Monthly Archives: December 2013

Miscellaneous Quotes (95)

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quotes“Never does a person see any beauty in Christ as a Savior, until they discover that they are a lost and ruined sinner.” – J.C. Ryle

“The devil is a better theologian than any of us and is a devil still.” – A.W. Tozer

“The atheist has two tenants to his unbelief. 1) There is no god. 2) I hate him.” – Doug Wilson

“First of all, let me make a comment, to me a very important and vital comment. The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of this charge being brought against it. There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace. If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding, then it is not the gospel… …That is my comment and it is a very important comment for preachers. I would say to all preachers: If your preaching of salvation has not been misunderstood in that way, then you had better examine your sermons again, and you had better make sure that you are really preaching the salvation that is offered in the New Testament to the ungodly, the sinner, to those who are dead in trespasses and sins, to those who are enemies of God. There is this kind of dangerous element about the true presentation of the doctrine of salvation.” – D. Martyn Lloyd Jones

“God’s wrath is his righteousness reacting against unrighteousness.” – J.I. Packer

When we declare that all people are born dead in sin (Eph 2:1), it simply means that, as a result of the Fall, people are born stripped of God’s favor and without the Holy Spirit and so they are dead to God’s word …. “Dead in sin” does not mean they can do (or think about) nothing in their fallen state, but it means they can do nothing spiritual or redemptive … in this state they will always be unable to apprehend spiritual truth and as such they think God’s word is foolish (1 Cor 2:14; Rom 8:7) … that is, until the Holy Spirit renews their hearts (Ezek 11:19-20) and opens their eyes to the gospel. The natural man may be very alive to carnal things, but he is dead to spiritual things.

One of the primary reasons for the division in the church over free grace vs. free will is the failure of one side to distinguish between law and gospel. Synergists erroneously reason (outside of Scripture) that if something is commanded in Scripture then man must have the moral ability to do it. Instead, after the fall, the Bible uses the holy commands as an instrument of God to strip man of all hope in himself and behold his own moral bankruptcy (Rom 3:19, 20).

“There is no grace more excellent than faith; no sin more execrable and abominable then unbelief. Faith is the saving grace and unbelief the damning sin. (Mark 16:16) … Before Christ can be received, the heart must be emptied and opened: but men’s heart’s are full of self-righteousness and vain confidence (Rom 10:3).” – John Flavel

“Faith is not our physician; it only brings us to the Physician. It is not even our medicine; it only administers the medicine, divinely prepared by Him who healeth all our diseases. In all our believing, let us remember God’s word to Israel: I am Jehovah, that healeth thee (Exod. 14:26). Our faith is but our touching Jesus; and what is even this, in reality, but His touching us?” – Horatius Bonar

“Where any work of grace is not effectual, God never intended it should be so, nor did put forth that power of grace which was necessary to make it so. Wherefore, in or towards whomsoever the Holy Spirit puts forth his power, or acts his grace for their regeneration, he removes all obstacles, overcomes all oppositions … and infallibly produces the effect intended.”- John Owen

Martin Luther speaking colorfully about the distinction between Law and gospel, or the indicatives and imperatives found in the Bible:

“Even grammarians and schoolboys on street corners know that nothing more is signified by verbs in the imperative mood than what ought to be done, and that what is done or can be done should be expressed by words in the indicative. How is it that you theologians are twice as stupid as schoolboys, in that as soon as you get hold of a single imperative verb you infer an indicative meaning, as though the moment a thing is commanded it is done, or can be done?” pg 159

“The Word is, in regard to those to whom it is preached, like the sun which shines upon all, but is of no use to the blind. In this matter we are all naturally blind; and hence the Word cannot penetrate our mind unless the Spirit, that internal teacher, by his enlightening power make an entrance for it.” – John Calvin

“Let us use great caution that neither our thoughts nor our speech go beyond the limits to which the Word of God itself extends.” – John Calvin

“We should not be entertained by the sins for which Christ died.” – John MacArthur

“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.” – Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Beware of manufacturing a God of your own: a God who is all mercy, but not just; a God who is all love, but not holy; a God who has a heaven for everybody, but a hell for none. Such a God is an idol of your own.” – J.C. Ryle

