Obviously, we can’t find that answer directly in Scripture, and the answer we do land on is going to vary from person to person. The purpose of this essay is to outline some general principles which are consistent with Biblical values.

Since I am not a proponent of insurance-driven healthcare (for those who don’t know, we operate a “cash practice”1), I discuss the economics of health with my patients on a daily basis. Just this week I was doing a preoperative clearance on a patient for a planned orthopedic surgery. However, I included this caveat: the quoted self-pay price is 3+x the national average for this surgery, and I therefore advised patient to not proceed until a better price had been negotiated. Another patient from this past week told me that a cardiologist had recommended a certain medicine because of its cardiac benefits. When asked about the price, the doc didn’t have any idea. (It’s a $500 to $1,000/month med.) I’ve read that some physicians feel it’s unethical to discuss pricing with patients. For me, it’s unethical not to!

Let me also differentiate between terminal versus chronic illness. Terminal illness means there is no known cure outside of a God-directed miracle and death is likely imminent in the not-too-distant future. A 2014 study of doctors showed that 88% would choose DNR (do not resuscitate) for themselves when faced with a terminal illness in contrast to what they might recommend for their patients.2 Chronic illness, on the other hand, may also not have a cure but subsequent death is not on the near horizon. This is much more challenging when it comes to allocating healthcare dollars.

Biblical Principles

Let me begin with one of the most striking verses in Scripture in terms of our allotted days (Psalm 139:16, ESV):

Unformed substance in Hebrew is literally formless mass or embryo. The image is our allotted days being inscribed on a scroll. The idea is that the life stages of the psalmist were predetermined. In The Grammar of the Psalter, Mitchel Dahood (an American Jesuit Hebraist who died in 1982) writes3:

Like the Servant (Isa 49:1, 5), Jeremiah (1:5), and the Apostle Paul (Gal 1:15), the psalmist was predestined; his life stages and his days were decided and counted even before he was seen by them.

A friend of mine once told me, “You doctors can’t do anything to lengthen someone’s life.” This was in the context of why he was not getting a colonoscopy! I internally bristled, but then I came back to the above verse. It’s pretty clear!4

Within this context, it’s worth heeding the advice of King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived. Certainly, Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is a lot of “vanity” or futility in chasing after work, wealth, and pleasure. Yet it also surprisingly hopeful in its admonition to enjoy life (see 9:7-10, for example) within the context of God’s laws (“fear God and keep his commandments” [12:13]), with the understanding that all will be judged by God in the end (12:14). Considering that his daily court alone required about 180 bushels of wheat and 360 bushels of meal (I Kings 4:22), I doubt that his diet was gluten-free! And given the daily requirement of “ten fat oxen, and twenty pasture-fed cattle” (4:23), it likely wasn’t fat-free or dairy-free either!5

This is reminiscent of the New Testament reminder (Hebrews 9:27, KJV):

The Letter of James (4:14, ESV) reminds us that in the midst of advance planning for life and business,

In the Big Scheme of Things, our lives are compared to a transient mist that’s burned up by the morning sun. The following verse reminds us that our plans must be set in the light of Deo volente (D.V.), “if the Lord wills.” John Wesley reflected in his journal on this passage as he waited at Chester near the Irish Sea for favorable wind to sail to Ireland:

James would have approved the spirit of this entry, … contrasting as it does with the presumption of those he rebuked who planned the future without regard to the will of God or the uncertainties of life. What James urges is not a morbid preoccupation with possible disaster, but a realistic attitude to the future made possible by faith in God.… Realizing the future is uncertain not only teaches us trust in God, it helps us properly to value the present. To be obsessed with future plans may mark our failure to appreciate present blessings or our evasion of present duties.6

In one of the most convicting passages to me as a physician, we read in Mark (5:25-26, ESV) of the woman who had a presumably menstrual bleeding disorder:

Spent all that she had. No better, but actually worse! What a commentary on failure of care! But it does get at the heart of the question—how much is my life actually worth?

Bioethical Principles

Beauchamp and Childress first published their Principles of Biomedical Ethics in 1979. Currently in its 8th Edition, this text outlines four universal principles which help guide decisions in biomedical care. While not explicitly Christian, they have universal appeal and application regardless of faith.

1. Nonmaleficence: Since Hippocrates, the first principle of medicine has been primum non nocere, or “first, do no harm.” While stated in the negative, it is a daily guiding principle in my practice. I always need to make certain that anything I prescribe or recommend is not going to cause harm. If it doesn’t (cause harm), then it’s passed the first test.

2. Beneficence: This is the positive other side of the coin, which I loosely translate as “do some good.” Because it’s not enough to just not harm. We would expect that therapeutic recommendations would actually do good. If we can’t be certain that it will do good, then caution is advised. It seems simple enough, but it’s amazing how often both of these principles get overlooked in medical care!

3. Autonomy: Medicine used to be very paternalistic, as in “I’m the doctor and you do as I say.” When I was in training, the emphasis was very much on patient-centered care. Options were given and the patient chose. During Covid, there was an extreme swing back to paternalism in the form of mandates and patient dismissal from practices for failure to comply. But this hallmark principle has always emphasized a “patient first” philosophy with the patient in the driver’s seat.

4. Justice: Perhaps the hardest to wrap one’s head around, this is best translated as “the greatest good for the greatest number.” It’s this principle that guides the use of finite medical resources. For example, if there are 10 people and $1M, is it ethical or wise to spend $900k on 1 and $100k on the other 9? This principle rightly stands in tension with autonomy. This is why there are advisory boards on healthcare sharing plans to provide guidance on allocation of resources.

Gelassenheit: An Anabaptist Ideal

It’s worth pondering another tension, and that is the relationship between individualism and community with respect to emphasis.

• Entrepreneurs tend to be highly individualistic. They are often risk-takers in spite of community.

• The American frontier was conquered through a spirit of rugged individualism combined with community survival.

• Many religious groups (the Anabaptists, for example) thrive because the community takes precedence over the individual.

• Loners and sociopaths are born through a lack of both individual and community initiative. These can be described as “the dropouts of any generation.”7

I asked Grok to create a Punnett square expressing this, and after several tries, here was the result (above description is clockwise from top left).

I want to flesh out the bottom right a bit more using the Anabaptists as an example. Snyder writes:

Persons in the low individualism-high community group are members of a community. Their satisfaction in life derives from that membership. Their own individual achievement is not very important, nor does the achievement of the community insure [sic] individual satisfaction. Belonging is much more important. One is somebody (and therefore an individual) simply by belonging. The community forms the individual and protects its members.

Individuals will be healthy as long as they belong, whereas ill health derives from rupture within the community. Historic Anabaptists speak of Gelassenheit, or submission, as an essential characteristic for community life. Brethren speak of humility…8

Gelassenheit is a difficult term to define. A direct translation from German will yield something like “serenity” or “composure.” But that is a pretty vanilla description! It’s been suggested that it has as many as fifteen different translations. The ones that get to the heart of what I’m describing are self-surrender, self-abandonment, letting go, and resignation and yielding to God’s will.9

This coexisted in the context of Gemeinschaft, or community, better interpreted as “living and, if need be, suffering together as a fellowship of dedicated disciples.”10 This often involved the image of many kernels of wheat coming together in one common loaf of bread.

These concepts are embodied by Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:42, ESV):

It is further exposited in the Apostle Paul’s description of Christ in Philippians 2 (ESV):

This kenosis or emptying of Himself is the ultimate yielding to the Father’s will. We are instructed to have this same mind, which is truly countercultural to the potential selfishness of individualism.

Summary Points

Obviously, we can’t set a dollar amount to the question posed in the title. However, I believe the principles outlined above will provide some very clear directives. Let me offer three simple practical applications.

1. Utilize the value of community when the individual direction is unclear. We were never meant to navigate life alone. Consider creating a team or support group for challenging individual cases.

2. Reassess the big picture. Remember where you’ve come from, evaluate where you are presently, and assess where you are going. You will probably need others to help with this process.

3. Don’t chase every pot of gold at the end of every rainbow! There are people who make their living crafting compelling narratives—which are false! Pray for discernment.

Finally, realize that the earthly vessels we dwell in are the temples of the Holy Spirit, but they are transient. Someday a minister will stand at our graveside and proclaim, “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”11 We are sojourners in this vale of tears, strangers and pilgrims seeking our Heavenly Country. “For here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come” (Hebrews 13:14, KJV).

Even so come, Lord Jesus!

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Dr. Yeager’s reflections on goodness, truth, and beauty and their impact on life, medicine, and theology; what it means to live as male and female reflections of the imago Dei (Genesis 1:27); not intended as individual medical advice.

¹³…Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. ¹⁴For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this? (Esther 5)

Queen Esther was faced with the stark reality of both death through silence and death through speaking. It’s risky business to speak up. The world witnessed that just a few short days ago with Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Yet ironically, that unspeakable loss for us remaining has seeded what I pray will be a real “turning point.” Indeed, as his widow Erika said last evening, “You have no idea what you have just unleashed across this entire country and this world.”

Speaking up is costly, and sometimes deadly. Yet staying silent is equally so. None of us will ever achieve the impact that Charlie had. Our kingdoms—those areas over which God has called each of us to reign—are all different. I read recently of both Eric Metaxas and Dr. James Dobson reflecting on their friendship with Charlie and his global influence, yet Charlie acknowledging that his early years were forged by both of them. This reciprocity is just a small window into the intersecting “kingdoms” God has gifted each of us with, and we do well to pause and reflect on what that means for each of us individually.

With that as a backdrop, LuAnne and I have just finished virtually attending the 82nd annual conference of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. For those not familiar with AAPS, it is an alternative to the AMA (American Medical Association) and has been the voice of private physicians (such as us) since 1943.

I’m not used to thinking of medical conferences as “inspiring.” This one truly was! AAPS is not a Christian organization per se, yet it’s “dedicat[ion] to the highest ethical standards of the Oath of Hippocrates and to preserving the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship and the practice of private medicine” draws a lot of Christian physicians and therefore has a strong Christian orientation. For example:

• US Attorney Ed Martin concluded his introductory legal update presentation with “God is good all the time.”

• Profound expressions of gratitude for President Trump, Secretary Kennedy, and the life and legacy of Charlie Kirk.

• “Religious discrimination is just as repugnant as racial discrimination.”

• “The war on children came from the war on words” (this in reference to transgender medicine being rooted in verbal engineering which precedes social engineering).

• “My God is an awesome God…He reigns.” One of the speakers admitted to feeling apprehensive about her talk which revealed some of the historical horrors in modern psychiatry.

• The conference ended with a 45-year veteran of medical practice. He admitted that sometimes practice can be discouraging, but we have to remind ourselves of what God requires of us—to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. He then closed the conference with prayer, “in Jesus’ name.”

LuAnne and I have been to many conferences in our time—but this one was truly unique. And it got me to thinking about my kingdom and what it is that God has called me to do. So many unprecedented and exciting things have been happening in the world and particularly in health and medicine recently. A few days prior to the conference, I wanted to cancel patients and just write about this! But the kingdom duties called, and the writing was delayed. Now, with Charlie Kirk’s assassination, what I had intended to write has shifted a bit.

While I never knew Charlie personally, we did hear him speak in Lancaster, PA a few years ago. He was brilliant, quick-witted, and not afraid to tackle the cultural and spiritual issues of our day head on. The mainstream media has portrayed him as a “right wing activist.” Others have accused him of hate speech. Even some Christians have tried to defend or explain why Democrats in the US House shouted “no” when a moment of silence was requested the afternoon of his assassination. Others have had strange explanations of why national grief shouldn’t eclipse the ministry of the local church.

All of this strikes me as feckless, fickle, and most importantly false. Those who followed his life and ministry know that they are gross distortions of his ministry. The reality is that one of the most ardent and eloquent defenders of Truth—something Christians are supposed to care about—has been assassinated as both a political and religious martyr.

And while Christians are squabbling about the above and some refusing to defend his life (a discussion we shouldn’t even be having!), a widow shoulders unspeakable grief and two children will never know their father. Nancy Pearcey (America’s foremost female Christian intellectual) rightly calls out Christianity Today1:

Eric Metaxas pointed out yesterday that pastors’ cowardice has been partially responsible for Charlie being viewed as a radical.

Those who are critiquing Charlie Kirk didn’t understand or comprehend his mission. But millions did. As Tertullian said, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” And in that spirit, countless others are stepping forward. Here are just two young men that I’ve encountered in the last 24 hours (click on picture to watch):

And this just came into my email as I’m writing…a viral video on TikTok with nearly 123k likes:

My dear readers, amazing things are happening through this tragedy! God is emboldening His people. The message of Jesus, the reliability of the Word, and the importance of family and freedom are being unapologetically proclaimed. Personally, I feel a renewed energy to speak Truth without fear or compromise. Let us always do so, full of “grace and truth.” May none of us stand in the way of these messages with critiques and insensitivities.

