Evan S

2009-08-21T22:00:00.002-05:00

"Islam is quite simply, a religion of war. While there are lax Islamics, there is no such thing as peaceful or tolerant Islam. Islam divides the world into two portions: the Dar al Islam, the world of Islam, and the Dar al Harb, the world of war. In Islamic thought, peace is only possible within the world of Islam. The non-Islamic world is a battlefield, where Islamics are required by their faithto war against the unbelievers."

Sura 9:1-6: ... fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war).
Sura 9:29-31: Fight those who believe not in God nor the last day.. no acknowledge the religion of truth (Islam), (even if they are) of the the people of the Book (Christians and Jews), until they pay the jizya (poll tax on non-Islamics) with willing submission, and fell themselves subdued.

Paul M. Weyrich, William S. Lind, Why Islam is a Threat to America and The West, p. 1-3
quoted from The Journal, Summit Ministries, June 2004

Evolution as a Religion (part 5)

2009-08-20T22:00:00.000-05:00

These are various quotes from The Journal, Summit Ministries, January 2003

"Here [in Secular Humanism] are all the elements for a religious faith that shall not be confined to sect, class, or race. Such a faith has always been implicitly the common faith of mankind. It remains to make it explicit and militant."

John Dewey, A Common Faith [1934], p.87

"As Colin Russell tells it in his book Cross-Currents: Interactions Between Science and Faith, the idea of a war between science and religion is a relatively recent invention - one carefully nurtured by those who hope the victor in the conflict will be science. ... Huxley ... Though secularists, they understood very well that they were replacing one religion by another, for they described their goal as the establishment of the 'church scientific.' Huxley even referred to his scientific lectures a 'lay sermons.'"

Nancy R. Pearcey and Charles B. Thaxton, The Soul of Science, p. 19

"one day while browsing through a library in Colorado Springs, [Julian] Huxley came across some essays by Lord Morley in which he found these words: 'The next great task of science will be to create a religion for humanity.' Huxley was challenged by this vision. He wrote, 'I was fired by sharing his conviction that science would of necessity play an essential part in framing any religion of the future worthy of the name.' Huxley took up Morley's challenge to develop a scientific religion. He called it 'Evolutionary Humanism.'"

Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopdia of Christian Apologetics, p. 346

Animal Rights

2009-08-19T22:00:00.000-05:00

In 1999, Summit Ministries reported that Harvard Law School was offering classes on Animal Rights.

I just went to the Harvard web site and found a class in animal law.
http://www.law.harvard.edu/academics/courses/2009-10/?id=6803

This is part of the course description:
This is a basic course in animal law in which the student engages a broad range of cases, legislation, and concepts as they pertain to nonhuman animals. .... The second part of the course uses (a) the material from the first part of the course and (b) various constitutional and common law principles to assess current proposals that basic legal concepts, such as "rights" and "legal personhood," should be afforded some nonhuman animals.
------------------
Isn't "non human animals" precious!
If we're just plain, old, animals, there isn't much to differentiate us from the rest of the "animal kingdom" and "legal personhood" will have to be recognized.

The impossibility of Evolution

2009-08-17T22:00:00.001-05:00

The very simplest life form ... would be comprised of 239 protein molecules, each of these containing an average of 445 amino acids of a least 20 different types and all 445 precisely slotted into position. The probability that such a simple creature would come together by chance (and none so simple has been found yet to exist) would be: 1 x 10 to the 137,915 power.

Furthermore ... each amino acid must first be activated by a specific enzyme, multiple special enzymes are required to bind messenger RNA to ribosomes before synthesis can begin or end, and with the exception of glycerin, only amino acids with left handed configurations can be used in protein synthesis. When you take all of these factors into account, the chance that a simple form of life could arise spontaneously by chance is: 1 x 10 to the 15,000,000,000 power.

Hugh Ross, Genesis One: A scientific Perspective

from The Journal by Summit Ministries, August 2006

"With ALL Your Mind"

2009-08-16T22:00:00.004-05:00

the following are excerpts of a review of
J.P. Moreland's "Love Your God With All Your Mind"

Moreland traces the roots of modern anti-intellectualism to the revivalism of the mid--19th century. ... the subjective experience of conversion was highlighted at the expense of doctrinal precision. Preaching was marked by emotionalism and shallow theological content, resulting in a poor intellectual grasp of the Christan faith.

When faced with philosophies that attacked the authority and credibility of the Bible, the church was ill-prepared to counter and instead withdrew from public intellectual discourse.
...
Among the consequences of anti-intellectualism in the church, Moreland cites a faulty understanding of the relationship between faith and reason, a timidity in witnessing for fear we will not be capable of defending our faith, and a gospel message that calls people to believe it because it will meet their felt needs rather than because it is "true and reasonable" (Acts 26:25).

review by Keith Plummer

Moody magazine

September/October 1997

the Orthodox Church

2009-08-16T22:00:00.001-05:00

I know that I have a poor grasp of the theology of the Orthodox Church. Yet, I want to post one quote to show that we need to be cautious of blindly affirming the orthodoxy of the Orthodox.

As human beings we each have this one unique calling, to achieve Theosis. In other words, we are each destined to become a god. To be like God Himself, to be united with Him. The Apostle Peter describes with total clarity the purpose of life: we are to "become partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). This is the purpose of your life; that you be a participant, a sharer in the nature of God and in the life of Christ, a communicant of divine energy - to become just like God, a true God.

from Christoforos Stravopoulos, Partakers of Divine Nature

Minneapolis; Light and Life, 1976, p. 18

quoted from "That Man Might Become God" by Todd Wilken of Issues Etc.

Systems of Theology

2009-08-15T22:00:00.001-05:00

[T]he center of Calvinist theology is the Sovereignty of God. This is what makes Calvinism tick. The concept of God’s sovereignty runs the theological show. Every doctrine of Calvinism is shaped by the concept that God does as He pleases. This is why Calvinists teach double predestination, irresistible grace and a limited atonement.

The center gravity for Roman Catholic theology is the Justice of God. This explains why the Roman church teaches the merits of the saints, purgatory, the sacrifice of the mass, etc.

The center of Evangelical theology is the moral teaching of Jesus. This explains their moralistic theology and practice.

The center of Lutheran theology is the Cross, the person and work of Jesus Christ to save sinners. This is why Luther said: “The Cross alone is our theology.”

The center of Orthodox theology is “the divine life of the Trinity.” In particular, Orthodoxy is all about how man participates in that “divine life” through the activity of the holy Spirit.

from That Man Might Become God

By Todd Wilken

Issues Etc.

Evolution as a Religion (part 4)

2009-08-14T22:00:00.002-05:00

"We show deference to our leaders, pay respect to our elders and follow the dictates of our shamans; this being the Age of Science, it is scientism’s shamans who command our veneration … scientists [are] the premier mythmakers of our time. … [evolutionism is] courageously proffering naturalistic answers that supplant supernaturalistic ones and … is providing spiritual sustenance."

Michael Shermer, “The Shaman of Scientism,” Scientific American (June 2002), p. 35

Quoted from Evolutionary Arrogance
By Henry M. Morris
Back to Genesis, No. 170, February 2003
Institute for Creation Research

2009-08-13T22:00:00.001-05:00

"The humanist left knows the only way it can create substantial numbers of new ideological and social robots eager to follow in their failed footsteps is to imprison substantial numbers of children in government schools where they are force-fed liberal ideology and lied to about sex, about history and about a whole lot of other things at taxpayer's expense".

Cal Thomas, The Colorado Springs Gazette, August 31, 1999, p. N7

Evolution as a Religion (part 3)

2009-08-13T22:00:00.000-05:00

"My area of expertise is the clash between evolutionists and creationists, and my analysis is that we hae no simple clash between science and religion but rather between two religions."

Michael Ruse

The Evolution-Creation Struggle, p. 287

All of the above were quoted from The Struggles of Michael Ruse
By Henry M. Morris
Back to Genesis no. 206, Institute for Creation Research, February 2006

Evolution as a Religion (part 2)

2009-08-12T22:00:00.001-05:00

Evolution would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superfluous one.

O.S. Wilkins, “Evolutionary Processes,” BioEssays (vol. 22, 2000), p. 1052, Quoted by Skell (below)

… my own research with antibiotics received no guidance from insights provided by Darwinian evolution. … I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin’s theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: “No.”

Philip S. Skell, “Why Do We Invoke Darwin?” The Scientist (vol. 19, august 29, 2005), p. 10.

Evolution as a Religion

2009-08-11T22:00:00.001-05:00

Michael Ruse
From the prologue in his book The Evolution – Creation Struggle

"In particular, I argue that in both evolution and creation we have rival religious responses to a crisis of faith – rival stories of origins, rival judgments about the meaning of human life, rival sets of moral dictates, and above all what theologians call rival eschatologies – pictures of the future and of what lies ahead for humankind." (p 3)

What are their options?

2009-08-11T10:00:00.002-05:00

"Let us begin by supposing that Nature is all that exists. ...
In this situation there are, I think, three things one might do:
(1) You might commit suicide ...
(2) You might decide simply to have as good a time as possible. The universe is a universe of nonsense, but since you are here, grab what you can. Unfortunately, however, there is, on these terms, so very little left to grab - only the coarsest sensual pleasures ...
(3) You may defy the universe. You may say, 'Let it be irrational, I am not. Let it be merciless, I will have mercy.'"

C.S. Lewis

Present Concerns (1948)

2009-08-10T22:13:00.000-05:00

Kennedy
Huxley
Lewis

all died on the same day

The Trinity

2009-08-10T22:10:00.000-05:00

Here, in summary, is His [Jesus’] teaching. The Father is in the Son; the Son is in the Father (14:10). The Son is sent by the Father and returns to Him (15:21); 16:28). They have all things in common, except what distinguishes them in their relationship as Father and Son (16:15). They share in fellowship with the Spirit, for He goes out from the Father, and is sent to us by the Son (15:26). He glorifies the Son (16:14); He comes not only on His own but brings the presence of both the Father and the Son into the life of the believer (14:23), for He takes from what is the Son’s (which is also the Father’s) and makes it known to us (16:15)

Sinclair Ferguson

“The Mystery of Mysteries” in Tabletalk magazine (unknown date)

9/11

2009-08-10T00:05:00.003-05:00

September 11, 1683, was the date when the tide of Turkish-Muslim advance into Eastern Europe was checked adn reversed. September 11, 2001, was the date of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington D.C. and the beginning of America's War on Terrorism.