“Another part of God’s fulness which he communicates, is his happiness. This happiness consists in enjoying and rejoicing in himself; and so does also the creature’s happiness. It is a participation of what is in God; and God and his glory are the objective ground of it. The happiness of the creature consists in rejoicing in God; by which also God is magnified and exalted. Joy, or the exulting of the heart in God’s glory, is one thing that belongs to praise. So that God is all in all, with respect to each part of that communication of the divine fulness which is made to the creature. What is communicated is divine, or something of God; and each communication is of that nature, that the creature to whom it is made, is thereby conformed to God, and united to him: and that in proportion as the communication is greater or less. And the communication itself is no other, in the very nature of it, than that wherein the very honour, exaltation, and praise of God consists.” – Jonathan Edwards

“This is the sum; my brethren, preach Christ, always and evermore. He is the whole gospel. His person, offices, and work must be our one great all-comprehending theme.” – C. H. Spurgeon

“Over the last dozen or so years, managing Monergism.com has meant that I have been in no small number of discussions with classic Arminians regarding grace, free will and salvation. The importance of this discussion cannot be understated as it deals with whether salvation is all of Christ or not. Here is a typical exchange to which the Arminian, frankly has no real final answer:

Question: If God gives both you and your neighbor prevenient grace, why did you believe the gospel and not your neighbor?

Arminian Answer: Arminians believe in free will – that is, a person himself determines which of two paths to take. So, if I choose God and my neighbor does not, it means that, given the amounts of grace that each of us received, I stopped resisting God, and my neighbor is still choosing to resist.

Response: So the answer is that one stopped resisting God and the other did not, right? In other words, one person had the wisdom and humility to stop resisting God and so believe in Jesus… THAT IS WHY she is saved and not her neighbor… The question is where did that wisdom and humility come from? Was it natural? And why did not the neighbor also have this same wisdom and humility to do the same?

The classic Arminian, therefore, ascribes his repenting and believing (at least partly) to his own humility, wisdom, sound judgement or good sense and not to Christ alone. For something in him makes him to differ from his neighbor. But, in contrast, the Bible teaches that it is “because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’ – 1 Cor 1: 30-31” – John Hendryx

“No man ever believes with a true and saving faith unless God inclines his heart; and no man when God does incline his heart can refrain from believing.” – Blaise Pascal

Religion without emotion is religion without life

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spurgeon-portrait-roneyExcitement will accompany every great movement. We might justly question whether the movement was earnest and powerful if it was quite as serene as a drawing-room Bible-reading. You cannot very well blast great rocks without the sound of explosions, nor fight a battle and keep everybody as quiet as a mouse. On a dry day a carriage is not moving much along the road unless there is some noise and dust; friction and stir are the natural result of force in motion. So when the Spirit of God is abroad, and men’s minds are stirred, there must and will be certain visible signs of the movement, although these must never be confounded with the movement itself. If people imagined that to make a dust is the object aimed at by the rolling of a carriage, they can take a broom and very soon raise as much dust as fifty coaches, but they will be committing a nuisance rather than conferring a benefit. Excitement is as incidental as the dust, but it is not for one moment to be aimed at. When the woman swept her house she did it to find her money and not for the sake of raising a cloud.

Do not aim at sensation and “effect.” Flowing tears and streaming eyes, sobs and outcries, and crowded after-meetings and all kinds of confusions may occur, and may be borne with as concomitants of genuine feeling, but pray do not plan their production.

It very often happens that the converts that are born in excitement die when the excitement is over. They are like certain insects which are the product of an exceedingly warm day, and die when the sun goes down…

