9 Distinctives of the Puritans

There is some confusion among Reformed academics - theologians and church historians - as to how to define who was and who wasn't a Puritan; and whether there was any such thing as Puritans at all to begin with (some actually wonder this).

I see it this way: my observation that there is an academic approach to the faith and a spiritual warfare approach plays into this problem they have. The academic types can't see the spiritual warfare types or their approach.

The Puritans did indeed exist - in the past and today as well - and it should be added that Christians from the time of the Apostles who held these distinctives tended to be called names like 'puritan'; for instance, cathari is the Greek version of the puritan epithet, their history crazily rewritten by their murderers, like academics and popular culture today attempt to rewrite the history of the English, European, and American Puritans, if not, as mentioned, denying their existence altogether. (Look at this John Owen quote from the 1600s: “I will pass over other similar monstrous lies with the simple comment that they all pale into insignificance in comparison with the slanders that the Roman pontiffs have dreamed up against the Albigenses [Cathars], the Waldenses, and other faithful servants of Christ.” [pg. 147 of his Biblical Theology]) Here are the Puritan distinctives:

1. Bible oriented. Bible-believing, Bible-focused, Word of God valuing Christians.

2. They understood the fact and reality of supernatural regeneration by the Word and the Spirit (and overall recognized the work of the Holy Spirit Himself, especially in the foundational areas of regeneration and the preservation of the pure and whole word of God down through time, in a way that always seems to anger mainstream establishment Christianity).

3. They understood the difference between fearing the world and fearing God alone; and that when you fear God alone you don't then fear man or man's opinion of you which enables you to move in the direction of wisdom. They feared God alone.

4. They took a spiritual warfare approach to the faith. They understood and experienced the spiritual battlefield ('Faith hath a piercing eye, to see into the spiritual realm.'). For them this made biblical doctrine actual armor of God. They wanted real armor, hence they had no problem with 'hard truth' biblical doctrine (Calvinism), because it re-oriented them internally to being God-centered rather than man-centered or, in other words, being conformed to Christ.

5. They were practical with the faith (or "reduced to practice" the Christian faith). A soldier on a battlefield is a practical individual. Life and death is on the line constantly. For Puritans the Word of God and biblical doctrine is not merely philosophical or theoretical, but as practical as a spade, a weapon, a fox hole, or a good pair of boots. They also knew you have to practice the faith (summed up in the two great commandments of Jesus) in real time, in the traffic of one's average day, to increase understanding of the faith; i.e., to be truly conformed to the image of Christ, (to be awake to the reality and presence of God always in real time; and love your enemy as yourself, because we always target our resentment at human beings one way or another, and it's resentment, rather than gratitude, that keeps us under the power of our fallen nature).

6. Puritans were anti-establishment; or just by their nature outside any and all establishments. They were separated out from the world. They tended to be political targets of religious establishments and objects of mockery to the establishment.

7. Without being academic in the usual shallow ways (while still being willing to exploit any and all influences and sources of on-the-mark teaching, and being grateful for the effort to produce it, while producing it themselves as well) Puritans sought a complete understanding of the faith. They sought parts-in-relation-to-the-whole understanding of the Bible and its doctrine. They knew a Christian is to be a prophet, priest, and king (not an eternal infant in a nursery), and that the bar is raised high to be that, yet the Holy Spirit enables the Christian to meet and exceed that bar. For Puritans learning is active, and individual (we face death and our judgment, ultimately, standing solely on our own two feet).

8. They had a strong doctrine of sin and the very real wrath of God. They knew their own state. Tyndale's metaphor of the venomous snake described the Puritan understanding. We are snakes with poison in us, and we can't get the poison out of us. Only God can. And even if we don't strike with our fangs, it is nevertheless our nature to strike. So from birth, due to original and then active sin, we are by our very constitution unable to be in the Kingdom of God. It takes an act of God to change us, remove the venom from us (give us a new heart), and recognize the righteousness of Christ in us which we appropriate by faith in the life and death of Jesus Christ. In other words we can't improve ourselves enough to get into the Kingdom of God. The leopard can't change his spots. Only God can change us. And until He does, by an act of pure grace, we are children of wrath fit for the lake of fire. This stark realization Puritans came to know at an experiential level.

9. Which gets back starkly to the Bible. The word of God. Puritans knew regeneration was solely an act of God, we can't effect it. Yet the word of God, the living, quickening language of the Bible, is the wild card. God says in His Word, several times: move towards Me, and I'll move towards you. The Puritans knew we move towards God not by ritual or physical buildings, but by reading and getting understanding of the Word of God and by prayer.

