Litenen Up

The Circus is in town.

Georgia Baptists "Engage the Culture"

Read all about it here...

Conference Reminder and Thanks to Dusty

I thought I'd post a quick reminder that a few Mafia dons and readers are planning to attend the 2009 Ligonier National Conference in Orlando. As we get closer to the event, we'll try to work out a way for us meet up and hang-out or something. As far as the Mafia goes, I know that Gordan and myself are planning to attend. From the line-up of speakers, this looks like it's going to be a good one!

I also want to thank the infamous "Dusty McDust" of the Cerebral Dust blog for tweaking our blog header. Dusty, who happens to be the brother of Gordan, was commissioned to handle the task and I think he did a great job. I decided to get it changed because it dawned on me that it looked a bit odd for an exclusively Reformed-Credo blog to have a Paedobaptist on their blog header. Not that we're against Luther, he's cool and all, but it just seems that Spurgeon was a bit more in line with what this blog is all about, theologically speaking anyway.

Have a blessed day!

Transformationally Informal: Submission and Reverence Not Required

I like turning nouns into adverbs even if there is no such word adverbially speaking. It can often create its own genre of debate, discussionally trying to define what is meant by the speciously new terminology. A new species can become terminal, only if it generates its own life. Like missionally, a word that never before existed until it began to be used. Creative adverbing might be the only proof of evolution, actually. In the case of transformationally, it is an adverb, actually. Culturally, relationally, informally expressing ourselves is not always legitimate. Then again, without some liberty to transform what exists, legitimately, life and language would be communally, impossible.We have, today, an interesting phenomena known as the emergent church. I would not be surprised to find out that emergent was adapted from evolutionally specific auditory utterances, terminologically. Like audial, no one ever observed the use of the noun form. Well then, see, obviously audios have evolved decendantly (ascendantly?) from some unidentified parental line. Where in the case of missionally we can observe its lineage parentally. Phenomenally, emergent churches have descended from the parent churches who were in the ages past, formally organzied according to the prevailing culture. Call it a mutation or a anti-gen(erational) corrective if you will, what the emergent represents is the rejection, not of formality per se, but the exclusivity of it. But informality breeds its own problems. One of those is the lack of definition.Transformationally informal churches go along with such deconstruction and reconstruction permeating, culturally, society, subversively reassigning meanings not germane to the subject. Inch by inch, step by step, slowly we have turned in to a grunge culture. Which I have to admit, being a product of the sixties, that I had a part in said transformation. As is the case with most things subject to the laws of nature, I eventually regressed toward the mean. I no longer grungeally approach society, nor do I maintain a flip attitude toward such formal entities as the organized church that I once, pre-emergentally, loathed and distrusted. Grunge, I have had to recognize, is not just a look, or slovenliness, it is a more generally, diffusely, distributed attitude, impacting demeanor, propriety, correct handling, and sober-mindedness.

Continuing from Mr.(note formal address) Machine Gun's post I offer this program from White Horse Inn. You see I agree to great extent to what Rhett was saying about the necessity of reverence and the otherness of the church, at least in corporate worship as a formal gathering to honor and learn of the Lord. And, I didn't mean to sidetrack the discussion. The Hortonites speak to the same issues. Reverence carries certain weight of authority over against the apparent irreverence of informality. There are some things by which we should be identified by the world and by which, we should identify ourselves with one another. Which is why I wear only clean t-shirts without holes, a fresh pair of pants and my best tennis-shoes ;)

To some this will still not make the grade and with others it will be all formally and stuff, by all means something to be avoided. Both those extremes are, however, one, in a self-richly sorta way.

Wisdom does teach us at least this:

He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.

There are some requirements. Spiritually speaking, what is the key to reverence, is it not this last phrase?

walk humbly with your God.

James tells us, also, what can happen when reverence becomes showiness, then formalism and formalism a sacramental expression of spirituality. Let us then keep the focus upon what he then says: the poorly dressed may well be the more highly praised in God's estimation. On the other hand, we should be clothed in humility, no matter what state we find ourselves in, showing the proper deference to the King who has invited us into his banquet.

Worship at St. Andrew's Chapel

The Kelley family spent the July 4th weekend in Florida visiting family. In what has become somewhat of a tradition whenever we go to Florida, we visited St. Andrew's Chapel, where Dr. R.C. Sproul is the "Minister of Preaching and Teaching."