To win a soul it is necessary, not only to instruct our hearer and make him know the truth, but to impress him so that he may feel it. A purely didactic ministry, which should always appeal to the understanding and should leave the emotions untouched, would certainly be a limping ministry. “The legs of the lame are not equal,” says Solomon, and the unequal legs of some ministries cripple them. We have seen such an one limping about with a long doctrinal leg, but a very short emotional leg. It is a horrible thing for a man to be so doctrinal that he can speak coolly of the doom of the wicked, so that if he does not actually praise God for it, it costs him no anguish of heart to think of the ruin of millions of our race. This is horrible! I hate to hear the terrors of the Lord proclaimed by men whose hard visages, harsh tones, and unfeeling spirit betray a sort of doctrinal desiccation: all the milk of human kindness is dried out of them. Having no feeling himself, such a preacher creates none, and the people sit and listen while he keeps to dry, lifeless statements, until they come to value him for being “sound,” and they themselves come to be sound too, and I need not add sound asleep also, or what life they have is spent in sniffing out heresy, and making earnest men offenders for a word. Into this spirit may we never be baptized. Whatever I believe, or do not believe, the command to love my neighbor as myself still retains its claim upon me, and God forbid that any views or opinions should so contract my soul and harden my heart as to make me forget this law of love…

A sinner has a heart as well as a head; a sinner has emotions as well as thoughts; and we must appeal to both. A sinner will never be converted until his emotions are stirred. Unless he feels sorrow for sin, and unless he has some measure of joy in the reception of the word, you cannot have much hope of him. The truth must soak into the soul, and dye it with its own colour. The word must be like a strong wind sweeping through the whole heart, and swaying the whole man, even as a field of ripening corn waves in the summer breeze. Religion without emotion is religion without life. But, still, we must mind how these emotions are caused. Do not play upon the mind by exciting feelings which are not spiritual…

A young preacher once remarked, “Were you not greatly struck to see so large a congregation weeping?”

“Yes,” said his judicious friend, “but I was more struck with the reflection that they would probably have wept more at a play.” Exactly so: and the weeping in both cases may be equally valueless. I saw a girl on board a steamboat reading a book and crying as if her heart would break, but when I glanced at the volume I saw that it was only one of those silly yellow-covered novels which load our railway bookstalls. Her tears were a sheer waste of moisture, and so are those which are produced by mere pulpit tale-telling and death-bed painting. If our hearers will weep over their sins, and after Jesus, let their sorrows flow in rivers, but if the object of their tears is merely natural and not at all spiritual, what good is done by setting them weeping? There might be some virtue in making people joyful, for there is sorrow enough in the world, and the more we can promote cheerfulness the better, but what is the use of creating needless misery? What right have you to go through the world pricking everybody with your lancet just to show your skill in surgery? A true physician only makes incisions in order to effect cures, and a wise minister only excites painful emotions in men’s minds with the distinct object of blessing their souls. You and I must continue to drive at men’s hearts till they are broken; and then we must keep on preaching Christ crucified till their hearts are bound up, and when this is accomplished we must continue to proclaim the gospel till their whole nature is brought into subjection to the gospel of Christ.

– C. H. Spurgeon, The Sword and Trowel: 1879 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1879), 141–145.

Irrefutable Proof

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My friend, Christian Apologist and Pastor, Jeff Durbin, was invited to speak to the Philosophy of Religion class at Scottsdale Community College. Initially, this was planned as a debate between Jeff and an Atheist. After being unable to find an Atheist to participate, Jeff was invited to give a positive presentation of the existence of God and the truthfulness of the Christian Worldview.

Jeff presents and defends the claim: The proof of the Christian God is that apart from Him you can’t prove anything.

This is an excellent introduction to the Christian Worldview and the Biblical Gospel.

The Long History of Billy Graham’s Ecumenism

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By David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, PO Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061 , 866-295-4143 – fbns@wayoflife.org.

The following was first published in the out-of-print book Evangelicals and Rome in 1999:

When Did Graham’s Compromise Begin?

billyBilly Graham’s compromise and disobedience began very early in his ministry. He was born in 1918 into a Presbyterian home and traces his conversion to the preaching of evangelist Mordecai Ham in 1934. He graduated from high school in May 1936 and attended Bob Jones College (which later became Bob Jones University) in the fall but switched to Florida Bible Institute after only one semester because he did not like the strict discipline at Bob Jones.

He notes in his biography that “one thing that thrilled me [about Florida Bible Institute] was the diversity of viewpoints we were exposed to in the classroom, a wondrous blend of ecumenical and evangelical thought that was really ahead of its time” (Graham, Just As I Am , p. 46).

It was during his time in Florida that Graham felt the call to preach. In late 1938, he was baptized by immersion in a Baptist church, and in early 1939, he was ordained to preach by a Southern Baptist congregation.