I love some of the comments you see under articles

“Breitbart has no credibility outside of the most extreme conservative wing of our party."

________

Yeah, anyone outside of Washington D.C. globalist UniParty is "extreme" to these traitors.

In other words, Breitbart has no credibility with the D.C. political-class. And even that's a lie. They don't fear Breitbart for nothing, lol!

If Breitbart didn't have any credibility, these crap-weasel D.C. skunk-monkeys wouldn't be afraid of Breitbart.

- scott825

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

I've been reading up on Martyn Lloyd-Jones because I think he is very similar to me regarding many things of the faith. He is kind of an outcast among the mainstream too, for these reasons. So he's always been kind of off radar.

Here's one quote relevant to our times:

"A very good sign, therefore, that people are born again is that they become more acutely aware of the existence and the working of Satan than they have ever been hitherto. There is no need for Satan to busy himself very much with the unregenerate. They can be left, as it were; they are already bound; they are already in his kingdom and they cannot escape. But once people are transferred to the kingdom of God and the kingdom of light, the devil makes a new effort and in a spiritual way comes to them and attacks them. And they are aware of this other presence that is fighting for their life and for their very existence. Flesh and Spirit - the conflict is a proof of regeneration."

That's from Great Doctrines of the Bible. A sort of systematic theology.

Here is another telling quote:

"Nothing, it seems to me, is quite so strange as the way in which man by nature always objects to the doctrine of regeneration. There is nothing also, I sometimes think, that so demonstrates the depth of sin in the human heart as this objection to the doctrine of the rebirth or being born again. Read the New Testament Scriptures, and you will find that men objected to it in those days. When our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ spoke about it, He was always persecuted. People disliked Him for mentioning it. When He began to expose the depth of iniquity in the human heart and to talk about a rebirth, they invariably misunderstood Him. They disliked it then, and it has always been the same ever since. When John Wesley was truly converted, he went back to his university at Oxford and preached a sermon on this very subject; and he was hated for it. Those respectable religious people in Oxford disliked this doctrine, and they made it impossible for him to continue preaching there. The natural man, the unregenerate human heart, objected to this great and wondrous biblical doctrine of rebirth and regeneration. And it is equally true today. People sit and listen to an address or sermon on what is called the fatherhood of God or the brotherhood of man and they never object to it. When they are exhorted to live a better life, they never express any objection at all. They say that it is perfectly right, and even though they are reprimanded for not living better lives, they say that it is perfectly true and quite fair and that they could do better. But if a preacher stands before the natural man and says, “You must be born again—you must have a new life from God,”they ask, “What is this strange doctrine?” A THOUGHT TO PONDER There is nothing that so demonstrates the depth of sin in the human heart as objection to the doctrine of the rebirth." From Out of the Depths, pp. 71-72.

John Owen said something similar. The quote in the margin of my PPP blog.

I don't know everything about Jones, his eschatology, etc., so reserve the right to change my opinion...

Immortality - Boettner (rare book; at least I wasn't aware of it)

I didn't know Loraine Boettner wrote a book on death entitled Immortality. Just found that out. So I've been looking and looking for an electronic version, and it doesn't seem to exist. You can get a paperback version at Amazon, but I want the e-book version. Anyway, I did find a site or two that posted extensive sections from the book:

http://www.the-highway.com/articleOct13.html

http://www.the-highway.com/Immortality-The-Intermediate-State_Boettner.html

https://www.monergism.com/death-immortality-intermediate-state

If you're ever contemplating death as we all do at times Boettner is his usual biblical self in bringing a lot of material together in a plain and clear style. - C.

Fox News Channel shows its new hand

For those of you who don't follow or discern such things here is the first bit of evidence the new management at Fox News Channel will take that network globally leftward.

The new management has given comic book philosopher (and Donald Trump hater) Jonah Goldberg permission (or an actual assignment) to attack Sean Hannity.

Remember, Trump and his voters (which includes myself, from the beginning) are fighting the Devil and his end time consummation movement to assert dominion over the entire planet. God is seeing who stands where. We are commanded to confront the Devil, always, everywhere. We know the end, we know the victories the Devil and his army of dhimmis will achieve; yet we also know God (and His people) have victory in the end. Personally it is not disappointing to see so many self-identified Christians taking the side of the Satanic globalist movement. That is expected and a refreshing validation of many years of attempting to show those very so-called Christians where they were falling short. I have no sympathy for the Devil or his followers. I actually have deep hatred for those who hate my God and Creator and Savior. May they reap what they deserve.