On the cover of the program of St. Andrew's Chapel, these words are written:

"We cross the threshold of the secular to the sacred, from the common to the uncommon, from the profane to the Holy."

If anything, the trend in our day is to make the sacred secular, the uncommon common, and to profane the Holy. Just look around and it won't take you long to find an example. For instance, we have a church in our area who's members wear t-shirts around town that say "These are my church clothes." This, I suppose, is their way of poking a thumb in the eyes of legalists. But I think it also demonstrates how this church might have lost sight of the fact that a worship service (if it truly is one) is something special; something worth changing their clothes to attend.

A worship service at St. Andrew's is truly a wonderful experience. The high liturgy of the service is awe inspiring. Everything is done with purpose and with excellence unto God. The music inspires the mind and moves the soul. The hymns are deeply theological, not happy clappy fluff with no substance. There are no hippies with guitars, nor do they sing 3 mindless lines over and over in order to "pump and prime" the crowd.

The reverence in the room is amazing. Unlike anything I've ever experienced. The exposition of Scripture, verse by verse, is something that is esteemed vitally important and central, not simply a means to an altar call. It's almost like stepping into another world: a world that hasn't been effected by the revivalism, humanism, anti-intellectualism, and pragmatism that has conqured so many Evangelical churches of America.

Another recent visitor to St. Andrew's is Brandon Vallorani of American Vision Ministries. In an article published today, he wrote about his visit:

"We began our week by worshipping at St. Andrew’s Chapel in Orlando, where we heard Pastor R.C. Sproul deliver a striking sermon on Matthew 16:19. The reverence and majesty with which God is worshipped at St. Andrews stands in sharp contrast to much of what passes as “worship” in the contemporary church today. Every detail from the architecture to the liturgy reflects an appropriately high view of our Heavenly King. While there’s still an opportunity, I encourage all of you to make your way to R.C. Sproul’s church on the Lord’s Day and experience this taste of heaven for yourselves."

In closing, I think it's disturbing that Christians in our day want to bee-bop up into church with a "Jesus is my homeboy" attitude. The Lord isn't our "homeboy," He's the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. They forget that the God they claim to worship is the one who struck down Aaron's sons for offering "strange fire" that He did not command.

After each of my visits to St. Andrew's Chapel, I've always left longing for more. I come away with a vivid reminder that worship is all about God. If you ever get a chance to go to the Orlando area, take a ride up I-4 to Sanford on a Sunday morning. Visit St. Andrew's Chapel. You'll be blessed.

(I took this rather poor quality picture of Dr. Sproul preaching with my cell phone camera from inside the "cry room" where I was with my baby boy.)

Breaking the Rules

I'm kind of breaking Reformed Mafia rules with this post. When we went through the secret and bloody initiation ceremony into this family, it was stressed that the RM exists to promote the principles of Reformed soteriology (Calvinism) and the credo-baptist view of Baptism. We don't dive into denominational squabbles, or spiritual gifts, or eschatology.

Well, okay, I'm not diving in but I would like to dip my toe for a moment in the topic of eschatology. However, it's not my intention at this time to argue for a specific view, so all the guns can be put away.

What I want to mention is simply this idea (on which we here at the Reformed Mafia have proceded) that eschatology is a less-important field of study within the broader realm of theology.

While I agree with that notion, and have no intention to elevate the study of prophecy to a level of primary importance, I would like to balance that common Evangelical understanding. This whole notion that eschatology is rather unimportant in the grand scheme of things, is that Biblical?

I agree that genuine Christians ought not fight with venom over eschatological matters; and we certainly ought not divide over them, but I think I note on some high-powered Reformed blogs in particular the growing intimation that eschatology can be safely left aside while our focus is more properly placed elsewhere.

My argument on this point comes largely from experience. That is, I know that moving to a postmillennial view has sent ripples of effect throughout my whole practice of the faith. Similar to the manner in which embracing Calvinistic principles caused a thorough-going paradigm-shift which went far beyond soteriology, shifting millennial outlooks has effected more than merely my four-color chart of the End Times.

I've done no scientific survey on this, but here's what I think just from talking to people:

Premillennialists are less likely to be politically active, beyond voting.

Postmillennialists are more likely to homeschool their children.

Postmillennialists are more likely to dive into the realm of cultural reform, through the arts.

Meaning, I don't think it should shock anyone that if you hold to a view which says there is no option to the fact that the whole world will inevitably descend to the depths of unrestrained wickedness before Christ's return, you're going to be less motivated to try and get out there and build something that might actually last for generations.

