PLAIN PATH PURITAN

The shallow, fat, tame slave voice of Satan's Kingdom

2012-01-31T02:21:00.000-08:00

Church Christianity is shallow (and worse). Whether it's obviously shallow nonsense or it's Michael Horton Reformed churchian nonsense, it's all shallow.

Michael Horton is an academic Christian who wouldn't know (or believe in) the reality of spiritual warfare if the Devil had him by the throat, to paraphrase Goethe.

This recording:

http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2012/01/29/whi-1086-faith-experience/

is pure Satanic nonsense. Actually it's worse than nonsense, but they'd take it as a compliment if I called it anything but nonsense.

What these two churchians of the worst order miss is a) the fact of regeneration, and b) the fact of spiritual battle. And while missing the fact of regeneration they hence also miss the fact that once regenerated a Christian is *able to do.*

Once regenerated you will be a soldier on the battlefield whether you like it or not. These academic fools are fully going with the current of the world and the Devil's kingdom, thus they experience no friction. So their teaching to others is, "Relax! There's no need to *do* anything! There is no battle! There is no battlefield! That is childish nonsense! Be like us! We eat ice cream all day and sit in offices in churches and at seminaries, and we can tell you there aren't any 'forces of evil' trying to get at us! Ha, ha! Come away from that silliness! And as for our so-called inner fallen nature? It's natural! Celebrate it! It's God-given! We wouldn't have such features if God didn't give them to us! Relax! It's all about ritual on Sundays! OK, baptism just once, but then eating crackers! And drinking grape juice! That's it! You're done! Relax! Oh, and read the Bible every now and then! Not too much, though! Ha, ha! Don't want to be an 'enthusiast'! You'll just get it all wrong anyway! Let us read it to you! That's easier for you anyway! Ha, ha. Relax!"

They're the shallow, fat, tame slave voice of Satan's Kingdom.

Christians must provoke their limits and extend their limits for such things as watchfulness and fearing God alone, in the moment, when most difficult, among the other practices Jesus Himself teaches in the New Testament; such teaching that is obviously beyond the church level of Christianity, and so be it.

Jesus as King

2012-01-27T00:28:00.000-08:00

From a comment thread on a blog I am banned from:

“I think he’s [Michael Sudduth] been under some degree of occultic bondage for most of his life. Never able to shake free of that.”

How does one shake free of that?

Jesus as King takes care of that kind of bondage. When He's your King.

Bare naked saying

2012-01-25T22:08:00.000-08:00

Look for the mystical in the orthodox.

Prophets, priests, and kings - or nothing

2012-01-23T17:11:00.000-08:00

Think about this: if you just use the Bible itself and the demands it makes to be understood in a complete way, you have to know really a lot to get that complete understanding. You really do. There's no way of getting around that.

Now I always say - and this is what I believe - that the bar is set high by Christianity, but the Holy Spirit enables individuals to meet and exceed that bar.

Still, it has to be learned.

And the fact is, most Christians *don't* get complete understanding of the Bible, i.e. of the plan of God found in the Old and New Testaments.

So what does that mean? How should we think about that? Is it important? It seems one needs to get the understanding of a prophet, a priest, and a king to understand the Bible. I mean that seriously. That's the bar that has to be met.

Recurrence would explain it. I.e. that the drawing of individuals into the Kingdom is, from our point-of-view, slower than we tend to think, and that perhaps only a handful in each generation meet that bar. But in time, in the fullness of time, in recurrence, it plays out, and gets done.

But, for instance, without knowing the intricacies of law and Gospel and the overall plan of God then the Bible is just a book of strange events. People are Christians their entire lives and can't say why Jesus needed to be sacrificed on the cross.

The conceit of the clerical class (at least on the Protestant side, the Romanist side seems to have given up any belief that people can understand such things) is they exist to teach such things to people. But their very methods are obviously not up to the task. You can't get understanding of such things passively, sitting in a pew, listening to a sermon. Hence that just becomes a vain, indulgent show of the alpha monkey (or anti-alpha monkey, whatever the case may be) at the alter or podium.

Obviously we all learn from teachers, and if we are mature we are grateful for the efforts of those teachers. But this usually occurs from time-vetted books. But that is active study. Self-motivated as well. Inwardly-motivated, active study. Driven by the presence of the Holy Spirit within us.

But look how vain and immature the church leaders and educators are. They learn a few things and think they are thus in a higher class of Christian. The 'teaching class.' Like the Romanist Teaching Church. Magisterium, or traces of it, doesn't take long to follow in the wake of that.

Jesus specifically said - twice - that He hated such lording it over the so-called 'lay-people.' Why? Because you can't be a Christian and be a so-called lay person. The entire model is false. Christians are prophets, priests, and kings, or they are passive, outwardly-motivated (solely) fools with no understanding sitting in a pew listening to a vain fool indulging himself 'preaching' (which means anything other than actually proclaiming the *actual* word of God, which is living language and has effect alone to call God's elect, but the sermonizers are too vain and shallow and frankly to stupid to know or value that).

Fear God alone. That means don't fear man. Any man, Christian. Any man. Fear God alone. That is how you gain wisdom. They'll call you 'individualist' (as if that is a bad thing). Or 'lone ranger.' Or 'me and my Bible alone.' That is just the usual [garbage] that comes out of the mouths of the Devil's children when they are challenged. Exploit everything, yes. Your discernment that comes from the Holy Spirit needs material and influences to discern. Exploit everything (even create some of it when you are able), but join nothing. Certainly not until you have understanding that is demanded by Christianity, which is nothing short of the understanding of a prophet, priest, and king.

The relative value of books

2012-01-22T07:40:00.000-08:00

This anecdote reminds me how valuable a single book can be when we aren't inundated with thousands of books and when we don't have ability to get any book from anywhere in the world easily:

"John Colquhoun [pron. ka-HOON, 1748-1827], former pastor New Church in South Leith, Scotland. Educated at Glasgow University. Shortly after his conversion he walked all the way from Luss to Glasgow, a distance in all of about fifty miles, to buy a copy of Thomas Boston's Fourfold State. This book had a moulding influence on his early Christian life. He came to esteem it next to his Bible. The influence of Boston's teaching was later to permeate his ministry and writings."

I see that book by Boston in the same way. I'm currently reading Colquhoun's Treatise on the Law and the Gospel and getting much from it. It's not just another theology book. The subject matter is foundational, and he's surprising in his complete understanding of it, even the knottier parts like the Mosaic Covenant.

This wasn't supposed to get out into the media

2012-01-22T05:47:00.000-08:00

"At West Park [Presbyterian church], Rev. Brashear walked into the church for a morning service to find the 18-inch-diameter bronze basin and lid missing from the baptismal font’s 800-pound base. Holy water — straight from the River Jordan — had been poured from the missing basin insert into the base’s bowl."

Read N. Y. Post article here.

The above is a portion of a story about how Occupy Wallstreet people are stealing from and pissing in churches that are giving them shelter. Though the above quote is what caught my attention. It's a Presbyterian church. They have a concept of 'holy water'. From the Jordan even.

This is what the belief - or the fallen demand for - infant baptism leads to. It is a Romanist practice, and don't allow any paedo-baptist tell you Reformed infant baptism is any different from Romanist infant baptism. Both disdain God's sovereignty in regeneration. Actually hate it. Both exalt man and ritual over the word and the Spirit. Both believe in baptismal regeneration, and in fact demand it. And both - it too follows - have a low valuation for the Bible. Both are on the same page in pushing mutilated, corrupted versions of the Bible.

Paedo-baptism (infant baptism) is not a minor, silly, unimportant leftover from the Roman Beast church. It is where churchians who disdain God's sovereignty in grace (God is sovereign in creation, providence, and grace) make their stand against God. Regeneration is the main thing. The most important thing. The devil knows ritual doesn't effect regeneration. The Roman Beast church called people to be baptized all day and all night. Yet what did they keep away from people on penalty of torture and death? That's right, the word of God. Satan knows what regenerates God's elect, and it isn't cleric and ritual. It is the word and the Spirit.

The walking of your soul

2012-01-20T02:51:00.000-08:00

"Since the hearts of our first parents flew out at their eyes, on the forbidden fruit, and a night of darkness was thereby brought on the world, their posterity have a natural disease which Solomon calls, "The wandering of the desire," or, as the word is, "The walking of your soul," Eccl. 6:9. This is a sort of diabolical trance, wherein the soul traverses the world; feeds itself with a thousand airy nothings; snatches at this and the other created excellency, in imagination and desire; goes here, and there, and everywhere, except where it should go. And the soul is never cured of this disease, until conquering grace brings it back to take up its everlasting rest in God through Christ—but until this be, if man were set again in paradise, the garden of the Lord, all the pleasures there would not keep him from looking, yes, and leaping over the hedge a second time." - Thomas Boston, Human Nature in its Fourfold State, pg. 75, Banner of Truth edition

The difficulty is to actually observe it in yourself. Observe it in real time. And you need a language to see it. If you fear man you will never encounter or learn such a language. You will remain shallow. Churchianity is a shallow school. Another way to say that is it is a man-fearing school. Fear God alone, and find a real school.

Pondering biblical truth and subject matter out and about in the traffic of everyday life

2012-01-08T19:36:00.000-08:00

I've observed something over the years, here and there, but never really articulated it to myself or in writing, but here it is: I find that when I ponder biblical doctrine on my own, not in the study but out and about in everyday life, it becomes incredibly more powerful.

It's hard to explain it beyond that. I mean, something like the doctrine of providence, when pondering it - and even more than that - when reciting it to myself (usually with emotion because there is some context that starts me on it) then the meaning starts to roll and gather more meaning.

Also, the subject of protection from God, or what we think about regarding the subjects of spiritual warfare. Adoption into God's family. All doctrine. It becomes very powerful when pondering it 'out on the Way' rather than merely in the study with a book in hand.

Just truth itself when applied to actual life.

This is also a big part of the popularity and significance of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. It is Christian doctrine 'on the Way.' As it plays out.

Crucial in understanding the Mosaic Covenant is...

