One of the central qualifications for a father in a congregation is that he be able to demonstrate for the people what a godly, effective father can do in the home. Instead of this, we have decided to substitute three years of graduate study.
Doug Wilson, Father Hunger
In one of his rebuttals or his closing statement, it would have been refreshing to hear an Elijah mock the prophets of Baal.
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Mr. Nye, I’ve heard you reference Creationism with words like “extraordinary” and even faux surprise as if you could not fathom the foolishness of a mind that would hold to a literal, six day Creation by an omnipotent God as is recorded in the Bible.
Yet textbooks across our nation commonly teach that the Big Bang happened 14 billion years ago followed by a rock forming over the next 10 billion years or so. Life then sprang from this rock when water from some fantastic source chanced to fall upon it.
So, all life that we see today came from a rock. Consciousness, personality, spiritual entities like the laws of logic, morality, and science, maternal love, the pleasure we feel when we do good, information in cells—and we have not even mentioned irreducibly complex systems like blood clotting, the nervous system, and reproduction—all of these immaterial realities of life came from a rock.
That is what you believe. We came from a rock. Everything we see in this room from the people to the live streaming internet to our own eyeballs, came from a rock. Now, I like you as a person, and I would be glad to have you as a neighbor, but that particular belief can only be looked at honestly as a kind of insanity.
And you have the boldness to call the view extraordinary that says that an all-powerful, infinite Person could create a complex world? Again, I like you, and I want to be gracious toward you, but that conclusion is ridiculous.
The only possible way I can explain obviously intelligent people holding to that view is that they must really hate the God who makes my view both possible and necessary. And interestingly enough, that is exactly what John 7:7 says, “The world hates me [Jesus Christ].” Paul and Peter make some similar comments in their writings, so it would appear that the real divide between us is something in the heart rather than the head.
I mean, a rock over an infinite Person? Mr. Nye, you’ve got to rethink this one.
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I know in a dialogue you have to think on your feet, but he could have prepared a few slides on that theme and had them waiting for the finale or something. As far as the potential complaint that this little speech is not “nice,” let’s not forget that it is true, it could be said graciously, and we are in far greater danger of trying to be too nice, than too bold. What would a John Knox have said?
There is gold all around us, yet it stands in unexpected places. When my colleague reviewed The Forgotten Spurgeon by Murray, it prompted me to check out the book that has been waiting on my shelves. Murray titles should not wait too long. And what gold had been stored up for me there? Why as so often happens, a great appendix.
In 11 pages Charles Noble, a church member living about 25 years after Spurgeon’s death, takes the then-current Pastor, Deacons, and Elders to task for not following the constitution of the church. If you own the book, go read the Appendix as this church member raises some important issues for all churches.
The author’s frustration could be summarized in two headings. First, unethical treatment of interpersonal relationships. Secondly, the introduction of revivalism to the church.
From a relationship perspective, it is sometimes shocking to me to see Christians who are known to be faithful in certain areas ignore the most basic rules of the faith in conversation and relationships. The fruit of the Spirit is patience, kindness, and gentleness which goes perfectly with Christ’s Golden Rule in Matthew 7:12. But the serpent can slither into an unguarded crack in the life of an otherwise committed Christian. Or, maybe more transparently, he slips into the unguarded cracks of all our lives. It is interesting that this kind of sin found its way into such a famous church with such a well-known pastor.
But the second concern was even more interesting—if not quite so devotional. I summarize his concerns as revivalism, or the idea that men can work up a movement of God’s Spirit. As usual the trouble is with the “-ism” since every believer should love true revival. Possibly because it goes hand in hand with the can-do, pragmatic American ethos, American Christianity has been indelibly marked by revivalism. So numbers at church services, statistics from church programs, increases in income, and total number of “decisions made” serve as the measuring sticks of success. After all, we need some way to gauge our work, and saying, “I preached 120 accurate sermons last year,” doesn’t sound that impressive.
What fascinated me was that, the fourth pastor after Spurgeon, A. C. Dixon was an American, and the frustration that Noble expressed fell chiefly on him. In the letter, he charges the current leadership with abdicating the constitution written by Spurgeon some 60 years earlier because that document required both the pastor and the church members to be Calvinistic.
