PyroManiac

The downside of blogging

2006-01-24T00:28:00.000-08:00

Click on the image above to go to the new gangblog.

A major announcement

When I launched this weblog in June, it was intended to be a modest experiment. I knew some of my immediate friends and family could be persuaded to read semi-regularly. I hoped some of the people in my fellowship group at church would want to read and get more insight into the mind of the guy who teaches them on Sundays. And I knew from experience that there are people all over the world who look to the blogosphere as a way to gain information about trends, conflicts, and new ideas in the evangelical world. I figured some of them would read my thoughts, too.

So I guestimated that (in the best-case scenario) the blog might build a readership of some 300 people per day by the time it was a year old—at which time I would be able to decide whether to keep blogging or quit.

I was completely unprepared for the actual number of readers who come daily. In the past week (my slowest posting week ever), PyroManiac racked up some 18,000 hits. That doesn't count the people who download posts via RSS feed.

Of course, more readers equals more comments. More comments bring more critical scrutiny, requiring more follow-up posts, clarifications, rebuttals, and further elucidation. All of that means more work, more stress, and (above all) more time. Before you know it, it's not so much fun anymore.

Blogging with open comments also gives angry or disgruntled people an easy, public opportunity to air whatever complaints they may be nursing against my pastor, my church, my friends, or organizations I'm affiliated with. I don't mind dealing with objective, rational differences of opinion; and I even try to let most of the petty personal attacks slide, as long as I'm the only target. But when someone uses my blog to make a personal attack on others whom I love, that is a major grief.

PyroManiac also seems to have brought people out of the woodwork who have personal axes to grind with me. Recently in unrelated incidents, I corresponded privately with two commenters whose feedback seemed persistently insulting in a much-too-personal way. Turns out both of them were nursing grudges over things they had heard me teach years before I began the blog. I barely knew either of them, and neither had ever tried to discuss their grievances with me personally, but the blog gave them an opportunity to go public and remain at least partly anonymous. Unfortunately, it's been something of a magnet for that sort of hostility.

Meanwhile, I seem to find new and unexpected ways to irritate new people daily. Some of that is unavoidable, of course (Luke 6:26). On most of the matters that we've focused on here at the blog, I have strong convictions and I tend to express my opinion robustly. I'm neither surprised nor offended when people express strong disagreements. What does surprise me, however, is that even when I post on something that ought to be totally non-controversial—a devotional thought, or a lighthearted diary-entry-style item—there always seems to be someone in the wings looking for a reason to pick a fight.

On top of that, blogging tempts me to write when I ought to be reading. It's virtually impossible to do any serious or in-depth study every day and also read all the blogs and blogcomments in my blogroll, while answering all the extra e-mail the blog generates.

My blog has become more than I can handle by myself in my spare time. In order to maintain it by myself and achieve the standard of excellence I want, it would require full-time maintenance. I simply cannot do that, and I don't want it to be mediocre.

If that all sounds like a convincing argument for the closure of PyroManiac, that's what I thought, too.

Instead, I've decided to make a radical change. I think a group blog is the way to go. That way the pressure isn't entirely on me to write every post and answer every question.

So as of this morning, PyroManiac is officially closed. Starting tomorrow noon, you'll find me at a new blogaddress, here, where I've recruited a few friends to help keep the fires burning.

I hope you'll join us there and update your RSS feed. I realize I'm forfeiting my standing with all the blog indexes by changing URLs, but the change fairly demanded a new URL and a new start.

The rest will look very familiar to you, I think—but better. I hope you like it.

And thanks for helping make PyroManiac such a popular stop in the blogosphere.

New Theology?

2006-01-23T00:01:00.000-08:00

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon

PyroManiac devotes Monday space to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. This item is an excerpt from an article that first appeared in the January 1884 issue of The Sword and the Trowel.

There will be no new God, nor a new devil, and we shall never have a new Savior, nor a new atonement: why should we then be either attracted or alarmed by the error and nonsense which everywhere plead for a hearing because they are new?

What is their newness to us; we are not children, nor frequenters of playhouses? Truly, to such a new toy or a new play has immense attractions; but men care less about the age of a thing than about its intrinsic value.

To suppose that theology can be new is to imagine that the Lord himself is of yesterday. A doctrine which is said to have lately become true must of necessity be a lie. Falsehood has no beard, but truth is hoary with an age immeasurable. The old gospel is the only gospel. Pity is our only feeling towards those young preachers who cry, "See my new theology," in just the same spirit as little Mary says, "See my pretty new frock."

He was right, of course.

Here's where I am now

2006-01-20T10:19:00.000-08:00

A few regulars have noticed and commented on the state of torpor at my blog here at week's end. I am not without excuse, but it's a long story.

Here's a quick update that will have to suffice for the moment: I'm away this weekend at a leadership retreat in beautiful Oxnard, California. When I get back, I'm going to announce some significant changes with the blog. Stay tuned.

PS: The link above is a Google Earth placemark that will give you a breathtaking view from a satellite of Oxnard's industrial district. It's safe to open or run. I promise.

Does anyone even remember when BlogSpotting was a staple here?

2006-01-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

It's been so long since I've done this that I practically forgot how. The following short list is by no means a complete record of all the worthwhile links I've found pointing this direction, but it's a good-faith effort at logging as many as possible in the hour I have to devote to blogging tonight:

Pastor Shaun Nolan points out that his output on the cessationist issue has been far more prodigious than my own, and he gives a helpful compendium of links. The problem for me is that my first three posts on the issue were avalanched under some 350 comments (at least two-thirds of which either ignored the point I made or tried to bury it). I haven't even found time to read all those comments, much less write replies. So I'll be moving forward pretty slowly. But I don't intend to give it up just yet.
James White noticed that a high percentage of my commenters seemed to miss (or ignore) the point.
At least Rusty gets it.
Paul Huxley, on the other hand, figures "the burden of proof lies firmly on the cessationist side."
Jeremy Felden summarizes the recent discussion here pretty well.
John Schroeder thinks it's our fault apostolic signs and wonders have ceased, and he's tired of the discussion.
Adrian Warnock raises a good question I hope to answer in an upcoming post.
Kim Shay has as much trouble as I do trying to keep up with the comments here.
In addition to all the comments posted here at PyroManiac, there have been a few excellent spin-off posts at other blogs, like these from James Spurgeon who blogged on the closing of the canon, and generated at least 30 comments in reply at his own site.
And my friend Jerry Wragg anticipates a point I was hoping someone would make about exegesis.
Meanwhile, BlueRajah and friends take turns deconstructing the PyroManiac.
Gregg Hanke remembers the Northridge Earthquake, twelve years ago.
Tim Challies honored me by naming me "king" last week. Thanks.

Two miscellanies on which I want to comment briefly:

A group of scholars at The University of Edinburgh have started an excellent blog called The New College Conventicle as a way of sharing their interest in Puritan history. Here's a wonderful opportunity to eavesdrop on something worthwhile.
There's a considerable amount of chatter in the Christian blogosphere about the new movie telling the story of Nate Saint's martyrdom. The conversation focuses on the Christian film producers' decision to cast Chad Allen, an outspoken gay rights advocate, in the role of Saint. Sharper Iron has had an active forum on the issue, and they are doing a good job of tracking the debate across the blogosphere.
     For those who have inquired as to my position: I agree with those who are appalled at the casting decision. But I can't honestly say I'm surprised or shocked at stuff like this anymore. It's what inevitably happens in the academic and entertainment worlds when Christians begin to care more about being accepted by the world than they do about proclaiming our Lord's message clearly.
     Some have asked whether I will boycott the movie. Is it technically a "boycott" if you weren't planning to attend anyway?
     It disturbs me that even while they are ratcheting up their ongoing campaign against everything righteous, Hollywood moguls want to exploit evangelicals. It disturbs me even more that so many evangelicals seem blithely willing—almost eager, in fact—to be exploited.

Karaoke worship

2006-01-17T00:09:00.000-08:00

(We'll get back to the cessationism issue later in the week, I hope.)

I once remarked that if the trends in "contemporary worship" were carried to their logical conclusion, church services would soon feature karaoke contests.

That remark prompted an outpouring of replies from people who informed me that karaoke was already being used "quite successfully" in their churches. It also sparked the following exchange with a contemporary "worship leader," whose words appear below in brown italics. My replies are in normal typeface:

What verse of scripture forbids the use of karaoke in worship?

My opposition to such methods is not based only on a single proof-text, but on the totality of what Scripture teaches about the principle of worship. Genuine worship aims to please God, not the worshiper. "Worship" designed primarily to entertain or amuse people is not even true worship of God.

In the words of the Westminster Confession, "The acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the holy Scripture."

Biblical support? Sure:

Deuteronomy 12:31-32: "You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way [like the pagans do]. . . . Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it" [NKJV].
Psalm 29:2: "Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness."
Psalm 115:1: "Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and for thy truth's sake."
Matthew 15:9: "In vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men."
2 Timothy 4:2-5: "Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry."

Want more? I recommend John MacArthur's Ashamed of the Gospel.

And shall we let Spurgeon weigh in?

For us to give ourselves to getting up entertainments, to become competitors with theatres and music-halls, is a great degradation of our holy office.
"A Call to Prayer and Testimony"

The Lord our God is holy, and he cannot compromise his own glorious name by working with persons whose groveling tastes lead them to go to Egypt?—we had almost said to Sodom—?for their recreations. Is this walking with God? Is this the manner in which Enochs are produced?

It is a heart-sorrow to have to mention such things, but the work of the Lord must be done faithfully, and this evil must be laid bare. There can be no doubt that all sorts of entertainments, as nearly as possible approximating to stage-plays, have been carried on in connection with places of worship, and are, at this present time, in high favor. Can these things promote holiness, or help in communion with God? Can men come away from such things and plead with God for the salvation of sinners and the sanctification of believers? We loathe to touch the unhallowed subject; it seems so far removed from the walk of faith, and the way of heavenly fellowship. In some cases the follies complained of are even beneath the dignity of manhood, and fitter for the region of the imbecile than for thoughtful men.
"Restoration of Truth and Revival"

In the great day, when the muster-roll shall be read, of all those who are converted through fine music, and church decoration, and religious exhibitions and entertainments, they will amount to the tenth part of nothing; but it will always please God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. Keep to your preaching; and if you do anything beside, do not let it throw your preaching into the background. In the first place preach, and in the second place preach, and in the third place preach.
"How to Win Souls for Christ"

"For the sake of argument (leaving off the Spurgeon quotes), does a karaoke sing-along contradict 2 Timothy 4:2-5, if—and this is a big if, perhaps—if the karaoke songs are later tied in to a theme of Biblical exposition? Why or why not?"

If someone wants to sing biblical songs, let him sing them as unto the Lord (Psalm 29:2).

Karaoke is a populist form of burlesque. Taking turns singing for others' amusement (usually badly and without adequate rehearsal) is a cheap amusement—the kind of frivolity that (in effect) has turned churches into cabarets. It's not worship. And doing it with biblically-based songs or hymns only demeans the message.

I also don't get the opposition to pre-recorded accompaniments. In churches where musicianship is limited, recorded music seems like a good idea.

It is not pre-recorded accompaniments per se that I am objecting to. It's the tendency to think of church music as a performance or an entertainment for the benefit of an earthly audience, rather than worship offered to the Lord.

Karaoke as liturgy, like virtually every novelty that has been introduced into our worship services over the past 75 years or so, violates the central principle of all true worship and authentic ministry: "As we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God" (1 Thessalonians 2:4).

With You and In You

2006-01-16T00:01:00.000-08:00

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon

PyroManiac devotes Monday space to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from a sermon titled "Intimate Knowledge of the Holy Spirit," preached March 10th, 1889, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. the main point he makes is one both cessationists and non-cessationists alike should be able to agree on.

"He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you" (John 14:17).

Mark well the increase. Is it not a blessed step from with to in? "He dwelleth with you"—that is, a friend in the same house; "and shall be in you," that is, a Spirit within yourself; this is nearer, dearer, more mysterious, and more effective by far.

The bread yonder is "with" me. I eat it, and now it is "in" me. It could not nourish me until it advanced from "with" to "in."

What a distinct advance it is for the child of God when he rises from the Spirit of God being with him to the Spirit of God being in him! When the Spirit of God helped the apostles to work miracles, he was with them; but when they came to feel his spiritual work in their own souls, and to rejoice in the comfort which he brought to them, then he was in them. Even if you could obtain miraculous gifts, you ought not to be satisfied to speak with tongues, nor to work miracles; but you should press on to know the Spirit with yourself—indwelling, communing, quickening you.

Allow me to reiterate...

2006-01-12T00:01:00.000-08:00

Today I'm going to take advantage of the fact that this is my weblog and simply reiterate (for clarity's sake and for emphasis' sake) the same simple point I tried to make yesterday.

I should explain, first of all, that although the past two days have generated a record number of comments, and I would love to interact in detail with all of them, I've barely had time even to read some of them. On Tuesday I spent the morning preparing a funeral sermon and the afternoon actually doing the funeral and graveside services. Yesterday I spent most of the day giving a deposition in an unusual legal case. (I can't really describe the nature of the case, but I'm just a peripheral witness, neither the victim nor the accused. Nonetheless, the process required me to spend all afternoon Wednesday in downtown Los Angeles. Obviously, that ate up the better part of the day.)

Tonight we have houseguests coming to stay through the weekend, and meanwhile unanswered e-mail and other pressing duties are stacking up. So it's unlikely that I'll be able to post another extensive entry in the "cessationism" discussion before next week. Thanks for your patience, and feel free to keep commenting.

I did, however, print out fifty or so comments that had been posted by 11:00 AM yesterday, and I took them downtown with me to read while I was waiting to be deposed.

As I said, I can't reply to every point and every question, but I want to respond to one issue that keeps coming up. I thought I had addressed this (albeit obliquely) several times before, and I also thought I was clearly making a major point of it in yesterday's post. But perhaps I have been too subtle. (That's a problem I seem to have sometimes. I'm trying hard to overcome it.)

Let's try again:

The kneejerk demand for "exegesis" at the very start of the cessationism discussion is fatuous.

"Exegesis" for what? So far I haven't actually taken any positions or made any controversial biblical claims that require "exegetical" support. All I have done to date is point out how hard it is to find any credible person, even from the charismatic camp, who really believes the apostolic signs and offices are still in full operation just like when the apostle Paul raised Eutychus from the dead. I quoted some charismatic authors to establish their position. There's hardly any need for supporting "exegesis" on that.

Furthermore, I have asserted almost nothing about the degree of cessationism I hold to. I have not even actually stated whether I believe miracles (as distinct from miraculous gifts) occur today. I've merely argued that a genuinely non-cessationist, strictly pure continuationist theology is practically unheard of.

(Even in the earlier discussion last month, when I made several posts pointing out what an extraordinarily high percentage of modern "prophecies" turn out to be bogus, I did not actually argue—yet—that the gift of prophecy has utterly and finally ceased. As a matter of fact, several times I explicitly pointed out that I was not making any such argument. See, for example, the statement in large red type near the end of this post.)

That refusal to assert any specific degree of cessationism is a deliberate omission and not an accidental oversight on my part. I am first simply trying to establish the fact that no one who is credible seriously believes that all the miracles and gifts of the apostolic era are commonplace today. I don't need a proof-text, or any amount of "exegesis" to validate that.

As a matter of fact (unless I missed a comment) no one has yet seriously asserted the contrary. No one has come forward to offer any earnest defense for the claim that nothing whatsoever has changed in the exercise of miraculous gifts since Peter commanded the lame man at the Temple gate to rise and walk. Moreover, everyone (including a few bold commenters yesterday who seemed to doubt whether the canon is really closed) has agreed that no new Scripture has been written for the past 1900 years.

Now, show me something there that requires "exegetical support," and I'll try to tackle the challenge. Otherwise, it would be better to stay with the actual argument that's being made, and interact with that.

And be patient. When some argument I'm making calls for biblical support, I'll do my best to give it. But the principle of sola Scriptura has never meant that all theological arguments are invalid unless they can be substantiated with some proof-text. What "exegetical proof" would you have cited in 18 BC to confirm the truth that no new Scripture had been written for 400 years, since the time of Malachi?

And does the fact that no Old Testament text actually predicted the cessation of the Old Testament Prophetic office alter the reality that the office did in fact cease?

Likewise, there has never been any hue and cry for proof-texts or "exegetical support" for the almost universal conviction that nothing has been added to the New Testament canon since the end of the first century. Why do you suppose almost no one ever demands any biblical argument for that?

You're probably a cessationist, too

2006-01-11T00:01:00.000-08:00

If you believe any of the miraculous spiritual gifts were operative in the apostolic era only, and that some or all of those gifts gradually ceased before the end of the first century, you are a cessationist.

If you believe all the spiritual gifts described in the New Testament have continued unabated, unchanged, and unaltered since the initial outpouring of tongues at Pentecost, you are a continuationist.

It's pretty hard to find a real continuationist. Absolute non-cessationists exist only at the bizarre fringe of the charismatic movement. They are the sort of people who like to declare one another "apostles," claim (and inevitably abuse) all the apostolic prerogatives, sometimes invent fanciful stories about people raised from the dead, and twist and corrupt virtually every category of doctrine related to the gospel, the atonement, or Christian discipleship and self-denial.

But evangelical charismatics (especially the Reformed variety) do not really believe there are apostles today who have the same authority as the Apostles in the early church. Some may use the term apostle, but they invariably insist that the apostleship they recognize today is a lesser kind of apostleship than the office and gift that belonged to the apostles in the first century.

Now, think through the implications of that position: By arguing for a lesser kind of apostleship, they are actually conceding that the authentic, original New Testament gift of apostleship (Ephesians 4:11) has ceased. They have in effect embraced a kind of cessationism themselves.

Note: There is no more or less biblical warrant for this view than for any other kind of cessationism.

Nonetheless, every true evangelical holds to some form of cessationism. We all believe that the canon of Scripture is closed, right? We do not believe we should be seeking to add new inspired material to the New Testament canon. We hold to the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3)—delivered in the person of Christ, and through the teaching of His apostles, and inscripturated in the New Testament. We believe Scripture as we have it is complete. And those who do not believe that are not really evangelicals. They are cultists and false teachers, who would add to the Word of God.

But notice this: if you acknowledge that the canon is closed and the gift of apostleship has ceased, you have already conceded the heart of the cessationist argument.

That's not all, though. Most leading "Reformed charismatics" go even further than that. They freely admit that all the charismatic gifts in operation today are of a lesser quality than the gifts we read about in the New Testament.

For example, in Wayne Grudem's book The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today (Wheaton: Crossway, 1988)—probably the single most important and influential work written to defend modern prophecy—Grudem writes that "no responsible charismatic holds" the view that prophecy today is infallible and inerrant revelation from God (p. 111). He says charismatics are arguing for a "lesser kind of prophecy" (112), which is not on the same level as the inspired prophecies of the Old Testament prophets or the New Testament apostles—and which may even be (and very often is) fallible.

Grudem writes,

there is almost uniform testimony from all sections of the charismatic movement that [today's] prophecy is impure, and will contain elements which are not to be obeyed or trusted.

Jack Deere, former Dallas Seminary prof-turned charismatic advocate, likewise admits in his book Surprised by the Power of the Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993), that he has not seen anyone today performing miracles or possessing gifts of the same quality as the signs and wonders of the apostolic era. In fact, Deere argues vehemently throughout his book that modern charismatics do not even claim to have apostolic-quality gifts and miracle-working abilities. One of Deere's main lines of defense against critics of the charismatic movement is his insistence that modern charismatic gifts are actually lesser gifts than those available in the apostolic era, and therefore, he suggests, they should not be held to apostolic standards.

Again, consider the implications of that claim: Deere and Grudem have, in effect, conceded the entire cessationist argument. They have admitted that they are themselves cessationists of sorts. They believe that the true apostolic gifts and miracles have ceased, and they are admitting that what they are claiming today is not the same as the charismata described in the New Testament.

In other words, modern charismatics have already adopted a cessationist position. When pressed on the issue, all honest charismatics are forced to admit that the "gifts" they receive today are of lesser quality than those of the apostolic era.

Contemporary tongues-speakers do not speak in understandable or translatable dialects, the way the apostles and their followers did at Pentecost. Charismatics who minister on the foreign mission-field are not typically able to preach the gospel miraculously in the tongues of their hearers. Charismatic missionaries have to go to language school like everyone else.

If all sides already acknowledge that there are no modern workers of signs and wonders who can really duplicate apostolic power, then we have no actual argument about the principle of cessationism, and therefore all the frantic demands for biblical and exegetical support for cessationism are superfluous. The real gist of our disagreement boils down only to a question of degree.

In a very helpful book, Satisfied by the Promise of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1996), Thomas Edgar writes,

The charismatic movement gained credence and initial acceptance by claiming their gifts were the same as those in Acts. For most people this is why they are credible today. Yet now one of their primary defenses is the claim that [the gifts] are not the same [as those in the New Testament.] Faced with the facts, they have had to revoke the very foundation of their original reason for existence. (p. 32)

As for biblical arguments, in Scripture itself, there is ample evidence that miracles were extraordinary, rare events, usually associated in some significant way with people who spoke inspired and infallible utterances. It is obvious from the biblical narrative that miracles were declining in frequency even before the apostolic era drew to a close. Scripture says the miracles were apostolic signs (2 Corinthians 12:12), and therefore by definition they pertained specifically and uniquely to the apostolic era.

Why the cessationism "discussion" may be a non-starter

2006-01-10T00:10:00.000-08:00

I'm about to conclude that it's practically impossible to have an open, candid, rational conversation about cessationism and invite charismatics to participate without finding yourself at the bottom of an angry dogpile of "Spirit-filled" critics, no matter how charitably you try to approach the subject.

Several weeks ago, I brought up the issue of false messages from God (which, as I pointed out, is a serious problem among charismatics and non-charismatics alike). This wasn't a post or an issue that targeted charismatics in particular, but a number of exasperated charismatics nevertheless showed up instantly in the comments thread. Some came with chips on their shoulders, daring me to knock them off. Unless I first made a biblical case for cessationism, they insisted, I had no business bringing up the modern-prophecy issue at all.

But I declined to discuss or debate cessationism at the time. (OK, I made one comment in reply to those who were insisting the issue needed to be settled by dueling proof-texts. Still, for the most part, I steered clear of any "debate" on the issue.) Cessationism wasn't the issue I was aiming at when I brought up failed prophecy, and I didn't see any sense in following the discussion trail down the most rancorous path, away from the point I wanted to make, which (you remember) was only about the dismal track-record of people these days who claim God has given them private messages.

I tried more than once to clarify all of that. In one place, for example, I wrote,

I would like to reiterate something I said earlier: When I brought up this subject of prophetic-utterances-gone-bad in the first place, I wasn't trying to pick a fight with my charismatic readers. I originally had no intention of even getting into the issue of cessationism. I think I have much more in common with my "Reformed non-cessationist" brethren than I have with liberal cessationists. And oddly enough, the main targets I was originally planning to take on were non-charismatics like Henry Blackaby and the Gothardites.

It's not that cessationism isn't a serious issue, and worthy of discussion. It's just that I wasn't looking for a debate with people who were angry with me already just on the basis of something they expected me to say.

Meanwhile, a "debate" about cessationism supposedly broke out elsewhere in the blogosphere. Note: 1) I did not participate, and 2) I didn't ever actually see any credible evidence that a serious "debate" ever really took place. I saw quite a few posts about the debate, but I was never able to locate any actual debate.

Anyway, commenters kept demanding that I give a full argument for cessationism before dealing with the subject of errant prophecies, so I finally said I would tackle the issue of cessationism soon after the first of the new year.

Note again: Virtually all my entries on this subject have included an appeal for discussion without rancor. And—please don't forget—it wasn't I who asked for the discussion about cessationism in the first place.

But when I brought the topic up again (as promised) and merely said that I planned to try to respond to some of the questions and challenges that had already been raised, that unleashed a flood of outrage and ill humor from certain charismatic neighborhoods in the blogosphere.

For one thing, I apparently had the bad taste to bring the subject up within 24 hours after Dan Edelen "joked" about jumping back into the debate. Dan therefore wrote a long, fractured, frustrated lament about the "black hole" of the Christian blogosphere, targeting me in particular and accusing me of boasting that I would "prove ONCE AND FOR ALL that the gifts have ceased"—a claim I have nowhere made, or even insinuated.

Nonetheless, Dan went on to call me out publicly with a fairly ironic plea to "stop one-upping each other so we can prove who's right and who's wrong."

Now, I invite you to reread the offending post, follow the original thread, and notice that to date I still have not even posted a single argument against cessationism, unkind or otherwise. I merely stated that I would begin to respond to questions that had been raised—in some cases by the very same folks now taking me to task for ostensibly picking a fight.

By the way, Dan's plea was quickly echoed in similarly histrionic tones across the blogosphere, mostly by other non-cessationists who (having taunted me with questions and challenges) now apparently want to see the cessation of any and all debate over this particular issue. And, predictably, there were also some who couldn't resist using Dan's post as a club with which to beat "Reformed Theology."

Notice, however: while it's true that some nasty remarks were made in the comments thread after my post last Wednesday, virtually all the surliness and sarcasm came from the charismatic side of the aisle, not from "Reformed" commenters. I did not answer any of those comments, nor did I see any cessationist, Reformed or otherwise, respond in kind.

So all the hand-wringing about the Christian blogosphere's "black hole" is badly misplaced, and somewhat hypocritical, if you ask me. Seriously, the mere fact that Christians frequently disagree on certain points of doctrine, does not constitute a "black hole." Those who refuse to listen to a rational argument before attempting to shout down the opposition are frankly as much a part of the problem as those who want to argue about everything.

It's more like a sucking chest wound than a black hole, I fear. Hopefully, you get the point.

That's a long explanation of why I have stalled this discussion for the past week, and yet I still wish to pursue it. Can we try again? Can we discuss this issue seriously, without rancor and without all the histrionics?

PS: For those who have asked for a definition of cessationism and continuationism, see the post here.

New readers wanting to catch up on the previous discussion may likewise start with that same post, which is a summary of things heretofore blogged on this issue.

A letter from London

2006-01-09T00:01:00.000-08:00

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon

PyroManiac devotes Monday space to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive.

Here's a letter Charles Spurgeon wrote to his father within days of the younger Spurgeon's first visit to London. He had gone to preach a trial sermon for the famous congregation he would pastor for the rest of his life.

What interests me most about this letter is the insight it gives into Spurgeon's early concerns about high-Calvinist doctrinal tendencies of his new congregation. John Gill had pastored that congregation a hundred years before Spurgeon, and by Spurgeon's era, the nascent hyperism that was popular in Gill's day (and which Gill himself had a hand in promoting) had gone to seed.

Spurgeon's own opposition to hyperism never waned. For more on the subject, see Iain Murray's excellent book titled Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism.

MY DEAR FATHER,—

I concluded rather abruptly before;—but you are often called out from your writing, and therefore can excuse it in me. I hardly know what I left unsaid. I hope to be at home three days. I think of running down from London on Tuesday, January 3rd, and to go home by Bury on Friday, 6th. I hope it will be a sweet visit though a short one.

Should I be settled in London, I will come and see you often. I do not anticipate going there with much pleasure. I am contented where I am; but if God has more for me to do, then let me go and trust in Him. The London people are rather higher in Calvinism than I am; but I have succeeded in bringing one church to my own views, and will trust, with Divine assistance, to do the same with another. I am a Calvinist; I love what someone called "glorious Calvinism," but "Hyper-ism" is too hot-spiced for my palate.

I found a relation in London; a daughter of Thomas Spurgeon, at Bailingdon. On the Monday, she came and brought the unmarried sister, who you will remember was at home when we called last Christmas. I shall have no objection to preach for Mr. Langford on Wednesday, January 4th, if he wishes it.

I spent the Monday in going about London, climbed to the top of St. Paul's, and left some money with the booksellers.

My people are very sad; some wept bitterly at the sight of me, although I made no allusion to the subject in the pulpit, as it is too uncertain to speak of publicly. It is Calvinism they want in London, and any Arminian preaching will not be endured. Several in the church are far before me in theological acumen; they would not admit that it is so, but they all expressed their belief that my originality, or even eccentricity, was the very thing to draw a London audience. The chapel is one of the finest in the denomination; somewhat in the style of our Cambridge Museum. A Merry Christmas to you all; a Happy New Year; and the blessing of the God of Jacob!

Yours affectionately,

More on cessationism tomorrow, Lord willing.

Publisher prevails in important lawsuit

2006-01-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

This is very good news: "Appellate Court Rules in Favor of Harvest House and Its Authors, John Ankerberg and John Weldon."*

Harvest House had been the target of a protracted lawsuit** filed by "Living Stream Ministry" and "The Local Churches," an aberrant group closely associated with the teaching of Witness Lee, and known for answering their critics with litigation.

The group's litigious tendencies have effectively silenced most of their critics. The suit against Harvest House came after a short chapter critiquing the group's teaching was included in the Ankerberg/Weldon book Encyclopedia of Cults and New Religions. The four-year-long legal battle has been extremely costly to Harvest House, but they have persevered rather than settling (as some other publishers have done previously), because they were fighting for an important matter of principle.

The court's ruling Friday included this:

Because the allegedly libel statements are not defamatory, as a matter of law, we sustain the publisher and authors’ first issue on appeal. Accordingly, we need not address the remaining issues and decline to do so.