2012-01-07T16:40:00.000-08:00

Crucial in understanding the Mosaic Covenant is to distinguish between individual Israelites and National Israel as a unique entity. Individual Israelites were just like us, salvation by faith alone, in the (for them) coming Messiah. National Israel though is very much not like us (or not like fallen man). National Israel is prototypical of the coming Messiah. So in that sense national Israel (again, not individual Israelites!) very much *could* fulfill the Covenant of Works (*through the anti-type Jesus Christ*).

People are afraid of typology that brushes up against such central, important doctrine, for some reason.

In this sense *National Israel* was as *unique* a player in God's plan of redemption as pre-fall Adam and Jesus Christ Himself. (I believe this is why the apostle Paul struggles to explain in Romans why his fellow Jews are just like any other fallen individuals *yet* at the same time are a bit different.)

I am not a prototype of Jesus Christ, and no fallen man pre or post the Incarnation is either. National Israel *was* a prototype of Jesus Christ. National Israel was *unique* in the plan of redemption.

Jesus was *born under the law.* Had to be. The law given on Mt. Sinai was obviously the Covenant of Works in elaborated form. Jesus came to fulfill what the first Adam failed to fulfill.

The relationship of individual Israelites to that republished law was as a student/school teacher relationship. The laws also played a unique part in keeping the royal bloodline from Adam to Christ pure, and keeping the Israelites unified. They had unique responsibilities not the least of which was their very history became the substance of special revelation which had to be lived, recorded, and kept pure and whole and shepherded down through the centuries, etc.

Follow the law, stay in the land, fail to follow the law, get exiled from the land, all that is played out at the level of National Israel, mostly focused on the various kings and their behavior. The big fact is this: when the northern Kingdom and the southern Kingdom were eventually exiled *there were saved individual Israelites in those exiled populations.* They weren't kicked out because they didn't have faith in the coming Messiah, they were kicked out because their kings and the corporate *national level* of Israel failed to follow the law. But they weren't exiled forever because the fulfillment of National Israel was the incarnation of Jesus Christ who *did* follow the law and accomplish what the first Adam failed to accomplish. It was a long historical object lesson for all of fallen man, engrafted as special revelation.

There is a lot of ignorance and misguided piousness and - not a small thing - intentional false teacher confusion-sowing regarding this relatively simple doctrine of basic Federal Theology. Those who attack the central doctrine of justification by faith alone despise any notion of a Covenant of Works in the garden to begin with and demand it be done away with. Many don't see this. Much naivety (and the false teachers grin at how easy it is to muddy up the waters and sow confusion). Those false teachers currently would be people like the Federal Visionists.

Federal Theology is simple and complete (plain) and *powerful.*

Academics who are always learning and never able (or who just petulantly never want) to come to understanding of the truth also have a hand in sowing endless confusion over this simple doctrine. It's fairly maddening. Also, some of the slower thinkers in certain internet environments tend to take the lead in policing everybody on this particular subject. Again, it is basic Federal Theology, but basic Federal Theology isn't grasped in the sense of understanding the parts in relation to the whole by many people currently.

I'm not saying everybody is stupid but me, but there is definite frustration when going up against people on this subject. I think R. Scott Clark gave up trying and left the internet partially over this subject alone. You have to both take on the false teachers *and* all the people who have been severely confused by the false teachers, and it's the latter who tend to be very pious and ultimately unteachable.

The PuritanBoard is confused, allow a street Calvinist to unconfuse them

2012-01-07T08:23:00.000-08:00

At the PuritanBoard, where anyone with a doctrinal I.Q. above 2 digits gets banned (actually anybody who doesn't fear man gets banned), a person asked if regeneration and faith occur at the same time. None of the members over there could answer the question. Here's the answer:

No, they don't. Here is why: faith requires knowledge. We have to know who or what we are to have faith in and why. So after one is regenerated by the word and the Spirit there will likely be a time when the person does not yet have the biblical, doctrinal knowledge to know what we are to have faith in or why.

But once we learn (and regeneration puts the motivation in us to learn) then faith follows.

The main thing is regeneration. Once regenerated by the word and the Spirit (not by man and ritual) everything follows in its wake.

Somebody will ask: "What if you die right after you are regenerated by the word and the Spirit and you don't yet have faith based on real understanding?" That gets into providential matters which God controls. But one can speculate also that if someone has truly been regenerated by the word and the Spirit then they have enough of a knowledge (if not systematic doctrinal knowledge) of Jesus from actually reading the Bible to have saving faith, if even somewhat still unconscious at that point. But I doubt God in His providence is going to allow you to die prior to you having real faith based on real understanding of the what and why right after He has regenerated you. That suggests chaos, and God is not a God of chaos.

On mixed race marriages and creating mixed race offspring

2012-01-06T18:55:00.001-08:00

I'm not politically-correct, and I don't fear man's opinion of me, so turn away now before you get outraged...

I was looking at an interview of iconic German woman Heidi Klum and noticing how iconically white she is and attractive and all the rest of it, and also pondering what goes on in her little head regarding birthing babies with her black husband and so on.

From a biblical viewpoint I came up with this as a way to see it. Mixed race marriage is not a problem biblically after the incarnation of Jesus. Those laws national Israel had regarding it were to protect the royal bloodline from Adam to Christ. (Some people will say 'kind after kind' is a relevant point of Scripture against mixing races, but I don't see that as a strong argument. YET--- (hang with me)...

Yet, there is *still* an element of *rebellion* in the white girl who does it. And we all who are honest see that and know it. (The black man just seems like he's getting away with something.) So here's how I see it biblically: if the white girl *knows* her parents would really rather her not marry or produce children with a man of another race then that girl is violating the 5th commandment. She's not honoring her parents.

And we all know most white girls who do this are simply exploiting their power to have sex with anybody they want. And when they present the mixed child to their parents they are eyeing their parents *challenging* them (i.e. accusing them of racism if they don't accept the child), and in this way they are violating the 5th commandment in what amounts to really a very severe degree.

Now if the girl actually has parents who are delighted to have a half-black grandchild, then so be it. But they *really* have to not care, and the girl really has to know that.

So, biblically, the white girl is manifesting rebellion when she knowingly dishonors her parents wishes by presenting them a mixed race child. She's not honoring her parents (and she knows it). God can't trust her either. But I don't speak for God. I just go by His word.

By the way, to the racists and racism accusers: God can create a beautiful master race from the very stones on the ground if He wants to. And this post can be re-written in reverse obviously, but I'll let a non-white person do that. The subject of this post is rebellion against God, ultimately, by the violation of His fifth commandment.

Classical Covenant - Federal - Theology

2012-01-01T08:49:00.000-08:00

Christians, intellectually-oriented ones especially, are ever learning and never able to come to understanding of the truth. Or they are petulant in not wanting to come to terminal understanding of biblical doctrine.

Covenant Theology is a good example of this. Some new pious soul always wants to reorder it or accuse it or make it the servant of some specially-preferred doctrine. It is just basic, powerful Federal Theology. When you understand regeneration by the word and the Spirit (rather than ritual and man), when you see the types and the fulfillment of the types, when you have the whole and can see the parts in relation to the whole, you don't argue endlessly over a detail or eternally wring your hands that every last detail isn't as you demand it to be. It is complete. It's there. It's simple. It's elegant. Demanding unbiblical doctrine is what messes it up and complicates it and defiles it. But you should get there, in full understanding of it, if you are an elect of God, in time. If you desire more to squabble eternally and defile everything then that's another matter.

With Covenant Theology it is best to keep it simple. The outlines are set. The mechanics are fixed. Everything is framed in biblical warrant.

The Covenant of Redemption from eternity, the Covenant of Works in the Garden, the Covenant of Grace in history. The two Adams mechanics of fall and salvation. The distinctives of Federal Theology: five solas, doctrines of grace, all that is classical apostolic/Reformation era systematic theology.

Having this foundation is what is necessary. Operating upon this foundation. Standing upon the Covenant of Redemption (the Pactum Salutis) as the Magna Carta, the very constitution of the Kingdom of God, and our legal standing in the Kingdom of God. Standing upon this against all devils and all men. Fearing God alone and not fearing man.

The practice of spiritual warfare and of holiness (Christ formed in us) take place upon this foundation, in the Kingdom of God now.

Christians who walk from book-lined studies to pulpits and back to book-lined studies don't value the concrete, the terminal understanding of biblical doctrine, and they communicate that lack of valuation to those they lead and teach. The same with Christians in the academy. In fact the very way they teach, their sermonizing, to a passive audience, their impractical commenting on Bible verses and passages (like reciting a phone book), they know this is self-indulgent and doesn't deliver understanding, but they don't value delivering real understanding.

Education happens when the Holy Spirit is in us. We desire understanding. It will get done because real Christians are self-motivated and active in getting it done. But real Christianity occurs on the street. You're just screwing around until you are a Christian on the street.

The precious Christianity of the pulpit and the pew, and the shallow Christianity of the ivory tower are only worthy of mocking from where real Christianity and real Christians reside which is the street, the Way, the King's Highway, the spiritual battlefield, everyday practice of the faith.

Kingdom, warfare, holiness. The gratitude of being in God's Kingdom now, and the ability to fight the spiritual battle in Christ's army and to increase in holiness to ultimately be able to withstand in the evil day, in the full armor of God, and to stand...

I horse whip an ignorant or just disingenuous 'Reverend', but it's OK, because I fear and reverence God alone...(call no man 'reverend')

2011-12-31T09:51:00.000-08:00

Rev. Winzer writes:

"Now, if you would like to revise Kline's method of argumentation, and revert to a national probation that is different in nature to Adam's probation, then you are free to do so"

Meredith Kline wrote: "This history unfolds within the framework of the national covenant ratified at Sinai and (as we have noted) under that covenant continuance in possession of the typal kingdom was governed by the principle of works. Israel's situation was like Adam's in the creational covenant of works, Israel's probation, however, being corporate and continuing through their generations."

