1990 Issue 10 - Unbelief and Revolution - Counsel of Chalcedon

8/12/2019 1990 Issue 10 - Unbelief and Revolution - Counsel of Chalcedon

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Unbelief and evolution

by Joe Morecraft l l

The lnzpact

of

the French Revolution

and the nzerican Civil War

on Twentieth Century nzerica

The Celebration of the French Revolution

On October 11, 1988, President Ronald Reagan

signed into law Public Law 100-482, which, accor

ding to the Senators who introduced it, urges the

people

of

the United States to observe the Bicen

tennial

of

the French Revolution and the historic

events of 1789. Their reason for this law was that

the more we learn about the French Revolution and

the Declaration

of

the Rights

of

Man and the Citizen

the more we learn about our own past

n

1908 Russian anarchist, Prince Propotkin wrote,

What we learn today from the study of the great

Revolution

in

France is that it was the source and

origin of all the present communist, anarchist, and

socialist conceptions.

On July

14

1989, Bastille Day, President George

Bush and the leaders ofthe world's six other major

industrial nations met

in Paris to celebrate the 200th

Anniversary of the French Revolution in 1789.

In his address to the United Nations on December 7,

1988, Mik:ail Gorbachev said, Two great

revolutions, the French Revolution

of

1789 and the

Russian Revolution of 1917, exercise a powerful

impact on the very nature

of

the historical process,

having radically changed the course

of

world

development. These two revolutions, the French

and the Communist, each in its own way, gave a

huge impulse to human progress and contributed to

forming the pattern

of

mentality that continues to

prevail in the minds

of

people.

So, according to our leaders, there is one thing the

free'' West and the communist East can celebrate in

common:

both

cultures owe their existence and the

nature

of

their civilizations to the French Revolution

of 1789.

The Accomplishments

of the French Revolution

What is it we are to celebrate?

What

do we owe to

the French Revolution? Mirabeau, one of the leaders

of

the French Revolution summarized the attitude

of

the people behind the Revolution:

We

must

overthrow all order, suppress all laws, annul all

power, and leave the people

in

anarchy. We must

caress their vanity, flatter the people's hopes,

promise them happiness .. But as the people are a

lever which legislators can move at will, we must

necessarily use them as a support and render hateful

to them everything we wish to destroy, and sow

illusions in their paths. -- The clergy, being the

most powerful, through public opinion, can only be

destroyed by ridiculing religion, rendering its

ministers odious, and only

by

representing them as

hypocritical monsters. Liables must at every

moment show fresh traces

of

hatred against the

clergy: to exaggerate their riches, to make the sins

of

an individual appear to

be

common

to

all,

to

attribute

to them all vices--murder, irreligion, immorality,

sacrilege.

What

did the French Revolution accomplish? It

popularized the guillotine. During the French

Revolution, particularly the Reign of Terror,

thousands

of

men, women and children were

beheaded by the guillotine. At one point, little,

poverty-stricken peasant boys and girls were thrust

beneath the blade

of

he guillotine

andwere

mutilated

because they were t small to fit into the fatal

plank.

On

more than

one

occasion hundreds

of

these children were driven into an open f ield outside

the city, shot, clubbed down, sabered by the

assassins, around whose knees these little children

clung, weeping and crying for mercy. The guillotine

was too slow for the blood-thirstiness

of

Robespierre and the other leaders. They instituted a

new method of extermination. Men, women,

The Counsel of Chalcedon December 1990 Page 7


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Robespierre guillotines the executioner after

guillotining everyone

e se

n France.

children, priests, and nuns were herded together and

mown down with cannon, or simply blown up with

large charges

of

gun powder. Still the executions

were too slow. This problem was soon solved by a

man named Carrier, who invented mass drownings,

which he laughingly called ';bathing parties.'; Over

300,000 people were killed by guillotine, cannon

and drowning during the French Revolution, our

leaders have urged

us

to celebrate. 2

These revolutionaries believed that France was .

