Bill Muehlenberg – The Pull Of The Land

The Queen’s Funeral and the Passing of An Era — Bill Muehlenberg

September 21, 2022September 21, 2022 Richard Barnes

[With Bill Muehlenberg’s permission, I am happy to publish his post on Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, which post reflects much of my own thinking and which I believe you will appreciate — RMB]

A Few Thoughts on Queen Elizabeth’s Funeral

Over the past few hours I have been watching the Queen’s funeral, as have so many millions of others all over the globe. A little while ago I posted words like this on the social media: ‘This may be the last time a large portion of the world’s population tunes in to a service where great old hymns are sung and vital passages of Scripture are read out, along with moving prayers in a beautiful cathedral. For the West at least this may mark the end of an age.’

All the pomp and ceremony, the stirring music, the colourful uniforms, and precision marching, the solemnity – it was all done in accord with the Queen’s wishes. And the massive crowds in London, along with an estimated television audience of some four billion people, made this among the most significant public events of this century.

As to actual the funeral service, the sacral nature of it has impressed many, including myself. The hymns heard were: The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is Ended; The Lord’s My Shepherd; and Love Divine, All Loves Excelling. We heard various portions of Scripture during the service. And we heard the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby say these words:

The pattern for many leaders is to be exalted in life and forgotten after death. The pattern for all who serve God – famous or obscure, respected or ignored – is that death is the door to glory. Her Late Majesty famously declared in a 21st birthday broadcast that her whole life would be dedicated to serving the Nation and Commonwealth. Rarely has such a promise been so well kept! Few leaders receive the outpouring of love we have seen. Jesus – who in our reading does not tell his disciples how to follow, but who – said: “I am the way, the truth and the life”. Her Late Majesty’s example was not set through her position or her ambition, but through whom she followed. I know His Majesty shares the same faith and hope in Jesus Christ as his mother; the same sense of service and duty. In 1953 the Queen began her Coronation with silent prayer, just there at the High Altar. Her allegiance to God was given before any person gave allegiance to her. Her service to so many people in this nation, the Commonwealth and the world had its foundation in her following Christ – God himself – who said that he “came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many”.

We may never again see anything quite like it. Certainly not the unashamed Christian elements. What modern ruler would have so many people come out to view his funeral? What leader would have so many gospel elements present? Who could elicit such a response as the Queen did? There was not just royal pageantry on display but a very real element of the sacred here.

Yes, the Queen was simply a human being like you and I, but she took seriously her role of serving the people. She did so without arrogance or condescension. And often the words of Christ were heard in her Christmas messages and other addresses. One would get none of this from a Biden or a Trudeau or a Macron or an Ardern. But they are few and far between.

So things may have shifted big time in the West, with one era passing as another takes its place. The secularisation process has taken its toll, at least among our leaders and elites. Few come to mind today who will ever be anywhere near as outspoken about matters of faith – at least the Christian faith.

The new King has long told us how much he admires Islam, and how he wants to be known as a ‘defender of faith’ and not the ‘defender of the faith’. England will certainly be quite different. But most of the rest of the West is in the same boat. Sure, we can find a few leaders who are still up front about their faith, such as Ted Cruz in America or former leaders in Australia such as John Anderson or Tony Abbott.

So this may well spell the end of Christendom as we know it. Sure, it has been on wobbly legs for quite some time now. In the West a new, dark, secular era seems to be upon us. Everywhere we see the retreat of the Christian faith and the rise of secular humanism, along with forces quite hostile to Christianity.

Thankfully the church is strong and growing elsewhere: Africa, Asia, Latin America. God never leaves himself without a witness. But is the West now at the end of such a long period of the Christian faith, at least in the public, and amongst our ruling elites? It is certainly looking that way.

One might ask why a Yank such as myself is even writing this way. Sure, I was never a Royal watcher. But marrying an Australian and living in a Commonwealth country for over three decades has changed this somewhat. And as a student of church history one cannot overlook how Christianity came to England and developed there.

