A Journalist Being Arrested in Canada by Order of the Conservative Leader

Our Politicians are Dictators in Canada

Follow-Up Letter to the Deceivers at the Banner of Truth

This is a follow-up letter to the people at the Banner of Truth who shadow-ban Christians who politely, without the use of foul language, disagree with them on their YouTube channel. To shadow-ban is to deceive because the one who is shadow-banned has the impression that his comments are made public, when the truth is that he is the only one who sees them. That a professing Christian would shadow-ban (deceive) anyone just for disagreeing, whether that person be a Christian or not, should be shocking. It is a sin that should never happen.

THE BANNER OF TRUTH TRUST

The Grey House

3 Murrayfield Road

Edinburgh

EH12 6EL

THE BANNER OF TRUTH TRUST

PO Box 621

Carlisle

Pennsylvania 17013

August 2019 

Dear Banner: 

Greetings from Canada, you condescending sissy-men at the Banner. I have a few things to report to your easily-offended ears. I just finished reading Rutherford’s Letters, and am glad to inform you that his Spirit-filled manly tone is nothing like the anemic timbre that emanates from you book peddlers. Since ‘timbre’ signifies ‘overtones,’ how about if I substitute ‘squeak’ in its place, you mousy little man-boys? Have you been preaching against the Muslim invasion, the global warming myth, the gay agenda, abortion, feminist pulpits, open borders—or none of the above, as I suspect? Do you know something about the spiritual frame of mind that Rutherford so often experienced, which his letters are exhibitions of? Reformed people of the present time are baffled when they read about instances of joy unspeakable. I am happy to say that this humor is not unknown to me on the most personal level: Spirit to spirit. To get a draught of this heaven, you must not only sell, you must not only read godly books (which I suspect you do little of)—you must wrestle with the sins of the day, and the sins of self that are in your way: like your unmanly mien. You should be very concerned that to manly Christians who have handled shovels and hard books, you men at the Banner seem like sickly semi-homosexuals. It is not a good look; it is not a holy demeanor; it is not like David, John the Baptist, or even Samuel Rutherford. “Quit you like men,” sissy-boys. I am ashamed of you. Try spitting when you’re outside; try to get a callous on your palm; try to understand the next hard word or passage that you read instead of giving up and then reaching for a book by Alistair or Ravi. You people seem about as masculine as Obama does when he attempts to throw a ball. One of the things I hate most about going into a church is suddenly being in the midst of men who seem to have as much testosterone as female fruit-flies. The fruit-fly, by the way, feeds on decaying vegetable matter, says my dictionary. Try eating some beef. And try composting the decaying matter on your bookshelves: the contemporary pulp that makes you seem so non-binary to meat-eating readers. We need men at the present time—men who will stand for a covenanting cause. She-male fingernail fighters cannot handle a scythe, and will cut no mustard for the Lord. That is another painful word picture; but I do nothing but describe what you men remind me of. Be manlier than that—prithee do this anon—nay, rather, but do it apace.   

With love, but never enough,

Mark.

Deceivers at the Banner of Truth

Here is a letter that I sent to a publisher of Christian books. Christian conduct is hard to find these days, even among persons who sell the best books on Christian conduct that have ever been written.

THE BANNER OF TRUTH TRUST

The Grey House

3 Murrayfield Road

Edinburgh

EH12 6EL

THE BANNER OF TRUTH TRUST

PO Box 621

Carlisle

Pennsylvania 17013

March 2019 

Dear Banner: 

I recently noticed that you shadow-banned my comments on your YouTube channel. I didn’t know that channels had the means to do this. It’s not called shadow-banning on there, though. That would be too honest. It’s called ‘Hide user from channel.’ Let’s take a look at what you shadow-banned me for. I was not shadow-banned for trolling. I was not shadow-banned for making threats. I was not shadow-banned for using foul language. I was not shadow-banned for propagating fake news. I was shadow-banned, obviously, because you guys do not like the factual things that I say. My guess is that you shadow-banned me because of the discussion that I am about to walk you through, or because of my comments about Alistair Begg. There is no good reason to shadow-ban anyone, much less me for stating facts. To shadow-ban is a form of deception. Hiding a user from a channel means hiding his comments from everyone but himself, allowing him to think that his comments are being seen and read by others, when, in fact, they are hidden from view. Is it a Christian virtue to deceive? Is deception recommended in the books that you recommend and sell? Therefore, let’s have our walk-through/talk-through, shall we? The discussion below may be the reason why you shadow-banned me. I am the ‘Puritanical Opinion.’

You posted a video on 5 September, 2018, ‘How Can You Help the Banner of Truth?’ We can help, you say, by leaving testimonials on your site. Well, I happen to disagree with this approach because someone I know was disallowed from testifying simply because her testimonial was not fully positive. Therefore my comment:      

My Puritanical Opinion: A testimonial means this: you don’t accept actual honest reviews. No man is perfect, not even a Puritan. The Puritans, mister, would not ask for testimonials. They would ask for honest criticism. Quit being a pretender, man. Imitate the writers of the books you publish, already!

Then (maybe one of your men) someone responded:

Wayfaring Gent: Please do not speak on behalf of our glorified brothers and sisters. The Banner is doing the world a great service. They have changed many lives through their efforts, myself included. I am sure many of those Puritan works in your library are branded with their “George Whitefield” logo.

My Puritanical Opinion: I did not speak on behalf of ‘our glorified brothers and sisters.’ I spoke according to my knowledge of history. The problem with you people is you do not put into practice the principles that you publish. Allow reviews, not testimonials; espouse freedom, not dictatorship.

Wayfaring Gent: I believe you could benefit greatly from Richard Baxter’s tract, “Anger Management,” published by the Banner. You can also find it in volume 1 of his works, “The Christian Directory.” It was of great help to me. I will also pray for you.

My Puritanical Opinion: You are a condescending, petulant fellow. You calling me angry is like a leftist calling a person racist for lack of argument. I condemn your testimonial idea because it runs contrary to liberty. Asking for a testimonial is tantamount to asking the reader to not ‘prove all things.’

Wayfaring Gent: The irony of your comment is almost humorous and lost on you. As I said, I’ll pray for you. How can you as a finite creature judge men’s heart whom you do not know? You are trying to ascend to heaven and dethrone the Lord. We saw how that worked out at Babel.