The following images were screenshots from X that I took late afternoon on the day of his assassination—messages that spoke to me in the midst of profound grief.

And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this? What is your kingdom? What is your time?

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The Rev. Dr. Gregory Poland’s “Seven Lessons on Public Health and the Local Church”1 represents a very biased one-sided perspective of the Covid-19 pandemic and is fraught with significant medical and theological misrepresentations and errors. If Dr. Poland’s conclusions represent the official position of the PCA, then I would argue that we have in fact learned nothing significant from the past five years. This rebuttal presents the other side of the story.

Introduction

I have not advised the White House or the Department of Defense and I don’t have an academic appointment. Nor am I a teaching or ruling elder in the PCA. I do attend a large PCA church in southcentral Pennsylvania, having arrived at a Reformed understanding of faith from my Anabaptist upbringing. Along with my wife, we represent 1% of physicians in the USA who are not employed by a corporate hospital, insurance, or government entity. I’ve been practicing in the trenches of an agrarian community as a country doctor for the past several decades.2 We had the privilege of successfully treating hundreds of Covid patients through our office during the C193 pandemic. I, along with Dr. Poland, have pledged “my life in the service of humanity,” acknowledging that “the health and life of my patient will be my first consideration.”4

It's unlikely that anything I write will change Dr. Poland’s mind. That isn’t specifically my goal. As Dr. John West writes, “If you have already embraced Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, I doubt this book will persuade you to abandon it. But if you are one of the growing number of Christians troubled by the shocking failures of Christian leaders at all levels—and you want to become part of the solution—this book is for you.”5 This rebuttal is for those “growing numbers.”

Dr. Poland is a well-published academic physician-scientist with over 500 publications. He is familiar with the protocol of adding conflicts of interest at the end of journal articles. This was conspicuously absent in the byFaith publication. At the risk of “poisoning the well,” I think it’s important to state those conflicts upfront. Even though they are at the end of an article, I generally read them first, because it’s through those conflicts that I interpret everything else. Here is just one of those declaration of interests:

For many years he has been a proponent of compulsory influenza vaccination7 despite the fact that a study in 2017 critiques the widespread assumption that institutional vaccination of workers protects patients, stating that “current scientific data are inadequate to support the ethical implementation of enforced HCW [health care worker] influenza vaccination.”8 A Cochrane 2018 database review concluded that the “certainty of evidence for the small reductions in hospitalisations [sic] and time off work is low.”9 It’s beyond the scope of this rebuttal to address the impossibility of using biblical law to defend compulsory medical mandates—including vaccination.10

American novelist Upton Sinclair was known to tell his audiences, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”11 The following four rebuttals to Dr. Poland’s arguments aim to elucidate that understanding.

Rebuttal #1: Science does not have the final word and is meant to be an open debate.

I think Dr. Poland believes the first part of the above statement, as he states that “science can say nothing of moral or theological truth.” However, he mentions “science” quite frequently without actually defining what is meant by science. He argues that Christians’ rejection of “science outright” is nearly akin to rejecting the created order established by our Sovereign Lord, yet he never specifically identifies what science is being rejected.

By inference, those questions are answered by his reference to opinions different from his own as anti-science, conspiracy theories, and misinformation—all epithets used routinely during C19 to discredit, disembody, and disenfranchise those who were unwilling to follow a mockingbird narrative. In doing so, he commits the fallacy of argumentum ad verecundiam, or an appeal to authority, which “occurs when one argues that a position is true because it is held by an authoritative individual, institution or organization.”12 One is reminded of Dr. Fauci stating that criticizing him was “really criticizing science because I represent science.”13

Over the past 5 years we were repeatedly told to “trust the science.” But as Sir Patrick Vallance, the former chief scientific advisor for No. 10 Downing Street noted, “There is no such thing as ‘the’ science [because] science by its definition is a moving body of knowledge that tries to overturn things by testing the whole time.”14

Dr. West notes that calling views different from one’s own anti-science “betrays a strikingly unsophisticated understanding of science.” He goes on to state:

Dr. West further warns, “When scientific dissenters aren’t allowed to be heard, theologians and pastors may end up making embarrassing theological concessions that aren’t required by…science.”16 Disagreement with a prevailing narrative doesn’t automatically make one “anti-science.” One only needs to remember Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis who suggested around 1847 that the cause of puerperal fever was from physicians not properly washing their hands between the pathology lab and the obstetrical ward of the Vienna General Hospital. “He faced fierce opposition from some of the most prominent physicians in Europe,”17 and unfortunately died in an insane asylum in 1865 at the age of 47. The Semmelweis Doctrine of infectious disease wasn’t accepted until the late 19^th century, nearly 50 years after its proposal.

What Dr. Poland calls science ends up being scientism—which is by definition “a religion where you are expected to unquestionably trust the pronouncements of the anointed ‘scientific experts.’”18 The Medical Establishment hasn’t gotten the message that their credibility is sorely compromised over the past 5 years, with trust in doctors plummeting from 71.5% in April 2020 to 40.1% in January 2024.19 Public trust in our profession will not be restored by repeating the same tired mantra that led to the erosion of trust in the first place.

During the Enlightenment (which also correlated with the rise of scientific materialism), it was thought that truth was determined through experimentation, and hence the scientific method was born. As A Midwestern Doctor explains,

I hear not-so-subtle overtones of “science as religion” in Dr. Poland’s article which is profoundly disturbing coming from a teaching elder. It is clear from his instruction to pastors that dissenters from this religion are not allowed, as they do not meet his criteria for “credible and respected physicians.” I therefore found this commentary on the March 28, 2025 resignation of Dr. Peter Marks as the FDA’s Director for the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research very telling:

Rebuttal #2: Beware of the fallacy of expertise.

Remember that the experts thought Semmelweis was crazy!

Rabbi Edwin Friedman was a family therapist and leadership consultant who spent over 35 years interacting with the Beltway elites around DC. Chapter 3 of his book A Failure of Nerve has the subtitle of “The Fallacy of Expertise.”22 The basic premise of this chapter is that we place far too much emphasis on the accumulation of data at the expense of relationships. While he is not arguing against data or even expertise, he is cautioning his readers that ultimate answers will not be found in “the data” which becomes ever more preponderant and unmanageable.

There is a potential condescension which naturally accompanies expertise, a sort of fig leaf garment of degrees and accolades. Dr. Poland calls the “democratization of expertise” a “false belief,” as if expert knowledge is the privilege of the esoteric few. Yet Charles Spurgeon, the British Prince of Preachers, had no degrees or formal college education. He preached 10 times a week to a collective 10 million people during his lifetime. He read 6 books each week, The Pilgrim’s Progress more than one hundred times, and had a personal library of 12,000 books at his death with the Bible being preeminent.23 Can’t you imagine the deans and seminarians stating he would never amount to anything?! The Christian mandate of humility requires us to check our hubris at the door.

Experts are only as good as the veracity of their claims. Dr. Poland states that “an evidence-based approach to truth is a biblical call.” Yet the “evidence” continues to change. A prime example is taking a daily aspirin. When I was a resident, all of my diabetic patients needed to be on aspirin because the “evidence” suggested it prevented clots. About a decade out of residency, that dictum was completely turned on its head because the “evidence” didn’t support it. During residency, stroke patients were discharged from hospital with lifelong Plavix. Now, they’re discharged with generic clopidogrel plus aspirin for 21 days and then aspirin only. Which approach represents the biblical approach?

Dennis Rancourt notes that “recent medical history has shown that non-RCT [randomized controlled trials] comparative or observational studies can be egregiously wrong [emphasis added].” He cites other examples such as the widespread promotion of HRT (hormone replacement therapy) in women based on decades of observational studies until that was turned on its head by RCTs which showed that “these treatments actually increased myocardial infarctions (heart attacks) rather than decreased them as intended.”24 Thalidomide is another example. Originally marketed as a drug to prevent anxiety, insomnia, and morning sickness, it was eventually found to be frankly teratogenic.

Certainly, the call to Truth is a biblical one, but it’s hard to call an evidence-based approach biblical when the evidence changes by the decade. The biblical call is a call to faith, which by Hebrews definition is “the evidence of things not seen” (11:1, KJV).

In 2005, Stanford Professor John Ionnidas asserted that “most published research findings are false.” He presented six corollaries, with #5 & 6 being particularly relevant to C19: the greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true; and, the hotter a scientific field (with more scientific teams involved), the less likely the research findings are to be true. 25 It should be noted that Ionnidas was the one who in July 2020 estimated the infection fatality rate (IFR) of C19 to be 0.27% (corrected to 0.24%),26 much lower than the 3.4% widely published by the WHO in March 2020, and roughly equivalent to the 0.132% IFR27 of the annual flu. Ionnidas et al revised the IFR in 2022 to be <0.1% for those under the age of 70.28

Hence, the experts and their published findings are often simply wrong or at the very least display bias funded by their vested interests. In fact, many of the journal articles are not even written by the “big names” attached to the articles. This is known as medical ghostwriting and has been highlighted by investigative science and medicine journalist Robert Whitaker. Pharmaceutical companies hire someone to craft a narrative in their interest and then find a big name at a major university to sign on as lead author.29 This is then published in the major medical journals and sent for free to all physicians throughout the US who then read it as “Gospel truth.”30

Unfortunately, many experts embody the Peter Principle, rising to the level of their own incompetence based on seniority, influence, entitlement, and other factors.31

A recent meme nicely summarizes the first two rebuttals:

Rebuttal #3: Don’t assume that medical recommendations or advances are common grace.

In daily practice, I am aware of the key figures throughout medical history on whose shoulders I stand.32 It is an honor to stand in a tradition that has improved many lives throughout the centuries.33 In this I agree with Dr. Poland that much of our tradition represents common grace.34

However, Dr. Poland’s article leads the unsuspecting reader to believe that the “common graces” of masking, social distancing, and vaccinations saved us from the pandemic. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have written about these things in our Coronavirus book, and I have written independently about them on my blog. I will therefore not entirely rehash those arguments here.35 But I will offer rebuttal comments on masks, antivirals, and the C19 vaccine, all things Dr. Poland states are common graces.

We’ve all heard of the Spanish flu of 1918 which resulted in 50 million deaths worldwide. The primary cause of death was not from the flu itself but from secondary bacterial pneumonia.36 (This explains the efficacy of azithromycin and doxycycline use in outpatient C19 treatment protocols—protocols routinely discouraged by mainstream medicine.) Surveying the historical literature from the Spanish flu shows that public health campaigns for universal mask-wearing were every bit as prevalent and onerous as during the recent pandemic. Yet in 1921, Warren T. Vaughan, MD, wrote:

Edwin O. Jordan, PhD, ScD, was a professor of hygiene and bacteriology at the University of Chicago. He published Epidemic Influenza: A Survey in 1927. He wrote:

So we’ve been around this block a century ago. It is important to note that the “new evidence” which supposedly emerged during 2020 showing mask effectiveness “somehow ignored all of the randomized controlled trials [from the previous several decades] showing no effect from masking.”39

Dr. Poland does acknowledge that “proper masks worn properly” are the caveats for efficacy. Yet 99+% of the masks worn in general public didn’t fit either category. We’ve all seen people wearing N95s over facial hair, which by definition renders the mask entirely ineffective. Most masks we saw in church, school, and other public spaces were cloth or paper and “suppositious” at best—in my opinion, hypocritical virtue signals.

Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, our current NIH Director, stated this in an interview around April 2021 in relation to children wearing masks:

In the above interview, Dr. Bhattacharya outlines the “collateral damage” associated with C19 lockdowns such as dramatically increased risk of suicide, social and anxiety disorders, perpetuation of panic and fear, and isolation of the elderly. Numerous studies have shown significant decline in developmental milestones and social and cognitive development of children during Covid.4142434445 In 2022, the CDC’s pediatric milestones were updated and in some cases lowered.46 For example, previous expectations for vocabulary were 50 words at 24 months, revised to 30 months. According to Amy Yacoub, a speech-language pathologist and consultant, no one in her field was consulted by the CDC for these changes.47 “Fact-checkers” will say this had nothing to do with the effects of the lockdowns, but the timing of the revision leaves one wondering.

Bhattacharya described the national response to C19 as “a straight failure of public health messaging” and stated that “science works only when you can discuss the evidence.” He further stated that public health experts “conflated their own view of the effectiveness of the lockdowns with their personal values,” i.e. they may be more risk adverse than the general population. He called this “an enormous mistake in public health.”

