaging long enough to allow an infective complication to develop. Also, the viral hemorrhagic fevers typically only take hold and reach epidemic proportions in those populations that would already be expected to have low body stores of vitamin C, such as is found in many of the severely malnourished Africans. In such individuals, an infecting hemorrhagic virus will often wipe out any remaining vitamin C stores before the immune systems can get the upper hand and initiate recovery. When the vitamin C stores are rapidly depleted by large infecting doses of an aggressive virus, the immune system gets similarly depleted and compromised. However, this point is largely academic after hemorrhaging throughout the body has begun.

 

To date, no viral infection has been demonstrated to be resistant to the proper dosing of vitamin C as classically demonstrated by Klenner. However, not all viruses have been treated with Klenner-sized vitamin C doses, or at least the results have not been published. Ebola viral infection and the other acute viral hemorrhagic fevers appear to be diseases that fall into this category. Because of the seemingly exceptional ability of these viruses to rapidly deplete vitamin C stores, even larger doses of vitamin C would likely be required in order to effectively reverse and eventually cure infections caused by these viruses. Cathcart (1981), who introduced the concept of bowel tolerance to vitamin C discussed earlier, hypothesized that Ebola and the other acute viral hemorrhagic fevers may well require 500,000 mg of vitamin C daily to reach bowel tolerance! Whether this estimate is accurate, it seems clear as evidenced by the scurvy-like clinical manifestations of these infections that vitamin C dosing must be vigorous and given in extremely high doses. If the disease seems to be winning, then even more vitamin C should be given until symptoms begin to lessen. Obviously, these are viral diseases that would absolutely require high doses of vitamin C intravenously as the initial therapy.

 

The oral administration should begin simultaneously, but the intravenous route should not be abandoned until the clinical response is complete. Death occurs too quickly with the hemorrhagic fevers to be conservative when dosing the vitamin C.

 

Belfield and Stone (1975) reported enormous success in the treatment of a variety of viral infections in animals, emphasizing that they had found no virus to be unresponsive to intravenous vitamin C. Specifically, with regard to viral diseases, they asserted:  

 

The intravenous use of ascorbate [vitamin C] is especially valuable in the therapy of the viral diseases as it appears to be an effective, non-specific, non-toxic virucidal agent. We have not seen any viral disease that did not respond to this treatment. Successful therapy appears to depend on using it in sufficiently large doses.  

 

The experience of Belfield and Stone with vitamin C and viral infections in animals certainly seems to agree with the phenomenal success that Klenner reported in his treatment of viral infections with vitamin C in humans. It also implies that Ebola viral infection and the other acute viral hemorrhagic fevers should respond to large enough doses of intravenous vitamin C.

 

Another viral disease that has the capability of producing Ebola-like hemorrhagic complications is smallpox. Akin to chickenpox but much more deadly, smallpox has probably killed approximately 100 million people throughout history. Not surprisingly, smallpox has historically been the most deadly in those populations of people who have the poorest nutritional status and, logically, the lowest body reservoirs of vitamin C. Although no direct evidence of the effects of vitamin C on the smallpox virus could be found in the literature, the virus in the smallpox vaccine is readily killed by vitamin C. This virus, known as the vaccinia virus, is related closely enough to the smallpox virus that inoculation with it will typically produce an immunity to smallpox. However, this fortunate similarity between vaccinia and smallpox virus prevents the need for direct inoculation with some weakened or attenuated form of smallpox virus, eliminating the chance of an accidental smallpox infection. Kligler and Bernkopf (1937) and Turner (1964) found that this related vaccinia virus was easily killed by relatively small amounts of vitamin C. They noted that the degree of viral inactivation depended on the vitamin C concentration and time period it was in contact with the virus. These studies were done shortly after Jungeblut (1935) had demonstrated that vitamin C could similarly inactivate the poliovirus. All of this research represented initial efforts to show the wide-ranging ability of vitamin C to neutralize and/or kill different microbes. Although the vaccinia virus is not the smallpox virus, all of the evidence presented so far would argue strongly that enough vitamin C properly administered should control and cure smallpox as readily as any other of the deadly viral syndromes.