My Puritanical Opinion: What unfounded accusations you make. Trying to dethrone the Lord because I challenge you to allow Christians to prove all things, as the Lord commands them to do? And you are somehow in a position of power? Saying you will pray for me is a virtue signal from a false accuser.

At this point someone else drops in.

Liveluke9.23: Is it your ministry to constantly troll banner of truth with your terrible comments? Do you feel empowered to sit behind a keyboard and troll a ministry that does more for the church than you can do in your mom’s basement? Don’t watch their video’s or subscribe to their page, and don’t buy their books, simple as that. You sound more like a pharisee than one who actually attends church and fellowships with believers. Hopefully Banner will see the pattern and block you.

My Puritanical Opinion: Accusing someone of being a troll and a Pharisee is not an argument. Either deal with the issue in question, or leave me alone.

Liveluke9.23: Oh, it wasn’t an argument. You must have missed that being a hyper-intellectual that you think you are. It was a statement of fact based on the observation of your constant trolling comments. “Leave you alone,” sorry, you posted here trolling banner of truth with your self-righteous pharisaical comments. Stop being a self righteous troll. As far as the issue in question. You are the one with the issue. It’s a simple issue to fix. You can do it in a matter of seconds. Stop being a troll and I’ll leave you be. Cheers!

My Puritanical Opinion: Those who have no arguments accuse others of being racists or trolls or homophobes or some other despicable epithet. I don’t do that. I posit biblical views, like the right to ‘prove all things.’ I just want Christians to accord me the biblical right to ‘prove all things.’ That’s not being a troll.

You should have observed that the discussion became nasty, not from my end, but when insults and unfounded accusations were leveled against me from the other. Not long after this discussion, I was shadow-banned. The Banner of Truth engages in censorship and deceit, then, when it cannot give good answers to reasonable questions. This is just like what the mainstream media does, just like what the tech-giants do, just like what the Roman Catholic Church does when it can get away with it. You people do not act like you are told to act in the books that you sell. Am I trying to ‘dethrone the Lord’ just because I ask a Christian publisher to give Christian readers the opportunity to ‘prove all things,’ as the Bible commands them to do?—that is, just because I ask you to grant readers the freedom to give testimonials that are not 100% positive about the books you sell? Does that make me a Pharisee? Should I be blocked or shadow-banned because of my reasonable opinion? Does silencing voices that disagree with you give you an honest measure of your ministry? Is it evangelical to refuse to hear words of correction? Your action is not fair and it is certainly not virtuous. You act like the censors of the Established Church that Samuel Rutherford contended against. You have probably not read his letters; I am halfway through them. Reading them is nobler than selling them. And censoring someone for imitating the lessons contained in them is not noble at all. You men at the Banner remind me of thin-skinned politicians. Like them, you react like dictators when it suits your purpose. I am with Rutherford: “I wish and pray that the Lord would harden my face against all, and make me to learn to go with my face against a storm.” That is different from the easy path that you think a Christian should take, isn’t it? You are helping me, in a small way, to learn to harden my face. Rutherford is helping me by his example; you are helping me by being my sinful opposition. I am with Rutherford, who said, “Our Church, madam, is decaying.” Yes, and this includes the Banner. About the leaders of the persecuting church in his day, Rutherford said, “Our prelates, the Lord take the keys of his house from these bastard porters!” Well, I will not go as far as that about you. But I am glad to report that the keys to Puritan literature are not in your hands alone. They are not in the hands of prelate-like autocrats at the Banner. I get all I want for free from Google books. Downloading PDF files for free is the method of acquisition that I recommend. I have more Puritan literature than I could read in two lifetimes, much less in the time that remains to me in this one. I would not flatter you in order to acquire from you one single book, even if I could not get my Puritan books anywhere else. If reformation or revival ever occurs, it will happen through readers of Puritan books, not through those who censor readers who try to put into practice the principles that these books contain. We do not need you. Your service can dry up. God has raised up a stone (‘Google’ of all things) to provide books to us by which we may learn to praise God better. Even wicked people, such as the ones who manage Google, may prove more beneficial to Christians than you are. Is that not humiliating? It should be.           

It is true that I have called Mr. Begg a ‘joker’ in the comment section of some of your videos. But my calling him a joker is not a false charge, as the charges against me are. If a man cracks jokes in the pulpit, what is he but a joker? and not just a joker, but a joker of the very worst kind? a joker who thinks it appropriate to be comical in the holiest place on earth? a joker who is so unsanctified as to think that grace might find its way to sinners through farcical comments? Levity in the pulpit is conduct that any Puritan would denounce in strong terms. No Puritan—listen to me—no Puritan would share a pulpit on a stage with Mr. Begg. This is why I reproved R. C. Sproul for inviting this man and others like him, to speak at his conferences. Incidentally, get my book on Amazon and read it, R. C. Sproul and the Boys. It’s not very popular; but the opinion that says preaching and joking do not go together will be vindicated in the end. I cannot be proven wrong on this. Every book in the Bible and every single Puritan will be on my side. 

It seems to me that Mr. Begg has not read the books that he is asked to promote on your channel. I am not saying that he did not read the books. I am saying that, based on his comments, it seems that he has not read them. It is natural to suspect that a man who jokes in the pulpit would lie about what he has read. It is not a sin to be suspicious. Based on what he says about the books he is asked to comment on, it seems that he has not read them. I have read The Mystery of Providence at least twice. I would not recommend it by uttering comments about it that might be said about almost any other book, such as, “The Mystery of Providence is punchy and accessible.” This is not saying much of anything, is it? The Communist Manifesto is punchy and accessible. Probably so is Mein Kampf. If a reader of Puritan books has read The Mystery of Providence, he would say something like, “This book is not as illustrative as one that Charnock or Bunyan would write, but it has its ornaments. The anecdotes are often startling, always fitting, and they occur less frequently in the second half than in the first half. Flavel’s exposition of that part of Psalm 107—the part about they ‘that do business in great waters’—this I found particularly edifying because of the trials that I have been through. This book convincingly shows that the providence of God comes into contact with every event in some way or other. It therefore is one of the most God-centered, encouraging books that I have ever read.” I just made these comments based on what I remember of the book, except for the phrase from Psalm 107, which I wanted to get word perfect. How come I can say something more substantial about the book, without turning to it, than Mr. Begg can say in his scripted video? I think that someone would be more apt to buy the book based on my comments than based on Mr. Begg’s comments, whose comments sound like general talking points that could be used to recommend any book at all, Christian or not. My comments come across as though I have read the book, for I have indeed read it. I am not saying that Mr. Begg did not read the book. I am saying that it seems like he did not read it. So don’t accuse me of making that charge; be honorable. Strive to be like the men whose books you sell. Do you even read the books yourselves? These books advocate tolerance, liberty, charity, and integrity, not censorship and deceit. You will be held to account for your deceptive censorship. God will see to it.  

