Good quote, very good

"I believe every Christian man has a choice between being humble and being humbled." —C.H. Spurgeon

The first one - being humble - feeds vanity and pride and self-will. The second one - being humbled - outrages vanity and pride and self-will.

Blind debating the blind

A debate between Daniel B. Wallace and Bart Ehrman on the reliability of the Bible is like a debate between Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler on the virtues of liberty.

Wallace thinks the Bible needs him to do what uneducated Christians think the Holy Spirit has already done.

Ehrman thinks the Red Queen is in control.

Michael Horton, as usual, is confused.

Song about lost Eden

I've written some posts on pop songs that unwittingly touch on biblical themes. The Doors song Come On, Come On, Come On Now Touch Me Babe; the Who's Who are You? (the full version of that song with the final verse included, in that link it starts at 4.46), etc. Here is a song that unbeknownst to the song writers is about the lost Eden. The song is Once Upon a Time. It could very well be titled Adam's Song:

http://youtu.be/DMGlL0XkQAY

The Bobby Darin version here is the best. A commenter points out that this was close to his death, and he is out of breath as he's singing.

It's about Adam and Eve and their love. The first verse shows this.

In the second verse you get mention of a 'hill', in the Garden of Eden was the mountain, or hill, of God. You also have mention of a tree. A tree that was lost. The Tree of Life. Lost to fallen man, but not ultimately to those who have faith. There are even echoes of Adam in the 'counting all the stars'...

The final verse speaks for itself.

Real armor of God

[From an email.]

Warning: there seem to be a lot of older anti-Calvinism books in that free Christianity books category in the Amazon Kindle store. They tend to be shallow, or to not understand what they are complaining against. Also, false teachers attack the truth.

I've come to always think: what is real armor of God? That is what we want. We don't want fake armor. We don't want badly manufactured armor. We want real armor. The real thing. Pure, on-the-mark biblical doctrine is armor of God. It effects you internally. So if something is difficult for your fallen nature to accept, just ask, "But, don't I want real armor of God? That's what I need." - C.

Subject-Object again

I was thinking of this subject-object relationship regarding science [see this post], and applying it to the subject of God's sovereignty and man's efforts. God is the first cause, but He operates through secondary causes which can be determined, contingent, or free. Human efforts are part of these secondary causes. This is what gives our actions meaning and what makes them real and effectual.

It's because we don't know which cause if free, determined, or contingent on something else, so a dense matrix is created where our effort is real and meaningful for the outcome of God's decree and providence.

As it is said, God's prescriptive will is known to us. It is what is revealed in the Bible. But his decretal will is not known to us. Deut. 29:29 speaks to this.

So what I was thinking is this subject-object relationship exists in this subject of God's sovereignty and mans's effort as well. God's decree and providence is the object, we are the subject. The object needs the subject for the plan to come in to play.

So when we pray, for instance, instead of just thinking, well, why pray when everything will happen anyway, we instead think that our very prayer is *part* of things coming to happen. Of course some secondary causes are determined, so they will happen no matter what in the way God means them to happen, and some secondary causes are contingent, meaning for something to happen something else has to occur as well, and maybe you will do that something else, maybe someone else will do it, but somebody will do it, and that is why effort is meaningful. And God probably takes note of *who does it* and kind of gives that person a special regard. Then there are free secondary causes which I think opens up a lot of the poetry and potential surprise of life.

So God - the First Cause - and human beings - secondary causes - have a similar relationship as the subject and object of science. And maybe in this is partly where it is meant that God is a personal God which makes Him different from other 'gods'.

Atheists had a summit and decreed that colors don't exist

[Part of an email exchange based on this article, but mostly this article.]

Remember that article about the atheists holding some kind of summit and so on? In one part of that article it talked about how these atheists like to say things like color isn't even real. It's just light waves and doesn't even exist and all that. Look at this quote from Berkhof's Systematic Theology where this subject is directly spoken to (actually it is in Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics where it is really gone deeply into, and I just read that chapter in Bavinck):

"The objective revelation of God would be of no avail, if there were no subjective receptivity for it, a correspondence between subject [human beings] and object [natural world]. Dr. Bavinck correctly says: "Science always consists in a logical relation between subject and object." It is only when the subject is adapted to the object that science can result."

Berkhof, Louis (2011-11-08). Systematic Theology (Kindle Locations 2129-2131). Eerdmans Publishing Co - A. Kindle Edition.

What this is saying, and I paraphrase Bavinck, is there is an organic relationship, a kinship, between the subject and object, basically because God created the universe for those who have His image. I.e. you can't say color isn't really real because without a human eye to decode it it doesn't exist because color was created by God to be viewed, by the light of God inside humans, by humans. What the atheists are doing is separating the creation from man (as-well-as God).

There are also echoes of Work teaching in the Bavinck chapter when he goes into how we have to have in us what we can see or experience outside us.

Of course, Bavinck goes through all this talking about the history of philosophy and what the foundation of science is and all that.

Because theology is historically a science its first principles are the same as what we think of as science today. Atheist scientists are obviouslly off-track with their materialism and naturalism and so on. It's all a big subject yet also boiled down in the Bavinck chapter, but also by Berkhof.

I havn't even hit on the main points. This is a bit of a ragged email... - C.

Ragged or not it's a good point, interesting in its logic and simplicity. I mean it isn't like revelatory (at least on the one hand) but set up to counter some of that madness those athiests were spouting, it does seem kind of revelatory (afterall) - subject and object have a relationship. Surely they didn't miss that. Err ... looks like it. - Paul of England

It's remarkable and eye-opening to see how Reformed theologians went through the history of western philosophy from Plato and Aristotle forward and were very adept in all that thought and language and were able to put it all into its place ultimately showing how truth boils down to the Logos experienced in a Trinitarian way. It's not shallow. It doesn't give the impression of people operating outside their own field (and I refer to Bavinck's summary of it all in his chapter on the Foundations of Science in his first volume of Reformed Dogmatics). In passing manner he would touch on how someone like Augustine could boil things down to their essence. As I read through it I was wondering what a modern professional philosopher would think of it. Probably wouldn't even go near a volume of systematic theology, let alone by luck get one from the pure school that was as magisterial as Bavinck. - C.

The ho hum dance of death

I was watching some videos of Chechens torturing and killing Russian prisoners. Very brutal. Playfully brutal. Ugly, violent, crude butchering.

