On the commotion over a Protestant pastor who has gone over to Rome

People need to be broken in spirit. What church or denomination a person associates with is nothing compared to the effectual work of the word and the Spirit. The living word of God (heard or read, but received) is the wild card in the process of regeneration. Too many filters due to too much intellectual nonsense and pride can be a problem for many. Those filters have to dissolve, and the spirit has to be broken. Then an ability to see how fragile and limited our existence is. A person may be genuinely looking for a basic simplicity of the faith by bowing out intellectually, so to speak, and falling into the arms of a church like Rome, but the simplicity that person needs to have is the basic connection to the Branch which is Jesus. Once they have that, and the Spirit, they will want real biblical doctrine (which is armor of God) and not the word of man. It will happen naturally. It won't be merely intellectual at that point. Or vaguely emotional. This plays out in higher aspects of time, I believe, but there is an end of time, a harvest, so don't tarry. And don't underestimate the justice (or just-ness) and wrath of God. Remember: you were born guilty and corrupt. And then you got worse. When you hear: "Are you saved?" and you cleverly ask: "Saved from what?" the answer should shock: "Saved from God." Only the Mediator, Jesus Christ, can save you from God.

And don't be like this guy:

With regard to religion, he is agnostic, quoted as saying, "at the end of the day, if there was indeed some body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a god at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, 'But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven.' If so, I was going to reply, 'You know what? You're right. Fine.' " - Lance Armstrong (who once dated an Olsen twin)

The poor boy is 'realy quite weary'...

This is an example of the weary last stand of a Critical Text follower, who at this point doesn't even believe his own justifications:

"I'm really quite weary of this debate and typically avoid it because the claims for skepticism are always one way. You accept as an article of faith that if someone rejects your detailed account of how God has Providentially preserved the text then you claim a lack of faith in preservation. It is a tautology that I need not accept. Furthermore, WCF 20 leaves my conscience unbound to anything but Scripture. Every historical argument you make for the method by which the text has been preserved is not found in the Scriptures themselves but are an appeal to an external standard that I need not be bound unto in order to affirm that God has preserved His Word. I rest on Deut 29:29 and the inscrutable ways of God. I need not attempt (nor am I permitted) to state with certainty how God's Providential ways have worked but trust that He accomplishes what He promises. Thus, let's stop the tired comparison that those who are non-TR represent a sub-class of Christians who do not believe in the Providence of God simply because they refuse to accept the certainty of the report from TR-advocates that they know the mind and ways of God in historical detail."

Divine providence does not suggest a constructed text. Divine providence suggests a received text. It is at that point that you need to just accept that man needs the Bible more than the Bible needs man. Once the subject has been made known to the believer such an acceptance is a mark of regeneration.

The damage done by the constructed Critical Text versions is exactly the damage done that the Romanist counter-Reformation desired to be done by those mutilated and poisonous manuscripts.

When people are self-identified believers yet short of actual regeneration (they're proud and yet to be broken, and usually they are shallow, and along with that they always fear and revere man more than God) they always gravitate towards the shadow of the Beast church and adopt the *foundational* Beast church doctrine. There is no more foundational doctrine than what is the actual word of God.

It is the *received* traditional text, Hebrew and Greek, which underlies the Authorized - King James - Version. The giggling and mocking at this fact is no different than what is heard from inside the bowels of the Beast Romanist church throughout the centuries.

3 Big Features of our Fallen Nature

Self-Justifying

Resentment

Violence and/or Self-Pity

(Usually in that order as events play out.)

Articulating unspoken aspects of the Christian experience

All the language of 'love Christ' and 'know Jesus Christ' and similar language refers really, doesn't it, to the plan of God itself? Because 'love Christ' and 'know Christ' has to be based on who He is and what He did. Otherwise it comes across as meaningless pious drivel.

This shows the importance of knowing the true school of biblical doctrine. Federal Theology. The two Adams. Jesus (the second Adam) came to fulfill what the first Adam failed to fulfill.