He goes on to state that the two premises of the Great Barrington Declaration48 are 1) the elderly were the most vulnerable to C19 and therefore should be protected, and 2) everyone else should return to life as normal without lockdowns and other disruptions to daily life. Yet Dr. Poland argues for these discredited measures in his call for virtual gatherings, “normalizing mask-wearing during outbreaks,” physical distancing, etc.—carte blanche measures which are simply not supported by the evidence.

Dr. Poland also argues for “antiviral treatments and emerging therapies” all while disregarding the well-established early treatment protocols which were very effective en masse when used around the world. I agree that monoclonal antibodies worked very well, but they mysteriously disappeared about the time the vaccine rolled out. Unfortunately, the antiviral medication that Dr. Poland states “played a significant role in preventing and reducing COVID-19 severity and death” is remdesivir. This highly toxic drug had already been studied and withdrawn from previous Ebola trials.

Despite Dr. Fauci’s knowledge of its toxicity and lethality, he was able to get EUA (Emergency Use Authorization) approval for the drug on May 1, 2020, at a cost of $3,120 for five days of treatment.50 (See lie #6 in footnote 35.)

On the other hand, we had very well-studied, safe, inexpensive, and effective medicine like hydroxychloroquine52 and ivermectin53 which were banned by mainstream medicine. Remember lie #6 above. If there is an existing treatment, then there is no need for an EUA and no need for a vaccine. When medical authorities can state that there is no treatment, then the door is open for novel therapies with billions of dollars at stake. This is why ivermectin was deceptively propagandized as “horse medicine.” My wife and I along with thousands of other independent doctors around the world used these therapies as early treatment with remarkable success. Yet early treatment was discouraged and “not recommended” by the medical establishment.54

The public health messaging surrounding the C19 vaccine55 was equally disastrous. The public was first told that it would prevent you from getting Covid. We were then told it would prevent you from transmitting it. Finally, we were told it would prevent more severe cases of Covid. In turn, each of these fell as lies. But thousands of people lined up outside grocery stores and shopping malls, desperately hoping that all three of the lies were true all while being bribed with Happy Meals and million-dollar sweepstakes.

What has been the effect of the “common grace” of the vaccine? To date, 37,544 C19 vaccine deaths have been reported to VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System).56 A study by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. in Massachusetts between 2007 and 2010 noted that “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported”57 to VAERS. You can extrapolate the potential real number of C19 vaccine deaths. Kirsch data in 2023 estimated that 1 person dies per 1,000 doses, resulting in 676,000 dead Americans.58 In the 2024 Toxic Shot: Facing the Dangers of the COVID “Vaccines,” professor emeritus of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health Dr. Harvey Risch et al explore the link between the vaccine and 600,000 unexplained excess deaths; serious side effects such as myocarditis, neurological disorders, blood clots, impaired fertility, and “turbo” cancers; as well as 2 million newly disabled people.59

Pfizer’s own data showed that 22,000 vaccines needed to be administered to prevent a single death from C19. It also “revealed that vaccinated individuals in Pfizer’s trial had a 23-percent increased death risk from all causes over six months and a 400-percent elevated risk from fatal cardiac arrest over the unvaccinated cohort. Pfizer’s own data, therefore, suggests that for every COVID death that the vaccine averts, it will, over time, kill four additional people from cardiac arrest [author’s emphasis].”60

You will recall that Pfizer wanted 75 years to release its clinical data to the public. Through court order, that was shortened to about 8 months. It is now publicly available in the 2024 book The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity, compiled by a team of 3,250 doctors and scientists sorting through 450,000 pages of internal documents.61 In saner times, such a lethal “common grace” with a “died suddenly”62 outcome would have been withdrawn from the market at about 50 deaths.63

This rebuttal is not the place to debate the pros and cons of vaccines. But “a serious student of the history of vaccination will observe that this public health technology has always been more a matter of wishful thinking, faith, and commercial enterprise than unbiased scientific inquiry.”64 The public should also not assume that a vaccine automatically improves outcomes. There is a phenomenon known as pathogenic priming and antibody dependent enhancement (ADE) which states that “any antibody, even a vaccine-induced one, can render a person more vulnerable to disease…by increase[ing] the ability of viruses to infect their target cells [emphases added].”65 In layman’s terms, a vaccine can potentially make things a lot worse.

Nearly every day for the past five years, articles and books outlining the above and much, much more have come across my desk outlining a very different perspective than the narrative Dr. Poland espouses. An entire bookshelf in my library as well as hundreds of computer files are filled with research which contradict his assertions. Both viewpoints cannot be true.

Dr. Poland’s argument for all of the above follows the logical fallacy of non sequitur. That is, it does not follow that just because science has invented something, it is a common grace and gift from God. After all, science invented the atomic bomb. Hitler’s eugenics as well as toxic meds were done in the name of science.

If “common grace” is, as R. C. Sproul defines it, “ministering to the very basic human needs of people,”66 then the above are not “gift[s] of health” or “simple act[s] of love” as Dr. Poland suggests. They are common curses and not common graces. The C19 narrative collapses under the weight of its own dishonesty, which is why I’ve reserved the theological rebuttal until the end.

Rebuttal #4: Beware of twisted Scriptures and those who twist them.

William Faulkner was a high-school dropout from Mississippi. Having just received the Nobel Prize in Literature in November 1950, his daughter Jill asked him to speak at her University High School graduation on May 28, 1951. He spoke in a “climate of palpable fear” punctuated by the Soviet atomic bomb and the “duck and cover” campaigns for American schoolchildren. He stated,

Consider these words by C. S. Lewis buried deep within God in the Dock in an essay entitled “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” first appearing in 1942:

It may seem strange to begin a theological rebuttal with quotes from a Nobel laureate with no particular theological ties and an Anglican lay theologian. I will not exposit the above quotes except to say that they come much closer to the truth than anything heard from many a pastor during C19.

Far more profound than the facts outlined above is the profound deception which has settled over much of the church during and since C19. If the facts I have outlined above are correct, then Dr. Poland’s conclusions and his “seven lessons” are incorrect, i.e., they are wrong. As early as April 2020, some of us were warning that “this” would be the outcome. Yet most of our warnings were politely dismissed as minority voices not in keeping with the predominant narrative—a narrative set not by the church but by the world. Put bluntly, the church followed the world, and that following was dressed in the language of Scripture. Exhortations to “obey those in authority” and to “love your neighbor” by masking up were (and remain, per Dr. Poland) the order of the day. Cautious return to worship was acceptable because the local gym had reopened.

This and much more is addressed in our Coronavirus book (see footnote #2). Permit me to briefly develop three ideas.

First, dressing up a false narrative in the language of Scripture is the epitome of false teaching. We’ve all heard of proof texting. But this takes it to the next level of spoof texting, which is by definition taking Scripture references out of context to “prove” a point. The point is not the Scriptures he uses. We both agree that Scripture is the infallible Word of God. But the point is the way in which those Scriptures are used.

Publishing a false narrative in an official church publication does not make it true.

Spoof texting does not allow for liberty of conscience. For many—myself included—not following the mandates outlined by Dr. Poland was a matter of conscience. Westminster Confession of Faith XX.II is quite clear on this point:

Spoof texting implies that those of us who disagree with the narrative do not love or care for our neighbors, devalue the vulnerable, and value our own “self-centered individualism” over the community at large. But in keeping with the fallacy of non sequitur, it does not follow that any of those implied accusations are in fact true.

What does follow is that loving our neighbors involves “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15, ESV). It involves “snatching them out of the fire…hating even the garment stained by the flesh” (Jude 1:23, ESV).70 Following the mandates that Dr. Poland endorses seems equivalent to pushing someone into the fire and praying that God gives his angels charge over them.

Second, Dr. Poland’s recommendations to the church reveals a basic misunderstanding of the fundamental tenants of jurisdictionalism or sphere sovereignty. My co-author Dr. O’Roark has done a masterful job of outlining this in chapter 4 of our Coronavirus book (see footnote #2 above). He writes:

In contrast to Dr. Poland’s recommendation that “churches…consider developing robust virtual platforms” via ecclesiásticus interrúptio72 for future pandemics, Dr. O’Roark writes:

When churches were reopened, many were subject to the faulty and false ideology of masks, every-other-bench seating, pew racks sans hymnals, roped and Plexi glassed corridors, and prepackaged elements.

Third, we must all be truth-seekers and truth-tellers. Many if not most pastors failed this litmus test during C19. Few have repented of the error of their ways. This is why it was astounding that byFaith chose to publish this essay on the lessons we’ve learned. If pastors cannot discern the uncertain sound of a cultural test, then how are parishioners expected to believe their preaching from the pulpit? In the same way that many physicians seem unaware of their credibility gap, many pastors seem unaware that they also have been “weighed in the balance…and…found wanting” (Daniel 5:27, KJV).

In the introduction to his book Letter to the American Church, Eric Metaxas writes that the parallels between the American church and “where the German Church was in the 1930s are unavoidable and grim…The German Church of the 1930s was silent in the face of evil; but can there be any question whether the American Church of our own time is guilty of the same silence?”74

The church became a primary vehicle by which a false and deceptive narrative was perpetrated. Why did the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury and Dr. Poland speak the same lie that loving your neighbor entailed masking up and jabbing up? At least in the case of the second, I recall a documentary during C19 stating that the British government met weekly with faith leaders to make certain the correct narrative was spoken from the pulpit. What more brilliant way to do the Devil’s bidding than through the church?

Metaxas writes:

C. S. Lewis captured it as only he could:

“Getting it wrong” has profound implications for both the present and future of the church. Truth-discerning and truth-telling is ultimately a work of the Spirit, without which we will be “tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive” (Ephesians 4:14, KJV).

May God deliver us from that crafty deception. May He give us the courage to

Soli Deo Gloria!

Dr. Yeager’s reflections on goodness, truth, and beauty and their impact on life, medicine, and theology; what it means to live as male and female reflections of the imago Dei (Genesis 1:27); not intended as individual medical advice.

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Yesterday, I saw an 85-year-old in the office. It was only my second time seeing him, so I don’t know his history well. (It takes me a couple visits before I can put a patient story together in my head and have it stick.) I noted 9 medications on his med list. So I asked him:

Would you be willing to come off some of these meds?

His response?

Why certainly!

A family member who was with him said that he’s taking all of these meds, but they aren’t really sure what they’re all for!

Since we’re only 3 weeks into a new EMR system, I jotted some notes for myself so I could update his chart later in my office. This is what I jotted down:

His A1c was 6.4, which based on [age greater than 70 divided by 10] could acceptably be a lot higher. So, we could safely get rid of the glimepiride. In my clinical opinion, I’ve never found finasteride very effective—he agreed—so we’ll eliminate that. At his age, there’s no indication for 80 mg of atorvastatin, so we’ll cut that in half. We’ll check a lipid panel in the summer, and I’ll likely stop it entirely then along with one or two more.

His family member then reminded me of my interaction with her 8- to 10-year-old son 12 to 15 years previously. He had been diagnosed with a form of inflammatory bowel disease by a pediatric gastroenterologist and was placed on a prohibitively expensive biologic and was told he’d need to be on this for life. The specialist wanted to do more testing. I (didn’t remember that I) said to her:

“Well, what would happen if we simply stopped it?”

Her response:

That commonsense approach was exactly what I needed to hear as a much-younger mother to make me comfortable stopping it.

The result? They stopped the medicine, and he’s had absolutely no issues ever since! That was at least 12 years ago.

My immediate prior patient of the same morning admitted that he had “white coat hypertension.” He told me it stemmed from an interaction with the medical establishment some 20+ years previously. He was on at least 15 different medications at the time. He was nearly bedridden for about a 3-month period. He went to see a specialist who started looking through his pill bottles and one by one chucked them in the waste can, ending by saying:

What are they trying to do? Kill you?!

That physician must have been an expert in deprescribing! Yesterday, he was only on 3 meds, two of which are used only as needed.

How did this come to be a routine part of our clinical practice?

Dr. LuAnne and I were co-medical directors at a local retirement facility for about 5 years. We took this position seriously and became “certified medical directors” through the AMDA (American Medical Director’s Association). At the time, we were 2 of only about 3,000 in the country. (We’ve since let that certification lapse since we don’t do nursing home medicine anymore.) When new residents were admitted to the facility, their medicines in the MAR (Medication Administration Record) covered 4 to 5 pages on average. We said to each other:

What would happen if we attempted to pare this down to 1 or 2 pages?

And so we did. I soon realized that almost every resident had a diagnosis of GERD. I thought, there’s no way that every resident in this facility has reflux! So, I’d write an order to “Stop Protonix; monitor for any symptoms of reflux and notify physician if so.” I don’t recall ever being notified, and when I did my quarterly rounds, I’d ask the resident, and no one was having reflux!