It made me think of God and the angels and how they view such things. I think it is nothing to them because that is what fallen human beings do. I.e. that is just what they do. Now, if there is somebody caught up in it who is not supposed to be caught up in it I think they move in and change the scene, the event. But generally the people involved...the torturers and the tortured are there by their level of being. In recurrence. The torturer becomes the tortured, the tortured becomes the torturer. That is why it is nothing to God and the angels. The general activity of fallen man. Man in rebellion. In the case of Chechens and Russians it is generally Muslims vs. atheists. Gross idolators of a false god vs. mocking idolators of self. Idolators killing idolators. (Is there a true martyr in there now and again? Probably.)

In other words, the killing is ho-hum. From a higher perspective. The killer and the victim actually enjoy it. It's a dance. A dance of death. From under the sun, to Hades, to under the sun, to Hades. Or, "the land of graves" as one of the laughing Chechen soldiers put it to a Russian about to get his throat cut.

Short note on visionary seeing

Short overview of the Kingdom of God:

http://jimhamilton.info/2013/04/19/the-kingdom-of-god/

About 11 paragraphs. This subject gives me visionary overview insight into world history. You can see the children of Satan today with the same anger and resentment and lunatic desire to usurp God and God's people on this planet. They focus on the Holy Land, and they focus on Christian nations. Present reality gets broken up into myriad pieces and confuses, but true vision is seeing the more simple picture. This is true with the Bible. I.e. this is what the Bible actually teaches us to do. The Devil and his program and influence is represented by many different names and events and peoples and places and ideas and so on in the Bible, just as what is good and true has different guises in a similar manner; so when you can see both in the simplicity that unites all the disparate reflections you are seeing at a higher level.

On Michael S. Heiser

[An email...]

I've been reading Michael Heiser (not just on the Divine Council subject), and he's basically a theological liberal. The usual type found in academia. He defends the thoroughly indefensible Peter Enns. He's got a deficient view of the Bible as the very word of God.

http://michaelsheiser.com/TheNakedBible/2008/06/beginning-a-serious-discussion-about-inerrancy/

He also is an ANE (Ancient Near East) scholar (like Enns), and their overriding idiocy is to *have* to see ANE literature as *influencing the Bible* rather than the biblical narrative as it has echoed down through the ages influencing ANE literature.

Ultimately he's a shallow scholar and not a Bible-believing Christian, though he does give some lip service to being conservative on biblical issues.

It's not surprising that Mormons use his books to bolster their science fiction novel theology.

One thing he does that is lunatic (and that people like Peter Enns does) is he talks about the 'need' to rethink the entire biblical 'story' based on what scholars 'now know' regarding ANE this and that (and Enns would also include what is now known regarding evolution, which he swallows hook, line, and sinker). I.e. there is a *scale* thing going on here in their minds (i.e. they can't discern scale). They think the wide and strong river of history and theology can be redefined by their little books and theories and 'PhDs' and that everybody will just have to come along with them. This is Happy Hills Mental Disorder Hospital realm stuff. - C.

* * * * * * *

[An earlier email...]
I haven't looked at this person's [Michael S. Heiser] website or the links yet, but a good question to ask when approaching such a type is does he present good armor? Does he have effective armor? Does he present real biblical armor? - C.

No, he doesn't. He doesn't know the power of biblical doctrine. He doesn't have a parts-in-relation-to-the-whole understanding of the Bible. He's a scholar. An academic. A fool. Before he's a Christian. Ironically he's a rare case of someone being off-the-mark due in part to a *deficient* doctrine on angels. That's just an aside. He's got bigger problems than that. He, to mention maybe the biggest, doesn't seem to connect the orthodox understanding of the Trinity with salvation and the plan of God itself. I.e. he doesn't fear treading blithely on that ground. Again, a fool. We want armor of God. Real armor. That armor cast in the Reformation is real and celestial armor.

How false teachers admit to truth

The thoroughly odious false teacher Peter Enns was allowing my comments on his blog for a couple of weeks, but I had never made a direct hit on him. Today I did, and even though he seems to have changed his policy to allow comments from more than just useful idiot yes-men he deleted my comment. This is how false teachers admit to truth. By what they actually ban from their presence and the presence of their following of useful idiots. Here is my comment:

"Mr. Enns, you continue to pose this so-called problem in the most cartoonishly (and ignorant) way possible. 97% of scientists believe in *micro* evolution (otherwise know as dog breeding, now being done at ever smaller scale). Actually I hope 100% of scientists do. That is the *lab science* associated with the term evolution. You are conflating *that* with Darwinian *macro* evolution, which is not operative science but is speculative or historical science solely. It is the theory that fish turn into race horses. It's never been observed, never been proven from the fossil record or any other means, and is the main arena atheist scientists play in to use 'the theory of evolution' as a club to hit Christians over the head with. The fossil record and micro biology in general have caused most scientists to abandon Darwinian macro evolution (other than as a useful tool to attack Christianity still, which they still use it for, to the degree of still teaching decades old known hoaxes in school text books). At this point honest atheist scientists who have abandoned Darwinian macro evolution but who can never bring themselves to accept the word of God pretty much state their position this way: "We'll stay in suspended animation for however long it takes to come up with something better, but until then we will never accept supernatural creation." So be it. It's now time to present this subject in a more intelligent and accurate way (even if it makes your books look a bit silly and unnecessary)."

Many observers, few observed

In life there are observers and there are the observed. You want to be the observed. The observed are rare. You want to be a spectacle to the world. You want the world to see you as a spectacle. "Who is that out-of-place person?" It's a child of God. "Who is that outsider?" It's a child of God. "Who is that person who can't seem to be anonymous and inconspicuous to us?" It's a child of God. A temple of the Holy Spirit. In this world, not of this world.

Romanizing the Reformation

WESTMINSTER SEMINARY CALIFORNIA

Romanizing the Reformation Since 1979

"You Protestants are stupid. Read books written by the Pope." - Prof. Michael Horton

"Lay people should not read the Bible themselves. There is no salvation outside a local church building." - Prof. R. Scott Clark

Good quote

A quotable line from me in inner dialogue with a family member:

"You need to read the Bible and sort things out from a God-centered perspective; everything else is just B.S."

Here is a wonderful name for the Old and New Testaments

In the midst of the parable of the sower there is a wonderful name for the Old and New Testaments:

Mat 13:19 When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side.