Graham graduated from the Florida Bible Institute in May 1940 and joined Wheaton College that September, graduating from there in 1943.

In May 1944, he began preaching for the newly formed Chicagoland Youth for Christ, and in January 1945, he was appointed the first full-time evangelist for Youth for Christ International.

He was president of Northwestern Schools (founded by W.B. Riley) from December 1947 to February 1952, though he continued to travel and preach for Youth for Christ and eventually branched out with an independent ministry.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was formed in 1950 and the Hour of Decision radio broadcasts began that same year. Graham conducted his first citywide crusade in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in September 1947, and his October 1948 crusade in Augusta, Georgia, marked the beginning of an openly ecumenical program. This was the first crusade that was sponsored by the city ministerial association. The Graham organization began demanding broad denominational support for his crusades.

During Graham’s 1949 Los Angeles crusade, his ministry began to receive national press coverage. Graham’s final rift with most fundamentalist leaders did not occur until 1957, though. This was brought about by the open sponsorship of the liberal Protestant Church Council in New York City. The Graham crusade committee in New York included 120 theological modernists who denied the infallibility of Scripture. The wife of modernist Norman Vincent Peale headed up the women’s prayer groups for the Crusade. Modernists such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., sat on the platform and led in prayer. In the National Observer, Dec. 30, 1963, King said the virgin birth of Christ was “a mythological story” created by the early Christians. In Ebony magazine, January 1961, King said: “I do not believe in hell as a place of a literal burning fire.”

THE COMPROMISE BEGAN MUCH EARLIER THAN 1957, THOUGH. AS EARLY AS 1944, BILLY GRAHAM WAS BEFRIENDED BY ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL CATHOLIC LEADERS IN AMERICA, FULTON SHEEN. Continue reading →

The Council of Trent

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TrentJoe Carter, in an article entitled “9 Things You Should Know About the Council of Trent” found writes:

Yesterday marked the 450th anniversary of the closing of the Council of Trent, one of the most significant series of meetings in Christian history. Here are nine things evangelicals should know about the Council and the decrees that it issued:

1. The Council of Trent was the most important movement of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Church’s first significant reply to the growing Protestants Reformation. The primary purpose of the council was to condemn and refute the beliefs of the Protestants, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, and also to make the set of beliefs in Catholicism even clearer. Approximately forty clergymen, mainly Catholic bishops, were in attendance during the twenty-five times over the next eighteen years that the Council convened.

2. Protestants endorse justification by faith alone (sola fide) apart from anything (including good works), a position the Catholic Church condemned as heresy. During the the sixth session, the Council issued a decree saying that, “If any one saith, that the justice received is not preserved and also increased before God through good works; but that the said works are merely the fruits and signs of Justification obtained, but not a cause of the increase thereof; let him be anathema.”

3. The Protestant Reformers rejected the Apocrypha as part of the biblical canon. (The term Apocrypha (Gr., hidden) is a collection of ancient Jewish writings and is the title given to these books, which were written between 300 and 30 B.C., in the era between the Old and New Testaments.) During the the fourth session, the Council issued a decree damning anyone who rejected these books:

. . . if any one receive not, as sacred and canonical, the said books entire with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin vulgate edition; and knowingly and deliberately contemn the traditions aforesaid; let him be anathema.

Many doctrines unique to Catholicism, such as the teachings of purgatory, prayers for the dead, and salvation by works, are found in these books.

4. During the Protestant Reformation, the doctrine of transubstantiation was heavily criticized as an Aristotelian “pseudophilosophy.” The 13th session reaffirmed and defined transubstantiation as “that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood – the species only of the bread and wine remaining – which conversion indeed the Catholic Church most aptly calls Transubstantiation.”

5. Protestants claimed that the only source and norm for the Christian faith was Holy Scripture (the canonical Bible without the Apocrypha). The doctrine of Sola Scriptura was rejected at Trent. The Council affirmed two sources of special revelation: Holy Scripture (e.g., all the books included in the Latin Vulgate version) and traditions of the church (including the “unwritten traditions”).

