I have been blessed to see Niagara Falls on two separate occasions, but never from these angles. Stunning video photography!
Niagara Falls
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Monthly Archives: July 2013
Slavery and Racism in the Bible?
Comment: God allowed Israel to take slaves from other nations. This is immoral and racist. So if Christians were consistent they would also reinstate slavery and institutionalized racism.
Response from John Hendryx at monergism.com: We must remember, the removal of the Canaanite peoples was a judicial ruling by God. Consider, in the USA we give people rights. But those rights can be taken away if people commit a crime. It is called prison.
Is that hypocrisy to say people have rights (out of one side of our mouth) but then put them into prison (out of the other)?
No, because those persons gave up their rights when they committed a crime. There were no prisons in Canaan. As a judicial ruling, God told Israel to dispossess the people in the land. They were either to kill them or in some cases enslave them. The Canaanites had already lost all of their rights and were under God’s just judgment. There was no justification for arbitrary chattel slavery in the Bible — (the kind which we knew in antebellum times) … in fact the slavery which kidnapped people and sold them as property was punishable by death (Exodus 21:16).
No, they were ONLY to kill or enslave under God’s direct verbal orders. Remember, He is God so His judicial ruling is more just than any human court has ever been since He knows all of our crimes perfectly. So when Israel killed people they were simply acting as God’s hand, speeding up the death sentence we all justly deserve.
You think this racist because it targets foreigners? Think again. God also warned the Israelites that they were not immune from the Canaanites’ judgment: “But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will give you trouble in the land where you will live. And then I will do to you what I plan to do to them.’ “(Numbers 33:55-56).
So not only were foreigners made slaves … when the Israelites disobeyed God – REMEMBER – they were carried off in the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities. So God is not partial or racist.
Again, the Israelites deserved judgment just like the others, whether Egyptian or Canaanite. This should serve to remind us that we may not assume that those who suffer unique or catastrophic calamities in this life are any worse than we ourselves, since it is only the grace of God in Jesus Christ which makes us to differ from anyone (see Luke 13:1-5; 1 Cor. 4:7).
Also Christians, being consistent with the scripture and understanding this, would never enslave people. God has commanded us to set all men free with the gospel. The time between Christ’s coming and His return is a time of forbearance. But the time is coming when God’s patience will end and justice will be carried out in full measure. So it is important to differentiate what God commands as a way of life for us and his judicial rulings. The confusing of them causes college professors to misrepresent the beliefs of both Jews and Christians, and many atheists, who are ignorant of the fullness of what the Bible says, take this up and make unfortunate misrepresentations of the Bible in public. But at least it gives us an opportunity to bring the truth to light. So for this I thank you.
Lesson: We must learn to distinguish God’s judicial pronouncements from his commands about a way of life for us so as not to mix apples and oranges.
The Numbers Game
“I have found that churches, pastors, seminaries, and parachurch agencies throughout North America are mostly playing the numbers game—that is, defining success in terms of numbers of heads counted or added to those that were there before. Church-growth theorists, evangelists, pastors, missionaries, news reporters, and others all speak as if
(1) numerical increase is what matters most;
(2) numerical increase will surely come if our techniques and procedures are right;
(3) numerical increase validates ministries as nothing else does;
(4) numerical increase must be everyone’s main goal.
I detect four unhappy consequences of this.
First, big and growing churches are viewed as far more significant than others.
Second, parachurch specialists who pull in large numbers are venerated, while hard-working pastors are treated as near-nonentities.
Third, lively laymen and clergy too are constantly being creamed off from the churches to run parachurch ministries, in which, just because they specialize on a relatively narrow front, quicker and more striking results can be expected.
Fourth, many ministers of not-so-bouncy temperament and not-so-flashy gifts return to secular employment in disillusionment and bitterness, concluding that the pastoral life of steady service is a game not worth playing.
In all of this I seem to see a great deal of unmortified pride, either massaged, indulged, and gratified, or wounded, nursed, and mollycoddled. Where quantifiable success is god, pride always grows strong and spreads through the soul as cancer sometimes gallops through the body.
Shrinking spiritual stature and growing moral weakness thence result, and in pastoral leaders, especially those who have become sure they are succeeding, the various forms of abuse and exploitation that follow can be horrific.
Orienting all Christian action to visible success as its goal, a move which to many moderns seems supremely sensible and businesslike, is thus more a weakness in the church than its strength; it is a seedbed both of unspiritual vainglory for the self-rated succeeders and of unspiritual despair for the self-rated failures, and a source of shallowness and superficiality all round.