Churchianity is a false religion unto itself

A seminary professor writes this:

What moves pietism, what makes it what it is, is the quest to experience the risen Christ without the mediation of the preaching of the Word and Sacraments.

There are really three things that make churchianity dead. In this case Reformed churchianity.

1. Let's start with what is stated in the above quote. There is one mediator between God and man, and that is Jesus Christ. No priest/pastor/cleric is a mediator between God and man. Churchians always want to exalt cleric and ritual above the Word and the Spirit. It is such a Romanist tendency it is almost hallucinogenic to witness that a Protestant can't see that at this point. The further two points go a ways to explain it though.

2. The Romanist fetish doctrine of infant baptism is demanded by all churchians who actually hate the doctrine and reality of supernatural regeneration by the Word and the Spirit. The Romanist churchian, in this case, will say: "God, we grant you sovereignty in creation and providence; but we are going to have to draw the line at grace. Sorry, God, but we will take care of that." OK, little churchian, you go with that. And stay spiritually dead as a door nail.

3. Demanding bibles that have the authority of God taken out of them and the authority of man (scholars) put into them. Demanding bibles that need man more than man needs the Bible. Denying the work of the Holy Spirit in shepherding and preserving the pure and whole word of God down through history. (Churchians tend to deny the work of the Holy Spirit in pretty much everything.) As long as you demand a bible that needs you (for its very 'construction') more than you need it you will never be humbled to the word of God, and thus it will never be a quickening force within you.


The cure: recognize that Christians are prophets, priests, and kings. Not eternal infants in a nursery to be lectured to by seminary graduates nine out of ten of which don't even give evidence that their balls have dropped. (And any gathering of kings will be a gathering on a battlefield. The spiritual battlefield. It is generally conceded that the Devil occupies churches as a matter of course. This is because there are no warriors of Christ to run him off.)

The cure: Regeneration is the main thing. In the depths of the horror of the Romanist tyranny the Devil called people to be baptized and experience the sacraments all day and all night, but he kept the word of God away from people upon penalty of torture and death. The Devil knows what regenerates God's elect, and it is not clerics and ritual.

The cure: read the version of the Bible you most don't want to read. Be humbled to the version of the Bible you most don't want to be humbled to. Discern resentment and pride rising up in you when a certain version of the Bible is mentioned, and engage that Bible. You know what I'm talking about.

Good article on top ten pianists of the 20th century

Can't go wrong with this list. Surprised there were names I'd never heard of. They may not have recorded much into the more modern recording era...

This probably won't help, but I'll give it a shot anyway...

All you #nevertrumpers who so look up to your elite gods and goddesses and seemingly want to don dog collars post Georgetown dinner parties just like they do and talk about books they've never really actually read all the while sipping wine onto palettes destroyed by Diet Coke addictions as they thumb through their 83rd complete reading of Lord of the Rings... Here...please, try to read this piece from Spengler. Not Oswald, but the modern day guy who calls himself Spengler. He's really smart. You should be able to tell that. Should, I say. Though you all seem to be lacking the practical/common-sense intelligence component in modern day human models; or you are compromised by having to pay your rent by committing treason at the bidding of the globalist elite.

Standing Between Egypt and the Promised Land

Why does Christianity seem progressively dead?

By that I mean: you first encounter the Bible, the new genres, the doctrine, the new reality of it, the truth of it, you read it complete, several times, you get your arms around on-the-mark doctrine, then... Then what? Then you pick up the same Bible and it seems like old ground that has been covered, with nothing left to offer. Been there, done that.

At the same time whereas before your life seemed to be somewhat alive with a sense of higher meaning, higher contact, perhaps even some events suggesting contact with higher beings, angels, then... God seems to go silent. No guidance. No communication. You pray, you plead, when in dire straights, and...nothing. Hello?

This all occurs over a many year period, but it arrives. At least for me it arrived.

So, again, why does Christianity seem progressively dead? I.e. why over time does the entire process of coming into the faith seem to lose energy, or a sense of something active and higher world about it?

The common response from the more shallow corners of Christian environments would be something like: Stop looking for a burning bosom experience, you enthusiast! Eat your crackers, drink your grape juice, you are nothing and Christianity is supposed to be ordinary!

I'll answer my own question (then, in an additional note below, I'll give a higher level answer)...

Perhaps that very feeling of being cast onto a deserted landscape, surrounded by silence, seeming silence, is the very feeling of real development going on inside a follower of Christ.

Notice that feeling of abandonment and silence in a desolate landscape is very much not the feeling one had when dead asleep (prior to regeneration) in the world where everything is a light show of illusion and empty temptation and a mindless chasing after the worthless.

