Don't get stuck on sacraments, that's like being stuck on stupid

To the paedo-baptists who are currently in a mini-uproar saying "We aren't going to take it anymore!" you have to realize that the Reformed Baptists are the hunters and have the upper hand on you because they have the Bible on their side, and you are the hunted and just want to be left alone because you don't have the Bible on your side.

Beyond that, you all need to read The Embattled Christian, by Bryan G. Zacharias. It will be a good beginning for you on the foundational subject of spiritual warfare (foundational for a born again Christian).

Being stuck on sacraments is a sign of a devil-whipped Christian.

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It should be stated, over and over, that the dirty little not-so-secret secret of the paedo-baptists is they believe in baptismal regeneration. They are without the Spirit and demand to have control of what God only has control of: regeneration. And their anger towards anybody who would take their baptismal regeneration away from them is the same anger Cain had for Abel. Also, again, their seemingly now final refined argument for this unbiblical demand of theirs is now resting on their new canard that infant baptism is a synonym for classical Covenant - Federal - Theology (I, by the way, taught these superficially educated morons that Federal Theology was Covenant Theology systematized). One of their leaders points to the Abrahamic Covenant as the source for linking infant baptism to Covenant Theology, but, as shown in a post below, that was flimsy to begin with and was sure to be gunned down by their very own theologians.

A difficult to articulate, nagging subject matter

[from an email]

Something you guys have to know about the Bible and Christianity and biblical doctrine and faith and practice and all of it.

Take my approach to things, for instance. I cut through the noise and the nonsense and find the heart of things and the foundation and see what is real and practical and on-the-mark.

*I* can see the thinness and artificiality and silliness of much of what passes for Christianity at ALL levels. Most of it is obvious, but even the ones who know the Bible are asinine and not hitting any kind of practical mark, and not developing real understanding. They are in the world and still *of* the world. Guys driving minivans and considering themselves special and of the 'right crowd' for doing it.

I see this. Here is the problem though.

With Christianity there are a zillion forces at work trying to defile the truth. And where the truth is most being taught and defended *there* is where most of the most virulent and venomous and tireless false teachers are congregating, *inside the tent and outside the tent.*

So if a believer like myself who has understanding of biblical doctrine, and who has been given understanding of the practice of the faith just separates from the others because they are shallow and worse then all the false teachers have a field day.

It's more complicated than that. You sort of *have to* operate on the level of intellectual doctrinal defense - a seeming surface level - because that is where the false teachers and false teachings make their appearance and attempt to defile.

Then also there is a real phenomenon with biblical doctrine that the more you can see it and hold to it the more it *becomes* your inner state. So its surfacy, intellectual-only nature can be deceptive. That doesn't, though, explain the shallowness of biblical Christians and theologians and their general and common lack of development. That is the work of the world and the devil and their own inner fallen natures having the advantage of them. This is the work of the 'group' and the 'churches' where the lowest common denominator is in control and the environments are policed to keep out influences that don't conform with the world. Family centers instead of churches, for instance.

But even though it all seems surfacy and intellectual-only it really isn't. As long, though, as you keep up the dedicated, complete, cover-to-cover readings of the pure and whole Word of God. You get your discernment from those unfiltered complete readings. Your discernment for what is on-the-mark. If you do to begin with.

You have to have faith that that living language changes you and is changing you. And you then have to begin to see how holding to - truly understanding and holding to - apostolic biblical doctrine (doctrine derived from the Bible alone) changes you internally and effects your state vis-a-vis the Kingdom of Satan and the Kingdom of God. - C.

ps- This is to say there is increase of level of being here. It's not in ritual or group dynamics and group policing. *That's* unbiblical nonsense you can stay away from. It's in the living Word of God and in on-the-mark biblical doctrine which is Federal Theology unmixed with the various trace poisons of the system of the Beast that the reformers failed to purge; and it's in the battlefield of spiritual warfare and the ongoing effort of progressive sanctification which doesn't end until physical death or translation like Enoch and Elijah or the Second Coming.

