Biblical doctrine is made practical when seen in the context of spiritual warfare

When you seek what is practical - when you are practical - with biblical doctrine it comes down to seeing it in the context of spiritual warfare.

Example: classical covenant theology, the massive structure of it, three covenants, from eternity to eternity, can seem to people as alot of esoteric or arcane theological intellectualizing, but when you understand it and then you see it in the practical context of spiritual warfare it itself becomes practical and something that effects you in real time in a very real way.

Spiritual warfare is about kingdoms. The Kingdom of Satan and the Kingdom of God. Competing claims to souls, competing jurisdictions and laws and status and power and so on. When you are regenerated by the Word and the Spirit you are freed from the Kingdom of Satan and become a citizen of - given legal status in - the Kingdom of God. You have to realize this and assert this boldly because in the spiritual warfare that follows regeneration the devil and his ministers and followers and duped slaves will challenge your status and seek to fool you about your status as much as they can get away with. But when you know of the Covenant of Redemption and the legal foundation of your being a subject of the Kingdom of God, and what it brings you which is everything God has, you being an heir of the Living God of all Creation (think of - on a smaller scale - the biblical analogy of how the apostle Paul benefited legally from his being recognized as a Roman citizen) you are acting in your spiritual battles with knowledge and understanding of who you are and what you are, and this makes you more formidable a soldier of Christ in Christ's army.

As Paul had standing upon the laws of Rome and thus protection from Rome (using that smaller scale example) you as an effectually called, regenerated, justified believer in the Lord Jesus Christ stand upon the eternal Pactum Salutis and thus draw real protection from that Eternal Covenant, and this also lets you know who you are and what is expected of you and what powers you have derived from it. It gives you a real sense of why and how you are to glorify God.

The context of New Age Bible Versions by Gail Riplinger

This is the context to really see what Gail Riplinger's New Age Bible Versions is: spiritual warfare.

It's a work on spiritual warfare.

This places it in its proper context.

She outlined a campaign that had been going on under the radar for over a century, and did it in a bold and on-the-mark way.

The reaction speaks for itself.

Critical Text championing academics (and Christians who follow such academics) have yet to have their vanity and worldly pride and self-will broken. They've yet to receive the Spirit of discernment. They can't yet discern nor even value the pure and whole Word of God. They still demand to dictate to God what His Word is. They mock true believers which is a sign as well of being currently unregenerate.

When you are still in a state where you are under the tyranny of vanity and worldly pride, the main object of which is your dinky academic intellect, you can do nothing else but mock and express resentment at Christians who challenge you on the issues of the pure and whole Word of God. You have no other choice. Other than to begin to humble yourself to that Word...

Part 2 of newly available Gail Riplinger video

Here is Pt. 2 of the series of programs in which Gail Riplinger is being interviewed which follows Pt. 1 posted here.

Her critics are forced into mocking sophistry and disingenuously playing to the ignorance of their audience, like liberal politicians. All to salvage their man-centered demands to dictate to the Word of God what it will be.

Words and phrases I renounce and don't renounce

I hereby announce I will no longer descend into my righteous mode where I use such words as filthy (no more filthy this, filthy that) or 'rot in hell' or 'may you be burned at the stake' or 'you should be taken outside and whipped in front of your mother'... No more. No more of that. Never again... 'Satanic'? yes. I will use satanic still. 'High priests of the devil's Critical Text manuscripts', phrases such as that, yes. They are still in play. 'Village of Morality Christians', of course. No reason to toss that one. 'Pointy-shoed mockers'? yes. Talking about people 'scratching their wrists' as they expound Dispensationalism? Yes. That is still in. Talking about people who would have been 'sucking the Pope's ring' if confronted with decisions the heroic reformers were confronted with? Yes, I will continue to use such a phrase. It's a perfectly good phrase.

What the word Protestant means

There is a widespread misunderstanding regarding the definition of Protestant. Protestant is a noun when it refers to Christians. It means one who confesses, or gives witness to, the Word of God. It doesn't mean one who protests 'X', 'Y', or 'Z'.

Liberal theologians and Roman Catholics like to put forward the lie that Protestant simply means people who are in protest against something, and hence merely some ongoing movement always in need of, and always seeking, something to be against. Liberal theologians benefit from this lie because it enables them to belittle Protestantism as being, if anything, beyond it's initial reason-for-being. Roman Catholics benefit from this lie because it enables them to pose as the mainstay institution of which Protestantism is merely a breakaway protest and hence ephemeral and of a satellite nature to the 'real thing.'