Do not send me a condescending letter stating how much I need prayer and so on. Instead, do some actual prayer for both you and I. We are not supposed to be enemies. You have declared me your enemy by your conduct. I am blameless on your YouTube channel. Even my tone is biblical, if the example of the apostle Paul is taken for comparison. You people might not be bastards. But your conduct, as far as I can tell, tends to live down to that moniker. Because of how Wayfaring Gent presented himself, I assumed that he worked for the Banner. If he did not, or does not, forgive my false assumption. 

Know which side you are on when you censor persons for no biblical reason. Know whose side you are on when you solicit a joker like Mr. Begg to recommend books to people. A Mr. Humphrey Jones was one of the chief men used by God to set the Welsh Revival in motion. I quote this man from that book (not from one of your editions): “Beware of displaying yourself in any of your sermons. I try to aim at two things in studying and preaching: one is, not to say anything to show off myself; another is, not to say anything to amuse the people” (Thomas Phillips, The Welsh Revival, p. 10.) Anyone who has listened to Mr. Begg knows that he is fond of displaying himself by joking and amusing the people. This comment from Mr. Jones reproves Mr. Begg just as truly and as forcefully as I did. In censoring me for speaking against joking in the pulpit, you show that you would censor Mr. Jones as well. You show that you are not for revival, but against it. You show that you are not on the side of the men whose books you sell—the men used by God to communicate the gospel to multitudes, through which communication multitudes were saved. You show yourself standing against the Spirit of Revival. You have declared me your enemy for no other reason than that my comments reflect the comments of the men whose books you sell. It seems to me that selling, not saving, is what you aim to accomplish in life. Until you join me in condemning comedy in the pulpit, and until you cease to censor people who condemn comedy, you stand in opposition to the work of the Holy Spirit. If Samuel Rutherford or Humphrey Jones lived among us, I believe that you would, by your conduct, count them, too, your enemies. Real men like Rutherford and Jones would turn your stomach, just as Mr. Begg’s demeanor would turn theirs. You like to make merchandise of Puritan books. But the content of these books is not the kind of thing you admire, is it?

When I became a Christian near the close of 1994, I asked God to impart to me a clear mind. My aim was to find out truth, and to be receptive even to its more offensive aspects. Even back then I knew that my natural self would recoil from some aspects of God’s truth. Because of the short list of interpreters that were available to me then, I became a Scofield Fundamentalist. But in 1998 began a series of remarkable events that led me to study Covenant Theology, the Reformed Faith, and Puritan writings. The prejudice that had formed in me through Fundamentalist teachers was overcome by the Providence of God. I was led, against my will, to creeds, to catechisms, and to commentaries on both. The event that blew the door wide open to the discovery of Puritan excellence, though, was an ad for your magazine at the end of a book. I have bought many of the books that you sell, and I have studied them carefully: books, for example, by Perkins, Venning, Bridge, M’Cheyne, Ryle, and Spurgeon. Like Princeton Seminary, however, you have become intolerant of freedom of thought and speech. You have become that which Puritan writers rallied to oppose and convince. I can spew you out of my mouth and yet absorb, and benefit from, the nutrition that you sold me. It was romantic to buy the books that you sell, which I did for a long time with my GST checks four times per year. I keep typing ‘your’ books by mistake, as if any credit should fall to you for what the books contain! I thank you for the Puritanical honeymoon that you made possible for many years. This honeymoon will continue; but you are no longer the mediator of it. When possible, I do not transact business of any kind with haters of freedom. 

You will no doubt hate this stern letter, as well as the man who wrote it. But you would hate, if they were here, the outspoken men that I greatly admire: John Knox, Augustus Toplady, William Cunningham, and R. L. Dabney. Therefore, because of the company that it puts me in, your hatred has a good use. 

Farewell, Misters.

Be readers, and not sellers only. Books are more than merchandise; knowledge is better than mammon; and piety is worth more than the paper that it is written on. I do not look forward to your response. Therefore spare yourselves the trouble of conniving an answer. You dare not moralize to me, hypocritical deceivers that you are! 

Regular Use of F-Bomb on CBC Radio-Canada (French Station)

Bureau de L’Ombudsman, 

Radio-Canada, 

C. P. 6000,

Montreal, Quebec,

H3C- 3A8

April 12th, 2019

Dear Ombudsman:

There is a program on the CBC’s Radio-Canada, called, ‘Plus on est de fous plus on lit.’ Canadians listen to the French side of the CBC for a variety of reasons. There are many persons, no doubt, like me, who listen in order to maintain or recoup their French language skills. We all know what the F-bomb is. And we all know why we say ‘F-bomb’ in order to identify the foul word. Because some of us value decent speech, we do not wish to enunciate what F-bomb stands for. Some radio hosts obviously find it thrilling to broadcast this word on the air. What other reason would there be for a French-speaking host to do so, it being an English word? On the program mentioned above, the F-bomb is regularly used. It is a systemic problem. I submit proof. As Jean Chretien ineptly said, “A proof is a proof.”     

Here is the record of when the forbidden word came over the air, lately, through ‘Plus on est de fous plus on lit.’ All hours mentioned refer to Mountain Time. For 2018: September 3rd, approximately 13:54; September 7th, between 13:50 and 13:55; September 11th, approximately 13:55. (About this last one, you can tell that they had agreed that the guest would read the portion that contained the word. The thing was planned. So it is not true that the host was surprised. I know—and you know—how these things work.) To continue, September 26th, approximately 13:44; October 8th, approximately 13:55; November 8th, approximately 13:48; November 12th, approximately 13:50; November 16th, approximately 13:32; November 30th, approximately 13:38 and again at 13:49. For 2019: February 4th, approximately 13:50, twice (through a clip from Netflix); February 26th, approximately 13:45, twice; March 14th, approximately 13:45, twice; March 18th, approximately 13:53, twice; March 22nd, approximately 13:56. All of these instances, and I do not listen to this program every day. 