Hermeneutics - steps in the process

2009-08-09T21:59:00.003-05:00

1)Literary Analysis – Begin any study with a literary analysis. The Bible contains seven distinct genres or types of literature: narrative, prophecy, wisdom, psalm, gospel, epistle and apocalyptic.
2) Grammatical Analysis – At this point, an interpreter will need to be very familiar with basic grammar. Relationships like purpose, result, time, concession, means, manner, condition, comparison, and contrast are indicated by adverbs and adjectives.
3) Historical Analysis – the time period and the impact of the events of the day in which they text was written. Take note of beliefs, social norms, and material traits of the biblical world that may have influenced the writers of the biblical text. Ask yourself: (1)Where is the author and his audience? (2) What political, economic and social situations are confronting them? (3) What cultural references(s) need to be defined? (4) What is the purpose of the writer for the whole book? The author didn’t write in a vacuum.
4) Contextual Analysis – context will usually limit the range of interpretive possibilities … Each word must be considered within the sentence. Each sentence must be considered within the paragraph. Each paragraph must be considered within the chapter. Each chapter must be considered within the book. Each book must be considered within the whole Bible.
5) Theological Analysis – left last because the whole of Scripture is the focus. Theological analysis concerns itself with God and the continual revelation of the will for the world.

Quoted from “Hermeneutic: The Keys of a Wholistic Biblical Method of Interpretation”

By Rev. Charles Cooper

Scripture

2009-08-09T21:56:00.001-05:00

“Since I am entirely convinced that no Scripture contradicts another, I will rather acknowledge that I do not understand what is written.”

Justin Martyr – 2nd Century AD

God's armor

2009-08-07T01:58:00.000-05:00

In Isaiah 50:17 God is described as "put[ting] on righteousness as his breastplate, and the helmet of salvation on his head; he put on the garments of vengeance and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak."

Paul uses this same picture to describe the believer preparing for battle in Ephesians 6:
13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.
14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place,
15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.
16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

This equipment will serve us well in battle.
How do we know?
God used it successfully!

These are not ill fitting garments.
God has fitted the armor for us "For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels."

Dating Niagara Falls

2009-08-06T01:31:00.000-05:00

Everyone interprets the data based on their worldview. The article "Dating Niagara Falls" in the May 2003 issue of Impact reveals one such case. Sir Charles Lyell, the popularizer of uniformity visited Niagara falls in 1841. The falls recedes at 4-5 feet per year. Yet, he discounted an eyewitness report of "3 feet per year" and stated that it was "1 foot per year."

If Niagara Falls has always receded at the rate of 1 foot per year, it would be 35,00 years old.

If Niagara Falls has always receeded at the current rate of 4-5 feet per year, it would be about 7,000 years old.

Why did Lyell chose the rate of 1 foot per year?

Even if he had a report of 1 foot per, why did he latch onto that one and not the report of Mr. Bakewell (3 ft. per year)?

Jesus' coronation

2009-08-05T01:00:00.001-05:00

Read and compare two passages: Daniel 7:9,10,13,14 and Revelation chapters 4 & 5 (primarily 4:2-4 and 5:6-13)

Daniel
9 "As I looked, "thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat. His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool. His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze.
10 A river of fire was flowing, coming out from before him. Thousands upon thousands attended him; ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. The court was seated, and the books were opened.

13 "In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence.
14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Revelation
4:2 At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it.
3 And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne.
4 Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads.

6 Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. He had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.
7 He came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne.
8 And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
9 And they sang a new song: "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.
10 You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth."
11 Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders.
12 In a loud voice they sang: "Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!"
13 Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: "To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!"

As discussed yesterday, Jesus is ruling as King in heaven now.
Both of these passages occured at Christ's ascension (at his resurrection).

In both passages:
* God is on the throne (Ancient of Days in Daniel)
* The heavenly court is set ("court" in Daniel, 24 elders in Revelation)
* Jesus is given authority, glory and sovereign power, worship and dominion

Jesus is enthroned as King!

2009-08-04T00:10:00.000-05:00

Peter, in his sermon in the 2nd chapter of Acts, declared:

32 God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact.
33 Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear.
34 For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said, "'The Lord said to my Lord: "Sit at my right hand
35 until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet."'
36 "Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ."

In verse 36, we're told that God has made Jesus Lord and Christ.
Hasn't he always been Lord and Christ?
Yes, but now he has been enthroned in heaven and rules at the right hand of God

After his resurrections, Jesus declared that "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." (Matthew 28:18)

In Ephesiand 1:20-23 Paul briefly describes the fact of Christ's coronation:
"God has seated him (Christ) at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church"

Here are a few OT passages about Christ's enthronement:
Psalms 2:8 "Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession."

Isaiah 52:13: "See, my servant will act wisely ; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted."

Evolution - some notes and thoughts

2009-08-02T23:17:00.001-05:00

What are the minimum number of amino acids required to support life?
What is the probability of their forming?

I have read that the minimum number is "20."

How many amino acids are required for the simplest of proteins? (and simplest of life forms?)
What's the probability of that chain forming? (only left hand, not right hand)

I have read that, theoretically, the simplest organism that can self-replicate would have 124 proteins of 400 amino acids each. The simplest one KNOWN has 625 proteins.

WHAT IS THE PROBABILITY OF ONE PROTEIN OF 400 LEFT HAND AMINO ACIDS FORMING if there was a "pure" mixture of left and right hand amino acids of all types?

400 - 20 = 380
400 total amino acids needed, less 20 (glycine only comes in 1 form) = 380 acids

1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2 380 times is the probability of getting only left hand amino acids to combine
This equals 1/2^380 = 1/10^114

Remember, this does not take into account the information content (sequence), but only the validity of the amino acids.

To get 124 such proteins for self-replicating life, we would multiply the above result (1/10^114) 124 times.

1/10^114 * 1/10^114 * 1/10^114 (124 times) = 1/10 ^ 14,136

Folks, we've only begun to look at the improbability of proteins forming by chance and we've hit a wall. There is NO WAY that a chance of 1 in 10^14,136 could be realized.

There are 10^9 electrons in the universe. If I could pick one, color it red, release it somewhere in the universe - could you randomly pick an electron and have it be the correct one? You'd have to correctly pick the special electron 179 times in a row to equal the probability / improbability of just getting left hand amino acids to form a long chain!

Anti-intellectualism in the church

2009-08-01T23:07:00.001-05:00

"One of the most striking contrasts between pre Civil War revivalists and those afte the war is that the former founded liberal arts colleges while the latter established Bible schools."

"Os Guinness writes that "dispensational premillennialism .. has had unfortunate consequences on the christian mind," including refinforcing an already developing "anti-intellectualism" and a "general indifference to serious engagement with custure.""

Quoted from "A Prophetic Shift on the Horizon"
by Gary DeMar
in American Vision's Biblical Worlview, March 2007

Os Guiness quoted from "Fit Bodies, Fat Minds"

The limits of evolution

2009-07-31T21:55:00.004-05:00

The Acts & Facts of September 2008 had some interesting quotes from Werner Arber
The following are quotes from the article without added comments. (The footnote numbers have been deleted from the body of the text but are cited at the end.)

The most recent replication is by Lenski et al, who evaluated the changes in over 30,000 generations of E. coli, concluding that millions of mutations and trillions of cells were needed to produce the estimated two to three mutations required to allow cells to bring citrate into the cell under oxic conditions. This corresponds with Michael Behe's deductions that if one mutation is required to confer some advantage to an organism, this event is likely; if two are required, the likelihood is far less; but if three or more are required, the probability rapidly grows exponentially worse, from very improbable to impossible. Evolution by mutations for this reason has very clear limits.
…
Regarding major evolutionary questions, such as the origin of the information required for natural selection, Arbor wrote in his Nobel Prize speech that the answers so far proposed are often trivial or avoid the major questions facing Darwinism. He gave the example of using meaningless phrases such as "evolutionary driving forces" to explain how life evolved. As Arbor wrote, the claim that "more intensive research is needed to understand the apparent complexity of nature" is actually an admission of ignorance about the origin of complexity in the living natural world.9
…
For his study of mutations, Arber selected bacteria because they have short generation times (20 minutes vs. 20 years for humans) and therefore reproduce enormous numbers of progeny in only a few days. They also do not have sophisticated genetic repair mechanisms as do eukaryotes, allowing far more mutations to be expressed in their offspring. One of Arber's studies evaluated 10,000 generations of E. coli under various conditions, finding that "tremendous diversity accumulated within each population." The phenotypic change was very rapid for the initial 2,000 generations, but far slower for the subsequent 8,000 generations, conforming to the research on viruses that found the rate of fitness gain "decelerated significantly over time," as did the rate of nucleotide substitution.11 Arber concluded that genetic variety has definite limits, a finding carefully documented by Behe.7

This evidence indicates that the changes he observed in bacteria resulted almost solely from transposition and other types of chromosomal rearrangement, not mutations as required by macroevolution. This study provides clear evidence that the putative evolution observed in microorganisms is primarily, if not totally, a result of built-in mechanisms designed to produce genetic, and thus phenotypic, variety.

References
7.Behe, Michael. 2007. The Edge of Evolution. New York: The Free Press.
8.Arber, W. 1996. Molecular Mechanisms Promoting and Limiting Genetic Variation. In Di Castri, F. and T. Younes (eds.), Biodiversity, Science and Development: Towards a New Partnership. Wallingford, Oxon (UK): CAB International.
9.Arber, W, D. Nathans, and H. O. Smith. 1992. 1978 Physiology or Medicine, Nobel Lectures: Physiology or Medicine 1971-1980, 469-492.
10.Arber, W. 1991. Elements in Microbial Evolution. Journal of Molecular Evolution. 33: 4-12.
11. 11.Papadopoulos, D. et al. 1999. Genomic Evolution During a 10,000-Generation Experiment with Bacteria. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA. 96: 3807-3812.

Odd priorities in the EFCA

2009-07-30T21:24:00.006-05:00

The EFCA (Evangelical Church of America) was debating about changing their statement of faith. Number 11 of their prior statement read:

"We believe in the personal, premillenial and imminent coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and that this "Blessed Hope" has a vital bearing on the personal life and service of the believer."

The proposed changes were:

"We believe in the personal, bodily and glorious return of our Lord Jesus Christ with His holy angels when He will bring His kingdom to fulfillment and exercise His role as Judge of all. This coming of Christ, at a time known only to God, requires constant expectancy and, as our blessed hope, motivates the believer to godly living, sacrificial service and energetic mission."

Many pastors didn't appreciate the removal of the word "premillenial" from the statement.

One local EFCA church's head pastor was against the change. Yet, he was (apparantly) comfortable with the openness the EFCA has to BOTH Calvinism and Arminianism. His off-handed comment was "we just differ on Soteriology". He gave me a photocopy of "This We Believe Creeds in Conflict", spelling out the history of how the EFCA could have divided over "just Soteriology" (my sarcasim).

How is it the the message of SALVATION IN CHRIST and how it is accomplished could be of less importance than the contentin that there is a future, literal 1,000 reign?

The Premillenialists won and the EFCA still has "premillenial" in their statement of faith.