Yes, Israel's probation, however, being *corporate*... Maybe Rev. Winzer doesn't know that corporate here is legitimately a synonym for *national*, or maybe Rev. Winzer has never really read Meredith Kline, or perhaps Rev. Winzer has read Meredith Kline but had difficult understanding him, or, more likely, perhaps Rev. Winzer has read Meredith Kline and has chosen to engage in disingenuous confusion regarding what he has written so as to further his, Rev. Winzer's, chosen demands on biblical doctrine, the motivation for which being as covert as he seems to want it to be.

The Kline extract is from page 127 of his God, Heaven and Har Magedon. Read the rest of that chapter as well. If you have an interested in and actually value Federal Theology that is. Kline didn't invent it, by the way.

+ + + + + + +

I'm not going to again expose the blather of Winzer's claim that even a corporate probation for National Israel would be different from Adam's because at that point he just throws up a lot of magic dust knowing it will impress his rather slow and obsequious audience at the Not-Very-PuritanBoard forum. (John Flavel would be banned from that forum.) Here's an example of his magic dust:

"We do not need to go the length of Kline in order to validate the elements which have the appearance of works in the covenant with Israel. It suffices to say, with the reformed tradition, that certain elements of the covenant of works were republished in subordination to the covenant of grace. Not that this makes it an altogether unique covenant arrangement because the same elements are promulgated in the gospel, as Romans 2 teaches. The fact is that man was created under a moral order, and every administration of divine providence operates in accord with this order. The modern theory of republication partially chooses when to maximise that moral order and when to minimise it. In doing so it does not rightly divide the word of truth."

You see he snuck a little concession in there, but then he wants to say that the Covenant that Jesus came to fulfill is also then put upon Christians, which is not even an ad hoc hail Mary, but just a rank ignorant statement, if not malicious. It's not that people like Winzer don't understand the two Adam mechanics of salvation, but that he despises it. His fallen nature despises it. He rolls along in covert mode, but when the spirit of disobedience calls on him to repudiate crucial biblical doctrine he's right on cue. He is not alone, of course. The Reformed world is full of his type. They teach in seminaries, and they lead churches.

I really need to find my horse whip

2011-12-31T06:31:00.000-08:00

Now, if you would like to revise Kline's method of argumentation, and revert to a national probation that is different in nature to Adam's probation, then you are free to do so, but then you would not be holding to the modern republication theory. A different kind of probation would lead to a different kind of covenantal arrangement, and that would only serve to undermine the idea that "the covenant of works" was republished.

This is asinine in many ways. 'Modern republication theory' is non-existent. Anytime you see someone referencing Kline regarding the republication of the Covenant of Works on Sinai (as if that is a controversial doctrine to begin with) you are dealing with a person who is hiding his motives in the dark and is ashamed of putting them on the table. Whether they be theonomists, or Federal Vision, or, in Winzer's case, a Federal Vision useful idiot because he has a taste for things Romish.

This is what happens when Christian environments ban anybody with a doctrinal I.Q. above two digits. You get the blind leading the blind.

By the way, the answer to Winzer's confusion in his last sentence is Jesus doesn't need a different covenantal arrangement. He is the second Adam. He came to fulfill what the first Adam failed to fulfill. This is a doctrine all useful idiots of Rome calling themselves Reformed hate. Just as you hate the fact that God is sovereign in regeneration, you hate the fact that Jesus fulfilled the Covenant of Works.

If I was in your church I'd toss you out by the back of your pants. And probably horse whip you for good measure.

Explaining the strange and mostly disingenuous non-understanding of the doctrine of the republication of the Covenant of Works on Sinai

2011-12-29T22:52:00.000-08:00

I don't know why I do this, but this subject of the republication of the Covenant of Works on Sinai is just such basic Federal Theology, that the curious inability of certain infant baptism demanding Reformed types to grasp it suggests a bit of counter-Reformation aroma is in the room... Rev. Winzer commences:

Historical reformed theology taught the covenant of works appointed a representative head, Adam, who was placed on probation for himself and his posterity, and his fall issued in the condemnation of all who should descend from him by ordinary generation. The children of Adam are reckoned sinners by the immediate imputation of Adam's sin; they were not made sinners by their own probation and fall.

This is called stating the obvious. Thanks for the lesson, Mr. Winzer. You're making absolutely no point relevant to the subject at hand, but thanks for that basic point of Federal Theology anyhow.

The republication scheme allows a personal probation for Israel under the covenant of works, and thereby undermines the universal representative principle which is so pronounced in traditional reformed covenant theology. Says Kline, "The old covenant was law, the opposite of grace-faith, and in the postlapsarian world that meant it would turn out to be an administration of condemnation as a consequence of sinful Israel's failure to maintain the necessary meritorious obedience." He regarded Israel as undergoing its own probation, and falling in its own person, under a republished covenant of works. It was only on the basis of this personal fall of Israel that he could insist on the conclusion that the covenant made with Israel was one of works in contrast to grace: "A satisfactory explanation of Israel's fall demands works, not grace, as the controlling administrative principle." -- Meredith G. Kline, 'Answering Objections to the Covenant of Works,' in Kingdom Prologue, pp. 107-17. Available here: The Upper Register: Papers and mp3's by Lee Irons

If you don't distinguish between National Israel as prototype of the coming Messiah and individual Israelites who are fallen human beings and very much *not* prototypes of the coming Messiah. Yeah, if you don't do that then you have some degree of a point.

Here, then, is another serious departure which the modern republication theory makes from traditional reformed covenant theology. Whereas traditional reformed theology taught the universal nature of Adam's representation issuing in the condemnation of all men in him, the modern republication scheme makes Israel undergo its own probation and fall into condemnation. http://www.puritanboard.com/f31/dabney-broken-covenant-works-71844/

Rev. Winzer, in very much counter-Reformation Romanist priest mode, repeats his little poison pill word 'scheme' here.

No, Rev. Winzer, it's you who don't understand - or value - basic Federal Theology. Jesus was *born under the law.* Jesus came to fulfill what the first Adam failed to fulfill. Instead of Jesus not eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil Jesus followed 100% what that command represented, and what was republished (not reestablished as a way of salvation for individual fallen man, but simply republished) on Mt. Sinai in obviously elaborated form.

National Israel as a prototype of the coming Messiah had the same role vis-a-vis the Mosaic Covenant that the coming Messiah, Jesus Christ, would have. It played out for National Israel as 'do the commands' and stay in the land, 'fail to do the commands' and get kicked out of the land. Just as it played out with pre-fallen Adam. Typically though as the prototype of the coming Messiah.

Individual Israelites were saved by faith in the coming Messiah just as we are saved by faith in the already come Messiah.

National Israel is a different player in God's plan of redemption than individual Israelites were. There are three unique players in God's plan of redemption: Adam in the Garden, National Israel, and Jesus Christ Himself. All three have 'federal head' connections, National Israel's being of the nature of a prototype of Jesus' federal headship.

The Covenant of Works, republished on Sinai, is a covenant of works for Jesus, and by that it is grace for us. I.e. in that sense it is part of the Covenant of Grace for us.

One last important point: this is all just basic Federal Theology. Those of us who can see it don't see it as controversial in any sense. It is just basic Federal Theology. Those who kick and scream and cuss and call it names like 'scheme' obviously have some other motivation. They obviously are fighting against something. And of the false teachers who attack justification by faith alone most subtly they are the very ones who deny not only a republication of the Covenant of Works, but they deny a Covenant of Works altogether. They don't want Jesus fulfilling anything for them or anybody else, because they want *all* in bondage to the death and darkness of the system of the Beast which is works righteousness. They want *you* to have to work for your salvation.

This is why the pure theology does not include infant baptism. Infant baptism downgrades and disdains not only regeneration by the word and the Spirit but the very notion - noxious to fallen man - of God being sovereign in regeneration. Once a person determines they have disdain for God being sovereign in regeneration and demands that ritual and man can and will take the place of the word and the Spirit they are then by default in the system of the Beast and little by little they will downgrade on every other Reformed doctrine central to the faith such as justification by faith alone, and the very existence of a Covenant of Works. You see it over and over and over in the Reformed paedo-baptist community. They are always leaning towards Rome, and because they don't want to come out of the closet totally they make their little stands on doctrine such as the republication of the Covenant of Work on Sinai.

Dave Armstrong Syndrome

2011-12-29T06:32:00.000-08:00

I'm the first person to mock the shallowness of academia and academics including of the seminary variety. I'm the first to mock their self-assessed elitism, such as it is. I often refer disparagingly to the priesthood of scholars, and not just regarding modern Bible version issues.

But I'm seeing a lot of lunacy on the internet lately (and people will say I'm projecting, so be it, you should still be able to get something from what I'm about to say) regarding what I'll called Dave Armstrong Syndrome.

Dave, back when he was desperately trying to get Wikipedia to allow a page on him to stay up (which they eventually took down), kind of pulled me into the controversy (I forget how, but I have written several articles for Wikipedia which have actually had some staying power, many also which get nuked quick though), where I just off-handedly told the Wikipedia editor that Dave Armstrong considers his collected blog posts to be as world-historically valuable as the collected works of Luther and Calvin combined. That didn't help his case.

I'm seeing a similar lunacy in other quarters of the Christian blogosphere.

Now, I personally think Professor R. Scott Clark of Westminster Seminary California left the internet because he was seeing this same thing, from his own perspective. I know there was some unspoken thing that occurred where he apologized to his church and so on, but basically I believe, from what I observed over the years, that he left simply because of the lunacy of a thousand instant experts opining and getting to the point where they were showing a rather belligerent lack of respect for people like himself, and they were doing this on issues where clearly they didn't know what they were talking about. (The lack of understanding, persistent, petulant and pious lack of understanding, of law and gospel, the basics of Federal Theology itself, Meredith Kline in numerous ways, etc., is a constant amazement and frustration for many.)

So I listen to an interview where Frank Turk (he's really famous) of Pyromaniacs (a blog) is sounding like Dave Armstrong, or like he too has Dave Armstrong Syndrome. He's quoting the apostle Paul in a context that relates to him and his fellow bloggers ("People are saying, 'I'm of Frank Turk, I'm of Phil Johnson...'"), he's critiquing Reformed theologians on subjects he clearly doesn't grasp, and really has no value for (i.e. he's being a busy body outside his own stated camp).