The Word of the Kingdom

Something I still don't 'get', or understand in Christianity

I didn't respond directly to your observation. I can, and also can't see what you're saying. I mean, the dousing of flames, and the changing of desires and all that I can see. Personally for the rest of it I tread lightly around statements that sex has become something different, because it's so powerful. It's like food. Check to see if the person talking has a full stomach or not. And I'm not saying you're being naive, I'm not even directly responding to what you did say, but you know what I mean.

Here's something I still don't 'get', or understand in Christianity (or at least Christian writers, good ones, ones with great understanding like the Puritans)... They write that they can't wait to get to Heaven so they can gaze on Jesus. Not God the Father who no one has seen and is a Spirit, but Jesus Christ the God-man. Now, I know we are talking about ***God Himself*** and the beatific vision is most likely *more* than we can grasp now, but it actually seems *carnal* to me (and dare I say boring). And to gaze on humans has an idolatrous feeling to it, even though it's not because it is Jesus Himself. God.

But you know what I'm saying... Get to Heaven and just stand there gazing at Jesus. I'VE SEEN PICTURES OF JESUS! But even granting that that would be *more* than it sounds, it is still suspect to read over and over from theologians of the past that they are all emotional and longing to do just that.

C. S. Lewis and Meredith Kline in different ways talk about how we become the actual materiel of Heaven. Instead of just looking at a beautiful landscape we become the landscape. That type of thing. If that is what they are talking about (and I don't think it is) then I can see the wonder of that. And why we would desire it. We become like God, not God, but like God. We are part of that cosmos. All that. That would rate the language of longing and emotion and all that that the Puritans expressed.

I feel I'm treading dangerous ground here. I'm not saying, "Jesus, ho hum..." I'm focusing on Puritan type (and moderns as well) writers who seem to desire something that to me seems wholly sexless. I guess there is the crux of the matter. Sexless. We don't have sex with God. But we do want to be mirrored, we want to look at another being and see something delightful. That's the kind of joy I'd have to imagine, but maybe I'm being too this-worldly. But we can't deny beauty and charm and everything like that that gives delight. Men writing about seeing a man clanks to my ears. Wisdom, in all her beauty, yes.

But I know it's all *more*. As above, so below, yet very different in terms of degree and so on. Even the Olympian gods and goddesses had an appearance that was *more*. Zeus couldn't show his true appearance without the vision of it killing a human. So, I know there's more going on.

Maybe they are saying that seeing King Jesus will represent total salvation and arrival and success and end of suffering and stress and the joy of being *home.* I can see that. But I had to think it through. - C.

[I was replying to this email:]

From: S---- ----
To: c. t. <----------@yahoo.com>

Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2013 8:09 PM
Subject: RE: This R. C. Sproul book is free for now on Amazon
I can't remember the context now as I got sidetracked before I could email my thoughts, but something you said the other day had me thinking about the Bibles effect on our sinful nature.
My personal experience seems to be that sin loses its glamour. This is something that I don't think I could have got from the Work alone... For some time, you can have the feeling of "here am I trying to be conscious and clean, and look at everyone else having a great time, being famous, rich, and screwing their brains out! Am I c-r-a-z-y??!!!"
Continual intake of the language of the Bible however douses those flames, and replaces it with a new vision. A vision where all that is death.
It's quite a strange experience to be living through, quite mysterious I have to say.
Do you know what i mean?
s

[My first response to S. started this way:]

It's a parallel thing that I remember you observed a long while back, how resentment and anger is glorified in media, movies, television. How it's portrayed as cool and normal. Then when you learn that not all emotions are noble (something we have to actually learn), that some are negative, and we are total weak slaves to them, all that portrayed behavior starts to look uncool if not inane.

Reformed academics and Rome

"Confessionalism is a churchly, theological, sacramental, disciplined approach to Christianity that is probably fairly described as elitist inasmuch as The faith is mediated to the masses by the ministers." - a professor at a Reformed seminary

You can admire and use the classic Reformed confessions without being Roman Catholic. It's possible. I do it all the time.

1Ti 2:5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;

"Previously, men had looked to the Church for all the trustworthy knowledge of God obtainable, and as well for all the communications of grace accessible. Calvin taught them that neither function has been committed to the Church, but God the Holy Spirit has retained both in His own hands and confers both knowledge of God and communion with God on whom He will."
- B. B. Warfield

Dr. Christian Academic is currently evangelizing Indonesia

I love how academic Christians fly off to country X, speak to 14 people in a hotel meeting room, then come back and talk about it like they're a modern day apostle Paul. And they usually characterize the trip as: "I preached the message to Indonesia." Rather than saying: "I flew into an airport in Jakarta and talked to fourteen people in the Jakarta Holiday Inn, then I got back on the plane and flew back home."

Why am I mocking them? Because they're playing dress up. They're taking the most comfortable route with the least resistance, giving a 'talk' (that will have the impact of reading an article in a journal, if that), and then making like they are from the apostolic era.

"Jakarta!" his neighbor says, "that sounds exotic...and dangerous! Did you have to cut your way through dense tropical forest to get to a tribe that's never heard the Gospel?"

"No comment," Dr. Christian Academic says. "It's not my place to even give the false impression I may be boasting, so I'll just give you a no comment. And God bless."

These are not exactly holy men, are they? They don't exactly bring much with their presence. In fact, they are more likely to exaggerate their state of being undeveloped and shallow and ordinary but then to justify their state by saying Christianity isn't about coming on like a holy man. Well, how about *being* a holy man? Why do you accept a position of teacher and leader in Christian institutions and among Christians if you are no different than anyone else? If you are as shallow and undeveloped as anyone else? I don't think the Jakartans expect to see great antlers on your head, or a visible halo; but how about a human being whose understanding of the faith is larger and deeper than the average dope in a seminary?

Someone not interested in playing dress up. Someone not interested in the fake impression his trip will make on the naive.

Paradign enhancing Intrusion Ethics article by Meredith Kline

Recently I read complete this article by Meredith Kline on Intrusion Ethics:

http://www.meredithkline.com/files/articles/The-Intrusion-and-the-Decalogue-MGKline.pdf

It is epic for understanding some of the more difficult to understand parts of the Old Testament. It is *very* hard going though. I can summarize it from memory:

People (who don't like the Bible to begin with) complain of the genocide commanded by God in the Old Testament and the Psalms that speak of dashing infants against walls and so on. Kline, using the overall context of Reformed Covenant - Federal - Theology explains such passages in a way that is lock down accurate (if you can discern on-the-mark/off-the-mark) and very different from any other explanation offered. First of all, though, I don't need an explanation. God kills. We don't need to explain it from our warped point-of-view. That is judging God from our level. But with that out of the way here is how Kline explains it:

He calls it Intrusion Ethics. The genocide of the Canaanites is an *intrusion* of the ethics of the *consummation (end times)* on the Canaanites. I.e. it is a type of the final judgment. And what is being *intruded* upon is *common grace.* Normally, this time between the Garden and the final judgement is regulated by common grace. Especially after the flood when God said He would no longer bring such deathly judgment on mankind that the flood brought. So common grace is given to not only God's elect but everybody else. So that the theatre of the world would be a theatre of salvation.