Where is "heaven" mentioned in the OT?

2009-07-29T23:41:00.002-05:00

"Where is heaven mentioned in the OT?"
I've asked that question many times and have had a lot of silence in response.

In Genesis, Abraham is promised "the land." In Romans 4:13, Paul says that Abraham was given "the promise that he would be heir of the world."

I'd like to offer the premise: "The fulfillment is always greater than the promise."

Abraham was promised a piece of land in the OT. In the NT we see that it is really the whole world that was promised!

Hebrews 11:10 tells us that Abraham "was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God." This sounds like the heavenly Jerusalem seen at the end of Revelation.

Review all the OT "kingdom" passages. ALL of them are eternal kingdoms. They do not last 1,000 years; they last forever. I would contend that they refer to heaven.

No one can read all those Kingdom passages in a wooden literal way, but that discussion is for another day

Christ is the true Israel

2009-07-29T23:22:00.003-05:00

In my last post I said that all believers are Israel.
It would be better and more accurate to say that Christ is the true Israel.

The servant songs of Isaiah (41:8-9; 44:1-2,21; 45:4; 49:3) have a double referent. On one hand, they refer to the people of Israel. On another level they refer to an individual. The New Testament authors interpret this as referring to Christ (Mt 8:17 and Acts 8:30-35)
Matthew sees Jesus as Israel in many of his statements of fulfilled prophesies in Christ. Hosea 11:1, "Out of Egypt I called my son" is one such double referent.
Paul calls Jesus Christ as Abraham's seed, not physical Israel. (Gal 3:16)
Gal 3:7 and Romans 4:11,16 identify the church as Abraham's offspring. See also Gal 3:26-29, Rom 2:28-29, Phil 3:3.
The Old Covenant is obsolete (Hebrews 8:8-12) and is not applicable and will not be reinstated in a future millennial period ("obsolete" means "obsolete"). Also, the reference in this passage to the new covenant being with "Israel" means that the author is identifying the church as Israel.
The Old Testament authors didn't understand their prophecies. 1 Peter 1:12 says that they looked into these things. Until Christ came and fulfilled his mission, the prophecies of the OT were unclear. We must use the NT to interpret the OT.

How many "Israels" are there?

2009-07-28T22:26:00.000-05:00

March 7, 2007, John MacArthur gave a speech at the Shepherd's Conference at Grace Community Church. It was entitled "Why Every Self-Respecting Calvinist is a Premillennialist"

As a thoughtful amillennialist, Kim Riddlebarger gave a response to the speech. I have a few general notes to throw into the fray.

MacArthur said "There are over 2,000 references to Israel in Scripture, not one of them means anything but Israel. Not one of them, including Romans 9:6 and Galatians 6:16 which is the only two passages that amillennialists go to trying to convince us that that cancels out the other 2,000. There is no difficulty in interpreting those as simply meaning Jews who were believers..."

----------------------------------------------------------

Several years ago I was listening to a Dispensational Premillennial radio program in which two pastors were stating the same thing: "there is only one Israel."

I called into the show and read Romans 9:6 to them. Note that this is the same passage MacArthur says "we" run to as a proof text.

It is not as though God's word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel."

My question was "if the word Israel is used twice in a sentence, with a negation between them, there must be two Israels, right?"

I don't recall that the pastors ever addressed my challenge/question.
A few of the people that called into the show after me said that they'd pray for me :-)

------------------------------------------------------------

Back to MacArthur's claims:
If Romans 9:6 "simply means Jews who were believers" then the verse would read "not all Jews who are believers are Jews who are believers."

Of course this is silly. John must not be meaning that "Jews who are believers" is to be substituted on both sides of the equation.

Paul begins chapter 9 with a concern that many of his fellow Jews are not being saved. In verse 4 he sates that "There's is the adoption as sons ... the covenants" and YET they aren't saved. How can that be, if God keeps his promises? (verse 6a asks) It's because "not all of the physical descendants of Abraham/Isaac/Jacob (Israel) are of (spiritual) Israel."

In John 10:16 Jesus says "I have sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. ... and there shall be one flock and one shepherd."

We believing gentiles are being made part of the "one flock" with believing Jews that Jesus spoke of.

In Ephesians chapter 2:11-20, Paul states the same thing:
11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles
by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves
"the circumcision" (that done in the body by the hands of men)--
12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded
from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the
promise, without hope and without God in the world.
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought
near through the blood of Christ.
14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has
destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility,
15 by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and
regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out
of the two, thus making peace,
16 and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the
cross, by which he put to death their hostility.
17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to
those who were near.
18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow
citizens with God's people and members of God's household,
20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ
Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

"We amillennialists" don't have to run to just one or two texts. We don't have to read into the text the meaning we want. We see the text plainly stating that we have been brought near (elsewhere "grafted in") and are no longer foreigners and aliens.

ALL BELIEVERS ARE ISRAELITES

The logical conclusion of Darwinism is a-morality

2009-07-26T22:05:00.002-05:00

The following quotations are directly from “Darwinism: Survival without Purpose” from found in the November 2007 issue of Acts & Facts, written by Jerry Bergman, Ph.D. (Bold added to highlight the a-moral nature of Evolution)

Humans have always wondered about the meaning of life...life has no higher purpose than to perpetuate the survival of DNA...life has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference. Richard Dawkins
Scheff, Liam. 2007. The Dawkins Delusion. Salvo, 2:94.

Darwin "was keenly aware that admitting any purposefulness whatsoever to the question of the origin of species would put his theory of natural selection on a very slippery slope."
Turner, J. Scott. 2007. The Tinkerer's Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 206.

The ultimate purposelessness of evolution, and thus of the life that it produces, was eloquently expressed by Professor Lawrence Krauss as follows: "We're just a bit of pollution…. If you got rid of us…the universe would be largely the same. We're completely irrelevant."
Panek, Richard. 2007. Out There. New York Times Magazine, 56.

"undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous."
Futuyma, Douglas J. 1998. Evolutionary Biology. Third Edition, Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 5.

John Alcock, an evolutionary biologist, therefore concluded that "we exist solely to propagate the genes within us."
Alcock, John. 1998. Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 16, 609.

The pleasant outward face of nature was precisely that--only an outward face. Underneath was perpetual struggle, species against species, individual against individual. Life was ruled by death...destruction was the key to reproductive success. All the theological meaning was thus stripped out by Darwin and replaced by the concept of competition. All the telos, the purpose, on which natural theologians based their ideas of perfect adaptation was redirected into Malthusian--Darwinian--struggle.
Browne, Janet. 1995. Charles Darwin: Voyaging, A Biography. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 542.

Neo-Darwinist Richard Dawkins recognized the purposelessness of such a system:
In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Dawkins, Richard. 1995. River Out of Eden. New York: Basic Books, 133.

---------------------------------------

Some of the above quotes/Evolutionists say that we only exist to pass on our genes ("selfish genes"). Speaking from within their system, that is totally wrong!

Evoltuion has NO PURPOSE. Things, animals and people exist, but they have no purpose.

If they pass on their genes, they have offspring. That could be a measure of success. However, perhaps some humans would measure success as "having climed the most mountains."

The Evolutionary system has been built on a tautology of "Survival of the Fittest." And they deem "survival" as good. But they have no philosophical basis for this belief. It is presupposed.

Another conclusion of their "Survival of the Fittest" has lead some to conclude that rape is just another method of ensuring the passing on of genes. Refer to Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer. A Natural History of Rape (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1999).

"Move over Archaeopteryx"

2009-07-25T22:05:00.002-05:00

I wonder how special we'd feel the Archaeopteryx is if we could see a South American Hoatzin up-close.

It is a beautiful, striking, bird. They have claws on their wings, allowing them to climb trees just like a monkey and helping them ward off enemies.

The Hoatzin become expert swimmers before they can fly. If a predator approaches, they can fall to the swamp below their nest and swim back to shore and climb back up to the nest.

Another unique trait is that they are the only bird known to digest their food like a cow. They have two stomachs and they ferment their food.

Lastly, molecular biologists say that it is a relative to the cuckoo. Huh, and I thought it was a dinosaur!

What's on your brain?

2009-07-23T21:46:00.000-05:00

While the brain weighs only three pounds, it can do the work of 1,000 super-computers. It doesn't need to be connected to a power source and it doesn't overheat because it is able to make its own electricity and it operates on only microvolts of power. If you brain's 10 trillion cells were placed end-to-end, they would stretch for over 100,000 miles. Your brain has the capacity to store every word of every book on a bookshelf 500 miles long.

In order for the human brain to have evolved from a simpler brain in the time that evolutionists claim it has, the brain would have had to evolve millions of new cells every year for millions of years. A.R. Wallace, co-discoverer with Charles Darwin of Natural selection, once noted that there is a huge gulf between the human brain and that of the ape. Darwin recognized what Wallace's argument did to their theory and responded, "I hope you have not murdered completely you own and my child."

Ref: DeYoung, Don, and Richard Bliss, 1990,

Thinking about the brain, ICR Impact, Feb P.1

2009-07-22T21:35:00.000-05:00

The darkness the engulfed the world at the time of the crucifixion was recorded by Apollophanes. He was a fellow student with Dionysius at Heliopolis and reported that, upon the occurrence of the unexpected (miraculous) solar eclipse Dionysius exclaimed "Either the God of nature is suffering, or the fabric of the world is breaking up."

History of the Christian Church by Philip Schaff, David Schley Schaff, page 600

Scientific Red Faces

2009-07-21T21:22:00.003-05:00

Some years ago scientists discovered human bones in California buried under thick layers of mud. Scientific authorities studied the bones and dated them at about 75,000 years old. Digging deeper, scientist discovered an old United States Army button! Was the U.S. Army around 75,000 years ago, or was the dating method unreliable? More recently an archaeological team from a Japanese university discovered drawings on a cave wall on a Japanese island. This important discovery was dated at 10,000 to 13,000 years old. When one of the local residents of the island heard about the discovery, he stepped forward to confess that as a boy he often drew on the walls of the cave with charcoal.

From an ICR (Institute for Creation Research) article, they quoted from
Jackson, Wayne 1990, Scientific red faces, Reasoning from Revelation, v. II, n. 1, Jan p.3

I trust ICR, but if anyone reads this and shows that one of these is an urban legend, I will quickly remove it from this post.

Jesus did not have a physical defect

2009-04-24T08:33:00.000-05:00

Some people claim that Jesus had a physical defect. This opinion is based on Isaiah 53

1 Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
2 For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

BUT, this is regarding Jesus as the Suffering Servant. This is talking about his death and atonement.

As our High Priest, Jesus would have met the Law when it states "None of your offspring throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the bread of his God. For no one who has a blemish shall draw near, a man blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long." (Leviticus 21:17-18)

The VISUAL holiness of the High Priest symbolized the spiritual holiness required of us. Jesus was without outward (physical) blemish or inward (spiritual) blemish.

