#1: The Warrenton Declaration

This week on Cross and Crown Radio. We’re back. And boy, are we excited. The Warrenton Declaration is out. Yours truly is happy to be an original signer. Have you signed it and shared it in an attempt to stop government tyranny? Also, our three headlines include Dr. Lena Wen recently stated on CNN that “the science has changed.” We’ll try to sort that mess out. Also, Canadian police began making arrests and stealing people’s property in Ottawa while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invokes the emergency power statute. And Jan Psaki, the White House Press Secretary, recently dodged a question about the Johns Hopkins Lockdown study that recently came out. And finally, for our segment, Theonomy or Autonomy, we’ll revisit a short interaction I recently had with the Virginia House of Delegates as it pertains to religious exemption in the Virginia Code. As always, I’m your host, Jason Garwood. Thank you for watching and listening to Cross & Crown Radio. The Warrenton Declaration was released back in late June of 2021, and it has been signed by several thousand people from all across the world. The document itself was written and edited by several different people. However, what’s important is what’s in the document itself from the website.

WarrentonDeclaration.com “The Warrenton Declaration on Medical Mandates, Biblical Ethics and Authority was created in order to provide doctrinal clarity and coherence on issues of biblical authority and ethics related to medical mandates. The Declaration seeks to equip local churches and their officers in providing transparency on where they stand and to assist individuals who are being mistreated in their churches with a well ordered summary of belief in this regard.” Fairly clear, right? The past two years have been unprecedented in just about every way from mask wearing to redefining the word “healthy” by saying, “asymptomatic”–the science is always about clarity, right?–to changing how we view sickness and disease, or, as I like to call it, dis-ease. Part of that collective shift concerned the relationship between so called public health and vaccination. To be clear, there has always been a mindboggling assumption that unvaccinated individuals are somehow dangerous to the vaccinated. The irony, unfortunately, is lost on them. How can I give you a disease that I don’t have? And how can you, someone who’s been vaccinated, be given a disease you’ve been allegedly inoculated against anyone? Bueller? We lost some freedoms, that’s for sure. But perhaps the greatest devastation was a loss of intelligence.

If the COVID hysteria has taught us anything, it’s that we’re much dumber than we thought. How dumb have we become? Well, now you’re not getting the vaccine to protect yourself, but to protect others. That’s how dumb we’ve descended. We’re also told that the only way to stop the Omicron variant is to get the jab that has not stopped anything to date. Since when did that become “the science?” On top of this, the Church has nearly completely tripped over their own floor sign direction indicators by not providing clarity during the confusion. Many pastors felt the need to do whatever Caesar says because that’s what they’ve done all along. We can’t seem to get them to spend their energies doing something to end the infanticide that is abortion. Why would we expect them to think critically about the pandemic? To make matters much worse, we’ve seen a major influx in tyranny in places like Australia, Europe, and even recently, not too long ago, China locked down with even more restrictions than ever before. Enter the Declaration. Now. I happen to believe that the shenanigans we’re seeing are, dare I say it, premeditated shenanigans? I say premeditated because the consistent world view of humanism is always going to be more centralization, more power, and more centralized power.

Collectivism is an inherent mark of humanism. Why bother with the particulars and individuals when the universals and collectives are all that really matter? 40 years ago, men like Francis Schaeffer and RJ. Rushdoony warned that statism would be the greatest threat to Liberty and justice for all. Guess what? They were right. Furthermore, statism, being the ugly, virulent idol that it is, won’t be dislodged easily. Consider just how bad it really is by thinking about the following problems. Abortion on demand, rejection of common law and the rise of administrative/executive law, warrantless wiretaps, militarized police state, government theft via currency devaluation, which causes inflation currently at 7.5%, civil asset forfeiture the welfare state; crony capitalism, socialism, bloated centralized government, government encroachment on the family; exorbitant taxation, degradation of property ownership, imposition of the state with regard to marriage and gender, corrupt courts overburdened prisons, housing nonviolent persons, which leads to systemic injustice towards minorities and broken families; generational criminality through the drug war, state-run education centers, property tax, death tax, sales tax, capital gains tax, income tax, endless unjust war, unconstitutional immigration restrictions, complete disregard for the Second Amendment, mandatory vaccination, “just say no to vaccine Joe” and masking; circumvention of due process, bribery in the justice system, and on and on we go.