Personally, the combination of a Gospel that is heavy on God's sovereignty and an eschatology which sees the nations of the world converted to Christ through preaching that Gospel, has made me a much more motivated evangelist than I was when I was synergistic and Dispensational. For me at least, my eschatology has impacted the preaching of The Good News of Jesus Christ.

The Antichrist is another issue where I think that theoretical views on the Bible have concrete, real-world effects on our practice of Christianity. Specifically, consider this: What if you are convinced that the correct interpretation is the one all the Reformers believed, and that the office of the Pope is the Man of Sin, the son of perdition, the Antichrist?

Compared to those who hold to another view, you're going to have far less inclination to work alongside Catholics in any meaningful way. As a concrete example, did you know that the modern Pro-Life movement has become a windfall for Roman Catholicism, in terms of converting Protestants to the Pope's religion? As Protestants join with Catholics in the cause, they start to think maybe these guys ain't so bad, and we're off to the races. See, if your eschatology either has the Antichrist always just around the corner in the future, or, conversely a couple thousand years in the past, you will be more inclined to try and find ways to work together with his followers in a "good cause."

Not saying right now that one view is right or wrong, but merely illustrating how differing views really do effect things.

Okay, I'm done. Back to regular programming. Just some things to think about.

What's Depraved? (Reprise)

Continuing the discussion from the previous thread and post I thought it might be ripe to reference Edwards more completely concerning the imputation of Adam's guilt as congruent with the depraved nature.

What is evident, as Edwards points out, is the condition of man is that of unrighteousness at conception. Unrighteousness he posits is the negative principle. That is, when God removed the constraining influence of the positive, the righteousness of the will of God, man was then left to his own natural propensity to self-love but without the highest regard in self-love which is the love of God. It then is resolved that evil is no positive influence created by God in man but is rather the result of the negation of righteousness.

Evil in man is still, as Edwards would confirm, a reality, a thing which is created, but through negation. God does not need to place in man evil created ex nihilo, but merely to withhold his favor and evil is without the will of God that which wills its own. His favor is that constraint which is called the righteousness of God, or his will. It is not the will of his creatures, firstly, as derived from them, for what is the clay? Man's nature is as a river, the heart of a king in the hands of God, and water by its nature flows according to the constraint of the course set by the banks. Can man make God to see? Who has been God's counselor? None. It is God who has made man and the eye and given it sight to see. And more than that, he has given all that can be seen. All things, purposes, plans and means are from his hand. The negative principle does not mean that the nature itself is evil created, rather, that by the negation of the positive influence of righteousness in both nature and mind, that which was created good, and fit, does by its own tendency bend toward its own destruction being left without the unifying principle of the law of righteousness. Further, the whole creation was subjected to sin and the like principle known in physics, according to its natural bent, finds its terminus via the law of entropy in chaos.

Adam's action is not alone, nor at first where guilt resides. It cannot be, for even the "good" acts of fallen man are accounted as evil. Guilt was by imputation. It is the judgement of the righteous God who cannot abide with unrighteousness. Indeed, guilt as Edwards describes, is congruent with the nature of unrighteousness. By imputation of guilt, then, we have a legal decree, the finding of God which is assigned, not to the act, but to the individual who acted and that because man who acts is one with his nature which acts in the totality of the being. Adam's sin then is not like ours seeing as he had the righteousness of God constraining his actions and was innocent in the beginning. What we know is that he was deceived into believing that the action that he would take was righteous.

Our first exposure is in Genesis 3, and Paul tells us in Timothy as confirmation that the woman is not allowed to teach the man to reflect the original order of creation, and, to remind us of the deception that was first in Eve, who being in transgression taught her husband. Further, that he was cursed because he both listened to his wife and ate. Genesis says that Adam listened and that it was the woman's voice he heard. Adam was made first and from him is derived the woman whose position is not the dominance of her will over his, but is to be in submission to his headship, i.e., his will as a help fit for the purpose. Adam reversed the order by submitting himself to her in violation of the type which is the order of creation, itself the reflection of God's headship and his will as the primary source of will in man. When Eve fell, the conclusion is that Adam also, being one flesh, fell with her. Even though she ate first, the guilt is imputed to Adam as her head. That is the reality, for in Adam, all sinned, including Eve even though it was she and not he who first sinned. The offense Godward is to make God over into the creatures image, reversing the order or creation, now corrupted by that which opposes the will of God, exalts the will of man, and supresses the truth in unrighteousness. It is to do what Satan intimated, to make God to be unrighteous and ascend to equality with him, even above him.