Loving our neighbor Leviticus 19:15, 18

2009-04-23T08:28:00.001-05:00

Oh, that our court system, our taxation system, and our daily lives could follow this:
"You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor." (Lev 19:15)

"you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD." (Lev 19:18b)

Salvation by ...

2009-04-22T08:53:00.001-05:00

In the institution of the Levitical Law, its easy to see why a non-faithful person could read it as "salvation by works"

God said "You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the LORD." (Leviticus 18:5)

But King David helps to see behind the law: "You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." (Psalm 51:16-17)

"but the righteous shall live by his faith" (Habakkuk 2:4b)

The obedience of the law SHOULD stem from the broken and contrite heart. IF the broken spirit is the source of the obedience, then the person is righteous.

"For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it — the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:20-22)

"[that I may gain Christ] and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith" (Philippians 3:9)

The blood of Christ

2009-04-21T08:31:00.001-05:00

I was part of a prayer ministry with some wonderful people. Several people "claimed the blood" over several prayer concerns. That "claiming" sounded to me like an incantation - as if the blood had special properties that could be called on.

"Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins." (Hebrews 9:22)

In the establishment of the Day of Atonement, God explains the importance of blood: "For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life." (Leviticus 17:11))

If Jesus had just pricked his finger, THAT would not have atoned for my sins.
Jesus had to give his life.

The Day of Atonement

2009-04-20T08:00:00.001-05:00

I'm a bit behind in my reading through the Bible this year.
I'm in Deuteronomy and reviewing some thoughts from Leviticus.

There is a progression in "atonement” enactments:

one animal for one person - Adam and Eve in the Garden
one lamb for one family - the Passover lamb
one sacrifice for the nation - “the day of atonement”
one sacrifice for the entire world - Jesus Christ - "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29)

The first three are "enactments" because true atonement is SOLELY based upon the work of Christ. The prior three point forward to Jesus' crucifixion.

On the Day of Atonement, two male goats are presented as offerings.

One is sacrificed as a sin offering, pointing to Christ's death paying the penalty for our sins.
The second goat is called the scapegoat. The High Priest would lay his hand on the goat, to symbolize our sins being transferred, and the goat was led into the wilderness. "As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us." (Psalm 103:12)

You might be a DISPENSATIONALIST if...

2009-04-19T23:20:00.001-05:00

You might be a DISPENSATIONALIST if...

You think other Christians are anti-Semitic
You’ve never read Hebrews
You can justify being 2000 years late for an appointment
You’re really bad at math
When the going gets rough, you’re nowhere to be found
You sleep nude so your post-rapture bed is tidy
You were born after 1830
You use your newspaper for morning devotions
You’d rather have been outside Noah’s ark
You don't think Satan really noticed the cross
You prefer the shadows
Always always means always except sometimes
You went to Dallas Theological Seminary
You prefer the shadows
Always always means always except sometimes
You went to Dallas Theological Seminary
Bad news excites you
You feel Scofield's notes were inspired
You’ll only be a 2nd class citizen of paradise
You think THIS means THAT
You think NEAR means FAR
You thought about naming your kid Darby
You decided it’s too late to have kids
You believe the Day of Pentecost refers to the birthday of Dwight Pentecost
Your Pastoral Search committee only looks at candidates from DTS (Dallas Theological Seminary)
You consider your children to be an "intercalation" in your marriage
When people tell you Lewis is their favorite Christian author, you think of "Lewis Sperry Chaffer," not "C.S. Lewis"
No matter how many member states the EU adds, you "know" it's the revived Roman Empire with 10 heads
You own the entire "Left Behind" series
You get your news from Jack Van Impe
You’re offended by this list
When someone asks for your opinion on Bible versions and you think of
The John MacArthur Study Bible
The Ryrie Study Bible
The Scofield Study Bible
and not
The ESV - English Standard Version
The NIV - New International Version
The KJV - King James Version

Christian Rap

2009-04-18T22:06:00.002-05:00

Love their humor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NGx2sGM1aw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xay8Zq_eutc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP82CRoQnSU

their tour web site is http://reachrecords.com/dwyl/

Atonement

2009-03-20T08:04:00.000-05:00

In Leviticus chapter 9, Aaron offers a sin offering, a burnt offering (verse 3), a peace offering and a grain offering (verse 4) to the Lord. The rites had been given to Moses and Aaron and they followed the prescription. The culmination of the service is in verses 23 and 24:

Moses and Aaron then went into the Tent of Meeting. When they came out, they blessed the people; and the glory of the LORD appeared to all the people. Fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the fat portions on the altar. And when all the people saw it, they shouted for joy and fell facedown.

Chapter 10 begins with the account of Nadab and Abihu (Aaron's sons) offering unauthorized fire before the Lord:

Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu took their censers, put fire in them and added incense; and they offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, contrary to his command. So fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. Moses then said to Aaron, "This is what the LORD spoke of when he said: "'Among those who approach me I will show myself holy; in the sight of all the people I will be honored.'" Aaron remained silent.

The animals died because of the people's sin (ch 9). God's glory shown and fire consumed the animals. Then Nadab and Abihu die for their sin and fire consumed them (ch 10).

Do you WANT a substitute for your sins?
Or do you want to approach the Lord "as you please" but without a substitute?

God offers the substitute of Jesus Christ.
Why, oh why, would you profane Christ and not cling to him as your hope?

I heard it said that
"Hell is eternity in the presence of God"
"Heaven is eternity in the presence of God with a mediator "(Jesus)

Restitution, plus

2009-03-18T08:00:00.000-05:00

Leviticus 6:1-5 says:

The LORD said to Moses: "If anyone sins and is unfaithful to the LORD by deceiving his neighbor about something entrusted to him or left in his care or stolen, or if he cheats him, or if he finds lost property and lies about it, or if he swears falsely, or if he commits any such sin that people may do-- when he thus sins and becomes guilty, he must return what he has stolen or taken by extortion, or what was entrusted to him, or the lost property he found, or whatever it was he swore falsely about. He must make restitution in full, add a fifth of the value to it and give it all to the owner on the day he presents his guilt offering.

The guilty person must not only return what was stolen, they must pay an additional 20%. That is restitution plus 20%. America's penal system does not have a sense of restitution, yet alone a 20% penalty.

(I wonder if our growth of government, government entitlements, and growth in taxes are a result of this lack of concern for personal property.)

Telling the truth

2009-03-17T07:00:00.001-05:00

Years ago, I was in a church's annual business meeting where the chairman said a falsehood. It was probably unintentional. There had been a general meeting several days prior to the annual meeting where the errant statement was made by someone else and I corrected it.

Here, at the annual meeting, no one corrected the chairman. I waited a while and then asked to be recognized - and then corrected him.

Leviticus 5:1 says 'If a person sins because he does not speak up when he hears a public charge to testify regarding something he has seen or learned about, he will be held responsible.'

The burden is on believers to be TRUTH TELLERS.

East of Eden

2009-03-16T07:22:00.003-05:00

I've never read the book "East of Eden." Perhaps I'll look it up, now that I see "East of Eden" (and just plain "East") as a recurrent theme in the Bible.

Gen 3:24 - After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

Gen 4:16 - So Cain went out from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

Abraham was the first person mentioned in the Bible to travel west

Gen 13:11a - So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out toward the east. The two men parted company

The following two are about the construction and layout of the tabernacle:

Ex 36:27 -They made six frames for the far end, that is, the west end of the tabernacle,
The front of the tabernacle was to the East. The priests walked from east to west to approach the Lord.

Lev 1:16 - He is to remove the crop with its contents and throw it to the east side of the altar, where the ashes are.
The discard was cast out to the east.

The Prodigal Son

2009-01-14T00:14:00.003-06:00

In Luke 15:11-32, Jesus tells the parable of the prodigal son. It begins:

Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them. "Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living."

When living in rebellion against the father, he was still living off the riches of the father.
Imagine this rebellious son throwing a party - someone asks him "where did you get such fine wine?" - would he have said "I bought it with my father's wealth."?

When we have lived in rebellion against God, we were still his beneficiaries.
Even now, after my redemption, it is so easy to see the "wealth" I have as mine and not as His provision!

Economic Rules from a century ago

2009-01-13T22:19:00.001-06:00

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by increasing class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they will not do for themselves

Rev. William J. H. Boetcke, 1916

The Journal, December 2008, by Summit Ministries

Thomas Jefferson - a "supply sider"

2009-01-12T22:10:00.003-06:00

Thomas Jefferson argued that "a wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.

The Journal, December 2008, by Summit Ministries

The December issue of The Journal discusses a financial disaster in the 1830 similar to the one we've experienced recently. Easy credit led to land speculation. Prior to 1832, land sales on the frontier were running about $2.5 million per year. By 1836, annual land sales totaled $25 million.

In our recent debacle, it is estimated that 1/4 of all homes sales were speculative sales. Once housing prices stopped rising, and interest rates began to rise, foreclosures increased.

2008-11-26T23:15:00.001-06:00

At Christ's coming (1 Th 4:v16) the trumpet will sound and the rapture will occur. As verses 16 and 17 say, "the dead in Christ will rise first" and then "we will be caught up together with them."

When a Roman army would return from victory, they would camp outside Rome and wait for the town to prepare for a triumphal entry. When the town was ready, the residents would go out to meet them and parade with them into town.

"We will be with the Lord forever." (v 17) We will be with Christ as he "rules with a rod of iron" and defeats his foes. As Christ approaches, (5:3) destruction will reign down on his adversaries.

This matches with the the passage from 1 Th. we looked at. Verse 9 is often used by Dispensationalists to argue for a pre-trib rapture since 'we aren't appointed to wrath' and the 7 year tribulation is full of wrath. However, if you read the full text for the context, it is clearly that "we aren't going to hell" "we're going to be with the Lord" Which means that the destruction which rains down on the unbelievers will not be on "us" (if we're alive at His coming).

Christ's return

2008-11-24T22:28:00.006-06:00

Claim:
Every clear teaching regarding Christ's return shows that Jesus' return is the culmination of all things. There is no secret rapture and no millennial kingdom.

The three clear texts teaching about Christ's return are:
1 Thessalonians 4:16 - 5:3
2Thessalonians 2:7-8
2 Peter 3:10

1 Th. 4:16-5:3
16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18 Therefore encourage each other with these words. 5:1 Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, 2 for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3 While people are saying, "Peace and safety," destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

2 Th 2:7-8
7 For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.

2 Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.

Jesus return ONCE
It is called "the day of the Lord"
That day will come as a surprise to unbelievers "like a thief"
And destruction will come upon Christ's enemies.

This sequence coincides with the return of Christ in Revelation 20:7-9
7 When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison
8 and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth--Gog and Magog--to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore.
9 They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God's people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them.