But Kline deftly explains that in the consummation ethics are different. We are actually to hate our enemy then, to use an example. In this era of common grace we are to love our enemy. But once God unleashes the final judgment on the rebels we would be betraying God to love His enemies.

So this explains the imprecatory psalms as well. Those psalms that invoke judgement and violence and curses on one's enemies. They represent an intrusion of the consummation (final judgement) ethics. (And Kline points out that we are not to think we can do an intrusion on anybody, only God manifests that, and since the Bible is set now God is only talking through it, so if anybody says God told them this or that it is lunatic.)

He also points out that there are also instances of intrusion in the Old Testament involving salvation rather than just judgment. For instance when Hosea is ordered by God to marry a prostitute. That goes against the laws of National Israel, but they are an example of the intrusion of the ethics of the consummation where Christ takes as His bride sinful believers. Once adulterous. We become His bride.

The order to Abraham to sacrifice his child Isaac is the same. It is an example of an intrusion of consummation ethics. In this case God's sacrifice of his own Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ.

So Intrusion ethics means the intrusion from above (like from out of time down into the world) of the 'ethics of the consummation' into the world of common grace and overriding that common grace. It is involved with typology. (This element, typology, is a bigger subject in the Kline article than I'm giving it here.)

Kline is careful to explain how common grace ethics differs from ethics in the consummation end time.

It's a difficult read, but it is epic in establishing understanding of the unity of the Bible, typology, explaining difficult (difficult for some) passages, and even beyond all that the subject has epic edges to it that give a vision of the Bible that is raw and new and on-the-mark.

You have to know Covenant - Federal - Theology to understand Kline, but just so you know the mountain is there you will climb it. - C.

ps- I also had a question on a totally different subject: what is the 'first resurrection' mentioned in Revelation 20:4-6? I thought to myself, "I should know that." So I looked into it. Dispensationalists have their own take, so I wanted to know the Covenant Theology take, and it is this: I'll just give it short hand without going into context and everything: the first resurrection is regeneration by the word and the Spirit. I.e. if you have that then you are blessed and won't suffer the second death. What is the second death? It is the lake of fire. Judgment to hellfire. Why is it called the second death? Because the first death is the death of our physical bodies. Final question: if the first resurrection is called the first then what is the second resurrection? The second resurrection is the resurrection of our bodies at the Second Coming. The first resurrection takes us to be with Christ in Heaven when we die (and regeneration is the beginning of that, it itself is eschatololgical in that we are born again and with Christ above even now, but in full when we die). The second resurrection gives us a glorified body, our old body but very much changed.

pps- Meredith Kline has two articles on the first resurrection at that site linked above. His take is a bit different, but in line with what I've written above. He prefers to call the first resurrection solely our physical death when we then are literally resurrected up to God in paradise (Heaven). But regeneration is the cause of that and the beginning of it, so it is OK (and I and most Reformed theologians think more accurate) to call the first resurrection regeneration by the word and the Spirit.

Atheists in folklore

Remember: atheists are bridge trolls. They exist to dissuade people from crossing thresholds. They are a type of hell creature, in folklore known as the bridge troll.

Modern Idol Worship

Three idols of the modern world:

1. The collectivist state (worship of strongest-monkey tyranny).

2. Environmentalism (worship of nature, or the planet).

3. The notion of the Noble Savage (glorification of the criminal, glorification of violent cultures, glorification of resentment and ignorance, glorification of Third World conditions.)

Each is a religion that its adherents make sacrifices to. Sacrifices such as their freedom, their prosperity, their safety. In these acts of sacrifice it is felt that the inherent sense of guilt in the adherents is expiated. Or this is the game that is played. Though it is a game that is often played to the point of real death, such is the revulsion in fallen human beings for their Creator and the pure religion revealed by their Creator in the Old and New Testaments. I.e.: "We will worship anything other than the Creator even to the point of death."

Modern Christian leaders usually list temptations in place of true idols. Temptations such as money, sex, power, fame. These are temptations not true religious idols. Temptations don't give a semblance of expiation for our inherent sense of guilt. (Neither does worshiping professional athletes or rock stars or celebrities. Run-of-the-mill shallow behavior is not deep idol-religion. There's no true sacrifice; there's no sense of expiation of guilt. It may be a training wheels version of real, deep idol worship, or it may be a cover for the real thing though.) This wrong notion of what a real idol is is difficult to remove from the consciousness of modern Christian leaders, because most of them are fully under the spell of the three real idol-religions mentioned above.

Labyrinth and abyss

"[T]wo concepts that were fundamental to Calvin's speech and thought: labyrinth and abyss. For Calvin, these are the two forms of the ultimate experience of misery. Calvin took the word labyrinth from the humanistic tradition, where it was used pejoratively against scholasticism. For him, it represented a way of thinking that entangled a person and caused him or her to lose the way to God and self. In this life, humans find themselves in the labyrinth by nature. Only by holding onto the Scriptures as onto Ariadne's thread or, to use a Christian expression, as a guide for the journey to eternity can one escape from the labyrinth unscathed. As to the "abyss," people end up in it when they fall from God's ways, when they overturn his order and disregard his peace."

Herman J. Selderhuis. John Calvin: A Pilgrim's Life (p. 35). Kindle Edition.

God's will is liberty

Real Will, or God's Will is top-down will (it is descent-of-the-dove will). Self-will is bottom-up will (our first inclination, to act from the flesh, from our desires and fears and resentments and so on). Acting from God's will or top-down will or higher will is liberty (and it requires 'waiting on the Lord', i.e. not our first inclination). Self-will is bondage to this world of death and darkness.

Here's a main point: if you equate God the Father with a human, in effect a slave master, you will think acting from God's will is slavery. Yet God is Spirit (I'm speaking of God the Father). He is the source of all that is good and holy. You become a real individual with real liberty when you act from God's will.