overpopulated. They decided to begin a

depopulation program which was never carried out,

because the leaders could not agree on whether they

should exterminate one third, one half,

or

two thirds

of

the 26,000,000 people in France. They could

not

decide whether to

k ll

eight million

or

eighteen

million Frenchmen. One of them said, Let us make

a cemetery.of France rather than not regenerate her

after our manner. Everything, yes, everything must

be destroyed, since everything must

be

remade.''3

The: Counsel

of

Cbalcedon December 1990 Page 8

The aith of the French Revoluti.on

The Declaration of the Rights ofMan and the Citizen

was the confession

of

faith

of

the French

Revolution. Senator Richard Luger explained that

we should celebrate that revolution because

as we

read the Declaration

of

the Rights

of

Man and the

Citizen we learn more about our own past. The

basis for reyolutionary establishment

of

a new

world order is given in this document: Kings,

aristocrats, tyrants

of

every description are slaves in

revolt against the Sovereign of the earth, which is

HUMANITY, and against the Legislator of the

universe, which is

NATURE.''

(emphasis mine)

To celebrate their faith in man and nature, the

revolutionists created a statue of a harlot and

crowned her the goddess, Reason.'' They would

carry this harlot-goddess through the streets, and the

crowds would bow

in worship and submission

before her as she passed.

The confession

of

faith

of


was clearly

an

atheistic, anti-christian one, which

worshiped Man.

The Uniqueness of the French Revolution

Over one hundred years before . the French

Revolution

of

1789, during the Enlightenment,

Europe began her apostasy from the Christian Faith.

She stopped believing

in

the sovereignty

of

God and

began believing in the sovereignty of man and the

supremacy

of

human reason. As a result

of

its

apostasy from the Godofthe Bible iJ the hearts and

minds

of

Frenchmen, and other Europeans, the

bloody French Revolution was inevitable. God says

n Proverbs 8:36, Those whohate tne love death.

The French Revolution of 1789 was the first

revolution

of

its kind in the history

of

the world.

There had been many wars prior to 1789 in France,

but there never was a war like this one. t was the

first revolution in history which had as its express

purpose the total overturningof Christianity and of a

Christian moral order. That was its

goal, its thrust,

its intent, not only in France, but

n

Europe and

throughout the world. The wars of the Twentieth

Century are continuations and extensions

of

that

revolution

in

France. America's War Between the

States was a product

of

the French Revolution, as

well as the Communist Revolution

of

1917, World

War I, World Wat II, the wars n South America,

China, Korea, Vietnam, Angola, .Mozambique and

southern Africa, and Nicaragua. The wars

of

the

past 150 years have taken place because of what

took place nFrance n 1789.


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The Inevitability of the French Revolution

The French Revolution, which led to the dictatorship

and wars of Napoleon, was inevitable once Europe

embraced unbelief and turned from the supremacy

of

Almighty God and the authority of His Word,

t u r n n ~

to man and reason

as

the supreme gods of

the uruverse.

UNBELIEF BREEDS REVOLUTION

The greatest Christian critic

of

the French

Revolution was the Dutchman Groen Van Prinsterer,

(1801-1876), whose book on the revolution is

entitled,

Unbelief and Revolution. He speaks

of

the

inevitability of this revolution, when he writes that

the humanistic worldview

of

the supremacy

of man

and of human reason

of

the Eighteenth Century

would not be stopped until civilization was redefined

in terms

of

that self-consciously antichristian

worldview. His words are:

"With the tree of life planted once more in the

European soil by the Reformation all

but

dead, the

ground was ready to receive the deadly seed (of

humanism). Theology, political theory, literature

and education: all these were soon permeated by the

new doctrine. This leaven leavened the whole lump.

At the outbreak of he French Revolution virtually all

of

Europe was ripe for upheaval. -- The eruption

of

a volcano is inevitable long before the mountain

mass is torn asunder.

The

French Revolution was

inevitable long before

it

broke

out

"It (the revolution) is more than

just

a political

revolution ending

in

democracy ...

It

is TIIE

Revolution: with its baleful influence which, though

tempered in its pernicious effect by the blessings of a

higher providence, continues even

in our

day to

frustrate the operation of truly wholesome

principles.