We reverse the judgment of the trial court and render judgment that the church take nothing from the publisher and authors.

*The first link in the above article goes to a news release published at the Harvest House Website. They have also posted a thorough account of their position in the suit. Links at the site will take you to some documents filed in the suit, news accounts, and other information that will help you understand the nature of the case.

**The second link above goes to a website operated by "The Local Church." In my opinion, it is evident from the sect's own slanted accounts that this lawsuit was frivolous and sinister from the start. Even the spin they put on the facts cannot disguise that fact, and I therefore always believed it was merely a matter of time before Harvest House would be vindicated in court. Unfortunately, the lawsuit might have (what I suspect was) the intended effect anyway: silencing others from speaking out because they fear a costly, protracted lawsuit like this.

For a brief, helpful overview of "The Local Church," see this entry from Anton Hein's Apologetics Index.

Yeah, I'm still here

2006-01-06T07:54:00.000-08:00

Here's a real-life parable about the manifold follies of postmodernism:

Artist Accused of Vandalizing Urinal
I'll leave it to readers to work out the symbolism. But let me just say that I'd have a hard time arguing that one of these forms of "art" is more artistic than the other.

Read this recent article from BBC News if you don't get what's so ironic about the above story.

Note: I hate dissecting irony, but a few confused readers asked for help with this one, so here goes:

In the BBC item linked above, an "art expert" explains the theory behind Dadaism: Art "can be made of anything and can take any form"—including, the argument goes, a urinal.

The postmodern performance artist who is the hero of our story simply took that idea to the next logical level, raising the question of whether "art" may therefore consist of a crazy guy making a critical public statement (with a hammer) about Dadaism, modernism, and all the other ridiculous modernist notions the postmodern mind rightly wants to turn away from but can't seem to find a way to shed.

I think the vandal actually has a point when he speculates (in the original story) that his performance "might have pleased Dada artists." It certainly suggests he took the philosophy underlying their art very seriously.

Anyway, I found it an interesting illustration of how postmodernism attacks modernism but can't really get away from modernist philosophies,. It encourages me to realize that all of pomoism is likewise bound to self-destruct, and probably sooner rather than later.

Speaking of irony, while looking for a graphic of Duchamp's "Fountain," I found this book of drawings offered by Cokesbury.com (motto: "Resources for the Christian Journey").

I'll try to post my first real entry on the cessationism issue before the end of the weekend. Sorry to keep people waiting after promising so much, but the first of the year is always hectic, and I'm trying desperately to juggle multiple responsibilities. My new broadband connection is certainly faster, but that doesn't necessarily guarantee that I will keep up any better.

Broadband at last

2006-01-05T00:01:00.000-08:00

Here's something a lot of visitors to my websites may find hard to believe: for the past five-plus years, virtually all my home computing has been done via a 28.8k dial-up connection. (With occasional forays to Starbucks or Panera Bread to use the high-speed wireless networks there.)

Shortly after I started The Spurgeon Archive in 1995, I upgraded to a 56K modem, and it seemed really fast at the time. When we moved into the new hovel at the end of 1999, I intended to upgrade to DSL, but after moving in, I discovered we were just outside the area where DSL is offered.

Worse, I soon discovered that the phone line here is so bad, I couldn't connect any faster than 28.8, and I lost the connection every half hour or so.

No problem, the phone company assured me. The whole city will be wired for DSL within six months.

Yeah, right. Five years and three laptops later, I still can't connect any faster than 28.8, and I finally got fed up.

So two days after Christmas, I went to Best Buy and purchased a new HP desktop computer. I also bought a wireless router and ordered cable broadband service from Earthlink.

I spent the week after Christmas installing software and setting up the computer. (See part 1 of this post for an explanation of why that's no small task. That partly explains the lack of blog activity last week.)

Today the cable guy came and hooked up my broadband. After he left, I spent the afternoon setting up the wireless router and home network (something I was totally inexperienced at). But it's all working flawlessly now.

Wow.

Prophecy revisited

2006-01-04T00:01:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago, I began a series of posts critiquing the contemporary conceit that leads people to think God routinely gives them private revelation—either through subjective impulses, or by whispering inaudibly into their brains, or by otherwise employing their emotions as a barometer to reveal His will.

I had planned to make several points, among which were these:

Absolutely no one is receiving consistently reliable, demonstrably authentic messages from God today—including the best-known and most outspoken people who regularly make the claim that "God told me" this or that.
There is really no substantive difference (other than scale) between the spectacularly failed prophecies of questionable televangelists like Oral Roberts and Benny Hinn, and the misguided presumption of the non-charismatic Southern Baptist who thinks God routinely communicates to him via specific messages about virtually every daily decision in life, and who thinks he is obliged to order his life according to those impulses.
That sort of presumption has been the cause of constant embarrassment, error, and unsanctified behavior throughout the annals of church history. George Whitefield was susceptible to it, and Jonathan Edwards admonished him about it. Cotton Mather had a series of disastrous disappointments that were all rooted in the notion that God was giving him private guarantees that his prayers would be answered.
Private "revelation" invariably tends to usurp the authority and the proper role of Scripture, even when it turns out to be demonstrably false.
Nothing in Scripture ever commands us to seek such revelation, especially on a routine basis. On the other hand, we are constantly exhorted to seek guidance daily from the Scriptures; to devote ourselves to rightly dividing the inscripturated Word; and to make biblical wisdom and discernment the main source of guidance in all our decision-making.
Thinking you can discern the will of God by your own feelings is not only perilous; it is positively, carnally sinful.

I'm still willing to discuss those points, most of which transcend the normal differences between charismatics and cessationists. Note that none of these points necessarily presupposes cessationism.

But it seems we must talk about cessationism first, or else the noise level in the comments threads will drown out the real point anyway. When I began to post on this subject a few weeks ago, my comment-threads were spammed with demands that we either drop the subject altogether, or else deal with the cessationism issue first. I tried several times to pursue the subject without getting into a fight over cessationism, but the critics stuck their fingers in their ears and kept trying to pick that fight.

So cessationism it is. And we'll start that subject either tomorrow or the next day.

But fair warning: Someday, I do want to get back to the real issue I started trying to talk about. There are a lot of people out there who have been influenced by Gothard, Blackaby, and other non-charismatic subjectivists who teach people to think that God routinely guides them by their feelings, so much that if they don't think they are hearing private messages from God all the time, they are not really "experiencing" God.

And I eventually want to make the point I set out to make in the first place: That ordering your life by your feelings is the polar opposite of the biblical concept of discernment.

Anyway, I leave you today with an extra quotation from Spurgeon on the subject. He said:

We often meet with a fanciful religion in which people trust to impulses, to dreams, to noises, and mystic things which they imagine they have seen. Fiddle-faddle all of it, and yet they are quite wrapt up in it.

I pray that you may cast out this chaffy stuff, there is no food for the spirit in it. The life of my soul lies not in what I think, or what I fancy, or what I imagine, or what I enjoy of fine feeling, but only in that which faith apprehends to be the Word of God.

From "A Luther Sermon at the Tabernacle," delivered (on Martin Luther's 400th birthday) Sunday Morning, November 11, 1883.

By the way, this is post number 200 in the PyroManiac archive. That's a lot of words since the bloglaunch on June 1. Thanks to all who have given me encouragement and good advice.

Thanks also to my beloved friend, Frank Turk, who awarded me one of his coveted wooden nickles yesterday. A wooden nickle from the legendary Centuri0n is high praise indeed. Thank you.

An inauspicious start to the New Year

2006-01-03T11:17:00.000-08:00

I was suddenly awakened very early this morning by a loud noise. It jolted me out of the stupor of my sleep like a gunshot. In the fogginess of whatever dream I was having, I remember thinking it sounded as if a ceiling beam had suddenly snapped.

Whatever it was, it was loud. It was also clearly something right there in the room, not down the hall. I began fumbling around to see if I had knocked anything off the night-stand that might have made a crashing noise.

Nothing.

We always sleep with music in the background, and the music was still playing. The iPod was in the middle of a collection of John Rutter hymn arrangements, so I was pretty sure the startling noise didn't come from the iPod-speaker thingy.

But the noise had been loud and vivid, and I was fairly sure it was real, and not a dream. So I decided to look around. I turned on a light, and that didn't reveal anything amiss. Darlene was still sound asleep, even though she usually awakens quickly at unusual noises. Wrigley was still snoring soundly.

I was beginning to think the whole thing was my imagination when I heard the smoke-detector chirp. It wasn't sounding an alarm; it was just that chirping noise those things make when the battery begins to wear out. Since I was still half asleep, I didn't instantly recognize the chirp as a low-battery signal, so I started sniffing the air closely, to see if I could detect any smoke. Sure enough, I could smell the unmistakable fragrance of that ozone smell you get when you have an electrical fire or something shorts out.

It was a faint odor, and after 15 seconds or so, it seemed to be getting weaker, not stronger. But clearly something had shorted out, and most likely whatever it was, was the source of my noise. I ruled out the iPod speakers, because I figured a short there would have stopped the music. There wasn't much else in the room actually using electricity, so I looked around at all the electrical outlets themselves. While I was doing that, the smoke-detector chirped three more times.

I decided I had better awaken Darlene and get her to help me investigate. She was just starting to wake up when there were two more muffled gunshot sounds, not as loud as the one that awakened me, but enough to jolt Darlene immediately awake.

It was instantly clear to both of us that the explosions came from the smoke-detector itself. It was still chirping, only now more frequently than ever. It wasn't technically sounding the smoke alarm, but it was obviously trying to tell us something.

The commotion and chirping finally awakened the watch-beagle, and he was not happy. He started barking ferociously at the chirping smoke-detector, acting as if he had cornered a ferret or something on the ceiling.

The ceiling in our bedroom is at least nine feet high where the smoke-detector is placed, so I had to go down to the garage, get a step-ladder, and bring it back up. That took four or five minutes, which seemed like an eternity, because Wrigley was barking non-stop and Darlene was frantically trying to shush him. (She has this idea that the neighbors can hear the beagle bark even when he's indoors, so she tolerates no barking at night. Wrigley normally understands that, but this was clearly a special case, and he would not be shushed.)

Anyway, when I finally got the ladder set up under the smoke-detector (no small feat, but that's another story), I couldn't get the battery compartment on the smoke-detector to open. Darlene had changed the batteries about a month ago, and she assured me she had no difficulty opening it. So in that tender way preoccupied and agitated husbands tend to speak, I asked, "You didn't jam the new battery in backwards, did you?"

She insisted she had put the battery in correctly. Nonetheless, the battery-door simply would not open. In my fumbling with it, however, I discovered a half-twist would free the entire smoke-detector from its mounting. It was now hanging from the ceiling by two wires, still chirping. It's a dual-powered device, so the back of it has a special plug to connect to the wiring, and I unplugged this.

The infernal thing kept chirping, even after I disconnected it.

Back on ground level, I could see that the battery-door on the smoke-detector was being impeded by the battery itself, so I took a pair of tweezers and carefully pried it open.

The battery inside had exploded. Both top and bottom had been blown out of the battery, and there was some thick gray residue inside the smoke-detector. (The picture at the right is a photo I took of the actual battery.)

Even without battery or power source, the smoke-detector chirped at least three or four more times. The final chirp tailed off like a dying penny-whistle.

I looked at the clock. It was 3:15 AM.

At that point, most people would just go back to bed. I, however, wanted to see what would happen if I put a new battery back in the smoke-detector. So I carefully swabbed all the gray goo out with Q-Tips® and replaced the battery. (Note: This time it's an Energizer®.) I remounted it, tested it, and it seems to be working OK.

I have no clue what would make a fairly fresh battery explode, but just in case it's a problem with the smoke-detector, I'm getting a whole new one ASAP. After all, this one had a battery explode right inside it, and it didn't even sound an alarm, which seems kind of lame. (I was going to draw a parallel here with the less-than-stellar performace of my guard-dog, but I promised Wrigley I wouldn't make a public issue of his incompetence.)

Anyway, the Lord was gracious to us, and the whole thing is a reminder of why we should never put our ultimate trust in the devices of men. I'm thankful that this happened while we were home, and not while we were out of town for two weeks, so that the corrosive contents of a defective alkaline battery weren't left to drip out of my ceiling. I'm also very thankful that the outcome wasn't worse than it was. Think about the irony of dying in a fire caused by an explosion inside your smoke-detector! (On the one hand, I suppose that would make a funny and fitting conclusion to an extremely bizarre biography. On the other hand, I would love to be a grandfather someday.) So I am grateful for the Lord's goodness to me, and this is a reminder of His loving care for us.

That's all I'll have time to blog about today. This (for me) is the first day of work in 2006. Tomorrow (Lord willing) I'll try to start blogging some more meaty content.

A New Year Greeting from the Prince of Preachers

2006-01-01T20:54:00.000-08:00

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon

PyroManiac devotes Monday space to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following is excerpted from a sermon delivered at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, on Thursday Evening, January 1, 1885.

"And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new."—Revelation 21:5.

How pleased we are with that which is new! Our children's eyes sparkle when we talk of giving them a toy or a book which is called new; for our short-lived human nature loves that which has lately come, and is therefore like our own fleeting selves.

In this respect, we are all children, for we eagerly demand the news of the day, and are all too apt to rush after the "many inventions" of the hour. The Athenians, who spent their time in telling and hearing some new thing, were by no means singular persons: novelty still fascinates the crowd.

As the world's poet says—"All with one consent praise new-born gawds." [Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act 3, Scene 3.]

I should not wonder, therefore, if the mere words of my text should sound like a pleasant song in your ears; but I am thankful that their deeper meaning is even more joyful. The newness which Jesus brings is bright, clear, heavenly, enduring.

We are at this moment specially ready for a new year. The most of men have grown weary with the old cry of depression of trade and hard times; we are glad to escape from what has been to many a twelve-months of great trial. The last year had become wheezy, croaking, and decrepit, in its old age; and we lay it asleep with a psalm of judgment and mercy.

We hope that this newborn year will not be worse than its predecessor, and we pray that it may be a great deal better. At any rate, it is new, and we are encouraged to couple with it the idea of happiness, as we say one to another, "I wish you a happy New Year."

“Ring out the old, ring in the new;
Ring, happy bells, across the snow;
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.”

May you have a blessed New Year.

Enjoying a break from blogging

2005-12-29T23:31:00.000-08:00

Thanks for your patience. I'll be back with some Spurgeon on Monday, and back to our regularly scheduled programing around Tuesday or Wednesday.

Glory, Peace, Goodwill

2005-12-26T00:01:00.000-08:00

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon

PyroManiac devotes Monday space to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from a sermon titled "The First Christmas Carol," originally preached Sunday Morning, December 20, 1857, at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.

A Thought to Last the Whole Week

The angels sang something which men could understand—something which men ought to understand—something which will make men much better if they will understand it. The angels were singing about Jesus who was born in the manger. We must look upon their song as being built upon this foundation. They sang of Christ, and the salvation which he came into this world to work out. And what they said of this salvation was this: they said, first, that it gave glory to God; secondly, that it gave peace to man; and, thirdly, that it was a token of God's good will towards the human race.

1. First, they said that this salvation gave glory to God. They had been present on many august occasions, and they had joined in many a solemn chorus to the praise of their Almighty Creator. They were present at the creation: "The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." They had seen many a planet fashioned between the palms of Jehovah, and wheeled by his eternal hands through the infinitude of space. They had sung solemn songs over many a world which the Great One had created. We doubt not, they had often chanted "Blessing and honour, and glory, and majesty, and power, and dominion, and might, be unto him that sitteth on the throne," manifesting himself in the work of creation.

I doubt not, too, that their songs had gathered force through ages. As when first created, their first breath was song, so when they saw God create new worlds then their song received another note; they rose a little higher in the gamut of adoration. But this time, when they saw God stoop from his throne, and become a babe, hanging upon a woman's breast, they lifted their notes higher still; and reaching to the uttermost stretch of angelic music, they gained the highest notes of the divine scale of praise, and they sung, "Glory to God in the highest," for higher in goodness they felt God could not go.

Thus their highest praise they gave to him in the highest act of his godhead. If it be true that there is a hierarchy of angels, rising tier upon tier in magnificence and dignity—if the apostle teaches us that there be "angels, and principalities, and powers, and thrones, and dominions," amongst these blest inhabitants of the upper world—I can suppose that when the intelligence was first communicated to those angels that are to be found upon the outskirts of the heavenly world, when they looked down from heaven and saw the newborn babe, they sent the news backward to the place whence the miracle first proceeded, singing

"Angels, from the realms of glory,
Wing your downward flight to earth,
Ye who sing creation's story,
Now proclaim Messiah's birth;
Come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King."

And as the message ran from rank to rank, at last the presence angels, those four cherubim that perpetually watch around the throne of God—those wheels with eyes—took up the strain, and, gathering up the song of all the inferior grades of angels, surmounted the divine pinnacle of harmony with their own solemn chant of adoration, upon which the entire host shouted, "The highest angels praise thee."—"Glory to God in the highest." Ay, there is no mortal that can ever dream how magnificent was that song. Then, note, if angels shouted before and when the world was made, their hallelujahs were more full, more strong, more magnificent, if not more hearty, when they saw Jesus Christ born of the Virgin Mary to be man's redeemer—"Glory to God in the highest."

What is the instructive lesson to be learned from this first syllable of the angels' song? Why this, that salvation is God's highest glory. He is glorified in every dew drop that twinkles to the morning sun. He is magnified in every wood flower that blossoms in the copse, although it live to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness in the forest air. God is glorified in every bird that warbles on the spray; in every lamb that skips the mead. Do not the fishes in the sea praise him? From the tiny minnow to the huge Leviathan, do not all creatures that swim the water bless and praise his name? Do not all created things extol him? Is there aught beneath the sky, save man, that doth not glorify God? Do not the stars exalt him, when they write his name upon the azure of heaven in their golden letters? Do not the lightnings adore him when they flash his brightness in arrows of light piercing the midnight darkness? Do not thunders extol him when they roll like drums in the march of the God of armies? Do not all things exalt him, from the least even to the greatest?

But sing, sing, oh universe, till thou hast exhausted thyself, thou canst not afford a song so sweet as the song of Incarnation. Though creation may be a majestic organ of praise, it cannot reach the compass of the golden canticle—Incarnation! There is more in that than in creation, more melody in Jesus in the manger, than there is in worlds on worlds rolling their grandeur round the throne of the Most High.

Pause, Christian, and consider this a minute. See how every attribute is here magnified. Lo! what wisdom is here. God becomes man that God may be just, and the justifier of the ungodly. Lo! what power, for where is power so great as when it concealeth power? What power, that Godhead should unrobe itself and become man! Behold, what love is thus revealed to us when Jesus becomes a man. Behold ye, what faithfulness! How many promises are this day kept? How many solemn obligations are this hour discharged? Tell me one attribute of God that is not manifest in Jesus; and your ignorance shall be the reason why you have not seen it so. The whole of God is glorified in Christ; and though some part of the name of God is written in the universe, it is here best read—in Him who was the Son of Man, and, yet, the Son of God.

But, let me say one word here before I go away from this point. We must learn from this, that if salvation glorifies God, glorifies him in the highest degree, and makes the highest creatures praise him, this one reflection may be added—then, that doctrine which glorifies man in salvation cannot be the gospel. For salvation glorifies God. The angels were no Arminians, they sang, "Glory to God in the highest." They believe in no doctrine which uncrowns Christ, and puts the crown upon the head of mortals. They believe in no system of faith which makes salvation dependent upon the creature, and, which really gives the creature the praise, for what is it less than for a man to save himself, if the whole dependence of salvation rests upon his own free will? No, my brethren; they may be some preachers, that delight to preach a doctrine that magnifies man; but in their gospel angels have no delight. The only glad tidings that made the angels sing, are those that put God first, God last, God midst, and God without end, in the salvation of his creatures, and put the crown wholly and alone upon the head of him that saves without a helper. "Glory to God in the highest," is the angels' song.

2. When they had sung this, they sang what they had never sung before. "Glory to God in the highest," was an old, old song; they had sung that from before the foundations of the world. But, now, they sang as it were a new song before the throne of God: for they added this stanza—"on earth, peace."

They did not sing that in the garden. There was peace there, but it seemed a thing of course, and scarce worth singing of. There was more than peace there; for there was glory to God there. But, now, man had fallen, and since the day when cherubim with fiery swords drove out the man, there had been no peace on earth, save in the breast of some believers, who had obtained peace from the living fountain of this incarnation of Christ. Wars had raged from the ends of the world; men had slaughtered one another, heaps on heaps. There had been wars within as well as wars without. Conscience had fought with man; Satan had tormented man with thoughts of sin. There had been no peace on earth since Adam fell.

But, now, when the newborn King made his appearance, the swaddling band with which he was wrapped up was the white flag of peace. That manger was the place where the treaty was signed, whereby warfare should be stopped between man's conscience and himself, man's conscience and his God. It was then, that day, the trumpet blew—"Sheathe the sword, oh man, sheathe the sword, oh conscience, for God is now at peace with man, and man at peace with God." Do you not feel my brethren, that the gospel of God is peace to man? Where else can peace be found, but in the message of Jesus?

Go legalist, work for peace with toil and pain, and thou shalt never find it. Go, thou, that trustest in the law: go thou, to Sinai; look to the flames that Moses saw, and shrink, and tremble, and despair; for peace is nowhere to be found, but in him, of whom it is said, "This man shall be peace." And what a peace it is, beloved! It is peace like a river, and righteousness like the waves of the sea. It is the peace of God that passeth all understanding, which keeps our hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. This sacred peace between the pardoned soul and God the pardoner; this marvelous at-one-ment between the sinner and his judge, this was it that the angels sung when they said, "peace on earth."

3. And, then, they wisely ended their song with a third note. They said, "Good will to man."

Philosophers have said that God has a good will toward man; but I never knew any man who derived much comfort from their philosophical assertion. Wise men have thought from what we have seen in creation that God had much good will toward man, or else his works would never have been so constructed for their comfort; but I never heard of any man who could risk his soul's peace upon such a faint hope as that.

But I have not only heard of thousands, but I know them, who are quite sure that God has a good will towards men; and if you ask their reason, they will give a full and perfect answer. They say, he has good will toward man for he gave his Son. No greater proof of kindness between the Creator and his subjects can possibly be afforded than when the Creator gives his only begotten and well beloved Son to die.

Though the first note is God-like, and though the second note is peaceful, this third note melts my heart the most.

Some think of God as if he were a morose being who hated all mankind. Some picture him as if he were some abstract subsistence taking no interest in our affairs. Hark ye, God has "good will toward men." You know what good will means. Well, Swearer, you have cursed God; he has not fulfilled his curse on you; he has good will towards you, though you have no good will towards him. Infidel, you have sinned high and hard against the Most High; he has said no hard things against you, for he has good will towards men. Poor sinner, thou hast broken his laws; thou art half afraid to come to the throne of his mercy lest he should spurn thee; hear thou this, and be comforted—God has good will towards men, so good a will that he has said, and said it with an oath too, "As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, but had rather that he should turn unto me and live;" so good a will moreover that he has even condescended to say, "Come, now, let us reason together; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as wool; though they be red like crimson, they shall be whiter than snow."

And if you say, "Lord, how shall I know that thou hast this good will towards me?" he points to yonder manger, and says, "Sinner, if I had not a good will towards thee, would I have parted with my Son? if I had not good will towards the human race, would I have given up my Son to become one of that race that he might by so doing redeem them from death?" Ye that doubt the Master's love, look ye to that circle of angels; see their blaze of glory; hear their son, and let your doubts die away in that sweet music and be buried in a shroud of harmony.

He has good will to men; he is willing to pardon; he passes by iniquity, transgression, and sin. And mark thee, if Satan shall then add, "But though God hath good will, yet he cannot violate his justice, therefore his mercy may be ineffective, and you may die;" then listen to that first note of the song, "Glory to God in the highest," and reply to Satan and all his temptations, that when God shows good will to a penitent sinner, there is not only peace in the sinner's heart, but it brings glory to every attribute of God, and so he can be just, and yet justify the sinner, and glorify himself.

I do not pretend to say that I have opened all the instructions contained in these three sentences, but I may perhaps direct you into a train of thought that may serve you for the week. I hope that all through the week you will have a truly merry Christmas by feeling the power of these words, and knowing the unction of them. "Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men."

Note: This will be a slow week on PyroManiac. I plan to enjoy the holidays with my family. So don't anticipate anything deep or profound. And don't be surprised if I post nothing at all until after the first of the year. Have a blessed year's end.

A slight detour on the question of whether God is ex lex

2005-12-23T00:01:00.000-08:00

I'm going to let the comment thread on yesterday's post develop a bit before pursuing the subject of the moral law's continuity. (I'll probably pick up the topic soon after Christmas.)

Instead, today, I want to go back to another related, but totally different, issue that I raised in Tuesday's post. It's the question of whether God Himself operates outside His own law—ex lex.

Gordon Clark wrote a short but very thought-provoking work titled "God and Evil: The problem Solved" (originally a chapter in his book Religion, Reason and Revelation, now also published as a standalone work). The work itself is not on the Web, but a sympathetic review and summary by Gary Crampton may be found here. In some respects, Clark's work is helpful, explaining clearly (for example) the principle of secondary causation and how it relates to the issue of culpability. (This is an important point which, as noted below, Clark then unfortunately proceeds to make moot.)

Clark also gives several clear reasons why it's neither biblical nor rational to argue that God merely "permitted" evil without sovereignly decreeing it.

(Without getting sidetracked on a secondary issue, let me go on record as saying I believe there is a permissive element in God's decree with respect to evil. That is, His decree doesn't make him the author or efficient cause of evil. But, as Calvin said, God's role in the origin of evil is not bare permission. In other words, it's not permission against His will, but a positive decree. In that respect, I think Clark is absolutely right, and his arguments on this point are cogent and persuasive.)

But in the process, Clark makes much of the ex lex argument to absolve God from the charge that He is therefore culpable for the entry of evil into His creation. This, I believe, is not particularly helpful, and a lot of people who have been influenced by Clark and who think he has neatly and easily solved the problem of evil tend to fall into terribly sloppy thinking about divine holiness, God's instrumentality with respect to evil, and the relationship between causality and culpability.

Anyway, I think John Frame's assessment of Clark's famous theodicy is helpful. Here it is. Frame's own footnotes are included in braces {and faint type}:

[Clark's] argument is that God is ex lex, which means "outside of the law." The idea is that God is outside of or above the laws he prescribes for man. He tells us not to kill, yet he retains for himself the right to take human life. Thus, he is not himself bound to obey the Ten Commandments or any other law given to man in Scripture. Morally, he is on an entirely different level from us. Therefore, he has the right to do many things that seem evil to us, even things which contradict Scriptural norms. For a man to cause evil indirectly might very well be wrong, but it would not be wrong for God. {But on this basis, it would also not be wrong for God to cause evil directly. That is why I said this argument makes the indirect-cause argument beside the point.} Thus Clark neatly finesses any argument against God's justice or goodness.

There is some truth in this approach. As we shall see, Scripture does forbid human criticism of God's actions, and the reason is, as Clark implies, divine transcendence. It is also true that God has some prerogatives that he forbids to us, such as the freedom to take human life.

Clark forgets, however, or perhaps denies, the Reformed and biblical maxim that the law reflects God's own character. To obey the law is to imitate God, to be like him, to image him (Ex. 20:11; Lev. 11:44-45; Matt. 5:45; 1 Peter 1:15-16). There is in biblical ethics also an imitation of Christ, centered on the atonement (John 13:34-35; Eph. 4:32; 5:1; Phil. 2:3ff.; 1 John 3:16; 4:8-10). Obviously, there is much about God that we cannot imitate, including those prerogatives mentioned earlier. Satan tempted Eve into seeking to become "like God" in the sense of coveting His prerogatives (Gen. 3:5). {John Murray said that the difference between the two ways of seeking God's likeness appears to be a razor's edge, while there is actually a deep chasm between them.} But the overall holiness, justice, and goodness of God is something we can and must imitate on the human level.

So God does honor, in general, the same law that he gives to us. He rules out murder because he hates to see one human being murder another, and he intends to reserve for himself the right to control human death. He prohibits adultery because he hates adultery (which is a mirror of idolatry—see Hosea). We can be assured that God will behave according to the same standards of holiness that he prescribes for us, except insofar as Scripture declares a difference between his responsibilities and ours.

{Oddly, Clark, who is usually accused of being a Platonic realist, at this point veers into the opposite of realism, namely, nominalism. The extreme nominalists held that the biblical laws were not reflections of God's nature, but merely arbitrary requirements. God could have as easily commanded adultery as forbidden it. I mentioned this once in a letter to Clark, and he appreciated the irony, but did not provide an answer. Why, I wonder, didn't he deal with moral law the same way he dealt with reason and logic in, e.g., The Johannine Logos (Nutley, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1972)? There he argued that God's reason/logic was neither above God (Plato) nor below God (nominalism), but God's own rational nature. Why did he not take the same view of God's moral standards?}

[From: Apologetics to the Glory of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1994), 166-68.]

Frame concludes that Clark's ex lex defense "simply is not biblical." I think he's right.

Is Moses' law a simple, seamless garment?