One pithy way of seeing practically how we act from God's will is this: we take nothing more seriously than the teaching and commands of God in His living word.

This is also how we 'walk after the Spirit' rather than walking 'after the flesh.'

But to see it more fully you have to see that a regenerated individual with a new heart has a different relationship to the teachings and commands of God. They are not a chain about our neck that we *have* to follow though we might like to do something else. They are rather something that emanates from our new heart itself, so they are as natural to us as oranges are to an orange tree.

And Jesus summed up the law in the two great commandments: love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. That sums up the two tables of the Ten Commandments, or the moral law, which is the only law that is binding on us after the theocratic state of national Israel became defunct upon the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.

The living language of the word of God challenges our level of being

It is axiomatic and should always be kept in mind: the living language of the word of God challenges your level of being. Always. In all ways. When you go to them and they give you a sense of weariness, your level of being is being challenged. When you read them and even the promises of glory and higher existence seem tedious, your level of being is being challenged. When they seem strange or like having nothing to do with you or you can't get much from them, your level of being is being challenged.

So the proper response is: when your limits are being provoked, make then a little more effort to extend your limits.

One thing that can inspire one to just read the Bible consistently (i.e. just read it, page by page, cover to cover, like trekking over a continent from ocean to ocean) is this: it is higher visual language. Living language. And once inside you it enables you to see things in yourself and in the world around you that you couldn't see before. You have to have the language inside you before you can see what you couldn't see otherwise. This new ability doesn't become known to us immediately, but it's like planting a crop that will manifest in another season in time. Even then we tend to become acclimated to things, so we might not see anything new in us, but it will be there. (The Homeric epics - Iliad and Odyssey - do this as well, obviously not in the same category as the word of God, but a pure and powerful and universal higher visual language is contained in them having to do with inner development of level of being; and they are - especially the Iliad - a challenge to read as well.)

Set your affection on things above

Christians who criticize other Christians for doing things such as Work - Fourth Way - practices (and other things) sometimes make accusations of having an over-realized eschatology. Of trying to climb up to heaven, etc. Look at these verses from Colossians 3:

1 If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. 2 Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. 3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.

I'm not recommending Fourth Way ideas, practices, and goals, that would take too many caveats and so on (and it's usually something people come *out of* who become Christians, so don't get me wrong in mentioning that one among many types of school and so on out there, but practices can be universal and wheat can be found in much chaff), but even biblical watchfulness gets this treatment from the more establishment church types. Anything of a vertical nature, really. Being awake now, in a vertical eschatalogical sense. Now it is high time to awake out of sleep, Paul says in Romans 13:11. That is not head-on-pillow sleep.

The verses above, though, should be kept in mind when the 'grave concerns' of the usual types are being intoned.

Thinking about Arnold Murray

I've been thinking about Arnold Murray (a satellite preacher out of Arkansas), and I think there is a good example of 'school' in what he has done. When I look at it I really got kicked off that Puritanboard because somebody started a thread on Arnold Murray, and I wrote a long response, written carefully (knowing my environment), but their shallowness overwhelmed them and they kicked me out. They could tell I was not 'of them' anyway. I would just have to say 'hi' to determine that. But Murray put out the call that was effectual in me, so I can't say anything bad about him. The one thing he does well is to read the actual words of the Bible, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book and not care if it bores his audience. This is something even Reformed church leaders disdain to do (the "lay people" couldn't possibly understand!!).

(By the way: what does it mean that the good churchians at the Puritanboard know I am not 'of them'? It means there is a two-tiered Christianity. There is church Christianity and there is order (or 'school') Christianity. There are worldly knights, and there are Grail knights.)

Arnold Murray's doctrine obviously is unique. But even there it is not bad for 'hooking' certain types who are negative to the churchianity that Christianity has become all around us. Even the occult or neo-Nazi or what have you connections or accusations that get thrown around don't hurt what he is doing, because it sets him apart as not fearing the opinions of man (including Satanic churchianity leaders, seminary educated or not). I'm actually drawn to the symbol of the swastika for that reason (though I should state Murray has nothing to do with swastikas). I fear God alone. Churchians despise that. They want everybody fearing them and residing in their little satanic church nurseries.

I mentioned 'school' above. I mean that in the esoteric sense. What Murray has successfully done is create a school. It has boundaries, and he stays within those boundaries. This enables him to build force within the boundaries. He doesn't teach orthodox doctrine, but he doesn't need to. His listeners eventually leave and gravitate to that on their own. Like I did.

Once, about ten years after I'd ever ordered one of the books they sell I called them just curious what their reading list looked like currently, and their operator said you use to be on our list. I said, yes. Then she said since I left they can't sell me anything. I thought, after some time, wow, that's interesting. They were never after money in any of the usual ways, but not even wanting to sell a book to a former listener. With that they are saying, you are no longer in this school. No longer at this level.

And along those lines, Murray is also very good at being a rock for beginners to learn from and transcend. He repeats himself over and over. He doesn't try to impress anybody. That's a good teacher. He allows students to move on, and he stays behind to meet the new crop. He knows what he's doing.

I haven't heard him in a long time, so I can't speak to what he is up to now. I.e. if he's the same or changed. It actually wasn't difficult to see orthodox doctrine after listening to him because he doesn't really present any kind of recognizable systematic doctrine to begin with. After I learned for instance the doctrine of election from Reformed sources I went back and listened to Murray's tape on election and I couldn't make heads or tails of it. That's what I mean.

But having benefited from his efforts (and that is real, somebody's effort, you can't deny another person's effort that you are able to benefit from) I both feel sympathetic to him, even knowing pure biblical doctrine, and could never take part in any kind of mocking of him that occurs among the shallow and ignorant.

Early in my life when I was more interested in writing and literature and novels and what not I noticed there was a pattern in the lives of novelists where they were very reluctant to mention influences in their lives other than very generic ones that everybody of their era might mention. This is because they knew it only gives the world ammunition to mock them or misrepresent their connection to the influence in question. The very fact that a person could be influenced by a single aspect of an influence, or just 1% of the influence and how critics would not care about that but would run with a complete connection in a shallow and probably consciously vicious way...this made them keep silent. Murray would be just like that. You just mention his name and the monkey's at the Puritanboard (most of them Administrators and Moderators for some reason) start jumping around and throwing their dung.

Anyway, I was just thinking about Arnold Murray...who put out the call (the living language of the Old and New Testaments) that was effectual in me...

