Separatism as a Fundamental Principle, 2A

Separatism as a Fundamental Principle of Christian Agrarianism, Part 2-A
Posted by Michael Bunker
editor@biblicalagrarianism.com

Before you read this part, go read Part 1-A Read part 1-B

Becoming Babylon

We have established in the first two parts that Separatism is:

a) Reflected in the entire teaching of the whole Bible.
b) Not contrary to, or in contest with, evangelism or missionary work.
c) Commanded by God

Now it is important that we view Separatism in its relationship with Christian Agrarianism, and we will begin to do so in this part. When examining an issue like this, it is beneficial to have a vision (Prov. 29:18) of what God's intent was for the happiness and perpetuation of His people, and it is also valuable to be able to see the panorama of human existence and activity as man has fallen further and further from God's original intent. History, it is said, is a light by which we may guide our feet, and it is surely for this reason that God saw fit to give us the history of mankind, and of Israel, in written form.

God first placed man in a garden (not a city, or a disordered wasteland, or a jungle or thicket, but a well-ordered and planted garden), and commanded that man till and tend the garden for his provision and for the health, happiness, and perpetuation of his life. God put man in the garden with the command that he dress it and keep it, and immediately, before ever there was a fall or sin or death, He gave a command for man to be separate from sin. God commanded man to stay separate from a particular tree, a tree which provided access to that unauthorized knowledge which would not tend towards his happiness and obedience:

"And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Gen. 2:15-17).

Here again we see the pattern of separation. Now look at the entire pattern as it played out:

God created the light, and separated the light from the darkness (Gen. 1:3-4

God created the firmament, and separated the waters from the waters (Gen. 1:6-7

God separated the dry land from the waters (Gen. 1:10)

God caused the green grass and the herbs and trees to come forth out of the ground (Gen. 11-12)

God created the lights in the firmament, the stars, moon, and sun, to separate the night from the day and to divide light from darkness (Gen. 1:14-18).

God caused the fish and the birds to come forth abundantly (Gen. 1:20-22).

God caused the animals and creeping thing to come forth by separating them from the earth (creating them from dirt) (Gen. 1:24-25).

God created man by separating him from the earth and giving him dominion over it. He put a separation between man and the animal kingdom by making man King over it. God commanded man to have dominion and to manage the earth and subdue it, and to bring it under authority for God's glory (Gen. 1:26-28).

God separated the Seventh Day unto Himself as a perpetual sabbath day of rest, and rested from His own labors on that day (Gen. 2:1-4).

God separated man by command and law from all that which, however enticing and beneficial it might seem, would not be conducive to his life and happiness (Gen. 2:15-17).

As we have mentioned, God planted man in the Garden of Eden, and allowed him access to all of the trees of the Garden except for that tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God separated man from that tree by way of command, that he touch it not, neither eat from it, lest he die.

Let's take a moment and review some of our principle terms, because I am going to make an illustration and it is critical that you understand what I am saying. There are two opposing positions in view here:

1. Separatism - an advocate of separation from something established - ecclesiastical, political, cultural, or social. From the term separate, which means "to divide, sever, or set apart", or "to set apart from a number for a particular service".

2. Syncretism - the attempted reconciliation or union of different or opposing principles, practices, or parties, as in philosophy or religion.

Now, as an ironic aside - worldling Christian professors and theologians believe that there is a "syncretism" or compromise that can be had between even these opposite two worldviews. Since everything they are and everything they believe is based on syncretism, they must conclude that there is even a compromise between syncretism and separation. This compromise creates nothing but a monster, since it is really just syncretism repackaged in order to salve and silence the conscience of man, who knows instinctively that God commands separatism from the kingdom of this world.

Back to the garden. So the separatist would see God's commands in the Garden of Eden as absolute. Do not have anything whatsoever to do with the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God was unequivocal - Do not eat from it, lest ye die. The syncretist would say, "Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? Surely you may eat of it and not die. You see, God is interested in your heart! If your heart is right, it doesn't matter what your body is doing. God wants you to be clean and separate in your heart, so as long as you feel clean and separate in your heart, then go ahead and eat of any tree you like, even the forbidden tree, because God knows your heart". This is what they are saying when they say, "Go ahead and live however you like, God doesn't care. Every legal occupation, every worldview, every way of life is equal, so long as you feel good about it and accept it in your heart". This is also what the dominionist or reconstructionist is saying when he says, "Yes, we confess that the world is evil, and that the prince and ruler of it is God's enemy, and that its foundation and principles are fundamentally contrary to God's way and order, but... God is using us to reclaim the world and to bring it under the dominion of Christ. So... in order to convert the world, we must live like the world. Live however you like so long as you put Christ's name on everything you do, and so long as you try to convert the world around you to this same type of syncretistic "christianity""

That is the fundamental difference between Separatism and Syncretism. Syncretism always says, "Yea, hath God said?" and tries to find a way to continue in disobedience by salving and anesthetizing the conscience.