When you see that Protestant means one who confesses, or gives witness to, the Word of God you see that Protestants are simply real Christians confessing and practicing real Christianity. The classical, historical Protestant confessions of faith and catechisms - a practice unique to Protestants from the beginning - have in common that they contain apostolic biblical doctrine. Whether the Apostles' Creed and other early biblical creeds or the Westminster Standards or the Three Forms of Unity or the London Baptist Confession of Faith or the Second Helvetic or the handful of others (which only differ in areas such as church polity and sacramental issues, doctrine that the Word of God is not clear cut on, and hence intentionally not clear cut on; i.e. doctrine that applies differently to different eras in the history of redemption, or doctrine that applies differently to the different stages of development as the Holy Spirit guides individual Christians in their active, progressive sanctification). They define, in their totality, Protestantism. Protestants are Christians that uniquely fear God only and give witness to the Word of God rather than the words of man.

Critical Text Christians and Atheists

Critical Text academics and their followers are often struck silent when it is pointed out to them their anger and resentment towards the Traditional Text and the Authorized King James Version and the Christians who hold to the Traditional Text and the doctrine of God's providence regarding preservation of His Words. They usually respond, when they've gathered themselves, with something like this: "Oh, no, no, no, I don't dislike the Authorized Version...no, not at all! I have nothing against it, really..."

In this they sound just like atheists when it is pointed out to them that they really only hate Christianity and really have no problem with Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism, etc. They will protest in a similar manner and tone as the Critical Text people: "Oh, absolutely untrue! I, um, I spend time angrily writing and speaking against Christianity because, er, because it is so influential in my world and effects me so much! If I lived in a Muslim country or Hindu country I'd be writing and speaking against them as well!"

Right.

Critical Text people know they dislike the traditional text Word of God because it is something that is above them, given to them by God, something they must humble themselves to, something they can't 'determine' what it is or dictate to God what His Word is. This is really what they demand and the doctrine of God's providential preservation of His Word takes that away from them. They are willing, like Romanists, to defy all of the history of the Reformation to get and keep what they demand.

James White and his super ultra violet Bible camera

Critical Text high priest (and Orange Julius Professor of Theology from the University of Stripmall), James White, has declared, using his super ultra violet Bible camera Christians for centuries have been waiting to be invented, that verse 1 Tim. 3:16 in the traditional, Received Text is accurate after all...'

We Christians eagerly await more super ultra violet Bible camera discoveries from the Orange Julius Professor of Theology in the coming years validating the text God has preserved for His elect (the always controversial Received Text underlying the Authorized Version, 1611!). These are exciting times for textual criticism!

ps- Read the tone of White's post above. He is a mocking, 16th century Romanist cleric wearing modern Protestant garb. And notice how he never misses a chance to equate elect Christians (those of us who actually can discern and value - and humble ourselves to - the pure and whole Word of God) to Muslims. The irony of that is White's Critical Text-loving Roman Catholic Church of today considers Muslims to be part of their communion. White needs to upgrade his material for mocking...

Remember: the reformers defeated the Romanists on the manuscript issues in the 1500s (and starting prior of course). The battle is nothing new. (It started in the Garden when the devil questioned God's Word when deceiving Eve.) Many of the reformers heroically fought and lost their lives in the most horrible ways in that battle. God bless them, and God have vengeance on the ministers of the devil who preach and teach and mock and attempt to intimidate Christians (in the exact same way Darwinian evolutionists do to people who don't buy that Satanic lie), and who attempt to fool Christians into buying the devil's corrupt manuscripts and the [per]versions based on them such as the one White gets paid money to push, the Arian/Romanist New American Standard Perversion.

God have vengeance on all who willfully corrupt God's Word.

New Riplinger video (newly available)

Here's an interesting new video - newly available video - of Gail Riplinger being interviewed back in the '90s.

The host is a bit long-winded (and caught in a crossfire from the angry followers of the Critical Text priests who immediately deluged the host with angry letters after Riplinger's first appearance on his show), but it is worth listening to in full. Gail Riplinger also gives an impressive biblical and common-sense defense of her academic credentials in the midst of the interview when the host challenges her on this subject based on a letter he received.

It's hard not to find Gail Riplinger charming and a woman not only of real understanding but of real understanding of her subject matter. The hatred and mocking directed towards her is exactly similar to the hatred and mocking that Romanists directed towards the reformers back in the 16th century. Gail Riplinger is challenging the authority of followers of the academic priesthood (and she is challenging those academic priests themselves). She is on the reformers side, ironically. I say ironically because many of her most vocal mockers self-identify as Calvinists/Reformed. They don't know their own history, and they are yet to know - and value - the pure and whole Word of God. They've yet to humble themselves to God's Word. They are still in the self-willful, unregenerate state of demanding to dictate to God's Word what it will be. That they are teaching and influencing others puts them in grave danger of a harsh judgment.

Also see this post.

A Gail Riplinger and Calvinism post

Every self-identified Calvinist/Reformed Christian currently laboring under the fear and reverence of academic priests and thus mocking Christians who value the traditional text of the Word of God (in English: Authorized Version, 1611) needs to read this comment from another blog written by 'Thomas', and read it complete...all the way to the end...

