The Power of Thrift

Under the influence of Christian concepts of familistic property, the free market has acted to break up such large aristocratic holdings. The industrious poor eventually buy out the lazy rich, and anyone with thrift can eventually obtain his own garden. Dominion is multiplied (James Jordan, The Law of the Covenant, 133).

A guiding principle is for a poor person to be industrious and get to a point in their life where they consume less than they produce. When you consume less than you produce dominion is multiplied. The Church needs to teach the poor to get dominion for Jesus by being industrious in the midst of their poverty. 

This is The Healing

...You’ve tried to philosophize your pain / but the hurt is in your heart and not in your brain / You could be hit by the Spirit and be made new / You thought Heaven was a place one goes to /and this heaven on Earth is true / This is the healing / Give me tears from all your bitter years / The healing / Salt the wounds, the healing will come soon...     

                                   - This is The Healing by L.S.U./Michael Knott

What is a philosopher?

Ask Mr. Dooley.

A philosopher is a man "that is thryin' to make a livin' by thinkin' about things that no man can think about without th' top iv his head blowin' off" (quoted in Warren C. Young, A Christian Approach to Philosophy, 19).

40 Days for Life Kickoff Rally

Yellowstone Valley Christians for Life sponsors the local 40 Days for Life pro-life campaign and prayer vigil for Billings, MT. Tonight was the Kickoff Rally, hosted at St. Bernard Catholic Church; I provided an opening prayer below. 

###

7 PM
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
40 Days for Life Kickoff Rally
St. Bernard Catholic Church
Billings, MT

2 Chronicles 7:14 “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

Blessed Triune Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: You have called us to be a people of prayer, therefore, with ready obedience we now lift our hearts to you.

We come before you this evening as faithful Christians, as brothers and sisters in the household of faith, as citizens in the Kingdom of God. We are people of our Lord Jesus, we are people of our Lord's Prayer, therefore, we pray the prayer-of-all-prayers, Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. 

O Lord, in your Perfect Law you condemn murder; to Moses you gave the Holy Words, “Thou shalt not kill.” But our Nation scoffs at your Law; we've legalized and funded the heinous sin of abortion. Thus, tonight with urgency we join together in prayer; we now come before you in humility, interceding on the behalf of our nation--that you would continue to be long-suffering and merciful, and that we would be judged unto repentance and not unto destruction. We pray again, Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

O Lord, we confess and acknowledge that we live in a society that has built prosperity and a culture, economies and our cities, upon the blood of the Aborted. Blood flows from the operation tables in the abortion facilities, out doors, over sidewalks, and into the streets. This blood is mixed with the mortar used by our Nation for the bricks of progress and growth, and thus, Lord, we come before you and confess that we live in a Nation of bloody-city-builders. Therefore, we pray for conversion and revival in our nation, that the unborn and innocent might have life. We pray again, Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. 

O Lord, we thank you that we can be witnesses against this culture of death. O Lord, we ask that you would do a mighty work through the 40 Days for Life campaign in our Valley. Protect the many who in the days to come will offer up the sacrifice of prayer to you on the behalf of the unborn; and we rejoice knowing that you have promised in your Word, which never returns void, that “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”  We pray again, Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

O Lord, we ask that the hearts of fathers and mothers would be turned to their children through our witness. We ask that you would save babies here in the city of Billings! We ask that you would prevent mothers from committing the sin of aborting their children here in the city of Billings! We ask that you would close the Abortion Facility in our midst, in our city, just up the road. We ask that you would convert the employees of Planned Parenthood, that they would forsake their sins, as well as their wicked employment. And we ask that you would do all this in order that you might be Glorified! We pray again, Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

O Lord, teach us to humble ourselves; teach us to seek your face. We pray these things in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Jesus Christ: Initiative of God

"God has spoken and acted in Jesus Christ. He has said something. He has done something. . . . It [Christianity] is a 'gospel' (i.e. good news) -- in Paul's words 'the gospel of God . . . concerning his Son . . . Jesus Christ our Lord' (Romans 1:1-4). It is not primarily an invitation to man to do anything; it is supremely a declaration of what God has done in Christ for human beings like ourselves" (John R. W. Stott, Basic Christianity, 12).

