Classical Music

Okay, here's a totally frivolous post. This one goes back to the days when singers could, well, sing. Enjoy.

EXCELLENT Apologetics Resource

Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason now has a series of short apologetics videos on YouTube. Over the years I have found his work to be not only accessible and winsome, but deeply profound and on-point. You would do well to watch these several times and bookmark his STR channel to be able to play them for co-workers as well as fellow Christians. This is powerful stuff--you don't want to miss having it in your tool kit!

Here's a sample on "Why is Jesus the Only Way?"

Dabney on Eternal Security

Why "Dead Theologians' Society"? Because there is a reason that the works of these old-school theologians are considered classics. Consider this example from one of my favorites, R. L. Dabney:

"Scripture and experience concur in imputing to man, in his natural state, an obduracy and deadness of heart, which would leave the preacher of the gospel to labor in despair, were it not for his dependence on the sovereign grace of God. But when he believes firmly in the eternal covenant of grace, whereby God has promised His Son a chosen seed, not for any merit which He sees in sinners, and to call and perfect this seed by His efficacious grace, there is ground laid for cheerful exertions. The laborious Christian then looks upon his own efforts for sinners, as one of the preordained steps in this plan of mercy, upon his prayers as taught him by the Holy Spirit, and therefore surely destined to an answer; and upon the visible success of his labors, as the evidence that God, whose plans are immutable, and who always perfects what He undertakes, is working. He is joyfully hopeful concerning the final triumph of those who are born unto God by his instrumentality, because he sees an eternal purpose and unchangeable love engaged for their upholding. He can cheerfully leave them, though surrounded with the snares of the world; because he leaves the Chief Shepherd with them, who will easily raise up other instruments and provide other means for their guidance."

I have noticed that the more man-centered our concept of the Gospel becomes, the more we struggle with assurance. The doctrine of eternal security must be founded upon a monergistic concept of salvation or it crumbles into nonsense.

Bible Study at Warp 10

You've been there. You have a Sunday school lesson to prepare and 1,001 other things to do this week as well. And, let's be honest, the same holds true for those preparing Sunday morning sermons as well. You've just settled in with your favorite commentary and a good cup of coffee, and the phone rings. A young couple in the church is having their first big fight. Sermon prep gets pushed aside as you address the next crisis in line.

Most of us have two choices, really: either you do your best to squeeze study in around everything else, or you try to convince the flock that they're not being neglected as you squeeze everything else in around study. Some take a third choice--sacrifice the family; but that's not a Biblical choice so let's PLEASE drop it off our radar.

There is another option, though. You can concentrate your Bible study during the time that you do have. That is exactly what Logos Bible study software enables you to do. If you only have an hour here and there, use the FULL hour studying, rather than hunting books, trying to remember where you read this or that quote, turning pages, bouncing back and forth to an index, and shuffling books and papers around to make room on your desk.

I was one of those bibliophiles who swore that I would never switch to electronic books. But I cannot tell you how thankful I am that I did. Now I have access to more books in less time, and my study time is concentrated, allowing me to prepare higher-quality meals for the sheep.

Stop by the Logos web site and check out the demo videos. Yes, the packages are pricey, but as the old saying goes, "You can make more money; you can't make more time."

When the Church Gets Long in the Tooth

Douglas Wilson posted this on Blog & Mablog this morning:

"'For example, the biblical pattern of evangelism was not at all like our modern method of picking off the devil's stragglers, but rather a pattern of bringing the good news to household after household' (Mother Kirk, p. 236)."

I couldn't help but think that the reason the church only goes after stragglers now is that she's just not as quick on her feet as she used to be.

Isaiah 43:11-13

Another text to avoid if you want to remain comfortably Arminian:

“I, even I, am the Lord, And there is no savior besides Me. It is I who have declared and saved and proclaimed, and there was no strange god among you; so you are My witnesses,” declares the Lord, “And I am God. Even from eternity I am He, and there is none who can deliver out of My hand; I act and who can reverse it?” (NASB)

Theology Matters

James White has some excellent thoughts in his latest blog post here.