We don't have a Magisterium in Protestantism, and we don't want one, but I, lowly street Calvinist that I am, beneath Bunyan in my formal education, feel the same frustration when I see slow-brains moderating forums and dictating to others on subject matter they clearly don't grasp. And further, being totally unteachable.

I'm just writing about basic Federal Theology. I understand it. I see the power in it. The simplicity in it. I'm able to come to terminal understanding of biblical doctrine. I can understand that others are still learning, or in different stages of coming into understanding of the whole, and thus not yet able to see the parts in relation to the whole, which is a good definition of understanding. The problem is the lunacy. The vanity. We have bloggers and forum moderators and commentators lecturing people who have written sound books on the subjects at hand, and - important point - they are lecturing from a position of ignorance, and doing it piously and belligerently and making themselves totally unteachable.

One thing I've always been is teachable. I've lost every argument I've ever had with Louis Berkhof, for instance, other than regarding infant baptism. I understand Vos, I understand Kline, and I know how difficult it is when you first encounter them, but there is a lunacy around these days where when you disabuse a person 20, 30 times on some point of doctrine or something they think about Federal Theology or Kline or whatever, where they are clearly just factually mistaken, or don't know the politics involved, or can't yet see the subtlety of the Reformed position, or something similar, and they come back as if you never wrote a word and they continue to lecture in their ignorance, you have to scratch your head and wonder if something else other than invincible ignorance is at work.

Addendum to the 'what Jesus means when he says sell all' post

2011-12-28T21:10:00.000-08:00

And of course 'wealth' in the post [which I paste below for reference] refers to all that sustains a person in the Kingdom of Satan. If the root that sustains the plant is connected to the Kingdom of Satan that root has to be cut. That is hard to do. People don't want to do that. Jews especially seem to not want to do that.

It's fortunate if a person starts out poor and already a bit alienated from the world and gradually is drawn into the Kingdom of God; but those who are very fixed in their way of life and the sustenance of the Kingdom of Satan, 'rich' and 'fat' in their family and society and way of life and worldliness and mind and nature and all they've come to hold dear will have a more difficult time 'selling all' and following Jesus...

They can't, ultimately, unless God does it.

But this is why we should not envy the world or the 'successful' in the world, those fixed in the deadness and illusions and delusions of the Kingdom of Satan, and we should only put the highest value on regeneration by the word and the Spirit and glorifying God.

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[Title] What Jesus means when He says sell all you have and follow Him

This biblical insight was derived from a memory of seeing a Jewish man in a Christian bookstore looking at the Jewish Messianic books, and looking furtively at all the Christians in the store. Messianic Jews recognize Jesus as Messiah, but they still don't associate themselves with Christians. They maintain a boundary there.

The insight: when Jesus tells people (Jews) to sell all that they have and follow Him it comes across as if Jesus is saying poverty is part of following Him and part of the faith.

Yet at the same time there are passages that say when you believe on Him you won't suffer worldly needs and you will have access to all God has ultimately.

So here is how to see it. That Jewish man in the Christian bookstore has derived his wealth, all he has, from his people and culture, ultimately. Jesus is saying the fount of that wealth is the Kingdom of Satan (and I'm not associating Jews particularly with the Kingdom of Satan, all who are not in the Kingdom of God are in the Kingdom of Satan, but with Jews it's a pronounced example). It is *that* that the Jew must give up. Wealth from the Kingdom of Satan. Sustenance from the Kingdom of Satan. Sell *that.*

That Jewish man though is very reluctant (scared, as we all are) to give up his wealth, or the source of his wealth (even if he's a low level accountant in his uncle's warehouse company). When you leave your family you leave what sustains you. All that you know. So he sees a necessity to maintain that boundary between him and Christians in general. He doesn't want to stop being a Jew because he doesn't want to give up what the Kingdom of Satan has given him and keeps giving him.

When you become a Christian you go through a process where you separate from even your own family.

You say: "All that is death." And you move in the direction of God.

Two facts that give big insight into death but that are not talked about much

2011-12-27T14:26:00.000-08:00

If one is pondering the mystery of death - and the reality of something beyond - there are two facts about it that are big facts about death but that don't get talked about much.

1. The fact that people don't freak out when they die. This is a telling fact. Of course each dying person is in a different condition and situation, pain, medication, the amount of time leading up to the moment of passing - if any time - and all that, but all in all we all (as we get older) have seen people on their deathbeds, and for the most part people don't freak out that they are dying or will imminently die. We also see a lot of evidence that they are being conditioned for the moment of passing. Maybe consciously in some cases, or maybe only just unconsciously, but there seems to be a real conditioning from beyond the veil that occurs.

2. The fact that very elderly people (with exceptions, yes, but generally speaking) become more childlike the more frail and elderly they get. This fact is big because it shows the cycle aspect of human life. And when we see cycles in nature we see that life doesn't end at the end of a cycle. And this childlike nature of elderly people is given away also by the unconscious behavior in other people regarding how they talk and react to the elderly person. A young woman at a cash register will unconsciously talk to a very elderly woman as if she were four years old. "And how are *you* today? You're looking very sharp. Out and about in the sunshine?" etc.

What Jesus means when He says sell all you have and follow Him

2011-12-25T12:47:00.000-08:00

This biblical insight was derived from a memory of seeing a Jewish man in a Christian bookstore looking at the Jewish Messianic books, and looking furtively at all the Christians in the store. Messianic Jews recognize Jesus as Messiah, but they still don't associate themselves with Christians. They maintain a boundary there.

The insight: when Jesus tells people (Jews) to sell all that they have and follow Him it comes across as if Jesus is saying poverty is part of following Him and part of the faith.

Yet at the same time there are passages that say when you believe on Him you won't suffer worldly needs and you will have access to all God has ultimately.

So here is how to see it. That Jewish man in the Christian bookstore has derived his wealth, all he has, from his people and culture, ultimately. Jesus is saying the fount of that wealth is the Kingdom of Satan (and I'm not associating Jews particularly with the Kingdom of Satan, all who are not in the Kingdom of God are in the Kingdom of Satan, but with Jews it's a pronounced example). It is *that* that the Jew must give up. Wealth from the Kingdom of Satan. Sustenance from the Kingdom of Satan. Sell *that.*

That Jewish man though is very reluctant (scared, as we all are) to give up his wealth, or the source of his wealth (even if he's a low level accountant in his uncle's warehouse company). When you leave your family you leave what sustains you. All that you know. So he sees a necessity to maintain that boundary between him and Christians in general. He doesn't want to stop being a Jew because he doesn't want to give up what the Kingdom of Satan has given him and keeps giving him.

When you become a Christian you go through a process where you separate from even your own family.

You say: "All that is death." And you move in the direction of God.

The lower order is not the real order

2011-12-22T08:41:00.000-08:00

If you don't understand my writing (or John Bunyan's, for that matter) the lower order needs to be provoked by the higher order.

Yes, you've got a lot of sub-normal cases at the lower order who need some sort of basic treatment in a 'church', but the faith is not just defined by the sub-normal or the average (the good, upstanding family types who think producing children makes them righteous). That level really isn't even the true level of the faith.

This is not to say the higher order aren't sick cases. We all are.

One thing that distinguishes the higher order though is unlike the lower order we know our own smell. We know we are sinners, and we know sin isn't cool. We don't define our sin in terms that the world would smile at as if it were something cool. We actually know we are sinners, and that we smell, and that that smell is not a good smell.

A worse smell - far worse - is the smell of people who smell like the worst untreated bacterial infection yet who consider themselves to smell like roses. Meet the lower order.

How do you enter the higher order? You separate from the world. From 'all you hold dear.' You actually engage the word of God as if it is something higher than you. You get it into you complete. And you go on pilgrimage. And no you don't have to trek over deserts and mountains. That is thinking too literally. You cast off your worldly shell and you begin to develop your essential being, and you get your vanity and pride and self-will beaten to a bloody pulp in the process.

Practically speaking you can start this process by engaging influences that you, in your current fear of man, would never think of engaging. Influences just above your current level of understanding, just outside your current circle of interests. Music, art, religion in general, history, philosophy, imaginative literature, science...anything in those general categories. Throw in some performing arts, athletics... Sounds simple, but you really have to engage higher influences. Kind of systematically, until they begin to 'take'. Until they actually form a center in you. Until you value such influences and the direction they lead you in and what they lead to more than you value food, sex, money, and mother-in-law.

These influences contain in them by degree - greater or lesser degree - an even higher influence. You will discern the higher influence by following bits and pieces of ideas and images that occur and recur as you further engage these influences. It eventually leads you to a school, or school knowledge.

Doing this will make the people around you do a double take, then begin to get angry at you, to make accusations against you, to revile you. Then you kind of know you are on your way. You know you are now leaving the camp of darkness and stepping into the light. This makes the world very angry towards you. They'll even try to kill you. But you will have some degree of protection, hopefully. In God's providence he probably hasn't set you in the midst of a Muslim family in an Islamic hell hole, or something similar. So with the word of God, the living word of God, the Sword of the Spirit, you will have some protection.

You'll need more guidance than this note, but you get that on the Way...

What is a real Christian? Read on...

2011-12-22T08:04:00.000-08:00

A mark that an era of the faith has downgraded to the level of decadence is those among the faithful who are the most shallow - and the most proudly and unself-consciously shallow - will become the leaders and the educators.

What is a real Christian? Allow John Bunyan to show you.

I recently heard a podcast of two Christian educators and a pastor talking about Pilgrim's Progress. At one point one of them, the pastor, stated that Palace Beautiful was the most "wonderful depiction of church"... No, Bunyan conspicuously didn't portray any church in Pilgrim's Progress. The closest depiction of a church in Pilgrim's Progress is the feckless people sitting docilely outside the gates of heaven waiting for their name to be called so they can get their paperwork all in order *by the authority* of the little man sitting at the table *putting fear into them.*

So what happens? What then happens is a knight in black armor appears, and to the anger and embarrassed astonishment of the feckless pew dwellers sitting there, the knight in black armor draws his sword and takes out the guards in front of the gates of heaven and forces his way through those gates.