The canard of credo-baptism necessitating 'another' covenant theology

It is to be remembered that there were two covenants made with Abraham. By the one, his natural descendants through Isaac were constituted a commonwealth, an external, visible community. By the other, his spiritual descendants were constituted a church. The parties to the former covenant were God and the nation; to the other, God and His true people. The promises of the national covenant were national blessings; the promises of the spiritual covenant (i.e., the covenant of grace), were spiritual blessings, reconciliation, holiness, and eternal life. The conditions of the one covenant were circumcision and obedience to the law; the condition of the latter was, is, and ever has been, faith in the Messiah as the Seed of the woman, the Son of God, the Savior of the world. There cannot be a greater mistake than to confound the national covenant with the covenant of grace, and the commonwealth founded on the one with the church founded on the other.

When Christ came “the commonwealth” was abolished, and there was nothing put in its place. The Church remained. There was no external covenant, nor promises of external blessings, on condition of external rites and subjection. There was a spiritual society with spiritual promises, on the condition of faith in Christ. In no part of the New Testament is any other condition of membership in the Church prescribed than that contained in the answer of Philip to the eunuch who desired baptism: “If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” (Acts viii. 37)
Charles Hodge, Church Polity (New York: Scribner, 1878), 66-67.

The angry sacramentalists and practical deists (like the now eminently asinine R. Scott Clark) that self-identify as Reformed Christians have now gone shamelessly to the extreme of stating, dishonestly, that credo-baptism is against, or somehow not commensurate with, classical Covenant - Federal - Theology.

Read the extract from Charles Hodge above again. This is the area of doctrine that the angry infant baptizers are now resting on to put forward this canard. They are saying, well, it's not *Moses* that we are drawing our connection between circumcision and infant baptism and our overall doctrine of ritual regeneration from, it is *Abraham*!

Yet clearly, as Hodge points out, circumcision is connected *not* with the Covenant of Grace but with the covenant associated with Abraham's natural descendants that were to become the nation of Israel.

Regeneration - i.e. being born again - by the Word and the Spirit, and the faith that follows, is the entrance into the Covenant of Grace. Not ritual. Fallen man demands to control what only God has control of. Fallen man *demands* to exalt man and ritual above the Word and the Spirit. It angers fallen man to no end that God has control of regeneration -- to the point that, as John Owen said so well, any talk of regeneration engenders the very same anger in the ritualists Cain had for Abel.

On demons

One thing is certain and worth remembering from time to time - it has shock value. Whilst humans, both as depicted through the Gospel narrative and in our own time, and all time, cover a range of belief and faith in Jesus (from the fickle-hearted blow with the wind type to the hard core devotional type) - the only true believers, who never express or give way to any flicker of doubt, who know exactly who and what Jesus is and where he comes from are the demons. That is very practical knowledge. - Paul of England

This might muddy things, because first of all this insight you've written is on-the-mark and valuable (you should preserve it on your deepwater blog), but just recently I received the typical accusation from certain types that I was just like the demons who believed in Christ but supposedly didn't have faith in him (or whatever, those types never really know what they are saying when they use that thing from the Gospels, they really just want to accuse you of being a demon...usually because you are in the common wrangle with them regarding regeneration; i.e. they can't 'see' it, and you can't do anything but suggest to them how to get into the environment where it potentially takes place...this is the subject John Owen said was what put Cain at odds with Abel).

So, though I know what *you* are saying and mean, but if you said that in the company of other types they'd fire back, "So you think having the so-called belief of demons is a *good* thing???!!! Let me tell you something, my friend... [blah, blah, blah, heresy, blah]"

Just warning you, not that you need it. - ct

Demons are nasty phenomena to deal with. Because they are playing on your vanity and pride. Cutting that. And they are getting the 'upper hand' in all encounters. And they don't play fair. They have no standard to live up to. And they exploit the numbers and ignorance and advantages the world affords them. And you are an alone, alienated-from-the-world target. When I say 'demons' I also mean humans being used by demons.

This kind of explains the retreat I've often spoken of. You just don't want to - because of past experience - get 'into their world', so you retreat. But you can retreat so far that you don't push or provoke any of your limits and the demons win then.

They say, "OK, you are not making yourself vulnerable to us now, but at the same time you are not progressing in development at all, so we are OK with that. We win with that too."

- C.

ps- The cure is the name of Christ. But even there you have to be a skillful soldier on the battlefield. Progress forward without fear, yet with the full armor of God. Don't act innocent of what is going on when you're not. I.e. don't get into empty situations. And demons work with your inner fallen nature, so cut off that access and those opportunities to them by being a king of your inner domain as much as what is before you. Don't do things that are beneath you. Don't do, say, or think things that are beneath you. (The thought-world as well is part of the battlefield. Be a soldier in your thoughts as well. You cast your thoughts in a real way. Just as people see auras without being able to see an actual aura, they hear thoughts, without being able to actually hear your thoughts. This is spiritual warfare, and it's a more open medium than you thought at first when you were a more innocent soldier on the battlefield.)