It was standard hospital protocol at the time that everyone got put on a PPI (gastric protection in light of stressful hospital environment was the rationale), and most of these nursing home residents had at some point been in the hospital. (It turned out that the local hospital apparently had a contract with the makers of Protonix, because that was the single medicine everyone was put on.) At hospital discharge, they went home with their PPI and a diagnosis of GERD, and few physicians ever questioned that diagnosis, and many stayed on the medicine for years—despite the fact that their indication was 8 to 12 weeks max in the majority of patients.

And then one day I was sitting with the facility’s clinical pharmacist who was doing his monthly med review of the charts. He said:

You know there’s emerging evidence that these PPIs are leeching calcium out of bones.

…not a good thing for an elder in a nursing home!

We successfully pared most resident’s MAR list to one or two pages, and I don’t recall a single negative result of that. I’d like to think there was positive impact.

I’ll never forget the case of MS. MS had a significant cardiac history. She was a resident of the above nursing home. She was on about 6 cardiac meds, as I recall. In discussion with her and her family, we mutually agreed that it was time to bring hospice on board. The standard practice is to stop most medications during that process. I believe I stopped everything on MS except her Lasix.

At the end of one month, MS was still living. Two months came, then three. At six months, MS was still going strong. She lived for a full year after stopping all of those “life-sustaining” cardiac meds. I said to myself:

Either those meds were so effective they are still in her system, or they really didn’t do what we thought they did.

Now understand, I don’t deprescribe cavalierly. It’s done one patient at a time, and it’s based on each patient’s individual history. This is not a “one-size-fits-all” process, and it’s not meant as advice for my readers to just up and stop their meds! But I’ve learned several things about this process after two decades of medical practice:

1. Few (if any) patients are asking to be put on more meds.

2. Most patients appreciate the thoughtful process of deprescribing. My 85-year-old told me at the end of yesterday’s visit, “I really appreciate you looking through all of my meds and seeing what we can cut out.”

3. Most patients have improved outcomes and quality of life through this process.

4. I rarely if ever prescribe a medicine to take care of a side effect of another medicine. I rather address the first medicine causing the side effect.

5. The strong medical recommendation and indication for many medications is often directly correlated to the existing patent on the medication. Plavix (clopidogrel) is a great example. When I was in training, if you had a TIA or stroke, you got put on Plavix for life. Now, neurologists routinely discharge people from hospital after either with “ASA 81 mg + clopidogrel x 21 days, then ASA only thereafter.” I admit that I’ve not done a deep dive into why this recommendation has changed so dramatically, but I would suspect it’s connected to $$$.

And so, it keeps us all humble. Senator Rand Paul (an MD/ophthalmologist) did a great monologue recently during RFK Jr’s Senate hearings where he among other things used the previous recommendation for ASA (aspirin) for all being completely turned on its head—an example I’ve also used often to show that we must keep an “open mind” about our medical recommendations.

And so, “ask your doctor if deprescribing is right for you”!

I believe there are exciting days ahead of us.

Soli Deo Gloria!

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Let me briefly recap the past few months, since I last wrote part 1 on my reflections on medicine. Part 2 will be in the future.

In April, I taught a day-long seminar on Truth-Discerning and Truth-Telling (my complete notes are available at the link). None of us appreciate the shattering of our “cherished self-image,” and few can live in the cognitive dissonance that results when our deeply held false beliefs collide with the reality of truth. Participant feedback ranged from “this man gets it” to “I won’t ever attend a lecture by Dr. Yeager again”! In the meantime, we soldier on, and as Baroness Cox said in an interview I attended with Eric Metaxas in Oxford last month, “One must stand one’s ground”!

Exactly a week after the seminar, LuAnne and I had the opportunity of hearing Tucker Carlson at Dayspring Christian Academy’s annual Remember America series. Protestors stood outside Lancaster Convention Center likely unaware of what they were actually protesting while inside we heard a fascinating after-dinner speech sans notes on the importance of Christianity in western culture, the fact that all of our freedoms are derived from God our creator as children made in His image, and the reality that awaits “Christian[s]—I am one” on the Other Side.

A few days after that we had our annual spring alpaca shearing, and literally eight days later we lost our yearling Zephyr, which you know if you follow me on Facebook. I still miss her.

In early June, we headed with our 3 pups and a packed Ram 1500 to an Airbnb cabin in the northern tip of South Carolina.

The mountain-top view of Lake Jocassee, a 7,500-acre 300-foot-deep lake, was 10 miles from our cabin, but it took over 45 minutes to drive via mountain switchback roads. We were alone on the mountain top in near perfect stillness and silence except for a few birds. It was one of the most ethereal scenes I’ve experienced.

Our purpose for being in South Carolina? To participate as singers in the southwest premiere of Dan Forrest’s Creation with Rivertree Singers & Friends Choral Festival. 200 voices and nearly 50 instrumentalists joined conductor Warren Cook and Dan Forrest on the stage of the Rodeheaver (pronounced Rhoda Haver!) Auditorium at Bob Jones University. LuAnne and I started rehearing in January for this nearly all-Latin piece. There were 3 pre-festival rehearsals and then 3 on-stage rehearsals ahead of our Saturday evening performance.

As you can imagine, it’s a logistical challenge getting 200 singers in 8 voice parts to the correct place on stage. But Rivertree does it right, and I believe this was accomplished in about 15 minutes. We lined up in 8 rows by height on the floor of the auditorium and then filed to designated voice parts on stage. After being seated in the tenor 1 section, I was looking stage right and felt a hand slip around my waist on the left! Who would be so forward, I thought?! Much to my unexpected delight, it was LuAnne, purely “coincidental”! It was great fun to sing beside her all weekend.

The Rodeheaver Auditorium is one of the finest collegiate stages in the US, and the 14 on-stage cameras provide multiple angles. Currently, the production video is being edited and will be released by Rivertree at the end of the summer. I can’t wait!

Two weeks after SC, our Director of Operations and I took a quick trip to Holmes County, Ohio to present something called “HOS” (Heritage Operating System) to the 2nd annual conference of CHRG (Conservative Healthcare Resource Group). CHRG’s mission is to have up to 100 clinics scattered throughout Anabaptist communities over the next decade or so. HOS is our contribution to enabling other independent clinics to operate as we do at Heritage Family Health.

And of course, all of this interspersed with a busy summer in the office with surprises like a child bringing this in at her school physical visit!

In July, I flew to the UK to attend Eric Metaxas’ Socrates in the City 4-day retreat in Oxford. That’s an experience that I’ll write about separately in the near future. But just several teaser pictures!

And with that, Saturday morning duties call. I’m sure the alpacas are anxiously awaiting their grain.

More soon…

If I practice for another 17 years, I’ll be 72. One of my mentors in residency practiced at least part time until age 90! It’s likely fair to say I’m at the mid-point of my career, plus or minus 5 or 10 years! It is a known fact that it’s hard for physicians to retire; we become possessive of our patients and aren’t sure we want someone else “messing” with them!

My next several Stacks will be on transitions I’ve seen during the years I’ve been in practice.

PATERNALISM

Our training was very patient-focused. In contrast to perhaps the “Golden Age” of medicine in the 70s and 80s where “I’m the doctor and you do as I say,” medicine was very much driven by patient preferences. In fact, you should never tell the patient what they should do, and God forbid if you ever mentioned anything about faith! I never believed this latter dictum; my senior resident project was on “Health and Spirituality.”

As I recall, this was termed cultural competency, with a focus on understanding the culture you served and then adapting to that. This was not unlike “when in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Because our residency was in a large Amish and Mennonite community, I helped residents understand that community. Our residency was given a grant to teach residents how to speak Spanish (since there was also a large Latino population). Because I sensed my calling was to the former and not the latter, I refused to participate in that training, as I came to residency to learn family medicine and not Spanish! I would have taken up Pennsylvania Dutch, had that been offered. But you get the point—the focus was on the patient population you served. It was patient-centered, not provider-focused. And that is still how we practice medicine.

I recall a college biology professor assuming that I had a creationist position as opposed to an evolutionary one. But I don’t recall suffering academically for that position. There was generally a free exchange of ideas, and opposite opinions were respectfully engaged.

One such story highlights this. LuAnne and I arrived at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in London in the fall of 1997 to meet the Board of Trustees of Kigezi International School of Medicine. (It was here that LuAnne was invited to enter med school.) I was wearing the Mennonite “plain suit” and no necktie. The porter stopped us at the door and refused admittance. He said he could provide a tie. When I told him I was part of a religious group which prohibited the wearing of a necktie, he said “well come right on in”!

That’s how things were then. Differences were tolerated if not even respected. I sensed a crack in this foundation at a medical conference during the first decade of being an attending. The lecture was on the HPV vaccine, and the presenters went out of their way to make anyone in the room who had reservations about this vaccine (and we strongly did) feel like a total fool. At another medical conference a few years later, the last lecture of the day was rather boring until I realized the presenter was advocating a needle-exchange program!1

However, we continued to practice our profession with conscience and dignity. But then along came Covid, as we say. I wrote about eight Covid “lies that blind” back in May. Unfortunately, those lies are as false today as then. I still remain aghast at how many doctors went from genuinely caring for people to positively harming them. Instead of practice being patient-centric, it became “paternalism on steroids.” It was no longer, “I’m the doctor and you do as I say.” It was now, “I’m the doctor and you WILL do what I say, or you are not welcome here and you may never come back.”

We’ve had hundreds of patients transfer to our office over the past four years, and I’ve heard countless stories of angry, belligerent, and demeaning doctors who refused to engage with patient questions and whose offices refused to see patients who weren’t Covid-jabbed. Pediatric offices dismiss(ed) parents who declined childhood vaccinations. Surgeons and dermatologists recommended Covid jabs in their consult notes (pre-Covid, that would never have been the case). Hospitalists patently refused to administer safe and effective drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin to Covid patients. For example, pre-Covid, any reasonable doctor would have said:

• There’s no benefit to wearing a mask for disease prevention. (After all, Fauci told us around January 2020 that Americans should not go out and buy masks as they provide a false sense of security.)

• If you’re sick, by all means come to our office to be seen.

• At least some of my patients have been on HCQ 200 mg bid for decades for rheumatoid arthritis.

• The discoverers of ivermectin received the Nobel prize in 2015 for its role in curing African river blindness (see lie #6 above).

• Our treatment options look pretty grim as is, so why not give it a try? Remember, the first rule of medicine is nonmaleficence (primum non nocere, or “first, do no harm”). The second rule is beneficence, loosely translated as “do some good.”

• The CDC is a source of information and recommendations.

Post-Covid, most (unreasonable) doctors said:

• Make a mask out of a scarf hanging in the back of your closet. (You probably remember the Surgeon General explaining how it was done.)

• If you’re sick, stay home! And if you can’t breathe, go to the ER (where in many cases they’ll ventilate you and you will die).

• HCQ is toxic, associated with dangerous cardiac arrythmias, and one of the most dangerous drugs on the planet.

• Ivermectin is horse medicine! Remember the FDA tweet?

• We will not treat you with what you are requesting, period!

• The CDC is a government agency with enforcement powers, and you must do what the CDC says. (Even the church broadly took this position.)

It did appear that for the most part, independent doctors largely took the reasonable approach and non-independent, corporate-employed doctors took the unreasonable approach (although not exclusively). Or dare I say that independent doctors were freer to think for themselves? But that still does not explain the extreme pendulum shift back to paternalism on steroids.

The Epoch Times published an article this weekend entitled “Doctors, Dictators, and the Medical Autocracy” which may provide a clue to this question. They cite a correspondence piece in The Lancet (September 9, 2017) entitled “The physician as dictator.” They surveyed 1,254 leaders from 176 countries over 71 years and discovered that those who were trained as physicians or who had a healthcare background “tended to be more autocratic.” For example, the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was trained in London as an ophthalmologist but was responsible for the deaths of 400,000 of his own people in a nerve gas attack in 2017. “No one thought he would turn out to be a mass murderer,” writes Ranjana Srivastava in a Guardian opinion piece.

The Lancet authors write:

Our results reveal a disturbing correlation that associates leaders who are physicians in the modern era with more autocratic regimes than leaders who are not physicians…These findings are most likely a result of multiple, complex factors; however, considering the trope of the physician-god complex, these sobering data offer an opportunity for crucial self-reflection. In this regard, a shift away from the authoritarian physician toward a model based on shared decision making represents a promising measure. Such efforts could safeguard against any dictatorial tendencies physicians might harbour, and ensure they fulfil the medical profession's commitment to patient autonomy and dignity.