It

is

THE

Revolution: with its

systematic application of the philosophy of unbelief;

with its atrocities and destructiveness; with its self

deification and its adoration of Reason on the ruins

of the ancient state.

" . .

as

early

as

1770 the lcing was told by the clergy:

'Impiety bears a grudge against both God

and

men.

It

will

not be

satisfied until it has destroyed all

authority, divine

and

human.

It

will plunge France

into all the horrors

of

anarchy and give birth to the

most unspeakable revolutions.'

"What happened in 1789

had

to happen

.

4

The American Civil War as

our "French Revolution"

America experienced a bloody French Revolution

in

the 1860's

n our War

Between the States.

Our War

of Independence in 1776 was anything but a

revolution.5

It

was the opposite of the French

Revolution of 1789. The colonies were fighting a

war of self-defense against the lawless

totalitarianism

of

King George

and

the English

Parliament.

But we did

most certainly experience

THE

Revolution n the 1860's.

The

instigators of

theW

ar Between the States

had

the same design

and

intent as the leaders of the French Revolution: to

break the back

of

a Christian

moral

order and a

constitutional political order in the South and

throughout the United States. They used slavery as

an excuse to commence with war.

The southern states,

i e

., the Confederacy, were

"rebels",

but

they were

n

rebellion, not against the

Constitution, but against

THE

Revolution

of

the

northern states, i.e., the Union.6

New

England

Unitarians and others instigated the

war in

order to

establish the equivalent of the French Revolution n

these United States,

in

order to

crush

the influence

of

Biblical, Reformed Christianity

on

the political

and social institutions

of

this continent. These

Unitarians comprised the leadership

of

the Abolition

Movement, which was their "front" for their

revolution against Christianity.

Otto

Scott, in his

book,

The Secret Six documents this perspective,?

He proves that a group of wealthy

New

England

Unitarians subsidized the terrorist,

John

Brown, to

come to the South and to foment revolution there.

These Unitarians

not

only despised Biblical,

Reformed Christianity, they also hated the U.S.

Constitution, because of its Christ ian roots. Long

before 1860, there was widespread talk throughout

New

England about secession

from

the Union

in

order to

get

away from the Constitution, which they

said, "was a covenant with death

and an

agreement

with hell." The same

men who

plead for secession

n

the early 1800's condemned the South for

secession

in

the 1860's.

One of

these

New

England

Unitarians, a

man by

the

name

of Garrison,

celebrated July 4, 1854, by publicly burning the

U.S. Constitution at a rally in Framingham,

Massachusetts.

Unitarianism was imported in the United States from

Europe and the Enlightenment. It held that: (1).

reason is supreme; (2). man

is basically good; (3).

man

is perfectable;

and

(4). a utopia

is

possible

op.

earth for perfected

man

by means

of

state-controlled

education and governmental regulation

of

society.

Man

is not evil, as the despised Calvinists taught.

Evil

is rooted in Calvinism

and

in

the institutions

of

America which were given birth by

Cal

vinism, viz.

the Constitution. Therefore, Calvinism

and

those

terrible institutions

must be destro

yed, along with

the moral, social, political order which has sustained

The Counsel

of

Chalcedon December 1990 Page 9


4/6

them. Hence, the French Revolution. Their anti

christian faith led them to this political agenda:

"Social reform is to be a central program

of

all

political parties. This reform must be an instrument

for the -increasing

of

the centralization

of

political

power in a central government at the expense of the

states."8

The more

the Unitarians increased

in

numbers and

influence, the more radical their social and political

reforms became. Their followers became

Collectivists and Socialists, some of whom even

attempted to abolish marriage and families

as

institutions

based

on Christianity, which were

viewed

as obstacles

to

their

new

world order un:aer

Man.

The Abolition Movement was led and financed by

the Unitarians. They took advantage of the great

controversial issue

of slavery to motivate people to

war.

It is

interesting to point

out

that one

of

the

major

industries

of

New England prior

to

1860 was

slave-trade

They

used the slave question to cover

their intentions to create revolution in this country

against our Christian roots and heritage, in order to

create a new humanistic, utopian, socialistic order.

