Tuesday, February 28, 2006
On Martin Burnham a glorious entery into eternity
By Stefan J. Bos
ASSIST News Service
June 17, 2002
Crosswalk.com News Channel - A memorial service was held June 14 for American missionary Martin Burnham, who was shot and killed a week ago during a gun battle between government troops and Muslim militants in the jungle of the Philippines, according to reports monitored by ASSIST News Service. A Filipino nurse, Deborah Yap, was also killed during the partially failed rescue attempt by the Philippine army on June 7.
The ceremony for Martin (42) was conducted in the Central Christian Church in Wichita, Kansas, where residents had prayed around the clock for him and his wife since they were kidnapped last year by Abu Sayaf Group rebels.
Martin's 43-year old wife Gracia, who survived but is still in a wheelchair because of a bullet wound, and their three children Jeff (15), Mindy (12) and Zach (11) were among the thousands of people that attended the emotionally charged service.
Also present were representatives of the Bush Administration, former senator Bob Dole, Senator Sam Brownback, Rep. Todd Tiahrt and the Philippine Ambassador Albert del Rosario, according to news reports.
Outside the church, the staff of nearby stores stood on the street, paying their respects by holding flags and sympathy cards as police directed traffic, eyewitnesses said.
Alex Branch of The Wichita Eagle newspaper described the church service as a "joyous memorial" being held by friends and family, the Religious Media Agency said. "The family's poise impressed all those who have tried to imagine themselves in the family's place," he was quoted as saying.
Martin Burnham went to the Philippines with his missionary parents in 1969. Less than two decades later, he and his wife began working for the New Tribes Mission (NTM) in 1986. He soon became known as a dedicated pilot for missionaries, delivering their mail, supplies and encouragement.
Martin was often heard praying and singing during the one-year hostage ordeal that began when the Burnhams were kidnapped after celebrating their 18th wedding anniversary at the Dos Palmas beach resort near the island of Palawan.
Four days earlier on May 23, 2001, he reportedly remarked at his farewell meeting: "I wasn't called to be a missionary. I wasn't called to the Philippines. I was just called to follow Christ; and that's what I'm doing."
During the Memorial Service, much of which had been planned by Martin, the Rev. Galen Hinshaw read letters written by the children. Mindy told of her father singing to her, "playfully inserting her name into the song's lyrics."
The 12-year-old wrote: "Even though we weren't a rich family, any time I would want or needed anything, he did his best to get it for me." And their 15-year-old son, Jeff, told of a father who would always make time for him and planned to teach him to fly. "I'm going to miss our times together," he wrote.
The Rev. Oli Jacobsen, chairman of the New Tribes Mission executive committee, spoke of Martin as being "kind and gentle, but he was no weak person." NTM has reported that since the kidnapping, 5,000 people have registered to receive updates by e-mail and 1,000 checked the website for the latest information.
Martin had told his wife prior to his death that, if he should die, he wanted his funeral to have a sermon by Rev. Clay Bowlin, a Kansas City pastor at Northwest Bible Church and a fellow student with Martin at Calvary Bible College in Kansas City, Missouri.
Bowlin described how a hungry Martin and Gracia shared their food during captivity with the younger members of the Abu Sayyaf, many of whom were only children - children with guns - "because they were hungry, too."
Roxana Hegeman, an Associated Press Writer noted that Bowling told how people around the world prayed for the Burnhams' release. "Gracia told him that He (the Lord) brought her home by helicopter and brought Martin by angels' wings." His family believes that he is now in the heavenly home of Jesus Christ, who Martin Burnham considered to be his Lord and Savior.
Residents, friends and family have set up a Martin & Gracia Burnham Benefit Fund for donations to help Gracia and her children. Donations can be send to: Martin & Gracia Burnham Benefit Fund, C/O: Rose Hill Bank, P.O. Box 68, Rose Hill, KS 67133. Burnham Family Trust C/O: Valley View Bank, 7500 W. 95th Street. Family e-mails can be sent to New Tribes Mission at ntm@ntm.org.
The title on the Article was "Bush official pays respect" But why is this relevent in any way?
Enviornment or Genes
Jim Lewis and clerical worker Jim Springer, Identical twins separated five weeks after birth, they were raised by families 80 miles apart in Ohio. Reunited 39 years later, they would have strained the credulity of the editors of Ripley=s Believe it or Not. Not only did both have dark hair, stand six feet tall and weigh 180 pounds, but they spoke with the same inflections, moved with the gait and made the gestures. Both loved stock car racing and hated baseball. Both married women named Linda, divorced them and married women named Betty. Both drove Chevrolets, drank Miller light, chain-smoked Salem's and vacationed on the same half-mile stretch of Florida beach. Both had elevated blood pressure, severe migraines and had undergone vasectomies. Both hit their nails. Their heart rates, brain waves and IQ's were nearly identical. Their scores on personality tests were as close as if one person had taken the same test twice.
...
Studies of twins have produced an impressive list of attributes or behaviours that appear to owe at least as much to heredity as to environment. It includes alienation. Extroversions, traditionalism, leadership, career choice, risk aversion, attention deficit disorder, religious conviction and vulnerability to stress. one study even concluded that happiness is 80 percent heritable C it depends little on wealth, achievement or marital status. Another study found that while both optimism and pessimism are heavily influenced by genes, environment affects optimism but not pessimism
From Steve Camps Blog On church Growth
August 11th 2005
which one are we known for in America today?
Taking some license with Stephen Covey's best selling tome, "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People",here are three very different, but apt descriptions of church models that exist today. These lists are not exhaustive... and they were written with a broad brush strokes, intentionally, to include a wide variety of church "experiences" in each category. In fact, I would like to know what would your lists comprise of? Read
Ephesians 4:11-16 to get a glimpse into the church that glorifies God.
Seven highly effective habits of the Contemporary Church that almost always guarantee church growth with very little spiritual impact:
1. Go political, not biblical
2. Go pragmatic, not theological
3. Go psychological, not discipleship
4. Go anthropocentric, not Christocentric
5. Go postmodern, not transcendent
6. Go share your story, not all for His glory
7. Go sickness, not sin; go disease not, disobedience
Seven highly effective habits of the Traditional Church that almost always guarantee church stagnation with very little spiritual impact:
1. Go traditional, not spiritual
2. Go legalistic, not grace
3. Go corporate, not community
4. Go count converts, not make disciples
5. Go pastoral/elder ruler, not shepherd/servant leader
6. Go more information, not Christlikeness 7. Go programs, not prayer
Seven highly effective habits of the Biblical Church that almost always guarantee Gods blessing and spiritual impact:
1. Go supremacy of God and His glory in worship
2. Go sola fide, sola scriptura, sola gratia, solus Christus, Soli Deo Gloria
3. Go The Great Commission and the Two Great Commandments
4. Go take care of the poor, the widow and the orphan
5. Go discipline of sin 6. Go pray without ceasing
7. Go equip the saints for the work of the ministry
The Paradigm
Many definitions float around in society and clusters of people who have common interest or purposes to interrelate. The sociological anthropological field is no different. What needs to happen within these bodies then is for an official body to standardized terms. Sometimes this body just becomes a well-respected author. Paradigm is one such word. In the non-anthropological world the word is defined by the Oxford Dictionary by a Apattern or example." While the dictionary of anthropology says Aparadigm to a theoretical model to explain of social behaviour. Paradigm refers to that part of the culture that defines the culture. It is the essence of the culture. Parts of the Paradigm might be exhibited in other cultures but only one culture one culture that exhibit all of the characteristics of the paradigm.
A paradigm might be delineated by behaviour and worldview. If we delve deeper into the aspects of behaviour and world view we would find that different parts of the culture inter mingle so that the behaviour is not separated from the world view. The behaviour in various ways creates the worldview and conversely the worldview establishes what the behaviour is.
It would appear wonderful to have a hierarchical listing of behaviour, worldview, or location that forms the worldview but culture does not delineate within itself to decide that certain aspects of it are less necessary than others. Certain cultures emphasise different aspects of the paradigm model but all the aspects would be found in a culture, and all of them lead in creating the Paradigm.