The use of this word, then, is habitual on this program. They use the word loudly and proudly, thinking they will get away with offending moral listeners and decent ears. I know that the use of certain words and expressions over the radio goes against accepted standards. We should not have to turn off the CBC and turn on foreign radio sources instead just because our public broadcaster has a foul mouth. Please crack down on the offenders at the CBC. The CBC represents Canada and Canadians. We should be represented by clean hosts; we should have programming fit for respectable listeners. Jean Chretien once said that he could not voice the conservative party’s acronym in front of children because the letters spelled out: C-R-A-P. That was the Conservative-Reform-Alliance- Party. The F-bomb is much worse. Children can’t be left alone with the radio as long as the CBC is on the dial. That is a dirty rotten shame. Please begin to shovel the manure out of the CBC’s many pigpens. You may begin with the program in question. 

This issue is not as serious as the CBC’s systemic incitement to violence against white men. But one issue will suffice here. The hosts at the CBC should know, however, or should be told, that there are persons out here who are noting things down. One day, after the political power shifts, these things that are noted down may be brought to light, and then the CBC’s many lights will be turned off for good as the process of defunding claws her into oblivion. Tell the CBC that if we get Trump equivalency up here, their use of the F-bomb will be the least among things they will be anxious about and have to answer for: many of the CBC hosts can easily be found guilty of riot boosting.

The CBC Hates White Males

A Letter I Sent to the CBC Nearly Two Years Ago. I Received no Answer.

November 2017

Ottawa Production Centre (Head Office)

181 Queen Street

P.O. Box 3220, Station “C”

Ottawa, Ontario

K1Y 1E4

Dear Broadcaster:

I hope that you will read this letter in consideration of the negative impact your radio programs are having. The hatred of white men among CBC Radio hosts has become so obvious and menacing that you are sure to lose the rest of what remains of your conservative audience, which some of your hosts would call ‘Nazis’ just because we want facts and news instead of continuous propaganda. We are not Nazis for wanting our broadcaster to treat white men fairly and to tell us what is going on.

The sentiment against white men is acute on programs like ‘The Current,’ ‘Ontario Today,’ and ‘Alberta at Noon.’ The hosts are not satisfied with mere allusions of this hatred anymore. They openly target us now. 

I recall as a kid in the 70s and 80s that the CBC reported on the war in Beirut almost every single night. We were all in the dark as to what was going on and who the combatants were. No one in the community knew any more than the CBC or the CTV had to say on the matter. I have since found out that the culprits in that war were Muslims, and that the Muslims had been invited into Lebanon by leftists. More recently, before I started resorting to the internet to ferret facts out, I heard from the CBC that ‘French youths’ were burning cars in the suburbs of Paris. It turns out that the youths were Muslims. Some of them were citizens of France, true, but they were more Muslim than French; their failure and refusal to assimilate was the reason for their rage. 

Because of specious reporting like that, many of us are finished with CBC Television, and have been finished with it for a long, long time. We are never going back to it, even if our internet programs are snuffed out and even if our internet services are cut off. But, as Nazi as we are for being white, male, and wanting reliable information, we are hanging on to CBC Radio so far. You cannot continue to slander us without losing us. You cannot expect to keep listeners when you attack them at every turn. You will not screen us out on ‘Cross-Country Check-Up’ without losing us for good. And you certainly will not hold our attention with inane programs like ‘The Debaters.’ You used to have programs (like ‘Out Front’) that pushed no leftist agenda. As far as I can tell, you have no such programs left. Everything is politicized and skewed to the left now. 

I think you would be surprised at how many white conservative men still hang on to CBC Radio, hoping for the hatred against them to relent. I used to listen to the CBC Radio News every evening at six. I gave that up years ago because of this hatred. I used to listen to ‘As it Happens’ every evening as well. I gave that up for the same reason. Now programs like ‘Ontario Today,’ ‘Alberta at Noon,’ ‘Cross-Country Check-Up’ and ‘The Current’ are nearing the chopping block. I am no doubt very tolerant to have stuck with you for this long. How many white conservative men do I represent? Probably thousands. If you lose us, we will never come back. You know how it is with most things: once we discover something fairer and better, we don’t often look back, do we?

The CBC Campaigns for Prime Minister Blackface

Cross-Country Check-Up is a two hour CBC radio broadcast, without commercials. I listened to every minute of it this weekend because I knew that it was going to be about Prime Minister Blackface, which subject would have to touch on racism, one of the main doctrinal planks in the CBC’s Identity Politics Textbook. Racism is as important to the CBC as the Deity of Christ is to Christians. It is one of the tenets that they imagine to be saved by. It is one of the doctrines that their redemption, such as it is, hangs upon. It is a fundamental, indispensible component of their Systematic Atheism; it is quintessential, classic, archetypal CBC Dogma. Surely, then, the CBC would never give a pass to any man guilty of it, least of all the preeminent virtue signaler in the history of Canada. Prime Minister Blackface would have to be boiled alive in water taken from his ‘paper drink box water bottles sort of things.’ Racism is, according to CBC employees, one of the capital sins that the guilty party must, without mercy, be entirely and irrevocably run down for having committed; it is one of the abominable, unpardonable sins that Blackface Trudeau, by his own admission, is guilty of. That should settle it. The CBC would have to brand him forever with the R that is usually reserved for conservatives, disown him as they would a member of the KKK, and dog whistle some violence to be done to both him and his family, just as they have signaled should be done to the good man down south who has achieved the lowest unemployment rate for black persons in the history of the USA. So yes indeed: I listened to the broadcast in full, in toto, au complet. Capiche?