Update: Paul of England writes back:

Here's my unposted unedited blog post which seems to kinda tie in here:

One thing is certain and worth remembering from time to time - it has shock value. Whilst humans, both as depicted through the Gospel narrative and in our own time, and all time, cover a range of belief and faith in Jesus (from the fickle-hearted blow-with-the-wind type to the hard core devotional type) - the only true believers, who never express or give way to any flicker of doubt, who know exactly who and what Jesus is and where he comes from are the demons. That is very practical knowledge. This should remind us as we wile away our time with trivial fancies of the imagination, the Satans hordes never rest from their dark pleasures. They are vigilant and always armed, always ready to cause harm. We need to remember as puritan authors such as William Gurnall and others made clear in their writings, the devil is God's slave and man the devils. Satan works effectually in the children of disobedience. The harlot of the soul never really leaves our being, we are always weak vulnerable creatures - though that should never be an excuse for sloth. And let us not forget that God uses Satan to test and build his people. There is meaning then in the fact that the demons are onto and assault Jesus, this interaction of the demons with Jesus prepares us and comes as a warning that if we would stand with Jesus in this, Satan's world we need to wear the full armour of God . We are not passive slaves but active agents with an active faith.

On 'The Pilgrim's Progress'

"In the course of his journey the hero, named Christian, learns to understand the world as an allegory. He comes to perceive his experience as a series of signs that point toward nonmaterial, spiritual referents, and this constitutes his liberation. But before he can escape from prison, he must become aware that he is in one. The progress toward an allegorical interpretation of reality is simultaneously a process of alienation from the mundane world of experience. *The Pilgrim's Progress* shows us a man who becomes a stranger to the world, to the extent of rejecting empirical sense perception, as well as the laws, morality, and behavioral standards of society. The first lesson Christian learns after his conversion is that 'Mr. Worldly Wiseman is an alien.'"

- David Hawke, Intro to the Barnes and Noble edition of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress

Bonus:

Hungarian philosopher Georg Lukac wrote a definition of the novel genre in his *Theory of the Novel*: the novel genre is "the epic of a world that has been abandoned by God." From the same Intro mentioned above.

For kings

Proverbs 16 is written to kings. Christians are prophets, priests, and kings. What is written to a king in Scripture is written to Christians.

Hell

You'll know why hell exists when the people who scorn God's name now scorn Him to his face.

The canard of a "post-Christian world"

It's common to come across various types declaring we live in a "post-Christian world." This is a canard simply because God's remnant in all eras of His plan of redemption have always been numerically small, though with big influence due to the Holy Spirit and common grace and so on.

The Puritans, for instance, were a small, very small, island in a sea of unbelievers and unbelieving culture, everywhere they existed. People tend to think historically identifiable Bible-believing Christians lived in some kind of monolithic Christian culture.

It's true that the foundation of western culture and civilization is Christian to the marrow; but that is just the same as saying the Incarnation happened and changed everything. The civilization of Rome, the culture of Greece, the theocracy of the Isrealites/Jews ended. The god Pan announced the end of his fellow mythological beings.

The people who say we live in a post-Christian world stand on the foundation of and breathe Christian culture and civilization. That doesn't have to do with the number of Bible-believing Christians around today, or yesterday, or in the Middle Ages. We've always been a small number. Yet God's influence in the foundation of western civilization and culture is as central as at the beginning.

The people who say "post-Christian world" are consciously or unconsciously setting that pronouncement against a popular myth of Christendom in the middle ages, not realizing the number of Bible-believing Christians back then were most likely the same percentage (if not less) than what exist in today's population.

There's no 'post-' in "post-Christian world." The foundation we stand on is as God-influenced as anytime in the past, and the number of Bible-believing Christians is similar as anytime in the past.

So, a lingering question from what is stated above: why is Christianity so associated with 'western' civilization and culture and not eastern and so on? Western is just to say the universal dominant civilization and culture in the world since the Incarnation.

I really like how John Bunyan reads Scripture

[Below is an email...]