Indeed, during the past few years I have been reading quite a lot on things like the English Reformation, the Puritans, the Pilgrims, and so on. So much amazing history. So many great Christians. But now it seems like this chapter might be coming to an end, not just in the UK but all over the Western world.

That is why this funeral seems like such a crucial event – a hinge of history. The end of the old and the beginning of what many of us fear to see. Yes, knowing that God is on the throne and has no plans of getting off it, that is certainly reassuring.

But just as so many millions of Brits really do miss their beloved Queen, many of us can miss what she represented. The future looks rather bleak. The way ahead seems uncertain. But as we heard at the funeral, the Christian has hope. The resurrection of Jesus proves that.

Whether Europe and the West will again experience resurrection power in a major way is a moot point. But all those who love Christ and eagerly await his coming certainly do have that hope. And that is enough. God bless you QEII.

Understanding the Covid Catastrophe

July 17, 2022July 17, 2022 Richard Barnes

Prolific blogger, Bill Muehlenberg recently published a bracing post appropriately titled, “Understanding the Covid Catastrophe”.

Thank you, Bill Muehlenberg, for your post and for your allowing us to re-publish.

(Link to his blog is below)

By Bill Muehlenberg

Who knew just a few short years ago that the entire world would be turned upside down, with an infectious disease as its base. Plenty of astute observers and experts who have been analysing all this have made the case that the illness itself was not what was so catastrophic, but how governments responded to it, even using it for their own ends.

Many thousands of articles and podcasts and papers and speeches now exist on all this. And plenty of solid books looking at the hype, the hysteria, the fear-mongering and the Chicken Little scenarios being pushed around the world are available.

Not all that long ago I listed 21 of the best books to be aware of on the Covid wars and the Great Reset globalists who are behind so much of this: Top 21 Books on the Great Reset and the Covid Wars – CultureWatch

Excellent books and articles continue to appear. One of the newest and best articles is by science writer Debbie Lerman. While I encourage you to read the whole piece, let me provide some key excerpts from it here. She begins:

So much basic scientific data and so many best practices and ethical standards in public health were abandoned during the Covid pandemic, it would be difficult to list them all. Nevertheless, we must remember just how much reality has been warped since March 2020 and try to understand how that warping occurred. Maybe if we understand what happened, we can prevent it from happening again. Maybe we can unwrap the narrative enough so that more people can see clearly what went wrong.

For my own sanity, I need to understand what happened, so I can come to terms with why people behaved the way they did, and why so many of my own assumptions were shattered during the pandemic. I want to know why real science got thrown out as misinformation, propaganda turned into absolute truth, the free press morphed into a government mouthpiece, and supposedly liberal and scientific institutions abandoned ethical standards and critical thought to impose zero-evidence, zero-Covid authoritarian lockdowns and mandates.

How did my family, friends and neighbors – who I thought shared my liberal, humanist values – turn into a group-thinking, bullying herd? What forces were exerted to erase scientific and intellectual integrity from the minds of literally millions of doctors, scientists, economists, journalists, educators and other normally curious and compassionate people worldwide?

To help answer these questions she examines “four extremely powerful forces [that] converged catastrophically to initiate, and then perpetuate, the snowball that became the avalanche of Covid insanity.” Let me look at each one briefly.

1. Panic

She writes: “I believe pandemic panic was driven from above – from the highest echelons of the most powerful governments – and below – within populations primed for disaster and perpetually on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”

She discusses the Wuhan lab leak and then says:

Further strengthening this hypothesis is the fact that the countries with the strictest and most prolonged lockdowns, including Australia, New Zealand and Canada, were all members of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance, along with the US and UK. It makes sense that precisely those countries sharing the earliest and most detailed intelligence about the lab leak felt not only justified, but compelled, to carry out the strictest lockdowns.

All of this leads me to conclude that a small group of top intelligence and public health officials, fearing a catastrophically deadly engineered virus had been released (regardless of its observed effects in the real world), convinced themselves, their governments, and in turn their populations (without publicly revealing the virus’ origin) that the strictest containment measures were needed or else millions would die.