Reading Notes: Christian Theology by Alister E. McGrath

McGrath, Alister E. Christian Theology: An Introduction (5th ed.). Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

This book was comprehensive but not exhaustive. Christian Theology is indisputably a "textbook" proper, i.e., "a book used as a standard work for the study of a particular subject." What the book lacks in imagination, i.e., style, tone, voice, allusion, etc., McGrath compensates for with factoid and reference factors, e.g., a useful (shock!!!) index, glossary, and primary source citations. Such being the case, the book will sit on my bookcase next to other useful theological reference works, e.g., Lewis and DeMarest's Integrative Theology (3 vol.), Beeke and Ferguson's Reformed Confessions Harmonized, Hodge's Outlines of Theology, Beeke and Jones's A Puritan Theology, etc.

The book is truly comprehensive: "The present volume therefore assumes that its reader knows nothing about Christian theology. . . . This book is ideally placed to help its reader gain an appreciation of the rich resources of the Christian tradition. Although this is not a work of Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant theology, great care has been taken to ensure that Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant perspectives and insights are represented and explored" (xxii-xxiii). McGrath gladly admits "My aim in this work has not be to persuade but to explain" (xxiii). That is good in one sense, but bad in the sense that McGrath does not provide direction on what ideas the reader's mind-trap ought to go "slam!" on.

In addition to the already mentioned "factoid and reference factors" the book's structure was very helpful. McGrath wants to expose readers the "themes of Christian theology" but he also wants to "enable them to understand them" (xxvii). Thus, the book is split into three parts: Part I covers the "landmarks" of Christian theology, i.e., the historical development of Christian theology neatly broken into four parts (Patristic c. 100-700; Middle Ages/Renaissance, c. 700-1500; Reformation, c. 1500-1750; Modern, c. 1750-the Present); Part 2 covers "Sources and Methods," i.e., Prolegomena; the quadrilateral of Scripture, Tradition, Reason, Religious Experience; the ideas/categories of divine revelation and natural theology; and a high overview of different approaches to the relationship between Philosophy and Theology); Part 3 covers "Christian Theology" in its traditional creedal outline, i.e., "We shall use the structure of the traditional Christian creeds as a framework for our exploration of the leading topics of Christian theology" (197). This structure is where the book is at its strongest--the author's aim for his readers to know and understand the themes of Christian theology.

My undergraduate degree is in Religion and Philosophy, so I enjoyed Part 2 - Chapter 8, "Philosophy and Theology: Dialogue and Debate," and Part 3 - Chapter 17, "Christianity and the World Religions." Nothing new therein, but thoroughly enjoyable--like shaking up and searching through the catch-all, "junk drawer" in a home, revisiting those chapters stirred up a bunch lost, "junk drawer -- "wellwouldyoulookatthat" and "ha, cool!" -- philosophic ideas and memories. ;)

It was a bit of a chore to trudge through 450+ pages of dry academic prose that attempted to be objective, but it was well worth it. To have another good reference work that has been thumbed through and heavily underlined with marginal notes is always a good thing to have; later on in life when the brain-gears are getting rusty and the recall and recollection skills are taxed with the weight of decades I will be even more thankful.

My 8 word aphoristic review: A non-scintillating but thorough rehearsal of Christian theology. As McGrath may say, Cheers!

David Pogue: 10 top time-saving tech tips

Word & Prayer

The Word of God is a Sword, and Prayer is the instruction manual.

"Read [the Bible] with the prayer that the Holy Spirit's grace will help you understand it" (J. C. Ryle, Thoughts for Young Men, 57).