Furthermore, Dixon introduced the “Tithe” to the church which Spurgeon had opposed as being part of the law that was done away. Not only did he urge tithing on the church members, but he also took offerings at each service—a first for that church. Tithes and offerings do not have to be tainted with a man-centered ideology, but if a man already saw himself as the primary catalyst for a great work of God, though none would say it so crassly, the temptation would gnaw on him like the Ring on Gollum.
Noble disliked the other programs that were new to what had been the largest Baptist church in the world. He specifically indicts using “worldly instruments, concerts, soloists, and the purse of rich but worldly men” and “the holding up of hands after every service, which was an effort to hustle people into making some sort of profession of faith and desire to come into the Church, so as to look like doing wonders in the way of conversions and additions.” Rather than preaching the gospel with power and boldness as had been done during Spurgeon’s unprecedented days of evangelism, the church was trying to work up a fair show in the flesh. Amazingly, the Metropolitan Tabernacle was shrinking while using these methods when it had expanded with the Whitefieldian methods of Spurgeon.
The author of the letter saw that the doctrines of grace did not spawn programs to “hurry things up a bit” (a phrase actually used by Dixon in defense of his American innovations).
I find all of these reflections particularly remarkable since the Metropolitan Tabernacle was a model of an evangelistic church. During Spurgeons’ days, they held prayer meetings and constantly baptized new converts without the aids that sometimes are deemed vital to the task.
Don’t misunderstand what Noble was saying: a return to the gospel that Jesus and Peter preached would not guarantee that great numbers of people would be saved like before, but it would guarantee that the church was faithful and that those who responded would be much more likely to be genuine believers.
All this and more from an open letter 96 years old. Go read it.
The anger of a meek man is like fire struck out of steel, hard to be got out, but when it is out, soon gone.
Matthew Henry, The Quest for Meekness and Quietness of Spirit
Last Lord’s Day I began working through 1 Corinthians. Here is the path we hope to trod over the next year or so.
Purpose statement:
• A correction of relational, sexual, ecclesiastical, and theological problems that all churches might face
1. Acts 18:1-11 God saves people with problems.
2. 1:1-9 What to say before a rebuke
3. 1:10-16 Politics in the church
4. 1:17-25 An intellectual battle
5. 1:26-31 God chooses unlikely things
6. 2:1-5 Solus Christus in the pulpit
7. 2:6-16 Total inability
8. 3:1-4 Carnal Christians
9. 3:5-9 Christianity as farming
10. 3:10-15 Building for a reward
11. 3:16-23 NT temples
12. 4:1-5 Faithfulness is success
13. 4:6-13 The logic of humility
14. 4:14-17 Paul, our pattern
15. 4:18-21 A strict father
16. 5:1-8 Retribution is a Christian doctrine
17. 5:9-13 Separating from Christian sinners
18. 6:1-8 Better to lose
19. 6:9-20 Control your desires
20. 7:1-9 Marriage is good
21. 7:10-16 Can Christians divorce?
22. 7:17-24 Romantically content
23. 7:25-38 Focused relationships
24. 7:39-40 Bound until death
25. 8:1-13 When it is sin to eat
26. 9:1-7 Refusing privilege
27. 9:8-14 Pay the pastor
28. 9:19-23 All things to all men
29. 9:24-27 Christian athletes
30. 10:1-11 What to do with the OT
31. 10:12-13 Resisting attack
32. 10:14-22 Separation from sin
33. 10:23-30 A Christian conscience
34. 10:31-33 God-glorifying evangelism
35. 11:1-16 Women in worship
36. 11:17-34 The gospel in food
37. 12:1-11 Everyone has a gift
38. 12:12-26 Working together
39. 12:27-31 Coveting the best gifts
40. 13:1-3 Love vs. all other religious activity
41. 13:4-7 What is love?
