No honest atheist

Good post with classic Calvin quote.

James White peeks out of his cave, but retreats quickly

Update below...

James White came on to the PuritanBoard (or there was a James White sighting, let's say) to challenge someone to debate the manuscripts issues on his internet show. He didn't stick around, mind you. If he did that he'd have to expose himself by being confronted by Matthew Winzer, Steve Rafalsky, and Thomas Weddle, not that they are looking to gun him down, but they will, as they have shown, defend the pure and whole Word of God against the Jesuitical corrupt Alexandrian versions. White doesn't want any part of them. For an example of what he is up against, and why he chooses to stay in his cave, down the rock trail from bin Laden, read this by Thomas Weddle.

* * * * *

A 'reverend' at the PuritanBoard has spoken (proving once again how unteachable Reformed academics are on issues that require discernment from the Holy Spirit):

But I'll tell you this: there are people dear to me who stop short of being willing to study the Bible with me, not because I wouldn't be willing to use a translation they were comfortable with, but because I don't think the KJV is the ONLY TRUE BIBLE IN EXISTENCE IN THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD. Isn't that tragic?

The only one translated from the God-preserved Masoretic and Traditional Greek Text yes. God's elect have a thing about wanting the pure and whole Word of God, and not wanting corrupt versions based on corrupt manuscripts that Jesuits have no problem with.

Here, I think it is better that there be ANY translation in the most hands possible,

Yes, spread the leaven of poison around. And you don't have to give away your secret: that that leaven of poison causes people to fear and revere man (scholars, clerics, etc.) and not God. No need to mention that.

and sort out mistakes in understanding, and value (or lack thereof) of this or that "brand" in the context of the church

Can you hear his voice as he's writing this? Like a cardinal on a mission from Rome in the 1500s. "Now, now, can't we reason together here? Mmm? What, after all, is all this commotion? It's silly... Let us all come together in a spirit of peace, and love, for the common good; and I think we will all see, as an added benefit, that we will all be happy, and there will be no more contention (do you know what that word means? I'm sorry to confuse you my little ones, it means arguing and such. Bad things...)..."

but they won't admit of it.

No, those regenerated knuckleheads just won't give up the Word of God. Incredible.

They have been taught by their former teachers that those who do not adhere to the KJV brand are not to be trusted in doctrine.

I'll reword that for you (I'm sure he just got confused): "They have been taught by the Holy Spirit that those who do not adhere to the God-preserved Masoretic and Received Text in sound translation are not to be trusted in matters of the Word of God."

Better to follow false-teaching from a KJV-handling teacher, than an advocate of historic Christianity with "something other than God's Word version" in his hand.

Or better yet, why not go the full distance with the Reformation and follow apostolic biblical doctrine, five solas, doctrines of grace, classical Federal Theology while actually seeing the Word of God as something that is above one and that has the authority of God rather than man in it? Ahh, but now we come up against that regeneration thing...

Fear God, it is the beginning of wisdom. You can't regenerate yourself, but you can move towards God, and He says He will move towards you. Start by engaging his Word. The one you most don't want to engage. That's right, the one man mocks and teaches you to mock. For the soundest translation in English go with the Authorized - King James - Version. Yes, you will be on new ground.

Received vs. constructed

"The Scriptures obtain full authority among believers only when men regard them as having sprung from heaven, as if there the living words of God were heard." - John Calvin

God's elect can discern the *received* text (Masoretic Hebrew/Textus Receptus Greek - in English Tyndale through the Geneva, culminating in the Authorized - King James - Version) from a *constructed* text (all modern versions based on the corrupt Alexandrian manuscripts discarded by God's elect for over 1500 years until found by theological liberals who can't discern up from down and don't want to discern up from down (don't value being able to discern up from down).

The Received Text has the authority of God in it. A constructed text has the authority of man (scholars) in it. Fear and revere God alone, it is the beginning of wisdom.