Jesus Horton catches us all in our stupidity again

At the end of his latest White Horse Inn podcast (where I think I counted 873 'wows' giving the impression the on air crew there had gotten into somebody's medical marijuana stash) Michael Horton (or, em, Jesus Horton) said: "We are not saved by faith. We are saved by Christ." Which, is just a shallow and stupid theological statement. His desire to call everybody stupid is now to the point where he has to set us all up on justification by faith alone. We say we're justified by faith alone, and Jesus Horton comes along and tells us, "No! You are saved by Christ..." Wowww.

"You need to join a church."

You need to join a church.

OK.

Just don't join the Roman Catholic Church.

Got it. I understand that much.

Or any Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church.

Right. You have to drink Coke out of actual glass bottles in those churches.

Or any of the mainstream, 'seven sisters' churches.

Understood. Lesbians running the show there. New Age philosophy in place of biblical doctrine.

Also, stay away from the Pentecostal and charismatic churches.

No problem. Don't want anyone washing my feet. Not that it would feel bad. Also, don't ever want to have to pretend I can talk in tongues. Whatever that is.

Eastern Orthodox Church is not a good idea either.

They're almost as bad as the Roman Catholic Church. Understood.

Also, there are a lot of weird legalist churches out there. Stay away from them.

Cultish.

There are also nutty ecumenical churches that don't want to offend anybody but actual Christians.

I don't like their happy talk, no problem.

And stay away from the mega churches.

Consumerism, worldly entertainment, health and wealth doctrine, impersonal...

As for Reformed stay away from the Federal Vision ones. They teach heresy.

I'm on to them. Don't like them either.

Or the ones that want to turn the nation into a theocracy.

I see their barbed wire compounds, and I walk the other direction.

And don't join any nutty house church operations.

They turn into dens of swinger sex usually.

OK. So... Join a real Reformed church. There, I said it.

You mean like Presbyterian? Isn't that one of the 'seven sisters' mentioned above?

There are also churches with the name 'Reformed' in them.

Where they teach the heresy of Federal Vision?

Not all of them do.

How many churches are we left with here. What kind of number.

Probably six.

Are they regionally spread out at least?

I think their may be one within 650 miles of you.

Do they teach the unbiblical doctrine of infant baptism and use Bibles based on constructed 'critical texts'?

Maybe we can find you a Reformed Baptist church. You might have to travel an extra hundred miles or so.

Do they use critical text Bibles?

Probably.

...

It's pretty much a mess, isn't it?

Yes, it is. We can always be Grail Knights though...

Michael Horton

I just listened through this garbage again, the White Horse Inn (that would be the Romanist White Horse Inn, not the famous one of history, the other one where Romanists like these four Musketeers of stupid reside).

It's actually difficult to articulate how repulsive Michael Horton is. Obviously he's shallow. Obviously he has a naive self-awareness. Obviously he's a bit dense in his thinking a degree from Oxford is worth anything today beyond applause one might receive at a dinner engagement in Davos, Switzerland after giving an earnest speech on global warming and how best to loot national treasuries larded with several anecdotes and jokes about how stupid Americans are. And, no, he won't understand that last sentence. Neither will any of the other Musketeers of dumb on his show.

But he is really digging a unique hole to reside in. His take on Scripture has become almost unrecognizable even in the common panoply of false teachings. He's desperate to maintain his Reformed reputation, but his Romanism and disdain for anything Protestant has grown to such a degree that he's really having to stretch the boundary in which he can operate.

The one question to ask him that would cut through all the garbage and get to the heart of his problem is this: How long have you feared that you are unregenerate?

Actually, I think he's beyond fear now, and fully into rage at God and hatred for God's word and the pure doctrine Reformed Theology represents.

What specifically is he presenting in the name of Reformed Theology? The usual Romanist Beast doctrine: exalting cleric and ritual above the word and the Spirit; justifying his 'anger of Cain' for the regenerate by not just twisting Scripture, but reading it in a really strange pomo fashion where Jesus and Michael Horton are merged into a single entity and everybody else in the scene gets to wear the dunce cap, including all the disciples (not just the obviously stupid crowd, who resemble American Christians in so many ways); telling Christians that they can't do anything, that there's no point in trying to do anything, just eat crackers and drink grape juice and listen to liberal academic Reformed theologians, and basically stay infantile in your faith because you're stupid Americans and Protestants at that and he can't have you developing in any way or thinking you are - this he has trouble getting out of his throat - regenerated by the word and the Spirit or something.

I've always said these liberal academic Reformed types like Michael Horton make John Calvin look like a bare foot mystic, but they've gone beyond that at this point. Or actually they're just simply demonstrating what John Owen wrote centuries ago: "As among all the doctrines of the gospel, there is none opposed with more violence and subtlety than that concerning our regeneration by the immediate, powerful, effectual operation of the Holy Spirit of grace; so there is not scarce anything more despised or scorned by many in the world than that any should profess that there hath been such a work of God upon themselves, or on any occasion declare aught of the way and manner whereby it was wrought... yea, the enmity of Cain against Abel was but a branch of this proud and perverse inclination."

This is the spirit of the first generation Reformation. Fear God alone.

How long do Calvinists put up with theologians like Michael Horton and his mentally frumpy cohorts saying there is no effort in Christianity?

The biblical doctrine of regeneration - the reality of regeneration - is obviously the weak link in the chain of these seminary educated morons.

ONCE REGENERATED YOU BETTER MAKE EFFORTS.

Again: THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A REGENERATED BELIEVER AND AN UNREGENERATE HUMAN BEING.

At what point do we not show patience for these intellectual village idiots calling themselves Reformed educators and church leaders?

"What I saw earlier in Bavinck..." from an email

I'm right now reading volume 1 of Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics. Just as sheer intellectual feast it is pure delight. I'm reading subject matter right now that I can't articulate in an email, but his reputation and this systematic theology's reputation of being the Everest is not hyperbole. I know some book titles recently mentioned would run into the hundreds of dollars all together, but some books are worth more than their price. These books are of the pure school and get at knowledge of the mysteries of man and God and redemption in history...everything deep and real and important. - C.