2008-11-08T00:19:00.001-06:00

May I recommend some John Piper videos?

Do you love Jesus Christ more than football?
http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=lPBCGMBmDHE

Let's not waste our lives
http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=DKNFbZa9cH4

What Christians need to remember about politics (especially the last 1/2)
http://tw.youtube.com/watch?v=YGjGbZNyIBY

2008-11-07T00:12:00.000-06:00

I am not surprised that Obama has won.
Unfortunately, he is ultra liberal

It would be depressing but my life is not wrapped up in the the country - rather it is wrapped up in the Lord.

A general question I have for any evangelical that voted for Obama is "is abortion wrong?"

Page 15 of the national Democratic platform endorses "reproductive health care" - - they consistently fight for any form of abortion and partial birth abortion and Obama voted against the giving of aid to children born alive after a failed abortion attempt.

The MN Family Council states that 39 abortions are performed in MN each day.
If that is carried out in each state, we have a 9/11 happening every day across America

Another question for an evangelical that tends to vote Democratic is "have you at LEAST gone to the caucus and submitted a resolution against those stances?"
"why not?"
These are clear-cut platform stances which need to change.

NEA - The National Education Assoc

2008-11-06T00:03:00.002-06:00

the journal of Summit Ministries reported (October 2008):

[Delegates of the NEA met at their annual convention in July this year. they] sported buttons with provocative slogans such as "Gay marriage causes Global Warming only because we are so hot!:, "Hate is not a family value," " The 'Christian Right' is neither," and "Gay Rights are civil rights."

[They passed non-education related resolutions] such as supporting stat-hood for the District of Columbia, a 'single-payer heath care plan' (i.e., government-run), gun control, ratification of the International Criminal Court Treaty, and taking steps "to change activities that contribute to global climate change."

their source: Phyllis Schlafly, Human Events, July 28, 2008, pg. 10

When will these "teachers" teach?

Global Warming

2008-11-04T22:15:00.003-06:00

The October 2008 issue of the journal (by Summit Ministries) states:

British archives contain more than 100,000 Royal Navy logbooks from around 1670 to 1850 ... They are a stunning resource.

The UK Met Office ... scoured more than 6,000 Royal Navy logs dating from the 1600s. 'Ships' officers recorded air pressure, wind strength, air and sea temperatures and other weather conditions. From these records, scientists can build a detailed picture of past weather and climate ... the findings show ... we went through a similar period of global warming in the 1730s that could not have been man-made.

the journal cites newstrackindia.com, August 4, 2008

Michael Ruse - Evolution is a Religion

2008-11-03T20:57:00.000-06:00

Michael Ruse, in Saving Darwinism from the Darwinians, National Post, May 13, 2000, B-3, Ruse said:

"Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion - a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint ... the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today."

Every worldview needs to explain how we got here.
Secular humanists need a creation story and they have developed Neo Darwinian Evolution to explain how we got here.

Global Warming

2008-11-02T20:47:00.003-06:00

On 10/12, I reported on Dr. Larry Vardiman's article regarding climate change in the October issue of Acts & Facts.

His second article, in the November Acts & Facts at http://www.icr.org/article/4156/

There is a 0.92 correlation between cosmic ray strength / volume and cloud cover. fro (1983 to 2005) This correlation has been traced back to about 1600 AD.

"A potential change in cloud cover of 3-4 percent caused by changes in cosmic ray flux is sufficient to explain global temperature changes of several degrees due to the change in the reflectivity of clouds."

A significant amount of global warming is caused by the sun. Perhaps we should reduce its "carbon footprint"!

Superfaults

2008-11-02T20:17:00.002-06:00

A year-long world-wide flood would significantly change the Earth's contours. Also, in the years immediately following the flood, there can be a lot of movement of the Earth as it regains equilibrium.

As reported in the Nov, 2008 Acts & Facts:
"The Heart Mountain detachment fault in northwestern Wyoming near Yellowstone National Park is the largest continental rockslide known on earth. this mass of rock, more than 400 square miles in area and over 1,000 feet thick, moved rapidly down a slope of less than 2 degrees at an estimated speed of 50 miles per hour."

The article discusses a possible way the immense friction of this rock formation could be reduced to allow the movement. You can read the article at http://www.icr.org/article/4154/

This is not an appeal to the "God of the gaps."
Rather, it is a phenomena more easily explained within the context of a major earth-wide catrastophe which saw the earth's tectonic plates move vast distances and had long-range effects, such as the movement of the Heart Mountain detachment fault.

Phlegon - regarding the darkness at Christ's crucifixion

2008-10-29T00:01:00.004-05:00

Dr. Paul Maier mentioned Phlegon in an interview on IssuesEtc (June 16, 2006 3rd hour).
Phlegon is an extra Biblical historian that chronicled the darkness at the time of Christ's crucifixion.

I found his quotes and others which seem to be based on his text at http://www.textexcavation.com/phlegontestimonium.html

He wrote "In the fourth year, however, of Olympiad 202, an eclipse of the sun happened, greater and more excellent than any that had happened before it; at the sixth hour, day turned into dark night, so that the stars were seen in the sky, and an earthquake in Bithynia toppled many buildings of the city of Nicaea. These things [are according to] the aforementioned man."

Dr. Maier said that Phlegon's dating places this event in the 4th month of the 4th year of the 202nd Olympiad. This places it at April, 33 AD.

This fits well with the dating of Jesus' crucifixion.

another source which I'll investigate later:
http://www.classicapologetics.com/d/DawsHeathen.pdf
a negative response:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/thallus.html

"The (restored) Temple" and "all Israel" (will be saved)

2008-10-28T16:53:00.004-05:00

I was just listening to Dr. Randall Price on KKMS radio.
He is a Dispensationalist and believes in a future, rebuilt, temple in which there will be a restored sacrificial system. He also believes that Romans 11 states that "all Israel will be saved".

I will briefly refute these or give "food for thought":

There are at least three relevant meanings to the word "temple" in the Bible.
1) the temple in Jerusalem where the sacrificial system was carried out
2) Jesus called himself the temple in John 2:19
Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days."
3) Believers are called the temple in several passages
3a) 1 Cor 3:16 "Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?"
3b) 1 Cor 6:19 "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?"
3c) Eph 2:21 "in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord."
3d) Rev 3:21 Jesus says "Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God."

Romans 11 does not say there will be a restored Israel, which is something Price just claimed.

Romans 11:25,26 says "Lest you be wise in your own sight, I want you to understand this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written,

FIRST
Verse 25 says there is a "partial hardening of Israel." Obviously, not all Israel had been hardened since Paul (the author) is of Israel and is saved.

SECOND
This period of history is characterized as a time where both Jews and Gentiles “coming in.”
And
“in this way” all Israel will be saved

"IN THIS WAY"
“in this way” DOES NOT SAY/MEAN “and then”
“and then” would indicate that “at a future time, the partial hardening will be removed and all Israel will be saved”

But the text says “in this way” or (in other translations) “thus”

The only clear message this gives is “by this method God is saving the Israel of faith” - - if there is a possible additional meaning, it is not stated here and must come from another text.

Earlier in Romans (ch 9:6,7) , Paul stated "But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring"

So the Israel that God is saving in Romans 11:26 only needs to be the subset of the full ethnic Israel.

How great is our problem?

2008-10-26T09:37:00.003-05:00

if the problem is Adam's bad example
the solution is Christ's good example (or Buddha, or ...)

if we are dead in our sins
we solution is savior to revive us and rescue us

The creation WAS subjected to futility

2008-10-15T08:00:00.000-05:00

Romans 8
17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs--heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.
19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.
20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope
21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

I read verse 20 to Hugh Ross (an old Earth creationist) and stressed that the creation WAS subjected to futility and asked him WHEN did this happen?

He said that it was created in futility!

In Genesis 3:17,18 God cursed the ground.
"To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field."

In Genesis 5:29 this curse is referred to as an historical event tied to the fall.
"He named him Noah and said, "He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed."

The curse is tied to the fall. The Earth, as we see it today, is under the curse and is NOT the same as when Adam and Eve first walked upon it.

Hugh Ross performs eisigesis (reading his beliefs into the text) rather than exegesis (reading the text for what it says or means). The thrust of Romans 8 calls for an understanding of the Earth being "perfect" and then being "fallen" after the sin of Adam and Eve.

The age of Saturn's rings

2008-10-14T22:37:00.000-05:00

The 1981 Voyager flybys astonished scientists with images of hundreds of individual ringlets and gaps. ... there was far more dynamism and structure than expecte, leading specialists at the time to conclude that the rings were young rather than primordial (i.e., formed along with Saturn). Upper limits were put at ~100 million years, only 2.2 percent of the assumed age of the solar system (4.5 billion years).

from the October 2008 Acts & Facts

by ICR - Institue for Creation Research

There are many "timepieces" in our solar system and on the earth which indicate a young earth.

Dinosaur Soft Tissue

2008-10-13T08:00:00.000-05:00

Click on the title to this blog to go to an article from ICR's Acts & Facts on the Dinosaur Soft Tissue found about 10 years ago.

If the dinosaur was truly 63 million years old, the tissue and blood cells would not survived.

So, the atheistic naturalistic scientists have to come up with a theory of how blood cells can survive. "'Schweitzer's work is showing us we really don't understand decay', paleontologist Thomas Holtz said in Smithsonian magazine." (May 2006)

Perhaps the evolutionists need to re-examine their paradigm.

Global Warming and the Little Ice Age

2008-10-12T21:45:00.004-05:00

Have you ever wondered why there were paintings of the canals of Holland frozen over and people skating on them? These scenes were popularized by Hans Christian Andersen and Danny Kaye.

I've wondered how a warm place like Holland could have frozen canals.

The October 2008 issue of Acts & Facts (by ICR - Institute for Creation Research) has an article "Does Carbon Dioxide Drive Global Warming?" by Larry Vardiman. (click on the heading to this blog to go the the article.)

If you follow my enclosed link to the article, you will see Figure 1 showing that there was a warm period in Europe from 1000 to 14000 AD. During this time, the "crops flourished, the economy boomed, and the Vikings settled parts of Greenland where the ice sheets had melted back.

From about 1400 to 1900 A.D. a 500 year cold period occurred. ... grapes could no longer be grown, the economy declined, and the Viking s were forced out of Greenland by the encroaching snow and ice. Sunspots were found to be fewer during this time period, ...The coldest center portion of this period with the fewest number of sunspots is called the Little Ice Age. The canals in Holland, unlike today, froze over each winter."

This answers my nagging question.
The article also states that global warming precedes the rise in Carbon Dioxide, not the other-way-around that Al Gore claims.