Dear Truth Unites and Divides,

You asked:

“If I may ask, if they [the reformers] did not approach this from an Enlightenment philosophy with its attendant extrabiblical standards, then whence or how did they approach the doctrine of Inspiration, Inerrancy, and Infallibility?”

Francis Turretin, a Geneva Reformer and author of the Helvetic Consensus, explains the matter plainly. For more see that Consensus:

“By the original texts, we do not mean the autographs written by the hand of Moses, of the prophets and the apostles, which certainly do not now exist. We mean their apographs which are so called because they set forth to us the word of God in the very words of those who wrote under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Spirit.” Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 1992 1:106.

For a much more expansive answer I would refer you to Richard Muller’s, “Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics.” Here is a pertinent quote:

“By “original” and “authentic” text, the Protestant orthodox do not mean the autographa which no one can possess but the apographa in the original tongue which are the source of all versions. The Jews throughout history and the church in the time of Christ regarded the Hebrew of the Old Testament as authentic and for nearly six centuries after Christ, the Greek of the New Testament was viewed as authentic without dispute. It is important to note that the Reformed orthodox insistence on the identification of the Hebrew and Greek texts as alone authentic does not demand direct reference to autographa in those languages: the “original and authentic text” of Scripture means, beyond the autograph copies, the legitimate tradition of Hebrew and Greek apographa. The case for Scripture as an infallible rule of faith and practice and the separate arguments for a received text free from major (non-scribal) error rests on an examination of the apographa and does not seek the infinite regress of the lost autographa as a prop for textual infallibility…. [In related footnote 165 Muller observes: “A rather sharp contrast must be drawn, therefore, between the Protestant orthodox arguments concerning the autographa and the views of Archibald Alexander Hodge and Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield.”] p. 433

The principle held today in modern criticism of this “infinite regress” to “inerrant autographa” is the textual heterdoxy of BB Warfield when he departed from the Westminster Confession and then redefined it in terms of his departure standing upon the enlightenment presupposition of Wescott and Hort. His departure from Protestant orthodoxy created a need to establish and maintain a scientific definition of Biblical inerrancy under attack by naturalistic scientific theory, walla, “inerrant autographa.” It is a new and novel idea in terms of historic Reformed Orthodoxy, none of the Magisterial Reformers held to the concept, on the contrary, that was Rome’s claim.

To the Reformers the Bible was infallible because it was the very word of the Living God. They simply identified the legitimate tradition of the preservation of the text and received it.

So, they approached it in the way they approached Nicene and Chalcedonian orthodoxy, thus they did not create a second classification of Scripture based upon hypothetical and hellenic presuppositions (”inerrant autographs”) in which God by His “singular care and providence” becomes required to abide by. Once you take the Bible in your hands and pit the autographa against the apographa, you are attempting to hold it in dialetical tension in the hellenic Form/Matter dialetic; you then become a wordless “Christian Mime.” Which is why the Gospel only speaks today in terms of “relevancy,” instead of an authoritative word from the Most High God.

Thus, they didn’t philosophize about the text, they received the Scriptures that was common to Greek and Protestant Church through the ages. The modern heterdoxy of “inerrant autographs” would have been seen by the Reformers as a concession to Rome, and the modern fundamentalist “KVJ Only” baptist clearly senses this. He simply doesn’t have the ability to deal with the problem of Biblical Authority with the philosophical tools at hand to him, this is because he is standing upon Reformed Orthodoxy in receipt of the Authorized Version but theologically denies the doctrines of that Orthodoxy. Hence, he necessarily creates the “inspiration” of the translation to maintain his theological independence. If you look at Riplinger, for example, whom James White disparages; she receives the Bible of Chalcedonian Orthodoxy (e.g., Calvinism) and sets out on anti-Calvinistic tirade because the Reformed caved to naturalistic scientific criticism ala BB Warfield and published that Romish NIV. James White, then, in his championing of Warfeldian heterdoxy simply confirms, in their eyes, every word she wrote.

We need to consider that the fundamentalist Baptist dogmatic stand upon the Authorized Version is the greatest opportunity for an evangelistic explosion of Reformational Orthodoxy since the Reformation itself. We should be embracing this, not disparaging it.

The Reformers did not try to stand upon a presupposition of neutral objectivity, they were biased against Rome and championed that bias. It is a matter of presuppositions by and through which one interprets the data, EF Hills explains this very well in his work, King James Version Defended.

The same problem exists, for example, in the way the evolutionist pretends to be capable of standing upon neutral ground to interpret the creation, instead of being analogical and thinking God’s thoughts after Him, in his definition he becomes a maker of facts, and stumbles. Likewise, the principles of eclectic criticism is the academic equivalent of the Scopes Monkey Trial in its quest for the inerrant autographa, which is why the Authorized Version is scorned and disparaged.