Here's a sample to whet your appetite:

"Theology matters. The substance of what God in His infinite wisdom has revealed to His creatures is the marrow of the joy of the believer's heart---and mind. Theology matters because theology is possible because of God's initiative in revelation. What God reveals is, by definition, important, central, vital, life-changing, heart-enrapturing, for all in whom the Spirit dwells. And thanks be to God, when one is absorbed in seeking to think God's thoughts after Him, the resultant joy cannot be touched by all the enemies in the world."

Amazingly Close

Just finished the new movie Amazing Grace (I was going to catch it in the theaters but frankly I got so sick of seeing LifeWay prostituting itself once again for the sake of yet another movie that I held off). I found that it was a very enjoyable movie -- I love period pieces -- with a stellar cast. Albert Finney has always amazed me with his abilities. He is an absolute chameleon. But there was something unsatisfying about the film. I couldn't quite put my finger on it at the time, but I think that I've figured it out now:

The movie treats the Christianity of its main characters with respect. I am actually glad that they avoided clubbing us over the head with it, as it made the characters more natural (although they certainly didn't mind a good deal of preachiness regarding the abolition issue). The movie does a wonderful job of capturing Wilberforce's passion and Newton's abject repentance as the core of the characters. However, it seemed to fail to make the vital connection to show that the men were abolitionists BECAUSE they were Christians--that their compassion for the helpless arose from their Christianity and not from mere humanitarianism.

Wilberforce, a student of the great Calvinist preacher John Newton, had a profound understanding of man's sinfulness. His theology was captured in the words of his mentor, preserved in the film, that "I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great Savior." It was a lack of this understanding, he believed, that was at the heart of the corrupted Christianity of his day; and that led professing Christians to support social evils such as slavery.

In his book Real Christianity Wilberforce wrote:

"But here, I am afraid, is the very place where we find the greatest flaw in the faith of most professing Christians. This flaw is like a physical defect, like a malfunction in our hearts that at first has no external symptoms and yet eventually puts out all the body's energy and motion, a paralysis that spreads through the entire organism until each molecule of the body falls still and silent. This defect that I am talking about is closely related to the last chapter's main subject: "They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick" (Luke 5:31). If we had really felt the burden of our sins, if we were aware that they are a load that we are not strong enough to bear, if we knew that eventually the weight of them would sink us into destruction, our emotions would have rejoiced when we heard the grace in this invitation: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28).

But when we barely feel the weight of our sin at all, we would be merely putting on an act if we pretended to think highly of the deliverance we have been offered. That is why few people even bother with this pretense anymore; if the most superficial observer were to compare the feelings and opinions of most Christians with the doctrines that we still keep in our creed, and with the Scripture's strong language, that person could not help but be struck by the amazing contrast between the two."

The more things change, the more they stay the same, n'est ce pas?

Why Not? part 2

You have GOT to see that this is the real strength of the praise & worship push.

Why Not?

"John the Baptist Gummy Locusts". I love it. Coming soon with the DELUXE Jerry Falwell Faith Partner Home Communion Kit.

Let's Do the Time Warp Again

A friend of mine just sent me this plaintive cry from a seminary student. It reminded me of when I was in Bible college, and the theory of relativity took on new meaning as one second in a certain prof's class lasted 1,527 times longer than an equal amount of time talking to my fiancé.