2. Politics

Lerman looks in detail at the Trump years and what followed, and concludes:

To top it all off, the pandemic happened during an election year. So Trump hatred and pandemic hysteria were effectively bundled together to get Trump voted out and Biden, a Democrat more aligned with the public health establishment, in. Subsequently, anyone elected on a pro-lockdown, zero-Covid agenda was incentivized to continue advocating for the strictest measures for as long as possible.

3. Propaganda

The third force contributing to global Covid hysteria was, as Michael Senger points out in his eye-opening book Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down the World, a concerted propaganda campaign by the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, that managed to turn the pandemic (at least until recently) into a celebration of China’s inimitable social cohesion and a showcase for the supposed success of its authoritarian anti-pandemic measures.

Previously, China had suffered loss of face and international condemnation due to a pandemic outbreak and coverup. This time, the CCP seized control of the narrative by imposing draconian, unprecedented zero-Covid measures no democratic government would ever dream of, then claiming, contrary to logic and basic epidemiological science, spectacular victory.

Everything from social media bots to China-friendly editorial boards at prestigious medical journals was leveraged to denigrate any state or nation with a less restrictive approach. Deviations from the Chinese methods were labeled – in a brilliantly insidious 21st-century demonstration of Newspeak – heartless, pro-death, anti-humanitarian and materialistically motivated.

The World Health Organization, largely supported by and beholden to China, vociferously praised the CCP and the Chinese people for their discipline, commitment, and ultimate victory. Fawning scientific and general press coverage marveled at how sometimes authoritarianism could be good, if it meant saving millions of lives.

Thanks to the propitious convergence of panic and politics described above, the CCP propaganda succeeded spectacularly in convincing democratic governments to adopt hitherto unthinkable authoritarian measures and to pretend, or convince themselves, that such measures actually worked.

4. Profits

She looks at some of the big money-makers here:

Big Tech

In October 2021 the New York Times reported: “In the last year, the five tech superpowers — Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook — had combined revenue of more than $1.2 trillion. … some of the companies are growing faster and are more profitable than they have been in years.”

Test Makers and Sellers

In January 2022 CBS reported “Windfall profits for test makers,” including Abbott Laboratories ($1.9 billion in third-quarter sales related to COVID-19 testing, up 48% compared to the year-ago period). Other beneficiaries with skyrocketing profits were labs that process PCR tests and drugstore chains like CVS and Walgreens.

Vaccines

In February 2022 The Guardian reported that Pfizer made nearly $37 billion in sales from its Covid-19 vaccine in 2021 – making it one of the most lucrative products in history. Pfizer’s overall revenues in 2021 doubled to $81.3 billion, and it expects to make record revenues of $98 – $102 billion this year.

Billionaires

In January 2022 OxFam reported: “The world’s ten richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion —at a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion a day— during the first two years of a pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall and over 160 million more people forced into poverty. If these ten men were to lose 99.999 percent of their wealth tomorrow, they would still be richer than 99 percent of all the people on this planet. They now have six times more wealth than the poorest 3.1 billion people.”

Her conclusions are ominous indeed:

· An engineered pandemic potential pathogen leaked from a high-security US-funded lab in Wuhan long before it was acknowledged by China. By the time it became known, it was too late to contain. Having outlined the cataclysmic convergence of forces I believe came together to create the Covid catastrophe, I now have a Covid story that makes sense to me.

· When they found out, top US intelligence and public health officials affiliated with the Wuhan research panicked, fearing millions of deaths, international mayhem and personal culpability. This caused them to disregard real-world data about the virus and to abandon basic epidemiological principles and best practices in public health.

· The Chinese authorities adopted scientifically nonsensical zero-Covid policies not because they thought they would work but to deflect attention from China’s role in the viral leak and coverup. In a brilliant propaganda coup, they turned the pandemic into a celebration of their authoritarian measures, convincing the world to follow their example.

· All Democrats in the US and their allies elsewhere reflexively and uncritically favored all the policies that President Trump – viewed as their mortal enemy – opposed. These were the very same scientifically bogus policies that the panicked officials and Chinese propagandists were pushing.