When I sent that email about Bavinck I was reading him on the subject of what someone has to believe to be saved. What core doctrines. Catholics have a list. Protestants sometimes try to make a list. It's happened in recent years on blogs where people debate what doctrines are necessary to be known and understood for a person to be saved. So here's Bavinck on that subject turning it all on its head. It's very subtle, but powerful. He said the Reformers knew that you can't make a list. He said once you have a connection to Christ there's no list, there's an organic connection where salvation is there and only gets stronger as understanding grows vis-a-vis all of doctrine. In other words faith gets stronger the more understanding of doctrine develops, but it starts like a seed, and with that seed salvation is already set then it organically grows.

It's related to the saying: "I don't try to understand so that I can believe; I believe so that I can then understand."

The former is a man-centered approach. The latter is a God-centered approach.

But this doesn't denigrate doctrinal knowledge because it is that which strengthens faith.

I don't know if I captured or articulated that well, but it's an example of how you can learn things from Bavinck. - C.

So do you see how when Bavinck uses the term 'organic' he is really, maybe unwittingly, talking in the language of cosmoses?

We get connected with Jesus Christ (unio mystica, or union with Christ) and that is due to regeneration by the word and the Spirit, and we don't really know doctrine, or on-the-mark doctrine yet, yet still we have that connection. Then with that connection, our understanding of doctrine grows (for instance why we are to have faith in Jesus) as if from the level of a seed sprouting into fullness as a flower. That is how evolution happens in cosmoses. From inside, or inside source outward to all parts simultaneously.

See how that's different from: "So now do you understand the Trinity? The Incarnation? Now how about grace? Original sin? OK, you have what you need to have salvation."

No, it starts with that union that occurs with regeneration by the word and the Spirit. Yes we read the living word and it has effect, but when I read it and it had effect I didn't know what it was saying at the level of on-the-mark biblical doctrine. I just got the connection, the union with Christ, then the process started of developing understanding, unfolding like a seed into a flower. You want to become a full flower in your understanding, but you have salvation when at the seed level. - C.

I've become a date setter

I've become an end of the world date setter.

If Jesus' Incarnation is the center of historical time (that which the Old Testament saints looked forward to, and that which we look back toward), and if we don't use creation but the founding of the Kingdom of which Jesus was born King into (i.e. Abraham and God making the covenant with Abraham) as our beginning date then that was in the neighborhood of 2000 BC. So, it's just a matter of symmetrical figuring to see that sometime around 2000 *AD* is the end of time date. It could be up to 2020, but not much further.

As I stated, when I had that series of personality conflicts with my Home Economics teacher in high school and had to go to the Principal's office repeatedly, and was able then to discern it as a sign of the end of time, I have been on this path of finding the true end time date, and now it has arrived.

Sometime between 2013 and 2020. - C.

Prophets, priests, and kings...and church

I personally think that *ideally* a church gathering is a gathering of *kings*. Individuals who are prophets, priests, and kings all in one. That includes males and females. And to really make an extended analogy, where in history do we see gatherings of kings? On battlefields. So if everybody can hold their own, biblically and doctrinally, then anyone who tries to lord it over anyone else in some off-the-mark way is in for quite a test of strength.

I see Christianity as being a high bar in terms of getting understanding of the Bible itself and doctrine and practice, but the Holy Spirit enables us to meet and exceed that bar.

Then once we get that real understanding, then ‘authoritative preacher guy’ and ‘shallow pastor guy’ and ‘false teacher guy’ and ‘pure vicious wolf guy’ can all be dealt with because we understand them. Of course, they’re going to know they don’t want you in their dominion, except for maybe ‘shallow pastor guy’, who I have more sympathy for, especially if he’s shy and trying really hard and means well.

This subject gets into ecclesiology and what a church, or gathering of Christians, is all about, or is supposed to be about. People have legitimate differences of seeing it. The most famous Calvinist in England – John Owen – differed with Calvin on church issues. (Owen was a Congregationalist.) In fact, most Calvinists in history and today differ with Calvin on ecclesiolgy and sacramentology.

John Bunyan, another famous Calvinist, when in court and asked by an Anglican judge why he didn’t belong to a local church said he didn’t see it in Scripture. I wish I still had the quote because Bunyan put it more pointedly. Didn’t mean you’d never see Bunyan in a church. But it’s about fear of God vs. fear of man.

For me, a church should be like a sanctuary where you can go to learn and meditate, read, listen, experience a quiet interlude from the world. Churches in the Old World are more conducive to that, perhaps. But that’s just me, my type.

For instance, we can’t get away from the basic fact that Christianity is a religion of the Book. God revealed Himself in language that we can read. And a church should be a place where that Book is read and we can read it and really get understanding of it. Parts in relation to the whole understanding of it. Not rely on one person only to know it. God wants us *all* to be prophets (knowing His word, able to speak in prayer to Him), priests (able to sacrifice our old nature in emulation of our High Priest Jesus Christ), and kings (able to command our inner domain and cultivate our new nature), while, of course, recognizing the *authority* of the Prophet, Priest, and King *above us* Jesus Christ Himself. There is one Mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ.

The Kingdom of God is a ‘Kingdom.’ And when God is the King that system of government works out well and is the best.

Fellaheen

This has always been an interesting term that I couldn't nail a tight definition down on. It's 'fellaheen.' I first came across it in Spengler's Decline of the West.

It's from an Arabic word and literally means: people who don't own the land they are farming.

It's broader, cultural meaning is: a people who are operating in a culture and civilization that isn't their own.

So, the Jewish people, for instance, are fellaheen in Christian culture and civilization. Just as Christians were fellaheen in Islamic culture and civilization back after 700 AD.

There is more to it though. The term and meaning carries within it the fact that fellaheen peoples can't participate at the deep, foundational level of that culture and civilization. I.e. because they aren't inherently of that culture and civilization their acts within it are shallow.

An example from the pop film level: Woody Allen instinctively knows he is fellaheen compared to Ingmar Bergman. He was always saying Bergman is the real thing, I am a fake. A fellaheen like Woody Allen can really only copycat within our culture and civilization. Just like Jewish novelists can write blockbuster novels, but they can't write Don Quixote or Moby Dick. They can copy cat and write pastiche and similar things and styles, but nothing that comes from within the heart and soul of Christian culture and civilization.

Fellaheen peoples can be very successful and contribute major things, but ultimately their contribution will be artificial to the culture and civilization, and often poisonous (Marx, Freud). Einstein would be cited as a counter argument by people with an emotional dislike for the term, but Einstein operated within the flow of the western scientific enterprise and was educated in western, Christian universities and so on. And his contribution has a lot more fluff and dead end in it than the popular myth of Einstein would let on.