 

For those who still fear that the Ebola virus is the untreatable disease just waiting to strike down their perfect health, consider the recently published evidence that indicates a symptom-free Ebola infection can and does occur in human beings. Leroy et al. (2000) looked at a number of individuals who were in direct contact with patients sick with Ebola but who had never developed symptoms. Evidence in the blood testing of these patients revealed that a strong inflammatory response early in the course of the infectious process had taken place, and that roughly half of the symptom-free group also developed Ebola virus-specific antibodies. All of this evidence lends further support to the notion that encountering the Ebola virus does not mean instant death. It is also highly unlikely that Ebola virus could successfully sicken an individual with a good general nutritional status, and who is taking a daily bowel tolerance dosage of vitamin C.

 

Levy MD JD, Thomas E. (2011-08-31). Vitamin C, Infectious Diseases, and Toxins:Curing the Incurable (Kindle Locations 1654-1667). Xlibris. Kindle Edition.

And here is a relevant portion of a 2012 interview with Levy:

Passwater: Is injectable ascorbate available today for U.S. physicians? There was a scare not too long ago that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was preventing the sale of injectable ascorbate.

 

Levy: It wasn’t a scare. It was quite calculated, and the situation is very serious. Not too long after the airing of Living Proof? on New Zealand’s 60 Minutes program, FDA shut down the mass production of injectable vitamin C by McGuff Pharmaceuticals, which was the company name clearly visible on the vials of vitamin C featured on that program. Since then, FDA has “allowed” vitamin C orders to be separately “formulated” by the McGuff compounding pharmacy, as well as by other compounding pharmacies in the United States. Merit Pharmaceuticals also sells injectable vitamin C, although, to my knowledge, all of that vitamin C is produced by Bioniche Pharmaceuticals in Ireland. All of these “interventions” by FDA have only served to make injectable vitamin C more expensive, which would represent a good initial goal for FDA, as it always appears the agency will do anything to make Big Pharma happier. However, it would still be wonderful if FDA would stop its apparent agenda to ultimately ban vitamin C, although I doubt this is likely. Probably the “best” ultimate outcome will be that vitamin C ends up being available only through prescription. Things are happening very rapidly on this front, and ready access to vitamin C, along with nearly all other supplements, may end as we know it before 2012 is over.

And here is an August 2014 article from Levy: Surprising solution for Ebola virus

And print this for your emergency kit:

The synergistic effect of a multi-C protocol

In most significant chronic diseases, multiple areas of the body have increased oxidative stress and decreased stores of vitamin C and other antioxidants. Since the goal of vitamin C therapy is to neutralize as much oxidative stress and damage as possible, taking as many different types of vitamin C as possible can give the positive clinical results not seen with one, or even two types of vitamin C.

 

The four main arms of the ‘multi-C protocol are:

1. Liposome-encapsulated vitamin C, 1 to 5 grams orally daily (not homemade formulations)

2. Sodium ascorbate daily up to or reaching bowel tolerance (C-flush)

3. Ascorbyl palmitate, 1 to 3 grams orally daily

4. Intravenous vitamin C (sodium ascorbate or buffered ascorbic acid), 25 to 150 grams, depending on body size. Sometimes daily initially, and often several times weekly to monthly depending upon clinical circumstances

 

The multi-C protocol is especially effective because:

1. The liposomes put vitamin C inside (intracellular) the diseased cells and the circulating immune cells without the consumption of energy.

2. The oral sodium ascorbate continues to saturate the extracellular areas with vitamin C while neutralizing the toxic products of poor digestion, shared by everyone to a greater or lesser degree.

3. The ascorbyl palmitate gets the normally water-soluble vitamin C into fat-soluble areas.

4. The intravenous vitamin C gets temporarily astronomical blood concentrations of vitamin C throughout the body. – See more at: http://www.naturalhealth365.com/vitamin_c/0929_multi_c_protocol.html#sthash.ZK7o1Z2t.dpuf

Is It Sinful for Unmarried Couples to Make Out?

Is It Sinful for Unmarried Couples to Make Out?

The Messianic Character of American Foreign Policy

The Messianic Character of American Foreign Policy

The historian Garet Garrett summed it up this way:

“It is our turn.

“Our turn to do what?

“Our turn to assume the responsibilities of moral leadership in the world.