During these two hours of uninterrupted conversation, the host of this call-in show had six guests on and took twelve calls. Those are shameful numbers for a two hour call-in show that has no commercials to accommodate. Why so many guests? Having that many guests on was a way to chew up time and avoid taking calls. But why chew up time and avoid taking calls? This was done in order to save Trudeau from being roasted. Five of the guests were apologists for Trudeau; only one was not. That was no accident; the CBC chooses guests very carefully, and knows beforehand what position each guest will maintain. While Pepperidge Farm remembers, the CBC makes sure. One guest was a coach of sorts that politicians turn to in order to learn how to apologize. In his opinion, Trudeau set a good example by the way he handled his apology. If the CBC host had acted more like a journalist than a Liberal campaigner, he would have thrown the following points in the guest’s face: If a politician is coached on how to apologize, the apology must be manufactured, not genuine; and no one who determines to apologize from the heart needs to be told how to do it. Then the host could have followed up with this point: That man who makes money by coaching politicians on how to beguile citizens with a synthetic apology—that man is a greedy, opportunistic, immoral maker of hypocrites. As for the callers, the CBC carefully screened them in order to make it appear that Canadians lean in the Liberal direction. Seven callers were Trudeau’s continuing supporters, while five were against him. When the pro-Trudeau callers were on the phone, they were gently handled, and were allowed to yip and yap. When the contenders were on the phone, they were countered by the host, or made to consider pro-Trudeau emails that were read. During the show, eleven emails were read; seven were for Trudeau, four were against. The selections were made to make Trudeau look more popular than deplorable. The show, from each perspective of it—whether of host, guests, or callers—would have been orchestrated to lean at least 95% against any Conservative politician if he had been stupid enough, shallow enough, and weird enough to have blackened his face even one time in his life in order to mock or to play the fool. Indeed, if it were found out that a Conservative had blackened his face during Halloween as a child, the CBC would depict him as the reincarnation of Hitler, he would be hectored into early retirement, and maybe physically attacked by a leftist posse.         

The CBC could not campaign for Trudeau 100% on this episode of Cross-Country Check-Up, because Trudeau, to save his job, admitted to having been a racist. But by tipping the balance in favor of Trudeau as much as they did, the CBC has shown that Liberal power, not racism, is what matters to them. The CBC does not believe in its dogma very deeply; CBC hosts are as nominal in their faith as a pedophile priest is in his. They are ideologues, true; but their tenets change with times and circumstances, and each tenet has its breaking point. To hosts at the CBC, whatever comes close to a minstrel show must be the epitome of racism—unless the self-confessed racist involved is their benefactor, even if that benefactor is patriarchal and white, not to mention a groper and a crook.

As I listened to the program, a theme began to dawn. The theme was: we must ‘move forward,’ which means: we must forgive, forget, and reelect. The conclusion was, and nearly in these very words: Canadians are racist; because of this, we need more diversity throughout the land in all stations and situations; more immigration than ever, then, is what we need, whether through an open border or otherwise, and from countries that are the most backward and barbaric that can be found.                    

When Trudeau’s blackface was discovered and reported on by the Americans, the hosts at the CBC had to pretend to be offended. Possibly they had to feign surprise as well, because it is hard to imagine the CBC Liberals not knowing every detail in the life of the person that they adore. They keep track of Trudeau’s socks, but know nothing about his drama teaching days? They’ve counted the hairs on his head, but don’t know what he did in high school? A few days have passed since PM Blackface was exposed by Time magazine. Now the CBC must be getting back on the campaign trail to herd Canadians into Liberal stalls and to brand Conservatives with an R for racism, all in order to make it absolutely certain that they’ll be able to rob the tax train for another four years. And campaigning for Trudeau is precisely what they did on this Sunday’s Cross-Country Check-Up. So on Sunday on Cross-Country Check-Up, September 22nd, 2019, the CBC came to Blackface Trudeau’s defense as if a minstrel show by a white man is suddenly forgivable and as if conservatives ought to be reckoned white supremacists just because they are national enough and Canadian enough to want a border that functions according to the law: as a border instead of an open door. 

      

In all my life, I have known only one person who painted her face black, and she did it on October 31st. How many citizens could name one person (other than Trudeau) who has blackened his face three times? How many of us could name a person who has done it even once? Any person who has done this three times since high school is obsessed with caricaturing black people, and might be, in fact, a racist for real. Why would a person paint his face black when depicting an Arabian like Aladdin unless it’s an excuse to indulge an obsession?  

By putting himself out there as the identity politics maestro, Trudeau laid a snare for himself, and he has been caught in it. “A fool’s mouth is his destruction, and his lips are the snare of his soul” (Proverbs 18.7.) And since our nation contains the multitudes of fools that it takes to elect a fool to our highest political office, it is a fact that we too are being destroyed, and not just culturally and nationally. People so unwise and unrighteous as to elect a man who was so obviously going to be bad for the country—such people, with very few exceptions, if any, are too unenlightened to be on their way to heaven. Sinners who have been saved from condemnation leading to hell would not elect a pro-abortion politician and an open-border traitor. Our ballots may lead to the destruction of national sovereignty, savings, jobs, free speech, the right to private property, and self-defense; and the fact that we cast them for wicked politicians is a signal that we might be on our way to destruction of an eternal kind as well. How so? Because a people wise unto salvation would not vote for politicians who are so plainly against the liberty, goodness, and decency that the Bible says the lover of God likes to have for himself, his family, and his nation. As for Andrew Scheer, the man is too ashamed and cowardly to speak or stand for the liberty, goodness, and decency that at least some of us believe in. What politician, if any, is brave enough and conscientious enough to campaign, not on eradicating an imagined racism, but on making abortion illegal? In Canada today, our political choices are choices for evil. When this is our plight, it can be no sin to spoil our ballot. It is either that, or vote for a lesser evil than the one we presently have. In any case, “It is time for thee, LORD, to work: for they have made void thy law” (Psalm 119.126.) That work could involve mercy; but it might just as well involve pain.

Our PM is A Proven Groper

Our PM has no Discretion

The CBC is Totalitarian

Postcard to the CBC About their Crooked Coverage of Terrorism

When I send a postcard to the CBC, I keep a record. Here is one I sent a few years ago to Rita Celli at at program called Ontario Today: 

SENT, OCT, 2017: [To Rita Celli who referred to Muslim vehicle attacks as ‘runaway cars and trucks.’] 

Rita, that is pretty insensitive and ignorant-sounding to refer to recent attacks involving vehicles as ‘runaway cars and trucks.’ We all know these vehicles did not run people down of their own accord. Men of a certain religion are using these vehicles as weapons.  We are at war, stupid, with a middle-eastern religion that began in the 7th century. Wake up! You’re supposed to be a reporter!

