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9.30.2006

Christians who don't really care for the Faith



One of the in-house scholars at Pyromaniacs was lecturing me that Christians aren't prophets. He cited his verses and accused me of not bowing to the Word of God and so on. I explained to him that to be a prophet, priest, and king is of the very nature of having the image of God. He didn't grasp this. I explained to him how his verses weren't saying what he claimed they were. He wasn't having any of it. I cited verses he didn't know existed. He ignored them. (No, I'm not a genius, I just read the whole and pure Word of God.) So lately I've been looking through my four-volume edition of Wilhelmus à Brakel's Christian's Reasonable Service and came across section titles such as:

The Christian's Sacred Duty to be a Prophet

and

The Prophetical Obligations of the Christian

In the chapter on the Prophetical Office of Jesus Christ.

And it turns out à Brakel was on the same page as me (or vice versa) regarding just what it means for a Christian to be a prophet: knowing the mysteries of the Gospel, and making them known to others. Also, I would throw in having direct access - and communication - with God Himself via prayer, made possible by our High Priest Jesus Christ and his work on the cross. But I said all this to the in-house scholar at the time, and it was typical brick wall response.

It reminded me of the time another of the in-house scholars at Pyromaniacs challenged me when I stated that when you fear God you don't fear man. He wanted to salvage some good old-fashioned fear of man, Roman Catholic style (all these church Christians these days are Roman Catholic just beneath the surface). So I attempted to disabuse him of his beliefs, but couldn't, and only later came across this passage from à Brakel on the subject.

Why am I so on the same page with a Dutch Second Reformation theologian, and why are modern day church Christians so not on the same page with a Dutch Second Reformation theologian? Because à Brakel, being part of that Dutch Second Reformation (the Nadere Reformatie) was, like the English Puritans, very much aware that the Faith involves the practice of godliness (practical piety), and that exercising oneself unto godliness is, in fact, one of the very pillars of the faith. And not divorced from the pure doctrine (like German - Lutheran - pietists of that day). Pure doctrine being five solas, doctrines of grace, Federal Theology Calvinism for the record.

3 PILLARS OF THE FAITH
Word of God...the engrafted Word (as authority)
Pure, apostolic biblical doctrine
Practical piety (or godliness, or exercising oneself unto godliness)

Modern day church Christians disdain the first and third above (the ones that do effect to value the pure doctrine). They mock you if you value the Word of God by actually reading it complete (which is a regeneration issue, by the way); or if you expose their corrupt manuscripts their modern versions are based on and hence if you hold to things like supernatural preservation of God's Word and not dictating to God's Word, pridefully, what it is and will be. And they mock any notion of practicing the faith at the practical level. They have a dead faith, and they are energetic in preaching it and enforcing it (to the extent that they can; they of course can't when it comes to God's elect).

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