“Our turn to maintain a balance of power against the forces of evil everywhere – in Europe and Asia and Africa, in the Atlantic and in the Pacific, by air and by sea – evil in this case being the Russian barbarian.

“Our turn to keep the peace of the world.

“Our turn to save civilization.

“Our turn to serve mankind.

“But this is the language of empire. The Roman Empire never doubted that it was the defender of civilization. Its good intentions were peace, law and order. The Spanish Empire added salvation. The British Empire added the noble myth of the white man’s burden. We have added freedom and democracy. Yet the more that may be added to it the more it is the same language still. A language of power.”

I’m a Leper in a Leprous House

The LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, “When you come into the land of Canaan, which I give you for a possession, and I put a case of leprous disease in a house in the land of your possession, then he who owns the house shall come and tell the priest, ‘There seems to me to be some case of disease in my house.’ Then the priest shall command that they empty the house before the priest goes to examine the disease, lest all that is in the house be declared unclean. And afterward the priest shall go in to see the house. And he shall examine the disease. And if the disease is in the walls of the house with greenish or reddish spots, and if it appears to be deeper than the surface, then the priest shall go out of the house to the door of the house and shut up the house seven days. And the priest shall come again on the seventh day, and look. If the disease has spread in the walls of the house, then the priest shall command that they take out the stones in which is the disease and throw them into an unclean place outside the city. And he shall have the inside of the house scraped all around, and the plaster that they scrape off they shall pour out in an unclean place outside the city. Then they shall take other stones and put them in the place of those stones, and he shall take other plaster and plaster the house.

“If the disease breaks out again in the house, after he has taken out the stones and scraped the house and plastered it, then the priest shall go and look. And if the disease has spread in the house, it is a persistent leprous disease in the house; it is unclean. And he shall break down the house, its stones and timber and all the plaster of the house, and he shall carry them out of the city to an unclean place. Moreover, whoever enters the house while it is shut up shall be unclean until the evening, and whoever sleeps in the house shall wash his clothes, and whoever eats in the house shall wash his clothes.

“But if the priest comes and looks, and if the disease has not spread in the house after the house was plastered, then the priest shall pronounce the house clean, for the disease is healed. And for the cleansing of the house he shall take two small birds, with cedarwood and scarlet yarn and hyssop, and shall kill one of the birds in an earthenware vessel over fresh water and shall take the cedarwood and the hyssop and the scarlet yarn, along with the live bird, and dip them in the blood of the bird that was killed and in the fresh water and sprinkle the house seven times. Thus he shall cleanse the house with the blood of the bird and with the fresh water and with the live bird and with the cedarwood and hyssop and scarlet yarn. And he shall let the live bird go out of the city into the open country. So he shall make atonement for the house, and it shall be clean.”

(Leviticus 14:33-53 ESV)

About a year and a half ago I posted about some of my health problems stemming from significant food allergies (gluten, dairy, egg, yeast). The most overt symptoms dissipated after removing those foods, but since then my health has continued to deteriorate, most notably as extreme fatigue. We moved in March and I suspected we had been dealing with mold at our previous residence, but my health seemed to worsen after the move.

In June I was visiting a church while out of town on business. I started feeling sick half way through the Sunday School. I couldn’t last more than 5 minutes once the morning service started. I felt nauseous and I was slurring my words. I couldn’t sing. I took a pair of hearing impaired wireless headphones and laid down outside for the rest of the service. After falling asleep and taking some detox supplements I felt a lot better.

That was my second experience with Sick Building Syndrome, and it confirmed that I had become a mold canary. I found out that 25% of people (that’s a huge number, btw) have a genetic susceptibility to this condition. Because of a defective immune system, we cannot properly respond to and eliminate toxins produced by mold. Most people, when exposed to toxic mold from water damaged buildings, experience seasonal allergy type symptoms as their body identifies and eliminates the toxins. For the rest of us, our body can’t do that, so the toxins trigger an inflammatory cascade and then they just keep cycling through your body, like a revolving door they never exit, continually triggering inflammatory responses. The result is that you become highly sensitive to moldy environments, whereas most people aren’t aware there is any problem in the building.