"I’ve recently fallen into a paradoxical blip in the time-space continuum. That is, to me, each day lasts for one week (7 days; 168 hours; 10,080 minutes; 604,800 seconds) while each week is as short as a single day (24 hours; 1440 minutes; 86,400 seconds). Wrap your firing synapses around that one. Believe me; I’m just as bewildered as you are. As far as I can tell, for the rest of humanity, time crawls by second-by-second, minute-by-minute, hour-by hour, and so on. For me, however, the past two months—I mean years, no, minutes—have been the slowest, fastest months I’ve ever encountered. Imagine: in the same amount of time (I struggle to use that term with a straight face) it takes the earth to make one 360° rotation, I’ve aged a full week. Yet, after the same earth has completed the same 360° rotation seven times, I’ve only experienced one 24-hour period. At this rate, I will have aged approximately sixty years in the next ten; but I won’t celebrate my 24th birthday until the year 2014, 25th until 2021, and so on. This doesn’t compute.With all of my extra free time (that I keep running out of) I have been trying to pinpoint the exact moment this paradox began. I ate some stale cheese a while back. I knew it wasn’t healthy, but extreme hunger (just like extreme boredom, lust, fatigue, obsession, and temperatures) cause one to do things outside of one’s character. I figured the worst that would happen to me is an upset stomach, a doctor’s visit, or a stomach pump—nothing too serious. How was I to know that some green cheese was would cause a catastrophic lapse in time? I doubt that was the cause."

EXPELLIARMUS!

Something I've been noticing more and more lately is the way prayer has been transformed into a series of magical incantations. And I'm not talking about the Ken Copeland "prayer is the container of the force of faith" gibberish. I'm talking about US. We are told to "pray on" God's protection, to "pray a hedge around" someone. Or how about the classic preaching on "the power of prayer". We don't really mean that the power is in our prayers, but in God; nevertheless this kind of sloppy terminology leaves its mark.

Prayer is treated like a series of magic spells, and if we can just use the right words our conjuring will be successful. Don't believe me? Charismatics aren't the only ones with a "prayer language". Where else would you use phrases like "travelling mercies," "lead, guide, and direct," or constant repetitions of the name of the addressee? ("Lord, I pray, Lord, that you would help me, Lord, to do what's right" etc. -- next prayer meeting, just count the number of times you do it.)

How about we substitute "the power of prayer" with the phrase "the power of God" for starters.

Heaven's Credit Check?

In a discussion Sunday about the ordo salutis I was a bit stymied by some questions I was getting peppered with. The questions focused on what I would say to invite a sinner to be saved. Maybe it was the post-fellowship-dinner Call of the Nap, but I just wasn't getting it. Then I caught some comments by Erroll Hulse in the classic The Great Invitation that shed light on the issue:

Apparently, some hyper-Calvinists have advanced the idea that there must be some perceptible, preparatory work in the heart before a person has the "right" to believe; and we therefore have no business calling anyone to believe until they have been "pre-qualified" through the work of the Spirit.

In the immortal words of Nero Wolfe, "Pfui!"

Yes, I believe that regeneration must precede faith. You don't get from "there is none that seeketh after God" to "Lord, I believe" without Divine intervention. But that is a logical order, not a chronological order. Hulse puts it beautifully:

"Why then should a man believe? The answer is that the sovereign God of heaven and earth commands it. This is called the 'warrant' of faith. The word warrant simply means the right to believe. This is important because many think that they must first be subject to a spiritual experience which gives them a reason or right to believe. It may be an experience of inspiration or of deep conviction of sin, but the idea is that you should experience something special before you believe. Once this erroneous concept possesses the soul, much harm is done because it means that the person in question becomes passive. Instead of thinking in terms of working for faith, the soul says to itself, 'There is nothing I can do until something happens within me.' I have come across such people who are very faithful in church attendance, but are dominated by the idea that nothing can be done by themselves. They have become fatalistic in attitude." (Hulse, The Great Invitation, p. 56)

God Glorified in the Ruins

"To study atheistic nations, pantheistic, polytheistic nations that have renounced God for themselves, you don't study them by travelling to them. You go to books and look at pictures of their ruins. You study their charred remains."
- Tommy Nelson, "A Sermon to America from a Long Gone King"

MUST-HEAR Sermon!

You have GOT to hear this message. Powerful, timely, Biblical. Download it, stream it, audio or video -- but don't miss it!