From a concluding post by 'Thomas':

Gentlemen,

It was my intention to demonstrate what the Reformers believed in regard to the spurios claim that the “Providential…theory of textual criticism” was something that was made up. While this may have been merely a “name” of a category that was made up, I believe anyone is going to associate that the same way I did and it was coupled to a charge broad-brushing anyone that held to such a thing stood in the camp of the fundamentalists.

I believe I have provided an adequate amount of evidence that demonstrates there was and is a completely different orientation to the issue that is silently glossed over in the modern critical claim. The Church, at best, is left with the impression that the Reformers just didn’t have the evidence to make a correct determination, or at worst, were nincompoops and must be dismissed out of hand.

What troubles me most about that is that these were men that were hunted down and many died horrible deaths in order to secure for their posterity the words of God. Modern criticism works without risk or threat casting aspersions upon great men of the faith.

I believe that Christians, who receive the Bible as the very word of God, have a right to know the truth of history and not merely the opinions of modern textual critics that advance their cause without hardly ever a mention of the varying views of history which was responsible for the English Protestant Reformation, upon which all of the American settlement rests.

Every man is born into history on grounds inheriting the past, he has a right to the truth of that history. While Mr. Wallace may wish to charge me with some agenda, that simply isn’t the case. I simply offered a post demonstrating their was another view in history, and then simply answered some questions of others that seemed to me, at least, to be ignorant of this (even if they disagreed with its conclusions) or interested in it.

There is one correction I need to make, in my haste of response - which I too admit was too lengthy for blog comments, and for that I apologize - I stated they held to it as the inerrant original. I should have said “infallible original” As they did hold the inerrancy and infalibility as two separate things and did not seek an inerrancy. Their orientation was completely different - they simply worked to identify what they believed was the preserved word of God.

Finally, then, Mr. Wallace claims that the Protestant claim of “Ad fontes” was sought independent of ancient catholic orthodoxy, that is simply false. “Ad fontes” was coupled to a return to the Faith of the early Church as contained within the Creeds. There is no irony here, nor a Catholic method - it is fundamentally dishonest to equate ancient catholic orthodoxy to medieval scholasticism’s shift in the locus of Authority to the visible Church.

Gail Riplinger is in this title because you need to read this

Look at the comment thread under this post. The commenter named Thomas is exceptional - I mean, truly exceptional by any standard - in articulating the real issues regarding the traditional text vs. the so-called Critical Text. He nails the liberal academics (including the ones who have no self-awareness of their liberal views regarding Scripture). He also nails Reformed and self-identified Calvinist Christians (of the Village of Morality kind, which unfortunately is by far the most numerous kind) in showing them how they've adopted the Romanist position on Scripture and are using the same tactics against Christians that Romanists used during the Reformation. Because Thomas' comments may be deleted over at the above-linked blog (the blog owner actually rebuked him for writing comments that were 'too long', this is all he could come up with to chill him, the blog owner being a Critical Text dupe), I will put the entire thread in a comment below to save it for future reference.

The demonizing of words, at the instigation of the devil

> A quotation directly from Wikipedia's Therese de Lisieux page.
>
> Everything is a grace, everything is the direct effect of our father's
> love ù difficulties, contradictions, humiliations, all the soul's
> miseries, her burdens, her needs ù everything, because through them,
> she learns humility, realizes her weakness ù Everything is a grace
> because everything is God's gift. Whatever be the character of life or
> its unexpected events ù to the heart that loves, all is well.
>
> And another:
>
> Do you realize that Jesus is there in the tabernacle expressly for you-
> for you alone? He burns with the desire to come into your heart...don't
> listen to the demon, laugh at him, and go without fear to receive the
> Jesus of peace and love...

True Christian development leads to the private realizations and understanding like that. God deals with individuals. Many churches and preachers and Christian writers will mock you if you say such a thing. They usually are wearing very worldly garb. Suits and ties, or casual wear that the world wears. They are afraid of not looking like everyone else in the world. You can't turn humiliation into understanding when you are afraid of being alone with yourself. When you are afraid of not being a part of the crowd.

I read of some very on-the-mark though CHURCH-ORIENTED theologians who later in life it is said they became mystics. You can't help but become a mystic if you are developing as a believer. I mean, a separated-out one (sanctification). I know 'mystic' has alot of meanings, but I mean one who is alone with God and not afraid of being alone with God. Against the world.

Of course a robe by itself doesn't do it. Bare feet are not a necessity. Being not afraid to be alone with yourself is a necessity, and being not upset if the world finds you to be disgusting (the world can be very shameless in expressing itself towards those unafraid to fear - and be alone with - God only.