It would follow that when a person wakes up to their real situation that it will seem depressing in all the common ways we think of depression. We wake up to the fact that we are in kind of a bad situation. A fallen nature within, living in a fallen world. We are seeing good and evil (mostly evil) clearly now. It's like waking up to realize you're in a prison surrounded by violent lunatics. You're now on the spiritual battlefield. Who wants to be on a battlefield, of any nature?

But you can't go back to sleep.

You're standing between Egypt and the Promised Land.

You can only go forward.

___________
Here is the higher level answer: You can't pour new wine into old bottles. The metaphor in the Gospels is about a leather 'bottle' that holds wine and so on. But see it this way: your being (i.e. your level of being) is like a glass. It is of a certain size. Because it is of a fixed size you can only pour so much wine (knowledge/understanding) into the glass. To increase your level of understanding you have to increase the size, or capacity, of the glass. You have to increase your level of being.

So if you are taking in the Bible and doctrine over and over, non-stop, and it is getting old and seemingly less and less profitable (diminishing returns) it's because you are trying to pour new wine (understanding) into an old glass that can't take anymore new liquid. It's capacity is full.

This is why an ancient formula states: Knowledge + Being = Understanding.

It's not just knowledge, but it is knowledge plus increasing level of being that is required to increase level of understanding.

The Bible has more to give. Yet you can only hold so much until you increase the size of the glass that represents the current level of your being.

(Now I hear the shallow voice: "Oh, so you're saying that if you somehow increase your level of being - whatever that means - then you'll start seeing new things in the Bible nobody else in history has been able to see? Do you become psychic too? Ha, ha. I'm hearing New Age gnosticism!!! There's nothing new under the sun! You can't know more than the very righteous and reverend Michael Horton knows! Why would you think you could? Do you have a seminary degree??? I'm finished here!!!")

OK, getting that guy out of the way...

I think regarding the Bible and doctrine "seeing more" means seeing and understanding the BASICS at the experiential level. Because a more secular version of that ancient formula could be put: Knowledge + Experience = Understanding. But that's actually a totally different thing because experience won't necessarily raise level of being. But it doesn't hurt. One thing experience gives is new language. Any experience, say a trade, commercial fishing, bricklaying, starting a small business, gives a person a new language to use in all other areas of life. For instance. But that is getting off topic. The question here is, going back to the ancient formula as first worded above, what actually is involved in increasing level of being?

It is simply practicing the knowledge you've acquired in real time, everyday life.

If the knowledge is love your enemy you first learn what that means (and doesn't mean) and then you actually practice it in real life situations and events. It's difficult to do in real time. (It's difficult to remember to do it to begin with!) We can be assured, though, if we do make the effort to practice that teaching from the Bible in real time situations and events then it will increase our level of being. And with that increase of level of being we can then go back to the Bible and perhaps see more of the teaching that we were perhaps missing before because we simply didn't have the capacity to see it and understand it.

Love your enemy is just one thing the Bible commands us to practice. Be awake is another. It arguably comes before love your enemy. The very fact that you are practicing the knowledge of the Bible is 'seeing more' in the statement about pouring new wine into old bottles. You don't pass over that, you see more in it. At a practical, experiential level.

Using more doctrinal type language we can see that resentment is something a Christian never has any reason to indulge in (even so-called righteous anger). For a Christian gratitude for everything all the time is the great royal attitude to be cultivated. Gratitude is the opposite of resentment. Practicing this in real time will increase your level of being.

I'll stop now.

Amazing so many people who self-identify as conservative can't see this

hokkoda A close election will produce a National Review endorsement of Hillary Clinton.

Stonewall_61 Even if true, it would have no effect, right? Trump says NR is irrelevant, and nobody pays attention to it. If anybody did, Trump would not have won the nomination.

hokkoda I'm not trying to tally up the votes this or that paid-political-campaign produces in November. The useful thing about Trump, to me, has always been that he has revealed what a complete scam that Conservative Inc. has become.

This is the election where I can't really lose because I believe it to be part of a bigger political realignment taking place in the country: The Official Party of Government vs. Everyone Else.

Trump, for all his faults, has pulled back the curtain on the fraud that is our one-party political system. Many of the things nevertrump criticizes Trump for the most are things that nevertrump excuses in the likes of John Boener, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, etc. What nevertrump has always failed to grasp is that they failed because they are not credible.

If 'nevertrump' actually advanced a candidate, they'd collapse. Which is why they didn't advance a candidate.