The Insight

of

Thornwell

and Palmer

The Presbyterians saw through the excuses

of

the

War, and understood clearly the true issues.

The

three most influential Presbyterian ministers in the

South in the middle and late 1800's were James H.

Thornwell, president

of

Columbia Seminary,

Benjamin Palmer, a pastor

in New

Orleans, and

Robert

L

Dabney, Chief

of

Staff to Stonewall

Jackson and professor in Union Seminary. All three

of these

men

understood that the

War

Between the

States was ultimately a war to destroy Christianity,

although

most of

the people of the North were

certainly not aware

of

that fact.

On May 4, 1850, ten years before the war,

Thomwell said: "These are mighty questions which

are shaking thrones to their centers, upheaving the

masses like an earthquake, rocking the solid pillars

of this Union. The Parties in this conflict are

abolistionists and slaveholders; they are atheists,

socialists, communists and Jacobins, (this was the

name

of

the leaders

of

the French Revolution), on

one

side,

and

friends of order and regulated freedom

on

the other.

In

one word, the world is the

battleground, Christianity and Atheism are the

combatants, and the progress of humanity is at

stake. One party seems to regard society with all its

complicated interests, its divisions, and its

subdivisions as the machinery

of

man, which, as

it


has been invented and

arranged by man's

ingenuity and skill, may

be taken to pieces,

reconstructed or

repaired, as experience

shall indicate defects or

confusions

in

the original

plan. The other party

beholds this moral order

as

the ordinance

of

God. 9

Benjamin Palmer's

assessment of the

James H Thornwell situation was as follows

on Thanksgiving,

1 8 ~ :

"The abolitionist's spirit is undeniably atheistic. The

demon spirit which erected its throne upon the

guillotine in the days - of Robespierre, which

abolished the Sabbath and worshiped reason in the

person of

a harlot, yet survives to work other

horrors

of

which those of the French Revolution are

but a type. Among a people so generally religious as

the Americans a disguise must be worn, but

it

is the

same old threadbare disguise

of

the advocacy

of

human rights. rom a thousand

J

acobin clubs here

and in France the decree has gone forth which

strikes at God by striking at all subordination and

law. Under the spacious cry of reform

it

demands

that every evil shall

be

corrected

or

society become a

wreck. The sun must

be

stricken from the heavens

i

a spot is found upon the disk. These self

constituted reformers must quicken the activity

of

Jehovah and compel His abdication. It is time to

reproduce the obsolete idea that Providence must

govern man, but

not

that man should control

Providence.

-

-_ro

the South is assigned the high

postition of-defending before all nations the cause

of

all religion and

of

all truth. In this trust we are

resisting the power which wars against constitutions

and laws and compacts against Sabbaths and

Sanctuaries, against the family, the state, and the

church, which blasphemies invade the prerogative

of

God and rebuke the Most High for the errors

of

His

administration." 10

The

Continuation

of


America lost to the French Revolution, and the entire

nation, north and south, east and west, has been

suffering ever since, because America has been an

increasingly anti-christian nation ever since the

War

Between the States, and before. The spirit

of

anti

christ that swept Europe into revolution and .

dictatorships in 1789, against which the American

states resisted and stood firm as it fought the

despotism

of

England in the 1700's, by the middle

of

the 1800's eventually swept away the Christian


5/6

culture. that. had been in

p l ~ c e ,

although it was

crumbling, smce our founding m the middle 1600's.

Frothingham, a great Unitarian from New York said

in 1875: "The army of the North was the church

militant; the leader

of

the army was the avenging

Lord, and the reconstruction of a new order or the

subjugation

of

the south, from which it still has not

recovered, on the basis

of

freedom for mankind

was

the first installment of the Messianic Kingdom."'

Lenin understood in 1917 that the Russian

Revolution was a continuation

of

the French

Revolution of 1789. Mikail Gorbachev understands

that today, and seeks to advance the goals of the

French Revolution. Why do American presidents

suc:h as

Reagan and Bush, along with the o n g r e s ~

of the .United

t a t e ~ , say

t ~ a t everything we are as an

Amencan nat1on IS defmed by the anti-christian

French Revolution, which seeks to dethrone the God

of the Bible and place Man in God's place? There

are two answers to this question: .