Open Letter to Eleanor Wachtel of the CBC

September 8, 2019

Writers and Company
Eleanor Wachtel
CBC Radio
PO Box 500
Station A
Toronto, Ontario,
Canada
M5W-1E6

Greetings, Madam Wachtel,

I had been listening to you regularly for over twenty years. I quit a few of years ago on account of your increasing radicalism against Christians, conservatives, white men, liberty, and virtue. Today, nevertheless, I decided to listen to your interview of a man who wrote a book (The Ministry of Truth) about 1984. This broadcast reminded me, not of how fair, sweet, and warm you once were, but of how fanatical for tyranny you have become. You even began the show by smearing President Trump, as if this good president is Big Brother incarnate. I’m shocked that you would descend to Enright’s and Tremonti’s level.  You are on their base level now, down where the CBC’s worst devils are. Soon you will be comfortable, no doubt, in this habitation among radio’s basest dregs. Paraphrase: “It is dangerous to be a dissident in a dictatorship.” One of you said this during the interview. Is this like the danger that a person is in when he goes out in public with a Trump hat on his head? Should we fear the inert white supremacy when there is virtually none of it to fear? Or should we fear Black Lives Matter and Antifa, the very active and very violent terrorist groups of the Left? Should we doubt the ‘misinformation’ that filmed Hillary Clinton when she fell on her face in spite of how healthy mainstream media reported her to be? Or should we believe ‘a trusted source’ like CNN after they manipulated a video to make it look like Trump fed fish in China in a doltish fashion? White supremacy, by the way, is as popular as CBC’s Marketplace proved it to be: when Marketplace’s race-baiters pretended to be white supremacists in the hope of finding at least one. Atwood’s dystopia suits the Communist paradigm, or the Globalist paradigm, or the Muslim paradigm that is ushered in by the Globalist paradigm, as we see happening in Sweden and Germany; but you and Atwood pretend that Christians are the problem. Muslim rape gangs have traumatized over a thousand girls in the UK in recent years. But watch out for the white theocracy!        

You have become unfair, bigoted, and hateful. But worse than this, because of your crooked way of presenting the issues of our time, you have become dangerous. It is because of people like you that people like me have to watch our backs in public. You make us out to be racist Hitlers just because we don’t want to live in your version of 1984: that in which the Oppressive Left crushes every good thing into dust. I had a revelation once of how depraved your soul is: when you exclaimed ‘how romantic!’ at the mention of a married person breaking off to go into an adulterous liaison. There was no ‘how horrible!’ for the one who was cheated on, though, because your default is to love what is wicked and destructive—and to love this so much that the good is not even thought of. Your default is toward hell, where all persons bent in favor of wickedness must eventually go. Seek the remedy for your sinful nature and your iniquitous conduct; you may find this remedy in the person and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Therefore read your Bible: the unadulterated King James Version. People like you have become so dangerous that a person must worry about getting hauled before the Human Rights Commission just for giving you a biblical warning, which Commission, appropriate to its 1984 mandate, is named the opposite of what it truly is: A Commission of Injustice. You live off the taxpayers that you demonize, which is worse than what a parasite does to a dog, for the flea is amoral. 

I used to be fond of you and your work. Each week I looked forward to your next broadcast—until your Libertine-Marxist ideology became the main reason for the existence of your show—until I realized that CBC hosts like you are responsible for people like me being misrepresented, maligned, falsely accused, shadow-banned, de-boosted, de-platformed, ostracized, fired, physically attacked, and maybe even killed. You think that your menacing influence is not recorded in heaven? I used to think that out of all the CBC hosts, you would be the one who could be trusted to give a righteous man a fair interview. I don’t believe that anymore. A righteous man would be vilified, wouldn’t he? What am I saying? He would not be invited on your show in the first place, Nazi that he would no doubt be. If Nazis are not allowed in heaven, neither are CBC hosts who worship Marx, Trotsky, Lenin, and Stalin.

Don’t bother playing the victim on the ground of what is said in this letter. It is going online as proof of what I said. There is soon coming a day, though, because of media sophists like yourself, when even this letter will get me in trouble. But you will be summoned at the Judgment Seat of Christ One Fine Day to give answers for all that you have done—unless you repent, which we both know is not likely to happen. You are old, hardened, and becoming more ossified by the day. To make an impression on a heart as reprobate as yours is next to impossible to do, I guess, though the Holy Ghost can do even more than that, which divine prospect seems utterly doubtful, however, at this late point in your life. That which has become petrified has no sap; I would nearly say that she who has become so progressively stiff-necked has no soul. But you do have a soul—a soul as hard as a diamond after these many years of sinning against the taxpayers who pay your salary, and against God who commands that you not bear false witness. If it were not that the Lord can do the impossible, I would say that you are past the possibility of grace. Go to God in prayer, Eleanor, and never mind what your associates think. Get out of this business before your soul is entirely swallowed up in hate, and thus entirely left by God to go in the way of the everlasting dystopia that is especially prepared for the impenitent. Unless you openly renounce the evil that you have done, and unless you recant what you stand for, you cannot be saved. 

The host of Writers and Company must be a big reader of hard books, must she not? She must be well acquainted with all the groups of people that she and her coworkers put down, marginalize, and endanger. She must have an idea of what some of these white okey-doke simpletons read. Would she be willing to read something from the other side in order to at least see, at least once, what some dimwitted hillbilly Christians read before they lie them down to sleep at night? You’re thinking that I will recommend one of my books, don’t you? No, I will not do that; I will not even give you my full name. I am not a shameless self-promoter like the incompetent novelists that you madly, and, I daresay, stupidly, dote on. Here is a book for you: The Existence and Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock. I do not recommend a book to you that I have not read myself; nor do I recommend one to you that is any smaller or simpler than that one, because I would not want to insult the accomplished reader that you, without a doubt, must be. You read that, and may the Lord bless you with the humiliation and fear of God that you so desperately need. And thank the Lord if this is the harshest piece of ‘hate mail’ that you receive today. The people you mischaracterize week after week have more serious things to be anxious about than hate mail: like wondering if mischaracterization will bar them from making a living or even get them assaulted or killed. 

Francis Schaeffer on our Religious Leaders

Jonathan Edwards on the 'Vessels of Wrath Fitted for Destruction'

Critique of Rosario Butterfield's Sermon: Sexuality, Identity, and the Doctrine of Repentance: My Train Wreck Conversion

Rosario Butterfield is a former lesbian professor who converted to the Christian faith (allegedly) and married a pastor. I have watched two of her interviews and one of her sermons, which is the sermon that I am criticizing. All three videos feature her testimony, though in her sermon she teaches and preaches more. That sermon is called: Sexuality, Identity, and the Doctrine of Repentance: My Train Wreck Conversion. To say the least, this is not a mature title for a sermon, or even a decent one.  