I left out this sentence in the ellipsis above—“However, this trend is not true for leaders who are scientists, who, like physicians, have non-traditional paths to political power”—because it does appear to be true these days. Just witness WHO Director-General Tedros, trained as an Ethiopian microbiologist, and “the organisation’s first leader without medical qualifications,”2 who has been accused of aiding genocide in Ethiopia.3 And consider the WHO pandemic treaty, due to be voted on this coming May, which essentially overturns national sovereignty. Now our own Senator Casey (D-PA) has assured me that “nothing in the WHO draft agreement would infringe upon the sovereignty of the United States” and that “the WHO also has no enforcement body, so compliance with its agreements is necessarily nonbinding by design.”4 This sounds remarkably similar to this Representative’s response:5

Now either the government is right, and we have nothing to worry about, or they are wrong, and we have a lot to worry about! I would favor the latter, in deference to Ronald Reagan’s famous quote, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”6

To read more about the WHO pandemic treaty, I recommend the following:

• The Midwestern Doctor’s “How We Can Stop the WHO’s Horrific Pandemic Treaty.”

• Meryl Nass, the Maine physician who is an international expert on bioweapons and who lost her license for prescribing ivermectin (yes, you read that write), now has time to travel and inform the world on this. She has written extensively. Here is just one example and is a compilation of slides from a lecture given in Milan, Italy in January.

• The Heritage Foundation’s “The Pandemic Treaty That Won’t Prevent a Pandemic.”

• To sign a petition against it, visit Sovereignty Coalition.

The above may have seemed like a rabbit hole, but it’s crucial to engage with the striking reality that many doctors and scientists these days act exactly as autocratic dictators.

And would it be correct to say that those doctors and scientists who have advocated for Covid mandates and have recommended and actively participated in Covid jabs are also complicit in global crimes against humanity? To answer that question, consider the following summary points by Dr. Peter McCullough in his “Four Year Anniversary of COVID-19 Pandemic.” If you’re not familiar with Dr. McCullough’s presentations, almost all of his observations are supported by primary source citations in the medical literature.

Somewhere between 5 & 10% of those Covid-vaccinated individuals have cause for great concern over the next 5 to 15 years. The negative effects are associated with hyper-concentrated genetic fragments as well as significant contamination, independently tested and verified at various labs. Yet the CDC and FDA have refused to look at the vaccine vials/lots in question.

Prior to the vaccine rollout, there were NO randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trials showing:

• the duration of time the vaccine, specifically the spike protein, stays in the body (it has now been shown to stay in the blood for 1 to 6+ months and in the heart and lymph nodes for at least several months).

• reduction in severity of illness, transmission of disease, or hospitalizations (it was later shown to be ineffective in any of these categories).

• uptake in major organs such as heart, lungs, brain, kidneys, adrenal glands, and reproductive organs.

“The major vaccines were the genetic code for the spike protein. The spike protein is the lethal part of the virus, and there were no assurances or mechanism of what was going to shut off production of the spike protein.”

“It was the most dangerous proposition in all of humanity to mass vaccinate with the genetic code for a lethal protein that was devised in a Chinese biosecurity lab and have that in everyone’s bodies.”

Four major disease categories now exist specifically as a result of the jabs:

1. CARDIAC: the vaccines cause myocarditis (heart inflammation) which leads to cardiac arrest. They also accelerate the atherosclerotic process in vessels, leading to blocked arteries.

2. NEUROLOGIC: both ischemic/thrombotic CVAs (strokes), Guillan-Barré syndrome, small fiber neuropathy, seizures, blindness, and hearing loss.

3. BLOOD CLOTS: fibrous clots from ankle to hip have been identified by multiple morticians around the world. These are clots unlike any ever seen before.

4. AUTOIMMUNE: vasculitis, renal failure, joint issues, and skin rashes, along with rapidly accelerated cancers presenting in advance stages.7

Dr. McCullough has devised the Spike Protein Detox Protocol, which I’m including below for those who have been vaccinated and for those suffering long-COVID.

Remember, we’re discussing paternalism. There is absolutely no way that any of the COVID craziness could have happened in a non-paternalistic atmosphere. Paternalism flourishes in the following intellectual environments.

You can’t ask.

Contrary to the environment in which I was trained, it no longer seems acceptable to ask questions. Or at least the only questions that you are allowed to ask are those sanctioned by The Establishment.

This really gets to the heart of how one arrives at truth. I teach an all-day seminar in April on this very topic, and so I’ll save reflections on this for the future.

If one does ask a legitimate question that is not in keeping with the dominant narrative, one is immediately labeled a racist, a white supremacist, a Christian nationalist, and other such terms which are completely concocted and meaningless in an intellectual discussion. (Thow the conversation back to the 1960s and you’ll see the dramatic irony in calling conservative Justice Clarence Thomas a racist!)

You can’t disagree.

If you do disagree, you get visited by the Department of State or the Department of Justice or by the FBI. You may have your medical license revoked, be thrown in jail, be fined, or other sundry tactics of totalitarian regimes.

Because the totalitariat cannot abide dissent!

Journal articles get retracted. Social media accounts get canceled. Bank accounts get locked down. All things we’ve seen dozens of times in the past four years.

You must “trust the science.”

We heard this repeatedly to defend all sorts of now-dunked lockdowns and dangerous and lethal jabs. As if science always has only one side. You recall Dr. Fauci stating in response to criticism of him, “…they’re really criticizing science because I represent science. That’s dangerous.”8

Recently, LuAnne asked me whatever happened to the null hypothesis? For those unfamiliar, the null hypothesis is the opposite of what you hope to be true and the thing you want your research to disprove. That’s how scientific research has advanced for years. In the case of a new drug, for example, the null hypothesis is that it is no better than placebo. You hope that your research will disprove that null hypothesis and therefore show the superiority of your drug or therapy over placebo.9

In the case of the Covid jab, the null hypothesis—that a “vaccine” has no effect whatsoever on Covid—was completely ignored. In fact, it appears to be ignored in almost all scientific studies these days. I was delighted to see Dr. McCullough address this very fact in a recent fascinating interview with physician, sociologist, and university professor Claudia Chaufan,10 MD, PhD, Dr. McCullough.

As it turns out, the “science” that we’re supposed to be following usually doesn’t end up being science at all. That’s the “rat” LuAnne and I smelled in early April 2020. It ends up being more correctly called scientism, which is a “religion” all of its own. I would highly recommend reading A Midwestern Doctor’s “The Deadly Rise of Scientism: We All Suffer Once You Can No Longer Debate ‘The Science’.”

In summary, we must insist that our healthcare providers remove the god-complex of paternalism. We must insist the same of our church leaders and our politicians. Without unfettered and open exchange of ideas, a free society will die a thousand deaths, until there is no recourse but destruction.

One Final Caveat

Everything I’ve written above is dismissed by The Establishment as misinformation or disinformation. That was the World Economic Forum’s #1 agenda/concern this year. (Here’s Steve Kirsch’s—the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has offered anyone from the “other side” a million bucks to openly debate him on Covid—take on that.) In fact, the NIH’s National Library of Medicine now has an entire division dedicated to “confronting health misinformation.” Remember who was head of an NIH subdivision called NIAID until 2023, whose most recent memoir due to be published in June is entitled On Call, despite not having been “on call” as an attending physician since 1968?!

I will continue my “reflections at midpoint” by exploring other topics in future Stacks.

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The above came to mind this morning—New Year’s Day—when I read Psalm 1:1-2:

Many people approach this day with resolutions—usually about weight, exercise, better time management, etc. None of these are bad. But in light of eternity, the above is far better direction than well-intentioned but oft ill-fated resolutions which wane with the flip of the calendar page from January to February. As we face the uncertainties and challenges of 2024—from the presidential election to the “lunidiocy” of gender queer ideology to the corruption of Big Pharma—this passage tells us all we need to know to stay on course.

Note the progression of the “man” (or person) who loiters around evil—the opposite of the godly person this passage describes.

First, he walks in the general direction of evil. He “happens” to be in the vicinity. It reminds me of a walk I took on The Strip in Las Vegas when LuAnne and I were there for a medical conference in 2011. I told LuAnne what I was doing, prayed for spiritual protection, and took my camera and headed north on Las Vegas Boulevard—away from all the glitz and glamor of the Venetian and the Bellagio and countless other Vegas icons. One 60-year-old besotted, foul-mouthed man entered the elevator with a scantily clad lass not much more than 18. His language made it sound like he had just purchased the finest mare. Billboard trucks drove circuits through the streets advertising “hot babes direct to you.” But as I headed north—with the occasional diversion into the marble-topped and gold-plated foyers and restrooms of the opulent casinos—the scenery became far less glitzy and a whole lot less glamorous. I happened upon a Mercedes and Ferrari dealer, and immediately on the other side of the surrounding fence lay a homeless man in a drunken stupor, streets littered with pornographic pamphlets amidst cigarette butts, plastic cups, and fast-food trash. One image tells the tale.

These degrading images were a stark counter to any lust arising in my own heart. I was keenly aware that this walk could have ended very differently for me, and I was grateful for God’s protection. (One conservative Mennonite bishop once told me that his plain suit kept him from entering the red-light district in Africa. While I didn’t have a plain suit, I did have the Triune protection of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.) Of course, the passage isn’t just reminding us of sexual sins. I John 2:16 poignantly reminds us:

Sex, money, and power. Or passion, possession, and position (as my high school teacher John D. Martin taught). They don’t call Vegas “Sin City” for no reason. Indeed, it is all there. And it ends in a littered wayside ditch.

But it’s not just in Vegas. It’s in all of our hearts. Which is why the warning—”don’t walk”—is to all of us.

Second, he stands around in the general vicinity of evil. He is no longer just happening by. According to the Hebrew meaning of the verb, he is now “holding his ground and maintaining his position.” If walking could be contributed to chance, this no longer can. This is a chosen posture. He has chosen to stop and stand. This is deliberate. He has not only taken advice (counsel) from the wicked but is now deliberately conducting himself in the presence of and as a sinner, defined as “a person who has disobeyed any divine command or neglected any duty.”

The writer of Proverbs warns his son about taking this path in chapter 7 (ESV):

Third, he now sits in the presence of the scoffers, his seat reserved for those who jeer, mock, and scorn the truth. He is generally a bad person. Here’s the schematic as Logos describes him:

Of note, all three of the verbs—walk, stand, and sit—are in the masculine in the Hebrew. Not a pretty picture of masculinity indeed!

But, the passage actually begins with the word blessed! Note the schematic for that word from Logos:

Yes, simply that—blessed! No other words are really needed to describe it!

So, on this New Year’s Day, the instructions are pretty simple. Don’t walk, don’t stand, and don’t sit in the presence of evil. No stopping or standing! Rather,

In so doing, you will be blessed in 2024, as you delight in daily mediation on the law of God.

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The first was on the very front of our bulletin:

Westminster follows a three-step progression at the beginning of each worship service, beginning with corporate confession of sin, followed by assurance of God’s grace, and concluding with a confession of faith, usually in the words of the ancient Apostle’s Creed or Nicene Creed. The second confirmatory passage was in the assurance of God’s grace portion of the service:

Now that could have been any given passage read on any given Sunday morning. But, Isaiah 9:2 states:

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone (ESV).

I don’t need to tell you how dark our world is. The darkness extends from global chaos to familial disruption. A demented President occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. A 3-day junior doctor’s strike in the UK cripples the British healthcare system and reveals the abysmal failure of that country’s 75-year-old National Health Service. The Ukraine-Russia conflict wages on, while billions of US dollars sent to Ukraine line US politician’s pockets. It’s apparently become politically correct to be antisemitic in the Israel-Hamas conflict, as revealed by three major university presidents (only one “fell from grace”). The Colorado Supreme Court has removed Trump from the 2024 ballot on the basis of the 14th Amendment (which specifically does not apply to the President) and an insurrection charge which has never been proven, and now it appears California and likely other states will follow suit. The US southern border remains in chaos with no guaranteed protection for this country’s own citizens. Almost weekly now we hear announcements in prayer groups that “so-and-so” died suddenly. The elephant in the room—did they have the Covid jab—is rarely asked. In the meantime, Dr. Palmer and others in this document show that the Covid jabs were designed to kill. Meanwhile, loved ones attempt suicide and elders die.

For some, it’s a blue Christmas instead of a green and red one.

LuAnne reminded me on the way to church this morning of the verses which follow the very familiar John 3:16:

¹⁹ And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. ²⁰ For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. ²¹ But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God (ESV).

This passage reminds us that outside of Christian conversion, we’re all like cockroaches that go scampering for the dark in the presence of light. And Romans 7 reminds us that even for those of us who are “in Christ,” we still struggle with the sin nature this side of Jordan.

So, before we all go getting hoity toity about our own perceived (self-) righteousness, we do well to remember that we all struggle with darkness.