1

Americans, including Conservatives, do not

understand the French Revolution. Conservatives

write, "The problem with the French Revolution is

that it did some good things, but it went too far." Or

"it was an exaggeration

of

some good principles."

Or "the leaders

of

the Revolution were inconsistent

with the good principles they did believe."

r

"The

French R e v o l ~ t i o n was highjacked by a conspiracy

of the Illummate and Free mason." However,

France did not fall to THE Revolution because of the

conspiracies of the llluminate and Mason. America

has

n ~ t

fallen ~ e c a u s e ~ f the conspicracy

of

the

Council

of

Foreign Relation. Conspiracies are not

the cause

of

spiritual, moral decline. They are

always the effects of spiritual decline.

2

Americans, including Conservatives are, by and

l a r ~ e , products

of

the French Revolution. They

b e h e v ~

the gospel

of

the French Revolution and they

W?rshrp

at the feet

of

sovereign man. Their rally

cnes are "The freedom of the individual Individual

: i g ~ t ~ Individual.liberty The sovereignty

of

the

m d t v l d ~ a l A m ~ n c a Sovereign Forever " The

Sovereign God

IS

dethroned, and sovereign man

e ~ t h e r as a ~ i n d i v ~ d u a l or as the state, has replaced

him. (Not m reality, but in the hearts and minds of

Americans.)

Why can (republican) presidents of the United States

a n ~ the. (marxist-le?inist) president

of

the Soviet

Umon smg the praises

of

the French Revolution?

Because both modern America and the Soviet Union

are products of the French Revolution. Both are

built upon a principle of revolt against God and the

Bible. Read Psalm 2

The Judgment of God on the West

9od

is j u d ~ i n g the West for ~ t s apostasy by allowing

It to expenence the devastatmg consequences of its

decision to rebel against

Him

. To use the words of

Romans 1: 18ff, He has given our culture over to a

reprobate mind. Over the past 100 years God has

been saying

to

us, n effect: '

You have cut yourself

off

from Me the Source

of

all life: Instead

of

believing in my

~ u p r e m a c y

and

s o v ~ r e i g n t y over every area

of

life, you have

f o o h s ~ l y chosen to believe in the supremacy

of

s o _ v e r e r ~ n t y of n:ran You say that without Me you

will build utopra ~ eart_h, that you will bring to all

men equalio/, fraternity, hberty, brotherhood, justice

and prospenty. Very well. I will turn you loose on

your course, and I will show you that without Me

you can do nothing but destroy yourself and your

children. What has man, the product

of

the French

revolution, produced _over the past 100 years?

Countless wars Farmne Starvation Injustice

Depression R e c e s ~ i o n s I n ~ a t i o n Bankruptcies

Slavery Perversions VIolence Terrorism

Incurable diseases Treachery Breakdown

of

the

family Increasing illiteracy Legalized murder'

Repent or Perish Turn to Christ and live "

We live in a world created by the French Revolution.

We live in an anti-christian world. A world

of

~ o n t ~ n u a l revolutions and wars, which are always

mevltable whenever a culture cuts i tself loose from

God and seeks to live in unbelief and in rebellion

against the Living God. More people have died in

the past seventy-five years because of the effects of

the French Revolution, (humanism in the West and

communism in the East), than have died at the hands

of

go.vernments and dictators throughout history

combmed. More people have died in this century

because

?f

anti-christianity than in all the rest

of

human history put together We are living during

the bloodiest era in the history of the world

Beginning with the War Between the States ~

which war more Americans died than in both ~ r l d

Wars, millions upon millions

of

men women and

children h a v ~

~ i e d

as a result

of

athei;t humanism.

Over 200 rmlhon people have been killed at the

hands

of

the Communists since 1917 and thousands

m ? ~ are being k i l l e ~ every year. ' In the USA,

~ l h o n s

have been killed by abortion since 1973

with the Roe vs. Wade decision. Thanks to effects

of th e French R ~ v o l u t i o t ; I on the Tw.entieth Century,

this

IS

the bloodiest er a m.human hrstory. And it is

~ o t over yet More will die before THE Revolution

Is stopped.