The way of health and humility is for us to admit to ourselves that in the final analysis we do not and cannot know the measure of our success the way God sees it. Wisdom says: leave success ratings to God, and live your Christianity as a religion of faithfulness rather than an idolatry of achievement.”
– J. I. Packer, A Passion for Faithfulness: Wisdom from the Book of Nehemiah (Wheaton: Crossway, 1995), 207-209.
Justification Quotes
In the New Testament, words for salvation include: propitiation, vitally important for understanding the nature of the atonement yet only mentioned four times; Reconciliation is found just five times (all Pauline); and Redemption is not very common. But when we come to justification, we have 81 occurrences of the adjective, 100+ of the noun, 39 of the verb, and 5 of the adverb. Justification could be called the central idea in the doctrine of salvation.
John Calvin (1509-1564), “Justification is the main hinge on which salvation turns.”
Martin Luther (1483-1546), “When the article of justification has fallen, everything has fallen … This is the chief article from which all other doctrines have flowed … It alone begets, nourishes, builds, preserves, and defends the church of God; and without it the church of God cannot exist for one hour. Justification is the master and prince, the lord, the ruler, and the judge over all kinds of doctrines.”
Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), “Justification is the strong rock and foundation of Christian religion. Whosoever denies this doctrine is not to be counted for a true Christian man but an adversary of Christ.”
John Stott, “Justification is not a synonym for amnesty, which is pardon without principle, a forgiveness which overlooks – even forgets – wrongdoing and declines to bring it to justice. No. Justification is an act of justice… When God justifies sinners, He is not declaring bad people to be good, or saying that they are not sinners after all; He is pronouncing them legally righteous, free from any liability to the broken law, because He Himself in His Son has borne the penalty of their law-breaking. We are justified by His blood.”
How can I know if I am elect?
but that is not possible; it is only to be discovered by “looking to Jesus.”1 If you desire to ascertain your own election, after the following manner shall you assure your heart before God.
Do you feel yourself to be a lost, guilty sinner? Go straight to the cross of Christ, and tell Jesus so, and tell Him that you have read in the Bible, “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”2 Tell Him that He has said, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”3 Look to Jesus and believe on Him, and you shall make proof of your election directly, for as surely as you believe, you are elect.
If you will give yourself wholly up to Christ and trust Him, then you are one of God’s chosen ones; but if you stop and say, “I want to know first whether I am elect,” you do not know what you are asking. Go to Jesus, just as you are, in all your guilt. Leave all curious inquiry about election alone. Go straight to Christ, and hide in His wounds, and you shall know your election. The assurance of the Holy Spirit shall be given to you, so that you shall be able to say, “I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me.”4
Christ was at the everlasting council-He can tell you whether you were chosen or not; but you cannot find it out in any other way. Go and put your trust in Him, and His answer will be, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.”5 There will be no doubt about His having chosen you when you have chosen Him.
Sons we are through God’s election,
Who in Jesus Christ believe.
1 – Hebrews 12:2
2 – John 6:37
3 – 1 Timothy 1:15
4 – 2 Timothy 1:12
5 – Jeremiah 31:3
From “Morning and Evening,” written by C.H. Spurgeon, revised and updated by Alistair Begg and made available by Truth for Life.
When a tweet on the twitter dings, a soul from purgatory springs
According to the Vatican’s Sacred Apostolic Penitentiary publication, in an effort to make more use of social media, Pope Francis will give indulgences when he is followed on twitter. See this article from the Guardian newspaper here.
For more on Indulgences see the articles “The power is not in Joseph’s pants” and “Indulgences – Alive and well in the Roman Catholic Church.”
The Providence of God
Transcript
“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).
Now one of the things that jumps out at me about this verse is the strength of conviction that the Apostle expresses when he writes these words. You know, patient it wasn’t that he said, “I sure hope that everything is going to come out well in the end.’ Or, ‘I believe that things will work out according to the will of God. But he says, “For we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, and are the called according to His purpose.” I mean, he’s speaking here with an apostolic assurance about an idea that is so basic and so fundamental to living the Christian life, that I think that we can from this passage derive great comfort.
But I’m also afraid that in this day and age the strength of conviction that is expressed here by Paul is very much absent from our churches and from our Christian communities. And there’s been a striking change in our cultural understanding of the way in which our lives relate to the sovereign government of God.
Some of you in recent years had the opportunity to see the series on television, the mini-series on the Civil War. And one of the most moving segments of that series was when the narrator read letters that have survived from soldiers of both sides of the conflict in the war between the states. As they would write home to their loved ones, to their wives, or to their mothers or fathers on the eave of a battle, and they would talk about their concerns, and about their fears and their apprehensions. And yet they would say frequently in these letters, ‘But my life is in the hands of a good, benevolent, providence. And to Him do I trust myself body and soul.’