Then what happens? Yes, the feckless, angry, embarrassed pew dwellers to further incense them hear *cheering* from within the gates of heaven.

That knight is a real Christian, and it's a fair statement to say it was the *first time* those feckless pew dwellers had ever been that close to a real Christian.

Legalists are silly, and they suck

2011-12-20T13:36:00.000-08:00

What a dour, unpleasant, and ridiculous atmosphere legalists create:

http://www.puritanboard.com/f25/what-wrong-tim-tebow-71689/

Someone calls them on it - a woman, oh, my! - and the moralators come out of their dark closets slamming down angry decrees and warnings.

Glowering eyes and low whispers... "We must not suffer this to be..."

No, sorry, we see you. You suck. And read Revelation. Jesus thinks you suck too.

Found a connection between C. S. Lewis and Ouspensky

2011-12-19T11:56:00.000-08:00

Anybody who knows Ouspensky and who has read C. S. Lewis knows Lewis got a great many insights from Ouspensky (and the body of writings generally on the subject of what is called the Work).

This is from the book Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis by Michael Ward:

"He [Lewis] was a keen amateur astronomer who had a telescope on the balcony of his bedroom and enjoyed visiting the Oxford observatory. He knew about such things as Venus' Albedo and was conversant with the broad outlines of the work of such figures in astronomy and physics as Schiaparelli, Ball, Jeans, Eddington, Schrodinger (his Magdalen colleague), and Hoyle, as well as that of more speculative writers such as Dunne, Abbott, Hinton, and Ouspenski."

In a footnote I was led to a book called We Remember C. S. Lewis (ed. Graham):

http://www.amazon.com/We-Remember-C-S-Lewis-Memoirs/dp/0805422994/ref=lh_ni_t

and was surprised to find that J. I. Packer apparently knew him (Lewis) and wrote an essay for the book. There is also another reference to Ouspenski vis-a-vis C. S. Lewis on page 112. Nothing more than a bare reference though.

I would suspect Lewis probably read New Model of the Universe and perhaps Tertium Organum, though many of his deeper and more striking insights obviously come from Work ideas that Lewis recycled in non-Work language.

And those reading this who have no idea what I'm talking about should probably stay far away from anything written by Ouspensky or any other on-the-mark source for such a teaching that he presented. Very dangerous. I'm speaking out of school as it is. Lewis never spoke out of school, but I probably can get away with it, having .0000000000000000000000000001% the audience he had.

An Open Letter to Chris Caughey

2011-12-10T11:12:00.001-08:00

Don't fear the word of God, child. You've stepped out of Rome's building; now step out of Rome's shadow.

(This is in reference to this silliness: http://www.scribd.com/doc/70593703/An-Open-Letter-to-Micah-and-Samuel-Renihan )

Cornering Rome

2011-12-10T10:33:00.000-08:00

Responding to this:

http://www.puritanboard.com/f31/kingdom-covenant-71536/#post915133

Rev. Winzer responded with this:

In effect, modern antipaedobaptists have etherealised "covenant;" relating kingdom to that etherealised covenant requires the antipaedobaptist to etherealise the kingdom. That is all that is accomplished by the OP. As an exercise in consistency it has gone a long way towards accomplishing its goal. As an incorporation of biblical and dogmatic theology, however, it is disastrous. In terms of biblical theology, the Davidic covenant is the covenant of the kingdom. One must neglect that important development in order to tie covenant and kingdom together from the beginning of revelation. In terms of dogmatic theology, "the kingdom of God" has always been understood as being connected with the visible church in some way. Even the modern modifications of it accept a partial connection. An etherealised kingdom which relates to an etherealised covenant destroys the claim of the church of God on earth to serve a kingdom which is in the world but not of it.

You're right, Rev. Winzer. Rome is not going to be pleased with this turn of events.

(Having said that, I must also state that the author of the post linked above, in rather uncharming man-fearing fashion, threw too many bones Rome's way in the last portions of his post. Anyway, I must also say, this is a step in the right direction, overall, but these guys have further to go. Kingdom, warfare, holiness. They don't involve things you can touch, or eat, or have sex with. Think about spiritual warfare. Rome and its unconscious followers would mock the biblical teaching on spiritual warfare as 'etherealised.' Right, because we must actually burn people at the stake if we are to engage in spiritual warfare. Right? Right.)

Interesting note on Christianity and Greek myth

2011-12-09T10:13:00.000-08:00

W. H. D. Rouse wrote a popular book on Greek Myths titled Gods, Heroes and Men of Ancient Greece. I would describe him as an 'old hand' type who was competent in portraying such a thing as Greek myth. I recommend his little volume (only a penny for a used copy on Amazon) for just getting a good rendition of all of Greek myth. But anyway, he had an interesting note in his one-page introduction regarding how Christianity relates to the Greek myths. Of course I'll preface this by saying the Apostle Paul in the 17th chapter of Acts tells the Greeks that he saw their monument to the 'Unknown God' which he told them was the real Creator of Heaven and Earth.

So anyway, he is describing the family of Olympians, the generations before them, and their progeny:

"And all these [Olympians, lesser deities, heroes] were themselves subject to something higher than themselves, which they called Necessity. It is this highest power of all that we call God, and the Greeks were feeling their way towards it, but they thought less about it than they did about the lower powers. These stories [the Greek myths in general] concern these lower powers and how they were mixed up with mankind."

I thought that was interesting because I'd never come across 'Necessity' as the highest power in Greek myth. I might disagree somewhat with Rouse when he says the Greeks were "...feeling their way towards it [God]..." I suppose they were in a way, but rather I'd say they were remembering collectively like reflections through broken shards of glass the truth they had with them in their heart and with them in their collective memory as they migrated, as all people did, from the handed down truth coming from the immediate descendents of Adam.

A thought on the Bible

2011-12-08T16:29:00.000-08:00

After reading the Bible complete so many times I am beginning to reflect on thoughts and feelings I've had and have about it.

For instance, I really got angry reading through the history books this last time. I now know why. They are an ongoing depiction of fallen man being fallen man. Those depictions are designed to turn you to Christ and away from your own fallen self-will.

You probably don't need to be exposed to that particular message after you have understanding of it, but that takes a few or more complete readings, so exposed very fully you will be.

The books of the prophets too suffer from this intended limitation, they being commentary on the history books pretty much. And they really hammer points home. Repeatedly. Over and over. Quite a lot. No mistaking the message. If you didn't get it the first go round, then...the seventy-third will nail it down. (I am not mocking them or the style of them, but I am saying that once you have engaged them rather fully and gained real understanding of them then their work may have been accomplished as well.)

The mystery school is of course in the Gospels and Epistles. In everything, of course, but I mean blatantly there.

Another thought I've had today is how we need to remember that our business is really with death and warfare and where we stand and what we stand upon from here on out. These three realities I listed awhile back, kingdom, warfare, holiness, gather it all up rather completely I think. I mean soteriology is in Kingdom, in the sense that being a legal subject of the Kingdom of God involves all that soteriology is. Warfare and the subject of holiness - Christ formed in you - follow.

The end point is death or the Second Coming, and our ability to stand, and the degree of that ability. Yet with the call to watchfulness, and the fear of God alone, eschatology is a present-tense reality always.

Connecting the history of redemption and biblical doctrine to secular history and human nature

2011-12-01T23:35:00.001-08:00

It's the usual condition of a Christian to have a vague theoretical/philosophical connection to the faith overall, and to kind of put off that fact and just accept it as the reality of what we are to experience in this life.

We sense the bigness of what we are involved with, but the banality of existence is pretty big too.

One way to get beyond such a thin connection to the history of redemption and doctrine is to connect the history of redemption to secular history and to see doctrine in human nature itself, including your own.

Like seeing animal sacrifice in pagan culture. Why is Odysseus depicted as sacrificing bulls to appease Apollo in the Iliad? The answer is obvious, because the culture that created that epic poem was seeing through a glass darkly and had pieces and parts of the history of redemption, just as all religions and ways and philosophies and so forth have pieces and parts of the truth, not knowing - seemingly not curious - where they came from.

Seeing all the evil in the world - and in ourselves - is similar. An unregenerated person doesn't even want to think in the categories of good and evil and so forth, so the greatest horror shows of evil can pass before their very eyes and it doesn't leave an impression. But a Christian can use the existence of evil to truly 'see' doctrine in action. Original sin. The Kingdom of Satan. Idol worship. Human suffering and death as sacrifice to the idols. Getting expiation of guilt from the idols. Etc. We can see these things in real time, in real history, all around us, and in us.

So in this sense World War II, for instance, becomes a vast pageant of false religion in action; a hallucinogenic horror show of fallen human nature and the forces of the Kingdom of Satan (with the forces of liberty, by the way, not surprisingly represented by the Christian nation and company of nations of America and western Europe).

And the Law becomes a monster of collective force, acting through collective and individual fallen humanity, increasing sin and the power of sin, an actual substantive force, accusing, shaming, policing, while all the while self-justifying the breaking of every commandment brought down by Moses.

And the features of our fallen nature, within us, acting as the corresponding 'reins' the world and the Devil use to direct us and so on.

We're in it. See it around you. See it in you.

Atheists perplexed other atheists are shallow

2011-12-01T09:21:00.000-08:00

http://secularright.org/SR/wordpress/2011/11/13/the-idea-of-meaning-or-something/

An email upon my completing 7 complete readings of the Bible

2011-11-29T22:44:00.000-08:00

>How does it feel to have read the bible 7 times complete?

Well, I've thought about it. One thing that nags at me is I don't *feel* like I have it all in me at a deep, essential level. Like I keep thinking if I had had it read to me as a child, then I'd read it as a child, and I'd memorized passages as a child, then it seems like it would *really* be in me in a more substantial way. But I'm not sure it works that way even for people who start with it as children.