To be clear, the COVID insanity didn’t just drop out of nowhere, which is why I called it “premeditated.” It came for two very specific reasons. First, statism will never curttail its own power. It is unwilling and unable to relinquish power. And second, statism will thus only seek to grab for more. This grotesque idol is a glutton in every sense of the word. The COVID fever is a tyranny we’re simply going to have to sweat out. We’re going to have to get to the place where we’re calling on the name of the Lord, not the name of Mr. Science himself, Lord Fauci. Which is all to say, the Declaration is a needed document. I’ve heard from people literally all over the world who have shared their stories about how their churches have been useless and impotent during these times. I’ve heard first hand of people not allowed to gather with their church family because they wouldn’t wear a mask. I know of a family who hasn’t been to their church gathering for nearly two years. The Warrenton Declaration provides clarity on the doctrinal issues pertaining to these matters, and it ties together the ethical issues that are at play, and it serves to equip local churches to provide transparency during these most important times.

What should we think of the role of the civil Magistrate? What does God require in order for justice to prevail? How do we disciple the nations during this time? Should we like the Gospel Coalition-y, people who simply do not have the correct categories in place, do whatever the CDC says? The thing that changes on a dime. Where does the locus of health belong? The individual or the humanist state? Does God’s law permit the magistracy the power to quarantine anyone and everyone? No. What about Romans 13? This is why the declaration was written. It wasn’t written because we just don’t like vaccines. Albeit I’m happy to be called an anti-vaxxer because, well, I am; but none of those are helpful. They only perpetuate the abortion industry while putting heavy metals into your brain. I’m fine with that label, but the declaration doesn’t exist because we just don’t want to go with the flow or we just want to go against the flow. No, it exists because Christians know that the Bible puts limitations on power. Only Christ has unlimited power and only Christ has unlimited authority and jurisdiction. Man does not. I for one am ready for a Reformation and a Revival: A reformation will only come when we rediscover the Book of the Law and get back to biblical Christianity.

A revival will only come when we’re desperate for the Holy Spirit to convict us of sin and lead us into righteousness. Are you ready for that? Are you desperate enough to stop trusting in yourself and in the humanist state? If so, then let’s get to work. You can start by signing the Warrenton Declaration. Share it on social media, send it to your church, to your elders, to your congregation, and send it to your town councils, wherever you can find anyone: send it. And above all, cry out to God; be men of Issachar, knowing the times. Now let’s get to our three headlines.

First up, Dr. Lena Wan recently stated on CNN during an interview that the science has changed. Let’s go ahead and see that clip.

Do you agree with the move?

I do. There was and is a time and place for pandemic restrictions, but when they were put in, it was always with the understanding that they would be removed as soon as we can. And in this case, circumstances have changed. Case counts are declining. Also, the science has changed. We know that vaccines protect very well against armorcrom, which is the dominant variant. Everyone five and older have widespread access to vaccines. And we also know about one way masking. The idea that even if other people around you are not wearing masks, if you wear a high quality mask that also protects you the wearer, too. And so in this case, I’m not saying I don’t think anyone really is saying that no one should ever wear masks, but rather that the responsibility should shift from a government mandate imposed from the state or the local district of the school. Rather, it should shift to an individual responsibility by the family who can still decide that their child can wear a mask if needed.

Take New Jersey. The case in New Jersey, for instance, their new case average is just over $4,000. Is that an acceptable number to do this, or are they projecting out to March 7? At this point?

I don’t think we should be looking at case counts at all at this point, especially when we’re dealing with a milder variant and when so many people were exposed to Amacron and therefore have at least some level of protection, either through vaccination or immunity. The key number that we should be looking at is hospitalizations. If our ICU’s and hospitals in that particular region are not overwhelmed, if they’re not overcapacity, we can set a number, for example, 75% or 80% full, then we should be able to relax all restrictions. And I actually believe that we should be starting to with the first restriction removed should actually be the restriction on children, because while for adults, you could say, well, what’s the harm of adults masking when they go into a grocery store, there actually is a harm that we should be discussing of children continuing to mask. That doesn’t mean that masking doesn’t have its place for children when there are very high rates of hospitalization. If we get a new variant in the future that children are particularly susceptible to, we may want to bring masks back. But we should also be intellectually honest and say that masking has had a cost, especially for the youngest learners, people with English as a second language, children with learning disabilities.