· Many who controlled the narrative in media, academia, public health and medicine were particularly susceptible to panic, politicization of the pandemic, and Chinese propaganda, which all came together to induce widespread groupthink and herd behavior. As cogently explained in The Great Covid Panic, such behavior is detached from logical reasoning and the ability to objectively evaluate reality.

· Major industries and individuals with enormous wealth and influence saw huge gains from the pandemic. It was, and still is, in their best interests to push for more testing, more treating, more vaccinating, more remote work and learning, more online shopping, and more of everything else pandemic-related.

Bear in mind that dozens of references go along with this piece. So she has very well documented what she is saying here. Please have a read of the whole article: The Catastrophic Covid Convergence ⋆ Brownstone Institute

I and others have been warning for years now that the use of fear and the exploitation of a crisis – real or imagined – makes for the perfect soil for Big Brother statism to be raised in and to flourish. We have seen that played out in sickening details over the past 30 months, and it is certainly not over yet.

Unless we wake up and start to take a stand, all this will only get worse. And if it does, we will only have ourselves to blame.

Understanding the Covid Catastrophe

Airline passengers during Covid regulations

Magna Carta: The Christian Connection

June 11, 2022June 11, 2022 Richard Barnes

In other posts I’ve noted that often history is taught as if it were a series of chaotic events without rhyme or reason. For example, I do not recall having studied the background to The Magna Carta beyond its importance to our liberties. It was only as an adult, long out of high school and college that I learned its critical Christian background.

A few years ago, Christian commentator, Bill Muehlenberge wrote a concise post on the Christian background to the Magna Carta which I believe you will find not only interesting but provocative and encouraging.

He has graciously given me permission to post it in its entirety which I have done below. I also recommend and encourage you to check out his blog, Culture Watch.

Thank you, Bill Muehlenberg, for your permission to publish your post here on The Pull of The Land:

Magna Carta: The Christian Connection

Eight hundred years ago the Great Charter was written, and we still are enjoying the benefits of it today. Simply put, this hugely significant document helped secure genuine democratic reforms, restrictions on government powers, equality and freedom under law, and other vital social goods we often take for granted today.

As Lynda Rose of Voice for Justice in the UK put it:

On 15 June 1215, with England on the brink of civil war, King John met with the barons at Runnymede and put his seal to what was in effect a peace treaty: Magna Carta. Today, that Charter has become one of the most celebrated and influential documents in history, rightly seen as the foundation for Democracy worldwide. Lord Denning described it as “…the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot.”

What is not so well known is the overwhelming influence of the Christian church on this vitally important document. Australian law professor Augusto Zimmermann explains the Christian roots:

Common law means a legal system based upon the English legal system; a mixture of customary law, judge-made law and parliamentary law. At least until the early 19th century, the common law was heavily influenced by Christian philosophy. This philosophy argues that there is a divine reason for the existence of fundamental laws, and that such laws are superior to human-made legislation, thus reflecting universal and unchangeable principles by which everyone should live. This assumption was expressed, among other things, in the Magna Carta of 1215, a charter which guaranteed the basic rights and privileges to the English barons against the king. Professor Aroney explains Christianity’s ideological influence upon the Magna Carta:

From [the time of Alfred] the kings of England have traditionally recognised their submission to God. At their coronations they take an oath before the Archbishop acknowledging the Law of God as the standard of justice, and the rights of the church. They are also urged to do justice under God and to govern God’s people fairly. Magna Carta was a development of these themes.

As Zimmermann explains in another important article:

At the time of Magna Carta (1215), a royal judge called Henry de Bracton (d. 1268) wrote a massive treatise on principles of law and justice. Bracton is broadly regarded as ‘the father of the common law’, because his book De legibus et consuetudinibus Anglia is one of the most important works on the constitution of medieval England. For Bracton, the application of law implies ‘a just sanction ordering virtue and prohibiting its opposite’, which means that the state law can never depart from God’s higher laws. As Bracton explains, jurisprudence was ‘the science of the just and unjust’. And he also declared that the state is under God and the law, ‘because the law makes the king. For there is no king where will rules rather than the law.’