Even if it still seems 'surface' in you I still have experience with it that after even my first complete reading it would 'come up' from inside me when I was pondering doctrinal questions or arguing doctrinal points, or just being challenged regarding doctrinal points, or discerning 'on-the-mark' and 'off-the-mark' regarding doctrine. The material of the Old and New Testaments would come to mind in a sort of whole way.

So I can't say it's only surface in me.

It's living language, so...

Also, to use the Homeric epics example, when you get the higher visual language in you you are seeing things you couldn't see before, *even if you don't have the epic poems in you in some technically memorized way.* And you take it for granted, mostly too. You are put into new territory and you don't realize that you are in new territory.

Maybe I can say this: I do suspect that it only took three complete readings to get basic 'in focus' understanding of what I was reading (maybe four or five, but that may have to do with time eras because I read the Bible three times complete in sort of the same time era of my life, then the fourth and fifth much later). Like the history books. Maybe the prophets came along last. But doing it that way is best. It is organic. Inside out development of understanding of it.

So, 'seven times' might have been fanciful just as a number. I can see benefit now in doing another with a system like Paul [of England] has been mentioning. Basically just always drenching yourself in it. Yet mechanical is what is to be avoided, and mechanical reading happens when you don't increase level of being. To increase understanding you have to increase *capacity* for understanding. - C.

ps- Learning doctrine from the on-the-mark school [Reformed, Calvinist] contributes greatly to understanding the 'whole' of Scripture, yet you have to have the whole text of Scripture in you to have the raw material corresponding to what you are reading in doctrine. And understanding is, of course, seeing the parts in relation to the whole.

Union with Christ the latest Trojan Horse

2011-11-29T16:34:00.000-08:00

Excellent, concise comment:

"I think Gaffin goes off the ranch when he makes union [with Christ] an existential category and not exclusively an intellectual and legal one." - Sean Gerety

It's not just one theologian named Gaffin, but this is a current popular attack on justification by faith alone.

For context listen to Lane Tipton being interviewed in several of the reformedforum.org podcasts such as this one: http://reformedforum.org/ctc200/

Bottom line: however the false teachers are identifying themselves their attack as always is against justification by faith alone. The Kingdom of Satan wants you in bondage to it. It wants you working (to any degree) for your salvation. And the angles of attack it takes on the central doctrine of justification by faith alone are subtle and myriad. In this latest case they are saying, "Union with Christ! Union with Christ! It's all about union with Christ! You disagree with that? How, brother? It's all about Christ! You deny it's all about Christ?" So once they get union with Christ ensconced in a position that is prior to and foundational to the legal status of justification by faith alone they already have downgraded justification and imputation of the active obedience of Christ and everything else important to a person's status before God.

Of course the useful idiots that spread the new attack don't know the issues and don't sense even the importance of it all. They can't discern that doctrine effects internal states. That doctrine, when discerned and accepted and believed effects one internally. And that doctrine is armor of God. The false teachers themselves, though, are purely Satanic. They are pulling and distorting biblical doctrine down to the level of man's fallen nature and the demands of man's fallen nature. They may be only half-conscious of what they are doing, but that is enough. Have no sympathy for them. Have no sympathy for the Devil.

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2011-11-29T05:03:00.000-08:00

This is a separator post.

Was Carl Trueman 'initiated' by the same Roman Catholic priest as James White?

2011-11-29T03:17:00.000-08:00

I was suspicious when this liberal 'Reformed' internet podcast dedicated its most recent show to the King James Bible:

http://reformedforum.org/ctc204/

I mean, I wasn't really overtly suspicious, but more surprised with a hint of perplexed wariness.

So not 30 minutes into the show, an interview with a 'scholar', Carl Trueman, Trueman very deftly states as fact that King James was a homosexual, and (wait for it), compares King James to Adolf Hitler. (He states King James and Adolf Hitler had similar leadership styles.) He makes both statements as if it's the most natural thing in the world to do. The interviewer swallows both statements as if Trueman had stated James was a good writer and knowledgeable of biblical doctrine.

Anyway, Trueman is a Ph.D., and who in the seminary realm ever questions a Ph.D.? If one of those guys says the Bible gives warrant to blood-drinking the little dogs like Camden Bucey of seminary world (the interviewer in this case) will accept it and mock any 'lay' people who would comically disagree (in their cute 'layperson' ignorance).

I've written Bucey asking him if any of their famous false teacher professors that have taught for decades over there at Westminster Theological Seminary loved (I originally had the 'f' word) all of them in the ass. He deleted the comment the question appeared in. (I've removed the name of the professor I originally had referenced because I have no evidence he was doing that to students over there. I'm not going to do what Carl Trueman - and Roman Catholics throughout history - did to King James.)

Folks, if you think the Romanist Counter-Reformation ever ended you don't know Satan and his wicked little children.

James White hates it when this happens

2011-11-28T19:27:00.000-08:00

"Reverend Winzer is most correct here as to the Assembly's being fully aware of the Vaticanus manuscript. I am preparing a book right now, answering James White's book The King James Only Controversy. White makes the silly claim that, had Erasmus known of the Vaticanus manuscript, he would have used its readings."

From here: http://www.puritanboard.com/f63/only-perfect-translation-70942/index2.html#post912669

Will White come out from the protection of his cyber pulpit and engage this individual? Of course the answer is no. White fears direct engagement on this subject with serious people more than anything. He'll say he doesn't have time. He has to go ride his bike or something.

But, you know, the critical text priestly caste needs its recreation. They're engaged in something the Roman Catholic Church dedicated a whole Counter-Reformation effort to...

Amateurs beget amateurs

2011-11-28T14:48:00.000-08:00

"Interestingly, Kutscher also believed the Byzantine Text of the Greek to be the better and more reliable text of both the Greek Septuagint, and the New Testament. Kutscher was also a Greek scholar, a LXX scholar, who heavily referenced the New Testament for data on the Aramaic dialect of Jerusalem during the time of Jesus. Kutscher came to believe that the work of the Egyptian scribes of the Alexandrian text was similar to that of the Qumran scribes - the work of amateurs, not at all committed to copying the actual words set before them. Kutscher said that, just as the Leningrad Codex, which is 1000 years younger than the Great Isaiah Scroll, nonetheless has a text 600 years older than that of the Isaiah Scroll, so also the Byzantine Text of the New Testament, which is primarily of the Middle Ages, has nonetheless an older text that the papyri of the third and fourth centuries."

From here:
http://www.puritanboard.com/f63/only-perfect-translation-70942/index2.html#post912523

Interesting.

One then thinks of the modern day priesthood of scholars and their critical text.

Amateurs beget amateurs.

This is incredibly interesting (global flood and plate tectonics)

2011-11-26T00:35:00.000-08:00

This video is incredibly interesting:

http://youtu.be/y7HCa6XlYO0

I have always stated that if you think the global flood is too bizarre to think about then think about the shifting of the continents and an ice age. They are equally bizarre. Little did I know I was drawing in all elements of the actual flood, and this guy (a Dr., a real scientist) shows it. Don't be skeptical, watch. You'll see most of the info in the first half or so of the video above. If you want to see the whole presentation then this is part two:

http://youtu.be/OKOhPUx9XF4

The initial point about how technology developed in WWII to find submarines opened up a new world under the oceans starts the video out. Very interesting. Many illustrations.

I might be naive because I just saw this, and I might get slammed with some counter-argument after I look into it more, but just see for yourself, if you haven't come across this type of material before.

Maybe it's just me...

2011-11-25T18:50:00.000-08:00

Upon reading a dispute between Roman Catholics and a former Roman Catholic now Protestant, my thought is (and not to seem to be above the fray) that it really doesn't matter what church you are attending, if any. What matters is do you have a connection to Jesus Christ via the Holy Spirit? Do you have a connection to the Kingdom of God? Do you have the living language of the word of God engrafted in you? Are you able to discern and accept on-the-mark, un-watered-down biblical doctrine? Do you have the whole armor of God? Are you fitted for the spiritual battlefield? Can you boldly claim to be a legal subject of the Kingdom of God now and when in that evil day you will have to stand, and can you boldly announce to any that would hold you in spiritual bondage that you stand upon the Pactum Salutis, the Covenant of Redemption, and that your King is Jesus Christ and that you are indeed His legal subject in His Kingdom?

Have you been regenerated by the word and the Spirit? Do you put yourself in the environment where that happens when it happens, the pure and whole word of God?

If all the above is yes you're going to be light wherever you stand; and you'll know by the reaction to that light whether you're in a communion that has connection to Jesus Christ and His Kingdom or not. If you maintain that presence of light you will either be accepted, or tossed out, or you will exist in friction with the environment in which case you can stay and engage in reformation until you are kicked out or the darkness retreats, but you really won't have any choice on your part in the sense that until the return of the King the darkness has power to call the shots. At least within its own domains.

Pony Ride Inn

2011-11-21T14:53:00.001-08:00

It's almost overwhelming how shallow Christian academics are:

http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2011/11/20/whi-1076-the-gospel-of-pragmatism/

It always comes down to regeneration and their lack of it. Yet the demand to teach and lecture and blow 'wisdom' like diarrhea out of their mouths never abates.

Christians are probably the worst served of any people for leaders and educators. We do have time-vetted books written by on-the-mark teachers of the past. God sees to it we have that.

I'm not going to go through all the ways the discussion above is asinine, but one thing shallow individuals do is assume that because they are as they are, in this case hyper intellectual (such as that is, it doesn't mean they are intelligent, but driven more by their intellect than their emotion or more physical aspects of their being), they stupidly assume everybody is or must be hyper intellectual in their approach.

It's better to be balanced in one's development, but the fact is at the level they are at and are dealing with other people they need to recognize not everybody is going to be like them. Pretty basic realization, but obviously beyond the intellectual grasp of our foursome there.

What is biblical doctrine?

2011-11-21T05:40:00.000-08:00

Biblical doctrine is armor of God. It's not subject matter for academic 'conversation.'

Karl Barth's theology is ass-less leather pants. Good luck with that on the battlefield, Westminster Theological Seminary and all theologically liberal useful idiots of the Devil.