There has been a cost to them. So the risk benefit calculation has really changed.

Now, if you watch that and thought, boy, she sounds like she’s equivocating, well, then you and I would agree. Note that the science has changed, which is an interesting way of putting it, right? The science has changed.All along we were told that the science says this and that this was always towing the CDC line. It was always towing the line, whatever they say. But now the science has changed, and it sounds like she’s running the show in a different way. She almost sounds like a Christian, arguing that the family should be the ones who are deciding those types of things. Or, “there is a danger in mask wearing.” No one ever said that for the first two years, no one was worried about that. No one said, “Well, maybe we should be concerned about children and having to see their parents, their faces covered.” And maybe we should be concerned about children at school wearing masks who are breathing in all this toxic nonsense that they’re supposed to be exhaling, which is a normal digestive and detoxing process. But the science has now changed and noticed that we’re back to hospitalizations. Hospitalizations: apparently that’s the thing. We saw that early on, and then it went to case count, and then we started talking about vaccination, and now we’re back to hospitalizations. And the goal posts keep moving. And this is something that’s frustrating me from the very beginning.

It’s something I’ve certainly spoken out against from the very start. Is this, this idea that we need to trust “the science,” like it’s this objective standard that we can appeal to that never changes and never moves. It’s this immutable thing that’s out there sort of an ontological fixed reality that we all just need to succumb to and bow before. That’s how it was presented. That’s certainly how Dr. Fraud-ci, as I like to call him, presented it when he said, “If you question me, you question the science.” You see the difficulty here and again saying this from the very beginning. We need to think Christianly about these things, okay? We can’t just throw all caution to the wind in an effort to just get everything accomplished that we want to get accomplished. Let’s get more beds in the hospitals. Let’s get more ventilators. How many of you remember that? The ventilators? Hardly any. This is something Dr. McCullough and others have been sounding the alarm on as well. Dr. Robert Malone and others. Why aren’t we talking about therapies? Why is it that we continue to talk about hospitalizations and case counts? You know why the case counts are up? Because people are getting tested. I’ve seen videos of people testing whiskey and a testing positive. We’ve known, even the New York Times said this last summer, the testing is a problem whether you’re running the cycles too high or what have you. We have an issue. The testing isn’t really that great. Apparently “the science” isn’t as unchanging and infallible as we’ve been all led to believe. But here she says, “the science has changed,” which is funny because only in the Christian worldview do you get an objective standard by which you can then reason and draw conclusions. The whole scientific method given to you, by the way, Western civilization, by Christians, by Christians who knew that the universe was created by the true and living God, the self-contained absolute being, the Triune God as revealed in Scripture. This is a world that we get to enjoy that is beautiful. Think of Herman Dooyeweerd’s 15 different aspects of reality, these modal aspects, as he would call them, all of these different things we experience from the psychic and the sensitive, the things we enjoy, beauty, aesthetic, the biotic–the truth about we are living creatures–and all of these different things that kind of come together for us to experience this beautiful creation.

It’s all there. And Dooyeweerd was quick to say, you can’t absolutize any of those things. You can’t make the biotic aspect of creation as being the most important thing. They all work together in harmony. It’s God who’s the arche. He’s the Principium, he’s the foundation. All right? Everything rests upon him. And from there, we can deduce certain things. We can anticipate the seasons, the changes in time, the things that Ecclesiastes tells us about. You can only do that in the Christian worldview. For her to say the science has changed. Well, duh, we’ve known that. Of course, “the science” changes because what is science? It’s observation. It’s drawing conclusions. You live in a world where God gives us historical feedback, His sanctions. He blesses nations. He curses nations. He’s involved in every aspect of creation, from the birds in the sky to the hairs in your head, God is the standard; Christ is the standard. So for Dr. Wen to come on here and suggest that, well, through Interestingly enough, progressive sanctification, the science has changed. In other words. Well, this isn’t exactly like we said from the beginning. Well, a lot of us said that early on.