2005-12-22T00:01:00.000-08:00

Is there any sound biblical basis for differentiating between the moral aspect of Moses' law and its ceremonial features?

I believe there is. In fact, I would argue that some sort of distinction like that is necessary before you can make good, thoughtful sense of some pretty basic biblical texts, including Jeremiah 31:33; Romans 2:14-15; 1 John 3:4; 1 Timothy 1:8; Leviticus 18:24; and scores of other key passages.

I'm not going to try to prove the whole argument in one post, because too many of my posts are overlong already. But I'm going to start with a very narrow focus and try to build my case one small point or two at a time.

I would simply ask commenters who are itching to argue against my position to stay with the point under discussion and not try to anticipate arguments I haven't even made yet. No fair jumping the gun and trying to turn the discussion to some larger question that's not even on the table yet. And it's especially not fair to for anyone to pretend I'm claiming that a couple of very simple posts dealing with a narrow issue are all that's needed to make the whole case for my position. That is not what I think; I make no such claim; and those whose reflexive counter-argument always begins with the accusation that I haven't been thorough enough are welcome to give that old workhorse a rest this time—at least until we get ten or fifteen posts into the topic.

(By the way, the itch to jump the gun seems to be a peculiar tendency of some commenters at my blog. It's is how the modern-prophecy discussion got derailed before it really even got started. I haven't forgotten my promise to come back to that topic. I'm just going to wait for my charismatic friends who are spoiling for a fight about the larger and more academic issue of cessationism to calm down first, so that we can get back to the fairly simple, more practical question that I initially raised—regarding whether anyone is actually receiving reliable messages directly from God on an ongoing basis today. But that's not the subject of today's post; the law is.)

Anyway, I fully realize there are some terms vital to this discussion that are just crying for technical definitions, and I haven't even tried to define them yet (including the crucial but often ambiguous expression "moral law"). Please stay with me and try to be patient. We can get through this.

But let me start with a very simple question for those who insist that the Mosaic law must be seen as one seamless garment with no legitimate categorical distinctions between its various precepts. (I've noticed that people these days especially seem to be passionate in their opposition to the famous threefold taxonomy of the law's moral, civil, and ceremonial aspects outlined in the Westminster Confession of Faith, XIX:3-5. Perhaps we can take up the issue of the threefold division before we are done, but here my focus is even narrower than that. I just want to challenge those who insist that the law is all one indivisible unit whose precepts are therefore all basically of equal import.)

Here's the question:

Are there not clear biblical distinctions made repeatedly between the "weightier matters" and the external features of the law (Matthew 23:23); between "mercy" and "sacrifice" (Matthew 12:7); between "the knowledge of God" and "burnt offerings" (Hosea 6:6); between "obedience" and "the fat of rams" (1 Samuel 15:22); between "justice" and legal ritual (Proverbs 21:3); between the putting away of evil and "vain oblations . . . incense . . . sabbaths . . . feasts" (Isaiah 1:11-17); between true righteousness and the "noise of . . . songs" (Amos 5:23-24)?

As a matter of fact, Jesus Himself said, "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire compassion, and not sacrifice'" (Matthew 9:13). Doesn't that suggest that one aspect of the law takes moral precedence over another?

To put the same question another way: Why would Jesus criticize the Pharisees and other teachers of the law for straining out the gnats of ceremonial defilement while swallowing the camels of injustice and cruelty (Matthew 23:23-24) if there really is no legitimate distinction between any different aspects of the law?

Those very contrasts are some of the key distinctions I see between the moral and ceremonial aspects of the law. So before anyone tries to sweep this whole issue aside by putting his fingers in his ears and reciting the mantra about there being "no exegetical proof for any divisions in the law," please note that the distinctions I'm speaking of here are spelled out in Scripture, not in the Confession of Faith.

Furthermore, all the texts I have cited assume that we ought to be able to see and understand certain distinctions between various aspects of the law, even though (as far as I can see) there is no single proof-text that spells out a list of those distinctions for us, whether in fine detail or in convenient shorthand.

The weight of so many admonitions and condemnations aimed at people who seemed oblivious to the differences between gnats and camels only increases my certainty that God holds us accountable not merely for the explicit statements of Scripture, but more importantly for the true sense of those statements—as well as for any sound inferences that can be deduced from them by good and necessary consequence.

And incidentally, that's why I'm not easily persuaded by the bare assertion of one commenter who declared ("for the record"!) that "there is NO exegetical basis for dividing the Mosaic code into these nifty little component parts. NONE!"

For future reference, that sort of histrionic dismissal of centuries of mainstream Protestant opinion isn't the kind of "argument" I find particularly persuasive. I realize it's becoming more and more the norm, but it still doesn't get much traction around here.

Ex lex?

2005-12-20T01:36:00.000-08:00

No law can be set above God, but God Himself should never be thought of as utterly lawless. There are things He cannot do: "He cannot deny Himself" (2 Timothy 2:13). He "cannot lie" (Titus 1:2).

The reason He cannot do these things is not because some higher law binds Him, but because such actions are inconsistent with His own holy character.

Calvin wrote: "We fancy no lawless God who is a law unto himself. . . . The will of God is not only free of all fault but is [itself] the highest rule of perfection, and even the law of all laws" (Institutes 3.23.2).

To the careless thinker, it may seem as if Calvin was either contradicting himself or making an extremely fine distinction (God is not a law unto Himself; but His will is the law of all laws). Actually Calvin was making a crucial point. A proper understanding of biblical law ultimately hinges on this point: While acknowledging that God gives account to no one, we must likewise recognize that He is not lawless. The moral principles by which God rules, far from being aimless or arbitrary, are grounded in His own perfect holiness and are therefore as eternal and unchangeable as God Himself.

It is vital to see this aspect of the law. Unless you want to say that God is capricious, changeable, or even lawless, you cannot deny that certain eternally inviolable moral standards flow from His very character and not only determine the nature of the law by which He governs His creatures, but these principles also circumscribe God's own actions.

If you affirm that much, you have already in effect acknowledged the validity of a fundamental distinction between the moral and ceremonial aspects of the Mosaic code.

Some addenda after reading the first few comments:

I'm surprised the connection between the final sentence and the rest of the post seems like a non sequitur to so many. I'll definitely be expanding on this claim in future posts. But in short, the point seems pretty obvious to me:
- The term "moral law" normally refers to those principles of holiness taught by the law that are expressions of God's own eternal, righteous, and immutable character. By definition, these are principles that cannot be altered or abrogated.
- It's evident that some other aspects of the law have been fulfilled and thus either altered or abrogated (Hebrews 7:11-12). Hebrews 8-10 and Colossians 2 outline some of these shadowy, symbolic, and temporary aspects of the law. They are (by and large) symbols, not moral standards, and they clearly serve a different purpose from the eternal, moral elements of the law.
- It is therefore folly to reject the distinction between moral and ceremonial law on the grounds that there's no "text" (a single proof-text?) outlining such a distinction in those precise terms. It is likewise folly to refuse to see that some aspects of the law are "weighter matters" (Matthew 23:23) just because we aren't given a convenient, explicit list of "objective criteria" to make hard-line distinctions. I'll acknowledge up front that the distinctions between the moral and ceremonial precepts of the law aren't always immediately clear, and sometimes they overlap (the Sabbath being the classic example). But (and here's one of my central points) this is a good example of where our thinking needs to be guided by "good and necessary consequence" and not merely by proof-texting.
If "at first read" anyone thought I was saying "God is 'governed' by" law, you need to read the first phrase of my post again. Then read the second paragraph. I actually began by expressly denying such a notion.
I'm also arguing, however, that this does not necessarily entail the notion that God is so utterly ex lex (without law) that He Himself might act in a way that is inconsistent with the righteous principles of His law, or that He would ever be arbitrary in what He wills.
I'm not intending to suggest that God's character has ultimacy over His will. But the opposite notion strikes me as fraught with all sorts of mischief. When we contemplate the divine will and the divine character, it seems to me that the question of ontological antecedence is moot and wholly inappropriate. This is admittedly one of the difficulties we have trying to fathom God's eternality, but I am convinced that trying to understand God's will in isolation from His character is a serious error, and it's the very error I think Calvin was addressing in the quote I cited above.

A plea to would-be poets

2005-12-19T00:01:00.000-08:00

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon

PyroManiac devotes Monday space to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive.

Among all the things I love about Charles Spurgeon, the impishness that occasionally surfaced in his sense of humor has to rank somewhere near the top of the list.

Spurgeon personally made many of the editorial decisions and wrote most of the lead articles for his famous magazine, The Sword and the Trowel.

Trust me, that's a job you don't want.

I'm mainly a book editor, and that's bad enough. But I've also been involved with the editorial process on a few magazines over the years, and it's not a fun job. The unremitting deadlines and perennial creative pressure will literally take years off your life.

One of the inevitable, never-ending annoyances for any magazine editor is the difficulty of dealing with someone who fancies himself a great writer or gifted poet and wants you to publish his work. "And if you won't publish it, will you please help me get it published. I'm eager to hear your thoughts about my work and am open to any suggestions you might have."

I've received countless letters just like that from all kinds of ballad-mongers. But I have yet to meet the aspiring poet who is really eager to hear an editor's thoughts or truly open to any editorial suggestions.

I sometimes think the church is full of amateur poets who write the cheesiest doggerel and are honestly convinced it's high art. My advice to young editors: Don't try telling them their poetry is bad—especially if you're not a great poet yourself. To them, the reason you don't recognize the genius of their versification is all too obvious: you're just a Philistine when it comes to such matters.

Spurgeon had people like that sending him twaddle, too—including one guy who offered to supply entire devotional articles for The Sword and the Trowel written completely in "blank verse" (which is supposed to be rhythmic but unrhyming lines, usually written in iambic pentameter). This particular bard felt blank verse was the perfect vehicle for Spurgeon's readers, and he was just the poet/theologian to write it for Spurgeon's magazine.

Spurgeon was unimpressed. He published the following brief item in the July 1884 issue of The Sword and the Trowel:

Where Not to Send Poems or Blank Verse

"BLANK VERSE was first written in the modern languages in 1508, by Trissine." We do not know the gentleman, and do not wish to make his acquaintance. He lived a very long time ago, and it might have been as well had he never lived at all.

We have seen a vast deal of very blank verse in our time, and feel no kind of gratitude to its inventor for having brought upon us this infliction. Oh, poetic brother, do try your hand at prose! You will be prosy enough then; but now you string together your long lines of nonsense, with such an absence of all thought, that you are altogether unbearable.

We once saw an advertisement of a sermon in blank verse: we did not go to hear it, and the good man is since dead. We believe his discourse was dead long before. He has not sold the good-will of the poetical discourse business, and so there is no successor in the blank-verse-sermon line. Quite as well! Pulpits are dull enough without this last ounce of aggravation.

Milton and Thomson, Young and Cowper, we can all rejoice in; but your ordinary imitator of these sweet singers is blank as blankness itself. When the dear man feels that he must cover reams of paper with his effervescences, we have not the remotest objection to his doing so: it may be good for the paper-trade and good for himself; BUT, with the utmost vehemence of our outraged nature, we entreat him not to send his manuscripts to us, that we may pass our opinion upon them, and introduce them to a publisher.

This is one of our afflictions, and by no means a light one. The quantity of time it takes to answer poets we dare not attempt to calculate. Moreover, there is the solemn responsibility of having such jewels to take care of. We do not feet worthy to have the charge of such priceless treasures. Burglars might run off with them, rats might eat them, our Mary might either sell them to the waste-paper man, or they might even drop into

THE RECEPTACLE BELOW

End of my vacation, and why I'll skip the New Year's parties

2005-12-15T11:55:00.000-08:00

Darlene and I are in the departure lounge at JFK, on our way home. I'd forgotten something I learned on a couple of my previous trips through here: The folks who designed JFK went out of their way to avoid putting electrical outlets anywhere near the departure lounges.

I don't know how they buff the floors.

Oh, I see. They don't.

I've been examining how various kiosks and displays get juice to their cash registers, etc., and it seems they all have to run extension cords to some hidden panel behind a triple-locked door.

Even the TSA's scanners are plugged in via long orange power cables like you buy at Wal-Mart. They are all plugged in behind doors, panels, or curtains in some unseen electrical room the public is not privy to. Apparently, power is so expensive in New York that they don't even want travelers borrowing an outlet to recharge a cell phone.

Which makes me wonder what the nightly tab is for all those lights in Times Square. Last night, with temperatures below 20, you could actually feel the heat coming off the light panels in Times Square.

Trust me, that was the only thing enjoyable about Times Square last night. It was unbelievably crowded with pedestrians and choked with taxi traffic. (But don't try to get an available cab there. There aren't any.)

Times Square is a horrible place to be on a normal weeknight. I can't imagine why hordes of people all want to be there on New Year's Eve, when you have to stand in one place, hour after hour, shoulder-to-shoulder with people who are mostly drunk—just to watch a ball drop?

As a Cubs fan, I've seen enough dropped balls to last a lifetime. Thanks.

But, then, New Year's revelry in general doesn't really appeal to me anyway. The night the calendar changed from 1999 to 2000, I went to bed about 11:00 and was sound asleep when the New Year came. I wonder how many people can say that?

Snapshots

2005-12-14T00:01:00.000-08:00

Manhattan from the top of Rockefeller Center

The famous Christmas tree in Rockefeller Plaza

The castle in Central Park

The Empire State Building's shadow from the top

A corner of Times Square from the Empire State Building

The souvenir rack on the 86th floor

The interior of St. Paul's chapel. This is the Anglican church adjacent to the World Trade Center where rescue workers sought rest and refuge in the days after September 11. It's the oldest continually-occupied building in Manhattan, having been built in 1766. It's also part of the parish that sponsors the infamous "clown eucharists."

The cross formed by girders that was left standing after the World Trade Center collapse.

A perfect day in New York

2005-12-13T00:01:00.000-08:00

Frank Turk is right. Christmas season is the ideal time to visit New York. Today couldn't have been better. It was crisp but still and sunny. There's a fresh layer of snow, and much of it (especially in Central Park) is still bright white. Everywhere you go, it seems, traditional Christmas carols are playing. Surprisingly, we didn't hear a lot of cheesy contemporary "holiday" music today. In that regard, at least, New York City seems to be in rebellion against the zeitgeist.

I'd chronicle what we did on Monday, because it was all great—but I hate reading people's travelogues, so I'm not going to write one. The hands-down highlight of our day, however, was the concert we came to see: a Christmas program with Christopher Parkening and Jubilant Sykes, in the Medieval Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The hall is about the size of a small-college basketball arena, but the acoustics are much better. The ambience was perfect, in fact, for highlighting the full range of rich overtones in Jubilant's voice, as well as for hearing the lingering tones of Christopher's quietest guitar notes. The concert was totally unplugged; no amplification at all, except for a microphone that Chris was supposed to use for comments between pieces. He stopped using it about halfway through, and (even though he has a slight case of laryngitis) you could actually understand him better without the sound system.

The room was arranged with a half-circle of 400 or more chairs, every one full. The worst seats in the house were still close enough to make clear eye contact with the performers. The centerpiece of the room is a massive baroque Christmas-tree creche scene with elaborate Neapolitan ceramic figurines, impressive by any measure, even though that sort of thing is not really my cup of tea.

The music was wonderful from start to finish. I'd write a thorough account of every piece, but Sharon (who comments here and wrote three terrific pages of program notes that were handed out at the concert) is probably the only reader who is really interested in that much detail. It truly was all totally superb, both technically and aesthetically.

Jubilant sings with such expression that there's an element of evangelistic preaching in his songs. I'm not a particularly sentimental person, but Jubilant's singing never fails to move me deeply. He conveys power and emotion whether he is singing at full volume or in a barely-audible whisper. And when he sings softly, he does it with more clarity and precise intonation than anyone I have ever heard. (In an acoustic like the Medieval Hall, it's almost other-worldly.) He did a rendition of "I Wonder as I Wander" that made the gospel as clear and poignant as you'll ever hear it sung.

The highlights of the concert for me included a song by Jubilant called "Boi Bumbá," an Afro-Brazilian song, which Jubilant said depicted an argument between the Magi "about who had the best samba." I don't know what that means, and the song didn't make it any clearer for me, because it was in an unfamiliar language (Portuguese, I suppose). But it was both beautiful and fun. The syllables were so fast and complex, I don't know how a non-Charismatic like Jubilant pulled it off. The whole audience's appreciation was obvious.

Another highlight was a piece Christopher played called "Koyunbaba" ("The Shepherd") by a modern composer named Carlo Domeniconi. He's an Italian who lived for a while in Istanbul, so the piece had a Turkish-Italian flavor, if you can picture that. It's written for a guitar tuned in the tones of a c-sharp minor chord (except for the first string, which is tuned as normal). I can't imagine what difficulties that introduces for the performer, but on top of that, the notes and fingerings are lightning-fast. Chris played it with apparent effortlessness. It was a delightful sound, not like you normally hear from a guitar and obviously not completely Western. I loved it.

The concert included several traditional Christmas carols, including "Silent Night," which was an unprogrammed addition to the concert. The traditional carols and a handful of spirituals in particular seemed to have been chosen with the express purpose of honoring Christ, and that was the clear theme that ran like a thread through the whole concert. Jubilant sang the closing number, "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" (a Calvinistic spiritual, if you really think about it) with such passionate conviction that at least one Baptist in the audience felt like shouting amen at the end instead of merely applauding.

A little foretaste of heaven in New York City.

Where divine sovereignty meets human responsibility

2005-12-12T00:00:00.000-08:00

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon

PyroManiac devotes Monday space to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The extended quotation (below) is from Charles Haddon Spurgeon and is excerpted from his sermon "Sovereign Grace and Man's Responsibility," originally delivered Sunday morning, August 1, 1858, at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens, London.

I like how Spurgeon defends the coherence and consistency of truth. He clearly would have abhorred the kind of thinking existentialist philosophers and neo-orthodox theologians have managed to foist on the public consciousness for almost a century now—namely, the absurd notion that all truth is inherently "paradoxical." Make no mistake: many who talk nonstop about the principle of paradox really do seem to imagine that God's revealed truth is full of contradictions, which is tantamount to calling it nonsense.

Spurgeon, by contrast, says we should never imagine that God's truth is at odds with itself. Rather than portraying the twin truths of divine sovereignty and human responsibility as an "antinomy" (a self-contradictory principle) or even a "paradox" (an "apparent" contradiction), he wisely describes these truths as apparently parallel.

Spurgeon is certain the truth of God's absolute sovereignty and the reality of human responsibility are not so truly and eternally distinct from one another that they will never come together. While acknowledging that it's not easy to see how they come together, he avoids any suggestion that they are in any way in conflict with one another. "Nearly parallel," he calls them:

The system of truth is not one straight line, but two. No man will ever get a right view of the gospel until he knows how to look at the two lines at once.

I am taught in one book to believe that what I sow I shall reap: I am taught in another place, that "it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy."

I see in one place, God presiding over all in providence; and yet I see, and I cannot help seeing, that man acts as he pleases, and that God has left his actions to his own will, in a great measure.

Now, if I were to declare that man was so free to act, that there was no presidence of God over his actions, I should be driven very near to Atheism; and if, on the other hand, I declare that God so overrules all things, as that man is not free enough to be responsible, I am driven at once into Antinomianism or fatalism.

That God predestines, and that man is responsible, are two things that few can see. They are believed to be inconsistent and contradictory; but they are not. It is just the fault of our weak judgment. Two truths cannot be contradictory to each other.

If, then, I find taught in one place that everything is fore-ordained, that is true; and if I find in another place that man is responsible for all his actions, that is true; and it is my folly that leads me to imagine that two truths can ever contradict each other.

These two truths, I do not believe, can ever be welded into one upon any human anvil, but one they shall be in eternity: they are two lines that are so nearly parallel, that the mind that shall pursue them farthest, will never discover that they converge; but they do converge, and they will meet somewhere in eternity, close to the throne of God, whence all truth doth spring.

Personal update

By the way, Darlene and I are in New York City for the next few days. We flew here Sunday evening after church, and we'll return home late Thursday, if the Lord permits.

Darlene was born in upstate New York, and I've been there, seen Niagara Falls, and sensed the spiritual deadness of Finney's infamous "Burnt District." But I've never really visited New York City except for a few hours at a time—always on travel layovers and whatnot.

I first came through here several years ago. That was literally underground, by train, arriving in Penn Station (right under Madison Square Garden) just after midnight for a 1-hour layover. Twice I've sailed into the harbor and seen the Statue of Liberty from the deck of a ship at 5:00 AM. And I've flown through JFK dozens of times, twice stopping to spend the night on my way to and from London. One of those two times, Darlene and I splurged and stayed in a hotel right in Times Square.

But I have never seen New York.

I want to visit Ground Zero, take Darlene to the top of the Empire State Building, and walk in Central Park. There's never been time to do any of those things when we've breezed through here in the past.

So when I learned my friend Christopher Parkening (arguably the finest classical guitar player in the world) and my favorite singer, Jubilant Sykes, are giving a Christmas concert together in Manhattan this week, Darlene and I decided that's how we would spend my remaining vacation-days this year. That's what has brought us here. It's pure vacation, and a rare treat for me.

Before leaving, I finished all the work on my desk (except a thousand unanswered e-mails [sorry]), so it's my first fairly pressure-free, genuine vacation in a long time.

Why am I blogging? I wanted to. If time permits, I'll probably try to write something for the blog each evening this week. But unless the weather is really bad and we end up confined to a hotel room, don't look for anything profound or totally serious until I get back home.

Note to homeschool moms (and others)

2005-12-09T17:37:00.000-08:00

Marla Swoffer is absolutely right: Mormonism is not authentic Christianity. Mormonism has never been deemed anything other than a cult by mainstream biblical and historic Christianity. For their part (until very recently) Mormons have always denied being mainstream Christians anyway. They claim true Christianity was totally lost and the church was dead until Christ began "the Restoration" under Joseph Smith.

The fact that lots of Mormon moms are likable, politically conservative women who homeschool their kids does not alter the seriousness of Mormonism's error. Mormon doctrine corrupts the very essence of biblical truth and the gospel itself, trading the simplicity of the apostolic gospel for a different message. See Galatians 1:8-9.

Christian homeschoolers need to guard diligently against allowing their movement to become just one more vehicle for the kind of ecumenism that surrenders vital distinctives of classic Christianity while making unholy alliances in the name of impacting the culture, upholding high moral standards, opposing secularism, or whatever.

As a matter of fact, Mormonism is a false religion that is every bit as spiritually deadly as the humanistic secularism most Christian homeschooling parents are trying to avoid.

Katrina reminder

2005-12-09T15:54:00.000-08:00

After Katrina hit Mississippi and Louisiana, I was flooded with e-mails from people looking for suggestions about how to help.

The sense of urgency in the media and elsewhere seems to have dinminished somewhat, but this is the point where Christians need to show that they are serious about seeing the disaster relief through to the end.

My friend and fellow FIRE member, Eddie Exposito, whose congregtion was dealt a staggering blow by Katrina, sends me this update. Just in case some of my readers are looking for special needs to meet during the Christmas season, Eddie reminds me that our brothers and sisters in the damaged regions still have some urgent needs for vehicles, heavy equipment, and compassionate people:

Friday, December 9th, 2005

Dear Phil,

Here is a quick note to you of some specific needs we have identified in the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts here in Slidell, Louisiana:

Family van or similar vehicle
Family with four children (and temporary care of an in-law's child) has no vehicle large enough to carry the entire family after the floodwaters and a tree wiped out their family van. The floodwaters also ruined a Honda Civic that the husband used to commute to work and an old Oldsmobile they had planned to let their teen-age son drive to school and work. They were underinsured for these losses.

Small used car
We have "adopted" a 57-year-old man who has a heart and lung condition who has no means of income except welfare and no vehicle. His home was flooded and he will soon get a FEMA trailer to live in until he is able to repair his home. A small vehicle would help him get to church, the pharmacy, grocery, doctor's visits, etc.

Used 12-passenger van
We at Sovereign Grace Fellowship are in the market for a 12-passenger van to to ferry relief crews and supplies and pull a small trailer with equipment, among other things. We have received some donations to help us make this purchase, but will need either more funds or a special deal. If you have a van or know someone who has one we could buy, please let us know.

Heavy equipment
All heavy equipment - a stump grinder, a backhoe, trackhoe, or Bobcat-type machine. If you have contacts who could possibly arrange to loan one to our relief effort for a few months or could bring one down for use, there are LOTS of stumps and trees and debris still left to move.

Counselors
Depression, suicide, angry rages ... the newspapers continue to report on symptoms of the spiritual problems evident in a population that is heavily Catholic and where biblical counseling is a rarity. More than 100 days have passed since Katrina and many people have not been able, for various reasons, to begin rebuilding. Counselors can help us mount an outreach effort to evangelize and/or minister to the overwhelmed. We will follow through with those who need to be discipled.

"For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen."

By His grace,

Eddie Exposito and Charles Busby
Elders, Sovereign Grace Fellowship
http://www.sgfellowship.org

Lunch with the dawgs

2005-12-08T00:01:00.000-08:00

The closer to Christmas we get, the busier I am and the harder it is to post anything of substance. Today, rather than post nothing at all (as I did Tuesday), I'm going to write one of those insipid "Where I Am Now" posts.

Forget about getting normal office work done this week. Today is the one opportunity I will have all week to answer mail and deal with whatever is urgent in my e-mail or on my "to do" list.

Yesterday we had a luncheon for about 150 volunteers who serve weekly at Grace to You. The annual Grace to You Staff Christmas activity (at Disneyland) is tomorrow, and the GraceLife Christmas get-together is Saturday night. On Sunday afternoon Darlene and I will leave for a week of vacation. (I must use one more week of accrued vacation by the end of the calendar year or lose it.) So I'll be blogging next week from the east coast—and probably somewhat sporadically.

I still intend to get back to the thread I started about private revelation, but I can't do it right now.

Tuesday was an interesting day. Among other things, I finally got to meet two of the Fide-o guys, Scott and Jason.

It may surprise a lot of readers to hear that I did not know the Fide-o Dawgs before Tuesday. A few people have practically blamed me for them, as if I stirred them up and unleashed them on the blogosphere. Not so. I wish I could take credit for that, but it wasn't my doing.

They are a couple of Southern Baptist pastors who are involved in a church-planting ministry about an hour and a half from where I live. Although we have nearly always agreed on controversial issues, we never actually met before Tuesday. (No, wait. Jason said I met him at a Shepherds' conference once. But I don't remember it.) They have a mostly-silent blogging partner, Bret Capranica, who married my secretary a few years ago when he was fresh out of seminary. He's probably the least mischievous of the three. But I don't even know Bret very well, and he didn't come with Jason and Scott on this trip.

Anyway, Jason and Scott had e-mailed me last week to say they would be in my area and wanted me to go lunch with them. Having never met them, I wasn't quite sure how to picture them. It was hard to resist the mental picture of a couple of tattooed miscreants in motorcycle leather.

Turns out, they are winsome and amiable—the kind of guys you'd love to spend the day fishing with. They're both from the deep south, funny, fun-loving, effervescent, and interesting. The story of the church they are planting is fascinating. I hope they blog about it one of these days.

Anyway, they both had salads, no red meat. No barbecue pork. We talked about Psalm 22 and the doctrine of penal substitution. (Jason answered well the questions I had raised about his controversial post on that subject.) We compared blogwar wounds. They told me what they really think about Frank Turk. We agreed that homeschool moms are probably the next generation's best hope. And we talked about the kind of stuff pastors always talk about over lunch. The time went too quickly. I hope we get to do it again.

But not today. Today I have two 10-inch stacks of paperwork I have to get through.

Another guest-post from my favorite preacher

2005-12-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

Doctrine Is Practical
by John MacArthur

I have in my library a book by the spiritual father of a quasi-Christian cult. He argues that doctrinal statements, systematic theology and propositional truth claims are contrary to the spirit of Jesus' ministry.

That seemed a rather bizarre notion when I first heard it years ago. But the belief that Christ is against doctrine is a notion I seem to be encountering with increasing frequency.

No idea could be much further from the truth. The word doctrine simply means "teaching." And it's ludicrous to say that Christ is anti-teaching. The central imperative of His Great Commission is the command to teach (Matthew 28:18-20).

Yet there's no shortage of church-growth experts, professional pollsters, and even seminary professors nowadays who are cautioning young pastors that doctrine is too divisive, too threatening, too heady and theoretical—and therefore simply impractical.

Impractical? I agree that practical application is vital. I don't want to minimize its importance. But if there is a deficiency in preaching today, it is that there's too much relational, pseudo-psychological, and thinly life-related content, and not enough emphasis on sound doctrine.

Moreover, the distinction between doctrinal and practical truth is completely artificial; doctrine is practical. In fact, nothing is more practical than sound doctrine, because there's ultimately no basis for godly behavior apart from the truth of God's Word.

Practical insights, gimmicks, and illustrations mean little if they are divorced from divine principle. Before the preacher asks anyone to perform a certain duty, he must first deal with doctrine. He must develop his message around theological themes and draw out the principles of the texts. Then the truth can be applied.

Romans provides the clearest example. Paul doesn't give any exhortation until he has given eleven chapters of theology.

He scales incredible heights of truth, culminating in 11:33-36, where he says, "Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or who has first given Him that it might be paid back to Him again? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen."