One must consider that the evil tendency (the negation of righteousness) was not in Adam, nor in Eve from the creation, contrasted to James who locates it in fallen man, and not external. Rather, they were created in holiness in the image of God. The evil resided outside of them in an influential spirit called the Serpent of Old, or Satan, who Scripture declares as being what he was from the beginning. His influence was directed toward the mind and not the nature of man which was righteous. The mind operates under the influence of the nature unless some other influence impinges upon it. Unlike we who have inherited both the guilt and corruption, the faculties of Adam's mind had not yet been infected with thoughts directed only toward self-love to the negation of love of God resulting in chaos. Theirs was a righteous nature and beside it was given a righteous commandment, another influence, to guide the mind. So we have the statement that Adam's sin was not in the similitude of the many sins of his posterity. We sin because the corruption that was introduced into Adam by deception (a contradiction of the commandment) is passed along to us and resides in us. To that effect, God has assigned to man the stature of unrighteousness, removing from him the constraints of God's will which is righteous. The effect of Adam's guilt was sealed to him by God's imputation of guilt and the removal of righteousness which leads to life, simultaneously. The result was that Adam became the condemned according to his nature. We then have the history of Scripture and of all mankind, that the likeness of Adam is now transferred to his posterity rather than the likeness of God. Such that, the unrighteousness that was imaged by Satan in the Garden, Jesus assigns to man. To that end, man is continually attempting to make others over into him own image just as his father the devil did.

I will add this paper also.

As Shedd says, the reality of sin is far deeper than the superficial reality that guilt inheres in actions alone as the Arminian would propose. Guilt inheres in the nature. Nature permeates the entirety of our being. But some will say, then how was Adam accounted guilty? Was it not in the action? Again, I say, no. Guilt has to do with the declaration of God as Judge, just as righteousness has to do with God's declaration of righteousness which is foreign to man, an action outside of himself given to him. Man was not in the beginning neutral having both tendencies, therefore guilt was external to him for unrighteousness was not in him. Guilt inheres in nature precisely because God has declared the nature to be unrighteousness, not merely in an abstract way, but in truth, man has been "unrighteoussed." So also, the guilt is imputed congruently with depravity. "In the day you eat you will die." Not, in the day you eat you will become guilty, then later die. But, at once, simultaneous. "In the day" is colloquial meaning at the point of time. So later, we have Scripture using the term judgement to connote both the passing of the sentence and the execution of it as simultaneous though temporally expressed. To our feeble minds we see things from a temporally bounded perspective. But, the reality is that though man is born with an unrighteous nature and will proceed to actual sins, those sins are nothing more than the expression of one thing, sin. And sin is guilty of offense toward the nature of God by its very nature, whether it acts or not.

Man was created in innocence, but not in moral neutrality. He was created righteous. As righteous he could not sin, but God had left the will to its native freedom, being that which chooses according to the highest regard of the mind (in this sense it means volition where Shedd rightly uses Will to mean essential being or nature and all the attributes of it including its actions). It was there, in the mind, that deception entered,

"So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate."

To this Jesus adds, what a man desires in his heart, that is what he is. So that, a man lusting after a woman has already committed adultery. It does not become sin in action but in conception (the woman saw), and conception is accomplished in the inmost place where no one knows. The entrance of the deception was below perception, precisely the definition of deception. Then, it was at the point that Eve saw, that it was concluded that she had already eaten. The corruption though entered in disguised as a beautiful creature. This does not take genius, just attention to the texts. It was by imputation, in other words, by the introduction of the lie, beyond the view of consciousness, that she was corrupted, and obviously that without her consent for no true consent is given to a lie.

The text tells us that their eyes were opened, but what it means is that their eyes were closed, blinded by the darkness that had entered and they had chosen over the light. They saw themselves as naked, where God saw them as he had clothed them. Who said they were naked? Not God. Nakedness to them became shame but it was not so, God had clothed with righteousness and nakedness was what he had clothed them with. As we can see, the doctrine of imputation is demonstrated in Satan's very actions. For it was he who introduced deprivation into Eve and she into Adam. The deception itself is guilty. The corruption itself, at once the judgement, death sentence and execution. Through Adam we have, as Scripture declares, received God's curse, he having concluded that we were all in Adam, the whole of creation, subject to sin. Which is of course the truth even though the action of our birth had not yet occurred. Therefore David says he was conceived in sin. Not his, but his by imputation and that by the negation of righteousness as a result of the curse upon Adam's kind.

Guilt then is at once congruent with and consequent of depravity. That depravity is primarily the deprivation of righteousness. It is deprivation of righteousness in nature, nature being that which permeates the entire being, body, soul and mind. Righteousness itself cannot abide with any kind of sin, whether of nature, or of the actions of mind or body. In the entrance of sin into the world, God withdrew himself by removing the righteousness which constrains the will to love of God alone. Later we see this in the veil. It is not man who has placed the barrier to entrance between God and man, (see the Garden event), but God. In fact by God's action God prevents man from doing so by the unrighteousness of man's own will. In the reconciliation that is in Christ, that veil is removed to the glory of God, through Christ's flesh, through the imputation of Christ's righteousness, effectually securing regeneration in the elect so that they can enter. Christ, who has put to death sin in his flesh has reconciled them to God in himself for the benefit of the elect and secured them forever by the vital union of the Spirit. But, no sinful choice can enter and no sin nature would will itself to, either.

As Shedd concludes, this is the great rift between one set of theologians and the other. What was begun in the Reformation was a return to the doctrine of original sin and clearer understanding than that which was held by the Pelagians of all types who rejected the doctrines of the Protestation both before and after Luther. This is what separates us, today. Misunderstanding the doctrines of the fall is the seminal beginning of all errors and offense against the doctrines of grace. The Arminian faction would contend against Shedd's statement:

"The prayer of David is the proper prayer for us to the lay of our death:

"Search me, O Lord, and try me, and see what evil ways are within me; cleanse Thou me from secret faults."

A prayer, it may be remarked, that is utterly unintelligible on the hypothesis that there is no sin deeper than consciousness."

Far then from being that it is only the conscious sin that it under the guilt of condemnation, David is repeating what he had learned by the Law, as well from his own innate sense. We must remember that the Law was added because of transgression not transgression because of the law, even though the law would produce the effect of making sin recognizably, exceedingly sinful through the unavoidable violation of it.

Let's not forget that we wage our war not against flesh and blood but against every lofty thought that exalts itself against the knowledge of God (my compilation). It is not individual Arminians, or Romanists, or any other people of Pelagian persuasions who are the real enemy. And each of us shall give an account of himself to God. Our challenge is to declare the truth and let the sword of his word divide that which is his from that which is not. It is not a new battle and all of the elect at first fight against the kingdom of God until they finally hear, "Do you kick against the goads?" I did, for I did not begin completed with this knowledge, nor have I yet arrived at a full understanding of it. Like the disciples we all believe ourselves the possessors of our own destinies at first self-assured that we have found the way until we hear the Lord say, "You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you."

With Isaiah let's us declare as we come into the presence of God, "Woe to me, for I am undone," recognizing that sin is the un-doing of God's will in man, of which we are all guilty. Humanistic concepts of will as mere volitions of single choices do not go deep enough into the soul well of depravity. Instead, rightly defined, Will is the entire being according to Shedd's usage as expressed by Isaiah's totally coming apart in the presence of the Lord, peirced to the deepest part, divided soul and spirit, searched in the inmost being, where secrets of the hearts of men so desperately wicked that no man can know it, reside. That depravity is not found just in the foaming of the surface waters, nor in the merky deep and darkness below, but issues forth from the very sping of its existence. A Reformation understanding then, is not that of the will as a ready instrument wielded distinct from self, but Will is the wielder, himself. Will is what Shedd says, in concert with Edwards, man is, and man is born bound by a creature's nature, a child of wrath, exhaustively unrighteous, thoroughly.

So we do not speak a common language when speaking of will. For we do not mean mere volition as the Arminian formula would have it. Rather, we speak of that which is reflective of the whole image of God into which we were created. It follows then, we also have a greater appreciation of what it means to love the Lord God with the whole mind, the whole soul, the whole spirit, the entire substance of our being and not just our volitions, and then why it is that total depravity is the only other reality, and being sin, stands guilty of hating God with its entire being and not just the actions that flow from it. Knowing this, we also gain a deeper appreciation for repentance, and forgiveness, for those who love much have been forgiven much by he who has become sin for us. With Isaiah we know our native state, but also who it is that has given us the righteous confession of the lips that comes from the throne of God.

Found At Provocations and Pantings

That's interesting. Saw it before. And I have heard the argument before. It was set forth by Billy Graham in fact on Larry King as is quoted in Ian Murray's Evangelicalism Divided. And we built a statue commemorating his soteriology! A soteriology, that by the "Biblicist" standard is nothing short of heresy.

Another question that this raises is the obvious ecumenical spirit that tags along with the Arminian/Calvinist divide. Two different soteriologies can be derived from the BFM. Which is all good and fine until the discussion becomes: just how is one saved?

Albert Mohler has said that no one will go to hell for another's sin. Though he equivocates on the matter, the inherited guilt of Adam, again, is a non-negotiable, and absolutely necessary for an orthodox soteriology. He signed and approved in his work on the 2000 BFM, of the reversal of the order of condemnation from the 1925 BFM, to what is now the BFM's definition of the nature of man after the fall since the 1963. (A bit of a culpability factor working there, maybe?) The denial at any level of the doctrine of original sin is foundational to all sorts of error, giving us notable myths like the age of accountability and LFW, as well as a labyrinth of sacramentalist religions.

You can see what I believe is at the heart of the world's confusion here, along with the rest of the series which began here. It is not them, it is we who allow falsehood and will not defend truth from error that gives them the right of dissent. Remove the strictures of total depravity and God's sovereignty in election, his drawing grace will fall, and there will remain only the conditions of man's vain imagination as the means of salvation. What is the difference between the typical SBC'er and an Oprah disciple if it is by synergistic means that people come to the knowledge of God? If in the end salvation requires some measure of man's effort, then the Oprahites or Osteenites for that matter, are justified in any scheme.



Osteen is the son of a former Southern Baptist. But, is that where he got his theology?





Perhaps, just perhaps, as Billy Graham said, "They may not know the name of Jesus but they know in their hearts that they need something and I think that they are saved and they are going to be with us in heaven." Oh, we might well say that we are credobaptists and all the while deny that we are a credal people. However, according to some heros of the Southern Baptists, when it comes to the final assessment it might just be that God does judge men in deference to the light that they have and what they did with it,



and not by the standards of the only way. A Southern Baptist and fellow member of Sunnyside Baptist in Cheyenne, told me just that. Wonder's where he learned it?

There are some who do not bow to the hero icons, this one for example:



Nor would such stalwarts as Tom Ascol, or the inimitable James White.

Take notice Billy Graham's position has not changed since 1960. A mere three years before the 1963 BFM was finalized by former President of the SBC, Herschel H. Hobbs, a semi-Pelagian. What should be clear is that the accomodation of such heros while ostensibly forbidden, the BFM cannot exclude. One must question how Billy Graham could be honored by the SBC with a statue,



and reject the central tenant of soteriology in the SBC, salvation in the name of Jesus only.

The final assessment is that it matters what integrity we have in the eyes of the world when we make criticisms and expect credibility. What the world sees is a house doctrinally divided and unsure of its doctrinal foundations and history. What once passed the muster of love of truth in the Conservative Resurgence, must again come to the fore and reestablish the Protestant doctrines upon which the SBC was founded. But, as long as it holds to Romanistic free-will and humanistic goodness inherent in man, as opposed to the great hinge pin of the Protestant Reformation, the bondage of the will, and total human depravity, it will continue to feed the world the excuses it needs to not heed the call of repentance.

The only true revival will come when the truth is once again the SBC signature song. As Spurgeon said and I paraphrase, "These doctrines are the Gospel." Let the Doctrines of Grace be proclaimed and the Gospel will be reclaimed. It will cause hate and division, true enough, even attempts by the Secret 9 to subvert the truth. No matter. Truth is our life, is risen indeed and cannot die again.

Independence Day Odds and Ends

I won't be blogging anymore this week, so I want wish everyone a Happy Independence Day!

We'll be spending time with the extended family and, Lord willing, we will be sitting under the preaching of the much beloved R.C. Sproul this Sunday.

On a totally unrelated matter, my wife made a very rare "impulse buy" last week. She bought us a copy of When Grace Comes Home: How the Doctrines of Grace Change Your Life. I have looked over it briefly and I think this book will be very profitable for helping people understand how "the Doctrines" effect the lives of those who affirm them. (Might be a good gift for a special Arminian in your life!)