We were out of town for 2.5 weeks when I started figuring this out. We planned on getting our house tested when we returned, finding a doctor, and slowly figuring everything out. Well, the first night back I started feeling sick. I spent the next day outside, and then slept outside. Being aware from the environment for that long and then re-exposing myself made the reaction apparent (think about the frog in a boiling pot). So I sent the family away and stayed to figure things out.

With some help, I tested our home using an ERMI PCR DNA analysis. The test showed that we had unsafe levels of Stachybotrys Chartarum (aka “toxic black mold” – even though lots of mold is black). S. chartarum is a toxic mold, meaning it produces mycotoxins. One of the mycotoxins produced by S. chartarum (trichothesene) was used to produce a chemical weapon known as “yellow rain”. So it was clear we needed to get out of the house. What was also clear was that everything we owned was also contaminated. With a tremendous amount of help from friends and family demonstrating Christ’s care and provision for His people, we were able to sort through everything in the house, discarding what couldn’t be cleaned (anything porous) and cleaning what could be kept safely. I put those things in a truck and got out of Dodge, driving north to live with family in Washington for my 6 month treatment to reverse the inflammation. (After arriving, it was apparent that the items were still contaminated, so they’re in storage for now).

The official diagnosis is Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome Caused by Exposure to the Interior Environment of Water-Damaged Buildings (CIRS-WDB). (It was the cause of my food allergies)

Many patients “don’t look that bad.” But those people are struggling with an illness that causes them to lose their quality of life. These patients don’t know that they have a genetic susceptibility to develop this illness based on their immune response genes (HLA–DR). They don’t know that the inflammation that makes them ill comes from within: it is due to an assault by their own unregulated innate immune system responses. Because of exposure to the interior environment of a water-damaged building(WDB), these patients will have a series of abnormalities in innate immune responses that will not self heal; will not abate in severity [actually increase!] and will continue to cause illness from blood- and tissue- based inflammation as well as alteration of the regulation of fundamental genomic activity. At the core of why one person becomes ill from this exposure and another doesn’t is their gene susceptibility (or predisposition) – what is built into their DNA.

 

When these spores with their neurotoxins are inhaled, about 76% of people have the ability to quickly eliminate them. They may sneeze or have other minor symptoms, but symptoms are temporary. They are like a plastic bucket that has poison drip into it from time to time but they have a small hole in the bottom of the bucket and
the poison leaks out.

About 24% do not have a hole in their bucket. They have a genetic inheritance that makes them unable to eliminate mold toxins. The body simply does not tag the toxins as invaders and it does not eliminate them. The liver can send these toxins to the digestive tract via the bile, but they are quickly reabsorbed back into the blood. The result is that continual or repeated exposures to mold toxins results in an ever increasing amount of these toxins in the body. It is estimated that around 25 million Americans have some degree of mold toxin illness though it might be called MS, Parkinson’s, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis[, lupus, ALS,]  and so on.

Mold Toxins Summary

Currently, there are only 8 physicians in the US who treat the condition. Thankfully I found one in San Francisco that I’ve been seeing. This week I was thrown a curve ball I wasn’t expecting. I also tested positive for Lyme Disease. There is a great deal of overlap in symptoms and the genetic defect (CIRS) is also triggered by toxins produced by Lyme as well. So the rabbit hole gets a little deeper and treatment will now take 2.5 years, rather than 6 months. But we know what we’re dealing with and how to treat it, and much more importantly I know that my Redeemer lives and that every affliction in this life is appointed by Him to tear down my idols of health, prosperity, self – anything that keeps me from clinging to and loving my Savior. Physical leprosy in the Old Covenant was symbolic of something much more deadly: spiritual leprosy – our corrupt and sinful hearts at war with God. Though my physical leprosy may or may not be healed, praise God that by His grace, I have been saved from my spiritual leprosy – for which I deserve so much worse than the minor inconveniences I’m now experiencing.