I call the ‘train wreck’ that I watched ‘a sermon’ because in this video Butterfield speaks in a church from behind a pulpit, and in it her testimony turns into a sermon. Because a man is not supposed to be taught doctrine by a woman, I did not listen to this woman in order to learn something; I listened to her in order to teach something. I listened in order to warn Christians that this woman is dangerous to be taught by, which is always the case when a woman teaches from an office that God has forbidden her to teach from.  

Because of her intimate knowledge of the LGBT community and lifestyle, many Christians consider her speaking to be so valuable that they do not appreciate her being criticized for teaching from a pulpit. They maintain that she is not overstepping her bounds by doing so and that she is not really teaching from there, just giving her testimony. But it is absurd to deny that the testimony becomes a sermon long before it finishes. It is not a proper sermon, admittedly, because she is not a legitimate official in God’s Church. But it is a sermonizing speech that is made by a woman from a pulpit inside a church, which kind of thing is clearly and strongly forbidden in the New Testament in several places, most notably in the Pastoral Epistles where the qualifications for church leadership are laid out. Her ministry to the LGBT crowd, and to the church crowd desiring to understand the LGBT crowd, purports to be a ministry with a capital M, though some would deny that it does. I think I know what answer her supporters would give to my allegation that she is not keeping to her proper role. They would say that she is under the authority of her pastor/husband and is not in a position of formal authority. That is the usual line. This line of defense is not much of a bulwark against the truth of the matter, which may be gleaned simply by the sight of her in a pulpit and by the nature of what she delivers from there. She is not in her proper role while she occupies a pulpit to teach or to preach. Her pastor/husband, if he were true to his role, would forbid his wife from occupying a pulpit and from teaching men the Bible, period. This woman admits that she was a lesbian butch; it is no surprise that upon her ‘conversion’ she married a submissive man. It is natural that this woman’s temptation, as a new Christian, if she is one, would be to step into a man’s role, for she was both a lesbian butch and a tenured professor before her alleged conversion took place. She dominates one of her interviews so much as to have to remind the host to take back the reins. Her old ways and/or her ‘old man’ decide much of what this woman’s role will be and how it will be executed.

Her principal conversion verse is Psalm 119.56, which is about keeping the precepts of God. How about keeping the precept that says a woman shall not teach a man the Bible? Each jot and tittle of the Bible is her open highway, she says, to a holy God. What about those jots and tittles that forbid women from teaching men the Bible? Are they not open highways to a holy God? We should drink deeply from God’s holy word, she says—his direct word, not the themes that we create. How about drinking deeply from this verse?—: “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence” (I Timothy 2.12.) I know that the feminists have created nuanced themes about what this verse means. But the verse is direct enough to be instantly understood. Mrs. Butterfield is Reformed, apparently. So here are a few words from Calvin on this verse: “Not that he [Paul] takes from them the charge of instructing their family, but only excludes them from the office of teaching, which God has committed to men only.” Is this woman teaching her family, and her family alone, from behind that pulpit in that church? No, obviously she is not. Well, maybe this woman has found that by experience her teaching works very well. What do we say to that? We say the following: In this very sermon she says that we should not use our experience to verify the validity of God’s commands. The Christian faith is not a pragmatist’s paradigm, she says. God will have all of us, not part of us, she continues. Will she let God have that part of her that wants to teach men God’s word? Wouldn’t that be biblically pragmatic? He is the potter, we are the clay, she asserts. Why should she not allow the potter to mold her into a vessel of submission, then? After all, like she says, no one gets to order up a personal program of sanctification. We should flee from sin, she insists, not discuss it nor debate it. Should the subject of women in pulpits be up for discussion and debate? The apostle Paul does not think so. John Calvin does not think so. In order to flee from sin, this woman needs to get out of the pulpit. Women who occupy pulpits end up being reproved by their own words. It happens to them all.  

They also tend to use the same clichéd speech, as in the case here with ‘postmodernism’— ‘hermeneutic baggage’—and ‘let me unpack that for you.’ I say this just to point out how predictable and tiresome they are. How tediously academic their language is! 

They also end up peddling errors. This is the most predictable thing of all. In her zeal to have Christians deal with gays respectfully, she reproves Christians for mocking them. Mocking gays is behavior that few Christians engage in, however. Has anyone even seen or heard a Christian do it? I haven’t. Then she asserts that Christians are guilty of homophobia, which she defines as “the unrestrained fear of gay and lesbian people and the wholesale writing off of their souls.” Few Christians write gays off wholesale, though. Few Christians could be classified under her definition of homophobia—probably none. Moreover, homophobia is not a fear; it is an irrational fear. A former tenured professor does not know this? A former tenured professor does not know the definition of a phobia? Since a phobia is by definition an irrational fear, homophobia would be an irrational fear of homosexuals. When Christians fear homosexuals, is it rational or irrational? Was it irrational for the members and guests of Lot’s house to fear when the homosexual deviants came pounding on his door, demanding unnatural intercourse? Was it irrational for the American baker to fear when the gays came to his bakery demanding a cake to be made according to their perverted design? It must not have been irrational at all since the baker was dragged into court for refusing. There was no homophobia in that case, assuredly. There is good reason to fear people who come under the LGBT banner. There is a movement among gays to remove bans on gays giving blood, for example, which inhumane liberty would put lives at risk. Those who have reason to fear for their lives are not irrationally fearful, are they?

  

When Mrs. Butterfield is asked for her position on Sodom and Gomorrah, she is general and vague, which is suspicious for the reason that elsewhere she claims to be better at addressing things specifically, not generally. The man who asked the question wanted her to speak directly to how the Gay Christian Network interprets the incident at Sodom and Gomorrah, which interpretation she gave the impression of being familiar with. She even named the gay man whose channel it is. I went to the Gay Christian Network and had the same gay man affirm that Sodom and Gomorrah were judged for committing violence, not homosexual acts. In truth, they were judged for both, which the text on that makes clear, for the abusers were after the flesh of men. Why does Mrs. Butterfield hide her lamp under a bushel on this topic? Obviously, she does not want to expose how unbiblical her position on it is. Not only does she hide her lamp, she introduces darkness. “We need to be in a posture of being ready to disciple our brothers and sisters in the Gay Christian Network because God’s elect people are everywhere,” she says. Isn’t it revealing, interesting, and concerning that she uses the word ‘disciple’ in this context? Some gays are elect. Does that mean gays need to be discipled instead of converted? Some gays call themselves Christian. Does that make them our brothers and sisters? In her zeal against an oversimplified gospel approach, Mrs. Butterfield claims that believing in Jesus is something that even the demons do. Demons do not believe in Jesus, though. But even if they did, we would not assume that demons are Christians, would we? Why does she present demons as believing in Jesus? I think that she does it because if we can be made to believe that demons, in some sense, believe in Jesus, it will be easy for us to believe that gays, while continuing impenitent, can believe in Jesus also. She wants us to believe that gays are believers in Christ just because they claim to be and just because some of them might be elect. 