Messianic fevor before Christ's ministry

2008-09-07T22:49:00.005-05:00

Dr. Michael Wise (famed translator of the Dead Sea Scrolls) taught a Sunday School class of mine about a decade ago. He had just written a book "The First Messiah: Investigating the Savior Before Jesus." In it he tells of The Teacher of Righteousness at the Qumran community. He was the first recorded Messianic figure.

The Sept/Oct 2008 BAR, (pp. 58-62) article The Messiah Son of Joseph (also called "Gabriel's Revelation") reports of a tablet from Jesus Christ's era, telling of a Son of Joseph that would be the suffering servant, would rise from the dead in 3 days, would institute righteousness and cause a general resurrection

----The following three quotes are from the above article -----------------------
'In "Gabriel's Revelation," the Lord addresses David, asking him to request of Ephraim that he place a sign: "My servant David, ask of Ephraim [that he p]lace the sign ..." (Line 16-17). ... the fact that David is sent by God to request Ephraim to place the sign may attest that Ephraim has superior rank. He, and not David, is the key person who is asked to place the sign; David is only the messenger!' (BAR p. 60)

"By three days you shall know that thus said the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, the evil has been broken by righteousness" (Lines 19-21) (BAR p. 60)

'"In three days, live, I, Gabriel, command you." ... Ada Yardeni has since agreed with this reading of hayeh and with the translation ... The archangel is ordering someone to rise from the dead within three days.'
-----------------------------------------------------------------
This is a link to another article about false messiahs
http://www.religiousstudies.uncc.edu/jdtabor/4Q521.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Daniel 7:13-14 predicted the Messiah would receive authority - and more importantly (reading this as a Christian) he would be worshiped (as part of the Trinity).
"In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

In Daniel 9, God gave a clear time indicator for the coming of the Messiah with the prophecy of the 70 7's (weeks) of years. The prophecy states that the Messiah would be cut off 69.5 "weeks" (486.5 years) after the command to rebuild Jerusalem. The Jews didn't have the meticulous calendar and dating system we have but they knew that the Messiah should appear near the time that Jesus did.

I heard in a lecture that, in the 1st century, about 16 people were held forth as Messiahs.

An atheist can claim that Jesus was just caught up in the Messianic fervor.
I would claim that SOMEONE was going to be the divinely sent Messiah, Jesus was the true Messiah and the "other Messiahs" are evidence of the trust the Jews had in the prophecy.

http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/messiah/other-historically-significant-jewish-messiah-claimants.html

Interesting quote from B.C.

2008-09-07T22:31:00.004-05:00

This quote is from the Sept/Oct 2008 BAR, page 36:

Theophrastus (372-288 B.C) remarks that "being a race of philosophers, they converse with each other about divinity, and during the night they view the stars, turning their eyes to them and invoking their God with prayers."

On Piety, cited by Poryphry, third century A.D., in

On Abstinence, 2.26. Meyer Reinhold and Lousi Feldman,

Jewish Life and Thought Among Greeks and Romans

(Mpls: Fortress Press, 1996), primary readings, p.7.

In Exodus 19:6a, God says that Israel "will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."

It is fun (a rejoicing kind) to see that the Jewish nation was known by others as a people interested in divinity.

In the New Testament, Peter states that those in Christ "are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. (1 Peter 2:9)

We are called to be declarers of God's excellencies to the world. Oh that modern historians could write of us, that we loved the [true] divinity!

Creation

2008-09-05T20:48:00.004-05:00

"The energy budget of the universe is the total amount of energy and matter in the whole cosmos added up. ... the Universe is 72.1% dark energy, 23.3% dark matter, and 4.62% normal matter. ... everything you can see, taste, hear, touch, just sense in any way ... is less than 5% of the whole Universe.

In other words ... science and rational materialist philosophy is only relevant to five percent of what we currently consider to be all known Creation. Combined with its complete inapplicability to abstract concepts such as justice, equality, and freedom, this shows that even attempting to build a social order on a secular basis is not only doomed to failure, but is quite arguably insane."

Vox Day Website, Vox Popoli, March 8, 2008

from The Journal , by Summit Ministries, August 2008

Global Warming

2008-09-05T20:38:00.003-05:00

"On May Day, Noah Keenlyside of Germany's Leipzig Institute of Marine Science, published a paper in Nature forecasting no additional global warming 'over the next decade.' ... that there has not been any since 1998."

Patrick J. Michaels, The Washington Times, May 16, 2008, P. A21

Folks, we've had one full decade with NO increase in global temperatures!

AND

They do not expect any increase over the next decade!

"Let me recommend Roy W. Spencer's, article "Global Warming and Nature's Thermostat" at http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm Spencer notes that Al Gore says humans put 70 million tons of carbon dioxide (humans breathe!) into the atmosphere every day. What Gore doesn't say is that mother nature puts 24,000 time that amount of grenhouse gases into the atmosphere every day as well!"

both quote are from The Journal , by Summit Ministries, August 2008

Opportunity

2008-09-05T20:36:00.003-05:00

"Thomas Edison once said, 'Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.'"

National Review, June 30, 2008, p. 51

from The Journal , by Summit Ministries, August 2008

Inflation

2008-09-05T20:32:00.004-05:00

"Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owner a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into its arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, baked by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it."

Ayn Rand

"By a continuous process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. The process engages all of the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner that not one man in a million can diagnose."

John Maynard Keynes

both from The Journal , by Summit Ministries, August 2008

Miracles

2008-09-05T20:28:00.004-05:00

"No doubt most stories of Miracles are unreliable, but then, as anyone can see by reading the papers, so are most stories of all events. Each story must be taken on its merits: what one must not do is to rule out the supernatural as the one impossible explanation."

C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock, p. 27

from The Journal , by Summit Ministries, August 2008

A few good blog entries

2008-08-30T11:34:00.002-05:00

Thomas Chalmers was a preacher in the 19th century. A famous sermon of his is "The Expulsive Power of a New Affection"
Here is a link to a blog on the sermon: http://www.christianity.com/blogs/pritchard/11581025/
And a link to the full sermon: http://www.parishpres.org/documents/The%20Expulsive%20Power%20of%20a%20New%20Affection.pdf

I recently read a book edited by Os Guiness which had a biography of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I havn't read any of his books - to my detrimnet.
James Emery White has a recent blog entry about Solzhenitsyn: http://www.christianity.com/blogs/JWhite/11580222/

Secret Rapture Mania

2008-07-11T07:24:00.005-05:00

"News of the Weird" is a weekly syndicated column by Chuck Shepherd. He reviews odd events and pokes fun at them. In his column for this week, Chuck discussed "You've Been Left Behind LLC". They are at http://youvebeenleftbehind.com/index.html

They charge $40 per user per year to store documents you want delivered via email to people after the rapture. They say:
We have set up a system to send documents by the email,
to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the "Rapture" of the Church.
This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail
to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any
false triggering of the system.

Folks - there is NO secret rapture.

1 Thessalonians 4:16a
"For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel"

THIS IS NOT SILENT!

the next verses are in chapter 5:1-3
"Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, "There is peace and security," then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape."

The day of the Lord COMES as a thief in the night, unannounced, but it brings swift and sudden destruction. A pregnant woman wants the "delivery" but does not know when it will come/happen. The birth process can begin at any time - sometimes at very inconvenient times.

2 Thessalonians 1:7-10
"and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed."

When Jesus appears, verse 7 says he will be revealed in flaming fire - not secret!Dispensationalists want this to apply to the end of their Tribulation period, but that is being imposed upon the text. You will not find that anywhere.

2 Thessalonians 2:1-3 and 8
"Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction ... And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming."

The "man of lawlessness" must be revealed first - before the coming of our Lord. And the Lord will kill him with the breath of his mouth.

AGAIN, as in 2 Th 1:7, fire is involved with Jesus' return.

This also corresponds to 2 Peter 3:9-10
"The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed."

Here we see that the long delay of Christ's return (corresponding to the long pregnancy) will be ended unannounced (like a thief that doesn't announce his coming) and the heavens will be consumed (the fire we've seen twice before).

There is a rapture. Believers are "caught up."
And then the fire consumes what remains.
"You've Been Left Behind LLC" will never send those emails and their subscribers will have spent $40 per year for nothing. They need to invest their time in being good ambassadors of Christ - pray for the unsaved, witness to them, show them Christ's love.

Dating the birth of Jesus

2008-06-30T07:00:00.001-05:00

The following is from Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ by Harold W. Hoehner

According to Matthew 2:1 and Luke 1:5, Christ's birth came before Herod's death. ... According to Josephus, an eclipse of the moon occurred shortly before Herod's death. ... this occurred on March 12/13, 4 B.C. After his death there was the celebration of the Passover, the first day of which would have occurred on April 11, 4 B.C. Hence, his death occurred sometime between March 12th and April 11th. ... Christ could not have been born later than March/April of 4 B.C.

Pages 12,13

According to Luke 2:1-5 a census was taken just before Christ's birth. Thus, Christ could not have been born before the census. ... The critics say that Luke's dating of the birth of Christ with the census of Judea, which Josephus places after the deposition of Archelaus in A.D. 6, is a clear historical blunder. But certainly Luke was conscious of chronology in his works. This is seen, for example, in Luke 3:1 and 3:23. Luke was not ignorant of the census mentioned by Josephus which was conducted by Quirinius in A.D. 6-7 since he mentions it in Acts 5:37. He knew that Jesus was not born that late, for he states in Luke 1:5 that the births of John the Baptist and Jesus took place in the days of Herod.

Pages 13,18

Moving along the same line of argumentation [translating Luke 2:2, 'This census was before that census when Quirinius was governor of Syria'] a better solution is the one suggested by [A.J.B.] Higgins. ... Luke is not distinguishing an earlier census from one during the governorship of Quinirius, but is merely stating that the census at the time of the nativity took place some time before Quirinius held office.

Page 21

The above was excerpted from The Journal, December 2007

Comments: one of the added insights of this is that the text of Luke 2:2, which is often translated "was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria" but could be translated "was the first registration before Quirinius was governor of Syria." Given that Luke is a quality historian, this is a reasonable solution to the "dating" problem.

Evangelism Quotes

2008-06-29T10:10:00.003-05:00

Someone asked "Will the heathen who have never heard the Gospel be saved?"
It is more a question with me whether we -- who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not -- can be saved.

Charles Spurgeon

Tell the students to give up their small ambitions and come eastward to preach the gospel of Christ.

Francis Xavier, missionary to India, the Philippines, and Japan

Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth.

John Wesley

Every man is a missionary, now and forever, for good or for evil, whether he intends or designs it or not. He may be a blot radiating his dark influence outward to the very circumference of society, or he may be a blessing spreading benediction over the length and breadth of the world. But a blank he cannot be: there are no moral blanks; there are no neutral characters.

Thomas Chalmers

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't.

John Piper

We shall have all eternity in which to celebrate our victories, but we have only one swift hour before the sunset in which to win them.