The different factors that create the worldview are concept of the individual, patterns of behaviour, assumptions about the world and the way people should behave
What is the Doctrine of the Trinity?
What is the doctrine of the Trinity?
Is the Trinity contradictory?
What is the difference between essence and person?
What are some applications of this doctrine?
The doctrine of the Trinity means that there is one God who eternally exists as three distinct Persons--the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Stated differently, God is one in essence and three in person. These definitions express three crucial truths: (1) The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct Persons, (2) each Person is fully God, (3) there is only one God.
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct Persons. The Bible speaks of the Father as God (Phil. 1:2), the Jesus as God (Titus 2:13), and the Holy Spirit as God (Acts 5:3-4). Are these just three different ways of looking at God, or simply ways of referring to three different roles that God plays?
The answer must be no, because the Bible also indicates that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct Persons. For example, since the Father sent the Son into the world (John 3:16), He cannot be the same person as the Son. Likewise, after the Son returned to the Father (John 16:10), the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit into the world (John 14:26; Acts 2:33). Therefore, the Holy Spirit must be distinct from the Father and the Son.
In the baptism of Jesus, we see the Father speaking from heaven and the Spirit descending from heaven in the form of a dove as Jesus comes out of the water (Mark 1:10-11). In John 1:1 it is affirmed that Jesus is God and, at the same time, that He was "with God"--thereby indicating that Jesus is a distinct Person from God the Father (cf. also 1:18). And in John 16:13-15 we see that although there is a close unity between them all, the Holy Spirit is also distinct from the Father and the Son.
The fact that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct Persons means, in other words, that the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father. Jesus is God, but He is not the Father or the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God, but He is not the Son or the Father. They are different Persons, not three different ways of looking at God.
The personhood of each member of the Trinity means that each Person has a distinct center of consciousness. Thus, they relate to each other personally--the Father regards Himself as "I," while He regards the Son and Holy Spirit as "You." Likewise the Son regards Himself as "I," but the Son and the Holy Spirit as "You."
Often it is objected that "If Jesus is God, then he must have prayed to himself while he was on earth." But the answer to this objection lies in simply applying what we have already seen. While Jesus and the Father are both God, they are different Persons. Thus, Jesus prayed to God the Father without praying to Himself. In fact, it is precisely the continuing dialog between the Father and the Son (Matthew 3:17; 17:5; John 5:19; 11:41-42; 17:1ff) which furnishes the best evidence that they are distinct Persons with distinct centers of consciousness.
Sometimes the Personhood of the Father and Son is appreciated, but the Personhood of the Holy Spirit is neglected. Sometimes the Spirit is treated more like a "force" than a person. But the Holy Spirit is not an it, but a He (see John 14:26; 16:7-15; Acts 8:16). The fact that the Holy Spirit is a Person, not an impersonal force (like gravity), is also shown by the fact that He speaks (Hebrews 3:7), reasons (Acts 15:28), thinks and understands (1 Corinthians 2:10-11), wills (1 Corinthians 12:11), feels (Ephesians 4:30), and gives personal fellowship (2 Corinthians 13:14). These are all qualities of personhood. In addition to these texts, the others we mentioned above make clear that the Personhood of the Holy Spirit is distinct from the Personhood of the Son and the Father. They are three real persons, not three roles God plays.
Another serious error people have made is to think that the Father became the Son, who then became the Holy Spirit. Contrary to this, the passages we have seen imply that God always was and always will be three Persons. There was never a time when one of the Persons of the Godhead did not exist. They are all eternal.
While the three members of the Trinity are distinct, this does not mean that any is inferior to the other. Instead, they are all identical in attributes. They are equal in power, love, mercy, justice, holiness, knowledge, and all other qualities.
Each Person is fully God. If God is three Persons, does this mean that each Person is "one-third" of God? Does the Trinity mean that God is divided into three parts?
The Trinity does not divide God into three parts. The Bible is clear that all three Persons are each one hundred percent God. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all fully God. For example, it says of Christ that "in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9). We should not think of God as like a "pie" cut into three pieces, each piece representing a Person. This would make each Person less than fully God and thus not God at all. Rather, "the being of each Person is equal to the whole being of God."[1] The divine essence is not something that is divided between the three persons, but is fully in all three persons without being divided into "parts."
Thus, the Son is not one-third of the being of God, He is all of the being of God. The Father is not one-third of the being of God, He is all of the being of God. And likewise with the Holy Spirit. Thus, as Wayne Grudem writes, "When we speak of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together we are not speaking of any greater being than when we speak of the Father alone, the Son alone, or the Holy Spirit alone."[2]
There is only one God. If each Person of the Trinity is distinct and yet fully God, then should we conclude that there is more than one God? Obviously we cannot, for Scripture is clear that there is only one God: "There is no other God besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me. Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other" (Isaiah 45:21-22; see also 44:6-8; Exodus 15:11; Deuteronomy 4:35; 6:4-5; 32:39; 1 Samuel 2:2; 1 Kings 8:60).
Having seen that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinct Persons, that they are each fully God, and that there is nonetheless only one God, we must conclude that all three Persons are the same God. In other words, there is one God who exists as three distinct Persons.
If there is one passage which most clearly brings all of this together, it is Matthew 28:19: "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." First, notice that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinguished as distinct Persons. We baptize into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Second, notice that each Person must be deity because they are all placed on the same level. In fact, would Jesus have us baptize in the name of a mere creature? Surely not. Therefore each of the Persons into whose name we are to be baptized must be deity. Third, notice that although the three divine Persons are distinct, we are baptized into their name (singular), not names (plural). The three Persons are distinct, yet only constitute one name. This can only be if they share one essence.
Is the Trinity Contradictory?
This leads us to investigate more closely a very helpful definition of the Trinity which I mentioned earlier: God is one in essence, but three in Person. This formulation can show us why there are not three Gods, and why the Trinity is not a contradiction.
In order for something to be contradictory, it must violate the law of noncontradiction. This law states that A cannot be both A (what it is) and non-A (what it is not) at the same time and in the same relationship. In other words, you have contradicted yourself if you affirm and deny the same statement. For example, if I say that the moon is made entirely of cheese but then also say that the moon is not made entirely of cheese, I have contradicted myself.
Other statements may at first seem contradictory but are really not. Theologian R. C. Sproul cites as an example Dickens' famous line, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Obviously this is a contradiction if Dickens means that it was the best of times in the same way that it was the worst of times. But he avoids contradiction with this statement because he means that in one sense it was the best of times, but in another sense it was the worst of times.
Carrying this concept over to the Trinity, it is not a contradiction for God to be both three and one because He is not three and one in the same way. He is three in a different way than He is one. Thus, we are not speaking with a forked tongue-we are not saying that God is one and then denying that He is one by saying that He is three. This is very important: God is one and three at the same time, but not in the same way.
How is God one? He is one in essence. How is God three? He is three in person. Essence and person are not the same thing. God is one in a certain way (essence) and three in a different way (person). Since God is one in a different way than He is three, the Trinity is not a contradiction. There would only be a contradiction if we said that God is three in the same way that He is one.
So a closer look at the fact that God is one in essence but three in person has helped to show why the Trinity is not a contradiction. But how does it show us why there is only one God instead of three? It is very simple: All three Persons are one God because, as we saw above, they are all the same essence. Essence means the same thing as "being." Thus, since God is only one essence, He is only one being--not three. This should make it clear why it is so important to understand that all three Persons are the same essence. For if we deny this, we have denied God's unity and affirmed that there is more than one being of God (i.e., that there is more than one God).
What we have seen so far provides a good basic understanding of the Trinity. But it is possible to go deeper. If we can understand more precisely what is meant by essence and person, how these two terms differ, and how they relate, we will then have a more complete understanding of the Trinity.
Essence and Person
Essence. What does essence mean? As I said earlier, it means the same thing as being. God's essence is His being. To be even more precise, essence is what you are. At the risk of sounding too physical, essence can be understood as the "stuff" that you "consist of." Of course we are speaking by analogy here, for we cannot understand this in a physical way about God. "God is spirit" (John 4:24). Further, we clearly should not think of God as "consisting of" anything other than divinity. The "substance" of God is God, not a bunch of "ingredients" that taken together yield deity.
Person. In regards to the Trinity, we use the term "Person" differently than we generally use it in everyday life. Therefore it is often difficult to have a concrete definition of Person as we use it in regards to the Trinity. What we do not mean by Person is an "independent individual" in the sense that both I and another human are separate, independent individuals who can exist apart from one another.
What we do mean by Person is something that regards himself as "I" and others as "You." So the Father, for example, is a different Person from the Son because He regards the Son as a "You," even though He regards Himself as "I." Thus, in regards to the Trinity, we can say that "Person" means a distinct subject which regards Himself as an "I" and the other two as a "You." These distinct subjects are not a division within the being of God, but "a form of personal existence other than a difference in being."[3]
How do they relate? The relationship between essence and Person, then, is as follows. Within God's one, undivided being is an "unfolding" into three personal distinctions. These personal distinctions are modes of existence within the divine being, but are not divisions of the divine being. They are personal forms of existence other than a difference in being. The late theologian Herman Bavinck has stated something very helpful at this point: "The persons are modes of existence within the being; accordingly, the Persons differ among themselves as the one mode of existence differs from the other, and--using a common illustration-as the open palm differs from a closed fist."[4]
Because each of these "forms of existence" are relational (and thus are Persons), they are each a distinct center of consciousness, with each center of consciousness regarding Himself as "I" and the others as "You." Nonetheless, these three Persons all "consist of" the same "stuff" (that is, the same "what," or essence). As some have explained it, while essence is what you are, person is who you are. So God is one "what" but three "whos."
The divine essence is thus not something that exists "above" or separate from the three Persons, but the divine essence is the being of the three Persons. Neither should we think of the Persons as being defined by attributes added on to the being of God. Wayne Grudem explains:
But if each person is fully God and has all of God's being, then we also should not think that the personal distinctions are any kind of additional attributes added on to the being of God . . . Rather, each person of the Trinity has all of the attributes of God, and no one Person has any attributes that are not possessed by the others. On the other hand, we must say that the Persons are real, that they are not just different ways of looking at the one being of God...the only way it seems possible to do this is to say that the distinction between the persons is not a difference of `being' but a difference of `relationships.' This is something far removed from our human experience, where every different human `person' is a different being as well. Somehow God's being is so much greater than ours that within his one undivided being there can be an unfolding into interpersonal relationships, so that there can be three distinct persons.[5]
Trinitarian Illustrations?
There are many illustrations which have been offered to help us understand the Trinity. While there are some illustrations which are helpful, we should recognize that no illustration is perfect. Unfortunately, there are many illustrations which are not simply imperfect, but in error. One illustration to beware of is the one which says "I am one person, but I am a student, son, and brother. This explains how God can be both one and three." The problem with this is that it reflects a heresy called modalism. God is not one person who plays three different roles, as this illustration suggests. He is one Being in three Persons (centers of consciousness), not merely three roles. This analogy ignores the personal distinctions within God and mitigates them to mere roles.
Application
Why is it important to understand what it means to worship a triune God? The Trinity is first of all important because God is important. To understand more fully what God is like is a way of honoring God. Further, we should allow the fact that God is triune to deepen our worship. We exist to worship God. And God seeks people to worship Him in "spirit and truth" (John 4:24). Therefore we must always endeavor to deepen our worship of God--in truth as well as in our hearts.
The Trinity also has a very significant application to prayer. The general pattern of prayer in the Bible is to pray to the Father through the Son and in the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 2:18). Our fellowship with God should be enhanced by consciously knowing that we are relating to a tri-personal God!
Awareness of the distinct role that each Person of the Trinity has in our salvation can especially serve to give us greater comfort and appreciation for God in our prayers, as well as helping us to be specific in directing our prayers. Nonetheless, while recognizing the distinct roles that each Person has, we should never think of their roles as so separate that the other Persons are not involved. Rather, everything that one Person is involved in, the other two are also involved in, one way or another.
Summary
To summarize:
1. The Trinity is not belief in three gods. There is only one God.
2. This one God exists as three Persons.
3. The three Persons are not each a part of God, but are each fully God and equally God. Within God's one undivided being there is an unfolding into three interpersonal relationships such that there are three Persons. The distinctions within the Godhead are not distinctions of His essence and neither are they something added on to His essence, but they are the unfolding of God's one, undivided being into three interpersonal relationships such that there are three real Persons.
4. God is not one person who took three consecutive roles. That is the heresy of modalism. The Father did not become the Son and then the Holy Spirit. Instead, there have always been and always will be three distinct persons in the Godhead.
5. The Trinity is not a contradiction because God is not three in the same way that He is one. God is one in essence, three in Person.
Notes
1.Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, (InterVarsity Press and Zondervan Publishing House, 1994), p. 255, emphasis added.
2. Ibid, 252.
3. Ibid, p. 255. While we believe this is a helpful definition, it should be recognized that Grudem himself is offering this as more of an explanation than definition of person.
4. Herman Bavinck, The Doctrine of God, (Great Britain: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1991 edition), p. 303.
5. Grudem, pp. 253-254.
Further Resources
Augustine, On the Trinity
Herman Bavinck, The Doctrine of God, pp. 255-334
Edward Bickersteth, The Trinity.
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, chapter 14
Donald Macleod, Shared Life: The Trinity and the Fellowship of God's People
R.C. Sproul, The Mystery of the Holy Spirit
R.C. Sproul, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith, pp. 35-36
J.I. Packer, Knowing God, pp. 57-63.
John Piper, The Pleasures of God, chapter 1
James White, The Forgotten Trinity
Answered by the Desiring God Ministries Staff
Language
The phrase Cameron Townsend uttered decades ago is still relevant today, "If God is so big why doesn't He speak my language?"
Monday, February 27, 2006
Finish Strong
"Moses was wounded, Churchill was wounded, and perhaps you are wounded." "The God who oversees and controls the events of history is overseeing your life as well. And He knows exactly what He is doing. You may have lost control of your circumstances, but He has not. He has enrolled you in a course you didn't sign up for. And if you remain teachable, He'll make sure you finish strong."(162?3)
"God was far from finished with Moses. Although Moses felt God had removed His hand from him, nothing was further from the truth. God's hand was as firmly on Moses in the desert as it had been when he was a babe in the bulrushes. God was signing Moses up for a master's degree with a major in character development. While he was in the desert over the next forty years, Moses took four core courses: unemployment 101, advanced obscurity, remedial waiting, and intermediate loneliness." (163)
FINISHING STRONG
Finding the Power to Go the Distance Steve Farrar
Multnomah Books, 1995, ISBN 1576730239
Die Daily
Ah, Darinka, to die would be a simple thing." He opened the curtains and the window. "But to die daily this is another thing."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer?
John Piper on the 5 points of Calvinism
These ten points are my personal testimony to the effects of believing in the five points of Calvinism. I have just completed teaching a seminar on this topic and was asked by the class members to post these reflections so they could have access to them. I am happy to do so. They, of course, assume the content of the course, which is available on tape from Desiring God Ministries, but I will put them here for wider use in the hope that they might stir others to search, Berean-like, to see if the Bible teaches what I call "Calvinism."
1. These truths make me stand in awe of God and lead me into the depth of true God-centered worship. I recall the time I first saw, while teaching Ephesians at Bethel College in the late '70's, the threefold statement of the goal of all God's work, namely, "to the praise of the glory of his grace" (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14). It has led me to see that we cannot enrich God and that therefore his glory shines most brightly not when we try to meet his needs but when we are satisfied in him as the essence of our deeds. "From him and through him and to him are all things. To him the glory forever" (Romans 11:36). Worship becomes an end in itself. It has made me feel how low and inadequate are my affections, so that the Psalms of longing come alive and make worship intense.
2. These truths help protect me from trifling with divine things. One of the curses of our culture is banality, cuteness, cleverness. Television is the main sustainer of our addiction to superficiality and triviality. God is swept into this. Hence the trifling with divine things. Earnestness is not excessive in our day. It might have been once. And, yes, there are imbalances in certain people today who don't seem to be able to relax and talk about the weather. Robertson Nicole said of Spurgeon, "Evangelism of the humorous type [we might say, church growth of the marketing type] may attract multitudes, but it lays the soul in ashes and destroys the very germs of religion. Mr. Spurgeon is often thought by those who do not know his sermons to have been a humorous preacher. As a matter of fact there was no preacher whose tone was more uniformly earnest, reverent and solemn" (Quoted in The Supremacy of God in Preaching, p. 57).
3. These truths make me marvel at my own salvation. After laying out the great, God-wrought salvation in Ephesians 1, Paul prays, in the last part of that chapter, that the effect of that theology will be the enlightenment of our hearts so that we marvel at our hope, and at the riches of the glory of our inheritance, and at the power of God at work in us - that is, the power to raise the dead. Every ground of boasting is removed. Brokenhearted joy and gratitude abound. The piety of Jonathan Edwards begins to grow. When God has given us a taste of his own majesty and our own wickedness, then the Christian life becomes a thing very different than conventional piety. Edwards describes it beautifully when he says, The desires of the saints, however earnest, are humble desires: their hope is a humble hope, and their joy, even when it is unspeakable, and full of glory, is humble, brokenhearted joy, and leaves the Christian more poor in spirit, and more like a little child, and more disposed to a universal lowliness of behavior (Religious Affections, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959, pp. 339f).
4. These truths make me alert to man-centered substitutes that pose as good news. In my book, The Pleasures of God (2000), pp. 144-145, I show that in the 18th century in New England the slide from the sovereignty of God led to Arminianism and thence to universalism and thence to Unitarianism. The same thing happened in England in the 19thcentury after Spurgeon. Iain Murray's Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1987), p. 454, documents the same thing: "Calvinistic convictions waned in North America. In the progress of the decline which Edwards had rightly anticipated, those Congregational churches of New England which had embraced Arminianism after the Great Awakening gradually moved into Unitarianism and universalism, led by Charles Chauncy." You can also read in J. I. Packer's Quest for Godliness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1990), p. 160, how Richard Baxter forsook these teachings and how the following generations reaped a grim harvest in the Baxter church in Kidderminster. These doctrines are a bulwark against man-centered teachings in many forms that gradually corrupt the church and make her weak from the inside, all the while looking strong or popular. 1 Timothy 3:15, "The church of the living God [is] the pillar and bulwark of the truth."
5. These truths make me groan over the indescribable disease of our secular, God-belittling culture. I can hardly read the newspaper or look at a TV ad or a billboard without feeling the burden that God is missing. When God is the main reality in the universe and is treated as a non-reality, I tremble at the wrath that is being stored up. I am able to be shocked. So many Christians are sedated with the same drug as the world. But these teachings are a great antidote. And I pray for awakening and revival. And I try to preach to create a people that are so God-saturated that they will show and tell God everywhere and all the time. We exist to reassert the reality of God and the supremacy of God in all of life.
6. These truths make me confident that the work which God planned and began, he will finish - both globally and personally. This is the point of Romans 8:28-39. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. 31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died- more than that, who was raised- who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
7. These truths make me see everything in the light of God's sovereign purposes - that from him and through him and to him are all things, to him be glory forever and ever. All of life relates to God. There's no compartment where he is not all-important and the one who gives meaning to everything. 1 Corinthians 10:31. Seeing God's sovereign purpose worked out in Scripture, and hearing Paul say that "he accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will" (Ephesians 1:11) makes me see the world this way.
8. These truths make me hopeful that God has the will, the right, and the power to answer prayer that people be changed. The warrant for prayer is that God may break in and change things - including the human heart. He can turn the will around. "Hallowed be thy name" means: cause people to hallow your name. "May your word run and be glorified" means: cause hearts to be opened to the gospel. We should take the New Covenant promises and plead with God to bring them to pass in our children and in our neighbors and among all the mission fields of the world. "God, take out of their flesh the heart of stone and give him a new heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 11:19). "Lord, circumcise their hearts so that they love you" (Deuteronomy 30:6). "Father, put your spirit within them and cause them to walk in Your statutes" (Ezekiel 36:27). "Lord, grant them repentance and the knowledge of the truth that they may escape from the snare of the devil" (2 Timothy 2:25-26). "Father, open their hearts so that they believe the gospel" (Acts 16:14).
9. These truths reminds me that evangelism is absolutely essential for people to come to Christ and be saved, and that there is great hope for success in leading people to faith, but that conversion is not finally dependent on me or limited by the hardness of the unbeliever. So it gives hope to evangelism, especially in the hard places and among the hard peoples. John 10:16, "I have other sheep that are not of this fold, I must bring them also. They will heed my voice." It is God's work. Throw yourself into it with abandon.
10. These truths make me sure that God will triumph in the end. Isaiah 46:9-10, "I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, "My counsel shall stand that I will accomplish all my purpose'" Putting them altogether: God gets the glory and we get the joy. April 20, 2002
1. These truths make me stand in awe of God and lead me into the depth of true God-centered worship. I recall the time I first saw, while teaching Ephesians at Bethel College in the late '70's, the threefold statement of the goal of all God's work, namely, "to the praise of the glory of his grace" (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14). It has led me to see that we cannot enrich God and that therefore his glory shines most brightly not when we try to meet his needs but when we are satisfied in him as the essence of our deeds. "From him and through him and to him are all things. To him the glory forever" (Romans 11:36). Worship becomes an end in itself. It has made me feel how low and inadequate are my affections, so that the Psalms of longing come alive and make worship intense.
2. These truths help protect me from trifling with divine things. One of the curses of our culture is banality, cuteness, cleverness. Television is the main sustainer of our addiction to superficiality and triviality. God is swept into this. Hence the trifling with divine things. Earnestness is not excessive in our day. It might have been once. And, yes, there are imbalances in certain people today who don't seem to be able to relax and talk about the weather. Robertson Nicole said of Spurgeon, "Evangelism of the humorous type [we might say, church growth of the marketing type] may attract multitudes, but it lays the soul in ashes and destroys the very germs of religion. Mr. Spurgeon is often thought by those who do not know his sermons to have been a humorous preacher. As a matter of fact there was no preacher whose tone was more uniformly earnest, reverent and solemn" (Quoted in The Supremacy of God in Preaching, p. 57).
3. These truths make me marvel at my own salvation. After laying out the great, God-wrought salvation in Ephesians 1, Paul prays, in the last part of that chapter, that the effect of that theology will be the enlightenment of our hearts so that we marvel at our hope, and at the riches of the glory of our inheritance, and at the power of God at work in us - that is, the power to raise the dead. Every ground of boasting is removed. Brokenhearted joy and gratitude abound. The piety of Jonathan Edwards begins to grow. When God has given us a taste of his own majesty and our own wickedness, then the Christian life becomes a thing very different than conventional piety. Edwards describes it beautifully when he says, The desires of the saints, however earnest, are humble desires: their hope is a humble hope, and their joy, even when it is unspeakable, and full of glory, is humble, brokenhearted joy, and leaves the Christian more poor in spirit, and more like a little child, and more disposed to a universal lowliness of behavior (Religious Affections, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959, pp. 339f).
4. These truths make me alert to man-centered substitutes that pose as good news. In my book, The Pleasures of God (2000), pp. 144-145, I show that in the 18th century in New England the slide from the sovereignty of God led to Arminianism and thence to universalism and thence to Unitarianism. The same thing happened in England in the 19thcentury after Spurgeon. Iain Murray's Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1987), p. 454, documents the same thing: "Calvinistic convictions waned in North America. In the progress of the decline which Edwards had rightly anticipated, those Congregational churches of New England which had embraced Arminianism after the Great Awakening gradually moved into Unitarianism and universalism, led by Charles Chauncy." You can also read in J. I. Packer's Quest for Godliness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1990), p. 160, how Richard Baxter forsook these teachings and how the following generations reaped a grim harvest in the Baxter church in Kidderminster. These doctrines are a bulwark against man-centered teachings in many forms that gradually corrupt the church and make her weak from the inside, all the while looking strong or popular. 1 Timothy 3:15, "The church of the living God [is] the pillar and bulwark of the truth."
5. These truths make me groan over the indescribable disease of our secular, God-belittling culture. I can hardly read the newspaper or look at a TV ad or a billboard without feeling the burden that God is missing. When God is the main reality in the universe and is treated as a non-reality, I tremble at the wrath that is being stored up. I am able to be shocked. So many Christians are sedated with the same drug as the world. But these teachings are a great antidote. And I pray for awakening and revival. And I try to preach to create a people that are so God-saturated that they will show and tell God everywhere and all the time. We exist to reassert the reality of God and the supremacy of God in all of life.
6. These truths make me confident that the work which God planned and began, he will finish - both globally and personally. This is the point of Romans 8:28-39. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. 31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died- more than that, who was raised- who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
7. These truths make me see everything in the light of God's sovereign purposes - that from him and through him and to him are all things, to him be glory forever and ever. All of life relates to God. There's no compartment where he is not all-important and the one who gives meaning to everything. 1 Corinthians 10:31. Seeing God's sovereign purpose worked out in Scripture, and hearing Paul say that "he accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will" (Ephesians 1:11) makes me see the world this way.
8. These truths make me hopeful that God has the will, the right, and the power to answer prayer that people be changed. The warrant for prayer is that God may break in and change things - including the human heart. He can turn the will around. "Hallowed be thy name" means: cause people to hallow your name. "May your word run and be glorified" means: cause hearts to be opened to the gospel. We should take the New Covenant promises and plead with God to bring them to pass in our children and in our neighbors and among all the mission fields of the world. "God, take out of their flesh the heart of stone and give him a new heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 11:19). "Lord, circumcise their hearts so that they love you" (Deuteronomy 30:6). "Father, put your spirit within them and cause them to walk in Your statutes" (Ezekiel 36:27). "Lord, grant them repentance and the knowledge of the truth that they may escape from the snare of the devil" (2 Timothy 2:25-26). "Father, open their hearts so that they believe the gospel" (Acts 16:14).
9. These truths reminds me that evangelism is absolutely essential for people to come to Christ and be saved, and that there is great hope for success in leading people to faith, but that conversion is not finally dependent on me or limited by the hardness of the unbeliever. So it gives hope to evangelism, especially in the hard places and among the hard peoples. John 10:16, "I have other sheep that are not of this fold, I must bring them also. They will heed my voice." It is God's work. Throw yourself into it with abandon.
10. These truths make me sure that God will triumph in the end. Isaiah 46:9-10, "I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, "My counsel shall stand that I will accomplish all my purpose'" Putting them altogether: God gets the glory and we get the joy. April 20, 2002
Rober Frost on the BRAIN
BRAIN
" ROBERT FROST"
THE BRAIN IS A WONDERFUL ORGAN,
IT STARTS THE MINUTE YOU GET UP IN THE MORNING,
AND DOES NOT STOP UNTIL YOU GET TO THE OFFICE.
"ROBERT FROST"
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
New Age Psalm 1 compared
Psalm 1
New Age by Stephen Mitchell
Blessed are the man and the woman,
who have grown beyond themselves
and have seen through their separations.
They delight in the way things are and keep their hearts open,
day and night they are like trees planted near flowing rivers,
Which bear fruit when they are ready.
Their leaves will not fall or wither
Everything they do will succeed
This is the Holman Translation which is quite good
How happy is the man who does not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path of sinners, or join a group of mockers!
Instead, his delight is in the LORD's instruction, and he meditates on it day and night.
He is like a tree planted beside streams of water that bears its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
The wicked are not like this; instead, they are like chaff that the wind blows away.
Therefore the wicked will not survive the judgment, and sinners will not be in the community of the righteous.
For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to ruin.
(Psa 1:1-6 HCSB)
Hass, Robert
Into the garden:
A wedding anthology: Poetry and prose on love and marriage
edited by Robert Hass and Stephen Mitchell 1994
Haper Perennial
A division of HarperCollins
Other books by Stephen Mitchell
The gospel according to Jesus
Tao Te Ching
The Book of Job
The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai(with Chana Bloch)
Dropping ashes on the Buddha: the teaching of Zen Master Seung Sahn
New Age by Stephen Mitchell
Blessed are the man and the woman,
who have grown beyond themselves
and have seen through their separations.
They delight in the way things are and keep their hearts open,
day and night they are like trees planted near flowing rivers,
Which bear fruit when they are ready.
Their leaves will not fall or wither
Everything they do will succeed
This is the Holman Translation which is quite good
How happy is the man who does not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path of sinners, or join a group of mockers!
Instead, his delight is in the LORD's instruction, and he meditates on it day and night.
He is like a tree planted beside streams of water that bears its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
The wicked are not like this; instead, they are like chaff that the wind blows away.
Therefore the wicked will not survive the judgment, and sinners will not be in the community of the righteous.
For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to ruin.
(Psa 1:1-6 HCSB)
Hass, Robert
Into the garden:
A wedding anthology: Poetry and prose on love and marriage
edited by Robert Hass and Stephen Mitchell 1994
Haper Perennial
A division of HarperCollins
Other books by Stephen Mitchell
The gospel according to Jesus
Tao Te Ching
The Book of Job
The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai(with Chana Bloch)
Dropping ashes on the Buddha: the teaching of Zen Master Seung Sahn
James O. Fraser on Praying for Missionaries
It seems to be a big responsibility to be the only preacher of the Gospel within a radius of about 150 miles. I feel my weakness very much, yet the Lord seems to delight in making His power perfect in weakness, May I ask you then to remember me specially in prayer, asking God to use me to the salvation of many precious souls.
I am feeling more and more that it is, after all, just the prayers of Gods people that call down blessing upon the work, whether they are directly engaged in it or not.
Paul may plant and Apollos water, but it is God who gives the increase; and this increase can be brought down from heaven by believing prayer, whether offered in China or in the homeland. We are, as it were, God's agents - used by Him to do His work not ours. We do our part and then can only look to Him, with others, for His blessing.
If this is so, Christians at home can do as much for foreign missions as those actually on the field. I believe it will be know only on the last day how much has been accomplished in missionary work by the prayers of earnest believers at home. And this, surely, is the heart of the problem. Such work does not consist in curio tables, showing of slides, and the giving of reports. Good as this may be, they are only the fringe and not the root of the matter, solid, lasting missionary work is done on our knees. What I count more than anything else is earnest, believing prayer, and I write to ask you to continue to put up much prayer for me and work here in Tengyueh.
Beyond The Range
by Mrs. Howard Taylor pg 57 & 58
Bertrand Russel
Bertrand Russel
Man is….but the outcome of accidental concoctions of atoms, .. no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave, and … all the labor of the ages, all the devotion, all the labor of the ages, all the devotion, all of the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system. The whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.
Man is….but the outcome of accidental concoctions of atoms, .. no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave, and … all the labor of the ages, all the devotion, all the labor of the ages, all the devotion, all of the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system. The whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.
Monday, February 20, 2006
The Mission of the Evangelist
Every evangelist, indeed every preacher, first must develop the habit of serious prayer. It is in the prayer closet that a person's life is transformed into the Jesus. Second, the evangelist must be an intercessor for the people he she has reached for Christ and those yet to be reached. Third, the evangelist needs the intensive prayer support of other people. Fourth, prayer is the evangelist's indispensable weapon in spiritual warfare.
Number one is prayer in the life of the evangelist. Prayer is the simplest act a creature of God can perform. It is divine communion with our Heavenly Prayer gives vision to the believer. It gives eyes to our faith. In prayer we go beyond ourselves and focus on God's infinite power. Prayer is a gift God has given to us.
Prayer is the mightiest weapon in the evangelistic arsenal. There are certain things that never happen unless we ask God to bring them to pass.
The Mission of the Evangelist, @2001 Billy Graham EvangeHstic Association;
Published by World World Wide Publications, 1303 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403, U.S.A.
Amsterdam 2000 Conference of Preaching Evangelist
Isaac Ababio is Executive Director of Hour' of Visitation Miniseries Accra, Ghana
Sunday, February 19, 2006
George MacDonald: Faith, the Proof of the Unseen
Preached in Brixton Congregational Church, Last Sunday Morning, June 1882
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 11:1I read it to you as it is down here, but as it stands it never conveyed any idea to my mind at all, and I am very glad it is altered in the Revised Version, for, of all things if we are Christiansthe least claim to the nameit is with the spirit and not the letter that we have to do; and this translation has neither the letter nor spirit. Happy ought the man to be who finds the ark things in the dear Book cleared up for himfind that what had been as a pebble under his feet was a nut with a kernel in it, a life in it, a power of growth planted within his spirit. The true heart goes to the blessed Book not as an idolater but as a disciple; not to worship the Book, but to learn the will of Him who made the Book, and that has made His Spirit to understand the Book. But I am going to talk to you this morning about the faith that is here spoken of. We have been talking about faith ever since the Lord came. It is not exhausted yet; and God forbid that I should know yet what faith is; although I know a little what it is. I think the meaning of the phrase is this: Faith is the foundation, the root, the underlying substance of hope. If you have any hope, it comes from some faith in you. Hope, you may say, is a bud upon the plantof faith, a bud from the root of faith; the flower is joy and peace. Now the evidence of things not seencannot, as I say, find any meaning in that at all; but the true meaning is the most profound fact in human history; it is the trial or the proving of things not seen. Now upon that turns the life of every man, especially, perhaps, in the present day. This thing of faith means the whole recognized fellowship of man to God and His fellows; it is the right position of the human soul which is made to understand the truththe right position of that soul towards the truth; that is faith, partly. But you must remember that whenever you begin to speak of anything true, divine, heavenly, beyond the human, you cannot speak of it at all without speaking in somemeasure wrongly about it. We have no words, we have no phrases, we have no possible combination of sentencesnay, we have no forms of intellect that do more than represent fragmentarily the greatness of the things that belongs to the very vital being of our nature. Much, much foolish talk has been uttered about faith. Oh, this talking, friends. I would not trouble myself to set your opinions all right from this moment, henceforth, and for ever. I would not get up into the pulpit and do so. I do not thinkit is worth any man's labour; but if I could stir up a single soul, instead of talking about the meaning even of the greatest things, to go and do the smallest duty, I should say that is the kind of duty for which Christ spent Himself. If you read His life wisely you will see that His constant effort is to turn a man's thought back to himself, and make him do a thing, and not talkabout it. About faith they often used to say that it was antithetically opposed to works. There never was greater nonsense. They would say that Paul taught faith and St. James taught worksindeed one would feel something like this sometimesthat St. Paul had gone too far and that St. James had to write that epistle to set him right. It is not any of us, friends, that will find St. Paul or St. James wrong, nor was there the smallest difference between them. On the contrary, I assert that faith is simply the greatest work that man can do. Taking it in its simplest, original development, it is the highest effort of the whole human intellect, imagination, will, in the highest direction. Never does the human nature put forth itself in such power, with such effort, with such energy as to have faith in God. I say it is the highest, and sometimes the most difficult, work that a man can do. Then, that is attended by thousands and thousands of other works of faith. In the present state of England's historywe may add that of several other countries to itit seems as if it were more difficult to believe than ever it was before. It seems alsomay say seemsit seems also to many people, and some people in certain moods, as if there was less faith in the world than ever there was before. And when they look in their own heartsthose who would feign rank themselves among believers they recognise there an amount of doubt, difficulty, and fear that appals themselves. What?! Is the whole thing going to vanish like "the baseless fabric of a vision"?all this story of Christ, His life and death, and the conquests that were made in His nameis it all going out of sight; and are we to be left where the world was before He came? I should like to help some of you, if I can, friends, about all this. It troubles some of your hearts; and some of you, perhaps, ought to be a little more troubled about it than you are, because it lies at your door in some measure; but I should like if, ,on the minds of young men particularlythere is sad enough ground for including young women, tooif I could impress upon them that, let the thing look to them as it may, it is a notion and a false idea of Christianity that has come into their minds, partly because their own doors were opened narrow, partly because their own aspirations were so low, partly because they have been so little in earnest for the truth; it is about to vanish away and must perish; but the true thingnotion of it; what Christ thought and felt while He was here; what He thinks and feels now when He is here stillis that which shall never pass away but is the true fountain of truth and life to all the generations. But first of all let me say a word to the man or woman who is troubled with the difficulty of believing. Nowdays, there is such a talk about science, and such a contempt poured forth on the man who thinks to walk without that kind of science for the guide of his life, who has a different goal, a different ambition, whose thoughts stretch further than the things of this lifethings he sees and hears and handlesif there be such a man among us, friends, who does the work of the world, and does it well, but his head is in heaventhat is the kind of thing we ought all to be an to seek. And there are perhaps a few even now of this kind, and there are more growing. But let me say to you about your own fears and doubts and difficultiesit is a great thing to believe. Are you fit to believe? I have just said that I believe it to be the loftiest exercise of the human being and of human nature. How can you expect to believe? Are you like NathanialIsraelite indeed, a man without guile? What are your ways? What have you been about? What are your desires in life? How have you been ordering yourself? If it may be that although the power of God upon you makes you feel that you ought to believe, that you are such thatyou cannot believe, and it is your own fault. Fully do I recognise the difficulty. I question if there is a doubt or a sense of difficulty that prevails now that has not passed through my own mind as a thing to be encountered and understood and settled. It is natural that we should doubt, with such cries especially on all sides of us, and the intellect so much more awake than ever it was before, and indeed the conscience not more asleep than before; and with one on this side and one on that side crying out, "I have reached, I have seen, and I have found no God." Settle this with yourselves to begin with. Not all the intellect or metaphysics of the world could prove that there is no God, and not all the intellect in the world could prove that there is a God.If you could prove that there is a God, that would imply that you could go all around Him, and buttress up his being with your human argument that He should exist. As soon might a child on his mother's bosom, looking up into his mother's face, write a treatise on what a woman was and what a mother was. But do not think that God is angry with you because you find it hard to believe. It is not so; that is not like God; God is all that you can honestly wish Him to be, and infinitely more; He is not angry withyou for that. And He knows perfectly well what the scientific man calls truthyou will observe that he is always constantly, and everywhere changing his theoriesthat what the scientific man calls truth is simply an impossibility with regard toGod; And God knows it. Your brain, the symbol of your intellect, cannot, concerning Him, if He exists, receive that kind of proof, which you have when you read a proposition of Euclid. It commends itself to your mind and your understanding. You say, "So it is, and it cannot be otherwise." But you cannot receive that kind of; there is no such proof with regard to the Mighty God. And therefore I say if you doubt the existence of the living God, He is not angry with you for that. But I am speaking of those who would fain believe if they could, I ask you, have you been trying the things not seen? Have you been proving them? This is what God puts in your hands. He says, " I tell you I Am. You act upon that; for I know that your conscience moves you to it; you act upon that and you will find whether I Am or not, and what I Am." Do you see? Faith in its true sense does not belong to the intellect alone, nor to the intellect first, but to the conscience, to the will, and that man is a faithful man who says "I cannotprove that there is a God, but, O God, if Thou hearest me anywhere, help me to do Thy will." There is faith, "Do this," and he does it. It is o, friends, that is faith; it is doing that thing which you, let me say, even only suppose to be the will of God;for if you are wrong, and do it because you think it is His will, He will set you right. It is the turning of the eye to the light; it is the sending of the feet into the path that is required, putting the hands to do the things which the conscience saysought to be done. You will notice that all this chapter from which I have taken the text is a list of people that did things. Some of them were made kings, and some of them were sawn asunder for it; but it was all for faith, and nothing but faith. There was a truth; there was a live truth; a truth that had welled through and called the knowledge of truth up in us, nay, called up in us the very possibility of feeling truth; and according to this law these men walked through all the world, and all the worldstogether set themselves against them, and in the name of the original vital law of the universenamely, the living Godwalked right on and met their fate. Yes; victory and the participation of the Divine nature, that was their faith. Therefore, friends, the practical thing is just this, and it is the one lesson that we have to learn, that whatever our doubts or difficulties, we must do the thing we know in order to learn the thing we do not know; but whether we learn it or not, "If ye know these things," saith the Master, "happy are ye if you do them." It is the doing that is everything, and the doing is faith and there is no division between them. Then I would say a word to those who are further on. They have been trying to serve God for many yearsnow, they do not seem to themselves to have made much of it. They find that they are still troubled in their soulnot whether they be of God; but does he manage everything now? "Where is He? I have never seen Him; if He would but speak to myself! I have been crying for Him for all these years, and I have never had a sign out of the great blank. Oh, if He would but show Himself; if He would but do somethinggive me the meanest sign that He actually is, and that He cares about me." You say, "I feel as if Icould go and on for ever then." Friends, I believe there is no sign God could give you, but what you would begin to doubt again. I do not believe there is any miracle He could work before your eyes even, that byby you would not begin to doubt, and bejust as lost as before. God will not give us little things to spoil our appetite for great things. God will never be content until we are one with Him as He is one with Christ; God will not give us signs and wonders and these inferior things, for be sureGod's common and usual way is far better than His miraculous way, as we call it; If it were all miracle, we would make it all common. You may be sure then, that God's usual way of doing things is the best way. I say He will not give us signs of anything outside to give us confidence in Him. Nothing will serve God turn but thisthat our faith in Him shall be complete, go instantly with our perception of what He is. It is by the vision in our souls, the feeling and perception in our souls of what God is, that we are able to believe in Him. Let a man once see God as Christ saw Him, and he believes. He does not see Him perfectly,and his faith will never be absolutely complete until he comes to that point when he recognises the character and being and relation of God to himself; and then he believes; and any glimmer of the truth in regard to our Lord's nature helps us to believeenables us to go on, and on, and on; So that you see that the same thing that the intellect does with Euclid, the whole mind, heart, intellect, imagination, conscience, and will does with regard to God when a man sees God and knows Him. The man says, "I know enough to make life a grand and blessed and strong thing to me, and I am going on." We will see. "I cannot convey to you," he may say, "my conviction; that will only come with the conviction itself; you must see, else you do not know; but life to me is enough." So would he say; but then, "What is the way to this?" you say. Ah! my friends, if you have been at it for twenty or thirty orforty years, surely you have learnt by this time what you have just to go on doingis hearkening to Christ and doing His will. Let me try you a bit. What is your first thought in the morning? Is it "God is life"? or is it "How am I to order my day'swork?" Is it "God is very rich and I am His child and He will see to me"? or is it "How on earth shall I get through this that lies before me?" Are you afraid? Are the cares of this world troublesome to you? Well, you have not got on much. But if you arenot trying to suppress them, if you are not trying to get rid of them, I am afraid you have not got on at all; and if you had been thirty or forty years trying to serve Christ, it has been a kind of service that He does not care much about, and it is no wonder that you do not get on. You have been very careful reading your Bible and going to church, and this thing and that thing that you think belongs to religion; but have you been doing the thing Christ told you? If you do that, I do not care whatever elseyou do; you cannot be wrong then. The same holds with you as with the beginner who is troubled as to whether there is a God or not. But you that believe in a God do not trust Him; whereas, the other is not sure that there is a God; and you think it very horrible of him to doubt the existence of a God. And yet you, believing that there is a God, are afraid of the trouble, the poverty, the opinion of the world, and are ambitious to get on this way or that! Oh, had almost sooner say you do not believe in a God than say that you believe in God, and yet He is nothing to you. And when you feel inclined to say heavy and hard things about your atheistic neighbour, think that there may be a beam in your own eye even worsewe can bear to call it sothan the mote in his. Indeed, friends, it is because our life does not shine that men have stood up and said "There is no light." You see a man greedy and graspingmuch taken up with the things of this world as if he were to liveI will not say to the age of Methusalehbut to the age of seventyfive or eighty. He works in the world as if he were to live for ever in it; and sometimes, I think, the punishment that would fit him best would be to be condemned to live for ever in the world. What a thing that would be! Ah!, the man who is most sure that there is no God and that he can get on pretty wellwon't say first ratebut pretty well without Him; I think the better way would be just to let him live on and on and on, until he got heartily sick of himself and hated himself, and would gladly yield anything to get out of himself. Ah, friends, there is a worse thing than dying never to wake again. There is a worse thing than dying for ever, and going soul and brain to the dust, and that is to wake up and find that there is no God. That is the horror of horrors to me. But to tell me that I am to live for ever, and that there is no God! For anything any man knows who does not believe in a God it may be so. He cannot tell with certainty that he is going to die forever because he sees no more of those that have gone before. Why should not they go on to some other sphere as they came into this one? Without any warning or any choice, they do not know until they find themselves here. Why should it not be so in another stateof existence? But to find yourselves there without a God! There is no use praying to be killed, because there is no |God to hear your prayer. You can no more annihilate yourselves than make yourselves; the whole thing would be utter misery, especially when the man has such ideas that he is satisfied with himself. But what is to be done with you and me, who cannot finish ourselves? Poor creatures! we feel that if God is like us, He had better cease and we had better all cease; but if we see He is like usHe is perfect, absolute in grandeur and loveliness, ah then,"I shall get rid of this bad in methis poor, mean stuff in me, and I shall become glorious, true, and excellent like Him." That is worth living for; nothing else is; it is for that that Christ tells us to put confidence in Him and obey His word, and we shall see the Father. "He that heareth and openeth the door, I will come in, sit down with him, and sup with him and he with Me." When God is seated at the very fireside of our hearts, then there is no more doubt. I say, friends, it is a good thing that you should have doubt until you see that nothing less than that will do, and until you come to desire that, and to turn your judgments, your thought, and feeling in that direction. Oh! friends; Iknow nothing else in the world worth knowing. I could go on talking to you all the day long about this, but I should weary you. Faith is the trying of the things unseenthe putting them to the test, and whatever your doubts or your fears are try Him by obedience, and then you will get help to carry you on. Less than that won't do. The darkness of life's closing time will come round about you, and find you very doubtful, very sad, looking, looking into the darkness and wondering "Shall I wake or shall I sleep?" But if you believe that that man died and rose again, the whole thing is full of the dawn of an eternal morning. Coming up beyond the hills of this life, and full of such hope as the highest imagination of the poet has not a glimmer as of yet. Do you hope for anything, friends? Thank God, that comes from you faith. No man that has not faith can hope. But do not think the world is going all to the devil. There is a better and stronger faith coming. It was a great thing that this foolish, actionless kindof religion should vanish, and that a simple, obedient, hoping, trusting life should takes its place. The world is not worse than it was. Many even of those that do not believe in God have faith towards their neighbour. Even those who do not believe, on the whole are better in this century than those that did not believe in the last. Only, we are a set of foolish men and women who simply talk and nothing elsebelieve nor disbelievewho have neither the soul nor the heart to be in earnest about anything. God has a hold upon them too, and He has but to place His hand upon them to make them feel it. But, friends, what we have to do is let our light shine. Do you get any light? Let it shine. I do not mean be an example to other people. You have no business to set yourselves up for an example; you have to be and to do, and that is letting the light shine. It ought not to be possible to mistake a Christian for a man of the world. His very dealings with every man that comes near him have something to show, something that Christ would have done that a man of the world would not do. Tell me how you would like Christ to come in upon you at any moment in the midst of your business talk. Would you be ready to turn to H m and say, "Master, this is how I am saying the thing to my friend; this is how I see it in the light of Thy love!"? Would you be ready for that, or do you think that a great part of your being and your life can be conducted upon other laws than Christian? If a man does that, he is altogether wrongaltogether wrong. Christ is God, the allor nothing at all. If we were as the bushevery Christian were as the bush that burned with firethat would be the shining our light before men. Atheism would soon vanish; unbelief would draw in its horns; reproved, judged, condemned by the very presence of faith. I would have you, then, friends, remember that faith is the trying of the thing that you do not see, and that you cannot be sure about,a thing that you do not see and which, not seeing, you have doubt about, you can yet trythat is faith; and if you are honest, that will be a great opportunity and a great help to you; it will start a fresh faith which you have not thought of before, and give your life a new start. Faith is intended to put to the test the unseen world of truth, love, law, hope, redemption. God grant us all faith enough to carry on from point to point till the faith shall vanish into light, and we have never to think about faith more, nor to think about Church more, nor the Bible more, nor prayer more, but our whole being shall be a delighted consciousness of the presence of God and His Christ. Originally published in The Christian World Pulpit, London: James Clarke and Co., 21st June 1882.
7 Point Calvinism of John Piper
What does John Piper mean when he says that he is a "seven point" Calvinist?
When Dr. Piper says he is a "seven point Calvinist," he does so half jokingly and half seriously. Historically, there are five points of Calvinism, not seven.
- Piper isn't seeking to add two more points, but is simply calling attention to his belief in the traditional five points (total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints) in a way that also points toward two additional "Calvinistic" truths that follow from them: double predestination and the best-of-all-possible worlds.
- The "sixth" point, double predestination, is simply the flip side of unconditional election. Just as God chooses whom He will save without regard to any distinctives in the person (Ephesians 1:5-6; Acts 13:48; Revelation 17:8), so also he decides whom He will not save without regard to any distinctives in the individual (John 10:26; 12:37-40; Romans 9:11-18; 1 Peter 2:7-8). By definition, the decision to elect some individuals to salvation necessarily implies the decision not to save those that were not chosen. God ordains not only that some will be rescued from his judgment, but that others will undergo that judgment. This does not mean that someone might really want to be saved but then be rejected because they are on the wrong list. Rather, we are all dead in sin and unwilling to seek God on our own. A true, genuine desire for salvation in Christ is in fact a mark of election, and therefore none who truly come to Christ for salvation will be turned away (John 6:37-40).So just as God doesn't choose to save certain people because they are better than others (unconditional election), neither does he choose not to save certain people because they are worse than others (unconditional reprobation, or double predestination). Rather, everybody is lost in sin and no one has anything to recommend them to God above anyone else. And so from this mass of fallen humanity, God chooses to redeem some and leave others.
- The "seventh" point, the best-of-all-possible worlds, means that God governs the course of history so that, in the long run, His glory will be more fully displayed and His people more fully satisfied than would have been the case in any other world. If we look only at the way things are now in the present era of this fallen world, this is not the best-of-all-possible worlds. But if we look at the whole course of history, from creation to redemption to eternity and beyond, and see the entirety of God's plan, it is the best-of-all-possible plans and leads to the best-of-all-possible eternities. And therefore this universe (and the events that happen in it from creation into eternity, taken as a whole) is the best-of-all-possible-worlds.
More on Calvinism & the Doctrines of Grace.
John Piper, The Justification of God, chapters 5, 9, 10, 11.
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Zondervan, 1994), chapter 32, "Election and Reprobation."
Jonathan Edwards, Concerning the Divine Decrees in General and Election in Particular, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards Volume II (Banner of Truth, 1974), 525-543.
Answered by the Desiring God Ministries Staff
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (Paperback)
Recently I was reading this book, well not really reading it, more of a scan and thought this book is absolutely fabulous. I can heartliy aggree with it. When I had TV reception I was an addict, I guess that still makes me one well I would sit trasfixed to the Television. I still catch myself drawn to staring at it when I get close. In fact I have found that the internet is in many ways the replacement for this now. I have wasted many an hour looking for stuff and going down useless rabit trails even at work. There are many hours wasted around the world on the Web now and so the Web is both a blessing and a curse the dificulty comes into how to use the tool. For the TV and the computer are both tools, we need to use them properly.
Amazon Search In watching American Television, One is reminded of George Bernard Shaws Remarks on his first seeing the glittering neon signs of Broadway and 42nd street at night. It must be beautiful, he said, if you cannot read. American television is indeed a beautiful spectacle, a visual delight, pouring forth thousands of images on any given day. The average length of a shot on network television is only 3.5 seconds, so that the eye never rests, always has something new to see. Moreover, television offers viewers a variety of subject matter, requires minimal skills to comprehend it, and is largely aimed at emotional gratification. Even commercials, which some regard as an annoyance, are exquisitely crafted, always pleasing to the eye and accompanied by exquisitely crafted, always pleasing to the eye and accompanied by exciting music. There is no question but that the best photography in the world is presently seen on television commercials. American television, in other words, is devoted entirely to supplying its audience with entertainment PG 87 The Problem is not that Television presents with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining, which is another issue altogether. ..... No matter what is depicted or from what point of view, the overarching presumption is that it is therefore our amusement and pleasure. That is why even on news shows which provide us daily with fragments of tragedy and barbarism, we are tragedy and barbarism, we are urged by the newscasters to join them tomorrow. What for One would think that several minutes of murder and mayhem would suffice as material for a month of sleepless nights. We accept the newscasters invitation because we know that the news is not to be taken seriously, that it is all in fun, so to say. Everything about a news show tell us this - the good looks and amiability of the cast, their pleasant banter the exciting music that opens and closes the show, the vivid film footage, the attractive commercials - all these and more suggest that what we have just seen is no cause weeping a news show, to put it plainly, is a format for entertainment, not for education, reflection or catharsis. Pg 87-88 Now ...This.... All that has happened is that the public has adjusted to incoherence and been amused into indifference. Which is why Aldous Huxley would not in the least be surprised... Indeed he prophesied its coming. He believed that it is far more likely that the Western democracies will dance and dream themselves into oblivion than march into it, single filae and manacled. Huxley grasped, as Orwell did not, that it is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcoticized by technological diversions. Although Huxley did not specify that television would be our main line to the drug, he would have no difficulty accepting Robert MacNeilss observation that television is the soma of Aldous Huxleys Brave New World. Big Brother turns out to be Howdy Doody. PG 110-111 Shuffle off to Bethlehem(religion on the TV) The first is that on television, religion, like everything else, is presented, quite simply and without apology, as an entertainment. everything that makes religion an historic, profound and sacred human activity is stripped away; there is no ritual, no dogma, no tradition, no theologye, and above all no sense of spirityal transence. On These shows, the preacher is tops. God comes out as second bababa. Pg 116-117 ... Most american, including preacheres have difficulty accepting the truth, if they think about it at all, that not all forms of discourse can be converted from one medium to another. It is naive to suppose that something that has been expressed in one form can be expressed in another without significantly changing its meaning, tecture or value. Much prose translates fairly well from one language to another, bu twe know that poetry does not; we may get a rough idea of the sense of a translated poem but usually everything else is lost , especially that whyich makes an object of beauty. The Translation makes it into something it was not. pg 117 For the most part preachers have not seriously addressed this matter they have assumet that wahat had formerly been done in a church or a tent, and face-to-face, can bedone on television without loss of meaning, without changing the quality of the religious experience. Perhaps their failure to address the translation issue has it origin in the hubris engendered by the dazzling number of people to whom televison gives them access..pg118 I think it is fair to say that attractin an audience is the main goal of these programs, just as it is for ' the A-team" and Dallas." As a consequence, what is preached on televeision not anything like the sermon on the mount. Religous programs are filled with good cheer. They celebrate affluence. their featured players become celebrities though their messages are trivial, the shhows have hight ratings, or rather because their messages are trivial, the shows have hight ratings I believe I am not mistatken in saying that Christianity is a demaninding and serous religion. when it is delviere as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether. pg121 It is well understood at the national council[ of Churches, if they have figured it out it must be real] the athe danger is not that religion has become the content of television shows but that televison shows may[have] become the content of religion. pg124 Reach Out and Elect Someone Television does not ban books, it simply displaces them. Hw delighted would be all the kings, czars and f�hrers of the past(and commissars of the present) to know that censhorshi is not a necessity when all political discourse take the form of a jest. pg 141 Teaching as an Amusing Activity We now know that "Sesame Street" encourages children to love school only if school is like "Sesame Street." Which is to say, we now know that "Sesame Street" undermines what the traditional idea of schooling represents. Whereas a classroom is a place of socail interatction, the space in front of a televeision set is a priveate preserve. pg 143 As a television show, and a ood one, "sesame Street' does not encourage children to love school or anything about school. It encourages them to love television. pg 144 The Huxley Warning We would be better off if television got worse, not better. "The A-team" and "Cheers" are no threat to our public health. "60 Minutes," "Eye-Witness News" and "Sesame Street" are. pg 160 ...in the end, he was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they wer laughting instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking. Amusing ourselves to Death Public Discourse in the age of Show business Neil Postman Penguin, 1985
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