Then in chapter 12, he turns immediately to the practical consequences of the doctrine of the first 11 chapters. No passage in Scripture captures the Christian's responsibility in the face of truth more clearly than Romans 12:1-2. Resting on eleven chapters of profound doctrine, Paul calls each believer to a supreme act of spiritual worship—giving oneself as a living sacrifice.

So doctrine gives rise to devotion to Christ. What could be more practical? And the remainder of the book of Romans goes on to explain still more practical outworkings of one's dedication to Christ.

Paul follows the same pattern in Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and 1 Thessalonians. The doctrinal message comes first. Upon that foundation he builds the practical application, making the logical connection with the word therefore (Romans 12:1; Galatians 5:1; Ephesians 4:1; Philippians 2:1) or then (Colossians 3:1; 1 Thessalonians 4:1).

So we have imposed an artificial meaning on the word doctrine. We've made it something abstract and threatening, unrelated to daily living. That has brought about the disastrous idea that preaching and teaching are unrelated to living.

The scriptural concept of doctrine includes the entire message of the gospel—its teaching about God, salvation, sin, and righteousness. Those concepts are so tightly bound to daily living that the first-century mind did not see them as something separate from practical truth.

The New Testament church was founded on a solid base of doctrine. First Timothy 3:16 contains what many expositors believe is an early church hymn: "God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." There, in capsule form, is the basis of all Christian teaching. Without that, no practical application matters.

The next few verses of 1 Timothy describe what happens when men depart from the basis of biblical truth: "Some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods, which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth" (4:1-3).

In other words, lying, hypocrisy, a dulled conscience, and false religious practices all have root in wrong doctrine.

No ministry activity is more important than rightly understanding and clearly proclaiming sound doctrine. In 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, Paul commissions two young men to the ministry. His central theme is the importance of adhering to sound doctrine.

Paul charged Timothy: "In pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following" (1 Tim. 4:6). "Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching," Paul adds, "persevere in these things; for as you do this you will insure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you" (v. 16).

Titus 2:10 says we "adorn [or honor] the doctrine of God" by how we live. When it comes to affirming sound doctrine, what we do carries far more significance than what we say. That's why it's disastrous when a pastor, seminary professor, or any kind of Christian leader fails morally. The message he proclaims is that his doctrine is unrelated to life. And for those whose lives he has touched, doctrine becomes merely an intellectual exercise.

True doctrine transforms behavior as it is woven into the fabric of everyday life. But it must be understood if it is to have its impact. The real challenge of the ministry is to dispense the truth clearly and accurately. Practical application comes easily by comparison.

John MacArthur

At last! Something new at The Spurgeon Archive

2005-12-05T00:01:00.002-08:00

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon

PyroManiac devotes Monday space to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive.

My good friend James Spurgeon (not a direct descendant of the Prince of Preachers, but quite a fine Baptist preacher himself) proofread five new sermons from the 1885 volume of The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, which have now been added to :

James promises to proofread more sermons if I keep posting them. Let's encourage him.

Meanwhile, Here's an excerpt from "The Lowly King," a sermon about the amazing prophecy of Zecariah 9:9 ("Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation, lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass."):

Now, this riding of Christ upon an ass is remarkable, if you remember that no pretender to be a prophet, or a divine messenger, has imitated it.

Ask the Jew whether he expects the Messiah to ride thus through the streets of Jerusalem. He will probably answer "No." If he does not, you may ask him the further question, whether there has appeared in his nation anyone who, professing to be the Messiah, has, at any time, come to the daughter of Jerusalem "riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass."

It is rather singular that no false Messiah has copied this lowly style of the Son of David. When Sapor, the great Persian, jested with a Jew about his Messiah riding upon an ass, he said to him, "I will send him one of my horses": to which the Rabbi replied, "You cannot send him a horse that will be good enough, for that ass is to be of a hundred colors." By that idle tradition the Rabbi showed that he had not caught the idea of the prophet at all, since he could not believe in Messiah's lowliness displayed by his riding upon a common ass. The rabbinical mind must needs make simplicity mysterious, and turn lowliness into another form of pomp.

The very pith of the matter is that our Lord gave himself no grand airs, but was natural, unaffected, and free from all vain-glory. His greatest pomp went no further than riding through Jerusalem upon a colt the foal of an ass.

The Mohammedan turns round with a sneer, and says to the Christian, "Your Master was the rider on an ass; our Mohammed was the rider on a camel; and the camel is by far the superior beast." Just so; and that is where the Mohammedan fails to grasp the prophetic thought: he looks for strength and honor, but Jesus triumphs by weakness and lowliness.

How little real glory is to be found in the grandeur and display which princes of this world affect! There is far more true glory in condescension than in display. Our Lord's riding on an ass and its foal was meant to show us how lowly our Savior is, and what tenderness there is in that lowliness. When he is proclaimed King in his great Father's capital, and rides in triumph through the streets, he sits upon no prancing charger, such as warriors choose for their triumphs, but he sits upon a borrowed ass, whose mother walks by its side. His poverty was seen, for of all the cattle on a thousand hills he owned not one; and yet we see his more than royal wealth, for he did but say, "The Lord hath need of them," and straightway their owner yielded them up.

No forced contributions supply the revenue of this prince; but his people are willing in the day of his power. He is thy King, O Zion! Shout, to think that thou hast such a Lord! Where the scepter is love, and the crown is lowliness, the homage should be peculiarly bright with rejoicing. None shall groan beneath such a sway; but the people shall willingly offer themselves; they shall find their liberty in his service, their rest in obedience to him, their honor in his glory.

The next big thing after Biblezines®?

2005-12-03T11:01:00.000-08:00

One of my lurking readers, Johnathan Tate, sends me a link to a BBC news article reporting that a German Protestant youth group has produced a calendar featuring nude "Bible characters." I'd post a link to the article, but it includes a PG-13 graphic that exceeds the limits of what I'm willing to link to.

Here's the actual text of the article:

Youths reveal racy Bible calendar

A German Protestant youth group has put together a 2006 calendar illustrated with erotic scenes from the Bible.

The 12 re-enacted passages feature a bare-breasted Delilah cutting Samson's hair and a nude Eve offering an apple.

The Nuremberg-based group said they wanted to represent the Bible in a way that would entice young people.

Nuremberg pastor Bernd Grasser said: "It's just wonderful when teenagers commit themselves with their hair and their skin to the bible."

"There's a whole range of biblical scriptures simply bursting with eroticism," said Stefan Wiest, 32, who took the racy photographs.

Anne Rohmer, 21, wearing garters and stockings, posed on a doorstep as the prostitute Rahab.

"We wanted to represent the Bible in a different way and to interest young people," she told news agency Reuters.

"Anyway, it doesn't say anywhere in the Bible that you are forbidden to show yourself nude."

Bernd Grasser, pastor of the church in Nuremberg where the calendar is being sold, said he was supportive of the project.

I keep saying: there's no way left to parody this stuff. The real thing is more exaggerated and more extreme than any caricature could ever make it seem.

Six-Month Reckoning

2005-12-02T00:01:00.000-08:00

I hate blogposts about blogging. They are always comically self-referential and grotesquely dull. If you feel that way too, go ahead and skip this post. It won't hurt my feelings at all.

PyroManiac is now exactly 6 months old.

When the blog launched June 1, I expected readership to be roughly the size of my Sunday-school class. If the hit-counter is to be trusted, there have been a few more readers than that.

I'm not a stats-checker. I honestly can't tell you how many hits the blog gets on an average day. I can't tell you what the trends in my traffic have been, because I just don't pay attention to that. On the few occasions when I have visited sites where stats and rankings are found, it has always seemed to me that the data are unreliable. (I noticed, for example, that PyroManiac was briefly listed as an "insignificant microbe" on TTLB just last week, with not a single link from anywhere in the blogosphere. That cannot be accurate.) But I don't really care about that stuff.

In fact, if Darlene hadn't reminded me on Thursday, I would have forgotten it was the half-anniversary of the blog.

It's a good time to take stock and do some hard assessments. Is the blog worth the time and energy it requires? How long can I keep it up? Are there things I should change? Should I quit needling homeschool moms? Should I post less, solemnize the mood, change the graphic look to something more subtle? Could I save a lot of time and conflict simply by closing the comments?

I'm not really asking for feedback; just sharing some of the questions that have occurred to me from time to time.

Here, in random order, are some of my thoughts about PyroManiac at the six-month mile-marker:

I've been greatly encouraged by most of the feedback and private e-mails I have received.
There are, occasionally, some notable exceptions. Just yesterday received a terse, one-sentence e-mail: "Go Away, 'Phil' the internet has enough noise on it." Made me think. The argument he gives is unassailable.
I'm very thankful for literally dozens of friends I have made through the blog. I've had the privilege of meeting many in person. Practically every week at church, I meet someone new who knows me because of the blog. In July I finally got to meet Dr. Adrian Warnock, with whom I first exchanged e-mail in 1996. And twice now I have had lunch with Frank Turk, a kindred spirit whom I might never have met except through bloglinks. Those kinds of things are the up-side of having open comments.
I really do despise the conflict in the comments threads and occasional blogwars. The open format more or less invites that, though. It's not like speaking to a live audience, where people aren't likely to talk back. Here, critics seem to be standing in the wings on a daily basis, looking for a point to quarrel with. I've been caught totally off guard by this repeatedly—especially the recent backlash against my posts about patently false prophecies. I'm still shaking my head over that. (And by the way, I still intend as soon as possible to complete the series I began on "hearing the voice of God").
This is a weblog, not a pulpit or seminary class, so I have deliberately included some personal-journal-style entries, a high percentage of humor (or well-meant attempts at merriment), and occasional lighter-than-usual fare. But I have lately wondered whether so much farce and frivolity is wasted effort, or even counterproductive to what I really hope to accomplish with the blog. For one thing, American humor doesn't always translate well into other cultures. And I think Southern California humor sometimes isn't even funny in other North American climates. I'd have a lot less 'splainin' to do if I just throttled my humor reflex whenever possible. I like the mildly droll graphics. The trademark comic-book covers may have to go, though.
When I started, I said I did not intend to post daily. The Blogger website tells me this is my 181st post. That's almost exactly a post a day, even though I took a two-week hiatus at one point. Nobody has that much to say that's worth reading. (OK, there's James White, Michael Haykin, Steve Hays, Tim Challies—and maybe a handful of others. But most of us probably should not entertain the conceit of imagining that so much of what we write is really worthy of blogging about.) Reading back over my blog, I see lots of days when I probably should have gone to bed early and skipped blogging altogether.
On the other hand, there are a few posts that I'm happy to have written. The "London Journal" series in early July stands out in my memory. The Fad-Driven Church series later that same month also generated a lot of good feedback.
Amazingly, the single most commented-on post ever was my very first one. Some readers probably think that post was developed over several weeks while I was planning to launch the blog. Actually, I wrote it in an hour and a half the night before the bloglaunch. Until that evening, I had no idea what the first post was going to be. (I had been swamped with other writing deadlines right up to the day the blog launched.)

So what's the sum of my thoughts on all this? In the days to come, look for me to blog a little less obsessively, a little less light-heartedly, and (hopefully) a lot more pointedly. I think the result will be a better blog, even if a less wordy one.

"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 5:16).

What is worldliness, and when is it sinful?

2005-12-01T00:01:00.000-08:00

Christians in earlier generations were a lot more concerned about worldliness than we typically are. Many evangelicals these days don't even seem to be aware that worldliness is still a sin.

A major shift seems to have occurred in less than three decades' time. I have vivid recollections of the two semesters in I spent in fundamentalist purgatory in the mid-1970s. Worldliness was one of the most oft-mentioned sins by chapel speakers at the Baptist college where I was enrolled.

To hear them describe it, worldliness was essentially the sin of being too cool. An acquaintance of mine—a rigidly old-fashioned middle-aged woman—once scolded me as a worldling for wearing contact lenses. She was certain my motives for wearing them were driven only by carnal vanity. She pleaded with me to opt for thick bifocals instead. "I like you the way God made you," she protested.

"He didn't make me with eyeglasses," I reminded her.

"You know what I mean," she said, waving her hand, as if the point should be obvious.

Sure. Makes perfect sense.

Our Amish friends take it even further. Their strategy for avoiding worldliness involves eschewing all modern conveniences.

The same sort of thinking culminates in austere forms of monasticism, where poverty, celibacy, and ascetic solitude are seen as sure means of avoiding worldly influences.

The truth is, you can live a totally cloistered life or be as unhip as a Stephen Foster song and still be worldly.

That's not to deny that worldliness poses a particular threat to those who are obsessed with being fashionable. There's no question that a fixation with being hip and trendy has made the evangelical movement itself worldly. If you need evidence of that, find the posts on "The Fad-Driven Church" in the archives of PyroManiac, or search the archives here for "Biblezines®."

Worldly simply means "pertaining to this earth." On the one hand, Hebrews 9:1 speaks of "a worldly sanctuary"—i.e., an earthly and material one, contrasted with the "True tabernacle"—the heavenly temple, "which the Lord pitched, and not man" (8:2). So something can be "worldly" (like the Tabernacle) without being sinful.

On the other hand, Titus 2:12 speaks of "worldly lusts," meaning passions that are set on earthly and temporal things. Love for earthly things is inconsistent with true love for God, because the passions that drive this world's philosophies and value-systems are all characterized by pride and sinful lust (1 John 2:15-17).

The sin of "worldliness" is the tendency to set one's affections on things of the earth rather than on heavenly things (cf. Colossians 3:2). "Friendship with the world is enmity with God" (James 4:4). It is positively sinful to love this present world and imbibe its values more than we love heaven and order our lives according to heavenly values (cf. Philippians 1:23; Romans 8:5-6; Matthew 6:19-21; 16:23).

In other words, worldliness is a sin of the heart.

Conversely, worldliness isn't necessarily related to movies, music styles, the latest fashions, or other typical fundamentalist taboos. Those things certainly can be worldly and obviously do have a tendency to provoke sinful worldliness insofar as they naturally appeal to our passions and tempt us to become obsessed with earthly things.

But there's an even worse kind of worldliness than that. Religion—even conservative, doctrinally-sound religion—can be worldly too.

Think about it: if a person cares less for heaven and heaven's values than for the trappings of "a worldly sanctuary"—be it an ornate cathedral, a megachurch with a Starbucks kiosk in the foyer, or a lowbrow church where snake-handling provides the entertainment—that person is worldly and living in disobedience to God.

As a matter of fact, I know some hard-core fundamentalists who are the rankest kind of worldlings, because they imagine that holiness consists only in external and cultural things, and they have not cultivated a genuine love in their hearts for that which is spiritual.

So you cannot discover whether you are worldly merely by seeing how you look or what kind of lifestyle you live. If you want to recognize true worldliness, you have to assess your desires and passions. What do you truly love? Since worldliness is inherent in the bent of the old man, when you examine your heart honestly, you're virtually certain to discover a degree of worldliness there.

The biblical instructions for how to deal with worldliness are surprisingly simple:

"Put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and . . . put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness" (Ephesians 4:22-24).

Because I like this meme better:

2005-11-30T00:01:00.000-08:00

Regarding humor—sarcastic humor in particular—Spurgeon said,

I must confess that I would rather hear people laugh than I would see them asleep in the house of God; and I would rather get the truth into them through the medium of ridicule than I would have it neglected, or leave the people to perish through lack of reception of the message.

I do believe in my heart, that there may be as much holiness in a laugh as in a cry; and that, sometimes, to laugh is the better thing of the two, for I may weep, and be murmuring, and repining, and thinking all sorts of bitter thoughts against God; while, at another time, I may laugh the laugh of sarcasm against sin, and so evince a holy earnestness in the defense of the truth.

I do not know why ridicule is to be given up to Satan as a weapon to be used against us, and not to be employed by us as a weapon against him.

I will venture to affirm that the Reformation owed almost as much to the sense of the ridiculous in human nature as to anything else, and that those humorous squibs and caricatures, that were issued by the friends of Luther, did more to open the eyes of Germany to the abominations of the priesthood than the more solid and ponderous arguments against Romanism. I know no reason why we should not, on suitable occasions, try the same style of reasoning.

"It is a dangerous weapon," it will be said, "and many men will cut their fingers with it." Well, that is their own lookout; but I do not know why we should be so particular about their cutting their fingers if they can, at the same time, cut the throat of sin, and do serious damage to the great adversary of souls.

Lectures to my Students

There are a couple of things I would like to add about humor, sarcasm, cruelty, kindness, and the Christian's duty not to look for reasons to take offense—but I'll wait till it's clear that the recent ugliness is really in the past and everyone is a little more calm.

(Finally, to the handful of individuals still badgering me about the blogwar, please re-read this.)

Ugliness everywhere

2005-11-29T00:25:00.000-08:00

Coupla ugly items today:

The life and times of Pecadillo

Pecadillo leaves his car at the Park and Ride, and from there he travels via carpool each day to the police academy. When he returned to the Park and Ride yesterday afternoon, his car had been broken into. The steering-column key-slot was clumsily ripped off in an attempt to steal the car. The miscreant who did the deed did it so badly that it rendered the ignition switch inoperable.

Instead of stealing the car, then, the perp made off with Pecadillo's radio and CD player, the multiple-CD changer in the boot, Pecadillo's entire CD collection (about 100 CDs in a special case), and everything else of value in the car.

Well, everything except for Pecadillo's Mr. T® bobble-head, which was inexplicably left behind undamaged (perhaps because Pec has a potty-training award ribbon hanging on Mr. T's neck. Don't ask me what it means. I don't know.) So anyway, Pec is without transportation and (more tragically) his life is totally devoid of music at the moment.

Of course, he'd better not expect the folks at the police academy to cut him any slack. He won't be getting time off to sort things out with the insurance company. In fact, since Pec was involved in an incident that required a police report, he is most likely going to have a whole lot of extra paperwork to do.

It's a really good thing Pecadillo did not return to his car during the actual robbery carrying anything like a frozen meat chub. I know Pecadillo. He once challenged a seminary student with a baseball bat when the poor guy accidentally set off the burglar alarm at Carey Hardy's house and the "intruder" didn't properly ID himself. (I'll let Pec write about that at his blog someday.)

Anyway, I'm pretty sure Pec's normal instinct would be to challenge the perp, and if necessary employ said meat chub in a way that might have required some dentistry to repair the thwarted car-thief's grin. At the moment, however, Pecadillo could actually get in serious trouble for doing that. Recruit officers are strictly prohibited from intervening in any criminal incidents until they actually earn their badges. So for the next few months, Pecadillo has to be very cautious with the bad guys. One thoughtless meat-chub incident could cost him his whole career.

So it could have been worse, but it was bad enough. I hate when stuff like that happens.

The Blogwar

Regarding the Great Thanksgiving Blogwar: Yes, I agree it's really ugly. Maybe not for all the same reasons everyone else says it's ugly. But it is definitely ugly.

I'm reluctant to say anything more about it at all. I'm pretty sure whatever I say is going to get me in trouble. In fact, I haven't referred to the Blogwar in any context for some 48 hours or more—after I made a comment on one of the larger blogs trying to make a reasonable point and was angrily rebuffed by someone who, for good measure, also questioned my manhood—immediately after the fellow had bemoaned the fact that the whole thing had got too petty and personal. (I'd link to the post in question, because it was a beaut, making an impassioned appeal to Ephesians 4:29. But the author himself employed vulgar language to make that appeal. It wasn't the vilest possible profanity, but it was extremely crude and angry—and enough to violate the standard of what I am willing to link to.)

I decided at that point it would be prudent to bow out of the discussion without fanfare.

All of this is to say that the hypocrisy and histrionics on one side are every bit as ugly and blameworthy as the smug and arrogant tone those same folks are busily complaining about. It's also amazing to see so many people who claim to be absolutely outraged by public disagreement among Christians, but who nonetheless feel it prudent to dissect the whole business in an angry, slanted, and very public way.

I've watched at least two well-known bloggers publicly condemn the controversy at their own blogs, claim they were swearing off the dispute completely, and then simply carry the fight to the comments section of another blog or two where the debate was still brewing. That's ugly.

And if you want to see something really ugly, you should see a few of the private messages I have received in the past 48 hours. One person angrily declared me the chief culprit in the whole conflict, even though he admitted he hadn't actually read anything I have written. He refuses to read me because I'm too closed-minded! A number of people have begged me to join the dogpile on Frank Turk, saying it's "obvious" that he is out of control. (Presumably this is "obvious" just because of the sheer number of people who are angry at Frank.) One or two other people have written to say they are angry with me because I won't simply "drop it." Apparently, they were so busy reading others' opinions about the conflict (and writing their own diatribes) that they didn't notice I did actually drop it a couple of days ago. Still others have pleaded with me to end my silence and voice my disapproval for the way the people on "my side" of the conflict are conducting themselves.

OK, since I'm apparently going to be blamed and criticized for the whole ugly incident no matter what I do or don't do, let me offer a very brief analysis of my own. I make no claim that I am perfectly objective, but I really am trying to be.

First: the penalty points against "my side":

I wasn't happy with Frank Turk's title or tone on this post.
If I were Frank, I wouldn't punctuate my points with expressions like "Booyah!"—especially after so many people are already angry. The advice given in Proverbs 15:1 and 25:15 is, I think, a sounder strategy for a conflict like this.
I think the Fide-O post with the dead hawgs was predictably inflammatory. I therefore would not have posted those particular pictures at that moment. At a different time, they would have been somewhat amusing. But coming when it did, that post frightened even Darlene, who is naturally inclined to sympathy for "my side" and (after 27 years with me) isn't particularly squeamish.
In retrospect, since what I intended to do was add some comedic final punctuation to (what I thought at the time was) the end of a blogfight, it turns out my comic-book tribute to Frank Turk was a tad premature. I did think it was essentially neutral and non-harmful to anyone in the conflict (there was no actual brunt of that "joke"). However, I clearly overestimated some folks' ability to appreciate the joke. For any pain and anguish my artwork may have caused people whom I love (which includes all y'all), I apologize.
I think "my side" probably ought to work harder to treat serious issues as seriously as possible when conflict is involved, keeping the humor to a minimum, especially when it becomes obvious that the drollery is inflaming people's rage rather than lightening the mood.

I'll say this again, however: It's my candid opinion that raw histrionics, vulgar language, hypocritical fanning of the flames, the wrath of man, the supercilious contempt of people who thank God that they are not like the "TRs" (and who cannot pass up any opportunity, no matter how cheap, to take that shot just one more time)—and a lot of the other stuff from the "other" side—is every bit as reprehensible and just as bad a testimony to casual observers as everything people rightly and wrongly judged "my side" guilty of.

And for the record, I do not think there is anything inherently or necessarily shameful in disagreement between Christians, even when it is expressed publicly and candidly. We of all people ought to love the truth that much.

That said, I appreciate the fact that Frank Turk has not once lost his temper throughout this whole imbroglio. Whether you agree with him or not (and of course, I do), he deserves credit for his patience, persistence, and even-temperedness. I also do think there's a real, significant, rational, biblical point in the stand Frank has taken this past week, and he summed it up well right here, at a point in the conflict where I confess I would have found it pretty hard to be that restrained. I'm very glad to have Frank as my friend.

Bonus points also to Jus Divinum, who joined the fray with some careful thinking and dispassionate wisdom at a key point in the discussion. Jus has probably argued longer and harder against some of my opinions than anyone else in the blogosphere, and I'd much rather have him on "my side" than arguing against me. Either way, he's usually worth listening to, and this was no exception.

I also appreciated Steve Hays's contribution, but you already knew I would. I nearly always find his thoughts lucid and helpful. He is very pithy too, and I know that rubs some people the wrong way, but I was very glad he stepped into the fray when I'm pretty sure he would have liked to stay out of it.

I'm not so naive as to declare the whole imbroglio finally over once again. I hope it is. We'll see. But I do want to add two more things:

I really do think there were some vitally important points on the table at the start of this quarrel:
- The church does not need loose-cannon critics of the perpetually-cynical variety who are driven (to a conspicuous degree) by their own passions.
- Christians ought to evaluate everything with careful and critical discernment—but especially voices that are unrelentingly censorious and constantly shifting positions.
- Authentic "transparency" and "vulnerability" are not best expressed in fiction pieces.
- We ought to be wary of preachers who freely and gladly admit that their persona in the pulpit is different from the way they represent themselves elsewhere—especially when they declare the out-of-pulpit persona an honest and "vulnerable" expression of the real person.
- A person who taunts a critic shouldn't complain when he gets what he asked for.
There's also an important point I hope someone will make at the end of all this: Real discernment is not a matter of evaluating everything by how it makes us feel. Often, the truth makes us uncomfortable. That's the way it is supposed to be. One of the real, serious dangers posed by the pervasive postmodern spirit is the tendency to treat "truth" as something determined in my own mind and heart from my unique perspective. Naturally, by that measure, whatever makes us uncomfortable isn't likely to be widely embraced. That's actually a dangerous form of sensuality, and it is a grievous sin, especially in the matter of discernment. It's disturbing to see how widespread that tendency is nowadays.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Another Fracas

Speaking of pomoism, Doug Wilson and Andrew Sandlin have gotten into it over postmodernism—and it's a much more rollicking, more entertaining, and more enlightening fight than my little back-and-forth tussle with The Blue Raja in the comments threads here at PyroManiac. <joke>(Raja is bucking for a demotion to "irritating" in my blogroll, I think.)</joke> Back in July, I put up a link to the archive of Wilson's articles on pomoism, but the archive has grown considerably since then, and it's great stuff to read. A couple of side notes:

F. J. DeAngelis has a chronicle of Sandlin's about-face in the pomo debate here.
Sandlin posts an interesting quick first impression of Tom Wright's book The Last Word here.

Let's not lose in truthfulness what we gain in charity

2005-11-28T00:01:00.000-08:00

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon

PyroManiac devotes Monday space to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from an article titled "Ministers Sailing under False Colours," originally published the February 1870 Sword and Trowel:

Our forefathers were far less tolerant than we are, and it is to be feared that they were also more honest. It will be a sad discount upon our gain in the matter of charity if it turn out that we have been losers in the department of truthfulness.

There is no necessary connection between the two facts of growth in tolerance and decline in sincerity, but we are suspicious that they have occurred and are occurring at the same moment.

We freely accord to theological teachers a freedom of thought and utterance which in other ages could only be obtained by the more daring at serious risks, but we also allow an amount of untruthfulness in ministers, which former ages would have utterly abhorred. . . .

Our love to the most unlimited religious liberty incites us to all the sterner abhorrence of the license which like a parasite feeds thereon.

the plea of spiritual liberty, of late years certain teachers who have abjured the faith of the churches which employ them, have nevertheless endeavored, with more or less success, to retain their offices and their emoluments. . . .

Our complaint is . . . not that the men changed their views, and threw up their former creeds, but that having done so they did not at once quit the office of minister to the community whose faith they could no longer uphold; their fault is not that they differed, but that, differing, they sought an office of which the prime necessity is agreement.

All the elements of the lowest kind of knavery meet in the evil which we now denounce. Treachery is never more treacherous than when it leads a man to stab at a doctrine which he has solemnly engaged to uphold, and for the maintenance of which he receives a livelihood. . . .

It is frequently bewailed as a mournful circumstance that creeds were ever written; it is said, "Let the Bible alone be the creed of every church, and let preachers explain the Scriptures as they conscientiously think best." Here again we enter into no debate, but simply beg the objector to remember that there are creeds, that the churches have not given them up, that persons are not forced to be ministers of these churches, and therefore if they object to creeds they should not offer to become teachers of them; above all, they should not agree to teach what they do not believe.

Can't we all just get along?

2005-11-26T01:17:00.000-08:00

Why "playing nice" by postmodernist standards is a losing proposition

The favorite buzzwords of the postmodern spirit all sound so warm and friendly, don't they? Conversation, dialogue, openness, generosity, tolerance. Who wouldn't want to participate in discourse with someone who truly prized human values such as those?

On the other hand, the very same Zeitgeist has demonized a host of other essential biblical values, such as authority, conviction, clarity, and even truth. In the milieu of the emerging discussion, this second category of words has been made to sound harsh, unreasonable, arrogant, and extreme—if not downright evil.

Moreover, postmodern human values are increasingly being defined in a way that expressly precludes eternal biblical values. For example, the prevailing opinion nowadays is that you cannot be "open" and certain at the same time. A person who speaks with too much conviction is ipso facto deemed an "intolerant" person. Above all, anyone who recognizes the full authority of Scripture and insists that God's Word deserves our unconditional submission will inevitably be accused of deliberately trying to stymie the whole "conversation."

This is not to suggest that disagreement per se is prohibited in the postmodern dialectic. Quite the contrary, "deconstruction" is all about disputes over words. Postmoderns thrive on dissent, debate, and contradiction.

And (giving credit where credit is due) it should be noted that postmodernists can sometimes be amazingly congenial in their verbal sparring with one another.

One thing the participants in the postmodern "conversation" simply will not tolerate, however, is someone who disagrees and thinks the point is really serious. Virtually no heresy is ever to be regarded as damnable. The notion that erroneous doctrine can actually be dangerous is deemed uncouth and naive. Every bizarre notion gets equal respect. Truth itself is only a matter of personal perspective, you see. Everything is ultimately negotiable.