This subject is a matter of regeneration. The reason the scholars and their followers get so angry when disabused of their false beliefs is because it comes down to the fact that they have yet to be regenerated by the Word and the Spirit and they resent that some people *have.* Of course it is this very resentment towards God's elect, and this very distaste for God's pure and whole Word that is the reason they are currently unregenerate. You can't regenerate yourself, but God says you can move towards Him, and He will move towards you. If, though, you prefer to fear and revere man more than God you will never move towards God in a genuine way. All we elect can do is give them the truth. Give them the true, pure, and whole Word of God, and give them the truth.

A quote for the academic Reformed

"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."

A Discourse Concerning The Holy Spirit - John Owen

Celtic Christianity

"Enter the Celtic missionaries. Out to the west, in the islands of Britannia and Hibernia, constant pagan pressure, like the force exerted on carbon, had resulted in a hard, brilliant, diamondlike Christian spirituality. It was biblical, it was ascetic, it was scholarly, it was uncompromising and it was evangelistic. Impelled by peregrinatio, a kind of divine wanderlust, pioneer missionaries such as Columban, Fursey, Willibrod and Boniface roamed the European mainland, converting pagans and tearing down their shrines, preaching affective religion to Christians, challenging monks and priests to live up to their vocations and establishing centers for contemplation and study. These puritanical and purifying missionaries exercised a profound influence on Charlemagne."

Charlemagne - Derek Wilson, pg. 7

To a (I assume) young girl

Learn about the Reformation. The battle for the Masoretic and Received Texts (the pure and whole - received - Word of God) was won in the 16th century. The reformers won that battle at great price. They gave of their lives. The counter-Reformation made the Word of God the main battleline. The forces of darkness knew that if they could put doubt in the minds of God's people regarding the authority of the Word of God then people would put their authority in the word of man. This was what the Jesuits of the counter-Reformation sought to do and they were defeated by God's own. Then a slight historical interlude (the devil always has the long view) and the same dark forces got their victory in the 19th century with nary a shot fired.

This is about God's preservation of his Word. It's also about the famine of the end times. It's also about authority. Is your authority God or is your authority man?

When I hold the Authorized - King James - Version (any of the sound Reformation era translations of the Masoretic and Received texts) I have God's perfectly preserved Word. I have real authority. The Bible received by the universal Church of which Christ is King. The Bible fought for and defended through time and tyranny and martyrdom. Kept available by God's own for God's own.

Notice all projects to make a modern translation of the Masoretic and Received texts today deviates (such as the New King James Version and the Holman Christian Standard)? That is God-ordained as well. The famine of the end times is real. God hardens. God puts stumblingblocks in front of people. His own, though, know the voice of the Shepherd.

Don't throw away what God has preserved for you. Don't fear and revere man and the mocking of man. Fear God only, not man. It is the beginning of wisdom.

[The above was written in response to a girl on her blog. She was repeating what James White had taught her regarding the Word of God.]

A good line on prayer

I like the succinctness of this statement:

>God answers prayers in one of two ways: "Yes," or "I have something better."

Don't know who said it. It was on a person's signature on a forum without a reference to author. It's deeper than it may look at first.

On an atheist forum I gave an example of how a prayer can be answered but in a way a person didn't expect: a woman is treated badly by her husband, she asks in prayer to God for it to be better; so God answers the prayer by opening up the possibility for the woman to move out and away from her abusive husband. Not what the woman expected when she said her prayer.

An atheist responded: "Or the husband beats her to death. This prayer stuff is just way too arbitrary. Good luck with it though." In so many words.

Well, in that case the woman would be getting something arguably better: she would be going to heaven. Not something you ask for (the death part), but a good result nevertheless.

Pure ignorance

Just as one should never underestimate the role of drugs or alcohol in the strange and violent and criminal behaviour of human beings it is also the case that one should never underestimate the role of pure ignorance in the actions and statements of people in the realms of politics and religion.