42. 13:8-13 Love will never end
43. 14:1-19 Speaking in tongues
44. 14:20-40 The rules for tongues
45. 15:1-11 The message that drove Paul
46. 15:12-19 Why the Resurrection matters
47. 15:20-28 The resurrection made a King
48. 15:29-34 Applying the resurrection
49. 15:35-53 Our new bodies
50. 15:54-58 Why we should persevere
51. 16:1-4 How Christians give
52. 16:5-24 How Paul says goodbye
53. 1-16 A problem church’s hope
Once when I was a student, I recall seeing a church sign for “First Corinthian Baptist Church.” I don’t think I’ll be renaming our church, but as I read the letter I am growing to respect its wisdom and love its Author.
Propositions are critically important, but not all knowledge is propositional.
Unlike science, culture is not a repository of factual information or theoretical truth, nor is it a kind of training in skills, whether rhetorical or practical. Yet it is a source of knowledge: emotional knowledge, concerning what to do and what to feel. … Every culture therefore has its roots in religion, and from this root the sap of moral knowledge spreads through all the branches of speculation and art.
Roger Scruton, Culture Counts
For every careless saint who burns himself out and breaks up his family with misdirected zeal, I venture, there are a thousand who coast with the world, treating Jesus like a helpful add-on, but not as an all-satisfying, all-authoritative King in the cause of love.
John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life, 118
First of all, I would like to publicly take my stand obeying texts like Romans 16:17 to mark and avoid those who change the gospel. That is an entire category of texts, not just an isolated example. Paul says similar things in Galatians 1, and 1 Timothy 1. Peter, John, and Jude all address these issues in their epistles–even when John only has about a dozen verses worth of material in his second epistle. And of course our Lord had the strongest words (Matt. 7:21-23) for those who twist the gospel by means of charismatic phenomena and personality. So, let it be clearly said that false teachers are repeatedly gaining acceptance in the Christian church especially in the developing world, and they are doing so under the guise of a charismatic renewal. With my whole heart I oppose these false teachers and desire to bring to bear every gift that God gives me for the clarity of the gospel in opposition to those who deceive the poor of the world.
Secondly, the gist of MacArthur’s book is a call for giving the Bible its rightful place–restoring doctrine to a central position in the lives of God’s people. I can happily agree with the great majority of material presented at the conference and in the book. I pray that God will purify His church by causing charlatans and those who love the sensational to love Christ more than the flashy attractions of their eyes.
Using spiritual gifts in such a way that practically the canon of Scripture is reopened and a wild-eyed love for unbiblical sensationalism are having devestating effects within the church, and I, for one, am glad that John MacArthur had the Christian guts to take another unpopular stand for the truth of Scripture.
Ultimately, I disagree with him on his exegesis of prophecy and the definition of the gift of tongues, but if these gifts are held within the clear parameters of Scripture then a worship service that I would be involved with would be very much like those where MacArthur would feel comfortable with. The terrible errors of the prosperity preachers and the wolves in sheep’s clothing as well as the ignorant but well-meaning attitudes of lesser known pastors and churches are long overdue for a firm Biblical corrective. As has been said, the influence of Reformed charismatics is far less in the broader evangelical world than the “uprooted trees” of the charismatic mainstream ministers. Since the errors are so egregious and so popular, I happily lay my relatively minor disagreements to the side, and as such, I wholeheartedly endorse the major message at the conference and in the book in hopes that every charismatic Christian would rejoice when the Bible is given its rightful position of absolute authority.
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That is the message he should have sent. But unfortunately John Piper did not write that.
The way in which we reason, how we evaluate claims to the truth, the standards we adopt for knowing, etc.–is itself an ethical matter. …
A person cannot have it both ways regarding his final standard or ultimate reference point. He presupposes and reasons either according to the authority of God or according to some other authority. Attempting to be neutral about God’s ultimate authority in determining what we know is a result of a bad attitude toward God’s ultimate authority.
Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, 90, 92
Striving for true doctrine, right action, and spiritual feeling amidst the mine fields on all sides.
I could wish that they had dealt with Rom. 7:2-3 in its own chapter. Also, the syllogism of Eph. 5:25:
1. A husband must be like Jesus Christ.
2. Jesus Christ never divorces His wife.
Conclus…
An interesting and perhaps important book which educates the citizen to vital factors about the region and country to which he is obligated to vote, pray, …
For its glorious and compelling presentation of Christ as well as intensity that comes straight from Scripture, this book deserves more honor than Pilgrim’s Progress.
Plot:
1….