Now, if you want to join the postmodern "conversation," you are expected to acknowledge all this up front—at least tacitly. That's the price of admission to the discussion. Once you're in, you can throw any bizarre idea you want on the table, no matter how outlandish. You can use virtually any tone or language to make your point, no matter how outrageous. But you must bear in mind that all disputation at this table is purely for sport. At the end of the day, you mustn't really be concerned about the truth or falsehood of any mere propositions.

Some "conversation." The ground rules guarantee that truth itself will be a casualty in every controversy, because regardless of the substance or the outcome of the dialogue, participants have in effect agreed up front that the propositions under debate don't really matter.

Entering the "conversation" at all is tantamount to breaking the seal on a software package. The moment you do it, you have putatively given your consent to the postmodernist's ground rules. If you then violate those rules—meaning if you take any doctrine too seriously or insist that Scripture is really authoritative—you will be savaged as someone who is cruel, intolerant, unenlightened, and hopelessly arrogant.

That's why it is well-nigh impossible to have an authentic, meaningful conversation with a devoted postmodernist and ever see anything genuinely resolved. The postmodernist by definition has no real hope or expectation of arriving at the truth of any matter. That's not the goal of the postmodernist exercise. It's not even a desirable objective. The only real point is to eliminate certitude altogether. This is done not by settling disputes, but by silencing or assimilating everyone who resists the unrestrained free flow of the postmodernist idea-exchange.

Truth is under attack on countless fronts today. What's popular these days—even among professing Christians—is glorying in ambiguity and uncertainty. Precious few are still committed without reservation to the truth and authority of Scripture. The very last thing I would willingly do in times like these would be to pledge a moratorium on candor or agree to a ceasefire with people who delight in testing the limits of orthodoxy. See Nehemiah 6:2-4.

"Spine"?

2005-11-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

PS:

For my readers who wonder what in the world this means,
Matt Gumm has provided a more-or-less objective (and admirably complete) Soap Opera Digest-style rundown of this week's
drama. For those who wonder: No, I am not attempting to prolong someone else's blogwar. I'm an editor, and I have an obsessive urge to supply final punctuation where I see it missing. This imbroglio was fairly screaming for a comic-book cover.

Here's to a traditional Thanksgiving

2005-11-24T00:01:00.000-08:00

Almost as soon as the Johnson boys were old enough to have firm convictions and express strong opinions (I think all three of them were still under 5 at the time), they let us know that the inevitable two weeks of turkey leftovers, turkey soup, and turkey goulash associated with Thanksgiving had become an unbearable burden for them. Could we do something less poultry-oriented this year? (All my sons were born with a preference for red meat, just like their dad.)

So, some 15 years ago or so, we started a new tradition in our family: Thanksgiving pizza.

It's not that effeminate matzo-crust delivery stuff with nothing of any substance on it. This is serious made-from-scratch deep-dish gourmet pizza with a full pound of cheese and a pound or more of meat in one large-size classic 2-inch-deep Chicago-style pizza pan.

The sauce and crust must be made from scratch. The cheese must be grated by hand from solid blocks of three different varieties of sharp Italian cheese purchased at the deli—not that cheapo, bagged, pre-grated Costco "mozzarella."

Making the pizza is a minimum four-hour project. Cooking a stuffed 18-pound turkey would frankly be quicker. But nowhere near as good.

I'd post my recipe for the gourmet pizza, but it's a closely-guarded family secret. In an era where few people really appreciate the value and richness of tradition, we fiercely guard our family customs.

We hope you have a blessed Thanksgiving.

7:00 PM Update:

This is an actual photo of the Johnsons' 2005 Thanksgiving pizza (after cooking and carving, but prior to consumption). It was fine.

Hoping to clear the air

2005-11-23T02:49:00.000-08:00

For reasons I cannot quite fathom, I've received public scoldings here and there around the blogosphere for supposedly waging "war" against another blog.

I'd just like to point out that the supposed "feud" has been rather one-sided. I haven't mentioned the blog in question in ages. I've alluded to it exactly twice in the past month—once when I expressed disgust at a snide and utterly inappropriate remark posted there, and a second time (without even saying whom I was referring to) when I objected to some gratuitous scatology that was posted there.

I won't give a tally of how many times I have been mentioned or held up to ridicule on that blog in the past ten days, except to say that it has been a steady stream of snark. That isn't a "feud"; it's a blitzkrieg.

Some thoughts about all this unpleasantness:

Can we lay the "It’s a tavern, not a Swiss watch doctrinal precision factory" mantra to rest? In the first place, I don't see how that is supposed to exempt bad theology, bad attitudes, or bad manners from criticism.
In the second place, I generally try to discourage Christians from trying to develop a better understanding of theology by listening in on heavy-drinking armchair-theologians' dialogues anyway. Taverns these days tend to be the worst venues for theological dialogue and Christian fellowship. So I'm not sure how the "it's a tavern" abracadabra is supposed to make aberrant ideas and ungodly words untouchable.
I have never been deliberately unkind to anyone at the Tavern, including the monk who usually tends bar. My personal interaction with all of those guys has always been friendly and polite. A few of my jokes about them have ruffled feathers, but even in those cases, I did everything possible beforehand to make it obvious that I wasn't entirely serious, and I have never acted out of malice.
On the other hand, every time I have ever expressed any disagreement with anything posted there, it has prompted an angry response and days of retaliatory sneering.
To my knowledge, not one of the people who routinely expresses outrage about every uncomplimentary remark or criticism directed toward the Tavern has ever once made a similar complaint about the sarcasm, filthy language, and foolish talk that pours forth from there on a nearly daily basis.
Frank "Centuri0n" Turk accidentally unleashed a firestorm of "PyroManiac" proportions yesterday. Contrary to conjecture that has been publicly posted elsewhere, I did not in any way consult beforehand with Centuri0n about anything he posted, stir him up to post it, dare him to do it, or ask him to do it. (Actually, the person who incurred Mr. Turk's criticism is the one who did all those things himself.)
I'm not going to comment on that controversy, except to say that I believe those who are so absolutely sure that they know Frank's heart and insist that his request for prayer was merely flippant and sarcastic have misjudged him. See John 7:24.
Ironically, some who are most outraged at Frank's supposed irreverence are individuals whose own blogs and comments (especially in their interactions with people who push the limits of sound doctrine) seem beset with a chronic and constitutional inability to be serious about anything that really is serious.
Well, OK. Here's one more comment about the controversy at Centuri0n's blog: I was glad to learn that I am not the only one who has noticed that the so-called "confessional essays" have become increasingly shrill. And conversely, let me go on record saying that Frank Turk is not the only one who finds them worrisome.
Perhaps I am not empathetic enough. But let me share my heart: Darlene and I don't have prolonged fights about petty issues. If we ever had one, I wouldn't blog about it. I don't think that's appropriate or edifying, much less laudable. (And it's well-nigh blasphemy to compare that kind of drivel with the book of Lamentations.)
I've had my share of pastoral struggles and disappointments, but honestly, I have never once regretted entering the ministry or questioned my calling. If that makes me seem less "authentic" in the eyes of people who have a voyeuristic need to enter vicariously into someone else's angst, I'm sorry. But in all candor, and with no rancor whatsoever, I do sincerely wonder if someone so bitterly disappointed with his own failures, so openly disillusioned with the church, and (by his own testimony) so emotionally fragile really is called to ministry. And my heart has been burdened to pray for him. You want me to be transparent? There it is.
Finally, some of the patrons at the Tavern have repeatedly and publicly asserted that I "hate" them. For the record, I have never entertained a hateful thought about any of them. If I were even tempted to hate them, I would simply ignore them.
     Why don't I just ignore them anyway? Because they insist on airing their criticisms of everything I stand for, replete with links and jeering references back this direction. (They were doing it before I even started blogging.) Meanwhile, the outpouring of complaints every time they are criticized is proof of their influence.
     And I really do think much that is posted at their blog is unnecessarily negative toward the church, rooted in a low view of the Scriptures, and detrimental to impressionable readers.
     Those concerns are serious. Mere melodrama (a lot of it, too!) has not been sufficient to convince me that it would be appropriate to stifle those concerns for the sake of an artificial pretense of "unity."

This should be good

2005-11-22T10:13:00.000-08:00

Some guys I know are starting a blog, January 1. Flag this one. These guys will tackle provocative issues without fear and without equivocation, but in a way that's a lot more cultured, well-mannered, and respectable than the PyroManiac.

In their introductory post, they say,

We chose the name "faith and practice" because it encompasses all areas of theology, from the systematic to the practical; and also because it serves as a vivid reminder to all of us that true Christianity does not consist of mere theory, but of wholehearted obedience to the truth (cf. John 14:15).

About those blogroll revisions...

2005-11-21T16:22:00.000-08:00

All sorts of speculation has been going on about the revisions in my blogroll and What It All Might Mean.

It's simple, really. The blogroll has needed an overhaul for some time. It reflects blogs I read regularly. Until now, it has been a list of blogs I try to read daily, but I wanted to expand it, because there are several good blogs I wanted to link to that I can't necessarily read every single day.

Some observations:

"Entertaining" is a perfectly good category, and not a "lesser" category than "Interesting." There are many blogs that could fit equally well in either category, but I have tended to put those that keep me amused and smiling in "Entertaining," and those that make me pensive and reflective in "Interesting." If I had to assign PyroManiac to any category on my own blogroll, I would proudly and without hesitation add it to the "Entertaining" category.
"Convivial" is a perfectly good category, too. If it seems like all the girl-blogs wound up in "Convivial," I noticed that, too. I'm not trying to segregate the women in a category of their own. (Note that Intellectuelle made "Interesting.") It's just that the women bloggers whose writing I enjoy tend to write more personal and less didactic material. They seemed to fit best in "Convivial," which is not to say I don't find them interesting and entertaining as well. (Hey, no one is more entertaining than a home-school mom who has her hackles up.) But I organized my blogroll by what makes sense to me. If someone thinks my male chauvinism is showing, so be it. Here's a blog you might like.
I did not "demote" or delete anyone as a punitive measure for a post that I disagreed with. If I wanted to send someone a message, I wouldn't be so subtle about it.
Speaking of which, some blogs may be listed but not linked. They are in my penalty box. Why? you ask? "A couple of reasons," I reply. I'll unlink a site temporarily if they post gratuitous scatology, blasphemy, or anything else that deeply offends my moral sensibilities. If they insult or offend Darlene, I may unlink them for a much longer period of time. If someone posts white supremacist or neo-Nazi material, I may unlink them permanently but leave their name in a category such as "Apalling" (especially if they have at times linked to any of my websites), because I think it's appropriate to signal my displeasure, but I don't want to drive traffic to their sites.
I know there are blogs I should be linked to but haven't listed yet. I'll add them as I think of them. Bribery and threats won't get you listed here, however, so don't try it.

Is there a universal aspect to the atonement?

2005-11-21T00:01:00.000-08:00

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon

PyroManiac devotes Monday space to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive.

Charles Spurgeon, like all Calvinists, understood that the saving efficacy of the atonement is limited to the elect alone. But he rejected the notion of those high Calvinists who deny that the atoning work of Christ has any application or relevance to the reprobate whatsoever.

Spurgeon taught that the atoning work of Christ had universal and particular aspects. Of course, he stressed that the substitutionary aspects of the atonement—where Christ stood in the place of sinners and bore their punishment in their stead, propitiating God and providing full expiation for sin—were applicable to the elect alone.

But he also saw a universal aspect to the work of Christ on the cross. He taught that common grace is (at least to some degree) grounded in the atonement, because the kindness and benevolence of God to humanity in general—especially as reflected in the well-meant offer of salvation—would not have been possible at all apart from Christ's death. That is why those who reject Christ are guilty of the most egregious kind of personal affront against His goodness toward them (cf. Romans 2:4).

The following excerpt is from sermon no. 650, "Judgment Threatening but Mercy Sparing," delivered Sunday Morning, 17 September 1865 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London:

We do not believe in general redemption, but we believe in every word of this precious Bible, and there are many passages in the Scripture which seem to show that Christ's death had an universal bearing upon the sons of men.

We are told that he tasted death for every man. What does that mean? Does it mean that Jesus Christ died to save every man? I do not believe it does, for seems to me that everything which Christ intended to accomplish by the act of his death he must accomplish or else he will be disappointed, which is not supposable. Those whom Christ died to save I believe he will save effectually, through his substitutionary sacrifice.

But did he in any other sense die for the rest of mankind? He did. Nothing can be much more plain in Scripture, it seems to me, than that all sinners are spared as the result of Jesus Christ' death. And this is the sense in which men are said to trample on the blood of Jesus Christ. We read of some who denied the Lord that bought them. No one who is bought with blood for eternal salvation ever tramples on that blood; but Jesus Christ has shed his blood for the reprieve of men that they may be spared, and those who turn God's sparing mercy into an occasion for fresh sin, do trample on the blood of Jesus Christ.

You can hold that doctrine without holding universal redemption, or without at all contradicting that undoubted truth, that Jesus laid down his life for his sheep, and that where he suffered he suffered not in vain.

Now, sinner, whether thou knowest it or not, thou art indebted to him that did hang upon the tree, for the breath that is now in thee. Thou hadst not been on praying ground and pleading terms with God this morning if it had not been for that dear suffering one.

This is where I was yesterday

2005-11-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

As planned, Darlene and I had lunch Thursday with Frank Turk and three-fourths of his family. In deference to Mrs. Turk, who shuns all the fame and accolades that go with being Centuri0n's wife, I'm not going to mention any first names. But they have a daughter who is beautiful, intelligent, sophisticated, witty—and four years old. I want grandchildren like that. They also have a son who I am told is equally bright and athletic (he plays soccer), but he was stuck in school yesterday.

Lunch was at Cheddars Casual Cafe on 71st street—one of my favorite Tulsa places. We swapped home-school-mom tales (Frank has some good ones) and gossipped about the blogosphere. I'm not going to get specific here, but if you're a regular reader, commenter, or blogger and wondering if we talked about you, the answer is yes. We talked about you all. For a couple of hours.

Then we drove to Mardel, the Christian and Educational Supply store, which is just down the street from Cheddars. That was the highlight of the day. Frank is the perfect guy to walk through a massive warehouse-sized Christian retail store with. He's a Christian retailer himself, and he also works for a Christian publisher. I've been involved in various aspects of Christian publishing for 30 years. We could have spent the whole week at a place like Mardel and not run out of things to talk about.

We walked through the greeting-card aisle (an area where Frank's expertise is unsurpassed and I have asolutely no experience—not even as a customer, because Darlene does all the card-buying in our family). Frank gave me an education and a whole new appreciation for what's involved in writing, publishing, and marketing cards.

We groused about the tripe that fills the Wall o' Best-Sellers in Mardel's book section.

We watched a video of Emerging Church leader Rob Bell and analyzed his idiosyncratic delivery style.

We talked about the current state of affairs in Christian publishing, critiqued cover art and packaging concepts, sized up the latest Biblezine®, reminisced about our first impressions of Clarence Larkin's architectural-drawing approach to eschatology, traded anecdotes about James White, speculated about what Steve Hays looks like, confabulated some more about the rest of you, and played with the Christian Koosh balls.

QOtD from Frank's daughter: "How do you make them koosh?" She's absolutely adorable.

PS:

I'm not finished messing with my blogroll. I'm thinking of adding a couple more categories. I have to find something worse than "irritating" but just short of "loathsome" to accommodate a certain blog that is screaming for a category all its own. And without expanding my "stellar" category so much that it means nothing, I need to have a new category above "interesting" to place a few of my favorites that deserve special recognition. Give me a few days to get it like I want it before you try to draw any conclusions about what it all means.

This is where I am going to be Today

2005-11-17T00:01:00.000-08:00

You know what? I'm too tired to write the next post in the "Modern Prophecy" series. I realize yesterday's post was about five times longer than optimum. (I probably should have held the Adrian Rogers anecdote out till today and made it a post on its own. If you skipped it because of the overflow of words yesterday, go back and read it.)

I also don't have the energy to do a BlogSpotting post.

And despite the undue length of yesterday's post, I neglected to mention two items I wanted to headline:

Discoshaman is back. Big time. His blog, Le Sabot Post-Moderne, deserves a category of its own in my blogroll, combining all the best elements of "Stellar, Interesting, Entertaining, Convivial, and Informative in one. It was a favorite of mine (and countless other readers) when he was writing from Ukraine. Then he came back to the States and put the blog on hiatus. Now the silence is finally over. And Discoshaman also has a second blog to enhance your reading experience: "Religion of Peace?"—which he says he hopes will become "a nexus for all things Islamist, military and terrorifical." I love his biting wit and vibrant sense of humor. He is clever enough to get by, and even garner accolades, saying things that would get me stoned by my readers. I'm delighted he is back.
An old friend of mine, Chris Jenkins (now known as C. Ryan Jenkins) has (along with some friends) started a new group blog, Reformata, whose contributors include Paul Helm (yes, the Paul Helm, Emeritus Professor, University of London; J.I. Packer Professor, Theology and Philosophy, Regent College) and Frank Turk (yes, that Frank Turk). The blogosphere is having a good week, I'd say. I really need to update my blogroll.

Speaking of Turk, I'm planning to have lunch with him today. Business brings him to Tulsa once a year, and today happens to be the day he had scheduled to be here this year. When he learned last week that I too would be in Tulsa, he tried to rearrange his schedule so he'd be in Memphis instead—but without success. I have bullied him into meeting me for lunch at a restaurant here in Tulsa. We're going to trade jokes about home-school moms.

The last time I had lunch with Frank was an unforgettable day. He's a really bad influence on me. Brace yourselves for the worst.

This is where I am Right Now

2005-11-16T00:01:00.000-08:00

I haven't mentioned it on the blog yet, but I've been in my home state of Oklahoma since Sunday evening.

John MacArthur spoke Monday at a Southern Baptist pastors' conference in Edmond, just prior to the Baptist General Convention at Henderson Hills Baptist Church there. Darlene and I were there to staff a book table for Grace to You. I learned only after arriving that Falwell was supposed to be there, too. He canceled at the last minute. Perhaps he heard the PyroManiac was going to be there.

Then Tuesday night, I spoke at the Heartland Regional FIRE conference in Oklahoma City. Lance Quinn was also in town for the FIRE conference, so it was good to spend some time with him. Jerry Marcellino, whose home and church took a hit from Katrina, was also there, as were Dennis Gundersen from Tulsa, Jim Elliff from Kansas City, Pastor Jim Kirby from Rio Rico, Arizona, and too many other friends to itemize.

Today we will be driving back to Tulsa via Stillwater, where we plan to have lunch with my younger sister.

Tomorrow, Frank Turk and his wife will be in Tulsa, so we'll get to spend a little time with them.

So it's a busy and fun week for me, and I thought I'd let the modern-prophecy theme simmer for a day while I post a collection of miscellaneous thoughts:

Edmond

Edmond is where my dad grew up in the 1920s and '30s. In fact, as a boy, he used to catch the school bus a few yards from where Henderson Hills Baptist Church is today. My nephew, Chris Freeland, was married at that same church last year.

I spent lots of time in Edmond as a child, visiting my grandmother. She lived in the same house from the time I was born until after I was married, and when I drove by the house two years ago, it was abandoned and in a state of terrible, heartbreaking disrepair. I drove by it again Tuesday, and it has been completely renovated and now has a family living there. That warmed my heart.

OKC

Tuesday we also drove by the Oklahoma City National Memorial, and St. Anthony's Hospital a few blocks away, where I was born. My mom reminded me of a detail that helps round out the story I told in last Friday's post: Within a day or two after I was born, while my mom was still in hospital, an earthquake hit Oklahoma City and shook the downtown area pretty hard. That's really rare for this part of the country.

Being here always makes me nostalgic. My family's roots here run deep. Two of my great-grandfathers were cattlemen who helped settle and build Oklahoma City. Some of the ancestral family lands here (no longer in our family's possession) were acquired by my great-great grandfather, who participated in one of the famous Land Runs. Or supposedly. My mom uncovered some evidence in the family documents that indicates he may have been a true Sooner—having come in early in order to get prime land. (But my mom wants it emphasized that the record shows "he purchased the land from an Indian," rather than stealing it outright.)

I say "prime land," because it was deemed so at the time. Providence had different plans for the family fortunes. Today all that land is dotted with auto salvage yards, graveyards for rusty oil field equipment, and abandoned farmlands overgrown with wild juniper bushes.

Adrian Rogers

I want to say something about the passing of Adrian Rogers. I had the highest respect for him, a great love for his preaching ministry, and a special appreciation for the courage and diligence he showed in resisting the erosion of confidence in the Scriptures in some SBC circles.

I also made a short personal connection with Dr. Rogers once.

This happened while I was working as acquisitions editor for Moody Press in 1982. I was still in my 20s, but my job at Moody gave me access to a number of well-known preachers and authors. Moody Press sent me to the ICBI convention in San Diego that year, because every major Moody Press author (as well as every person we ever dreamed of recruiting to be a Moody Press author) was there. My assignment was to get to know as many of them as possible and find out what they were interested in writing. (That conference was where I really got to know John MacArthur for the first time.)

Anyway, one morning during the conference, I had breakfast scheduled with Adrian Rogers. Just the two of us. To talk about books. I was in awe. It was hard not to be. Of course, his voice was the deepest, richest, most mellifluous voice ever. In person, he had the presence to match. He was poised, elegant, refined—the very picture of dignity. And he seemed genuinely interested in talking to me about writing.

I ordered grapefruit. I had so many restaurant-meetings lined up for three days solid that I would have preferred not to eat at all, but he was having breakfast, and it would have been impolite to sit there and do nothing besides talk business while watching him eat.

This was a pretty good grapefruit, with only a few seeds, and small ones. But about halfway through my grapefruit, at a point in the conversation where he was laying out a really interesting book idea, I took a bite of grapefruit that turned out to have a seed in it. If I were at home with Darlene, I would just get up, walk over, and spit the seed directly into the bin. (Or else take aim and spit the seed across the kitchen in the general direction of the bin.) But in this classy hotel restaurant with fabric napkins and fine silverware, sitting across a small table from Dr. Rogers, I wanted to be as well-mannered as possible.

In retrospect, it would have been wise simply to swallow the seed. What I tried to do was quietly, discreetly, put the spoon to my mouth, deposit the seed there, and then silently put it back on the edge of my plate. But this was a really sticky seed, and I couldn't get it off my lip. I tried to blow it softly onto the spoon, but it didn't budge. So I blew harder.

Much too hard, actually. The maneuver launched the seed, which bounced off my spoon, arced across the table, and stuck fast to Adrian Rogers' lapel. His dark blue tailored suit was now decorated with a rather conspicuous grapefruit seed.

Worse, he didn't seem to see it happen. He kept talking to me without missing a beat, as if the whole thing had utterly escaped his notice.

I quickly realized I was no longer hearing him. My attention was fixed on the grapefruit seed, which sat there like a large, grinning lapel pin—getting bigger the more I looked at it. I couldn't decide whether to mention it to him or let him start his day with a seed from my breakfast clinging to his suit, waiting until someone else pointed out to him that it was there. In every scenario I could imagine, he would be embarrassed to discover the grapefruit seed hanging from his lapel, and of course, he would immediately know where it must've come from.

But after a 90-second eternity, during a moment when he thought I had looked down at my note pad, he quickly flicked his wrist and brushed it off. He knew it was there all the time, but he said nothing about it, I presume because he was too gracious to embarrass me.

From that day on, every time I ever saw him or heard his voice on the radio, I have remembered the grapefruit-seed incident; his classy, gentle compassion; and the care he took not to notice my disastrous lapse of etiquette.

I know he was beloved by his people, and I completely understand why. He'll be missed.

Miscellanies found on the Web today

Here's a collection of stuff I'd like to comment on, but time doesn't permit more than a short listing of them:

Daniel J. Phillips manages to say eloquently what I have been trying clumsily to put into words.
Speaking of which . . . Sam Waldron has a new book giving a systematic biblical case for cessationism. I read it a year ago, when it was in manuscript form. Like everything else I've ever read by Waldron, it's clear, biblical, and to my mind, persuasive. It is what the continuists in my comment-threads have been clamoring for.
And here's something from an unlikely source. Charisma magazine finally notices what I have been saying for 20 years: it's getting really weird out there where their constituents live. (HT: Ingrid Schleuter)
Here's a news item that made my skin crawl.
My friend James Spurgeon has a great blog chronicling the idiosyncrasies of the spawn-of-Hyles style of fundamentalism he escaped. This post is particularly priceless. I read it at lunch Tuesday (Panera Bread—they have free wireless and a Greek Salad that is near perfect). I laughed so hard I had to get extra serviettes to clean the Pepsi off my laptop screen.
Turns out Adrian Warnock is something of a cessationist after all.
What offends me even more than the superstition of someone who ignorantly think God is giving him private messages is the arrogance of the non-charismatic who pretends to have the gift of interpreting extraordinary providences.
On the other hand, this sort of thing is no less arrogant, and only slightly less unbecoming.

Some said they blundered

2005-11-15T00:01:00.000-08:00

The continuationists' response to this series of posts continues to amaze and amuse me. No matter how many times I point out that I am not making an argument for cessationism—not trying to make one; wasn't planning to make one; wasn't talking about the issue; did not even intend to bring it up when I began this series—we still have this flood of frantic comments from people who think cessationism is the issue and who demand to be given proof-texts so that they can dismantle whatever exegetical claims cessationism might rest on.

Let me say again: cessationism is not the issue here. I am simply pointing out the dismal track record of all modern prognosticating "prophets."

My point is not merely (as one commenter proposed) "that people sometimes claim divine inspiration and are lying." My point is that since the time of the apostolic era until now, there is not a single "prophet" on record who has proved to be a reliable source of "new revelation." Modern prophets don't just "sometimes" make prophecies that miss. When they make detailed predictions that are capable of being tested and verified or debunked, they are usually wrong.

And you don't have to be a cessationist to see the truth of that.

Now, I realize it would be impossible to get accurate figures on how many modern prophecies go unfulfilled. But if you really have the impression charismatic prophecies are right most of the time, you are naively gullible.

By the prophets' own testimony, their track record is lousy. The Kansas City Prophets, who rose to fame on the "Third Wave" tsunami in the 1990s, boasted that their success rate was about two-thirds accurate. One of their leading prophets said, "I figure if I hit two-thirds of it, I'm doing pretty good. . . . [T]hat's better than it's ever been up to now, you know. That's the highest level it's ever been."

Moreover, examine the "successful" prophecies, and I think you'll have to admit that many claims of fulfilled predictions are exaggerated. (I'm thinking of examples such as the one cited in Friday's post, where a non-disastrous earthquake was claimed as a fulfillment of a prophecy of doom. Or Oral Roberts's inventive reinterpretation of the Prophecy of the Nine-Hundred-Foot-Tall Jesus.)

Frankly, the statistical probability of successful results on random yes-no questions from a Magic Eight-Ball® is almost exactly the same: one-third yes; one-third no; one-third undecided.

Think of it: in very best of cases, modern prophets are dead wrong at least a third of the time. One of every three "prophecies" is totally bogus. That would be more than enough to get a seer stoned to death in Old Testament Israel.

I suspect that if the truth were known, far fewer than two-thirds of all modern prophecies ever see any kind of real fulfillment—even if you count the liberally reinterpreted "fulfillments" like what Oral Roberts claimed after his 900-foot-high false prophecy.

So here's my challenge to those continuationists who insist that the problem of bogus prophecies pales in importance compared to the exegetical issues raised by cessationism: Name one faithful modern prophet whose prognostications are both objectively verifiable and always one-hundred percent accurate. Because that is the biblical standard (Deuteronomy 18:20-22).

If you argue (as most do) that the gifts being practiced today are different in quality from the gifts possessed by the apostles themselves, you are actually arguing for a kind of cessationism yourself. If no one can identify a prophet who meets the biblical standard for basic accuracy, the question of cessationism is essentially moot anyway.

For people obsessed with prognostication

2005-11-14T00:01:00.000-08:00

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon

PyroManiac devotes Monday space to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following selection is an excerpt from "Witnessing Better Than Knowing the Future," a sermon originally preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle on Thursday evening, August 29th, 1889.

Spurgeon is speaking of the dangers of being overly detailed in our speculations about eschatalogical schemes, but much of what he says is doubly applicable to those who are so eager to hear fresh revelation that they invent "prophecies" out of their own fancy.

It is not for us to know the times and the seasons, and to be able to make a map of the future. There are some great events of the future very clearly revealed. The prophecy is not at all indistinct about the facts that will occur; but as to when they will occur, we have no data. Some think that they have; but our Lord here seems to say that we do not know the times and the seasons, and that it is not for us to know them.

I pass no censure upon brethren who think that, by elaborate calculations, they find out what is to be in the future; I say that I pass no censure, but time has passed censure of the strongest kind upon all their predecessors. I forget how many miles of books interpreting prophecy there are in the British Museum; but I believe it amounts to miles, all of which have been disproved by the lapse of time. Some of the writers were wonderfully definite; they knew within half-an-hour when the Lord would come. Some of them were very distinct about all the events; they had mapped them all within a few years. The men who wrote the books, happily for themselves, had mostly died before the time appointed came.