1. What is your only comfort in life and in death?

That I, with body and soul, both in life and in death,¹ am not my own,² but belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ,³ who with His precious blood⁴has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the devil;⁵ and so preserves me,⁶ that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head;⁷ indeed, that all things must work together for my salvation.⁸ Wherefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life,⁹ and makes me heartily willing and ready henceforth to live unto Him.¹⁰

¹Rom 14:7-9; ²1 Cor 6:19-20; ³1 Cor 3:23; Tit 2:14; ⁴1 Pt 1:18-19; 1 Jn 1:7, 2:2; ⁵Jn 8:34-36; Heb 2:14-15; 1 Jn 3:8; ⁶Jn 6:39-40, 10:27-30; 2 Thes 3:3; 1 Pt 1:5; ⁷Mt 10:29-31; Lk 21:16-18; ⁸Rom 8:28; ⁹Rom 8:15-16; 2 Cor 1:21-22, 5:5; Eph 1:13-14; ¹⁰Rom 8:14

Hercules Collins, An Orthodox Catechism

 

 

As is common in every field of medicine, politics has tremendously hindered progress in acknowledging, diagnosing, and treating CIRS. Ritchie Shoemaker’s Surviving Mold recounts much of that struggle. One chapter is about a man who was completely debilitated by CIRS, leaving him house bound and largely bed ridden with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The catch is that he was an accomplished employee of the EPA, and he acquired his condition at the EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C., along with thousands of other employees. Of course the EPA denied it and it took 20 years of legal battles to finally prove the EPA headquarters was itself a “sick building”. Clearly we won’t get any clear answers on the issue so long as the legal and medical establishment looks to regulatory bodies like the EPA who have a vested interest in denying the existence of the condition (it would cost the government billions of dollars to remediate their moldy buildings).

Final note: this is not a rare condition, but it is a rarely diagnosed condition. There are a great number of people dealing with diseases with a name, but without a known cause. Since 25% of people are genetically susceptible and an estimated 30% of buildings have mold problems, a lot of people are suffering from CIRS without knowing it.

Resources

Mold:

• How Your House Can Make You Weak
• The Molding of the World Part 1: How We Made Mycotoxins into the Health Disaster They Are Today
• Fabry family’s struggle with toxic mold – Samaritan Ministries International
• Dr. Andrew Campbell and the effects of mycotoxins on human body. Great place to start
• moms AWARE – Living Healthy in a Toxic World
• It Takes Time
• Policy Holders of America: Research Committee Report on Diagnosis and Treatment of Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome Caused by Exposure to the Interior Environment of Water-Damaged Buildings (2010) This is the definitive document
• Toxicology Expert Dr. Jack Thrasher on Mold Exposure (Part 1 of 6) (video)
• Dr. Jim Pearson on the Dangers of Mold Exposure (video)
• Mold and Chronic Illness
• ACOEM, Mold, Injured Workers & The Insurance Industry with Dr. Jack Thrasher (video)
• Paradigm Change
• Surviving Mold (the definitive site from Dr. Shoemaker – best resource)
• The Health Bridge – Is Mold the Secret Enemy? Mycotoxins with Guest Dave Asprey
• Biotoxin Journey
• Mold Blogger: Fight Mold and Win
• Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker on Surviving Mold – Podcast #126
• MOLD TOXICITY: NEW UNDERSTANDING AND TREATMENT FOR A SURPRISING COMMON AND SERIOUS ILLNESS
• Mold Illness Treatment

Lyme

• Under Our Skin (they are unaware of the CIRS link)
• The Shoemaker Protocol: Adjunctive Treatment in Chronic Lyme Disease? (how CIRS relates to Chronic Lyme)
• As I See It- Lyme Disease and CIRS | Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker

A Few Thoughts for Consideration in the Modern Republication Debate

straight to the point

Petty France

These thoughts are directed primarily at members in the OPC and PCA.

For those contra republication:

1. The view that the Mosaic covenant was a covenant of works is a view found among Reformed divines in the 17th and 16th centuries.
2. The Westminster Confession of Faith is not the exclusive expression or boundary of Reformed orthodoxy.

For those pro republication:

1. The fact that a given divine at the Westminster Assembly held to a given view does not mean that the Confession itself either reflects, includes, or accounts for their view. They debated many things. The conclusion of the debates was a majority vote in one direction, not a unanimous vote.
2. A covenant of works and a covenant of grace are as different as wood and stone. They are different “substances.” If the Mosaic covenant is a formal covenant of works (not just containing a remembrance of Adam’s covenant) it cannot be…

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