Who are these people?

Who are the people in broadcasts like this?

http://reformedforum.org/podcasts/ctc321/

Don't waste your time, they are just church Christians.

But where did they come from? How did the faith get to be what they are?

The first impression I got listening to the interview within the show was how dumb they are. They have no clue how to learn anything. They don't even know what is meaningful to learn.

From the top (their famous pastors and teachers) to bottom they all approach learning at the unserious surface level, and have no clue there is any other approach. "We all need to remember that we need to keep Jesus in mind when we are doing..." and blah, blah, blah. They give a litany of "we need to always keep in mind" knowing that is a type of empty effort that gets forgotten the moment they stop talking (key: talking) and go get their junk food. The next day the book(s) is forgotten (they are always forgettable books anyway), and all the litanies of "we must..." are forgotten.

They know this is the pattern, yet they stick to it. Day after day, until they die.

It's shallow. It is not how one learns anything.

Here's how you learn:

"I'm going to read the Bible complete; dedicated cover-to-cover complete readings, seven times."

"But, my friend, you may be taking a wrong approach there, we must caution you..."

"Back off, devil. I'm going to read the Bible seven times complete. Yeah, that pisses you off. It makes you angry like Cain. I don't care. Go dissuade one of your nursery room sheep."

Then you do it.

Oh, just simply read the Bible?

Yes. You get it into you. You apply yourself and get the complete word of God into you. You don't worry about this or that along the way, you are merely reading every word, every verse, every chapter, every book, one after the other, one step after another, until you traverse the full continent of Scripture shore-to-shore.

"Oh, but dear friend, you must have understanding of what you read..."

We can't understand doctrine until we have the entire raw material of the word of God inside us. Dear friend. Much of the Bible is higher visual language, which needs to be merely taken in. Once inside us it gives us language to see things in ourselves and in the world we weren't able to see before. That's how it works. Other parts of the Bible are different, but it all needs to simply be downloaded.

By default on the second, third, fourth, fifth, etc. reading you begin to get understanding of what you are reading. But what is happening, dear friend? What is happening is you are in a process of actively reading the real thing and actively seeking out understanding of what you are reading. Active learning. Learning that happens in long arcs of time in your life (it takes a long time to read the Bible complete, hence the word 'dedicated' put before 'complete readings'). It is effort that pays off in time as well. Not noticeable immediately, but like planting a crop in one season, it manifests in another season further along in time.

Once you gravitate towards the pure school (hopefully you are regenerate and will do so) you identify the main sources of that school and you learn from them. And because you have the raw biblical material in you from the complete readings you are able to discern on-the-mark/off-the-mark. It's not an academic exercise. It's in the realm of spiritual warfare at that point. It's everything that pisses academics off.

I'm not going to go into what constitutes a complete education, higher influences, developing different parts of our very being; but I'll just state that learning has to go to essence. It has to get through the shell of your shallow personality and reach your essential being. All that you hear from the churchian leaders and educators is about surface knowledge, surface learning, going through the motions to ultimately get to the ice cream shoppe which is the real goal at the church level. No, your goal is to get to the summit of the mountain you should be climbing. Then to get beyond summit.