It is always wise to pitch on a long period of prophecy, that you may be out of the way if the thing does not come off; and they mostly did so. There were very few of them who lived to suffer the disappointment which would certainly have come to them through having fixed the wrong date. I let time censure their mistake. God forgave it, for they did it with a desire for his glory. The bulk of them were most sincere students of the Word, and herein are a lesson to us, even though they were mistaken in their calculations; but, beloved, it is not for you to know the times and the seasons.

First, it is not proper for you. It is not your work. You are not sent into the world to be prophets; you are sent into the world to be witnesses. You do not come here to be prognosticators of the events of tomorrow about yourself, or about your children, or about your friends, or about the nations of the earth. A veil hangs between you and the future. Your prayer is to be, "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven."

You are told to look for the coming of your Lord, and to stand in perpetual expectation of his return; but to know the time when he will come, is no part of your office. You are servants who are to look for your Lord, who may come at cock-crowing, or at midday, or at midnight. Keep you always on the tiptoe of expectation. It would be wrong for you to profess that you need not watch until such and such a time, for he would not come until such a date arrived.

As it is not proper for you, so it is not profitable for you. What would you be the better if you could make a map of all that is yet to be? Suppose it were revealed to yon to-night, by an angel, in what respect would it alter your conduct for to-morrow? In what way would it help you to perform the duties which your Master has enjoined upon you?

I believe that it would be to you a very dangerous gift; you would be tempted to set yourself up as an interpreter of the future. If men believed in you, you would become eminent and notable, and you would be looked upon with awe. The temptation would be to become a prophet on your own account, to head a new sect, to lead a new company of men to believe in yourself. I say that that would be the temptation. For my part, I would rather not know any more than my Lord pleases to reveal to me; and if he did reveal all the future to me, I should feel like the prophets who spake of "the burden of the Lord."

Neither would it ensure your salvation to be able to foretell the future, for Balaam was a great prophet, but he was a great sinner; he was an arch-rebel although he was an arch-divine. Nor do I know that, by foretelling the future, you would convince your fellow-men; for Noah told them that the world would be destroyed by the flood, he could give them a very accurate account of the time when the rain would descend, and yet they were not converted by his preaching, neither did they come into the ark. Those truths which God has revealed, you must accept for yourselves and proclaim to others; they are profitable for all purposes, and sufficient for your work; but the future is known only to God.

And as it is not proper or profitable, so it is not possible for you to know the times and the seasons. You may study as you will, and pray as you please; but the times and the seasons are not committed to you. Our Lord, as man, spoke of one great event of which lie did not know the time: "Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." He does not say that now that he has risen from the dead, but he seems to hint that he did not know so as to tell his disciples; he must keep secret, even from them, that, which the Father hath put in his own power."

Notice, next, dear friends, that it is not good for you to know the times and the seasons. That is what the Savior means when he says, "It is not for you to know." For, first, it would distract your attention from the great things of which you have to think. It is enough for your mind to dwell upon the cross and the coming glory of your Lord. Keep these two things distinctly before you, and you need not puzzle your brains about the future.

If you did know that something important was going to happen very speedily, you might be full of consternation, and do your work in a great hurry. You might be worked up into a frenzy that would spoil all your service. Or, if there was a long time to elapse before the great event, you might feel the indifference of distance. If our Lord were not to come for another hundred years, and he may not, we cannot tell,—then we might say, "My Lord delayeth his coming," and so we might begin to sleep, or to play the wanton. It is for our good to stand ever in this condition, knowing that he is coming, knowing that he will reign, knowing that certain great events will certainly transpire; but not knowing the exact times and seasons when those events are to be expected.

But there is something better than knowing the times or the seasons; it is good for us to know that they are in the Father's power: "which the Father hath put in his own power." The events will come to pass, then, in due time. The future is all in God's hand. No prophecy will lack its mate. No word of God will fall unfulfilled to the ground. Possess your souls in patience: the things that are foretold are sure to happen. "Though the vision tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry." I am persuaded that God never is before his time, but he never is too late. He never failed to keep tryst with his people to the tick of the clock. The future is in the Father's power.

And especially let it be remembered that it is in his power as our Father. He must arrange it rightly; he must arrange it in infinite love to us. It cannot be that, in some dark hour yet to come, he will forget us. He is our Father; will he forget his children? If the times could be in my hand, how earnestly would I pray that Christ would take them into his hand, or that the Father would take away from me the dangerous power, and wield it all himself! Did we not sing just now,—

"All my times are in thy hand,
All events at thy command"?

The time of birth, the time of the new birth, the time of a sore trial, the time of the death of your beloved one, the time of your sickness, and how long it shall last, all these times must come, and last, and end, as shall please your Father. It is for you to know that your Father is at the helm of the ship, and therefore it cannot be wrecked. It may rock and reel to and fro; but, since he rules the waves, the vessel will not have one more tossing than his infinite love permits. Let us, then, not seek to unroll the map of the future, but calmly say,—

"My God, I would not long to see
My fate with curious eyes,
What gloomy lines are writ for me,
Or what bright scenes arise;"

but just leave it all with God. The Father hath it in his own hands, and there we wish it to be.

Let's review the discussion so far:

2005-11-12T14:33:00.000-08:00

FIRST, A COUPLE OF SIMPLIFIED DEFINITIONS
(because someone asked):

cessationism: the belief that the miraculous gifts such as healing, tongues, prophetic revelation, and supernatural knowledge pertained to the apostolic era only, served a purpose that was unique to the era before the New Testament was complete, and passed from use before the canon of Scripture was closed.

continuationism: the assumption that the miraculous gifts are normative and have continued in uninterrupted operation since Pentecost.

Careful readers ought to have noticed (because I have emphasized this fact repeatedly) that I have not yet posted a single argument in favor of cessationism. I really haven't dealt with the issue yet at all.

I have pointed out how influential and audacious certain false prophets have become—especially among those who dominate the world of charismatic media. I have decried the extreme gullibility of people who are driven by a hunger for "fresh revelation." I have suggested that such gullibility breeds sinful superstition. And I have pointed out that there is a valid and vital distinction that needs to be to be made between "miracles" and God's providential control over all that He has made.

But so far, I have not offered a single argument in favor of cessationism. If the only thing you read were my blogposts on the subject so far (ignoring what has been said about me in the comment-threads and forgetting for a moment where I work) there would be no reason for anyone to assume that I am a cessationist. Despite several commenters' baiting me on the issue, I haven't yet jumped into that debate.

As a matter of fact, I would like to reiterate something I said earlier: When I brought up this subject of prophetic-utterances-gone-bad in the first place, I wasn't trying to pick a fight with my charismatic readers. I originally had no intention of even getting into the issue of cessationism. I think I have much more in common with my "Reformed non-cessationist" brethren than I have with liberal cessationists. And oddly enough, the main targets I was originally planning to take on were non-charismatics like Henry Blackaby and the Gothardites.

Let me be as clear as possible. You could boil down everything I have tried to say since the beginning of this series into about four simple points. Regardless of your position on cessationism, it seems to me that you ought to be able to affirm these four points:

There is a monstrous potential for evil in blithely assuming that all your private imaginations are supernatural promptings that come to you as divine revelations from the Holy Spirit.
Those who order their lives by such an assumption are being willfully gullible and sinfully superstitious, and they have no biblical warrant for the practice. In fact, such a mindset is hostile to the biblical concept of discernment.
Claiming God told you something when in fact He did not is a profoundly wicked kind of presumption whose fruits are always evil. In fact, it was a capital crime under Moses' law.
That kind of presumption, paired with a declining concern about biblical doctrine, has unleashed an untold amount of mischief in the visible church over the past century.

Looking at the issues dispassionately, I can't imagine why even the most devoted Reformed continuationist (assuming he has some biblical scruples and a genuine concern for sound doctrine) would object to any point I have made so far. And yet the subject has already provoked some of the harshest disagreement and bitterest feelings we've seen in the comment threads here at PyroManiac since The Great Comic-Book Apocalypse of the Summer of 2005.

Worse, some of my Reformed-charismatic readers want to jump past the weighty issues I have raised and debate cessationism instead. Some have actually scolded me for not posting any biblical proof-texts in favor of cessationism—as if the truth of any of the above points hinged on a biblical argument in favor of cessationism.

I think that fact speaks volumes about the inevitable tension that arises between continuationism and biblical discernment. In effect, what the continuationists seem to be saying is: "Yeah, yeah, OK, false prophecies are bad. Over-gullibility is a problem. We can manage those things. They are incidental issues. The real danger (or a far greater danger) lies in the opposite direction."

That has been the knee-jerk response of many Reformed continuationists who have commented here and on their own blogs. As if a strict commitment to the absolute sufficiency of Scripture posed a greater and more immediate threat to the church in our generation than the horde of false prophets that are rising up everywhere.

Nothing less than the Reformation principle of sola Scriptura is at stake here, and I suggest that anyone who truly thinks cessationism poses a greater threat than the proliferation of false prophecies has already effectively abandoned the formal principle of the Reformation.

(One commenter even seemed to suggest that my opinion on these matters isn't worth hearing unless I have received some new revelation from the Holy Spirit. Wow.)

All of this has convinced me that it is indeed impossible and impractical to try to divorce the issue of bogus prophecies from the problem of cessationism—not because cessationists are unwilling to deal with one issue apart from the other, but because continuationists are incapable of doing so.

As a matter of fact, in the real world, the two issues do intersect all too often, because of many leading Reformed-charismatics' unfortunate failure to practice biblical discernment consistently and responsibly. For example, Sam Storms lent his considerable credibility to the Kansas City Prophets for years, even after it was clear they were false prophets. Wayne Grudem has likewise shown an undue tolerance of prophetic abuses in the Vineyard movement. Jack Deere renounced cessationism and within a few short years virtually engineered the spiritual train wreck that culminated in the public disqualification of Paul Cain. I think it's fair to point out that the track record on these issues ought to be an embarrassment to my Reformed continuationist brethren—even if we limit the discussion to the fruit of their very best teachers.

Now, before someone parrots the standard line, let me just say I realize that's still not an exegetical argument for cessationism. Hey, I'll go even further: it's technically no argument for cessationism at all. But it is a reminder of the very serious and profound truth of Matthew 7:15-17:

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

I admit that one of the things that concerns me most about Reformed non-cessationism is that when you trace the movement back to its roots, it stems from a bramble bush, not a fruit tree. And I rather suspect that fact is one of the chief reasons when I started talking about the disastrous effects of the current epidemic of false prophets, my Reformed charismatic friends came out of the woodwork spoiling for a fight.

Whole lotta shakin'

2005-11-11T00:01:00.000-08:00

JollyBlogger wisely pleads for a careful distinction between God's constant providential control over the natural order of everyday events and His occasional miraculous intervention in worldly affairs. Adrian Warnock doesn't see the point. Here's a real-life illustration that I hope will help.

Friday mid-day update: I added the material in the large text box below. It simply expands and clarifies some issues a few readers may have felt were not quite clear in the original post.

Between April 1997 and April 2000, I lived through six earthquakes on four different continents. They were all fairly significant earthquakes that registered between 4.9 and 6.8 on the Richter scale—the kind that make you stop and gasp while you hold onto something for dear life. But they weren't really catastrophic events (unless you count the 6.8 quake at Assisi, in September of '97, which killed 10 people and destroyed some ancient frescoes on the ceiling of the Franciscan basilica there. By the way, that one struck within an hour after I had flown into Italy, while Carey Hardy and I were literally standing at our hotel's front desk, checking in.)

Here's the complete list, with documentation:

SIX BIG EARTHQUAKES THAT STRUCK CLOSE TO ME AT THE END OF THE MILLENNIUM
Twin 5.0 quakes in southern CA	April 26 and 27, 1997
6.8 quake in Assisi, Italy	September 26, 1997
5.3 quake Hollister, CA	August 12, 1998
5.1 quake near Queenstown, NZ	April 24, 1999
5.1 quake near Pune, Maharashtra, India	March 12, 2000

The first two of those quakes hit within 24 hours of each other, while I was home. The others all occurred in places where I had gone to minister. The string of earthquakes in and of itself seemed a rather bizarre turn of providence. (An earthquake occurred every place I visited, practically every time I traveled overseas, for three years! What are the odds of that?) I admit that I wondered after the fourth and fifth quakes whether these tremors had some sort of apocalyptic significance, and whether they were meant to convey some divine message to me personally.

It also occurred to me that if I were a charismatic charlatan, I could have parlayed my connection with the earthquakes into big-time fame and credibility, simply by inventing whatever "prophetic" significance I wanted to imagine and claiming the earthquakes were divinely-inspired punctuation marks for my prophecies. After all, I had multiple witnesses to my presence in all six earthquakes. The one in Queenstown, New Zealand, occurred while I was preaching about Jonah, right after I had made an emphatic point about God's sovereignty over the forces of nature.

If you have spent any time in charismatic circles, you know that I could have easily sold the idea that the earthquakes were proof that I am endowed with amazing prophetic gifts.

As a matter of fact, the day before the Pune earthquake, an American faith-healing evangelist launched a series of open-air meetings in Pune, in a vacant lot across the street from where a friend of mine lives. This faith-healer was known for making prophecies of doom. He had preached in Pune a year earlier and prophesied a long series of catastrophic disasters that he said would devastate the region if people did not repent—earthquakes, floods, famines, etc.

Of course, if you make enough prophecies like that, chances are you're going to get one of them right someday. Since this guy's constant theme is disaster and he had already prophesied the full range of possible catastrophes (storms, earthquakes, financial disasters, and so on) the odds were pretty good he'd be able to claim something someday.

Since this earthquake hit the day after his first Pune meeting, he immediately claimed the phenomenon was sent by God specifically as a fulfillment of his prophecies.

Now, this earthquake was by no means a disaster. It was enough to shake me out of a deep jet-lag-induced nap and into an immediate state of fervent prayer as the ceiling fan swayed over my head. It shook the whole city pretty hard. But it didn't really do any major property damage. As far as I know, no lives were lost.

My first thought, as soon as the shaking subsided, was, That guy is going to claim this as a fulfillment of his prophecies.

That is precisely what he did. That night more than 10,000 people showed up to hear this counterfeit prophet. They didn't notice the fact that no actual disaster occurred. The famines and financial disasters he had predicted never materialized. Even the earthquake itself was not really a disaster. But that fellow was claiming it as proof that he spoke for God, and multitudes believed him.

I happened to be visiting my friend across the street that night, and we moseyed over to hear the guy preach for a half hour or so. He was the worst kind of false prophet and charlatan, preaching a man-centered health-and-prosperity message to people the vast majority of whom lived in extreme poverty. And he took their money as a "seed-faith offering" that was supposed to make them rich. The amount of money he collected was astonishing. Then after prophesying more doom, he took a second offering.

He was preying on superstition for personal profit.

Superstition is irrational awe or fear of the unknown, resulting credulity regarding the supernatural. In this case, people's superstition was purposely manipulated and intensified by the preacher's deliberate blurring of any distinction between God's supernatural intervention by miracles and His providential control over everything that happens.

A miracle is a particular kind of sign—an unmistakable display of supernatural power calculated to confront unbelief and provoke awe—with the purpose of authenticating an agent of divine revelation. True miracles are not merely arbitrary displays of God's power; they are manifestly supernatural and are themselves a form of revelation.

The earthquake was a natural occurrence, not a "miracle." It had no more significance as a "fulfillment" of that false prophet's wild-eyed forecasts than it had as a harbinger of my presence in Pune. There was no reason whatsoever to see it as an example of immediate and preternatural intervention by God. There was no reason to assume it was a special judgment against the sins of the people in that city, as if they were worse sinners than the people in Calcutta (cf. Luke 13:1-5. As a matter of fact, there was far more evidence of mercy than judgment in the providential outworking of the Pune earthquake). The only reason anyone assumed otherwise was sheer superstition, aggravated by the claims of a man who was pretending to speak for God, even though he clearly did not.

By denying that there was any overt supernatural significance or special revelatory message from God in the earthquake, am I suggesting that God had no involvement in the event at all? Am I claiming it was without any meaning or significance whatsoever—as if it were a chance event, utterly devoid of divine purpose? Of course I am not saying that.

On the contrary, I would insist that God is always working through providence, so that every detail of everything that happens is part of His eternal plan and purpose—right down to "insignificant" details like the number of hairs on your head, or the falling of a sparrow (Matthew 10:29-30). It's not necessary to invent a "miraculous" explanation for every extraordinary turn of events in order to give God due credit for accomplishing His will in human affairs. In fact, it downgrades the biblical concept of miracles to imagine that everything unusual qualifies as a "miracle."

I am convinced by all the clear commands and best examples of Scripture that God would have us ordinarily seek an understanding of how His will and His purposes are being providentially fulfilled (insofar as such understanding is given to us at all) by seeking wisdom in the more sure Word of Scripture, rather than the declarations of uncredentialed modern "prophets" who (I think we all agree) often mistake their own imaginations for revelation from God.

That's true of ordinary and extraordinary providences alike. Miracles are a whole different category, and by definition, they are extremely rare events—even on the pages of Scripture.

If you mask the proper distinction between providence and miracles, you confuse things that ought to be clear—and such confusion always breeds superstition.

David Wayne, the JollyBlogger, has a post that makes this point well: "We reformed cessationists believe that God has ceased revelation, but He hasn't ceased upholding, directing, disposing and governing all creatures, actions and things. In other words, God is working in a mighty way at all times."

Adrian Warnock rejects any such distinction: "I honestly believe it is the cessationist who makes the supernatural/natural distinction too large. "For me, it really doesn't matter too much if God answers my prayer for the healing of Phil Johnson's allergic rhinitis by means of a new medication, his body just suddenly deciding one day no longer to exhibit such symptoms. . . , by miraculously changing something physically wrong with his white cells or by . . . taking Phil home to be with him and performing the ultimate miracle of healing. I just want Phil to be healed."

I appreciate the prayers and the well-wishes, and I agree that God's answer to Adrian's prayer (by sending rain that eliminated the high pollen counts) was just as much an answer to prayer as a miracle of healing would have been. I also agree that it would have likewise been an answer to prayer if He had called me home.

But it's still not precisely the same thing. Ask Darlene if the dead-Phil option and the natural-relief option are functionally equivalent in every sense, and she'll explain why they are not.

This post is longer and more far-ranging than I planned, so I'm going to cut it short. Here's the point: The faith that sees the hand of God in the natural outworking of divine providence (and understands that God is sovereign over every detail of everything that happens) is not a lesser faith than the kind of belief that can only see God at work when He intervenes in spectacular, supernatural, and miraculous ways.

One more quick personal update

2005-11-10T11:07:00.000-08:00

I want to say a very sincere thank-you to all the well-wishers who have expressed concerns and suggestions about my health. I'm still feeling the buzz from Tuesday's dose of Benadryl, but the good news is that it rained yesterday and is raining hard this morning, and my allergy symptoms have mostly subsided.

I spent all day yesterday (Wednesday) in an orientation seminar with the illustrious Pecadillo, who enters the Police Academy this month. The hiring process for LAPD is long and arduous. For every 1,000 applicants who are considered, fewer than 50 are selected. So I'm very proud of Pecadillo for all he has gone through to get this far. He won't want me to blog much about it, because one of the cardinal rules for a recruit is not to stand out or call attention to yourself in any way. (And this rule of thumb was stressed repeatedly. They are not kidding.)

Even the normally upbeat and jovial Pecadillo sees no humor in any of this, and I don't blame him for taking it so seriously. Every one of his training supervisors intimidated me, and I'm not easily intimidated. That includes a couple of petite young women who I'm absolutely positive could beat me into a coma in a matter of seconds without raising much of a sweat, take great delight in doing so, and yet never even crack a smile in the process.

Since some of my readers are also fans of Pecadillo, I thought I'd mention that he might be putting his blog on hiatus or posting very sporadically for a while. Life for him is not going to be all that funny for the next 8 or 9 months. Nor will he have a surplus of spare time. His mornings for the next few months will be starting at 3:30 AM. That's not a lifestyle that is very compatible with writing a humor blog. I think he'll blog at least once more before officially launching his new career. After that, I predict his posts will be pretty spotty and perhaps even nonexistent—at least until he gets back into a less stressful routine.

Incidentally, when he was a little kid, Pecadillo was the least literate of all our sons. He hated every minute of school. He struggled with learning how to read. His two elder brothers loved Sesame Street and learned the alphabet and basic reading skills before entering kindergarten. Pecadillo's tastes ran to the Three Stooges, and he didn't read anything voluntarily until late Junior High, when someone gave him a biography of Curly. He was the least likely person in our family to blog. He started his blog quietly, without even mentioning it to me, while Darlene and I were out of town a few months ago. I have been amazed by his latent literary abilities. It took me completely by surprise. I honestly don't know when and where he developed his writing skills, but—wow.

I just wanted to put on the record how proud I am of him.

Finally, an iPod update: I'm still ripping CDs and will be for weeks. I own some 1,500-2,000 CDs, and I've never had them well organized or easily accessible all at once. So I absolutely love the iPod. I got one of those docking stations that plays music from the iPod through speakers, so I can program several hours of music and let it play through the night. I've always liked music in the background when I sleep, and the classical radio station is at best unpredictable. Occasionally they'll play something with a screeching soprano that's impossible to sleep to. On the other hand, CDs are too repetitive. With a 5-CD changer, I wake up to the same thing I went to sleep to. Then it's in my mind all day. Boring.

I already have 9 solid days' worth of nonstop music (no repeats) ripped to the iPod, with only a tenth of my CD collection uploaded. That's amazing.

Last night I started the process of ripping all my Bach cantatas. Bach's cantatas are without a doubt the finest anthology of sacred music ever produced by a single composer. (How did Protestants ever get from Bach to the insipid stuff we call "worship choruses" today?)

Anyway, I've just begun to appreciate all over again how much great church music Bach produced, and I'm realizing for the first time how large my collection of Kantaten had become. After ripping CDs for three hours last night, I had some 10 hours of Das Kantatenwerk in the iPod. So I put it on and fell asleep to Christ lag in Todesbanden ("Christ Lay in death's bonds") and got up this morning to the triumphant strains of Wachet Auf ("Sleepers Awake"). Is that a perfect night's sleep, or what?

Look for the next post in the "Modern Prophecy" series within 12 hours. We'll get this blog back on track ASAP.

Four reasons there was no regular blogpost today

2005-11-08T17:22:00.000-08:00

My new Profile picture. Whaddya think?

My allergies have left me feeling worse than ever today. I awoke at 3:00 AM unable to breathe and hence unable to sleep. So I went to the office at 4:00 this morning and have been fatigued all day.
I spent most of the day today glued to the telephone, participating by long distance in a board meeting located in Bradenton, Florida. I would have much preferred to be there in person, but I'm glad not to be on the road on a day when I feel so lousy.
I broke down and bought an iPod yesterday. So in the background of everything else I'm doing today, I've started ripping my copious CD collection and uploading it to the iPod (mostly Classical disks).
     The iPod is wonderfully designed, with no moving parts, a minimum of buttons and cables, a totally intuitive system (the "user's manual" is a single folded sheet of paper with less info than the liner notes in a typical CD. The software works brilliantly. I'm going to love it. I already do.
     The best immediate benefit for me is the ability to subscribe to John Piper's podcast. "Desiring God Radio" wasn't on any radio outlet I could easily listen to (and I don't normally like to use my computer as a listening device, because if I'm using the computer at all, all I want is background music, and I don't want even that to slow down or get in the way of whatever I am doing). But with the iPod, I can get the feed for each day's broadcast automatically delivered when I plug it in the morning, and I can listen anytime at my leisure.
     Today's message from Piper is the middle lecture of a three-part series on Athanasius, the hero of the Arian conflict in the fourth century. Piper's observations are brilliant and priceless. He says it's not enough to profess love for the Person of Christ; we must fight for true propositions about Him as well. He demonstrates why extrabiblical language is sometimes vital in the defense of biblical truth. He shows a lot of parallels between the methodology Arius employed in peddling his heresy and the way people with questionable orthodoxy today are maneuvering to try to commandeer the mainstream of the evangelical movement. In all, it's one of the best historical studies I've ever heard Piper deliver. You can listen to the whole three-day series at Oneplace.com.
I've taken more Benadryl. Several people advised me that Claritin-D would be effective without the drowsiness. I tried it. It did not cause drowsiness, but it also had no perceptible effect on the allergy symptoms
If the Benadryl wears off tomorrow and I get home at a reasonable time, I'll pick up where we left off on the issue of modern prophecy. In the meantime, go easy on me. I don't have time, energy, or mental focus enough to answer antagonistic comments.

The Banner of Truth arrived in the mail today

2005-11-07T16:58:00.000-08:00

I've always loved The Banner of Truth. The November issue is especially good. Just thumbing through, I noticed a brilliant article by Tom Lyon, "The Centrality of Preaching." Lyon includes an undocumented quotation from John MacArthur:

Worship services in many churches today are like a merry-go-round. You drop a token in the collection box; it's good for a ride. There's music and lots of motion up and down. The ride is carefully timed and seldom varies in length. Lots of good feelings are generated, and it is the one ride you can be sure will never be the least bit threatening or challenging. But though you spend the whole time feeling as if you're moving forward, you get off exactly where you got on.

I recognized the quotation as something I once edited, but I had to do a little searching to find it. Turns out it's from Our Sufficiency in Christ (Dallas: Word, 1991), pp. 150-51.

The "News & Comment" section of this issue includes something that made me smile. It's a scolding from "Lady Catherwood of Cambridge," who wrote to express her displeasure over a remark reported in a previous issue's account of the U.S. Ministers' conference. It seems someone had suggested that the use of PowerPoint presentations is a good way to build a congregation of women. ("Men and boys do not hear unless you are looking them in the eye....")

Precisely who originally made the remark isn't quite clear, but I figure it had to be some American. I'm just glad it wasn't me.

What's not mentioned is the fact (well known to regular Banner readers) that Lady Catherwood is Dr. Lloyd-Jones's daughter. She has also been the main editor of Lloyd-Jones's printed works for many years. I've served with her on the board of The Martyn Lloyd-Jones Recordings Trust for about twelve years and have the utmost respect and affection for her. Both her depth of theological understanding and her editorial accomplishments make her a particular hero of mine. Getting a scolding from her would cause me more pain that a twenty-minute clubbing from ten homeschool moms using unabridged dictionaries. But it was fun to watch, as long as someone else was on the receiving end of her reprimand.

Also in "News & Comment" is an editorial response to "a number of readers" who have written to express displeasure that there is so much controversy in Christendom. The editorial is a brief, patient, thoughtful, and well-worded defense of the need to defend sound doctrine. The Banner has always excelled at defending the truth with power and conviction but without rancor.

Spurgeon on private prophecies and new revelation

2005-11-07T12:32:00.000-08:00

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon

PyroManiac devotes Monday space to highlights from .

Charles Spurgeon was a cessationist. He regarded the charismata as apostolic signs—unique gifts for a unique era. He taught (as did virtually every evangelical preacher of his era) that the miraculous gifts described in Acts and 1 Corinthians (including the ability to command physical healing or speak in tongues) ceased before the end of the apostolic era.

Nonetheless, Spurgeon is sometimes cited by contemporary charismatics as someone who would be sympathetic with the idea of modern supernatural prophetic utterances, because he himself occasionally acted upon strong subjective impressions as if they were special revelatory messages from the Holy Spirit. Here are a couple of examples from his sermons:

"Looking for One Thing and Finding Another" (sermon 3075):

Many old stories are current which we do not doubt are true. There is one of a man who never would attend a place of worship until he was induced to go to hear the singing. He would listen to the tunes, he said, but he would have "none of your canting preaching," he would put his fingers in his ears. He takes that wicked precaution, and effectually blocks up Ear-gate for a while, but the gate is stormed by a little adversary, for a fly settles on his nose; he must brush it off, and, as he takes out his finger to do so, the preacher says, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." The man listens, the Word pierces his soul, and he is converted.
I remember quite well, and the subject of the story is most probably present in this congregation, that a very singular conversion was wrought at New Park Street Chapel. A man, who had been accustomed to go to a gin-palace to fetch in gin for his Sunday evening's drinking, saw a crowd round the door of the chapel, he looked in, and forced his way to the top of the gallery stairs. Just then, I looked in the direction in which he stood,—I do not know why I did so, but I remarked that there might be a man in the gallery who had come in there with no very good motive, for even then he had a gin-bottle in his pocket. The singularity of the expression struck the man, and being startled because the preacher so exactly described him, he listened attentively to the warnings which followed; the Word reached his heart, the grace of God met with him, he became converted, and he is walking humbly in the fear of God.

"The Call of 'To-Day'" (sermon 3160):

An incident occurred this afternoon. An aged minister, an excellent man, came into my vestry, and shook my hand and said, "I have got this letter which I should like you to see."
     Well, I had many things to attend to, but he was so anxious and said, "I know you will like to hear it," that I took the letter.
     Before I read it he explained to me that he had a son who had made a profession of religion, but had gone aside from it, and it had pretty well broken his heart. At last, he was to go to America, and the father sent him away with a very heavy heart. The old man took off his spectacles.
     The letter was from his son and it said, "I went to hear Mr. Spurgeon, and I have not the slightest doubt that it has had an influence on my whole life. The text was, 'He is as a root out of a dry ground.' The sermon was divided into four parts."
     I can recollect the sermon well enough. I was suffering from great pain at the time.
     "The point which lasted longest was that in which he said that God had made Christ to grow up like a root, like a root out of a dry ground. He went on for twenty-five minutes,"—[then he gave an opinion of my style which I won't read to you]—"but what surprised me most was that out of five or six thousand, he fastened his eyes or me though I was in the farthest gallery"—[the young man's name was Thomas So-and-so—the son of the Baptist minister]—"and suddenly he shouted out these words, 'There's that wild, dare-devil Tom. God means to save him: and he will be a comfort to his father in his old age.'"
     The old gentleman took off his spectacles again when he got to that and said, "And so he is."
     It went on, "I thought he was going to say my name." He trembled lest the people should think his name was Tom.
     Well, that cheered my heart to think of that young fellow, and I thought I would have a shot at some of you to-night, and I pray that it may go right straight through your hearts.