But, over 2,000 years ago, there were some humble, hillside shepherds “out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8, ESV). Not in the day, but at night. In the darkness. In the shadows. Watching sheep. Shepherds. Unreliable sources who were forbidden to give testimony in court. Yet it was to these scoundrels on the back roads of civility that the “multitude of the heavenly host” (Luke 2:13) first announced His arrival.

Now perhaps the shepherds didn’t see a star. Possibly it was only the Magi two years later who actually saw a star over the house (Matthew 2). But the point of the story still remains, as so beautifully expressed in the Gospel of John:

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it (1:5, ESV).

Darkness cannot exist in the presence of light. As His image-bearers, we are called to bring His light into the darkest corners of our world. Christ became man in the incarnation so that we could be presented faultless before His presence with exceeding joy in our redemption (Jude 1:24) and ultimate glorification.

He came into the darkness so that we could see the light.

And that, my friends, is the beauty of Christmas! May that reality undergird all of your festivities this season.

Merry Christmas!

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In previous saner times, governments stopped the roll-out of new biomedical products at numbers less than 50.

If you get your news from mainstream media only, then you won’t know at all about the hearing before the UK Parliament yesterday. Buried deep within the walls of the Palace of Westminster (below), a brave MP summoned some top-notch scientists to testify before invited members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

Here was the line-up:

Below is MP Andrew Bridgen with an introductory video produced by Oracle Films announcing the event.

Click on Dr. Malone’s picture below to take you out to his commentary in his Stack today. Please watch his 11-minute testimony.

As you can see, A/V difficulties, downgraded rooms, uniformed guards, etc.—all meant to keep the truth from coming out. Dr. Peter McCullough was to address via Zoom, but that feed didn’t work. And Dr. Mike Yeadon’s feed didn’t work either (this all within a 2-minute bike ride or 15-minute walk from Thames House, head of the UK’s MI5!). But he had thankfully done a pre-recorded message.

One of my favorites, Dr. David Martin, always gives compelling presentations. This clip is not the clearest—remember, video was “banned”!—but well-worth watching.

The fight must go one. Many people have seen the light. Some, but too few, have repented. Many have not yet seen the light. We must continue to hold high the candle of truth.

I write these somewhat disjointed thoughts above to spur you on to seek truth. It’s Advent season, and we wait…

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• What if the foggy mist settled over Schaeffer Road this morning wasn’t a result of temperature change so much as the chemtrails (or geoengineering) that is so ever-present and active in the skies above?

Or…

• What if Obama is actually getting his 3rd term in the White House, yet doing it in his sweats from the basement of 2446 Belmont Rd NW, 2 miles from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? (What former President has stayed in DC [this long] after leaving office?!)

But…when I floated the idea by LuAnne, she struck it down! In all fairness, she told me I could do what I wanted, but she thought the post would come across as a “know-it-all” to people unfamiliar with the questions. She suggested a question at a time would be more appropriate. A wise preacher once told me to be very hesitant to do anything that my wife doesn’t approve of—in other words, don’t do it! Regrettably, I haven’t always honored her in this, but I have tried to make this a habit of life. So that’s as many of the 25 questions as you’re going to get in this post!

However, I kept thinking of “what if” throughout the day—between patients, when I took a brief walk outside to enjoy the 70 degrees, and generally when I wasn’t thinking of something else. Because writers always need to be ruminating on their next topic!

Then I remembered that LuAnne had sent me a “what if” meme the other day, before I was thinking about this post. Maybe that’s what subconsciously triggered this post.

And then we went to vote this afternoon around 4:45 at our local precinct, St. Paul’s UCC in Schaefferstown. Some of my readers, like me, were raised in religious settings which didn’t allow their members to vote. Others of my readers are active political constituents. Thanks to one such patient, we approached the social hall with names in hand of who we were going to vote for. I generally try to avoid the canvassers outside the door as they’ve never changed my mind at the last minute. But one such canvasser just couldn’t be avoided. He approached us with this introduction:

I’m J. P. Santos, and I’m running for the ELCO school board. But what I really want to tell you is that I’m a follower of Jesus Christ.

In less than 30 seconds, he briefly shared his Christian testimony and why that mattered to him since he has a young daughter who will be going to school in the district in a few years. I glanced down at my ballot and saw that he was one I was already planning to vote for! I know that conservatives don’t run for school boards these days to score political points but rather because they’re deeply concerned about the future of our local communities. Here’s a picture from Facebook of his wife and him.

We went in and cast our paper ballot for him and other conservatives who we think might make a difference in our community. Yes, since 2020 (I believe), our precinct uses good old paper ballots—sort of like doing achievement tests when I was in elementary school!

So, all of this got me to thinking about a different series of “what if” questions. Such as:

1. What if I did value my Bible as much as my phone? I like to think I value it way more than my phone. After all, I’ve read it from “lid to lid” (as an old River Brethren once said in testimony meeting!) many times. I read it every morning. I’ve read through commentary series with Bible in hand. But seriously, how much do I value it? How much have I committed to memory? How much have I hidden in my heart?

2. What if I was as bold in my faith as JP?

3. What if the only thing that really mattered to me was to be a humble servant of my Lord?

4. What if my only prayer was, “Increase my faith”?

5. What if when my own Moabites and Ammonites come against me for battle, striking fear deep in my heart, that I pray with Jehoshaphat: “For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you” (2 Chronicles 20:12, ESV)?

6. What if when there are no blossoms on the fig tree, no fruit on the vines, no flocks in the fields, and no herds in the stall, I still rejoice in the Lord and take joy in the God of my salvation (Habakkuk 3:17ff)?

I encourage you to add a few more of your own “what if” faith questions. I leave you this evening with another verse LuAnne shared with me the other day:

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me” (Psalm 50:14-14, ESV).

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But there’s been a “subtle shift.”

Now, globalists such as Bill Gates want to hire bulldozers to cut, clear, and bury 70 million acres of trees. Except that they will be “fully autonomous timber harvesting machines”—in other words a new and improved bulldozer. Apparently burying one billion tons of biomass is supposed to be the new way to save the planet.

Sometimes a meme says it all!

Massive stands of timber are apparently no longer a (good) “thing.” The beautiful God-created interaction between plant photosynthesis and human respiration is also apparently no longer a thing.

The premise of the tree-harvesting is that trees store carbon dioxide in their “biomass” and emit it into the atmosphere. I never heard of that before. It’s not what the schematic above shows—which is what I was taught in school. Perhaps I missed that part in Dr. Winstead’s botany class when she was dragging us through the JMU Arboretum in the pouring rain, with blue ballpoint streaks over my previously perfect lab composition book! Possibly it’s true, but I would have suspected God would have taken that into account in creation, and that even if they do, that is not a bad thing!

“I wonder what they do teach them at these schools.” (The Professor, Chapter 5, in C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe)

Perhaps the schools don’t teach this anymore because they’re too worried about the pronouns, or the gender, or the “critical race.” Or perhaps the corporations are too woke that the absurdity is lost on Hershey Chocolate hiring a trans woman (aka biological male, Fae Johnstone) to promote International Women’s Day. They may not have anticipated a new chocolate brand being launched in reaction. I just ordered a 12-pack for the office and can’t wait for it to arrive!

So how do we live in an increasingly crazy and evil world?

First, by calling evil by its name—evil. Anything that doesn’t accord with created order—whether plant photosynthesis or gender, is evil. Not just mixed up. Not just nuts. But evil.

Second, by speaking the truth. The above alternative chocolate by Jeremy’s Razors is so clever because it speaks the truth in a very simple way. Perhaps subtlety needs to give way to candor.

Third, by cultivating our spiritual life, specifically a relationship with Christ. One of my patients told me recently that truth is not a thing; it’s a Person. How true that is. If we don’t know Christ, we don’t know ultimate Truth. But when we know the Truth, that will set us free (John 8:32)!

Fourth, by being awakened and not “woke.” Keep your head above the water and your eyes peeled to the horizon. Don’t buy what many people are sellin’ these days.

And finally, by resting confidently in the assurance that this crazy and evil world is completely under God’s control!

I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you about a film happening this week—Dinesh D’Souza’s Police State. It’s being shown in select theaters across this land tonight and Wednesday evening with a virtual premiere on Friday evening, October 27. Anything by D’Souza gets my highest recommendation. It unfortunately shows what the good Old US of A is fast becoming.

And now, it’s off to hot ham and cheese sandwiches for a light supper!

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What strikes me about this routine was how all of it was couched in the oft-repeated phrase, “Lord willing.” This was based on the passage from James:

This passage goes on to say that if we don’t live with this mindset, we participate in arrogant boasting, which is evil. I was accustomed to ministers announcing the next service with the words, “Lord willing.” In fact, the initials "D.V.” were often printed on program announcements. I don’t recall anyone ever voicing Deo Volente, but we all knew that “D.V.” meant Lord (or most accurately God) willing.

A number of years ago I started to use this phrase frequently with my patients as I wrap up a visit and tell them I’ll see them in six months or a year. Because I am keenly aware that one or both of us may not be here next time. That could happen either by death or by the return of our Lord in the Second Coming. I am humbled by the fact that I can give someone a great report (the proverbial “clean bill of health”) and they collapse on their way out the door. I remember a Reader’s Digest “Laughter, the Best Medicine” column decades ago of a patient who collapsed in the entry while leaving his appointment. The nurse reported this to the doctor who told the nurse to turn him around as if he was heading into the office!

But in all seriousness, this simple phrase reminds me of several things.

1. I am not in control. God is. All events proceed under His divine sovereignty and superintendence. I can do nothing to interfere with that plan.

2. Life is short. It is, in fact, the mist or vapour described in this passage. I am staring 55 in the face a month from now. It reminds me to live this day—which could be my last—in the light of eternity.

3. God may have other plans. My neighbor for the first 24 years of my life, just 11 months older than me, was recently killed in a farming harvest accident. It stopped us all in our tracks to take account of our own lives and realize that the plans God has for us may not be our own.

4. I must look up. In the midst of what is sometimes called The Olivet Discourse, Jesus told his disciples, “Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28, ESV). While there are prophetic references in this Discourse, we know that our redemption is one day nearer than it was yesterday. And that keeps me looking up. Not inward, which too often results in selfish introspection. Not down, which often results in depression. But up. Because that’s what Jesus told us to do. And because Psalm 121 tells us that our help is found when we lift our eyes up to the hills (v. 1).

I don’t need to tell you about all the distractions in this world which by design keep our eyes downward. I don’t need to remind you of the “wars and rumors of wars.” I don’t need to mention the grotesque evil which surrounds us on every side.

But I do need to remind you to live each day in limbo! The ancient Celts and later Christians talked about “thin places.” The ancient Druids apparently believed that the distance between heaven and earth was three feet. Thin places are those mystical moments or experiences which feel closer than that. LuAnne and I will never forget hearing Dr. Richard Swenson speak at a Christian Medical Association conference in 2003 about the thin veil which separates us from this life and the next. Some days, it feels like one can reach your hand out and nearly touch the space on the other side of the veil! If memory serves me, he used this tunnel of trees in Halnaker, West Sussex, England to illustrate.

All of life is gift. And if God grants me another day, Lord willing, I pray I will live tomorrow for His honor and glory. And if today is my last and I am transported to the other side of that thin veil, then the “beatific vision” of gazing into the face of my Lord and Saviour will at last be a reality! Either way, it will be…

D.V., Deo Volente!

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The following words were found written on the wall of a concentration camp in Cologne, Germany following World War II:

Norwegian composer Kim André Arensen was commissioned in 2011 by the St. Olav Festival in Trondheim to set these words to music. I only discovered this song in the past week. The St. Olaf Choir, the premier a cappella choir in the United States, sang this piece (in front of the composer) at the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, Norway on June 16, 2013 (watch here).

The hallmark sound of the choir—according to their website—is “securely in tune, controlled in pitch, smooth in delivery…disciplined…and free of excessive vibrato.” Growing up in an a cappella tradition and being a choral tenor all of my life, I understand how difficult it is to achieve this sound. But that sound, combined with the simple poignancy of these timeless words, leaves one nearly in tears.

There is passage in Elie Wiesel’s Night that is particularly chilling (pg. 65 in my bookshelf edition). Wiesel was a Holocaust survivor and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

It strikes me that the hour is late, the night is dark, and the world is evil. Yet “I believe in God, even when He is silent.”

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“The United Nations is poised to” vote tomorrow (September 20th) in a move which would dramatically expand the power of the WHO in future pandemics. Senator Robert Casey (D-Pennsylvania) assured me some months ago when I expressed reservation that “nothing in the WHO draft agreement would infringe upon the sovereignty of the United States” (email dated 5/15/2023). I hope he’s right, but I’m not so sure.