It is not unimportant that we mention here that there was another tree in the garden – a tree from which our first parents might have freely eaten. That tree is the Tree of Life (Gen. 2:9). We know that this Tree of Life is representative of Christ, of whom it is said He was “separate from sinners” (Heb. 7:26). Christ, who called men out to be and live separate from the world, and who was Himself crucified “without the gate” (Heb. 13:12), and calls His own beloved to come to Him “without the camp”, is that Tree of Life that the sons and daughters of men are always rejecting in favor of the tree of knowledge (wordliness).

We have established that before the fall, God's command was very plain and unequivocal. God put man in the Garden and commanded him to keep it and till it (Gen. 3:15) - so man was created as an morally neutral but upright, holy, and innocent creature, capable of serving and glorifying him, but also capable of disobeying him. Man's vocation was to be an agrarian one, and he was designed and intended for the working and ordering of God's creation for God's glory. This command of God has never been rescinded, nor has His intention for man changed in the intervening millennia. After the fall we find the command re-established:

"Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken" (Gen 3:23).

I hope you understand that from this point, it is necessary that I give a sweeping panorama of man's folly on this planet, and I am going to do so in less detail than I would like – but, like Stephen who prophesied using history to those who would stone him, it is necessary that we cover the intervening thousands of years in a few short breaths.

Man was sent forth to till the ground, to take dominion over it, and to manage it for God's glory. Immediately we see man's intention to do otherwise, and to build cities, and to conglomerate and unify in order to bypass God's intentions. We also see God's opinion and hostility towards the building of cities, and to the attempts of men to come together and pull together for their own perceived worldly benefits.

Adam and Eve, following their rebellion and after they were barred from the garden from whence they came, conceived a son named Cain who, though he was originally a tiller of the ground, was a covetous rebel, and became the first murderer. And what is his curse? God says he will no longer will be a successful farmer: “When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength” (Gen. 4:12); and he shall be a wanderer on the earth, subject to the whims of the earth and the people thereon. He will be subject to the worlds culture, and a slave to the prince of the earth (Satan). Upon hearing that he has been removed and terminated from his divinely given vocation as a farmer, what does Cain say?

“And Cain said unto the LORD, My punishment is greater than I can bear” (Gen. 4:13).

Going out from the presence of the Lord, and continuing in his rebellion, Cain determines to build a great city, the shining monument to his sin. This city he names after his son Enoch (now, this is a different Enoch than that righteous son of Jared who “walked with God” (Gen. 5:21)). Many who have studied this subject in much depth have concluded that this city, built by Cain, was the city archaeologists and historians know as Tenochtitlan, which is modern day Mexico City, the largest city on the earth today. Remember that the earth was not divided at this time, meaning that the continents as we know them, divided by the seas, did not exist. The earth was divided at the time of Peleg (Gen. 10:25). We can't know this for a fact, but it is interesting that it is very likely that the city that Cain built might still be with us, and that it might be the largest city in the world today. That city is the archetype of every city in the world today.

Now, the earth became corrupt and filled with violence, because mankind had corrupted his way upon the earth (Gen. 6:12), and had refused the commands of separation and agrarianism given by God. Many writers and commentators have written about this time of corruption and violence, but we know that as man moved away from his true vocation, as he built cities and engaged in idolatry, he moved further away from God. His way was corrupted because man always believes he has a better plan, and that his way will bring him to glory without what he considers the stifling rules and commands of a just God. There are several different theories as to what type of corruption prompted God to destroy the whole earth. One theory says that the sons of Seth, sons of the righteous bloodline, took to themselves wives of the daughters of Cain (Gen. 6:2). John Gill, who holds to this theory, has this to say:

“According to the Arabic writers, immediately after the death of Adam the family of Seth was separated from the family of Cain; Seth took his sons and their wives to a high mountain (Hermon), on the top of which Adam was buried, and Cain and all his sons lived in the valley beneath, where Abel was slain; and they on the mountain obtained a name for holiness and purity, and were so near the angels that they could hear their voices and join their hymns with them; and they, their wives and their children, went by the common name of the sons of God: and now these were adjured, by Seth and by succeeding patriarchs, by no means to go down from the mountain and join the Cainites; but notwithstanding in the times of Jared some did go down, it seems; and after that others, and at this time it became general; and being taken with the beauty of the daughters of Cain and his posterity, they did as follows: and they took them wives of all that they chose”

In this theory, which seems to be the most widely held, the Sethite line violated the command of separation and purity, corrupted themselves by their syncretistic and miscegenetic marriages with the worldly Cainites, and brought destruction upon the whole world.

A second popular theory claims that angels, falling and leaving their first estate (Jude 1:6), began to lust after the daughters of men (mortal human women) and took them as wives, creating a race of giants (Gen. 6:4) who were not fully human, and therefore not subject to redemption. It is interesting to note that the Jude 1:6 verse, which tells us that the angels left their first estate, is followed by this:

“Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire” (Jud 1:7).