A lot of us were pushing back and frustrated with these unprecedented emergency powers being invoked in order to make people stand a certain distance away and wear something around their face. Of course. But now she’s concerned about the kids, which as someone who’s worked hand in hand with Planned Parenthood, I’m not really sure if she cares that much about the kids, but that’s a different topic for another day. So the science has changed? Well, yeah, of course. What actually changes is your willingness to bend the knee before Christ the King, the Giver of science, the one who gives us observation and insight into this beautiful created order. Of course, the science changed. I’m sure we’ll hear more about that from her in the coming weeks, as we see many places in Europe who are relaxing their restrictions and ending these different mandates. It’s about time. It’s about time. And unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to learn our lesson from this whole thing. We’re not going to learn the lesson of maybe we should have talked about therapies at home. Maybe we should have introduced people to chlorine dioxide. Maybe we should talk about vitamins, minerals and nutrition, and those types of things, and sunshine and exercise.Maybe instead of waiting till people can’t breathe and then carting them off to the hospital and throwing them on the CDC protocol and the NIH protocol, maybe we should have done something ahead of time. That would have been great.

Anyway, next up, this is from The Washington Post. And Canadian police. You’ve been following the trucker convoy, the Freedom Convoy. They’re making arrests. They’re confiscating vehicles, they’re cutting off supplies. And this Freedom Convoy protest is still going on. Interesting things happening there. And of course, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is attempting to invoke the emergency powers to stop the madness, which, as far as I can tell, that was actually shut down. But from the Post here, it says “big rigs and other vehicles continue to block crucial downtown arteries, snarling traffic, blaring their horns and fraying residents nerves,” quite literally unnerving. The protest has forced several businesses to close because of safety concerns. Yes, these people about as wild as January 6, right? National monuments are now fenced off after protesters desecrated them. I feel like we’ve seen this before. National monuments being desecrated. In a surreal scene, a man on horseback traveled down a road in front of Parliament over the weekend waving a Trump 2024 flag. That’s good. I don’t know who that guy is, but that’s really funny.

Ottawa Police Chief Peter Slowly. I think that’s how you pronounce his name. If he listens to this, he can correct me, but he has called it a “siege.” Ontario Premier Doug Ford cast it as an “occupation” just like January 6 in DC was an “insurrection.” I don’t know if these people have ever read a history book, that’s what I’d like to know. Well, in a tweet recently, Trudeau said that Canada will always support the right to protest, but that they don’t have the right to blockade our economy or our democracy or our fellow citizens daily lives. It has to stop now. It’s interesting the report here. “The convoy, which has attracted the attention of combatants in the US culture wars and drawn support from former President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, is spurring solidarity demonstrations elsewhere in Canada and inspiring similar protests from Europe to Australia. As it drags on, questions are mounting about what critics say has been the insufficient response of authorities and what comes next.” This is a criminologist, Michael Kempa, he said, and he’s from the University of Ottawa. So he’s really smart. “It’s so unprecedented that as we watched it and as the police and government watched it approaching, they could not recognize it for what it was.” He’s mad. The precrime unit did not act quickly. “It was figuratively outside our conceptual framework for what was possible for the city of Ottawa or for a protest in Canada.” “Figuratively outside our conceptual frame.” That’s an interesting way to put it.

The article goes on, “Police have now begun trying to choke off the supply lines of food, fuel, and other goods that have sustained the protesters.” Sounds like A.D. 70 and Rome’s tactics against Jerusalem. “Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson declared a state of emergency on Sunday, saying authorities were losing the battle against groups that were calling the shots. He asked the federal and provincial governments for 1800 more officers.” So it’s interesting that the police said recently that they had fully cleared and fenced off a downtown park near City Hall where protesters had erected “a wooden structure that functioned as a kitchen.” Maybe it is an occupation. They’ve set up a kitchen there; you gotta eat when you’re protesting government tyranny. You really need to make sure you have food supplies in place.