More Than Introduction

"'In the beginning God.' The first four words of the Bible are more than an introduction to the creation story or to the book of Genesis They supply the key to which opens our understanding to the Bible as a whole. They tell us that the religion of the Bible is a religion of the initiative of God" (John R. W. Stott, Basic Christianity, 11).

The Risen, Preaching Christ

"[W]e ought to give our attention to the sermons in Acts as models for preaching today . . . the preaching of the apostles in Acts is nothing less than the preaching of the risen Christ himself" (Roger Wagner, Tongues Aflame, 22).

There is a Balm in Gilead

...

If you cannot preach like Peter,

If you cannot pray like Paul,

But you can tell the love of Jesus,

You can say He died for us all.

There is a balm in Gilead

To make the wounded whole. 

There is a balm in Gilead

To save a sin-sick soul. 

...

Gospel-Identity

Alister McGrath discusses Martin Luther's thoughts about the relationship between God's word and the nature of the church.

Neither an episcopally ordained ministry, nor an institutional continuity with the apostolic church, are therefore necessary to safeguard the existence of the church, whereas the preaching of the gospel is essential to the identity of the church. 'Where the word is, there is faith; and where faith is, there is the true church.' The visible church is constituted by the preaching of the Word of God: no human assembly may claim to be the 'church of God' unless it is founded on this gospel. It is more important to the preach the same gospel as the apostles than to be a member of an institution which is historically derived from them (Christian Theology: An Introduction, 382).

 Hence, preaching was at the top of the to-do lists of the Reformers, e.g., in The Necessity of Reforming the Church, John Calvin said "no man is a true pastor of the Church who does not perform the office of teaching. . . . no man can claim for himself the office of bishop or pastor who does not feed his flock with the word of the Lord."

People of God - People of God's Word

"God's people cannot be without God's word."
           - Martin Luther

Task of the Holy Ghost

"The task of the Holy Spirit is to lead into God's truth: without that Spirit, truth remains elusive" (Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction, 231).

Basil on the Holy Ghost

"Through the Holy Spirit comes our restoration to paradise, our ascension into the kingdom of heaven, our return to the adoption of sons, our liberty to call God our Father, our being made partakers of the grace of Christ, our being called children of light, our sharing in eternal glory, and, in a word, our being brought into a state of all "fulness of blessing" [Romans 15:29], both in this world and in the world to come, of all the good gifts that are in store for us, by promise hereof, through faith, beholding the reflection of their grace as though they were already present, we await the full enjoyment" (Saint Basil the Great, De Spirtu Sancto, XV. 36.)

Reformed

"The great thing about being Reformed is that there is no passage of Scripture I have to hide from."
     - R.C. Sproul, Jr. quoting David Chilton in TABLETALK (January, 1999).

Preaching

"When Paul said he preached Christ, he meant it" (Separated Unto the Gospel: The Mission and Work of the Free Presbyterian Church of North America, 22).

Creation

In the Bible "creation" is an alpha and omega theme: in the Book of Genesis we learn about the original creation when "God created the heaven and earth" and in the Book of Revelation we see the glorified creation (re-creation) when the one who "sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new" (Revelation 21:5).

The Lord Jesus Christ is the Second Adam who by way of obedience and righteousness will make new all the things that the First Adam corrupted by way of sin and rebellion: "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22); "For if by one man's offence [Adam's] death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:17).

"Creation" is an alpha and omega theme because all of Scripture speaks of the Creator-Christ: Christ is the "Alpha" Creator, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men" (John 1:1-4), and Christ is the "Omega" Creator, "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. . . . And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write for these words are true and faithful. And he said unto me, It is done. I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; I will be his God, and he shall be my son" (Revelation 21:1-2, 5-7).

The Lord's Table

"It is the Lord’s Table to which we come. It is not a denominational table. All who credibly profess salvation in Christ, are seeking to maintain a pure testimony, and are not currently under discipline for sin in their local church are welcome to participate in services that for many of us are a foretaste of heaven. Here we view our Saviour in symbols that point us to the day when we will see Him face to face" (Separated Unto the Gospel: The Mission and Work of the Free Presbyterian Church of North America, 11).

WCF. VII. Of God's Covenant with Man - 1. Q & A

Blogging through and answering the questions from G. I. Williamson's The Westminster Confession of Faith for Study Classes for personal review and comprehension.

Prior posts for WCF. I. Of the Holy Scriptures - Sections 1-10.

Prior posts for WCF. II. Of God, And of the Holy Trinity - Sections 1-3.

Prior posts for WCF. III. Of God's Eternal Decree - Sections 1-8.

Prior posts for WCF. IV. Of Creation - Sections 1-2.

Prior posts for WCF. V. Of Providence - Sections 1-7.

Prior posts for WCF. VI. Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment Thereof - Sections 1-6. 

WCF. VII. Of God's Covenant with Man.

Section 1.

1. What does the depraved sinner deny besides the fact that he is depraved?

In addition to deny his depravity, the depraved sinner denies his creaturehood. Depraved man is bewitched by self-delusions of autonomy and independence from God (the Creator).

2. Have Reformed Christians failed to consistently acknowledge "the distance between God and the creature?"

 Yes, some Reformed Christians have failed to consistently acknowledge the basic distinction between the Creator and the creation.

3. How have they done so?

They have done so by when by describing a covenant as "an agreement between two or more persons." Williamson says, "There is, in such language, at least the danger of suggesting that God and man are equal parties in the disposition of the covenants--as if each agreed to terms sovereignly imposed by the other!" (82)

4. What would God have owed a sinlessly perfect, or perfectly obedient, man?

 God would have owed (God owes) only the gracious promises he has self-imposed by way of covenant.

5. By what is God "bound" in his covenant(s)?

Because "God's covenant dealings with men are both sovereign and gracious" . . . "He is bound by nothing but his own holy Word" (82).

6. By whom is a covenant instituted?

A covenant is sovereignly and graciously instituted by God; a covenant is instituted by the will of God alone.

Worship

"Worship has been defined as “reverent devotion and allegiance pledged to God.” It usually is extended to include the rites or ceremonies by which our devotion and allegiance are expressed. Our English word worship is basically the same word as worth. Worship is really “worthship” and denotes that God is worthy of receiving the praise and honor we bring to Him. From the Old and the New Testaments we glean that corporate worship is mandatory for God’s people (Heb. 10:25). It is to be marked by a sense of the presence of the Lord (Matt. 18:20; 1 Cor. 5:4). Its main elements are prayer and praise (Psa. 105:1-4; Eph. 5:19; Acts 2:42), the reading of the Word of God (Luke 4:16-17), the preaching of the Word (Luke 4:18-20; Acts 13:5; 2 Tim. 4:1-2), and the administration of the sacraments (Matt. 28:19; 1 Cor. 11:23-24). This worship is to be spiritual and sincere (John 4:24). It is not to degenerate into a mere mechanical, ritualistic, or liturgical form (Matt. 15:8)" (Separated Unto the Gospel: The Mission and Work of the Free Presbyterian Church of North America, 7-8).

WCF. VI. Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment Thereof - Q&A - Sections 1-6.

Blogging through and answering the questions from G. I. Williamson's The Westminster Confession of Faith for Study Classes for personal review and comprehension.

Prior posts for WCF. I. Of the Holy Scriptures - Sections 1-10.

Prior posts for WCF. II. Of God, And of the Holy Trinity - Sections 1-3.

Prior posts for WCF. III. Of God's Eternal Decree - Sections 1-8.

Prior posts for WCF. IV. Of Creation - Sections 1-2.

Prior posts for WCF. V. Of Providence - Sections 1-7.

WCF. VI. Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment Thereof.

Sections 1-2.

Sections 3-4.

Sections 5-6.