The first Adam at the fall put us all under the curse of death and bondage to the Kingdom of Satan, with no possibility of us remedying the situation by anything we can do, and Jesus Christ came and remedied it for us thus the good news. That is 'knowing Jesus', and knowing that and valuing being set free and saved it follows that we 'love Jesus.'

We seem to have been *passive* in the whole playing out of it though which puts a kind of veil over the whole process for us, like, we didn't even really know it was all happening until we found ourselves to be regenerated by the word and the Spirit and then kind of began to see it in hindsight. I mean, that is a fact we all have to deal with and factor in in how we see it all. Otherwise we, I guess, have to try to fake a lot of emotion that was never there, or what have you.

But knowing the plan of God is a big thing. Once you do. And progressive sanctification (mortifying the old nature, cultivating the new nature) calls for an active role.

If you have discernment you'll see the work of the Devil here

The title of the article/video is: eBooks Gone in 5 Years?

The key passage is this:

For some time now, Virginia Quarterly Review’s Jane Friedman has been trying to wean readers away from the standard idea of “The Book” as the inevitable goal. Here she is, in a piece from October, asking “What is your killer medium?”:

"The book is often assumed to be the most authoritative and important medium, but that’s only because we’ve all been led to believe that (through a culture that has created The Myth about the author as authority). It’s a Myth, neither good nor bad. Just a belief system that, increasingly, we’re all moving away from."

This is one of the new lines of attack by the Spiritless in academia. I've read this elsewhere. The notion that the written word is no more special than visual arts or video or any other medium.

This is an attack by the Spiritless (what I call atheists in general, but just all unbelievers no matter how enthusiastic and conscious they are of their state of rebellion from their Creator).

The Spiritless *know* that the written word is how God delivers His revelation, and they *know* the written word leads people to God. This is the foundational motive of their new line of attack on the written word as the preeminent or most-important medium. (Keep in mind the Satan-controlled Roman Catholic Church encouraged illiteracy and kept the written word of God away from people. Satan knows what regenerates. It is not visual medium. It is not ritual. It is the written word of God.)

Also, short of regeneration the Spiritless know it is the written word when engaged with seriousness and with focused attention and thought is what develops understanding in people. Such understanding undermines the tyrannical political goals of the Spiritless. They need a dumb populace. Tyranny needs a dumbed down populace to get the tyranny established, then they enforce a dumbed down status through policing power.

As a Christian I say loudly I *hate* atheists, I *hate* the worthless garbage that teaches in our institutions of higher learning, and I *hate* tyranny. Added to that I *love* the fact that King Jesus will return and put all that human garbage in its place. Hell.

Sound harsh? Why? These fools and devils have *heard* the call. We live in a time when everybody has heard the call. Time to get on with the harvesting.

The answer to this new attack, by the way, is to go back to reading deeply the handful of inspired works of history, imaginative literature, philosophy, and sacred writings. Find your books and make them a part of you at the level of essence.

One way the Devil uses Islam

Remember Islam is a Christianity based religion, and a heresy.

One thing its existence does is make exclusive claims such that Christianity is reality look Islamic-fanatic like. It makes adhering to one Book as truth look Islamic-fanatic like. It makes zealousness for your faith look Islamic-fanatic like.

That is what the Devil wants. He impersonates God. He wants to draw people away from the truth. But short of that he wants to make you embarrassed or ashamed of the Christian faith by having fanatics mimicking a zealous faith and being cartoonishly violent and repressive and pious to put people off true religion altogether.

I'm walking on a quiet, sunny day, and I can see clearly how Christianity contains everything the way the Creator/creation divide defines everything.

The Creator is self-revealed in one book.

What is an atheist as a basic type?

Atheists are bridge trolls.

Bridges are symbolic of passing over thresholds. When a person is moving from the Kingdom of Darkness into the Kingdom of Light they are crossing a threshold.

And lo and behold under that symbolic bridge resides the bridge troll, the atheist.

The atheist as bridge troll attempts to keep people from crossing over the bridge. The bridge troll atheist does this by attempting to intimidate; or to tempt (their weakest move because, after all, what does the atheist have that anybody could want?); or to mock.