Bunyan is impressive in his ability to navigate Scripture and not get caught on the twin crags of too literalness and too figurativeness. I say this not so much in regards to biblical doctrine (which he is on-the-mark on as well) but regarding things like the two witnesses of Revelation and the Anti-Christ and other similar things in Scripture that get a wide range of interpretation. Bunyan comes across as on-the-mark.

I just downloaded his complete works in a Kindle edition for my home PC and also for my Droid (both are apps, and you don't have to own an actual Kindle):

http://www.amazon.com/complete-including-contents-improved-ebook/dp/B0013GAJH4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1278469810&sr=8-1

The apps are free and worth getting. Find the PC app at the Amazon home page. The Droid app is in the Android Marketplace, but I'm sure the iPhone (Apple) has a similar Kindle app. The above link costs only .99 cents and is worth it. The bad reviews were written before a linkable table of contents was added on. It's an excellent Kindle edition now. - C.

ps- If you download the above link look at his book titled THE ANTICHRIST.

Macaulay's Essay, "The Puritans"

It's hard to describe this short little essay by the great English historian, but it's worth reading:

http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/Best/MacaulayPuritan.htm

- C.

Allowing the Holy Spirit to pray for you

I tend to pray passionately. When I go into a prayer it's like, if it's not passionate then why do it. I also consciously, when I have to which is often, note to myself that I am going against my fallen nature in this prayer. Whatever I am praying about. Because my fallen nature doesn't want to pray about anything, and my fallen nature is making me think I am being fake in my desire for something (usually regarding a petition for someone else), so I just acknowledge that fact and *go against it.*

At the foundational level prayer is an act of recognizing something higher than 'you.' And when you recognize something higher than you (something that is real, and what created you is real) it is a knife into the fake being of our Old Man fallen nature made up of, among other things, vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will. When we pray to what is higher than us we are directly taking on the internal tyranny of our inner 'Old Man' (our old Adamic fallen nature). So simply recognizing that is a sound tactic. Yeah, I know you're there, Old Man, accusing me, making me feel embarrassed, making me wonder if I really care about this person I am about to say a prayer for. I understand, and I recongize it and I will go over and above you and pray anyway.

Then I find that when I am in the midst of a prayer that it often takes on a life of its own. I believe this is what it means to allow the Holy Spirit to pray for you. I start out to say something specific, and I may even say it, yet I am inspired then to go further and at times what I then actually pray is something different than what I had planned on praying.

God is the first cause of all things that come about. Yet He also acts by secondary causes, and for us being a secondary cause, the result of that cause, can be free, contingent, or necessary. I think of prayer as being in the free or contingent categories. I.e. God answers prayers (wow, I am lost in this paragraph... I'll be honest and not delete it or edit it and just try to find my way out of it making at least some degree of sense...) Here is where it went wrong: "Yet He also acts by secondary causes, and for us being a secondary cause, the result of that cause, can be free, contingent, or necessary." That was somebody on mushrooms staring at the wallpaper.

If my prayer is a secondary cause of some desired end it may be *contingent* on something else happening I have no control of. Yet my prayer is needed nevertheless in that chain of a contingent secondary cause. Thus I pray in faith.

If my prayer is a secondary cause of some desired end it may not be contingent on anything else but just may be effective because I as a believer prayed it and God says He will answer prayers. This is an example of how *effort* has meaning. It's in the free category, but *somebody* has got to say the prayer, in other words. This goes for other actions as well. Effort has meaning, in this sense, because we are secondary causes in all that needs to get done.

If something is necessary then God *gets it done* despite the effort of his elect or anyone else.

(And of course by saying that because of secondary causes 'effort has meaning' that is a response to those who ignorantly think that the fact of God being sovereign in creation, providence, and grace means a 'deterministic' universe, or some equivalent of Islamic notions of fate - Kismet - where you believe hey, just sit in the sand and do nothing because it all happens as God will have it happen anyway. No, that's not how God has set things up. That would only follow for *necessary* secondary causes.)

Well, anyway, I wanted to show how prayer is effective even when we can't see how it could be.

I also make a central request in all my prayers that the Holy Spirit be sent into the heart of the person in question. For instance, if you are praying the person be healed of something fine, but then I request the ultimate: that the Holy Spirit be sent into their heart.

I recently prayed for an atheist who was sick, and as I was struggling with the usual thoughts about praying for healing and how it is usually not answered (in any obvious way) I then began to pray that the Holy Spirit be sent into this person's heart.