Men That We Need

I've been reading Erroll Hulse's book The Great Invitation. Last night my father-in-law sent me a link to an article by Hulse. Here's the cap-stone of the article:

Let us intercede earnestly for:
1. Men who have burning hearts of love for God and men, who fear God and nothing else but sin, who have an inexhaustible zeal for God's glory, and who are ready to die, if need be, for Christ.
2. Men who possess a thorough knowledge of Scripture and who are able to expound any text in a systematic and convincing manner.
3. Men who are gifted in doctrinal comprehension and who love the tried and tested doctrines of the faith.
4. Men who love and study church history, who specialize in the history of evangelical reformations and revivals, who know what the martyrs believed and died for, and who can competently apply an extensive knowledge of church history to the present day.
5. Men who are humble enough to apply themselves to small spheres of labor but who, at the same time, have a world vision, following missionary movements everywhere, doing everything in their power to help fulfill the Great Commission.
6. Men who know how to meet the evils of the age, who have a plan from God for our day, who are competent and aggressive in evangelism, and who are sons of thunder rather than showmen.
7. Men who do not follow infidels but concentrate like the apostles on power in preaching the gospel.
8. Men who will not compromise the truth for the sake of expediency, who have the courage to discard that which is merely traditional, oppose that which is unscriptural, and yet be respectful of those who do not measure up to the spiritual dimensions here described.

And may the Lord grant that we would be such men.

Butchering Longhorns

Chuck Swindoll posted an excellent comment on Longhorn Sermons on his blog "The Pastor's Soul". Here's a quick exerpt. Be sure to check out the entire post.

"There are all kinds of sermons: topical sermons, biographical sermons, expository sermons . . . and longhorn sermons—a point here, and a point there, and a lot of bull in between! It’s easy to preach those kinds of sermons, isn’t it?
A mentor of mine told me about the time he worked for an older pastor who used to come to the pulpit unprepared. So he would try to prepare during the song service. “Lord, give me something to say,” he’d pray. “Give me Your message.” After another song he’d ask again, “Lord, give me Your message.” Every Sunday it happened.
“One day,” the pastor said, “the Lord finally gave me His message. God told me, ‘Ralph, you’re lazy. That’s my message.’”
To be blunt, the issue of pastoral sloth is one of the major battles we must fight as pastors. It breeds longhorns."

Parents are Geniuses

Check out this mind-blowing revelation from ABC News.

WELL, DUUUUUUHH!!

A Prada Bible Belt (and matching purse and shoes)

Came across this article in the Christian Post this morning. Here's an idea: let's forget about our Baptist roots and focus on coloring our highlights.

"Texas Baptists elected their first female president in a narrow vote on Monday.
Retired missionary Joy Fenner was elected by a 900 to 840 vote during the annual meeting of the Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) – the largest state Baptist convention in the country. She defeated second-generation candidate David Lowrie by one of the smallest margins in BGCT history."

Isn't Christianity so much simpler since we decided we knew better than God? Hey, it's not like it's His Church or anything, right?

My Favorite Preachin' Bible

In our "Bible DIY" category, I wanted to show you my new favorite Bible. A couple of months ago Cambridge, the Aston-Martin of Bible publishers, came out with their first NASB Wide-Margin Bible. My understanding is that Pastor Mark Minnick from Mt. Calvary Baptist, as well as some other pastors, had a great deal of input into the new design features such as thicker paper and a wider margin. This is a Bible for serious study -- built to last under heavy use. It's fairly pricey (I found Amazon has the cheapest list price now), but with the top-quality leather and hand stitched, lay-flat binding, you get what you pay for. Some may find the print a bit small (if you're familiar with Cambridge Bibles, they used their Pitt-Minion typeface). My biggest problem has been adjusting to the paragraph format. Takes some getting used to when you grew up Old Scofield like I did, but the clarity and precision of the NASB makes it well worth the effort.

I've found that, with proper care, a Uni-Ball Signo Micro 207 gel pen does really well for clean, bold marking on Cambridge's paper.

The Bible for the Blogosphere

Found a new online Bible reading tool designed with the MySpace crowd in mind. You can read your favorite translation, highlight & markup your favorite texts, and then journal your thoughts. A great way to spend your breaks and lunches at work. Check it out here.