Father in heaven, my patience is at its limit

2011-11-20T15:30:00.000-08:00

These creeps are false teachers:

http://reformedforum.org/ctc200/

They hail from that prestigious Reformed seminary that gave us Peter Enns and so many other wicked village idiots. These giggling seminarians and theologians are considered the 'elite' intellectuals of Reformed theology.

Did you know that if you believe - know, in some cases - that regeneration precedes faith that you are 'Lutheran'?

Did you know that if you believe - know - regeneration precedes justification you 'logically' are saying justification precedes regeneration and hence you are semi-Pelagian?

Yeah, bet you didn't know that. This is all spelled out in the audio link with the carefulness of a Kindergarten teacher explaining the rules of nap time to her students.

Again, I can't wait for the return of my King. I want to personally escort all you false teachers into the deepest pits of hell and have the joy of leaving you there for ETERNITY. And that includes all the useful idiots like the useful idiots in the thread at the PuritanBoard who are universally praising the false teachers in the audio link.

Justification and sanctification - the lecturing confusion of the credentialed unregenerate

2011-11-20T13:37:00.000-08:00

Oh, is union with Christ prior and foundational to justification?

No, regeneration by the word and the Spirit is prior, and the righteousness of Christ is the ground of justification.

Oh, my, do I give my sheep laws to follow, or do I just make sure they know Jesus accepts them?

No, 'pastor', you give them the actual word of God, undiluted, boldly, and complete. That is the environment and the territory where regeneration happens when it happens.

Listen up, Reformed academics (the stealth and/or unconscious liberals and the so-called confessional, hold-the-line types) --- progressive sanctification is god-reliant effort. (That's a J. I. Packer phrase, and it's a good one.) Here's what you don't know and nobody teaching you knows: it's not about works at that point. I.e. at that point where regeneration and justification by faith alone has occured. Listen closely: apple trees produce apples. Before glorification the apple tree might commit adultery or some other sin, but it won't stay in the sin. It will not like the sin. God (the Father) will discipline the apple tree, but never cut it off. Meanwhile, pretty much, regarding good works, the apple tree will produce apples. Without having to think about it or constantly consciously will it. It has to do with having a new heart.

What requires God-reliant effort is *increasing* our union with Christ. You may be a sacraments type and so be it. I won't bother you. But some of you feel more of a motivation and inspiration to practically increase that union with Christ. The Spirit guides. I'm not going to direct you to any schools. If you want it you'll find it.

Final point you really have to listen closely to: in all the current debate regarding justification and sanctification and union with Christ there is the usual attempt to downgrade the doctrine of justification by faith alone. 'Union with Christ' as a doctrine is a mushy doctrine, more in the realm of biblical theology than systematic theology, hence it is being used by the usual liberal types and the out and out false teachers to make a breach and to downgrade the main doctrine they always attempt to downgrade, the aforementioned justification by faith alone. And of course 'biblical theology' has been commandeered by the false teachers of our day to cloak their false doctrine in. Notice they never want to produce a systematic theology and thus put their cards on the table because they know that will expose them, so they stay within the realm of biblical theology to ground/cloak their false doctrine and pretend or assert that the false theology is actually in harmony with the historic confessions and so forth. Why do I have to explain this to you?

(They are also interested in satisfying the demand of their fallen natures to belittle any notion of God proclaiming them innocent. In their precious self-image they already are innocent, and who is God to proclaim them something they already are? Hence the imputation of the active obedience of Christ is, of course, the usual target of their resentment and hate as well.)

WE ARE ONLY IN UNION WITH THE KINGDOM OF SATAN PRIOR TO JUSTIFICATION. ***THE HOLY SPIRIT IS NOT JESUS.*** WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? THE HOLY SPIRIT MAY INDEED BE WORKING IN US PRIOR TO OUR ACTUALLY CONSCIOUSLY HAVING SAVING FAITH, BUT THAT IS NOT UNION WITH CHRIST. UNION WITH CHRIST REQUIRES US BEING OUTSIDE THE COURTROOM WITH NO SHACKLES ON OUR HANDS AND LEGS AND NO POLICE ESCORTING US ANYWHERE. BECAUSE WHEN YOU WERE IN THAT JAIL CELL WAITING FOR YOUR COURT APPEARANCE AND YOUR BEING DECLARED INNOCENT YOU SAID YOU HAVE FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST AND HIS WORK IN HIS LIFE AND ON THE CROSS. YES THE HOLY SPIRIT IS THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST, BUT LET'S ALLOW AN ORTHODOX DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY TO GUIDE OUR UNDERSTANDING HERE. THE HOLY SPIRIT WORKS REGENERATION IN US, AND THAT IS PRIOR TO OUR HAVING SAVING FAITH AND HENCE JUSTIFICATION. UNION WITH CHRIST FOLLOWS JUSTIFICATION. WHY DOES A STREET CALVINIST UNDERSTAND THIS, ACCEPT THIS, PROCLAIM THIS, WHILE ALL YOU SEMINARY MORONS ONLY TRY TO DOWNGRADE IT OR FOLLOW THOSE WHO WOULD DOWNGRADE IT? WHY AM I ABLE TO ARTICULATE IT IN A SHORT BLOG POST WHEN YOU WASTE WHOLE ARTICLES AND BOOKS TAP DANCING AROUND EVERY ASPECT OF IT? WHY ARE YOU TAKEN SERIOUSLY BY ANYBODY?

Something to note on the spiritual battlefield

2011-11-19T00:19:00.001-08:00

A regenerated child of God who truly absorbs the Old and New Testaments complete and is led by the Spirit to the practical level of the faith will draw the hatred of nominal Christians, that is a given, but notice something along those lines.

If a Christian reads devotional literature, and even ones that get close to practical level works such as The Imitation of Christ the nominal Christians won't see that as something to attack. That is because they know what is and what isn't 'dangerous' in terms of being practical level works. The spirit of Satan within them guides them to know intuitively and instinctively what is 'OK' and what is a *crime* against the Kingdom of Satan.

When a work explicates the practical level of Jesus' own teachings in the New Testament then the antennae of the nominal Christians go up. Just as the Devil and his children *confront* you once you are regenerated by the word and the Spirit (because you are now noticeable in the Kingdom of Satan, i.e. you are no longer a tame slave in the Kingdom of Satan (Puritan turn of phrase there) going with the easy current of the Kingdom of Satan.

So the Devil's children will say: "It's not the Bible!" (As if they value the word of God to begin with.) Neither is a Bible commentary. Neither is a systematic theology. Neither is a Bible dictionary. Etc. The questions is: is something on-the-mark or is it off-the-mark, judged by the tribunal, or standard, of the word of God itself? *That* question is considered *boring* to the nominal Christian. They don't value the word of God as the very word of God, they don't even read it. Their demand is to police souls within the Kingdom of Satan.

Well, that is why this is something that occurs on the spiritual battlefield. Once regenerated you are put on that battlefield. Expect war, and fight like a king.

Nominal Christians can't hide their hatred of the actual word of God

2011-11-18T22:35:00.000-08:00

Wow, in recent days the mockers of the word of God at the PuritanBoard have come out of their closets (or climbed up out of their dark holes). The mocking of the KJV, the hatred directed at it, is nothing less than the mocking and hatred of the word of God and of God Himself. Nominal Christians give themselves away (think: Roman Catholics) when it gets down to the actual word of God.

I'm not going to rehearse the disgusting activity over there, but one note: one of the main God-haters over there named 'Tim V.' has posted that the late Theodore Letis didn't believe the Bible was inerrant. No, Letis disliked the term inerrant and preferred the term infallible. Though 'Tim V.' wants his hearers to think Letis didn't believe the Bible was even infallible. This is what goes on in common Reformed environments *when they ban all regenerate voices from their midst.* They are disgusting souls. Rancid souls. Dead souls.

Again, just like Roman Catholics, when it comes down to the actual word of God the Satanic spirit of nominal Christians becomes manifest without shame.

The book of nature within special revelation

2011-11-15T23:03:00.000-08:00

The Bible is very powerful when you, as you read it, imagine all the power and beauty of general revelation there, especially the book of nature, all around and above and shot through the people, places, things, and events. The landscape, the sky, the stars, the rain, and wind, the sun, the vistas, the mountains, the rivers, the hills, the forests, the storms, the ocean, the waves, the dirt, the crops, the trees, the fields, the meadows, and the villages and towns and cities built in the midst of it all. Armies arrayed in battle, the travel routes, ancient even for their days. All of it.

This is why people are moved by photographs or visits to the Holy Land. To see such background. It's also what is involved when we are moved by nature anywhere, in person, or from history, or art. It's all evocative of the biblical narrative. The history of redemption. A fishing village in Italy is as biblical as a lush forest, almost antediluvian in its impressions, of the early New World of America. Imagine the stars above the mountains surrounding Geneva, in Calvin's day, before city lights. Early American painting showing farmlands of now New England, Connecticut or the now boroughs of New York City, depicted a very lush land, with a heavy, low sky, again antediluvian in the impressions. But we describe it as 'antediluvian' because it is all general revelation, it is all biblical in that sense.

General revelation informs special revelation. We see it too in the impressions we get from great literature. The rhythms of life and of nature in an English village or the similar scenes depicted in the great Russian novels of the 19th century. Homer was 'biblical' to the English who made those epic poems central to their culture. The landscape of Don Quixote is biblical in its general impressions of dusty journey.

What I am getting at is our reading of the Bible benefits from some strong work of bringing up to view the natural world that it is taking place in. The book of nature within special revelation.

Legalism and the body of sin

2011-11-15T22:08:00.000-08:00

"Unbelief and a legal spirit, are the very soul or life of the body of sin." - John Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Law and the Gospel

A beautifully produced book, by the way. I mean the edition itself by Soli Deo Gloria Publications.

I'll rephrase the quote: Unbelief and a spirit of legalism, are the very soul or life of the atheist as-well-as the common unbeliever.

There is no more earnest and pious and belligerent a moralist than an atheist. Often they are even purse-lipped.