Dr. Tedros, the director-general of the WHO, is the first director who is not a medical doctor. His ties to terrorism are well-known, and The Times (of London) reported on December 14, 2020, that “WHO chief may face genocide charges.”

At the same European Parliament mentioned above, Dr. David Martin (who hails from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania) revealed the criminal cartel that is the WHO. Please watch his entire 25-minute presentation. It’s not the best video, but these are hard to find—I wonder why?!

This is a short Stack, but its purpose is to introduce my readers to the two videos above, which I hope you’ve watched by now.

Goodnight!

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I’ve been thinking a lot about cognitive dissonance lately, particularly over the past 3 years. For example, what if, after spending a half million dollars on education, one wakes up and realizes that much of that training has been “indoctrination” and that what is often branded as quackery and chicanery actually has solid scientific proof of efficacy behind it? It was only in the past few years that I became aware of the role of John D. Rockefeller in the early 20th century and his commissioned Flexner Report for removing herbal medicine from standard medical school curricula and replacing it with petroleum-based pharmaceuticals. (It was this awareness that led LuAnne and me to complete an herbal medicine fellowship earlier this year.)

In the introduction to his 1979 book Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America, sociologist E. Richard Brown writes this striking indictment of modern medicine:

This is an example of cognitive dissonance, defined broadly as the clash between two contradictory ideas. One would have expected “medicine” to be about helping people, but perhaps it’s largely driven by corporate and pharmaceutical greed. As a further example, statins (cholesterol-lowering drugs) are predicted to hit $22B by 2032, according to Persistence Market Research. According to JAMA (November 22, 2021), statin use among adults older than 40 cost $16.9B in 2012 & 2013 alone. But in Dr. Mercola’s “Just Say No to Statins” (May 26, 2023), he cites research which shows that statins essentially do nothing for either primary or secondary prevention of heart attack or stroke. (Of course, one has to pay to read this article, as during C19, the powers that be made Dr. Mercola take down most of his articles within a few days’ time as part of grand government censorship of alternative opinions.)

Add to this fact a Cochrane review published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology (Vol 148, Aug 2022, pp. 160-169) which showed that 94% of healthcare interventions had no high-quality evidence supporting their benefit. Only 5.6% had such supportive evidence and actual harm was measured in 36.8% of interventions.

Surely this is cognitive dissonance! We’re told one thing when in reality, the exact opposite is/may be true. A somewhat humorous example is seen in the photo below:

I was watching a news clip earlier today and noticed a picture of Meta’s headquarters (parent company of Facebook) in Menlo Park, California with the unique street address of 1 Hacker Way! I’m not sure if this is a joke, a coincidence, or overt acknowledgement that “the company that allows you to share your personal and vacation photos also is hacking all your privacy data.”

Cognitive dissonance makes people very uncomfortable, and few people can exist in that discomfort. Therefore, most people dismiss the dissonance with “well that can’t possibly be true” or “that’s just a conspiracy theory.” We saw this all the time during C19. Remember my “Dear Pastor” post addressed the fact that 2/3 of the adult population are living in a state of perpetual adolescence. It takes maturity to face the reality that “maybe I’ve been lied to, but what am I going to do about it?”

I’m keeping this post short, because the real reason for this post is to share Dr. Malone’s Stack from yesterday entitled “Perspective, Values, and the COVIDcrisis.” He has recently been writing about this very phenomenon. What I have called “cognitive dissonance” he has called “ontological shock.” I would really recommend clicking the two links in this paragraph (my writer dashboard shows me how many times the links are clicked!) as it’s an excellent treatment of this subject. But in case you don’t click and read either of these links, let me share four quotes from yesterday’s “Perspective”:

Bishop and psychiatrist Dr. E. Daniel Martin is my friend and mentor. While facing a difficult church situation many years ago, he burst out in prayer for me during a phone conversation. I will never forget what he prayed: “Joel has seen something that he can’t unsee.”

“For anyone willing and able to listen and hear,” don’t close your eyes. Don’t close your ears. Don’t fall asleep. Pray for the courage to face the discomfort of cognitive dissonance and come to a place of truth that sets you free.

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In my June 4th Stack entitled “Perhaps Today,” I referenced Peter Van Doodeward’s “COVID-19 Reflection” in the May 29th Aquila Report. I sent this article as a recommendation to a friend and advised he send it to the ministry team at his church which was locked down, I believe, for around 9 months. The pastor responded with positive comments about the author as well as the Aquila Report. He did, however, state that “it would take me a long time to adequately respond to the article” and that he felt the author’s “handling of very nuanced topics is a bit simplistic” [particularly] in how he handled the ‘Love your neighbor’ argument. It’s more nuanced than [the author] acknowledges [and] he makes assumptions that may not be fair. I’m not sure he emphasizes enough the information Christians didn’t know at the time and how that impacted their attempt to protect the body and soul of the congregations…” (comments dated June 15th).

You’ll be interested to know that a response to Van Doodeward’s article was published in the June 23rd Aquila Report entitled “How Should We Then Repent? A Response to ‘COVID-19 Reflection.’” (I would encourage you to stop reading my Stack right now and read this.) You will see that Pastor Yi’s (a friend of my co-author Dr. O’Roark) response is even more hard-hitting than Van Doodeward’s and is not at all along the lines of the “critique” in the paragraph above!

This week’s Stack is a response at large to the pastor in the first paragraph, who will along with the church remain anonymous.

Dear Pastor,

Bill O’Reilly wrote today in “The Decline in Religion”:

Unfortunately, American religious leaders have no answer. Most are frightened, few engage their congregations in meaningful ways. My church last Sunday was 20 percent full for 10:30 mass.

Add it all up, traditional theology-centered lifestyles are disappearing from our country.

God help us.

In his introduction to The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way, Michael Horton references Dorothy Sayers’ outline of the grammar, dialectical, and rhetorical stages of our educational and emotional development. The grammar stage occurs in childhood, where children “delight in simple rhymes and repetitive phrases that increasingly become the stock of basic knowledge on which they will draw for the rest of their lives.” The dialectical stage occurs in adolescence and is characterized by “a period of questioning, testing, and thinking through why we believe what we believe.” Finally, these beliefs coalesce into “form[ed]…habits of thought and expression” in the rhetorical stage of adulthood (p. 21).

Piaget has outlined four stages of cognitive development: birth to age 2, age 2 to 7, age 7 to 11 (concrete operational stage), and ages 12 and up. James Fowler has identified six progressive stages of faith. Israel Galindo writes in The Hidden Lives of Congregations (a required text in a Doctor of Ministry course I started many years ago):

[Fowler’s] Stage 3 appears to be the adult faith stage of most people in our congregations and society. It is estimated that two-thirds of the adults in the United States function at Piaget’s Concrete-Operational level (p. 102).

Translated, this means that the bulk of society—both in and outside the church—appear stuck in perpetual adolescence.

I won’t rehash the lies of Covidiocy that I have written about elsewhere. (I believe the friend referenced above also provided you with a copy of our Coronavirus and the Leadership of the Church: A Sacred Trust Broken.) I will say that nothing I have said, written, or spoken about regarding C19 since April 2020 has been disproven. At a recent choir rehearsal, a friend from a previous church said something which few will say: “Well, everything you said was true.” What I will add is something my co-author Dr. O’Roark recently wrote (June 22nd) in an email—and I quote with permission: “After several years of the benefit of hindsight plus our own extensive research, I’m of the belief that not one single aspect of the official Covid narrative was true. Not one.”

If that is true, then you can understand why it is a complete mystery to us to see pastors attempting to defend the position their churches took on Covid. I see in your comments above three misplaced, faulty, and unbiblical appeals—appeals to adolescence, ignorance, and love. I will deal with each of these in turn.

An Appeal to ADOLESCENCE

Prior to C19, few if any had heard of terms like social distancing, 6 feet, asymptomatic spread, mask/vaccine mandates, my mask protects you, or stay home/stay safe. Now, unfortunately, they are part of our international parlance, and they seem here to stay. Everybody—church leaders included—got really comfortable throwing these terms around and being “in the know” on the latest CDC recommendations. Hymnals were swiped from pew backs. Plexiglass cordoned and corralled churchgoers through the appropriate “chutes and ladders” to get to their designated locations. The bread and cup of Communion was replaced with impossible-to-open “prepackaged elements” which tasted like Styrofoam. (I grew up in a church where we all drank from the same pewter cup, wiped down by the bishop with the same cloth in between congregants!) No mask was required in a Sunday School class which didn’t exceed 20 people, but masks were required in hallways and auditorium—all because this was protecting and loving your fellow believer. (I know this only from reading about it, because I refused to attend any church which instituted such foolish policies.) Few questioned these bizarre and unprecedented practices.

This represents Sayers’ pre-adolescent grammar stage of development where everyone got used to parroting the same repetition. It doesn’t even rise to the level of the dialectical stage, which, I repeat, involves “questioning, testing, and thinking through why we [do] what we [do].” Those of us who did question were dissed and dismissed by church leaders who told us we were in a minority position, in deference to the unbiblical principle that the majority is always right. Some of us were even visited “professionally” by the Department of State, threatening legal action and medical license suspension for refusing to surrender our principled convictions of patient care. Suddenly, in a profession which for centuries shunned new ideas (after all, the Hungarian physician Semmelweis lost his medical reputation and was mocked by the Royal Colleges for insisting doctors wash their hands; he died in an insane asylum at the age of 47), new and unproven ideas were propagated and enforced en masse by the medical community.

And pastors followed suit. There were few Daniels during C19.

When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously (Daniel 6:10, ESV).

Gone were the days of “dare to be a Daniel/dare to stand alone” that we sang about in Sunday School when I was a boy. Locked, shuttered, and sequestered in fear, churches cowered like scared adolescents. Gone were the days of the Apostle Paul, who went right back into the city where he had been stoned for preaching the Gospel and did it all over again (Acts 14)! We heard plenty from pastors about obeying and respecting our government and being a witness to our community by our obedience, written by the same Apostle who defied the authorities in the name of the Gospel. Why did we hear about the one but not the other during C19?

This was only possible as churches followed the peer pressure of an adolescent mentality. It would not have been possible in churches with a Berean mentality who examined the Scriptures daily (Acts 17:11), who sought to understand the “secret and hidden wisdom of God” in contrast to the “rulers of this age” (I Cor. 2:7-8, ESV), and who fed on the solid food or “meat” and not just the “milk” of the Word (I Cor. 3:2, Heb. 5:11ff). In the Hebrews passage, milk is for children and meat is for the mature (cf the developmental stages above).

An Appeal to IGNORANCE

You mention the information we didn’t know at the time.

But we did know it at the time. Some of us saw it immediately and implored others to do the same. Our emails, our essays, and our books were offered to church leaders. But they were largely dismissed. Let me be clear. I do not claim superior knowledge regarding C19. But I do believe that the Spirit of God gave us insight to see through the deception of the C19 narrative from the very beginning. That is a work of the Spirit and not of my own intellect.

I heard well-meaning church leaders say early on, you don’t know who to believe. I begged to differ. You believe what is true. LuAnne and I have said from the beginning that C19 was always about what was true; it was not about perceptions or opinions. Masks either worked or they didn’t. C19 was either the deadliest virus to hit the planet or it wasn’t. There was asymptomatic spread or there wasn’t. Vaccines either prevented you from getting C19 and transmitting it or they didn’t. mRNA jabs didn’t change your genetic code or they did. Lockdowns and social distancing either worked or they didn’t. Forced mandates against people’s consciences either were constitutional or they weren’t. Removing hymnals from pew racks either helped to prevent spread or it didn’t. And on the list goes.

The fact that few were unable to sort through these lies and discover the truth bespeaks a very sad theological state of church and society. One could forgive society, but it’s hard to forgive the church! The fact that few church leaders were unable to decrypt the daily deception that masqueraded as news tells us that we are woefully unprepared for the beasts of persecution, deception, and seduction outlined in Revelation 13 and 17. (I owe this understanding to John Stott.) In fact, those three beasts were all over the C19 narrative: seduced by Happy Meals and million-dollar sweepstakes to get the jab, deceived by government and medicine into believing the lies in the above paragraph, and persecuted for refusing to be complicit. Unable to buy or sell unless one has the mark. Regardless if one is pre-, post-, or amillennial in eschatological understanding, it’s hard to not see a connection! Those who suggest it is a coincidence are deceived. One would expect the Enemy to masquerade as an angel of light and to use the church as a conduit for that deception.

So what we didn’t know at the time (to use your words) is really interpreted as what we failed to or didn’t want to see at the time. And even if one honestly didn’t know (that’s hard for me to believe), I know of no place in Scripture where we’re given a pass for our ignorance. Pastors won’t get a pass to stand before the Judge and say that at the time they didn’t know that salvation was by grace through faith in Christ alone. I don’t believe they’ll be given a pass for being deceived “at the time” either. On the contrary. Rather, we read:

Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy time (Isaiah 33:6, KJV).