The police seized fuel, a fuel tanker of gas, and that was from a well stocked logistics hub in the parking lot of a baseball stadium. These guys came prepared. I love it. A logistics hub. I imagine that Vespasian had that under control in the Jewish-Roman Wars. It’s interesting. Even more recently, this is from the daily Wires’s Morning Wire where Trudeau invokes emergency powers against the truckers. Police have cleared trucks blocking a major trade route at the US Canada border. But the trucker protest known as the Freedom Convoy continues. In Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declares a national emergency allowing him to temporarily suspend civil rights. I love it. All you need is emergency. Isn’t that what he’s been doing for the past two years? Anyway, this quote is just fantastic from Trudeau. It’s really entertaining. He says, “This is not a peaceful protest. We will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue.” Well, I think the Freedom Convoy has showed up and is saying the same thing to you, except this is a peaceful protest. No one’s grabbing their guns and tanks and destroying your residents there. We will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue.

Well, if illegal and dangerous activities included forced vaccination, forced mask-wearing lockdowns, and just a general disregard for basic decency and freedom, maybe you’re the one Trudeau. Hopefully someone will send this to him. I’d love to talk to him. Maybe you’re the one that’s causing the problem. Maybe you’re the dangerous guy. Maybe you’re the one that you’re causing inflation in Canada, too, where it’s 7.5% here in the US. And I think it’s at 5% if I saw what I saw earlier is to be the case in Canada. So, it’s fascinating to me that Trudeau has such a problem with this sort of this provocative language of this is an occupation. And just like we saw the worst insurrection in history take place on January 6. So there’s all of these outspoken people, even the Washington Post article here talking about how the culture warriors are coming in, as if you’re not destroying culture, as if you’re not a warrior either. I don’t understand it. Well, I for one, stand by the Freedom Convoy. I think that being the peaceful protest that it is, sure there may be some economic ramifications. Of course, Go Fund Me decided not to allow them to have their $7 million.

I don’t know the latest on that. If they actually gave the money back to the people, I think they were going to give back to some, but who knows? Or they were going to give some to charity. But it’s just fascinating to me that you have people who want to peacefully demonstrate, which Trudeau says you have a right to do. But he doesn’t want to bend the knee and say maybe we should rethink our policies, our lockdown policies. I mean, maybe that’s the option. Maybe you should Trudeau just say, “You know what? You’re right. There’s a lot of you here. And I can see that you’re definitely outnumbering us.” Even though earlier he called it a small minority or something like that. Maybe he should have stopped and said, “Yeah, I hear you loud and clear. I heard you, honking. And there are thousands and thousands and thousands of you. There are protests all across Canada and the US and Australia and Europe. Maybe our position on this isn’t really helpful,” but of course, that would require the humility necessary to admit your policies are awful. And I’m not sure that’s ever going to happen.

All right, our third headline, this is from the Daily Wire. You might have seen recently that there was a lockdown study that was put out by Johns Hopkins that stated that “lockdown measures appeared to only reduce, quote, COVID mortality by 0.2% in the US and Europe.” Translation, they didn’t work. Okay. In case you’re wondering what that means, that’s what it means. They didn’t work. Well, the White House press Secretary, Jen Psaki, I don’t envy her position, even though she seems incredibly inept at the job. Jen Psaki was asked about it. So this happened not too long ago. But when she was asked about it, the reporter quoted from the study saying that lockdowns during the first wave of COVID in the spring of 2020, found that it only reduced COVID mortality by 0.2% in the US and in Europe, and suggested that they have little to no public health benefit. That’s from Johns Hopkins, but severe consequences for the economy, right. Suicide rates, depression, general disrupting of a social order. And it suggests that lockdown shouldn’t be part of a future pandemic response. That’s what the reporter was saying. And the reporter asked the question, is that the shared view of the administration looking in the rear view mirror?

And of course, Psaki responded, not wanting to discuss the specifics of the study. Why would she? You know, I doubt she even read it. And she wants to point to our, “Health and medical experts” for that. So interesting. Like, Johns Hopkins seems to be a fairly reputable place, even though I have my disagreements with them and their origins, especially as it pertains to the Flexner report that came out 100 years ago, which basically gave us the medical mafia that we have today. But she stated, Psaki stated to the reporter that the President isn’t pushing lockdowns, which I think is true. She said “We’ve not been pro lockdown.” That’s not been his agenda. Right. That seems to be the case. And she said most of the lockdowns actually happened under the previous President. Well, Trump didn’t lock down anybody either. That was left for the States. And unfortunately, places like California and New York, even here in Virginia and more leftist leaning States, lockdown measures were a pretty grotesque shall we say. So, it’s interesting. The reporter followed up again, says, do you guys believe that the lockdowns are more harmful than helpful? And Psaki dodged the question again, citing scientific experts.