The Christian faith provided to the people of England a status libertatis (state of liberty) which rested on the Christian presumption that God’s law always works for the good of society. With their conversion to Christianity, the kings of England would no longer possess an arbitrary power over the life and property of individuals, changing the basic laws of the kingdom at pleasure. Rather, they were told about God’s promise in the book Isaiah, to deal with civil authorities who enact unjust laws (Isaiah 10:1). In fact, the Bible contains many passages condemning the perversion of justice by them (Prov 17:15, 24:23; Exo 23:7; Deut 16:18; Hab 1:4; Isa 60:14; Lam 3:34).

A recent piece in the English press also discusses the Christian role in the production of the Magna Carta:

Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, played a central role in drafting the charter, which was signed by King John at Runnymede, Surrey. At least 11 other bishops were present.

A briefing note issued to members of the Synod reads: “The Church in England was central to the development of legal and human rights centuries before the French Revolution, now generally credited (along with the Enlightenment) for the secular genesis of human rights: the first parties to the charter were the bishops – led by Stephen Langton of Canterbury, who was a major drafter and mediator between the king and the barons; and its first and last clauses state that ‘the Church in England shall be free’.

“It is important that the Church’s crucial role in Magna Carta and its rights is not air-brushed out in 2015 – as was the role of Christians in the anti-slave trade celebrations.”

And recent research has even further demonstrated the Christians influence and underpinnings of this document.

New research suggests that Magna Carta may have been published predominantly by the church – rather than the Royal government of the day.

The revelations – announced as Britain prepares to commemorate the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta – shed remarkable new light on the politics behind the issuing of the charter.

The research suggests that early 13th century England’s King John was so reluctant to publicize the now world-famous document that the church had to step in to ensure that sufficient copies were made and distributed.

A new investigation into Magna Carta, carried out by scholars from the universities of East Anglia, Cambridge and King’s College London, has revealed, for the first time, that England’s bishops actually placed their own scribes inside the government’s civil service specifically to make copies of Magna Carta – so that every region of the country could have one.

The article concludes:

King’s College London’s Professor of Medieval History, David Carpenter, believes that the new revelations are “exciting discoveries”.

“We now know that three of the four surviving originals of the charter went to cathedrals – Lincoln, Salisbury and Canterbury. Probably cathedrals were the destination for the great majority of the other original charters issued in 1215,” he said.

“This overturns the old view that the charters were sent to the sheriffs in charge of the counties. That would have been fatal since the sheriffs were the very people under attack in the charter. They would have quickly consigned Magna Carta to their castle furnaces.

“The church, therefore, was central to the production, preservation and proclamation of Magna Carta. The cathedrals were like a beacon from which the light of the charter shone round the country, thus beginning the process by which it became central to national life,” said Professor Carpenter.

Last year while in England I had the privilege of seeing one of the four original copies at Salisbury Cathedral. I wrote an article about this at the time, noting the huge discrepancy between the Christian beginnings and development of England and its current anti-Christian stance. As I wrote there:

England is now an incredibly darkened and demonic place, with so much intense hatred of all things Christian. It is very difficult indeed for biblical believers to stand strong at the moment. Nonetheless, I have met many of these champions of the faith, pinpoints of light in a very black place, who are fighting the good fight.

But one after another they are being sued, harassed, bullied, pursued by the police, or taken to task legally by the secular lefties. This is really leading to full-scale persecution of true Christians. I thought things in Australia were bad, but they are even worse in the UK.

So please pray for the remnant of believers who are seeking to stand strong here. They are few and far between, but they are some of the boldest and bravest believers I have found. They know how dire things are, and they are still holding firm.

Magna Carta forever changed the world, and we still are enjoying the fruit of this overwhelmingly Christian document. But the tragedy is, the Western world is quickly renouncing its Christian past. And with it, it is renouncing freedom, democracy and rule of law.