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee… (Hosea 4:6, KJV).

Pastors who became like false prophets, urging “peace, peace when there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14 & I Thess. 5:3) or comply with government narratives will be held to the highest account for their deception. And they will not be able to appeal to adolescence or ignorance.

An Appeal to LOVE

Nor will they be able to appeal to love. This is probably the most disturbing of the three to me personally. You reference it above. I have written about it before and so I will be brief.

Let me be blunt. I don’t believe it was about love at all. I believe it was all about fear. The Scripture is clear: “Perfect love casts out fear” (I John 4:18). As I pointed out in “Perhaps Today,” the Pope, the Archbishop, the Anabaptists, and others all used this same argument. From where I stand now and in hindsight, urging complicity with the C19 narrative in the name of love is akin to encouraging someone to run across the road in front of an 18-wheeler because it’s the loving thing to do. It’s insane. It makes no sense. Certainly we’re called to love. The two greatest commands are love of God and love of others. However, we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the mind (along with the other three) was sorely missing in this argument.

The love argument has been used to justify almost any aberrant behavior in society—from abortion to homosexuality to transgenderism and more. In light of what is true, appealing to the love argument is akin to twisting (wresting) the Scriptures to one’s own destruction (2 Peter 3:16) and “handling the word of God deceitfully” (2 Corinthians 4:2, KJV). It must stop and it must be repented of!

In summary, I don’t believe Van Doodeward missed any nuances. Pastor Yi certainly didn’t either! I believe the extent to which we do believe there are nuances corresponds to the extent to which we’ve become comfortable with deception, which is exactly the place where the Enemy wants us.

We used to sing a hymn entitled “Faith of Our Fathers.” It’s in most Mennonite hymnals. It’s also in the Trinity Hymnal of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Church in America. I don’t know that it’s sung in many churches these days outside of the Anabaptist context. Perhaps it’s too embarrassing. The first stanza will suffice:

Faith of our fathers, living still/In spite of dungeon, fire, and sword;

O how our hearts beat high with joy/Whene’er we hear that glorious word.

Faith of our fathers, holy faith./We will be true to thee till death!

Worshipping in caves and dens of the mountain in defiance of authorities, these heroes of the faith were willing to be racked, quartered, sawn, drawn asunder, have their tongues pulled out, and be burned at the stake—all the while dying with the name of God on their lips.

Contrast that with modern day churches shuttered and doors bolted, with preachers “preaching” to an empty audience live-streamed on YouTube or to parishioners seated in every other bench with elbow bumps over handshakes. What an anemic, vanilla faith!

Even if C19 had been the deadliest virus to hit the planet, if we really believe the Christian story, then we’re transported to be with Christ, which Paul says is far better (Phil. 1:23)! What better way than for the saints to die while worshiping God and be simultaneously transported into His Presence. Talk about a grand entrance!

But oh, how glorious that will be!

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I have multiple Bible versions in my library, but they all translate this verse essentially the same way. “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” That’s because the message is quite clear. It’s unambiguous. There is no commentary needed. Pride goes before destruction.

Certainly we’ve heard Christians—I’ve said it myself—say that they’re proud of someone’s accomplishments. Perhaps a graduating senior. A successful business venture. A delightfully prepared meal. These are things we celebrate, which is a biblical concept. Yet if we’re true to biblical language, even those statements are a stretch by scriptural categories. One could even argue that they are unscriptural.

According to my Logos Bible software, there are approximately 84 references to pride or its derivatives in 68 verses throughout the Old and New Testaments (mostly in the Old). None of them are positive. Here are just a few striking references:

Perhaps you wonder where I’m going with this. June is designated as “pride month,” which apparently started around 1970. According to USA Today a few weeks ago, “‘Pride’ itself does not stand for anything.” It’s a time when LGBTQ+ identities are celebrated. + defines other identifies “under the rainbow umbrella” which aren’t necessarily lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (or questioning). When I was in training, anyone identifying as Jesus or Napoleon was diagnosed as psychotic and suffering from either hallucinations or delusions or both. Now, I can identify as a woman (which I am not) and there’s a month to celebrate me! Just don’t identify as a white professional male (which I am), because that’s characteristic of a racist white supremacist.

It seemed to be last year when all major businesses felt the need to make a statement in support of pride month. LuAnne and I love to burn candles, and we’ve been Yankee Candle fans most of our married life—until last year. When Yankee Candle created a rainbow candle to celebrate, LuAnne wrote and told them she wouldn’t be buying their candles anymore, as we’re interested in candles and not social agenda statements. So we permanently moved our $750+ per year candle acquistions elsewhere. Just today I saw a picture of rainbow rockers on the porches of Cracker Barrel.

It is the height of blasphemy to take the rainbow from Genesis 9, God’s “promise to uphold creation in its natural order” (Michael Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology, p. 114), and pervert it into a celebratory symbol of flagrant sin.

It seems further the height of biblical irony to have a month celebrating “pride” when the Bible has nothing good to say about it. Pride is usually listed first in “the seven deadly sins.” And while these are not listed as such in Scripture, they’ve been rightly identified by the church since at least 400 AD. Of this, Scripture says:

Romans 1:18-32 (ESV) is a key passage to understand the downward progression into sin, specifically sexual sin. It follows this basic outline:

1. God has revealed Himself in both His Word and His world. Verse 20 says that God’s “invisible attributes” (this Stack is about the Transcendentals—goodness, truth, and beauty) “have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (.i.e. His creation).

2. Because all people are created in the image of God (imago dei), all people have a sense of right and wrong. The “they” of this passage refer to the ungodly and unrighteous men/people, “who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (v. 18). Even though they are likely not reading His Word, Paul says they are “without excuse” (v. 20), because of what has been revealed in His world.

3. Verse 21 says that even though they knew God, they refused to acknowledge Him as God or give thanks to Him (ungratefulness is a hallmark of the wicked).

4. This posture of heart led them to distorted and dark thinking (v. 21).

5. While they claimed to be wise, they were actually exposed as fools (v. 22).

6. This led to idolatry, which verse 23 identifies as exchanging the glory of the true God for false gods.

7. With the above in place, God then gives them over to sexual debauchery where the creation is honored above the Creator (vv. 24-25). A specific representation of this in in the form of lesbian and homosexual behavior (vv. 26-27).

8. Finally and as a result of refusing to acknowledge God, “God gave them up to a debased [worthless, despicable] mind” (v. 28). This then results in all sorts of ungodly practices and a bold and blazen approval of those who commit such sins.

This scriptural line of reasoning is pushed back against by some professing Christians who state this doesn’t demonstrate any love for those who struggle with sexuality, identity, etc. My response to that is simple. This passage states that sexual sin is a result of a deliberate rejection of God. All of us have deliberately rejected God prior to conversion and even after conversion (cf Romans 7). Therefore, all people struggle at some level with sexuality. Now that requires a book to unpack!

But Scripture must be our starting point, not our own sin. And the above gives none of us the license to sin. The struggle on either side of the ditch is lawlessness (known as antinomianism, or live as you please) or legalism, neither of which are appropriate. Either way, we have no recourse but to run into the arms of our Saviour!

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Last evening was the premiere of the third of the plandemic series by Mikki Willis entitled “The Great Awakening.” (If that link doesn’t work, try this one.) I’d highly recommend the 1:42 film. If you’ve been following the plandemic from day one, none of this will surprise you. If you’ve never heard of the concept of plandemic, then you’re in for a shocking revelation. Only God knows if we’re gearing up for the Lord’s return or for a great awakening. Either way, it’s gratifying to see so many people openly talking about the smoke and subterfuge we’ve all been subjected to since March 2020.

In some of the red-carpet interviews before the premier screening last evening, it was pointed out that a lot of our current issues—from climate change to racism to transgender issues—are really distractions from the larger goal of communist takeover of the West, epitomized by Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum’s Great Reset agenda of 2030.

C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters was originally written in 1941. It is the account of the senior devil Screwtape advising his junior devil nephew Wormwood how to overcome the Enemy (think opposite; in The Screwtape Letters, the Enemy is the good or the Christian) and hence lead mankind astray. In the preface to the 1961 edition, Lewis writes:

I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.

In the very first chapter, he advises Wormwood that if relies on argument, then the Enemy always has the upper hand. However, if he relies on jargon (which he latter calls propaganda), then “Evil” has superior advantage.

Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church.

And again:

The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle onto the Enemy’s own ground. He can argue too; whereas in really practical propaganda of the kind I am suggesting He has been shown for centuries to be greatly the inferior of Our Father Below [i.e. Satan].

Why, then, in the past three years, has so much of the Church fallen victim to propaganda? Why did the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby state that if you love your neighbor, you’ll get the Covid vaccine? (Of course, pretty much everything he says in this 1-minute clip is entirely false.) Why did the Pope parrot the same line? Why did the ERLC (Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission) of the Southern Baptist Convention promote masks during Covid? Why did the conservative Anabaptist Viewpoint—Anabaptists have always emphasized separation from the world—promote Covid vaccines (more correctly called gene therapies) using the same argument of “loving your neighbors” as the Archbishop? (This was the first of four reasons in their encouragement to get Covid vaccinated, all of which are entirely misleading or patently false.)

Wouldn’t a far more honest, ethical, and biblical approach for the above to have been what Orthodox Presbyterian pastor Peter Van Doodewaard wrote on May 29:

I am a pastor, and I don’t give recommendations for vaccinations, masks, or appendectomies.

I’d highly recommend reading Van Doodewaard’s entire “COVID-19 Reflection,” where he calls church leaders to methodically evaluate their individual church’s handling of Covid and repent as needed.

Except that many were physicians who gave these recommendations, as in the Viewpoint above. The only possible answer to the above questions is if people were listening to the wrong sources, i.e. propaganda and not argument. Churches and parachurch organizations virtue-signaled from here to Timbuktu with their masking and jab recommendations. But they weren’t following truth. The data is in, and there is no place to hide. Masks didn’t work. In fact, they promoted harm. Vaccines didn’t prevent getting or spreading Covid. And they came with an abundance of irreparable harm and in many cases death. All of which we warned people about. Yet our concerns—from within the church—were either ignored or politely dismissed with “thank you for your thoughts.”

I wonder: when the watchman’s cries from the wall are ignored, and when those cries happen exactly as the watchman warned, and then when those who ignored the cries fall victim to the watchman’s warnings, will God hear a prayer for healing? Surely God is a God of abundant mercy, and we all stand desperately in need of that every day. But let us never presume upon His grace and mercy.

If God tarries, we will face another “Covid” crisis, and if we haven’t learned the first time around, there’s no telling what the end will be. It’s later than we think. “The end of all things is at hand,” Peter warns (I Pet. 4:7, ESV).

“Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming” (Matt. 24:42, ESV). And in that process, may you be truly awake, and not “woke” to the Enemy’s ideologies.

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It is also Ascension Day, a little-celebrated day throughout much of the Christian church. We live in a part of the world where many Mennonite-owned businesses will be closed today, but most people will give little to no thought to this unique day which marks the inauguration of Christ’s Kingdom. Most will go about their business as usual, forgetting that this day is the day Jesus promised His followers would receive Holy Spirit power to be His witnesses throughout the earth (see Acts 1:6ff).

The vet is coming this morning to check out our five alpacas, including the two pregnant ones—due to deliver any day now (there is no question in the animal world about male or female). I need to get them corralled in the barns. I have hay to move around to make space for the new before that (Thursday is my “administrative day” when I don’t see patients). We meet as Heritage providers for an educational session this afternoon. Hence, my writing moments are limited today!

But I’ve been thinking this week about legacy as I’ve wrapped up my reading in 2 Kings. The kings of Israel and Judah are introduced by name and the immediate commentary, “and he did what was evil [or right] in the sight of the Lord.” If you know anything about Old Testament history, you’ll recall that there were no kings of Israel who did what was right and few kings of Judah who did right. The sections often conclude with a comment that the rest of the king’s acts are chronicled elsewhere.

Name and commentary on evil or righteousness. In the big scheme of things, that seems to be all that matters. Not our accomplishments, not our wealth, not our education, not even our families. Not that any of these are insignificant. But they are not primary. So, roll the clock forward to the day of your demise—which could be today or years from today. What will be said of you? What will be said of me?

We sometimes get burdened down in the heat of the day. We forget to “tend our gardens.” That was a beautiful phrase used by J. I. Packer in his final interview before his death. It’s neither flashy nor sexy, as they say. It’s just responsibly tending the space God has entrusted us with.

And in the process, I hope that my legacy will be: “And Joel did that which was right in the sight of the Lord.”

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