Lift Him Up

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spurg7“The only thing we have to do with Christ Jesus crucified is just to lift him up and preach him. There is many a man who could only speak in a ploughman’s dialect, who will wear a bright and starry crown in heaven, because he lifted Christ up, and sinners saw and lived. And there is many a learned doctor, who spoke with the brogue of the Egyptian and, with the dark and mysterious language, he talked he knew not what, who, after having ended his course, shall enter heaven without a solitary star in his crown, never having lifted up Christ nor won crowns for his Master.

Let each of us who are called to the solemn work of the ministry remember that we are not called to lift up doctrine or church governments or particular denominations. Our business is to lift up Christ Jesus and to preach him fully. There may be times when church government is to be discussed and particular doctrines are to be vindicated. God forbid that we should silence any part of the truth. But the main work of the ministry — its every day work — is just exhibiting Christ and crying out to sinners, ‘Believe, believe, believe on him who is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.’”

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Treasury of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, 1950), II:279.

Jonathan Edwards for the 21st Century

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Justin Taylor writes, “If George Marsden only had 45 minutes to talk about Jonathan Edwards, what would he say? He answers that in the following lecture (November 3, 2010) for the Jonathan Edwards Center and the Henry Center for Theological Understanding at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

Here’s an abstract:

What are the most helpful insights that we can gain from Jonathan Edwards’s theology today? This lecture uses the contrast between Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards in the eighteenth century to reflect on some of the most characteristic traits of later American culture to which Edwards’s ‘theology of active beauty’ provides particularly helpful alternatives.

Professor Marsden is the author of the magisterial biography, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (Yale University Press, 2003) and A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards (Eerdmans, 2008), which is a shorter and fresh retelling, not an abridgment. I highly recommend both books. Most recently Dr. Marsden has written the foreword for Dane Ortlund’s Edwards on the Christian Life: Alive to the Beauty of God (forthcoming from Crossway in August 2014).

The lecture (found at this link) begins around the 4:00 mark and goes until around 50:00, and then Colin Smith (of The Orchard Evangelical Free Church) offers a response. Then for the final 20 minutes there is some Q&A.”

Ten Cannons of God’s Law

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Ray Comfort writes: “Those of you who have read the book ‘Out of the Comfort Zone’ will know that back in 1982 I discovered what is now called “Hell’s Best Kept Secret, ” and how I had a strong conviction that God was going to move myself and my family from New Zealand to the United States.

You will also know the amazing way in which He did that, how I waited another three years in America for doors to open, and how I received a call from a well-known preacher. He had seen the teaching on video, and felt it was so important he had me share it with a thousand pastors.

He put it on video and that year he screened what he titled “Ten Cannons of God’s Law” to 30,000 pastors. My faithful PA found the 1992 clip on YouTube where I (in a comparatively youthful body) shared it with those pastors”:

“I would VERY highly recommend a CD by Ray Comfort which includes the messages ‘Hell’s Best Kept Secret’ and ‘True and False Conversion.’ The CD is available for $5 for between 1 and 9 copies, and just $1.50 for between 10 and 199 copies. I just bought a number of them at this link to give away to people and would encourage others to do the same.” – John Samson