Robert Moffatt

Perhaps if there were more of that intense distress for souls that leads to tears, we should more frequently see the results we desire. Sometimes it may be that while we are complaining of the hardness of the hearts of those we are seeking to benefit, the hardness of our own hearts and our feeble apprehension of the solemn reality of eternal things may be the true cause of our want of success.

Hudson Taylor

If sinners be dammed, at least let them leap to Hell over our bodies. If they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees. Let no one GO there UNWARNED and UNPRAYED for.

Charles Spurgeon

I'd rather have people hate me with the knowledge that I tried to save them.

Keith Green

Preach abroad….It is the cooping yourselves up in rooms that has dampened the work of God, which never was and never will be carried out to any purpose without going into the highways and hedges and compelling men and women to come in.

Jonathan Edwards

Could a mariner sit idle if he heard the drowning cry?Could a doctor sit in comfort and just let his patients die?Could a fireman sit idle, let men burn and give no hand?Can you sit at ease in Zion with the world around you DAMNED?

Leonard Ravenhill

Survival of the fittest

2008-06-29T07:00:00.004-05:00

The following are quoted from War Against The Weak by Edwin Black:

In the 1850s, agnostic English philosopher Herbert Spencer published Social Statics, asserting that man and society, in truth, followed the laws of cold science, not the will of a caring, almighty God. Spence popularized a powerful new term: 'survival of the fittest.'

page 12

In 1859, some years after Spencer began to use the term 'survival of the fittest,' the naturalist Charles Darwin summed up years of observation in a lengthy abstract entitled The Origin of Species. Darwin espoused 'natural selection' as the survival process governing most living things in a world of limited resources and changing environments. He confirmed that his theory 'is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms ...

pages 12-13

[Margaret Sanger] became an outspoken social Darwinist, even looking beyond the ideas of Spencer. In her 1922 book, Pivot of Civilization, Sanger thoroughly condemned charitable action. .. Chapter 5, 'The Cruelty of Charity,' was prefaced by an epigraph from Spencer himself: 'Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty. It is a deliberate storing up of miseries for future generations. There is no great curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing population of imbeciles.

... 'Organized charity itself,' she wrote, 'is the symptom of a malignant social disease.
... She condemned philanthropists and repeatedly referred to those needing help as little more than 'human waste.'

page 129

The above is excerpted from The Journal April 2008, (published monthly) by Summit Ministries. http://www.summit.org/

Religous wars

2008-06-28T07:00:00.000-05:00

I've heard Marie Castle (a famous atheist in Minnesota) interviewed several times on the radio. Each time, she blurts out "religion is the cause of all wars".

A few years ago, I was doing street witnessing at the Minnesota State Fair and Marie Castle walked up to me and repeated her mantra, adding "atheists don't start wars".

I retorted "Stalin killed millions of Russians, Pol Pat killed millions of Cambodians. And how about Hitler and Mao?

In their book "Encyclopedia of Wars", Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod catalog a history of warfare. They list 123 wars as "religious wars". That may add fuel to Marie Castle's claim - except that these 123 wars represent only 6.98 percent of all the wars recorded in the encyclopedia!

Baptism and church history

2008-06-27T20:12:00.001-05:00

When preparing to teach about the errors in the book “The DaVinci Code” by Dan Brown, I learned that at the time of Constantine (325 AD) the church believed that baptism washed away sin. (sort of Roman Catholic and Lutheran). That is why Constantine didn’t want to get baptized until he was going to die – that way his sins would be washed away w/ the baptism.

The paedo Baptists argue their case from church history. However, as early as the 4th century, the teaching on baptism had been polluted.

The STATUS of NON-BELIEVERS

2008-06-27T19:45:00.003-05:00

1 Peter 2:10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Ephesians 2:3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.

Unregenerate people are "not a people" and "objects of wrath". Paul applies this pre-conversion status to himself by saying "we". The newborn are “not a people” and are “children of wrath”.

At a recent infant dedication at Bethlehem Baptist Church (Minneapolis), the pastor quoted the Ephesians “object of wrath”, calling that child of a believing couple an child of wrath. This sounds strong, almost harsh, but it seems to be Biblically true.

Baptism

2008-06-22T14:51:00.003-05:00

There are several signs which God instituted which, prior to their new significance as given by God, were "natural".

I would imagine that there were rainbows prior to the Noahic flood. At a minimum, any mist in the air may create a rainbow. But after the flood, God took the rainbow and gave it a new or additional meaning. (Genesis 9:8-17)

Prior to the Abrahamic covenant, circumcision was practiced by several tribes. In Jeremiah 9:25-26 five people groups (plus Israel) are listed as practicing circumcision. Yet God called them all "uncircumcised in heart."

"Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will punish all those who are circumcised merely in the flesh — Egypt, Judah, Edom, the sons of Ammon, Moab, and all who dwell in the desert who cut the corners of their hair, for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart."

In instituting circumcision with Abraham and his descendants, God was giving a special meaning to the "sign" which was already practiced among the people.

The baptism of Christ is different than the baptism of John (as seen in Acts 18:24-28). The significance of Christian Baptism is given by Christ, his death and resurrection and the new covenant. It is BELIEVERS that are in the new covenant. Review the verses quoted in June 8. The unregenerate children of believers are not in the new covenant. They participate in the blessings but they are not born again.

Thus, it is appropriate to reserve baptism only for members of the new covenant.

Greg Bahnsen on baptism

2008-06-20T07:00:00.003-05:00

In a paper on paedo baptism, Greg Bahnsen used the following two verses to argue that God’s principles do not change:

Psalm 89:34 I will not violate my covenant or alter what my lips have uttered.
James 1: 17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

Bahnsen argued that baptism is the New Covenant equivalent of circumcision. Therefore, since God doesn’t change his principles, baptism must be given to infants.

If we are to take Psalm 89:34 in a wooden / literal fashion, God’s covenant included circumcision and circumcision must be continued.

Bahnsen quoted numerous verses about the “sprinkling with water” and “sprinkling with a clean conscience”, both of which are arguments for believer baptism.

Acts 2:39 says that "The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off--for all whom the Lord our God will call."

However, it also says that the promise is for "all who are far off". Bahnsen correctly calls these "Gentiles". But Bahnsen does not apply it to "all" - he reserves baptism for believers and their children.

Given that Peter has said that the promise is to "all whom the Lord our God will call", he has qualified the scope of the promise. It is to "you" (who believe - not even all the hearers believed), "your children" and "gentiles" (people that were not at sermon and will be reached with the gospel ("God will call").

Since I am not strongly "covenantal", I like being challenged when covenantal NT texts are pointed out. One such verse that Bahnsen cited is 1 Cor 10:16:
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?

This implies that the communion cup is more than just a memorial. It is a cup of blessing to the partaker.

The word translated "blessing" is eulogia. In the NIV it is translated "thanksgiving", which mitigates the covenantal implications.
The primary meaning of eulogia is "fine speaking". The gospel (the euaggelion [notice the similarity?]) is God speaking finely to us. In Christ, we are blessed.

Baptism

2008-06-19T23:29:00.003-05:00

Its been about 10 days since I wrote about "washing by water" and "regeneration".

I've been reading articles about infant baptism (paedo baptism) versus believer baptism (credo baptism) and believe that most authors write from their prepositional stance.

Paedo baptists 1) are strongly covenantal in their exegesis and 2) view baptism as the substitute for circumcision.

Credo baptists see baptism as symbolizing entrance into the new covenant.

The texts from my prior two posts steer me towards this credo baptist stance. Those "born of water and the spirit", "sprinkled with clean water", who believes in Christ has "living water flowing from them" are all in the new covenant by faith.

I think it was Luther who said that infants have faith in their parents and parents have faith in Christ. So infants have faith in Christ (indirectly). Is this the "faith" described in the NT?

It seems to follow the paedo baptist logic to its end, they should view baptism like Lutherans or Roman Catholics.

A friend of mine that is in the Federal Vision camp calls the children of believers "saints". He says that these children are objectively under the covenant with their believing parents. A problem with this is that some of those children are not elect. Therefore, they cannot believe in the "perseverance of the saints" - I have not yet heard his response to this.

washed by water / regeneration

2008-06-08T07:21:00.002-05:00

In my 6/7/08 post, I listed several verses about Living Water.
Jesus tells us that he is the Living Water of Zecheriah 14 and Jeremiah 2.
This Living Water cleanses us of our sins, regenerates, sanctifies, and justifies us.

Ephesians 5:26
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,
27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

Titus 3:5
4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared,
5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,
6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior

Hebrews 10:22
21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

John 15:3
1 "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.
2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.

1 Corinthians 6:11
9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,
10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

River of Life

2008-06-07T07:12:00.008-05:00

Two Sundays ago, Jon Piper's sermon was on Psalm 1 (an overview of the entire chapter)
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByDate/2008/2785_Songs_That_Shape_the_Heart_and_Mind/
1 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, ....
2 but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.

Verse 3 had me ping-ponging mentally through the scriptures. I will list them off here and discuss them on other posts.

There is the River of Life and the Tree of Life in Revelation 22:1-3a:
1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb
2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
3 No longer will there be anything accursed

This is a restoration of creation, an "uncursing" from the curse of the fall in Genesis 3.
In Genesis 2:
8 And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
9 And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
10 A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.

Ezekiel 47:1-9
1 Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar.
2 Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around on the outside to the outer gate that faces toward the east; and behold, the water was trickling out on the south side.
3 Going on eastward with a measuring line in his hand, the man measured a thousand cubits, and then led me through the water, and it was ankle-deep.
4 Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was knee-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was waist-deep.
5 Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen. It was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through.
6 And he said to me, "Son of man, have you seen this?" Then he led me back to the bank of the river.
7 As I went back, I saw on the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and on the other.
8 And he said to me, "This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, and enters the sea; when the water flows into the sea, the water will become fresh.
9 And wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very any fish. For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live here the river goes.

Zechariah 14:6-9
6 On that day there shall be no light, cold, or frost.
7 And there shall be a unique day, which is known to the LORD, neither day nor night, but at evening time there shall be light.
8 On that day living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea. It shall continue in summer as in winter.
9 And the LORD will be king over all the earth. On that day the LORD will be one and his name one.

Jeremiah 17:7-8
7 "Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD.
8 He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit."

Jeremiah 2:12-13
12 Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the LORD,
13 for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Jesus told Nicodemus that a person must be "born again" to enter the Kingdom of heaven.

John 3:5-6
5 Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

This is a reference back to Ezekiel 36:25
I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.

John 7:37-39a
37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.
38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'"
39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive

Some important cross references:
Ephesians 5:26
Titus 3:5
Hebrews 10:22

One reason I am listing these verses is that the Reformed camp equates the water with baptism and they equate Jesus statement about eating his flesh in John 7 with commumion. I am investigating and evaluating this.