The term has been suppressed because of the treatment of Jews in Europe culminating in the Holocaust (not the Holocaust of Jewish Bolshevism against Christians in Europe, but the Holocaust of Germans and other Europeans against Jews).

White Horse Inn

The four boys of the White Horse Inn seem intent on importing secular academic shallowness and man-fearing into the Reformed faith.

And their ridiculous performance style gives them away as perhaps not holding to what they claim to hold to. When biblical doctrine is delivered in an affected quirky manner it is the person or people doing it saying, even unconsciously, that they really don't value what they are saying. All that "Yup!" and theatrical "Uh, hum..."s and projecting breathless "Wow"s after the recitation of any verse of Scripture is a bit quirky. Not to mention all the straw men put forth, usually always to mock or denigrate the intelligence of Protestants (never Romanists).

One doesn't detect any value of classical influences - history, poetry, especially - in these boys. Nor does one detect the bold stance of fearing God alone one sees in the first and second generation reformers whose doctrine these four boys claim to hold to. One sees a rather obsequious fear of man, and in particular a fear of secular academic opinion.

Matthew Henry - Psalm 24

From an email:

I just read all of Matthew Henry's commentary on Psalm 24. I was surprised. If you read it straight through by the time he gets to the final third of the psalm his take on it is really powerful and transcendent. He has you up at the gates of Heaven. The imagery I had was like an epic fantasy novel. Yet he also gives the interpretation that applies to us, our being, I was impressed. It was the first time I had the patience to read something from him complete. Just judging by the cover, so to speak, you expect him to be more tame and safe and so forth. From this I can now see why some modern Reformed academic theologians are not positive on him. I should say, the modern academic Reformed types who make Calvin look like a bare foot mystic. They're not all like that by any means though.

Three little notes

CAN GOD TRUST ME. I like that question: Can God trust me.

Can he trust me with a lot of money (metaphorically or not)? With great responsibility? With great power? I.e. in His Kingdom.

We can answer the question after awhile. I say yes He can trust me.

Of course He gives me the ability and constitution to be trustworthy.

ARM YOURSELF. In your time left arm yourself.

Armor is defined in Ephesians 6:10-18.

And Biblical doctrine is armor of God. True, hard-to-accept doctrine is the best armor. It changes you internally.

OLD PATH. Get the old books into you. The ones that just have the feel of weaponry and armor. Get them in the parts and the whole. See through the dead patterns around you. See the whole plan of God and the more invisible realm where the battle takes place.

Go for depth of understanding, deeply engrafted, using only a handful of summit level inspired influences. Influences vetted by time. Reread them. In short master the word of God.

Answering the question of an accredited Christian 'teacher'

Peter Enns, one time, long time, professor at an iconic Reformed seminary, asks why is God so mad at His creation? You have to read the entire post to see how far a person can apostatize.

Here's one answer: idol worship.

Question: has Peter Enns ever read the Old Testament? I know his specialty, but has he ever actually read the Old Testament beginning to end as a plain believer? If he had he'd have seen a lot in the behavior of God's creation to make God angry.

Question: has Peter Enns ever looked into himself? Christianity doesn't even begin until you know you're a sinner.

Peter Enns' juvenile evolutionism aside, his lack of understanding of the Bible, parts-in-relation-to-the-whole understanding, the very type of understanding Reformed Theology uniquely attains to, is an indictment of seminaries in general. That Enns could attain the level of a professor in a so-called top Reformed seminary while having obviously little to zero understanding of the Bible and God's plan of redemption as a whole, and, again, setting aside his inability to distinguish micro from macro evolution claims (which is most likely intentional at this point of his apostasy, Darwinian macro evolution being the old useful hammer to attack Christianity with) shows the worth of academic seminaries of any stripe. About the same as the Ivy League today.

There's a thing going on

There's a thing going on among Reformed academic theologians regarding the republication of the Covenant of Works at Sinai. Because they never saw the simplicity of it, that Jesus came to fulfill what Adam failed to fulfill, and that Jesus was born under the law, and that that law was republished in obviously elaborated form on Sinai (what, was Jesus supposed to not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? and no the battle in the desert with Satan was not a direct analogue to Jesus fulfilling the Covenant of Works), and Jesus followed that law dotting every 'i' and crossing every 't.'

That simplicity which was missed by Reformed academic theologians who solely concentrated on how a republished Covenant of Works could relate to fallen human beings called national Israel, never seeing them as a type of the Messiah who existed to bring the Messiah in their midst in the fulness of time, the Messiah who *could* fulfill the Covenant of Works, etc.

Because they missed this they are now saying: "Well, ahem, of course, it's not as simple, uh, as to just say Jesus fulfilled what Adam failed to fulfill and that the law at Sinai represented that Covenant in the Garden and, uh, so on. It's much more complicated than that."

In other words Reformed academic theologians are reacting to protect their vanity by 'complicating' the matter and by that hoping to lasso it back in to their sterile professor's lounge and away from the street Calvinists who tend to see the parts in relation to the whole upon their first effort to see the parts in relation to the whole, and then recognize terminal understanding of biblical doctrine when they reach it. Rather than making everything akin to ever learning never able to come to understanding of the truth.

How to view death

Christopher Hitchens looked scared in the last weeks and days of his life. When the body starts to break down due to illness or injury it lets go its hold on the soul. That is when the silly atheist starts to see and experience things he'd denied during his life when his body was healthy. At that point Christopher Hitchens either had to silently concede defeat to reality or willfully go into a lunatic state to protect his pride. His speech at the atheist convention shortly before his death suggests the latter.

A corollary note: there is a difference between pondering your death when you are in a healthy state and experiencing the process of death when your body is breaking down. We can ponder death when healthy and come to off-the-mark conclusions or work up unnecessary fears. Once the body releases its smothering* hold over the soul and our spirit and spiritual body are freer to communicate beyond the veil - all a matter of degree in each individual case due to many obvious factors - we're likely to view it like we view now the miracle of birth. People don't freak out when they die.

*If you almost knee-jerked a "You're a Gnostic!!!" accusation slap yourself in the face.

Peter Enns' full stomach

Liberal theologians, cultural Marxists in academia, useful idiots in Hollywood and news media...they're all porting full stomachs.

Unfortunately the victims of their easy, go-with-the-current Devil philosophy are denied that comfort and blithe ease.

How do you explain to a liberal theologian that their game-playing is fueled by a constantly full stomach? You're talking to shells.