Judgment

God raises up both the true and the false prophet for His purposes. Throughout the centuries, the greatest challenge to the people of God has always been the false prophet within the ranks, rather than the military enemy outside. When Israel was right with Yahweh, no weapon formed against them could ever prosper. The clearest sign of God’s judgment is when He allows a people to have its carnal desires; when He gives them what they want but sends leaness to their souls; when He gives them over to the sin they crave (Romans 1) and allows them to embrace false prophets who lead them astray crying “peace,” “peace,” when there is no peace. As Jeremiah found to his own cost, when God’s hand of judgment comes on a people, the false prophet becomes more popular than the true. Its always been this way. When men refuse to embrace His truth, God sends them strong delusion so that they will believe falsehood.

“The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” – 2 Thess 2:9-12

“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” – 2 Tim 4:3,4

An Avalanche of Inspiration

After examining a number of passages that attest to Scripture’s inspiration and authority, which fills the whole New Testament; and which includes not only such direct assertions of divinity and infallibility for Scripture as these, but, along with them, an endless variety of expressions of confidence in, and phenomena of use of, Scripture which are irresistible in their teaching when it is once fairly apprehended.

The induction must be broad enough to embrace, and give their full weight to, a great variety of such facts as these: the lofty titles which are given to Scripture, and by which it is cited, such as “Scripture,” “the Scriptures,” even that almost awful title, “the Oracles of God”; the significant formulæ by which it is quoted, “It is written,” “It is spoken,” “It says,” “God says”; such modes of adducing it as betray that to the writer “Scripture says” is equivalent to “God says,” and even its narrative parts are conceived as direct utterances of God; the attribution to Scripture, as such, of divine qualities and acts, as in such phrases as “the Scriptures foresaw”; the ascription of the Scriptures, in whole or in their several parts as occasionally adduced, to the Holy Spirit as their author, while the human writers are treated as merely his media of expression; the reverence and trust shown, and the significance and authority ascribed, to the very words of Scripture; and the general attitude of entire subjection to every declaration of Scripture of whatever kind, which characterizes every line of the New Testament.

The effort to explain away the Bible’s witness to its plenary inspiration reminds one of a man standing safely in his laboratory and elaborately expounding—possibly by the aid of diagrams and mathematical formulæ—how every stone in an avalanche has a defined pathway and may easily be dodged by one of some presence of mind. We may fancy such an elaborate trifler’s triumph as he would analyze the avalanche into its constituent stones, and demonstrate of stone after stone that its pathway is definite, limited, and may easily be avoided.

But avalanches, unfortunately, do not come upon us, stone by stone, one at a time, courteously leaving us opportunity to withdraw from the pathway of each in turn: but all at once, in a roaring mass of destruction.

Just so we may explain away a text or two which teach plenary inspiration, to our own closet satisfaction, dealing with them each without reference to its relation to the others: but these texts of ours, again, unfortunately do not come upon us in this artificial isolation; neither are they few in number. There are scores, hundreds, of them: and they come bursting upon us in one solid mass. Explain them away? We should have to explain away the whole New Testament. What a pity it is that we cannot see and feel the avalanche of texts beneath which we may lie hopelessly buried, as clearly as we may see and feel an avalanche of stones!

Warfield, B. B. (2008). The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, Volume 1: Revelation and Inspiration (65–66). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

HT: Dan Phillips

Skeptical about Evolution

Evolution is a theory in crisis. Of course many would NOT want you to know that, but more than 800 Ph.D.-bearing scientists have recently signed a statement expressing skepticism about contemporary evolutionary theory’s claims that random mutation and natural selection account for the complexity of life. These scientists say, “Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

Source: http://www.worldmag.com/articles/19401