There was a time when people settled this country and they would name a city Providence, like the town in Rhode Island. But who in the world would do that in our culture today? The whole idea of divine providence has all but disappeared from our culture, and that’s a tragic thing. I think if any way in which the secular mindset has made inroads into the Christian community, it’s with a worldview that assumes that everything that happens out there, happens according to fixed, natural causes. And God, if He is anywhere doing anything, is above and beyond it all, and He’s just a spectator up in heaven looking down and perhaps rooting us on and cheerleading for us, but He has no immediate control over what happens here.
Whereas the Christians of the church of all centuries have always had an acute sense that this is our Father’s world, and that the affairs of men and nations, in the final analysis, are in His hands.
The Zwickau Prophets
Most Christians have heard of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers. But there is good reason why you have probably never heard of their contemporaries, the Zwickau prophets. In the following two videos, R.C. Sproul and Steve Lawson explain who they were and why they left no lasting legacy.
The principle of Sola Scriptura—Scripture alone—lies at the heart of the Protestant Reformation. Rejecting the pope as God’s voice on earth required that there be a true and superior authority on which Christians could depend. Replacing the pope with someone else who claimed direct revelation from God would have only served to perpetuate the original problem. The scope and extent of the Reformation legacy, still felt today, is primarily due to the Reformers’ unshakable commitment to God’s unchanging revelation found in the pages of your Bible.
Dr. R. C. Sproul:
Dr. Steven Lawson:
Allowing Romans 9 to speak for itself
As the Apostle Paul transitions into what we now call Romans 9 we should recall that there were no chapter and verse divisions in the original text. He is not starting a new theme but answering the question … if (or rather, since) God has an elect people who can never be separated from the love of God (which is what Romans 8 has just stated), what happened with the Jews? Weren’t they God’s elect people too?
History records that most of the Jews failed to recognize their own Messiah when He came… How can what Paul has written be true if God’s own people failed to receive Messiah when He came (and therefore are unsaved – Romans 10:1)? Hasn’t God’s promise failed to materialize for these people? What about the Jews Paul?
Paul was no ivory tower academician who had merely great intellectual acumen but no heart felt concern for people. Paul had a very real sympathy and compassion for his fellow countrymen and if it were possible (which of course it was not) he would have forfeited his own salvation if it would mean that his own people would be redeemed. He felt the issue very deeply.
Romans 9:1 I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— 2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.
The Jews had unique privileges which were enjoyed by no other people on earth. Paul lists eight distinct and unique benefits:
4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. 5 To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.
Much time could be spent outlining all the things the people of Israel had going for them. So why is it that we observe such a great many Jews rejecting Messiah? Paul wants to answer that question and does so by stating in very categorical terms that God has not in any way failed to keep His promise.
6 But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel,
Notice what Paul is doing here in this verse. He tells us that God’s word has not in any way failed and now explains WHY this is the case. The word “for” is used to show the reason why the word of God has not failed.
Why has the word of God not failed?
The answer: because “not all Israel is Israel” or “not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.”
That is quite a statement and one we must understand because Paul is about to take the next many verses to illustrate and prove this exact point.
He is about to show us that it in biblical history, it has always been this way. Continue reading
His Robes For Mine
Grace Community Church Worship Choir singing this great piece with beautiful, Bible-saturates lyrics about the gospel of Jesus:
HIS ROBES FOR MINE (Text by Chris Anderson; Tune by Greg Habegger)
His robes for mine: O wonderful exchange!
Clothed in my sin, Christ suffered ‘neath God’s rage.
Draped in His righteousness, I’m justified.
In Christ I live, for in my place He died.
Chorus:
I cling to Christ, and marvel at the cost:
Jesus forsaken, God estranged from God.
Bought by such love, my life is not my own.
My praise-my all-shall be for Christ alone.
His robes for mine: what cause have I for dread?
God’s daunting Law Christ mastered in my stead.
Faultless I stand with righteous works not mine,
Saved by my Lord’s vicarious death and life.
His robes for mine: God’s justice is appeased.
Jesus is crushed, and thus the Father’s pleased.
Christ drank God’s wrath on sin, then cried “‘Tis done!”
Sin’s wage is paid; propitiation won.
His robes for mine: such anguish none can know.
Christ, God’s beloved, condemned as though His foe.
He, as though I, accursed and left alone;
I, as though He, embraced and welcomed home!