This was brought to mind once again when reading prominent internet religion personality Michael "iMonk" Spencer scolding a Reformed Baptist for the crime of suggesting there is a difference in how Protestants and Roman Catholics view doctrine and also for suggesting that it matters.

Michael Spencer has admitted on his forum he is 'ADD' (attention deficit disorder), that he has never been able to read the Word of God through, and that he finds it difficult to take seriously anybody who does. Further, he states that he has never studied biblical doctrine in any kind of sustained way (in fact, he dropped out of his seminary education at the lowest level).

So we have this individual who is purely ignorant of both apostolic biblical doctrine and its corruptions into what is called Roman Catholic doctrine who then can still find it in himself to lecture to people (to the Protestants, of course) what is correct and what should be.

Just as when you hear of a boy who has killed his family you should assume the boy had been on any number of drugs prescribed by teachers and doctors (and the media has a policy to never mention such things, by the way) it is also the case that when you hear a political liberal or atheist or a Christian who defaults to criticizing Protestants continually and Protestant doctrine assume the person is purely and astonishingly ignorant of what he is speaking and writing of.

To be a liberal or an atheist or a Roman Catholic you just have to be born. To be a conservative and a Christian who understands and holds to apostolic biblical doctrine you have to come into contact with influences that educate you, and you have to be able to engage those influences in a non-desultory, dedicated way (not to mention value them).

Reformed Theology - the gold standard

Most schools of theology are:

1. partial
2. sentimental
3. self-defensive

Reformed Theology (Classical Covenant - Federal - Theology, i.e. five solas, doctrines of grace, federal Calvinism) is not partial (i.e. it deals with the whole and values the whole counsel of God, recognizing the final authority of the Masoretic and Received texts in sound translation as that, in English, of the Authorized - King James - Version).

Reformed Theology is not sentimental (it is apostolic biblical doctrine unwatered down, un-negotiated down to the demands of fallen man or what man deems to be 'right' and 'fair' and 'just' and so on).

Reformed Theology is not self-defensive in that a basic degree of God-awareness and self-awareness is necessary to value and hold to pure biblical doctrine, and an acknowledgment of one's fallen state and what it entails is also needed. I.e. no screwing around with self-justification(s).

Reformed theologians less steady on their feet in these areas

This post by TurretinFan brings up two issues where Reformed theologians are a bit, or a lot, less steady on their feet, biblically.

Reformed theologians are valuable because they say what the Bible says. The best of the Reformed school anyway.

The Bible, though, gives little guidance (explicit, but there is implicit guidance) for Reformed theologians when it comes to 1. the so-called intermediate state, and 2. the much-admired and must-be-recognized-as-good flesh body regarding resurrection.

You know that flesh body, that you just blew some snot out of the two holes in your face? Yes, you know what I refer to. MUSTN'T BE GNOSTIC! (Anything is 'gnostic' to modern day Reformed theologians that doesn't jive with thinking and proclaiming the flesh body to be just the most great and cool thing ever (!). Gas bag of snot, blood, and water, lookin' cool!) "Honey! What's that sound you just made? Good thing the guys at the seminary and the church didn't hear that! Flesh bodies are cool!"

"Honey, use the picture of us where we look perfect. Not the ones where we look normal. Our flesh bodies are cool! We're not gnostic!"

"I'm a married seminary graduate, and sex is just GREAT! You can do it in, like, three different positions! The flesh body is cool!"

"I have bones in my hands!!! The flesh body is cool!"

"A godly doctor is going to fix this, honey. Meanwhile we will hide out."

"Honey, it's a delicate subject I know, but we just can't get lazy with our hygiene. Oh my God, honey! Hygiene is spelled so weird! Honey?"

OK, yes, flesh bodies are cool. The flesh is cool. Got it, all you Reformed theologians who aren't fundamentalists. You like ice cream, you like sex, you like to call anything you don't like gnostic. OK.

But saying that our bodies we have now are resurrected yet in a changed state is like saying I can run a four-minute mile, yet only if I have bees' wings.