Supporters of this theory take from this that the sin of the fallen angels (leaving their first estate) was sexual in nature, and involved “going after strange flesh”, which means going after different flesh, or, that which is of a different kind, race, or species – in this case, leaving heaven permanently to cohabit with human women, and, in doing so, producing mongrel offspring. This too violates the principles and commands of separatism.

Ok, so in either theory we can conclusively determine that the singular sin which brought forth God's most destructive and damning judgment – in all of the history of the world – was a sin against God's command of separation. Herein we see God's mind on the subject, and we come to know God's intention in that judgment he will bring in the future.

God saves Noah and his progeny through the means of separation – he causes them to go into the ark, and he shuts the door, and rains down vengeance on those who are now His enemies – those who refused the preaching of Noah, and who would not separate from the corruption of the world.

After the world and every living thing in it is destroyed, God commands Noah and his family to go out from the ark, and to take the animals forth that they may breed and replenish the earth, and in Genesis 8:20 through 8:22 God institutes the type of sacrificial worship, and again, using agrarian terminology, commands man to live separate agrarian lives, holy unto him:

“While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” (Gen 8:22).

God gives forth threatenings and promises to Noah and his family, who are to go forth and be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth (Gen. 9:7); and Noah understood this to be a command to him to be engaged in agrarian work, as it is said, “And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard” (Gen 9:20). Note that Noah did not decide to build a city.

Noah's son Ham, like Cain a rebellious and wicked son, uncovered his father's nakedness and sinned against Noah and against God, and for this he and his line were marked and cursed to be servants to the lines of Shem and Japheth. Ham's son Cush begat Nimrod “who began to be a mighty one in the earth”. John Gill says, “that is, he was the first that formed a plan of government, and brought men into subjection to it”. The Jews say that Nimrod was the first king after God. Nimrod fundamentally re-ordered life throughout his dominions so that man was no longer free under the authority of God and His righteous commandments alone, but now suffered to be put under the dominion of a human king who ordered things after the commands of Satan, the Prince of this World. Nimrod patterned or copied his kingdom after a corrupt version of the kingdom of God, even forming a golden crown for himself after “seeing the figure of a golden crown in heaven” (John Gill Commentary).

“And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, And Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city (Gen 10:10-12)”

So here again we see how the wicked, who despise God's authority and who desire to usurp Him and to replace Him, immediately begin to build cities and gather men to themselves under their own pretended authority.

It is in this Babel, built and founded by Nimrod, that a tower begins to be built:

“And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth” (Gen 11:1-9).

Here we have the model of what has become modern urbanism and syncretism. All of the agents of syncretism, no matter how religious and spiritual they sound, have as an unstated mission statement “let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth”. Please note that the enemies of God are saying that, if man does not join together in urban and worldly fellowship, he will be scattered upon the face of the whole earth – which was God's command concerning man. Man scattered over the earth, tilling it and managing it for God's glory, will be free and unencumbered by the capricious tyrannies of wicked men. Man will be free to produce and harvest food from the ground (God's increase), and to worship God according to his conscience, and will not be enslaved to human economies, false currencies, debt and credit schemes, etc. This is what Satan did not want, so he puts it in men to come together and to live urban lives in close fellowship with their fallen brethren.

Whether they are using the argument of missionary evangelism, or Christ's eating and drinking with publicans, all syncretists – like Nimrod, Ham, and Cain – desire that man will not separate from worldliness and from the “kingdom of this world” as God has commanded. No matter how they howl and moan at the inference, they are agents of Babel, and God is found in His own Word to be steadfast against them.

From Babel (which became Babylon) we have the foundation of two antichristian systems:

1. Our current political, economic and social model – the urban nation state or kingdom being dominant over God's heritage and the freedom of the individual - including a monetary system which is designed to enslave men to an urban system of currency, debt, and credit.

2. The Babylonian religious system, which evolved into Talmudic Judaism and modern apostate Christianity, which is codified and represented by Papal Catholicism (the birth mother of the Charismatic/Pentacostal movement, and almost all modern nominal "Protestant" sects).
   

We will look at these two systems in more depth in a future part. It is important now to review, before we go on to the next part.

Review

A close study of Biblical history shows that our modern Babylonian system is a result of 6000 years of rebellion against God's commands concerning those who would worship Him in truth. Babylonianism, pushed by the prophets of worldliness and syncretism, is that same beast and sin which brought about God's judgment at the great flood, and the confounding of the languages on the plains of Shinar. This Babylonian sea-beast, depicted for us in the 13^th Chapter of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, is at perennial war with the true Saints of God (Rev. 13:7). God's opinion of syncretism and worldliness is well known, and we can be certain that His judgment will fall against this world, and all the proponents and false prophets of it.

In the next part we will examine how the modern Babylonian system of politics, economics, industry, and culture, captures, enslaves, and trades in the souls of men. We will study the root of the love of the world, which is mammon, and we will study the love of mammon, which is that love – antithetical to the love of God – which is called root and basis of all evil.

I am your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker