The Museum of Idolatry: Relevancy EPIC FAIL!

No One Changes God’s Law

I delight to do thy will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my heart. (Psalm 40:8)

Because we live in a period known as the age of God’s grace, it has become a popular thing to declare that the Ten Commandments are no longer valid, no longer relevant in our society.

With that context, it has become apparent that Christian churches are not paying attention to the Ten Commandments.

But Dwight L. Moody preached often in the commandments. John Wesley said he preached the commands of the Law to prepare the way for the gospel. R. A. Torrey told ministers if they did not preach the Law they would have no response to the preaching of the gospel. It is the Law that shows us our need for the gospel of salvation and forgiveness!

It is accurate to say that our binding obligation is not to the Old Testament Law. As sincere Christians we are under Christ’s higher law—that which is represented in His love and grace. But everything that is morally commanded in the Ten Commandments still comprises the moral principles that are the will of God for His people. God’s basic moral will for His people has not changed!

^[1]

I just finished Feminists Say the Darndest Things by the venerable Mike Adams.  I would commend it to you.

Some eclectic blog posts and videos:

http://blog.beliefnet.com/blogalogue/2008/04/why-suffering-is-gods-problem.html

http://stevenjcamp.blogspot.com/2005/10/time-for-truth-courage-humility-and.html

http://stevenjcamp.blogspot.com/2008/04/does-regeneration-precede-faith-yes.html

How_I_Distinguish_Between_the_Gospel_and_False_Gospels/

http://www.brianjones.com/2008/03/7-ways-we-keep-church-hoppers-from.html

SermonCentral.com: Free Sermons, Illustrations and Outlines

“Them’s fighting words!” …Seven sentences that should make every Christian cringe

Greg Stier
Dare2Share

How many times have you been in your church’s foyer when a member of your congregation said something so unbiblical that you literally cringed? Or maybe it was in a Sunday school class when that one person (you know who I’m talking about) raises his/her hand and waxes eloquent in an assertion that is so jacked-up theologically that you don’t even know how to begin to respond.  

An Evangelical Response to “An Evangelical Manifesto”

An Evangelical Response to “An Evangelical Manifesto”

Posted: Monday, May 12, 2008 at 6:35 am ET

Who are the Evangelicals? The issue of Evangelical identity and definition has been central to the Evangelical project from its very beginning in America. Given the nature of the movement, definition is elusive and constantly contested.

The release of “An Evangelical Manifesto” on May 7 caught the attention of the national media, and thus it represents yet another opportunity for evangelical definition. The document, released May 7, also represents a challenge, for its framers hope to redefine the movement in the context of our unsettled times.

The Manifesto, released at a press conference at the National Press Club, represents an agenda. The press release offered by the organizers makes that clear:

As always, a thought provoking article from MacDonald. Good reading for the new year on the whole.

I would suggest the Pursuit of God to help with this quest.

Take Time to Be What? – LeadershipJournal.net

Take Time to Be What?
A classic hymn shows why holiness is scarce these days.
by Gordon MacDonald

In the early 1880s, William D. Longstaff wrote a poem that later became a hymn called “Take Time to Be Holy.” In my branch of church tradition, we often sang this hymn. As a kid I considered it uninspiring (sorry, Mr. Longstaff), and I groaned whenever the song leader announced it. Today, decades later, I have taken a fresh look at the song and reconsidered my earlier appraisal. There’s substance here.

Take time to be holy,
Speak oft with thy Lord,
Abide in him always,
And feed on his word.
Make friends of God’s children;
Help those who are weak,
Forgetting in nothing his blessing to seek.

There are three more verses to Longstaff’s hymn, and the second verse is also worth quoting:

Take time to be holy,
The world rushes on;
Spend much time in secret
With Jesus alone;
By looking to Jesus
Like him thou shalt be;
Thy friends in thy conduct his likeness shall see.

9Marks

Simply Christian
By N.T. Wright Reviewed by Andrew Davis

HarperSanFrancisco, 2006, 256 pp., $22.95

It is the unique privilege and responsibility of every generation of Christians to explain Christian faith—the eternal gospel of Jesus Christ—clearly and simply to the unbelievers with whom they share their time on the earth. It is also entrusted to every generation of Christians to protect that eternal message from corruption. The first of these two responsibilities is extramural, and causes us to probe the minds and hearts of our unbelieving neighbors to see what unique obstacles Satan has erected that make the gospel unintelligible to them. The second of these is intramural, and causes us to study the words we use to articulate the unchanging gospel and to align those words with the perfectly straight canon of Scripture to be sure they are faithful and true. Christianity must be simply explained, but it must be done in a way that is faithful to the Scripture. Otherwise, it will be simply damaging.

Many experts are promoting N.T. Wright’s Simply Christian as a primary resource for explaining Christianity to skeptics and unbelievers. The dustcover promised “This will become a classic.” Christianity Today heralded it as a worthy successor to C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity as a ready-made tool to slip into the hands of unbelieving coworkers. While such tools are extremely helpful in our evangelistic mission, it is  essential that they be faithful to the biblical articulation of the gospel. If the tools we use contain errors, faulty articulations, misleading images and analogies, and harmful oversimplifications, then they do more harm than good. This is especially true if such a book becomes a “classic,” trusted and embraced by a majority of the gospel-loving church.

What Is Mormonism? A Baptist Answer – TIME

What Is Mormonism? A Baptist Answer

Good Article — Those long in the pastorate and those little in the pastorate should appreciate its thrust.

LeadershipJournal.net – So Many Christian Infants

Leader’s Insight: So Many Christian Infants
Why are we so good at leading people to faith and so bad at prodding them to maturity?
by Gordon MacDonald, Leadership editor at large

I have been musing on the words of Martin Thornton: “A walloping great congregation,” he wrote, “is fine and fun, but what most communities really need is a couple of saints. The tragedy is that they may well be there in embryo, waiting to be discovered, waiting for sound training, waiting to be emancipated from the cult of the mediocre.”

“Saints,” he says. Mature Christians: people who are “grown-up” in their faith, to whom one assigns descriptors such as holy, Christ-like, Godly, or men or women of God.

http://www.sfpulpit.com/2007/05/08/mother-church/#more-704

http://www.aomin.org/index.php?itemid=1961

Life Action Revival Ministries::Why Read the Puritans?

Written by Brian G. Hedges   

  The Puritans were the 16^th century English Protestants and their successors in 16^th and 17^th century New England, and it was their concern for church reform and spiritual renewal that earned them the originally derogatory epithet puritan. Unfortunately, most people associate the term with legalism, self-righteousness, hypocrisy, and witch hunts, thanks to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

WORLD Magazine | Weekly News, Christian Views

Remember the Alamo

RELIGION: Is the battle for the Bible really over?

It was America’s bicentennial year, but not all the fireworks were about the nation’s birthday. That same year, Harold Lindsell, then editor emeritus of Christianity Today, lit a fuse of his own with the publication of The Battle for the Bible.

Lindsell’s book was an exposé of a spreading liberalism within evangelicalism—and with special reference to the Southern Baptist Convention. “At this moment in history the great bulk of Southern Baptists are theologically orthodox and do believe that the Word of God is inerrant,” he advised. Even still he warned that if Southern Baptists committed to inerrancy did not act soon, “the rougher the battle will be, the more traumatic the consequences, and the less obvious the outcome in favor of historic Christianity.”

Southern Baptists did not hesitate. In 1979 they elected Adrian Rogers, pastor of the famed Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, as president—and the battle was joined. What later became known as the “Conservative Resurgence” in the SBC began in earnest, and conservatives eventually captured the boards of all of the denomination’s national institutions. The “Battle for the Bible” was won by those who insisted that biblical inerrancy is so vital to the health of the church that it was worth dividing the Convention over the issue if necessary.

This week the Southern Baptist Convention convenes for its annual meeting in San Antonio. The last time the Convention met here, the voting “messengers” elected Jerry Vines of Florida as president—by 692 votes out of 32,727 cast. Those were days of constant controversy and contested elections.

This year’s convention will be different. SBC President Frank Page, a prominent South Carolina pastor, is expected to be elected to a second term without opposition. Page represents a new generation and is marked by a low-key style. There will be no long lines of buses from across the Convention idling outside the convention center, waiting for decisive votes to be cast.

So much has changed. Adrian Rogers died in 2005. Jerry Vines retired last year as pastor of Jacksonville’s First Baptist Church.

The SBC’s seminaries, now under the control of conservative trustees and presidents, enroll a record number of young ministers, drawn to the conservative theology. But most of these students were not born when Adrian Rogers was elected in 1979. They were toddlers when the Convention made history in San Antonio in 1988. They are the generation without a living memory of the controversy and what was at stake. To them, the election of Jerry Vines in 1988 is almost as remote as the struggle of Davy Crockett and the brave Texans at the Alamo.

A group of younger pastors and bloggers is now openly asking the question, Is the “Battle for the Bible” over? Some go further, arguing that the theological issues are settled, health has been returned, and the SBC should move on from theological preoccupations. Are they right?

The SBC is certainly in no danger of an organized liberal takeover. The more liberal elements have largely moved on to other groups and have little to do with the SBC. There will be no re-match on the question of biblical inerrancy in San Antonio.

Still, all is not well. The denomination is losing many of its young people, especially at the crucial transition between adolescence and adulthood. New controversies have emerged even as older fissures have been reopened. A generation that was playing Little League as the “Battle for the Bible” raged now includes some who loudly claim that the Conservative Resurgence has gone too far.

Not hardly. The incipient controversies of the present serve to remind Southern Baptists of what was at stake when we last met in San Antonio—and of where we would be if the Convention had headed in a very different direction. The issue of biblical inerrancy is as important today—and as in need of defining and defending—as it was then.

Southern Baptists will do well to remember what every Texan remembers when reminded of the Alamo: There are some battles worth fighting, some stories worth remembering, and some causes that never die.
— R. Albert Mohler Jr.

Study: Fewer Americans Embrace Traditional View of God | Christianpost.com

Challies Dot Com: New Attitude (V)

New Attitude (V)

People often ask me if some speakers are easier to “blog” then others. The answer is a clear yes. There are some speakers who speak in such a way that they are really quite easy to capture and to summarize. There are others that are very difficult. The primary difference, I think, is between those who provide very logical, clear, alliterated and structured outlines versus those who may not. This would include the likes of Steve Lawson, Ligon Duncan, and Mark Dever. Dr. Mohler is one of those guys who is on the “harder to liveblog” list. I often wrestle with writing a cogent summary of his talks. This one proved no exception! Yet, like most of Mohler’s talks, I learned a lot from it. There are few people I’d rather listen to than Dr. Mohler.

Mohler’s topic for today is Discerning the culture.

He began by saying something I fully believe: if there is any one thing lacking in the church today it must be discernment. That’s the only explanation for how things are as they are. How else could the church be so seduced and how else could Christians be indistinguishable? Discernment is one of those things you need to live, both in the spiritual realm and outside of it.

Alex Chediak Blog: ETS Response To Beckwith Resignation

Man, what a classic example of a Hebrews 6 and 10 situation… I wonder what this means to those in the hypothetical camp…