First bit of good news

The first bit of good news is we were born human. We could have been born as rodents. (That, by the way, is how much power we have in all of this, for you Arminians out there.)

The second bit of good news is we didn't die in infancy. Many humans do. We didn't. Here we are.

The third bit of good news is we have been given knowledge of what is going on with all of us on this planet, or in this world. It's called the Bible. For us the drama has been a bit weakened because the big, central event in historical time has already happened. The birth, death, and resurrection of the God-man Jesus Christ. But we have the drama and suspense of the Second Coming to look forward to.

I jumped the gun a bit in this next bit of good news. The curse we'd all been living under has been lifted by the God-man Jesus Christ. Like a Knight on a horse he has come and slayed the dragon that was killing us and making us live in fear under his tyranny.

The fifth bit of good news is when we have faith in all this plan of God presented in the Bible and specifically have faith in Jesus Christ and His work in life and on the cross and in His resurrection and we physically die, we are then given glorified bodies to live in a new heaven and earth experiencing joy as we glorify God for eternity.

All the happy ending stories are true.

The Kingdom of God manifest

It's more difficult to see the Kingdom of God than to see evil manifest. 

It's also difficult to see things that we have from God but take for granted. 

Things like peace of mind. Or not having a disordered mind. Or not living in a confused state of ignorance of ourselves and the world around us. 

All we have to do is see a person with a  disordered mind to know we too could be in that state, but we have the grace from God to not be in that state. 

That is the Kingdom of God manifest. 

How God protects us

When a Christian says God will protect us it doesn't mean God will keep Christians from ever physically dying. We brought death upon ourselves at the fall in the Garden. 

It means God won't allow our souls to be captured by evil or our minds to be shielded from the truth.

Willem Vangemeren

In the book Five Views of Law and Gospel the first essay is by Willem Vangemeren representing the Reformed Theology view. He basically writes a tour de force history of redemption leaving the other four theologians (Theonomic, Dispensational, Lutheran, etc.) with nothing but milquetoast attempts to counter him. They nit pic, and in the case of the Dispensationalist he appropriates what he can't deny while still calling his position Dispensationalist. 

Reformed Theology is parts-in-relation-to-the-whole biblical theology. When you can see the parts in relation to the whole you have understanding. 

There are deep stumbling blocks. For instance if you have a low view of faith or a low view of sin and man's fallen condition and need for the very blood of Christ you won't see the bondage of Old Testament saints living under the curse and death sentence of the law. 

It goes to the basics and the need to have an experiential understanding of them.

Calvin, prophet of the mountain

The move to decouple Calvin from Reformed Theology is an academic move. Academic Christians don't know spiritual warfare. They don't know the spiritual battlefield. Calvin was made the symbol of biblical truth by Christians who came to know biblical truth for a reason. Take his name and work out of it and Reformed Theology disintegrates. It gets picked apart by one downgrading movement after another. Oh, but the name Calvin is scary! Yes, good, it keeps away vultures and snowflakes who would appropriate Reformed Theology and turn it into man pleasing mush.

Owen, Bunyan, Calvin. Yes, they had differences in ecclesiology and sacraments. The two areas the Bible gives warrant for differences. Yet were they called Owenists? Bunyanists? Or Calvinists? Calvinists for good reason. 

Calvin is the prophet of the mountain. Muhammad, the prophet of the desert. The Pope is the prophet of the sewers of Rome. Marx is the prophet of hell. Which represents what in the Bible is considered good? A wilderness? Sewers? Hell? Or a mountain? 

Go with the mountain. 

There's an academic approach to the faith, and there's a spiritual warfare approach. The spiritual warfare approach uses what is true and helpful from academia. The academic approach is totally unaware, if not mocking, of the spiritual warfare approach. 

Think Puritans. What were they? Baxterists? No, they were Calvinists. For a reason.

Three things that you take with you when you die

There are three things you take with you when you physically die:

1. Your spiritual body

2. Your true wisdom (which is knowing the plan of God and your place and state within that plan)

3. Your capacity for experiencing joy (not happiness or pleasure but joy which comes from God and is a perpetual fountain)

Each can be developed now while in a physical body. Developed by degree.