The Revolution VS The Reformation

Make no mistake about it, HE Revolution can be



6/6

stopped.

Tiff i

Reformation can reconstruct what

THE Revolution has destroyed; But only one thing

can stop the Revolution and begin the Reformation:

Faith

in

the gospel of Jesus Christ Groen Van

Prinsterer gives the answer to revolution:

"What can be learned from the experience of the

revolutionary era? That man, without

God,

even

with the circumstances in his favor, can do .nothing

but work hls own destruction. Man must break out

of

the vicious revolutionary; he must

turn

to God

whose truth alone can resist the power of the lie.

Should anyone consider this momentous lesson of

history to be more sentimental lament than advice for

politics, he is forgetting that the power

of

the gospel

toeffect order and freedom and prosperity has been

substantiated by world history. Let him bear in

mind that whatever is useful and beneficial to man is

promoted by the fear of God and thwarted by the

denial of God. He should bear in mind especially

that the revolutionary theory was an unfolding of the

germ ofunbelief, and that the poisonous plant which

was cultivated by apostasy from the faith will wilt

and choke

in

the atmosphere

of

a revival

of

the

faith."ll

Footnotes

1. Quoted by William F. Jasper in . his article, "Stoking the Fire:

CelebFating_ llie atrocities of llie French Revolution," in The New

Amencan,"July

3,

1989, Vol. 5 No. 14, page26.

2. IBID. page

27

3 IBID. page 27

4. Groen Van Prinsterer,

Unbelig

and Revolution.l..ectures V I I , ~

X (Tb,e Groen Van Priilsterer Fund, 1975, Amsterdam), pages' 29r,

561:

For

a Christian Frenchman's assessment of . lie French

Revolution, see Alexis De T o c q u e v i l l e ~ s J h e Old Regime

and

the

French Revolutio 'l (Do lbleday, 1955, l t 1 J. De. Tocqueville was a

contemporary

of

van

Prinsterer. .

5;

.

For the difference between the American

War

of Independence

of

1776 and the French Revolution

of

1789 see Rushdony's excellent

article, The French Revolution and the American Conservative

Counter-Revolution" in his book, This lnde_pendent Republic, (l'he

~ a i g

~ j e s s ,

1964, Nutley, N.J.), p iges 134fF.

He

begins the c h a p ~ r

w1th.this helpful Q)lOte from Peter Drucker, (The Future oflndustnal

Man

p.

219.

NY:

John Day, 1942):

"The American Revolution WlilS based

on

Jlrinciples completely

contrl IY to those of the

Enlightenment and

the

Fren,cfi Revolution . In

ilitention and effect

it

was a successful countermovement against the

very rationalist cfuSPQtism

of

the Enlightenment which jrrovided the

IJOhtical. foundat ion for the F r e ~ c h R e v o l u ~ o n . T h o u g ~ , the French

Revolution happened later

In lime,

1t

had po11tically and

philosophicallyl5een anticip_ated

by

the American R e v o l u t ~ o p . The

cqnservatives of.1776 and I787 fought a ~ d overcame the

spmt of

the

French Revolution

so

that the Amencan develo])men1 actually

represents a more advanced s ~ e in history than the Etats Generaux

the Terror, and Napoleon.

Far from

being a revolt against the old

tyranny of feudalism, the American Revolution was

a

conservative counterrevolution in the name of freedom against the new

tyranny

of

rationalist UberaJ.ism and Enlightened DespotiSni."

See also

The French and American Revolutions

C

ornparedby

Friedrich

Gentz,

(1800)h

translated by President John Quincy AC ams,

(St

Thomas P.ress,nouston, Texas, 1975).

6. Robert L. Dabn(d' Life and Campqigns o[Lt . General Thomas J

Jackson, (Sprinkle Publications,1970, Harrisonburg, Va.), pages 125-

176.


7. Otto Scott,

Th Secret Six: John Brawn

and

the Abolition

Movement, (Times Books, 1979, N) ). Sc

Documents

1990 Issue 10 - Unbelief and Revolution - Counsel of Chalcedon