She confuses the doctrines of election and conversion, not just in this sermon, but also in one of her interviews. Election and conversion seem to be interchangeable in her mind. This one theological error would get her fired from the chair or pulpit of any faithful seminary or church (not to suggest that she should ever be treated like a doctor or a minister, for she is an impostor.) She emphasizes that some of the elect are among the LGBT folk, which is, of course, probable. But because of this she calls LGBT persons who call themselves Christian: our brothers and sisters. This is to assume that conversions have already happened, when the truth is, these conversions might never occur. During an interview she says that she became a Christian before the foundations of the world were laid, which is to put conversion where election should be. Her fault on the doctrine of election is not a slip, but systemic. I would have liked to see a correction from the host of the interview on that point, for lack of distinction between election and conversion is a dangerous teaching to be exposed to. But this woman sermonizes even during an interview; and she is so talkative and intimidating (butch-like) that the host can’t pluck up the wherewithal to intervene and correct her. Or, it may be that the host does not understand theology any better than she does. 

This woman is pretty shifty on what is sexually acceptable; I think that the root of her false doctrine may be discovered in the reason for her shiftiness. If you ask me, I think that she would be content to have impenitent sinners from gay quarters fully participate in church as though they were Christian, which seems already to be going on regarding the transgender person who sings there with the deep voice that she likes so much. In one of her interviews she says that the sin we drag into church (like the not-yet converted lesbian) is not the sin that we have to worry about. Certain letters of Jesus in Revelation, however, warn that we ought to be concerned about this kind of thing very much. The word ‘Jezebel’ comes to mind.   

Mrs. Butterfield makes much of her experience of conversion being like a train wreck, which sounds quite a bit like C. S. Lewis stating that he was dragged into the kingdom of God kicking and screaming. She may be in the kingdom; I cannot infallibly say that she is not; but her presence in the pulpit seems to argue that she is still kicking and screaming against the Lord from the outside. 

I remember a sermon by Martyn Lloyd-Jones in which he makes the point that wolves in sheep’s clothing are not heretics that we would easily suspect. I easily suspect Butterfield as a heretic; but many do not. ‘Maybe’ this woman is a Christian and ‘maybe’ she is not intentionally a heretic. But she is a heretic; and the fact that she speaks from a pulpit in a church as though she were a preacher or teacher—this makes her dangerous. She, like Eve, has stepped out of her role. The irony is that while usurping the role of man, she lectures about the sins in Genesis 3! A woman is going to preach about Genesis 3 while her preaching is itself the commission of the same sin of rebellion that we find there in the conduct of Eve? Is such a woman to be trusted or even listened to? Her blurring of election and conversion is a heresy. She deserves nothing but censure and shunning. The woman is a Jezebel: a false teacher, which is what the word ‘Jezebel’ means when used in the New Testament. The Old Testament Jezebel is impudent; the New Testament Jezebel is not only impudent, but indecent as well. To permit impenitent gays (by which I mean whatever persons may be signified by the ever-growing perverted LGBTQ alphabet) to attend church as if they have closed with Christ is to introduce fornication into the society of the saved. That may not be Butterfield’s agenda; but she does not hide the fact that she wants impenitent fornicators in the midst of God’s people; the consequence of going along with her on that is to fall in, even if it be accidentally, with the agenda of Jezebel: ‘to seduce my servants to commit fornication’ (Revelation 2.20.)     

The Christian who recommends this woman’s sermons, and even her testimonies and interviews, for that matter, unwittingly lays a snare for the people that he recommends them to. The people that a person tries to help through Butterfield’s agency might assume that it is safe for women to teach men what the word of God means; and then they might soon be drinking the milk of the word with a little poison added to it. They might end up believing things like “discipling [not converting] our brothers and sisters in the Gay Christian Network.” This, in turn, would be harmful to the LGBT community that her ‘ministry’ exists to reach. Attempting to disciple an unconverted sinner will produce a hypocrite. Hypocrites, contrary to popular belief nowadays, do not belong in church. They are persons heading toward hell who think they’ve been saved for heaven.  

Presenting a cookie-cutter sinner’s prayer to a gay person and then coercing him to make a decision after he recites it is to act as foolishly as Billy Graham and his pragmatic assistants have done in their hypocrite-making crusades. To refer to gay persons as brothers and sisters who need to be discipled just because some of them might be elect is another hazard. The mechanical prayer and pretended fellowship have this in common: both tend to produce hypocrites. 

The demons did not believe in Jesus, by the way, like Mrs. Butterfield says. They believed ‘that there is one God’ (James 2.19); and they confessed that Jesus was ‘Christ the Son of God’ (Luke 4.41.) If they had ‘believed in’ Jesus, as the term is used in the New Testament, they had been saved from ruin. In her material, Mrs. Butterfield misinterprets saving faith and she credits saving faith to those who don’t have it. According to her interpretation of John 7.17, understanding comes through obedience. If she were to obey God by refusing to stand in man’s place, maybe God would give her a biblical understanding of the doctrines of election and conversion. Good Bible teachers are rare, perhaps as rare as they ever were; but it is not a biblical solution to turn to a woman in order to learn how to evangelize LGBT sinners. These sinners need sermons from good competent men, not compromising lectures by semi-saved rebellious women. Hand out sermons to them by C. H. Spurgeon or R. M. M’Cheyne. If they balk at that, shake the dust off your feet, and leave them to their sins. Balky sinners are not to be compromised with or pandered to. They cannot be helped by softening the word of God any more than the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah could have been reformed by an Egyptian hieroglyph. Unconverted sinners do not belong in churches unless they are there to be preached to, not taught. And when they are preached to in a church setting, it must be by a man, not Rosario Butterfield, who does not even know what conversion and election are, much less which one of them comes first in order.