And so I don’t understand what the deal is there. You’re talking about Johns Hopkins. It’s not some obscure cancer treatment center somewhere in Utah that no one knows about, that practices naturopathic medicine. And while they came out with the study, which I would want to hear it too, possibly. But we’re talking about someone who’s ostensibly on their side of this whole thing, and she keeps dodging the question. Why not just deal with it? Why not deal with the fact that, as many of us have been saying this entire time, lockdowns don’t work? We had Sweden early on. We had other places to look. We saw, how dangerous they are, how unhelpful they are, and we’re continuing to see the dangers of those things as people are isolated. And it seems like we’re coming out of that, thankfully. But our recent  headline here in our county, the Fauquier Times, stated that experts fear what might be next. Well, of course, you got to keep the fear narrative going, and that’s been their agenda all along, which is obviously very, very frustrating for those of us who have sounded the alarm for quite a long time.

I think the moral of the story here is that when you want to trust the experts, just make sure you get the right ones and don’t acknowledge what they say. But here we are with that. All right. We need to get to our Theonomy versus Autonomy segment.

There’s quite a bit of political fervor happening in Virginia right now. Some of you may know that Glen Youngkin, a Republican, is now our governor replacing the leftist Governor Ralph “Let’s discuss killing the baby after he or she is born” Northam. The political tides to some degree or another have shifted, albeit I take issue with Republicans because they tend to want to conserve yesterday’s progressivism. However, there is one delegate from a next door county who is uncompromising, and I love that about him. His name is Nick Freitas. Freitas is a man who cares about liberty and justice in the truest nonpolluted sense of those words. He’s a fighter who served in the US Army, and he is vigilant about his work here in Virginia. Now, I say all of this because Delegate Freitas of the 7th District has put forth several bills, one of which I have paid close attention to.

I think it’s an important bill, but it’s House Bill 306. And House Bill 306 pertains to the authority given to the Health Commissioner regarding mandating vaccination during an epidemic or a pandemic. As it stands now, the Virginia code allows for medical exemption, but not religious exemption. The bill that Freitas put forth and it is currently being put forth, which has passed through committee and is, in fact, expected to be hitting the House floor any day now, adds to this code. It adds the religious exemption clause to the Virginia Code.

Now, I’m not a big fan of legislative branches anyway, legislative branches of government. As an advocate of what I call the “theocratic judiciary,” I believe God’s law only permits a reactionary judgment, not proactive judgments. In other words, God’s law gives us the legislation that we need, of course, with case law should we have a local judge worthy of carrying forth the wisdom of God. And we don’t need to pile a bunch of man’s law all over it and on top of it. And nor do we need executive power to actively superintend the affairs of men meticulously actively superintend. A theocratic judiciary looks like local judges who meet the biblical qualifications, who are meting out justice when a crime has been committed. And not only that, a crime that’s been established with two or three witnesses.

The problem with today’s modern injustice system is that we’ve tried to go the Lockean route while ignoring the biblical route. And there is a difference. I say all this not because I’m ready to flesh out every single nuance of the theocratic judiciary, at least not today, but because there is a stark contrast, a very stark contrast between God’s law and man’s law. The two are very different. And if you think about it in terms of God’s law versus man’s law, man’s law is essentially a corporate driven, Justinian code. It’s a corporate driven Justinian code. God’s law is just and good altogether sufficient to sort out criminal matters. But as a nation, it’s pretty obvious we’re not really ready for such discussions because we’ve grown accustomed to our greatest idol, the idol of statism.

Now, before I show you the clip, I want to set the stage. Hp 306, as I mentioned, adds religious exemption to the Virginia Code. Before my time during the public comment in the video you’re going to see, a question was raised by a delegate. The individual said, “Has the power [I’m loosely quoting here] has this power ever been invoked by the Health Commissioner?”