On the other hand, whenever Spurgeon discussed such things, he nearly always warned of the dangers of such mysticism. Here are a few of his famous comments on the subject:

"Our Manifesto" (sermon 2185):

I hope that none of us will ever fall into the snare of following the guidance of impressions made upon us by texts which happen to come prominently before our minds. You have judgements, and you must not lay them aside to be guided by accidental impressions.

"A Well-Ordered Life" (sermon #878):

Some, I know, fall into a very vicious habit, which habit they excuse themselves—namely, that of ordering their footsteps according to impressions.
     Every now and then I meet with people whom I think to be rather weak in the head, who will journey from place to place and will perform follies by the gross under the belief that they are doing the will of God because some silly whim of their diseased brains is imagined to be an inspiration from above. There are occasionally impressions of the Holy Spirit which guide men where no other guidance could have answered the end. I do not doubt the old story of the Quaker who was disturbed at night and could not sleep and was led to go to a person's house miles away and knock at the door just at the time when the inhabitant was about to commit suicide—just in time to prevent the act.
     I have been the subject of such impressions, myself, and have seen very singular results. But to live by impressions is oftentimes to live the life of a fool and even to fall into downright rebellion against the revealed Word of God. Not your impressions, but that which is in this Bible must always guide you. "To the Law and to the Testimony." If it is not according to this Word, the impression comes not from God—it may proceed from Satan, or from your own distempered brain! Our prayer must be, "Order my steps in Your Word.
     Now, that rule of life, the written Word of God, we ought to study and obey. The text proves that the Psalmist desired to know what was in God's Word—he would be a reader and a searcher. O Christian, how can you know what God would have you to do if your Bible is unthumbed and covered over with dust? The prayer implies, too, that when David once knew God's Word, he wished to fulfill it all. Some are pickers and choosers. One of God's commands they will obey—another they are conveniently blind to—even directly disobedient to it. O that it were not so with God's people, that they had a balanced mind in their obedience and would take God's Word without making exceptions, following the Lamb where ever He goes!
     "Order my steps," Lord, not in a part of Your Word, but in all of it. Let me not omit any known duty, nor plunge into any known sin. There was, in David's mind, according to this prayer, a real love for holiness. He was not holy because he felt he ought to be and yet would gladly be otherwise. If there were anything good and lovely, he desired to have it. If there were anywhere in God's garden—a rare fruit or flower of purity and excellence—he longed to have it transplanted into his soul, that in all things his life might be the perfect transcript of the Word of God. Stick, then, to God's Word. There is a perfect rule in the Divine statutes. May the Holy Spirit cast us in the mold of His Word.

"Two Episodes in My Life," from "The Sword and the Trowel," October 1865:

SUPERSTITION is to religion what fiction is to history. Not content with the marvels of providence and grace which truly exist around us, fanaticism invents wonders and constructs for itself prodigies. Besides being wickedly mischievous, this fabrication is altogether unnecessary and superfluous, for as veritable history is often more romantic than romance, so certified divine interpositions are frequently far more extraordinary than those extravaganzas which claim fancy and frenzy as their parents. Every believing man into whose inner life we have been permitted to gaze without reserve, has made a revelation to us more or less partaking of the marvelous, but has generally done so under protest, as though we were to hold it for ever under the seal of secrecy. Had we not very distinctly been assured of their trustworthiness, we should have been visited with incredulity, or have suspected the sanity of our informants, and such unbelief would by no means have irritated them, for they themselves expected no one to believe in their remarkable experiences, and would not have unveiled their secret to us if they had not hoped against hope that our eye would view it from a sympathizing point of view. Our personal pathway has been so frequently directed contrary to our own design and beyond our own conception by singularly powerful impulses, and irresistibly suggestive providences, that it were wanton wickedness for us to deride the doctrine that God occasionally grants to his servants a special and perceptible manifestation of his will for their guidance, over and above the strengthening energies of the Holy Spirit, and the sacred teaching of the inspired Word. We are not likely to adopt the peculiarities of the Quakers, but in this respect we are heartily agreed with them.
It needs a deliberate and judicious reflection to distinguish between the actual and apparent in professedly preternatural intimations, and if opposed to Scripture and common sense, we must neither believe in them nor obey them. The precious gift of reason is not to be ignored; we are not to be drifted hither and thither by every wayward impulse of a fickle mind, nor are we to be led into evil by suppositious impressions; these are misuses of a great truth, a murderous use of most useful edged tools. But notwithstanding all the folly of hair-brained rant, we believe that the unseen hand may be at times assuredly felt by gracious souls, and the mysterious power which guided the minds of the seers of old may, even to this day, sensibly overshadow reverent spirits. We would speak discreetly, but we dare say no less.

"The Holy Spirit in Connection with Our Ministry" from Lectures to My Students, Vol. 3:

I need scarcely warn any brother here against falling into the delusion that we may have the Spirit so as to become inspired. Yet the members of a certain litigious modern sect need to be warned against this folly. They hold that their meetings are under "the presidency of the Holy Spirit:" concerning which notion I can only say that I have been unable to discover in holy Scripture either the term or the idea. I do find in the New Testament a body of Corinthians eminently gifted, fond of speaking:, and given to party strifes—true representatives of those to whom I allude, but as Paul said of them, "I thank God I baptized none of you," so also do I thank the Lord that few of that school have ever been found in our midst.
It would seem that their assemblies possess a peculiar gift of inspiration, not quite perhaps amounting to infallibility, but nearly approximating thereto. If you have mingled in their gatherings, I greatly question whether you have been more edified by the prelections produced under celestial presidency, than you have been by those of ordinary preachers of the Word, who only consider themselves to be under the influence of the Holy Spirit, as one spirit is under the influence of another spirit, or one mind under the influence of another mind.. We are not the passive communicators of infallibility, but the honest teachers of such things as we have learned, so far as we have been able to grasp them. As our minds are active, and have a personal existence while the mind of the Spirit is acting upon them, our infirmities are apparent as well as his wisdom; and while we reveal what he has made us to know, we are greatly abased by the fear that our own ignorance and error are in a measure manifested at the same time, because we have not been more perfectly subject to the divine power.
I do not suspect that you will go astray in the direction I have hinted at: certainly the results of previous experiments are not likely to tempt; wise men to that folly.

"Enquiring of God" (sermon 2996)

Sometime, too, but rarely, God guides us by very vivid impressions. I have seen so much of people who have been impressed this way, and that way, and the other way, that I do not believe in impressions except in certain cases. I was once in conversation with two friends, one of whom was guided by his judgment, while the other was swayed by impressions, and I could not help noting that the man who was guided by impressions was, as such people always will be, "unstable as water." If I am impressed in one way one day, I may be impressed in another way the next day, so impressions are unreliable guides. There was a young man, who was impressed with the idea that he ought to preach for me one Lord's day; but as I was not impressed to let him do so, it stood over, and probably will continue to stand over for some little time. He had no gifts of speech, but he thought his impression was quite sufficient. When I receive a similar impression, the revelation will be a proper one, and you will have the pleasure of listening to his voice, but certainly not before that.
Occasionally, impressions do guide a man right. A Quaker, one night, could not sleep; and he had a very strong impression that he must get up and saddle and mount his horse. He did so, and rode along the streets, his horse's hoofs noisily clattering in the silence of the night. He did not know where he was to go, but there was a light in one house, and something seemed to say to him, "This is the house to which you are to go." He dismounted, and knocked at the door, and a man came down, and asked why he was there at that time of night. "Perhaps, friend," answered the Quaker, "thou canst tell me, for I do not know, but I have been moved to come here." "I can tell you indeed," said the man, with much emotion; and he took him upstairs, and showed him a short halter with which he was about to hang himself when the Quaker came to his door. Such strong impressions are not to be despised, and I have no doubt that highly spiritual minds do become like the photographer's sensitive plate, and do receive impressions. What another man may be a fool for talking of, such men may truly speak of, for God does sometimes reveal his will in that way.

Intelligent Obedience (sermon 3263)

Others, too, judge of their duty by impressions. "If I feel it impressed upon my mind," says one, "I shall do, it." Does God command you to do it? This is the proper question. If he does, you should make haste, whether it is impressed upon your mind or not; but if there be no command to that effect, or rather, if it diverges from the line of God's statutes, and needs apology or explanation, hold your hand, for though you have ten thousand impressions, yet must you never dare to go by them. It is a dangerous thing for us to make the whims of our brain instead of the clear precepts of God, the guide of our moral actions. " To the law and to the testimony,"—this is the lamp that shows the Christian true light; be this your chart, be this your compass; but as to impressions, and whims, and fancies, and I know not what beside which some have taken,—these are more wreckers lights that will entice you on the rocks. Hold fast to the Word of God, and nothing else; whoever he shall be that shall guide you otherwise, close your ears to him. If at any time, through infirmity or weakness, I should teach you anything which is contrary to this Book, cast it from you, hurl it away as chaff is driven from the wheat; if it be mine and not my Master's, cast it away. Though you love me, though I may have been the means of your conversion to God, think no more of what I say than of the very strangers in the street, if it be not consistent with the teachings of the Most High. Our guide is his written Word, let us keep to this.

Some odds 'n' ends before I lapse into a drug-induced stupor

2005-11-06T22:33:00.000-08:00

For reasons that I don't understand, I am beset with severe allergy problems every year about this time. I know it's not technically "hay fever" season for most folks. But oddly enough, for most of the 23 years I have lived in California, I start having itchy eyes, congestion, asthma, and other allergic symptoms around November 1, and it can last until mid-April, just when most people start fighting allergies.

I'm sure it has something to do with olive trees budding and blooming, because whenever I am in the vicinity of them, it's noticeably worse. I feel the effects of my allergies ten times more in the San Fernando Valley (where Grace Church is) than I do here in the Santa Clarita Valley (where I live and work).

Anyway, this year my very own personal allergy season has been especially bad already, and that is not a good sign. Last week's trip to Mt. Hermon did not help; on the contrary, it made my eyes dryer, my nose itchier, and my sinuses more congested than before. There was an olive tree in the backyard of the place we stayed.

Today Darlene had to attend a meeting after church (dealing with the nursery volunteer staffing system), so I had to stay in the San Fernando Valley a couple of hours extra after church, and I felt so miserable when I got home that I had no choice but to take two Benadryl. That means I'll be lethargic and unfocused for the next 3 days.

Have I ever mentioned that I don't do well with drugs? Especially allergy tablets (which make me want to sleep); sleep aids (which usually keep me from sleeping at all); and pain killers (which tend to irritate my stomach and esophagus). If I mixed all three, they would basically cancel each other's side-effects but leave me either hyperactive or totally unconscious. I prefer the allergy symptoms, and when that gets to be too much, I choose the lethargy I get from Benadryl.

Anyway, I've got a few little things I want to blog about, but no one thing significant enough to devote a whole Sunday afternoon post to. So quick, before the Benadryl kicks in and leaves me unable to do anything productive but watch reruns of "The Rockford Files," I'm going to try to make a list:

Despite all the militant language flying around the blogosphere suggesting you're about to witness a bloody cage match over the issue of cessationism, I personally don't expect anything rancorous.
     In the first place, cessationism was not even an issue I planned to raise in my current series of posts on false prophecy. I'm still hoping to finish what I originally intended to say before seriously taking up the cudgels against the non-cessationists. In the second place, I recognize this issue is an extremely difficult one in the minds of many people (including some dear friends of mine). So I intend to be uncharacteristically patient.
     While I'm at it, let me say that if all charismatics were of the Mahaney/Piper/Grudem variety, I probably wouldn't pick a fight over our differences on the charismata. That's not to say I approve of any kind of charismatic mysticism, but if no one ever went any further than, say, the typical guy from Sovereign Grace Ministries, I don't think I would spend much energy arguing against them.
     I grew up in Tulsa, however, and the true roots of the charismatic movement are there, not in Geneva. Despite what they want you to think, "Reformed" charismatics are a fairly new kind of hybrid, and they do not represent the mainstream of either the Reformed or charismatic movements. I like their zeal. I appreciate (and share) their desire for passionate (rather than cold and dry) orthodoxy. There's a lot about them I esteem highly, and I am certainly not merely looking for another group of people to make angry.
     But in the context of what is going on today, there are so many dangers associated with "new revelation" that it's not an issue I'm willing to ignore. And if cessationism is the main issue in the minds of people who are undecided about whether or not to listen to voices in their heads, I'm willing to argue the point. But not in an acrimonious way, and not until I've finished what I was going to say. So if you're looking for me to verbally bust some charismatic heads this week, you may be bitterly disappointed.
If you just can't wait to get into the cessationism issue, at least three guys have already posted some pretty decent stuff. One is Daniel J. Phillips ("'Cessationism': ragged dress for a rich lady"); a second is Dave Ulrick, "The Inscrutable Observer" ("Two tiers of inspiration?"); and the third one is William Dicks ("Hearing God and Moving in the Prophetic: A critique").
If you're looking for something like my old "Monday Menagerie" posts, Andrew Lindsey, newlywed, has something I think you will like.
Here's a guy I seem to have a few things in common with.
Here's I guy I seem to have almost nothing in common with.
The Benadryl is having the expected effect. Look for Monday's regular Spurgeon post around midday Pacific time tomorrow.

Now back by popular demand: BlogSpotting

2005-11-05T00:01:00.000-08:00

Whoa. I just noticed that my last BlogSpotting post was back in September. Forgive me for neglecting this important duty. The humor quotient here at PyroManiac is suffering, I fear. I'm sure I've also squandered more opportunities than I want to think about to pay tribute to the homeschool moms. Perhaps this will help make up for it:

(Mug design by Carla Rolfe)

Now, down to the bidness at hand:

Adrian Warnock throws down. Then he follows it up by talking smack some more.
Jared lays odds.
OK, this one's old now, but it's still interesting: Marla Swoffer tries to sort out some categories. For the most part, I think her classifications show a lot of perception. My favorite item here, however, is a commenter, ~~Karen~~ Kim, who wonders aloud if I've forgotten everything my mom ever taught me. Not at all. I remember it fondly. My mom is still a very well-mannered, proper, dignified woman—and for the record, her instruction on matters of protocol and politeness was always thorough, clear, and well-mulched with creative types of corporal punishment. But I never let that get in the way of good fun. Still don't.
Uh-oh. Tim Challies will be liveblogging the Shepherds' Conference this year. I can't wait to meet him, but I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I realize that means one or more of my seminars might be the subject of his patented reviews. (Note to self: send Challies money to "help defray his expenses.")
Jim Bublitz, posting at Ingrid Schlueter's always-interesting and informative "Slice of Laodicea" blog, gives PyroManiac a good review.
Jeremy Moore thinks using the word hooey is the perfect way to pick a fight over the abuse of modern prophecy.
Steve Riedy, the Candleman, thinks of tagging me with a meme, but thinks better of it, because he fears losing his head and being made the subject of a comic-book cover.
Actually, this was that meme where you're supposed to find the fifth sentence of your 23rd post and it's supposed to say something profound about you. Curiosity got the better of me. I looked it up. Here's my 23rd post. Here's the fifth sentence: "There are no membership fees."
Yup, that about sums it up. I don't tag people with memes, so the meme stops here. This is a no-meme zone. But here's that dreaded comic-book cover for Steve:
John Schroeder thinks one of the worst side-effects of so many megachurches is that rank and file churches try to ape them, and do it badly. Amen.
Paulo at the wonderfully titled blog "How now, Brownpau?" tunes in to the Biblezine® theme.
Mark Hunsaker has some good things to add to the discussion on spiritual warfare. He links to Keith Plummer, who recommends an excellent book on the subject.
Luke at "OTheophilus.com" has a wry title in response to my reminder that preaching the gospel is the biblical strategy for church growth.
Fred Butler announces that the coveted car decals have arrived. He said he'd put it on his car right away. Uh, Fred—not on the tyre.
Scott Nichols (who has a brilliant neon blogheader that makes me a tad jealous) takes the admonition about Saul's armour seriously.
Dave Bish finds fodder for an upcoming message he's planning to give on "relevance."
William Dicks has very kind words about "The Story of Calvinism."
Swamphopper at "The Rough Woodsman" thinks I resemble my favorite preacher. Sciolist disagrees. I'm going to give Sciolist a pass here, but if I were John Piper, I'd find him and beat the trash out of him.
Kim in IL at "Hiraeth" pays me the perfect compliment.
Ian Clary notes that there's now a Canadian alternative to PyroManiac. Perhaps he'll absorb some of my Canadian critics. Not the homeschool moms, though. We need as many people who know how to use unabridged dictionaries as we can get around here.
Bowden McElroy finally publishes his disclaimers.
Matt Gumm punts.
TU at "The Reticent Extrovert" has just one word for you.
Elizabeth's mom at "Under the Sky" has especially kind words about the final post in the series on spiritual warfare.
Julianne at "semper reformanda" thinks "The Story of Calvinism" is worth the download time.
P. W. Hatcher liked that message, too.
Brad at "The Broken Messenger" starts what I hope will be a weekly digest of really provocative links.
Carla Rolfe whines about the super-cool mug I bought from Frank "Centuri0n" Turk. Well, she ought to be happy about the lead picture on this post. The picture above includes a link to her store.
Mike Perrigoue (who includes a helpful pronunciation guide to his last name in his profile) adds a couple of key biblical references to one of the points I made about spiritual warfare.
David Wayne, "JollyBlogger," tries to pin a new nickname on me.
Bean, lovely wife of Sean K. Higgins, earns her husband one of the coveted car decals. It's in the mail.
Matthew Self, The Gad(d)about, wrestles with whether to agree or disagree with what I wrote about spiritual warfare. He offers some measured and helpful insights. I don't think we disagree on the actual point I was trying to make, anyway. Still, his commenters have a field day questioning my sanctification. Note to Dan: I re-read my reply to your comment and don't quite understand why you characterized it as "ferocious." It was short and hurried because I was on the road that day, but not deliberately curt. I'm sorry it struck you that way. Would a smiley-face have helped? Maybe I should append a permanent smiley to my username.

That's about all I have time to write. I'm sure I missed a lot of links. But I'm not ignoring anyone on purpose. If the opportunity arises, I'll try to do another blogspotting post next week. (I was originally scheduled to fly to Tampa for some meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday next week, but I had to cancel the trip because Pecadillo was accepted into the LAPD's police academy, and Wednesday is his induction/orientation day. Darlene and I are invited to the festivities, so we're staying in town.) Maybe I'll have time to do some more BlogSpotting. Other than Pecadillo's copification, my calendar is pretty clear next week.

Rubber prophecies

2005-11-04T00:01:00.000-08:00

First off, thanks to everyone who left a comment on yesterday's post. I spent the day yesterday dealing with members of my family who are ill, running a chauffeuring service to the local medical clinic and cooking soup. Everyone in the fam seems to be improving, but I had no time Thursday for answering blog comments.

Before we finish with the subject of modern prophecy, I do plan to deal with the question of Spurgeon's opinion on private revelation. (This is one of only three or four issues on which I would dare to disagree at all with the Prince of Preachers, and it turns out to be a fairly minor disagreement.)

I'll also recount how Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield disagreed on the question of private messages from God—and how Cotton Mather's faith was nearly shaken when he believed God had guaranteed him specific answers to certain prayers, but then those answers never materialized. I also intend to comment on Henry Blackaby's paradigm for being "led" by the Spirit in Experiencing God. If interest in this subject is sustained long enough, I may also point out some examples of how subjective impressions "from God" are the basis for some of Bill Gothard's most questionable teachings.

But everything in its time.

Today I want to pick up on something I said yesterday: I remarked on how commonplace and how easy it is for modern prophets to reinterpret, twist, and radically reshape their own prophecies in their blind desperation to manufacture "fulfillments" for bogus forecasts.

Want a specific case in point?

One of the best-known and most notorious examples of this began in the late 1970s, when Oral Roberts claimed he saw an enormous vision of Jesus, 900 feet tall. Roberts said the colossal apparition ordered him to build a hospital—a 60-story structure in south Tulsa. It was to be called "The City of Faith."

Roberts built the building, but no more than three floors of the skyscraper were ever used as a hospital. More than a decade after the original vision of the 900-foot Jesus, 80 percent of that immense building was still vacant and had never had any tenants.

The promised cure for cancer never materialized, either.

By January of 1987 the City of Faith was burdened with so much debt that Oral Roberts announced to the world that the Lord had visited him again. This time, he said the Lord told him that unless Oral raised eight million dollars to pay off the debt within two months, the televangelist would die. The great Oral Roberts Death Watch of 1987 became one of the biggest religious news stories of the year.

In the final hour before the deadline, a dog-track owner in Florida gave Oral Roberts a check for the money he needed. (I suppose at least part of the complex prophecy was therefore "fulfilled" when Oral Roberts survived.)

But to this day, Oral Roberts insists that all his predictions about "The City of Faith" were legitimate prophecies. Genuine messages from God. In 1989, Roberts explained to Charisma magazine that despite appearances, the City-of-Faith fiasco completely accomplished everything God really intended all along. Roberts said God had finally given him a new message that explained the whole thing:

God said in my spirit, "I had you build the City of Faith large enough to capture the imagination of the entire world . . . . I did not want this revelation localized in Tulsa, however. . . . "

As clearly in my spirit as I've ever heard Him, the Lord gave me an impression. "You and your partners have merged prayer and medicine for the entire world, for the church world and for all generations," He said. "It is done."

I then asked, "Is that why after eight years you're having us close the hospital and after 11 years the medical school?"

God said, "Yes, the mission has been accomplished in the same way that after the three years of public ministry My Son said on the cross, 'Father, it is finished.'" ["Oral Roberts: Victory Out of Defeat," Charisma (Dec. 1989), p. 88.]

So in the mind of Oral Roberts, his massive failed prophecy, which was played out across the front pages of the secular press, was no embarrassment at all. In Roberts's imagination, his white-elephant monument to modern false prophecy is comparable to the finished work of Christ.

If you can twist your interpretation of the divine plan after the fact like that, there is no reason ever to regard any prophecy as false.

I could give a long list of similarly famous failed prophecies. Benny Hinn made a whole string of them in 1989. As he looked forward to the nineties, Hinn claimed God had shown him several important events that would surely come to pass within the decade. Fidel Castro would die sometime in the 1990s, Hinn prophesied. He also said the homosexual community in America would be destroyed by fire before 1995. A major earthquake was supposed to cause havoc on the east coast before the year 2000.

None of those things happened, of course. But it has not stopped Hinn from making more fantastic prophecies. In 2000 he predicted that Jesus would appear visibly, in person, at one of Benny Hinn's own healing crusades. It hasn't happened yet, but thousands of Hinn's followers are convinced that it will. And the expectation has boosted attendance at all of Benny's meetings.

An almost invincible gullibility has infected the modern charismatic and evangelical movements, creating an environment in which virtually anyone can make any bizarre prophecy he wants. If it turns out to be wrong, people will either forget or reinterpret the prophecy. And if the prophet happens to get one prediction right or even partially right, people will eagerly publicize that one correct guess as irrefutable proof that the prophet is inspired by God.

That type of "prophecy" is in no sense a "gift" from God. It is superstitious charlatanism, no better than the palm-reader in the ramshackle house with neon lights who bilks people out of their life savings by pretending to see the future.

Note: I am not now making any argument about cessationism vs. the continuation of miraculous gifts.

Whether you are a cessationist or not, you ought to be able to see that fatuous predictions which never come true are false prophecies, not legitimate spiritual gifts. And false prophecies are irrefutable proof that the mouthpiece who utters them does not really speak for God. If the contemporary church—including both charismatic and cessationist believers—cannot come to grips with that fundamental reality, then the only spiritual gift anyone ought to be seeking is the gift of discernment.

Frankly, we have an overabundance of professing prophets and tongues-speakers these days, and precious few men with real discernment.

Invasion of the evangelical soothsayers

2005-11-03T00:01:00.000-08:00

This is the start of a brief new series on the current obsession with "fresh revelation" from God. Predictably, a lot of the same people who have decided that Scripture isn't "relevant" have developed an itching after new and different revelation. From the evangelical mainstream to the wildest charismatic fringe, multitudes are convinced God regularly speaks to them directly. Unfortunately, a lot of what's being "heard" is just hooey. This sort of artless divination has done more than anything else—including "drunkenness in the Spirit"—to propagate lunacy and confusion in the visible church. It is also a serious attack on the authority and sufficiency of Scripture.

I can attest to you on the basis of almost 30 years of experience in Christian publishing that there are a lot of very strange people out there writing an awful lot of books that ought never to have been written.

Of course, the ones who are inevitably the most impervious to critique or correction are the people who claim that what they have written was given to them directly by God.

A few years ago, when I worked as an acquisitions editor for a very conservative evangelical publishing company, I received a manuscript in the mail with a cover letter that said this:

It may surprise you to learn that I am just 22. My work, however, speaks for itself. These truths, indeed these revelations, were given to me by God and they need to be published for the whole world. By the way, I am familiar with your policy of no cash advances. Do you have a "no exceptions" policy as well?

A few days later, before I had time to reply, I received a second letter from the same author:

Stop the presses. My book must not be published in its present form. The material that does not edify must come out, and new material must replace it.

He explained why he was issuing this emergency recall:

My former pastor, Sister B. R. Hicks, in direct disobedience to God, lavished the prophetic gift meant for me on another whom she favored. She has not repented, she will not answer my mail, and she may not even acknowledge that my words are legitimate prophecy. I greatly fear for her and the church which she pastors.

Apparently this fellow's falling out with his pastor involved some moral failure on his part, because he wrote,

Sister Hicks may tell you that I fell from grace, but the heartbreaking truth is that I was pushed. She repeatedly turned me away from my calling.

As a result, all that God has given me in the way of prophecy has come to me in my separated, somewhat backslidden state. But I have been praying, fasting, and studying, and now I have a better understanding of God's message. So help me if you will, and return my manuscript for revision.

You can tell from the way that fellow wrote that he wasn't a drooling idiot. He was inventive, somewhat literate, unusually articulate, and very clever. He was totally serious when he claimed to believe that his writing was inspired by God. Oddly enough, however, his unshakable belief that God had inspired him did not keep him from wanting to make revisions to the text.

That tendency is the very thing that has always puzzled me the most about people who believe God is giving them private revelation. The messages they receive always seem very pliable. The meaning of the message often changes with the circumstances. There is no legitimate hermeneutical approach for interpreting such messages from God. And the meaning of any given message from God is often treated like a clay figure. You can bend it and shape it into any form that pleases you.

That sort of "prophecy" is no better than the deliberately vague and trivial horoscope messages printed every day in the local newspaper. In fact, it's worse, because it claims to be revelation from God, leaving the impression that He speaks indistinctly and unreliably.

"We have . . . a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place" (2 Peter 1:19).

Why not follow the simple strategy God gave us?

2005-11-02T00:01:00.000-08:00

We've been talking about the biblical strategy for spiritual warfare for several days now. This is the final post I plan to make on the subject for awhile. Tomorrow, Lord willing, we'll move on to a different topic. But as we wrap up, I want to spell out the main point that I hope you have seen in the subtext all along:

Have you noticed how radically different the Bible's war plan is from the conventional wisdom of contemporary evangelicalism?

Nowadays we see book after book being published on ministry philosophy, church-growth strategy, and Christian leadership—virtually all urging church leaders to compromise, conform, accommodate, adapt, and adopt the language and thinking of the world. Youth Specialties and Zondervan (under Rupert Murdock's shrewd leadership) have built a major industry publishing how-to books that teach young pastors and youth leaders how to suit their style to the latest worldly trends.

I am frankly weary of all the self-styled experts who are telling pastors and church leaders today that unless they get with the times, tone down their message, adapt their methods to meet the worldly preferences of the current generation, accommodate their message to the postmodern dialectic, bone up on this or that academic fad, or otherwise adopt some fleshly strategy, the church will die or lose the battle for the souls of the next generation.

We've tried all those strategies for at least three or four generations now, and we're still losing ground. In our mad pursuit of "relevance," has anyone noticed that the church is becoming more and more irrelevant? All this accommodation to the culture is the very thing that makes the church culturally irrelevant.

We are supposed to be in this world but not of it, remember?

Now, before any one accuses me of advocating cultural defeatism, retreatism, asceticism, monasticism, or pessimism, let me say that the truth lies in the opposite direction.

I'm not saying we should give up on reaching the world or be passive and silent. On the contrary, I think we should turn up the volume. But I'm also saying this: Don't distrust the weapons Christ has entrusted to His church. Don't underestimate the power of the plain word of God or the influence of clear and dynamic preaching. Don't set aside the weapons God has chosen and trade them for Saul's armor.

Only the word of God is "quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."