More reasons we can trust the Disciple's accounts

2008-05-31T07:00:00.001-05:00

1) In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul says "not I, but the Lord" - they learned Jesus' message and quoted Him and distinguished between Jesus' teaching/words and their own.

2) "Son of Man" was a self designation of Jesus in the gospels. If the early church had made up that title, we would expect to see it throughout the rest of the New Testament writings.

3) The early church sprung up with THOUSANDS being added at the Day of Pentecost. They were witnesses to the events or had access to the facts that could have refuted the resurrection if they existed.

4) The disciples gave up their lives for their message. Would you expect someone to die for a message they KNEW was false? No.

Some reasons we can trust the Disciple's accounts (Gospels)

2008-05-30T07:31:00.003-05:00

1) A Disciple's training WAS memory work. Disciples were ready to graduate from their rabbi when they could quote the rabbi verbatim.

2)It was acceptable to condense or summarize a story but not to add to it.

3) Students kept written records. Rabbi EE Ellis said "if your rabbi is teaching and you have no paper, write it on your sleeve."

4) Jesus spoke in poetry - the rhyming rabbi - making him easier to remember.

5) The events were memorable, making them stay fresh in the mind.

6) As an oral society, they were better at remembering spoken words.

7) The early church regarded the writings of the apostles as scripture and "protected" them.
Tertullian, when writing about baptism, said "if the writing that wrongly go under Paul's name" (The Acts of Paul)
[my apology for not knowing the following fellow's name - I got this item from a speech] Tekel (sp) wrote using Paul's name as author and was removed from church office - disciplined for fabricating the text.

Caring about TRUTH

2008-05-29T07:00:00.003-05:00

"If God exists, then he is the measure of all things, and what he thinks about all things is the measure of what we should think. Not to care about truth is not to care about God. To love God passionately is to love truth passionately. Being God-centered in life means being truth-driven in ministry. What is not true is not of God. What is false is anti-God. Indifference to the truth is indifference to the mind of God. Pretense is rebellion against reality, and what makes reality reality is God. Or concern with truth is simply an echo of our concern with God. and all this is rooted in God's concern with God, or God's passion for the glory of God."

John Piper, "God's Passion..." p97

C.S. Lewis - our desires are too weak

2008-05-28T07:00:00.001-05:00

C.S. Lewis, in The Weight of Glory wrote
If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (p2, GPFHG 81)

Heady stuff from Jonathon Edwards on the Trinity and revelatin

2008-05-27T07:00:00.005-05:00

I'll find longer/better quotes to flesh this out another day - may you be edified anyway :-)

Jonathon Edwards, in his "The Miscellanies" wrote:
God is glorified within Himself these two ways: 1. By appearing ... to Himself in His own perfect idea [of Himself], or in His Son, who is the brightness of His glory. 2. By enjoying and delighting in Himself, by flowing forth in infinite love and delight towards Himself, or in his Holy Spirit ... So God glorifies Himself toward the creatures also in two ways; 1. By appearing to ... their understanding. 2. In communicating Himself to their hearts, and in their rejoicing and delighting in, and enjoying, the manifestations which He made of Himself ... God is glorified not only by His glory's being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart. God made the world that He might communicate, and the creature receive, His glory,; and that it might [be] received both by the mind and heart. He that testifies his idea of God's glory [doesn't] glorify God so much as he that testifies also his approbation of it and his delight in it. (GPFHG 79)

Later in "God's Passion for His Glory" (p84), John Piper wrote two paragraphs fleshing out Edwards discussion of the Trinity:

The Son of God is the eternal idea or image that God has of himself. And the image that he has of himself is so perfect and so complete and so full as to be the living, personal reproduction (or begetting) of God the Father. And this living , personal image or radiance or form of God is God, namely, God the Son. And therefore God the Son is coeternal with God the Father and equal in essence and glory.

And between the Son and the Father there arises eternally and infinitely holy personal communion of love. "The divine essence itself flows out and is, as it were, breathed forth in love and joy. So that the Godhead therein stands forth in yet another manner of subsistence, and there proceeds the third person in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit."

The Son is the standing forth of God knowing himself perfectly, and the Spirit is the standing forth of God loving himself perfectly. ... I saw a more profound unity in the nature of things than I had ever imagined.

The need for Theology and its goal (cont)

2008-05-26T07:00:00.003-05:00

"the strong timber of the tree of evangelicalism has historically been the great doctrines of the Bible - God's glorious perfections, man's fallen nature, the wonders of redemptive history, the magnificent work of redemption in Christ, the saving and sanctifying work of grace in the soul, the great mission of the church in conflict with the world and the flesh and the devil, and the greatness of our hope in everlasting joy at God's right hand. These things once defined us and were the strong fiber and timber beneath the fragile leaves and fruit of our religious experiences. But this is the case less and less. And that is why the waving leaves of success and the sweet fruit of prosperity are not a auspicious to David Wells and Os Guinness as they are to many. It is a hollow triumph, and the tree is getting weaker and weaker while the branches are waving in the sun. (Piper, GPFHG 78)

The need for Theology and its goal

2008-05-25T07:00:00.002-05:00

In "Fit Bodies Fat Minds, Os Guiness wrote:
the present state of American evangelicalism is appalling. As a spiritually and theologically defined community of faith, evangelicalism is weak or next to nonexistent; as a subculture, it is stronger but often embarrassing and downright offensive.

In "Losing our Virtue", David Wells wrote:
Twenty five years ago ... theology was a more honorable word, and there was a sense of mission that was infectious. That was the day when the trees that stood tall in this world were usually made so by their theological conviction and not simply by their money, size of their church, ... there has nevertheless come a hollowing out of evangelical conviction, a loss of the biblical Word in it authoritative function, and an erosion of character... (GPFHG 78)

Piper:The great end of all study - all theology - is a heart for God and a life of holiness. (GPFHG 75)

Worship

2008-05-24T07:00:00.004-05:00

John Piper:
The basic movement of worship on Sunday morning is not to come with our hands full to give to God, as though he needed anything (Acts 17:25), but to come with our hands empty, to receive from God. And what we receive in worship is the fullness of God, not the feelings of entertainment. We ought to come hungry for God. We should come saying, "As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God. ...." (Ps. 42:1-2). God is mightily honored when a people know that they will die of hunger and thirst unless they have God.
.... If the focus in corporate worship shifts onto our giving to God, one result I have seen again and again is that subtly it is not God that remains at the center but the quality of our giving.
(GPFHG 41 bold added)

Hell

2008-05-23T06:59:00.005-05:00

John Piper:
Hell is unspeakably real, conscious, horrible and eternal - the experience in which God vindicates the worth of his glory in holy wrath on those who would not delight in what is infinitely glorious. If infinitely valuable glory has been spurned, and the offer of eternal joy in God has been finally rejected, an indignity against God has been committed so despicable as to merit eternal suffering. (GPFHG 38)

Jonathon Edwards has a sermon dedicated to the justification of hell:
Wicked Men Useful in Their Destructin Only
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/edwards/sermons.destruction.html
Proverbs 16:4 "The LORD has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble." (ESV)

Footnote: GPFHG stands for God's Passion for His Glory. Any quote prior to page 125 is from the preface written by John Piper. Starting at page 125 is Edwards work " The End for Which God Created the World"

God's love for you

2008-05-22T07:10:00.006-05:00

"The love of God for sinners is not his making much of them, but his graciously freeing and empowering them to enjoy making much of him." (Piper GPFHG 35)

"True saints have their minds, in the first place, inexpressibly pleased and delighted with ... the things of God. But the dependence of the affections of hypocrites in in a contrary order: they first rejoice ... that they are made so much of by God; and then on that ground, he seems in a sort, lovely to them." (Jonathon Edwards GPFHG 35)

Evan:
Do we love God as God or do we love Him as the one who "cares so much about ME"?
Do we see His infinite beauty or do we think we are beautifully and, so, he makes much of us?

Cosmic treason - the seriousness of sin

2008-05-21T07:05:00.001-05:00

If I stomp on an ant, (most) people won’t care.
If I trap/kill a mouse, (most) people won’t care.
If I kick a pet dog, more people will be concerned. (Michael Vick got jail time.)
If I behave that way toward a child, I will be put in jail.
If I JUST PLAN to hurt the President of the US, I would be in BIG trouble.

The greater the stature of the creature, the greater the offense.
The perfect, glorious, creator God is INFINITELY holy. Therefore, rebellious activity (sin) against "that" God is correspondingly greatly offensive.

It is cosmic treason.
We underestimate God's glory and we overestimate our worth.

An atheist friend recently wrote, "If someone were to reject this perfect being, that would be no skin of its back. It would let them choose." He sees his sin as too small and he see God as too inconsequential.

God's glory shown in mercy

2008-05-20T07:00:00.007-05:00

John Piper:
God's righteousness is his unwavering commitment to uphold and display the infinite worth of his glory in all that he does, which would seem to require punishment for all who have "fallen short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). But since God's righteousness (his commitment to his glory) and his mercy (his commitment to our joy) are not ultimately at odds, he made a way to "be both just and the justifier of him who has faith in Jesus" (Rom. 3:26) GPFHG p. 33

Evan:
God created this universe and the angelic dimension to show forth (exhibit) all of His attributes.

As a Trinity, God already had/displayed love. This may be why the Bible says that “God is love”. However, there would be no display of judgment, wrath or mercy.

If the goal of creation is to display forth all of the attributes in their perfection, His numerous attributes WILL be shown in their perfection. Thus, there both heaven and hell, mercy and judgment.

Praising God

2008-05-19T08:21:00.010-05:00

C.S. Lewis wrote
"I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation." (Reflections on the Psalms p.95 GPFHG)

We quickly and gladly tell people about a good restaurant we've eaten at.
We are excited to talk of a quality movie.

How much more should we be caught up in the joy of knowing the creator of the universe. The sustainer of all things. The savior of our souls who indwells us and promises an eternity with Him!
------------------------------------------------
I found this story among my father’s belongings:
Betty, aged four, was taken by her governess to have tea with an aunt.
Presently she began to eat a piece of very rich cake.

“Oh, I just love this chocolate cake!” she exclaimed. “It’s awfully nice.”

"Betty, dear” corrected her governess, “it is wrong to say you love cake,
and I’ve frequently pointed out that ‘just’ is wrongly used in such a sentence.
Again, ‘awfully’ is quite wrong, ‘very’ would be more correct, dear.
Now repeat your remark, please.”

Betty obediently repeated: “I like chocolate cake; it is very good.”
“That’s better, dear,” said the governess, approvingly.
“But it sounds as if I was talking about bread,” protested the little girl.

We have the treasure of God incarnate, the indwelling Holy Spirit, adoption as children of God – do we SHOW IT?