6. In Catholic theology, an indulgence is a remission of temporal punishment due to sin, the guilt of which has been forgiven. Under Catholic teaching, every sin must be purified either here on earth or after death in a state called purgatory. The selling of indulgences was not part of official Catholic teaching, though in Martin Luther’s era, the practice had become common. (Luther was appalled by the sermon of an indulgence vendor named John Tetzel who said, “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”) The Council called for the reform of the practice, yet damned those who “say that indulgences are useless or that the Church does not have the power to grant them.”

7. In Catholic theology, purgatory is a place or condition of temporal punishment for those who denied yet were not free from “venial” sins (a lesser sin that does not result in a complete separation from God and eternal damnation in hell). The council affirmed the doctrine of purgatory and damned anyone who claimed “that after the grace of justification has been received the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out for any repentant sinner, that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be paid.”

8. In the 24 session, the council issued decrees on marriage which affirmed the excellence of celibacy, condemned concubinage, and made the validity of marriage dependent upon the wedding taking place before a priest and two witnesses. In the case of a divorce, the right of the innocent party to marry again was denied so long as the other party was alive, even if the other party had committed adultery.

9. At the request of Pope Gregory XIII, the Council approved a plan to correct the errors to the Julian calendar that would allow for a more consistent and accurate scheduling of the feast of Easter. The reform included reducing the number of leap years in four centuries from 100 to 97. Although Protestant countries in Europe initially refused to adopt the “Gregorian calendar” (also known as the Western or Christian calendar), it eventually became the most widely accepted and used civil calendar in the world.

(Note: The declarations and anathemas of the Council of Trent have never been revoked. The decrees of the Council of Trent are confirmed by both the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the official “Catechism of the Catholic Church” (1992).)

Poem: The Calvinist

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Justin Taylor writes, “Calvinism, they say, is making a comeback. But poetry? We rarely hear traditional poems today, apart from rhyming couplets in songs or greeting cards or spoken-word pieces with a beat. So I am thankful to hear and watch this robust, life-giving poem from John Piper—read by Piper with the help of friends Matt Chandler, R. C. Sproul, D. A. Carson, Thabiti Anyabwile, Alistair Begg, and Sinclair Ferguson—showing that Calvinism is not an arcane point of theology but a tough-and-tender approach to all of life before the face of God.”

The Calvinist from Desiring God on Vimeo.

desiringGod.org/calvinist
Sulva Productions
Jeremiah Rounds, Lisa Michelle Rounds, Ophelia Rounds
Poem Written by: John Piper
Directed & Edited by: Tristan Carnahan
Music by: AJ Hochhalter, Tony Anderson
Cinematography by: Tristan Carnahan, Jeremiah Rounds, Gabriel Leake
Sound Design & Mix by: Defacto Sound
Project Managed by: Stefan Green
Produced by: Desiring God

A Response to Shawn McCraney

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John-RadioThe folk at Apologia radio write, we love God’s Gospel and the incomprehensible nature of His grace enough to defend those truths whenever attacked: whether by cults (like Mormonism) or by professing brothers. Theology matters. Shawn McCraney’s attack on the biblical view of grace, the sovereignty of God, and the truths surrounding election have far reaching implications. The Gospel is at stake with issues related to grace, our condition before God, and our works. McCraney’s views are not helpful- they are not founded upon the Word of God.”

In this two hour show I was asked to respond to Shawn’s attack on Reformed theology. You can hear the program at this link. (The response to Shawn McCraney begins around the 23 minute mark)

Kept and Sealed

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Think about it: Do people with hearts of stone ask God to give them a different kind of heart?

Ezekiel 36:26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

He promises: “I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me” (Jer. 32:40).

On the other hand, it is entirely possible for someone to have a keen interest in Christianity (say a prayer, be a member of a local Church and even be involved in Christian ministry) and never be a genuine Christian in any way at all.

How do we know that? Well, because 1 John 2:19 explicitly says that! In referring to those who had once served alongside him in ministry, the Apostle John writes, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.”

I don’t know how John could have been clearer on the issue. According to him, those who leave the faith never truly were in the faith. John did not conclude that such a person was eternally safe because they had prayed a prayer one day long ago. No, for him, the fact that someone left the Christian faith showed that the faith they professed was never really possessed. They were never truly amongst God’s elect sheep. They were never a genuine Christian. Continue reading →