And if you're going to wage war in the spiritual realm, against evil imaginations and false ideologies, you are going to need a weapon like that—"a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart" that cuts with precision and pierces to the depths of the heart—not a toy weapon from the fleshly arsenal favored by contemporary worldly evangelicalism.

More about the weaponry of spiritual warfare

2005-11-01T00:01:00.000-08:00

Before we move to a completely different topic, look again at what Paul says about the weaponry for spiritual warfare:

"For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds" (2 Corinthians 10:4).

What are "carnal weapons"? Is Paul thinking of swords and knives and other military weapons? Certainly he would include those things among the carnal weapons he rejects. But it's more than that. "Carnal weapons" would include carnal wisdom, human philosophy, worldly gimmickery, psychological manipulation, political clout, doctrinal compromise, and every other method or strategy adopted for sheerly pragmatic reasons.

Listen to Paul himself from 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 "And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. . . . my speech and my preaching [were] not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God."

He's saying essentially the same thing here. "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal"; that is, they are not of human origin at all. They are not manmade military machines; they are not ideas spawned in the minds of human philosophers; they are not clever programs invented by imaginative innovators; they are not the techniques of material success borrowed from secular business.

And (can I say this without stirring Jus Divinum from hibernation?) the weapons by which the truth of God will ultimately prevail in this battle are not tied to the political apparatus of American democracy. The future of the kingdom of God doesn't ultimately hinge on the outcome of the next election or judicial appointment.

What are the true weapons in the spiritual warfare? At least one well-known charismatic commentator suggests that Paul was speaking of the apostolic sign-gifts—miraculous gifts of healing, prophecies, and various signs and wonders.

But that seems quite out of context here. Paul was not going to battle false apostles by staging a contest to see who could do the best miracles; he was going to answer their false teaching with the truth.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I think the weapons Paul has in mind here are the stuff of truth itself—the very kind of weaponry he had already outlined in chapter 6, verses 6-7, where he says we wage this warfare "by pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left."

I have no doubt that Paul is also thinking of the full panoply of Christian weaponry, just as he outlines it in Ephesians 6:13-18. That passage includes a complete array of defensive armor and one simple offensive weapon. All of them are inextricably linked to the concept of truth. Here is the whole armor of God: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, feet shod with the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, "and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God."

Notice: there is nothing novel or innovative about those weapons. They are old weapons. If you're waging a military fight (a warfare against literal flesh and blood), it is important to have the most modern, up-to-date weapons. Technology and innovation have always been important in conventional warfare. You don't want to show up at a gunfight with a knife. You can't go up against a modern army with nothing but slings and arrows.

But things are different in the spiritual realm. Our weapons are not carnal. We don't have any earthly military firepower. It may even seem to the carnal eye as if we are unarmed. But, Paul says, our weapons are "mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds."

These weapons are powerful because they are the instruments of God's power. They are "mighty through God." Their effectiveness does not ultimately depend on the skill of the swordsmen or the cleverness of our strategies. These weapons are always effectual because they unleash the power of God.

Don't distrust those weapons. They trump every kind of fleshly weapon for spiritual warfare.

Spurgeon on warfare, compromise, and the sword of the Spirit

2005-10-31T00:01:00.000-08:00

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon

PyroManiac devotes Monday space to highlights from .

Here's an excerpt one of the last sermons Spurgeon ever preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. This was preached on April 19, 1891—less than a year before Spurgeon's death. Spurgeon was embroiled in a great theological conflict at the time. It was the height of the "Down-Grade Controversy."

The sermon's theme is spiritual warfare. That, of course, has also been the central motif here at PyroManiac for several days. In this introduction to his sermon, Spurgeon makes some excellent points about the Christian's weaponry, the futility of compromise, and the need to stand.

Lord willing, we'll follow up some of these thoughts in Tuesday's post. In the meantime, if you want to read more of Spurgeon's sermon, the text is Ephesians 6:17 ("take . . . the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God"); the title is "The Sword of the Spirit," and you'll find the complete sermon at .

TO BE A CHRISTIAN is to be a warrior. The good soldier of Jesus Christ must not expect to find ease in this world: it is a battle-field. Neither must he reckon upon the friendship of the world; for that would be enmity against God. His occupation is war. As he puts on piece by piece of the panoply provided for him, he may wisely say to himself, "This warns me of danger; this prepares me for warfare; this prophesies opposition."

Difficulties meet us even in standing our ground; for the apostle, two or three times, bids us—"Stand." In the rush of the fight, men are apt to be carried off their legs. If they can keep their footing, they will be victorious; but if they are borne down by the rush of their adversaries, everything is lost.

You are to put on the heavenly armor in order that you may stand; and you will need it to maintain the position in which your Captain has placed you. If even to stand requires all this care, judge ye what the warfare must be!

The apostle also speaks of withstanding as well as standing. We are not merely to defend, but also to assail. It is not enough that you are not conquered; you have to conquer: and hence we find, that we are to take, not only a helmet to protect the head, but also a sword, with which to annoy the foe.

Ours, therefore, is a stern conflict, standing and withstanding; and we shall want all the armor from the divine magazine, all the strength from the mighty God of Jacob.

It is clear from our text that our defense and our conquest must be obtained by sheer fighting. Many try compromise; but if you are a true Christian, you can never do this business well. The language of deceit fits not a holy tongue. The adversary is the father of lies, and those that are with him understand the art of equivocation; but saints abhor it.

If we discuss terms of peace, and attempt to gain something by policy, we have entered upon a course from which we shall return in disgrace. We have no order from our Captain to patch up a truce, and get as good terms as we can. We are not sent out to offer concessions.

It is said that if we yield a little, perhaps the world will yield a little also, and good may come of it. If we are not too strict and narrow, perhaps sin will kindly consent to be more decent. Our association with it will prevent its being so barefaced and atrocious. If we are not narrow-minded, our broad doctrine will go down with the world, and those on the other side will not be so greedy of error as they now are.

No such thing. Assuredly this is not the order which our Captain has issued. When peace is to be made, he will make it himself, or he will tell us how to behave to that end; but at present our orders are very different.

Neither may we hope to gain by being neutral, or granting an occasional truce. We are not to cease from conflict, and try to be as agreeable as we can with our Lord's foes, frequenting their assemblies, and tasting their dainties. No such orders are written here. You are to grasp your weapon, and go forth to fight.

Neither may you so much as dream of winning the battle by accident. No man was ever holy by a happy chance. Infinite damage may be done by carelessness; but no man ever won life's battle by it. To let things go on as they please, is to let them bear us down to hell. We have no orders to be quiet, and take matters easily. No; we are to pray always, and watch constantly.

The one note that rings out from the text is this:—TAKE THE SWORD! TAKE THE SWORD! No longer is it, talk and debate! No longer is it, parley and compromise! The word of thunder is—Take the sword. The Captain's voice is clear as a trumpet—Take the sword! No Christian man here will have been obedient to our text unless with clear, sharp, and decisive firmness, courage, and resolve, he takes the sword. We must go to heaven sword in hand, all the way. "TAKE THE SWORD." On this command I would enlarge. May the Holy Spirit help me!

It is noteworthy that there is only one weapon of offense provided, although there are several pieces of armor. The Roman soldier usually carried a spear as well as a sword. We have seen frequent representations of the legionary standing upon guard as sentry, and he almost always stands with a spear in his right hand, while his sword hangs at his side. But Paul, for excellent reasons, concentrates our offensive weapon in one, because it answers for all. We are to use the sword, and that only.

Therefore, if you are going to this fight, see well to your only weapon. If you are to have no other, take care that you have this always in your hand.

An abbreviated account of Calvinism

2005-10-30T14:30:00.000-08:00

Last week I was asked to give a group of college students a 50-minute survey of the history of Calvinist opinion. Sound like I bit off more than I could chew? That's what I think, too. But if you want to listen to "The story of Calvinism," it's downloadable for free.

So I took Friday off and came up to Santa Cruz with Darlene to visit some of our best friends...

2005-10-29T00:01:00.000-07:00

Capitola, CA

The region around Santa Cruz and Capitola is practically our favorite place in the whole world. If a one-room bungalow didn't cost $750,000, we'd think of retiring here someday.

Nearby is the famous Mt. Hermon Christian conference center and campground—one of the premier Christian campgrounds anywhere (if not the absolute finest in the world). Down the road from the entrance to Mt. Hermon, we saw this sign:

I think it's a convention of homeschool moms.

Now, let's get personal

2005-10-28T00:01:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to underscore some principles about spiritual warfare from 2 Corinthians 10:4-5. If you get nothing else from that passage, please understand this much: First, the spiritual warfare we fight as Christian soldiers is a battle for truth, not territory.

Second, our weapons are not the carnal apparatus of worldly warfare, but vastly more powerful spiritual weaponry. Specifically, we wage this spiritual battle "by purity, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Spirit, by sincere love, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left" (2 Corinthians 6:6-7).

Today I want to consider those principles from a very personal and practical perspective.

Have you ever realized that if spiritual warfare is ideological, the most crucial battle you will ever participate in takes place in your own heart? If the goal and the end game of this warfare is to bring "every thought [captive] to the obedience of Christ," that presupposes that my own first order of business must be victory in my own thought life.

I have no control over your thoughts. I can perhaps influence your thinking by proclaiming the truth of God's Word, but my role in that capacity is instrumental only. You can't really be accountable to me for your private thoughts, nor can I be similarly accountable to you. This is a battle you must fight, sometimes all alone. It's lonely, grueling, lengthy, frustrating—and it's the one great battle you can least afford to shirk.

Paul knew that. On occasion, he described the Christian warfare in precisely those terms:

Romans 7:22-23: "I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members."
Galatians 5:17: "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would."

Paul was describing a struggle in his own heart. He says you can expect to have the same kind of internal conflict. That conflict you feel inside yourself is one of the key skirmishes you must win in the spiritual arena.

Peter understood that aspect of the warfare, too. In 1 Peter 2:11, he wrote, "Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul."

That is why the New Testament uses such graphic and violent language when it speaks of our duty in the matter of sanctification.

Romans 8:13: "For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify [put to death] the deeds of the body, ye shall live."
Colossians 3:5: "Mortify . . . your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry."

One of the sad realities of warfare is that the soldier must kill or be killed. In the spiritual warfare, there is some killing for us to do, Paul says. It's not about killing people, for that would require carnal weapons. But it's about putting to death sin—first of all in our own members.

May I say as gently as possible that you that you cannot be a good soldier unless you take this warfare seriously? You must be spiritually earnest, sober-minded, sound in the faith, strong in the Word of God, and diligent in the battle.

Too many Christians, especially in this worldly age, are content to coast through life taking nothing seriously. If you read the blog regularly, you know I'm not arguing against every expression of a lively sense of humor. But I am saying that this warfare we are engaged in is serious stuff. It's not for the lazy or apathetic. In fact, if you are passive or careless at all in your own personal spiritual walk, you will suffer agonizing defeat at the hands of the enemy.

Picking up where we left off Tuesday...

2005-10-27T00:01:00.000-07:00

Two days ago, before we got interrupted by the atonement debate, we were talking about spiritual warfare and 2 Corinthians 10:4-5:

"For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ."

Those words evoked vivid imagery in the minds of the Corinthian believers.

Acrocorinthus

Just outside Corinth is a very high natural formation that overlooks that city. It is a tower of rock that stands over 1800 feet high, known as Acrocorinthus. The ancient Corinthians had built an impregnable fortress atop that rock. It is so high that on a clear day you can see Athens, 45 miles away. The stronghold was virtually impregnable—a massive, towering bulwark so high and so strong that no earthly army ever succeeded in tearing it down. That's where the Corinthians would find refuge whenever their city was under assault.

The fortress atop Acrocorinthus

To the Corinthians, the idea of pulling down or casting down such a stronghold was unthinkable. Paul was comparing that impenetrable fortress atop Acrocorinthus to false religions, faulty worldviews, malignant philosophies, and evil belief systems—the fortresses of lies, deception, and unbiblical ideologies Christians are supposed to be waging war against.

Paul says, however, that our spiritual weapons are "mighty through God" to the pulling down of such battlements. What are those weapons? The apostle isn't specific here, but it's not hard to discern what he means.

In the first place, since he is talking about an ideological battle, the array of weapons he has in mind must be the instruments of truth and righteousness, starting with the gospel message and the Word of God itself. In the second place, and more specifically, it seems clear that he is speaking of the same apparatus he already mentioned just a few chapters earlier, in 2 Corinthians 6:6-7:

By purity, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Spirit, by sincere love, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand and on the left.

There's no need for a Christian employing such weaponry ever to be timid about the truth or to shrink away in the face of false or anti-christian ideologies. We don't need to compromise with such systems, try to find common ground with them, or engage their leading gurus in dialogue as if we might eventually come to some kind of profound agreement. We have weapons powerful enough to tear those strongholds down.

And we need to employ those weapons and keep at the fight as long as people are barricaded in the fortresses. The goal of our battle plan is to bring as many as possible "into captivity . . . to the obedience of Christ."

Be sure you catch what Paul is saying here. Our aim in the spiritual warfare is not to destroy people, but to liberate them. We're following the lead of our captain, who "[did] not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them."

Acrocorinthus, with the ruins of the Bema (a judge's platform, probably used for everything from tribunal to athletic events) in the foreground

"Captivity . . . to the obedience of Christ" is the true freedom. (Those who truly love Christ understand this principle. Romans 6:17-18: "But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.") It sounds paradoxical, but real freedom is found in a different kind of "captivity."

People who barricade themselves in fortresses of lies and deception are enslaved to their sin and their evil ideologies. Our goal is the liberation of as many of them as possible. And we can't relinquish the fight or ease off until the battle is completely over.

The ruins of Corinth, seen from atop Acrocorinthus

No punishment required?

2005-10-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

Spurgeon and penal substitution revisited

A couple of Brit-bloggers, Steve and Sven, both noticed Monday's Spurgeon quote and voiced doubts about whether Spurgeon really believed in the penal-substitution view of the atonement.

Steve writes, "Pyromaniac digs up this quote by spurgeon, which he belives [sic] is talking about Penal Substitution. Aside from some amusement at the Victor Meldrewness of it, it’s an excellent, and typical spurgeon quote, talking about Jesus atoning (at-one-ment—reconciliation) death on the cross."

(For Yank readers who wonder what Steve means, Victor Meldrew was an elderly character in the Britcom One Foot in the Grave, known for his ill-tempered grousing.)

Steve then opines: "Interestingly while he talks about a recompence and substititution, he makes no mention of punishment or anything penal. In fact he seems to be fairly clearly talking about the satisfaction model of Atonement (Substitutionary Atonement) which Anselm devloped, before it was developed further by Luther and Calvin into the currently popular penal model."

Actually, in such a context, the recompense Spurgeon spoke of (the payment of which he "fairly clearly" says was "render[ed] to God's justice") is nothing if not punitive. I suppose if you don't understand Spurgeon and aren't familiar with Victorianisms, you might not catch that idea on your initial reading of this particular quote, but for the record, Steve has badly misread what Spurgeon is saying.

Anyway, in a note added after posting, Steve refers his readers to The World of Sven, promising, "Sven says this better."

Sven actually says it much worse: "Spurgeon himself seems to have gotten stuck halfway between Anselm and the classic Reformed position." Sven quotes a sentence from Spurgeon, ("My conscience tells me that I must render to God's justice a recompense for the dishonor that I have done to His law, and I cannot find anything which bears the semblance of such a recompense till I look to Christ Jesus.") and asks:

Doesn't this sound rather more like satisfaction theory rather than the popular version of penal substitution? This is of course slightly problematic, because Anselm (satisfaction theory) and the magisterial Reformers view Christ's death in two very different ways, because of course if Christ makes recompense to God's honour, no punishment is required. (Epmphasis added.)

I admit to some amusement at the Arnold Rimmeresque hubris contained in such pronouncements; but Steve and Sven really ought to investigate what Spurgeon actually believed about the atonement before lecturing their readers on the nuances of his view. Spurgeon's view on the atonement was no secret. His outspoken defense of penal substitution was a consistent theme—and not a subtle one—from the beginning of his ministry to his dying gasps at the height of the Downgrade Controversy (in which this very issue of penal substitution was one of the main doctrines in dispute).

Nor would Spurgeon ever have approved of paring back the definition of "at-one-ment" to reconciliation only.

It's extremely irritating that after more than two years of controversy, Steve Chalke and his aficionados still seem blithely ignorant about the historical debate among British Baptists over the doctrine of penal substitution. It's always annoyed me that Chalke, who ministered at Haddon Hall—a chapel founded by Spurgeon's own congregation and named for him—decided to champion this issue, and then has handled the ensuing controversy in such a clumsy and perfunctory way.

Here's a message where Spurgeon explains himself with absolute clarity and without the Victorian euphemisms. Whenever Spurgeon spoke of "substitutionary atonement," here, in his own words, is what he had in mind:

"The doctrine of Holy Scripture is this, that inasmuch as man could not keep God's law, having fallen in Adam, Christ came and fulfilled the law on the behalf of his people; and that inasmuch as man had already broken the divine law and incurred the penalty of the wrath of God, Christ came and suffered in the room, place, and stead of his elect ones, that so by his enduring the full vials of wrath, they might be emptied out and not a drop might ever fall upon the heads of his blood-bought people."

"Christ—Our Substitute" is one of my all-time favorite Spurgeon sermons, because Spurgeon's passion is conveyed in the words. You don't have to know what he actually sounded like to sense the fervor with which he defended the atonement against the Steve Chalkes of his day:

These are the new men whom God has sent down from heaven, to tell us that the apostle Paul was all wrong, that our faith is vain, that we have been quite mistaken, that there was no need for propitiating blood to wash away our sins; that the fact was, our sins needed discipline, but penal vengeance and righteous wrath are quite out of the question. When I thus speak, I am free to confess that such ideas are not boldly taught by a certain individual whose volume excites these remarks, but as he puffs the books of gross perverters of the truth, I am compelled to believe that he endorses such theology.

Well, brethren, I am happy to say that sort of stuff has not gained entrance into this pulpit. I dare say the worms will eat the wood before there will be anything of that sort sounded in his place; and may these bones be picked by vultures, and this flesh be rent in sunder by lions, and may every nerve in this body suffer pangs and tortures, ere these lips shall give utterance to any such doctrines or sentiments.

There's lots of picturesque and painfully blunt language in this sermon, but if I get started quoting it, I won't know where to stop. It reads like it was aimed at Steve Chalke himself. Read the sermon for yourself. It's a good one.

And, by the way, there are many more where this one came from. Fans of Steve Chalke need to face up to the reality that Spurgeon is no friend of anything Chalke stands for.

Real spiritual warfare is not like a round of Doom

2005-10-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

Ever since Frank Peretti's demon-warfare novels dominated the Christian best-seller lists in the 1980s and '90s, the popular conception of "spiritual warfare" has had the complexion of trashy, mystical, superstitious fantasy.

The ideas of "territorial demons" and fanciful combat strategies like "spiritual mapping," "prayer marching," and similar nonsense have no basis whatsoever in Scripture.

True spiritual warfare is not about territory; it's about truth.

Note how Paul describes spiritual warfare 2 Corinthians 10:3-5: "Though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ."

Notice: the real spiritual warfare is about imaginations, arguments, knowledge, and thoughts—in other words, belief systems, not real estate. It's a fight for hearts and minds, not a war over cities and nations.

Spurgeon on substitutionary atonement

2005-10-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

from chapter 12, "The Minister in These Times"
in An All-Round Ministry

Spurgeon responds to men in his day who thought the doctrine of penal substitution wasn't genteel or sophisticated enough.

Those who set aside the atonement as a satisfaction for sin also murder the doctrine of justification by faith. They must do so. There is a common element which is the essence of both doctrines; so that, if you deny the one, you destroy the other.

Modern thought is nothing but an attempt to bring back the legal system of salvation by works. Our battle is the same as that which Luther fought at the Reformation. If you go to the very ground and root of it, grace is taken away, and human merit is substituted. The gracious act of God in pardoning sin is excluded, and human effort is made all in all, both for past sin and future hope. Every man is now to set up as his own savior, and the atonement is shelved as a pious fraud.

I will not foul my mouth with the unworthy phrases which have been used in reference to the substitutionary work of our Lord Jesus Christ; but it is a sore grief of heart to note how these evil things are tolerated by men whom we respect.

We shall not cease, dear brethren, in our ministry, most definitely and decidedly to preach the atoning sacrifice; and I will tell you why I shall be sure to do so. I have not personally a shadow of a hope of salvation from any other quarter: I am lost if Jesus be not my Substitute. I have been driven up into a corner by a pressing sense of my own personal sin, and have been made to despair of ever doing or being such that God can accept me in myself.

I must have a righteousness, perfect and Divine; yet it is beyond my own power to create. I find it in Christ: I read that it will become mine by faith, and by faith I take it. My conscience tells me that I must render to God's justice a recompense for the dishonor that I have done to His law, and I cannot find anything which bears the semblance of such a recompense till I look to Christ Jesus. Do I not remember when I first looked to Him, and was lightened? Do I not remember how often I have gone as a sinner to my Savior's feet, and looked anew at His wounds, and believed over again unto eternal life, feeling the old joy repeated by the deed?

Brethren, I cannot preach anything else, for I know nothing else. New dogmas may or may not be true; but of the truth of this doctrine, I am sure.

If anybody here is preaching the atonement, but does not like it, I dare not advise him to cease preaching it, but the words tremble on my lips. I am firmly persuaded that the unwilling or cold-hearted preacher of any doctrine is its worst enemy. It comes to this, in the long run, that the wounds of truth in the house of its false friends are worse than those given it by foes. If you do not love the cross in your heart's core, you had better let it alone. I can truly say that I preach the atonement con amore, with all my heart.

Some seem to think that we poor souls, who are of the Puritanic school, are "cabin'd, cribb'd, confined" by harsh dogmas, from which we would gladly escape. They imagine that we have to check every rising aspiration of our nobler selves, so as to preserve the tyranny of a certain iron system. John Calvin is supposed to ride us like a nightmare, and we lead dogs' lives under his lash.

Brethren, it is far otherwise. Little do these slanderers know of our happiness and peace. If they feel more joy in preaching than we do, their felicity is great; but, from their tone and style, I should greatly question it. Observers will have noticed that the joyous element has gone out of many pulpits. The preacher does not enjoy his own subject, and seldom speaks of having been in the Spirit while he was discoursing. He likes twenty minutes' preaching a great deal better than forty; and he is peculiarly apt to merge his two week-night services into one.

Nobody enjoys modern doctrine, for there is nothing to enjoy. The people have to do their best with that soup of which our friend spoke last night so admirably,—the soup made from a borrowed bone, which had been lent out for a similar purpose on six previous days, so that the flavor of meat no longer remained upon it.

No, my brothers; let our opponents dismiss from their minds all pity for our enslaved condition under the old gospel. We are the free men, whom the Lord makes free, and all are slaves besides.

I would like to rise from my bed, during the last five minutes of my life, to bear witness to the Divine sacrifice and the sin-atoning blood. I would then repeat those words which speak the truth of substitution most positively, even should I shock my hearers; for how could I regret that, as in Heaven my first words would be to ascribe my salvation to my Master's blood, my last act on earth was to shock His enemies by a testimony to the same fact?

C. H. Spurgeon

Pacifism and Christian warfare

2005-10-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

...Summing up

It should be clear by now that I oppose strict pacifism in principle.

I especially object to the jejune and naive types of "Christian pacifism" that try to turn Matthew 5:39 ("resist not evil") into a rigid absolute—making a wooden, literal interpretation of that text (and its cross-references) the controlling hermeneutical principle for the New Testament while canonizing non-violence as the supreme moral value.

To recap: In matters of national defense and criminal justice, "the sword" (a biblical expression for the use of deadly force) is sometimes an appropriate remedy against evildoers, and rulers who use the sword rightly do so as God's ministers for good (Romans 13:3-4). Moreover, when the government implicitly delegates authority to an individual for wielding the sword in self-defense, he has every moral right to use force.

Moving on...

On the other hand, I can't think of a single instance in which it would be appropriate for the church or her leaders to bear a sword or use violent means of any kind as part of their ministry. Although Christian life and ministry are often portrayed in Scripture as warfare, it's not a war against flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12).

"For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds)" (2 Corinthians 10:3-4). Paul is saying that Christian warfare is not a carnal battle. It's not a battle for lands and cities. It's not a personal conflict against other people. It's a battle for the truth.

Biblical Christianity is not and never has been like Islam, spreading its influence at the point of a sword or with threats of force or acts of terrorism. Although history includes several sad episodes of wars and crusades and inquisitions that have been carried out by men who claimed to be acting in the name of Christ, that has never been the tactic by which the true church has sought to increase her influence.

Our battle is not against flesh and blood. In the words of Spurgeon, "For the church of God ever to avail itself of force would be clean contrary to the spirit of Christianity: for the Christian bishop to become a soldier, or employ the secular arm [of military force], would seem the very climax of contradiction. A warrior ambassador is a dream of folly."

So Paul makes it clear in 2 Corinthians 10 that he is not talking about the actual use of force. He's at war, but it is not a carnal war. It's a spiritual conflict. This is not a battle over territory, but a fight for the minds and hearts of people.

Next week, I want to take up this subject of spiritual warfare and examine the context of 2 Corinthians 10:5 carefully. I hope to relate our duty in spiritual warfare to the issues of pacifism and militancy. Should be a lively discussion.

Odds 'n' ends

Not desiring to delve too much into the sort of self-referential, solipsistic specifics that send CenturiOn into spasms, I nonetheless need to inform my readers of a few changes I have planned for PyroManiac:

I'll no longer be doing the regular "Monday Menagerie" posts. These have proved to be too labor-intensive for my weekends.
Instead, I'll try to format one or two Spurgeon items for each weekend, and Monday's post will feature a pithy excerpt from that week's sermon or article. This will also maximize the use of my time and help me in the process of adding Spurgeon material to my Web site.
From time to time, I'll make a special post in the genre of the old "Monday Menagerie" items. I do enjoy writing those, but once a week is simply too much to promise. It was becoming a perfect ball and chain.
Yes, I really am having a few die-cut vinyl bumper stickers made from my new logo. Unfortunately, they are too expensive to produce in large numbers. They're going to be hard to come by. I'll have to devise a contest or something to give a few of them away. Suggestions would be appreciated.

A specimen from the week's e-mail

2005-10-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

When the recent pacifism thread got interrupted by my brief hiatus, I received a smattering of e-mail from angry pacifists. Their usually non-agressive tranquility was greatly disturbed by my suggestion that some forms of killing may actually be authorized by God—and therefore are righteous acts.

I could not possibly answer all who wrote or commented, but I did try to answer as many as possible, starting with the people who seemed most serious.

Here's one of my favorites. This guy is a radical Arminian pacifist and political left-winger in the Anabaptist tradition. Noticing that a few of my commenters were appalled at the idea of chub-clubbing the world's most infamous terrorist in the aisle of a Costco store when you could just as easily invite him to a Saturday men's Bible study, our liberal Anabaptist friend sensed blood in the water, and seized the opportunity to berate me about Calvin and Spurgeon.

Here's my reply:

From: "Phillip Johnson"
To: A____ B_____
Subject: Violence, Calvin, Spurgeon

> I'm appalled at your attacks on
> pacifism. I'm a Christian and a
> total pacifist. In fact, I've
> become a vegetarian partly in
> protest of wanton violence
> against animals.
>
> Your kind of thinking is exactly
> the kind of sick human reasoning
> that turned Calvin into a killer.
> In Calvin's Geneva, if you did not
> believe exactly what he taught then
> you were an unsaved person. A heretic.
> and he killed heretics, right?

No.

Calvin did not believe people should be executed (or even ostracized) simply for disagreeing with him. Many people—including the whole Geneva city council—disagreed openly, passionately, and outspokenly with Calvin on various issues. He was actually quite a reasonable man when it came to simple matters of disagreement.

There were only a handful of executions in Geneva over cases of conscience during Calvin's era. Of these, the best known and most frequently cited against Calvin was Servetus, who was not executed merely for disagreeing with Calvin. Servetus's crime—and it was a crime in those days—was deliberately propagating serious heresy in a way designed to undermine the established order of European society.

Servetus's heresy involved a fanatical hatred of the Trinity and a determination to breed his error by any means across central Europe. He was not merely duped by some insignificant theological error; he was a brazen anarchist, determined to overturn both civil and religious athority. He refused to cease and desist, though he knew he would ultimately die for his actions. Calvin and Geneva were not even his primary targets, initially. He fled to Geneva in a desperate attempt to avoid a death sentence already passed against him by the Catholic Church.

Incidentally, I don't approve of Servetus's execution. But it's simplistic and grossly unfair to Calvin to portray the Reformer as someone who was prone to employ violence or even excommunication in order to quell all dissent from people who disagreed with his personal opinions. (As a matter of fact, Servetus's conduct was deemed criminal first by civil authorities; Calvin did not initiate the call for Servetus's execution.) Civil autorities in Geneva tried heretics only in the most extreme cases. In the context of his age, Calvin was actually quite a tolerant man.

> By the way, Charles Spurgeon smoked cigars.
> Since smoking cigars is unregenerate behavior,
> how can you hold this man up as an example
> of what a Christian should be?

Well, at least he never killed any deer or Anabaptists.