Atheists are bridge trolls.

Separation

[Originally an email.]

When I originally wrote the title of this email I typo-ed it as 'Seaparation'. Don't know what that means.

But I wanted to write a note about separation. When you delve into real Christian doctrine to the saturation degree of a work like Boston's Human Nature in its Fourfold State you really see there is a separation called for, or needed, or just practically involved in knowing and being - understanding - the Faith.

I.e. there is the walking around in unconscious delusion vs. the real time knowledge of our true state and condition and the only remedy for it.

And you really - REALLY - have to buy into it. Of course the Holy Spirit influencing you will have something to say about that, but even as a regenerated being you still have to consciously accept it. Continually be shocked into the reality of it.

And it does separate you from the world, there is no denying it.

It's not a pious, holier-than-thou separation, or a, for instance, monkish separation. It's just a real separation.

Like, I was sitting in my car in a bookstore parking lot, and a typical couple walked by in front of me, and I was thinking how they know nothing (most likely) of - basically - what is really going on (as the Bible explains it). Nothing of God's plan. Nothing of their fallen state. Nothing of their current blindness and sleep regarding their state. Nothing of the remedy. Their body language and dress and everything else suggested a very limited range of vanities occupied their minds at any given time of their days. (And, again, of course who knows...maybe they were active, knowledgeable Christians, and we don't get visible haloes and all that, but you know what I mean...)

Seaparation would be like a Joycean word.

Seaparation. You're separated out of this sea of delusion and sleep.

I think we may even be in a different time scale, though still obviously able to operate in this world with everyone else. It's these higher aspects of time that I believe answer some of the questions we have regarding the seemingly unregenerate. Questions not intended to downgrade hard truth biblical doctrine, but to understand God's plan and how it is effected. He - in this case the Holy Spirit - acts from eternity in individuals which - eternity that is - has an access to our linear time that is rather radical and beyond our ability to perceive without getting into really rather pedestrian visual metaphor mostly involving circular motion and revolutions and so on. Higher aspects of time aren't easily captured by our limited perception. - C.

Federal Theology puts Waiting for Godot into perspective

An example of how Federal Theology can explain the world around us... Read this passage from Thomas Boston's Human Nature in its Fourfold State:

"Though you should do all you are able to do [the subject is man thinking he can save himself merely by being good or doing good works or what have you], in vain do you hope to be saved in that way. What word of God is this hope of yours founded on? It is founded on neither law nor Gospel; therefore it is but a delusion."

I.e. such behavior is founded neither on the Covenant of Works, which fallen man can't fulfill now anyway, nor is it founded on the Covenant of Grace, or in Jesus Christ simply by having faith in Him and appropriating His obedience to the law and his paying of the penalty Adam brought down on us all.

Now think of the description of humankind's lot by the philosophers. The 'absurdity' of our existence. The lack of 'authenticity' in our existence. The 'angst' and 'despair' of our existence.

Because what man engages in is neither law nor Gospel. To try to be saved by doing the law would be Sisyphean anyway, but it is only the Gospel route that is not meaningless and empty and vain.

In other words, so why all this feeling of despair and angst and sense of absurdity and lack of authenticity? Because until man is drawn towards the Gospel and is regenerated he will exist in this absurd no-man's-land; i.e. his actions and thoughts and words will have no real meaning and will not amount to anything because in the end is death and hell. And the sense of 'unfairness' is also woven into the absurdity. It is the life of the blind leading the blind, torturing the blind, lecturing the blind, devouring the blind, mocking the blind, killing the blind around and around in an absurd dance of delusion and nothingness.

And the living word of God is the wild card. When a person either reads the word of God or has it spoken to him by a believer then that person is then in the environment where regeneration will potentially happen, when it happens. It's all the work of the Spirit as well. But when a person hears the word and mocks or turns away that is perhaps a hardening that is or has taken place, but even then we can't know. In time the person may be awakened by the word and the Spirit.