Clearly, the issue of precedent matters to him, however, does that even really matter? Dr. Herman Oliver was the first Health Commissioner in the US to suggest early on that he wanted every single Virginian vaccinated against Covid-19. And perhaps this was a publicity stunt. I don’t actually know. Maybe it was a dipping of the toe in the water thing: a moment to see how people would respond. But either way, the mere suggestion of forced vaccination here in Virginia is loathsome. Many people reacted to him, and he didn’t say much else afterwards. So precedent doesn’t really matter, because precedent is whatever is convenient at the time. Ironically. At any rate, let’s go ahead and watch that clip.

So now the questions of committee will go to the virtual room and we’ll take comments in favor and the first would be Dr. Garwood.

“Good morning, ladies of the House of Delegates. My name is Dr. Jason Garwood. I’m the teaching pastor of Cross & Crown Church here in Fauquier County. I’m speaking in favor of HP 306 because health doesn’t belong in the hands of civil officials, but is reserved for the individual and the family. That’s something we’ve been working on. We launched the Warrenton Declaration — you can find that warrentondeclaration.com — to clarify theological reasons why someone would be opposed to those sorts of things. Medical treatment should be left to our own self governance and not someone in an office somewhere. So matters of religious conviction are off limits, and especially off limits to unelected bureaucrats and health agencies. So, in conclusion, what HP 306 does is humble this governing body and protect the religious freedom of Virginians. And it must be passed because Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not. And I thank you for your time.

Thank you.”

For me, religious exemption is innate. As someone made in the image of God, he or she is able to decide for themselves what they want to put in their bodies as it pertains to health. You don’t want the jab? Don’t get the jab. You want the jab? Fine. Albeit the principle of liability is important in a just society as well, because as it stands right now, Big Pharma is untouchable when their products kill, hurt, harm, or maim someone. And it’s actually quite simple. Conscientious objection transcends the state because it doesn’t even belong to the state. It’s entirely off limits.

The Dutch understanding of sphere sovereignty, first articulated by Groan Van Prinsterer, and popularized by Abraham Kuiper thereafter, and also his work with the Anti Revolutionary Party there in Amsterdam as well, helps us understand this issue. There are some things that simply belong to the family. There are some things that simply belong to the family, and that’s it. Health is that thing, which I pointed out in the comment, as you saw and heard. Because we are neck deep in statism and because we’ve chosen not to pump the brakes, we are now reaping what we have sown for the past 200 years. And what have we sown? Autonomy, plain and simple.

We’ve made the rationalism of man central, and even that wasn’t sufficient. Of course, we know when modernity was over, we reacted. Relativism must be the foundation: “Speak your truth! That’s what you should be doing!” Well, I don’t mind if I do. I’m going to speak my truth. I’m going to speak The Truth. And I don’t believe that HP 306 has to be passed in order to secure something that I already have secured in King Jesus. But I also know that statism isn’t going to just go away. I’m fine with poking the bear. I think we should be doing more of that. But my goal here in Virginia is to hear government officials say exactly what Ahab said to Elijah: “Is it you, oh troubler of Virginia.” Yes, it’s me and we’re tired of the autonomy. And one final comment here. In the process of fighting the good fight, we must keep central something very important. What must be central really is our crying out to God. I’m preaching through judges right now and the well known cycle of sin and servitude and supplication and Salvation Is what we are experiencing right now. But the problem is we haven’t really given ourselves to supplication just yet.

We have sinned by trying to do the collectivist/humanist/statis thing and we are now slaves to the state. But apparently it hasn’t gotten bad enough; it hasn’t gotten bad enough just yet because (in Christ we’ve been rescued) but some still want their Idol-cake and they want to eat it too. Which is to say, you can’t have both, “You can’t serve two masters,” Jesus tells us. You can’t have God’s law mixed and matched in with man’s law. That’s the bottom line. It’s the Theonomy or autonomy. It’s not going to be both and it’s time we make sure that we speak it and believe in it and actually act like Christ is King because He is.

Well, that’s going to be it for us this week. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. Please help us get the word out, share the show, get it out there, send it to your grandma, send it to your Church group, send it to anybody you want. This is a message that needs to be put out there loud and clear. We’ll see you next time.

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