The correct metaphor is probably the difference between a seed planted, and a flower sprung.

Jesus resurrected in something resembling his old flesh body (with wounds and all) because Jesus had to show He was resurrected from the dead. We don't have that burden on us. And even Jesus, in his resurrected body with wounds and all, could pass through walls and appear and disappear at will.

So enough with the: "So, Nick, your head is all out of proportion to your body? Which makes you very unpopular at church? Right. Get use to it. You'll resurrect in the same body you have now. You'll be like that for eternity. Even though you have no connection to all the DNA that went in to your current body, I mean, nobody is born to anybody in heaven, but still. It's what the Reformed theologians insist on...because FLESH IS COOL AND NOT TO BE DISPARAGED LIKE SOME FUNDAMENTALIST MORON WOULD DO!!! HA HA HA!! BIG HEAD!!!

The caps scare off the faint of heart. No more caps. I have to reach the faint of heart too.

As for the business of the 'intermediate state', which is the term Reformed theologians give their speculations regarding what happens when the unregenerate die.

First off, the Bible doesn't say what happens to the unregenerate when they die. It does say what happens to the regenerate and believing when they die, they go to be with God. The unregenerate, though, enter some ill-defined 'intermediate state' which Reformed theologians can only speculate on the nature of because they can't say anything dogmatically biblical on the subject.

Here's what happens: first you have to broaden your knowledge of the possibilities of what can happen when one dies. 1. annihilation. 2. reincarnation. 3. going to a different place, heaven or hell or what have you. Any other possibilities? They're all pretty much covered in those three.

Yet there is another that Reformed theologians don't know of (though early Christian theologians did know of). It's called recurrence. It's not reincarnation. It is what is to be understood by the biblical phrase 'fullness of time.'

Recurrence means the time you are alive in is living time and never goes away, even though you seem to go away. It can really only be thought of in terms of revolution or a circle, but that is a shallow way to think of it. It is more like a cosmos-like sphere in which develops the fullness of time. Recurrence encompasses all aspects of time. Higher aspects of time. Things the Bible doesn't go into because it would explode the narrative and the teaching. It's not practical to discuss higher aspects of time in the context of biblical teaching.

Recurrence means that when, to our limited perception of time, someone has died they are still in their time. Their living time. Time is not linear, in other words. We perceive it as linear - birth to death - but it is not that, and just to see that see how God perceives time. (And yes there is an interval between the great shocks of death and birth, and perhaps Hades is involved in this interval.) God can act anywhere at any time because He acts from eternity. He is not limited by - or in - time as we are. So, practically speaking, unregenerate at death doesn't necessarily imply reprobation. (And we all know this to be true because we don't instinctively and intuitively feel the need to scream the Gospel message to all people we see every minute of our days, but if unregenerate at death means eternal hellfire at death then we very well should be screaming the Gospel message to everyone at all times -- issues of election aside, we are called to spread the message. Yet we don't - i.e. don't do it frantically every minute of our days - and we don't feel we are falling short. A more paced evangelization is the order of the day. For most of us anyway.)

Now here comes a deep statement: when a person is even to the point of engaging the Word of God itself then their time has started to be counted anyway, so for them recurrence means less. When you are dead asleep in the way the unregenerate are dead asleep recurrence happens without you knowing, but once you begin to awaken your time is then counted and you either graduate or you fail. And failure has its consequences in God's plan. This is why hell exists. This is why the chaff is burned.

The biblical statement that you die once is obviously true. It is the same as saying you only have one portion of living time.

But if one must think in terms of revolutions and a circle of time think of this: there is a great wheel that is the wheel of this Age. This great wheel makes one revolution, then the end of the age occurs. Inside this great wheel are little wheels that represents individual lives. These little wheels turn many times as the great wheel makes its one big and single turn. But this is a shallow way to see living time, or the fullness of time. It can be helpful, but it is ultimately shallow and misleading. You don't 'live many times.' You have one life, but in higher aspects of time that one life develops in ways that our linear perception of time doesn't show. And God can act on us, or in us, in any part of our living time.

Also, briefly, because human experience involves common types and patterns (more so than we like to think or admit) changes we experience in recurrence can be seemingly dramatic, yet really not so dramatic, yet real. Gender would seem a dramatic change, but really not so. We all harbor secondary sexual characteristics in us unmanifested (that would be characteristics that define male and female). Families too are not so different (meaning the ones that are the same type in the finite gallery of types). One can be in one or in another pretty easily. Things like the birth of children can even be a matter of change. It all works out. In the fullness of time.

Now, Reformed theologians, you have to admit that you speculate on where the unregenerate go at death. Some of you say 'soul sleep' (Luther, Tyndale) which is not popular now (Calvin wrote his first doctrinal book against it). Roman Catholics developed a big unbiblical doctrine called Purgatory to tackle, in part, the problem. Reformed theologians obviously don't cotton to that. Some Reformed say the unregenerate at death go straight to hell. Yet hell is what you have to be judged to at the great white throne judgment which doesn't happen until the Second Coming which occurs at the end of time. Some Reformed then say, well, the unregenerate at death go to a 'sort of hell', not as bad as the big bad hell, but pretty bad. And they wait there until the Judgment and they are thrown into the big bad hell.

All speculation.

What happens is things develop in the fullness of time. Time is living. An individual can be regenerated at any part of his time because the Holy Spirit isn't constrained to act in a person's life in a way that conforms to how human beings perceive time.

Kick and scream all you want. Your real problem is you don't understand that there is a difference between recurrence and reincarnation. In recurrence you are the same you. Your time is the same. Your death is one death just as your time is one living time. You don't go back to Roman times, and you don't become an historical figure. You stay you. Yes, there can be change (good change, hopefully) which is what the phrase fullness of times implies. It implies a developing of history and lives within time. All within the limit of God's decreed time in his plan of redemption.

Message to the PuritanBoard Administrators and Moderators

You know when you are being addressed by a Christian. Your conscience knows. When you 'banned' discussion of the Word of God at your falsely-named, tea-party forum you crossed a line. Now you are fully in the army of the Devil and his kingdom of death. Calling yourselves Puritans is like homosexuals calling themselves men.

Any Christians who continue on that board have given their allegiance to the devil and his end times army.

When the King returns you will have to face Christians like myself, all of you. No it won't go well with you. When the King returns the order of the day will be to do away with all the devil's followers ONCE AND FOR ALL.

Another open message to the iMonk at the Boar's Head Tavern

As the iMonk flops on the shore of the Tiber, actually, where the water meets the shore, allow me to offer a few thoughts...

iMonk, admit that 80 percent of your current kvetching is due to mommy-wife having gone into the Roman Catholic Church. Period.

That's a logistical problem for you, not a spiritual one.

The other 20 percent of your problems (what is causing your kvetching) are caused by the fact that you havn't actually read the Word of God. Preaching Matthew 6 in church last Sunday is not reading the Word of God. You need to actually engage the Word of God in a way that is the opposite of waking up every day to splatter posts on your various websites. You need to make a dedicated, day by day, complete reading - complete downloading - of the Word of God into your short attention span mind and heart and soul.

(Oh, and the fact that Travis Prinzi actually got a book published demolishing your self-image as *the Writer* at your pub. That is really stinging you as well. There is a current noxious mix of things jabbing sharp objects into your pride, into your vanity.)

The unity of the Kingdom of God exists in the new heart of every Christian. Externally you just need the Word of God, the five solas (simple, eh? doctrine all contained right there, five solas, can't argue with that, can you?) and your practice of the faith, which everyone needs to be led by the Spirit and the Word of God to develop and to do. 1. Word of God, standard and authority; 2. doctrine, five solas; 3. your 'rule', or practice, that you actually do. Then evangelize with your presence, and with the Word of God. Then wait on the Lord regarding your number of days...