But anyone who is in rebellion to God - to whatever degree of being awake to that fact that they are - and who is worshiping some common idol, will always be a moralist. Think of an environmentalist. "Dude, did you just throw those french fries to seagulls? That's like totally toxic to the environment. You know we know you did something wrong. You know we saw you. What have you done for the environment, if ever? Why should you be suffered to live?" Sorry I couldn't think of a better example, but you get the point. Legalists.

A quote from a forum showing a common robotic strangeness

2011-11-14T21:15:00.000-08:00

I don't consider anything to be "wrong" with the KJV. However, I think the militant-strain KJVOnly folks have worked hard to push folks away to the NASB, ESV and NIV. And that is a shame, as the KJV is so majestic and historical.

Really? How does that work? Something is great. Is the standard. Has historical awesomeness. Has literary inspiration and overall majesty. But...you know what? That person over there said something, so I just think I've been put off by it. I just have to now go with a downgraded translation that uses horribly mutilated and corrupted manuscripts. Yeah, too bad that person said that thing over there.

You see the same thing with evangelism in general. Those people *might* have believed except we just didn't approach them just right. We didn't walk on egg shells enough. We weren't obsequious enough to their tender resentments and fallen nature in general. Oh, dang. If only we had not *upset* them they'd be sitting in Reformed churches right now memorizing the Westminster Shorter Catechism with a big smile on their face! Instead, they're now hardened atheists.

What's missing here, folks? How about regeneration? How about the word and the Spirit which effects regeneration when regeneration is effected? Maybe? Possibly?

The unregenerate who self-identify as Christian fear man. They simply fear man. When you don't fear God you fear man. When you fear man you are afraid of upsetting man. You are obsequious to man.

Give people the truth *boldly.* Let the chips fall where they may.

How to die successfully

2011-11-14T00:13:00.000-08:00

http://7holybooks.blogspot.com/2006/04/how-to-die-successfully.html

Section 6. is particularly good.

Peter Enns gently confronted, exposed, he punts

2011-11-13T15:54:00.000-08:00

I confronted Peter Enns on his blog using a fake name asking what I think is the central question he has to answer:

Frederick Santal says:
November 12, 2011 at 12:51 am

>That’s the whole point of this debate— evolution is a new factor we have to address.

You’re not being thorough in all this until you tell us why you believe in macro evolution. Acting like it is settled science is disingenuous, or naive.

peteenns says:
November 12, 2011 at 9:45 am

Frederick, I accept macro evolution because it has been demonstrated to be sufficiently true to an overwhelming majority of practicing scientists who work in the relevant fields. I certain allow for–in fact, assume to be the case–that scientific models continue to change, be refined, etc. I dont think, however, that the “unsettled” (as you put it) nature of science will open the back door to a literalist reading of Genesis, if that is what you are implying.

Frederick Santal says:
November 12, 2011 at 3:27 pm

There’s a difference between macro evolution and micro evolution. There is a constant bait and switch between the two when such statements are being made such as “[macro evolution] has been demonstrated to be sufficiently true to an overwhelming majority of practicing scientists.”

When pro-macro-evolution scientists conflate micro with macro evolution they are engaging in wild ad hoc speculation that has nothing to do with the scientific enterprise as we know it. They’ve left the empirical realm, and indeed often start speaking of space aliens (see Richard Dawkins) to explain their theory.

I’m sure you’re aware that the scientific community today is a rather controlled and well-policed environment; certainly as it’s presented to the public through its academic spokesmen/women and the media.

The fact is, though, that *macro* evolution has been rather successfully challenged by its lack of evidence in the fossil record and more recently by micro biology. Micro evolution, and the laboratory work we associate with it is really nothing new, except for its being done at ever smaller scale. That is not macro evolution though.

Again, you will be well-served in this enterprise if you make it clear just why you accept *macro* evolution to be reality. And anyway, creation of the heavens and the Earth was a supernatural event. You can take Adam out of the supernatural creation category, but you still have a problem with the very heavens and the Earth.

peteenns says:
November 12, 2011 at 5:03 pm

Frederick, are you a practicing scientist of any sort?

Frederick Santal says:
November 13, 2011 at 12:46 am

If questions can be fallacious, that is a fallacious question. The claims of historical science are hardly coded for only a closed society to understand or evaluate. Don’t tell me you accept macro evolution as fact because you unquestionably accept what some scientists claim for that theory (and as if there are no scientists who challenge the theory).

You see, he punted. The last comment by 'Frederick' was not let through.

Enns is like an amateur investor putting all his money on a stock after that stock has already had its big, historic run in the market and is pretty much set on being a flat to down stock from here on out.

One portion of hell debating another portion of hell

2011-11-12T13:58:00.000-08:00

I've been looking at the many videos on that ehrmanproject.com site, and I had a realization. I realized how I can get drawn into a whole context, a whole world, that itself is a total downgrade of the faith and of the Bible itself.

One reason all the Bart Ehrmans exist is because of the downgrade modern scholarship has made on the Bible itself.

As someone who accepts the Received Text, Hebrew and Greek, in sound translation (AV1611), and sees it as the Standard, and sees that a Standard *must* exist or you have Babel (and a Standard must exist for the devil to have something to deviate from), none of these attacks, and none of the problems these more believing scholars (more believing than Ehrman, wow) have in dealing with the Ehrmans of their world, effect me. I'm on a different plane of existence, as all true believing Christians are who accept the word of God as something that is above them. I have faith. I recognize and accept the Received Text as my Standard. I humble myself to the word of God, and don't see it as something that needs me or any priesthood of scholars to determine what it is.

The appearance of Daniel Wallace in those videos woke me up.

Many of the videos on that site don't show what I'm getting at. The ones discussing textual criticism do. But the word of God is the foundation of the faith. If you downgrade there, you remain man-centered. You remain undeveloped in any real, essential way a Christian is truly developed.

Watching all those guys debate is like watching secular or atheist Englishmen debating the Muslims in their midst. It's like watching one portion of hell debating another portion of hell.

Speaking in tongues

2011-11-10T12:37:00.000-08:00

It's difficult listening to Christians who are truly straining for the deeper understanding of the faith yet have no language to get them there:

http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2011/11/08/conversation-with-tullian-tchividjian-redux/

The first interview in the above link is what I'm referring to.

Some might say, well, the Bible is all the language we need. Well, in a foundational way yes, but we also naturally develop a doctrinal language, or a theological language, as we get real understanding of the Bible. That language though usually rests at the philosophical and theoretical levels and rarely, if ever, arrives at the practical level.

I'm convinced that what the Bible talks about as speaking in tongues demands a more esoteric reading than theologians are willing or capable of giving it. Saying that speaking in tongues means speaking in a foreign language you have never studied (for an American, the French language, or the German language, for instance) or speaking gibberish in a trance-like state just falls short of any meaningful reading of what that phenomenon is referring to.

They were speaking in a language which enabled them all to understand one another. That means they had left the outer circle of confusion of tongues (Babel) and entered a more inner circle where there is a language which enables each person who knows the language to communicate more practically, or, more precisely, without all the misconnection and everything else that happens when people aren't on the same page, or level.

A worldly analogy would be the language of music. Musicians can speak to each other, and understand each other, in a way non-musicians can't take part in.

So, for instance, in the interview at the link above they are struggling to define what school Christians know as the difference between self-will and real will. If anybody is reading this you will probably assume you yourself know what self-will is, though perhaps the term real will will be seen as new and hence weird in some way, or probably silly like somebody's made-up language. But to people who know the language those terms derive from they very well know what they mean, and it enables them to understand *at a practical/doing level* what the two theologians in the interview linked above are struggling to define.

And notice the two theologians will never get near to a practical/doing level of what they are struggling to define. They will be content to have hashed it out intellectually and then go back to the sleepy patterns and events of their daily lives.

I think it's natural for a Christian to strive for the practical level and to connect with a language that is at the practical level. I believe it is a gift of the Holy Spirit (which is what speaking in tongues is connected with in a rather big way, i.e. God, the Holy Spirit). Christians who are not at the practical level and who don't want to be will complain and warn of pride, or two-level Christianity, or whatever, but you really can't stop a child of God who has it in him or her to find the practical level and to connect with its language.

Seminaries, churches, and other synagogues of Satan

2011-11-05T05:27:00.000-07:00

I just can't get over the fact that this guy who writes this post-modern glop:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2011/11/talking-to-pastors-about-adam-and-evolution-models-1/

...dated pomo glop at that...taught as a professor at a major Reformed seminary for decades. And he also has a position in a church as an elder and teacher.

And how many times have I heard: "You need to be churched!" Or, put one way or another: "Do you have a seminary degree?!?"

Notice that the devil's children don't have confidence to operate openly in just any environment. They have to work up to an open operation in whatever environment they are infiltrating. Obviously seminaries and churches became open territory for them long ago. And rather easily. Why is that? Because seminaries and churches are traditionally led by the dumbest and the weakest and yet the most vain. When dumb, vain people are challenged for being weak and allowing a downgrade to their environment *they always side with the forces of the downgrade.* They do this because it is a sort of 'running for cover.' They can't *stand* with the forces of the Kingdom of God, so they have to maintain worldly status somehow and that means, for them, setting up camp within the camp of the children of the devil. Then they start justifying their position, a thousand different ways, always playing on the "peace" and "love" moralizing the Bible tells us the Devil and his children engage in.

God always has his remnant though. God's people are always a small minority, with, though, influence always potentially much bigger than their numbers might suggest.

The good news is chaff burns easily...

I suspect Daryl G. Hart wears white shoes

2011-11-05T03:12:00.001-07:00

Daryl G. Hart seems to think Americans shouldn't be allowed to read the Bible by themselves because they're not properly educated by the proper accredited institutions. (I was doing a search on theory of evolution on Michael Horton's Modern Reformation magazine, and came across many articles that when seen together are very Romish.)

Here's how an actual Christian sees that subject. We read the Bible; we learn doctrine from sound doctrinal works; and we practice the faith. Out of those three activities comes understanding of the word of God. Of course the Holy Spirit has to be present, ultimately, to guide and to teach and to give illumination and discernment and understanding.

What is Daryl G. Hart missing? The usual. Regeneration by the word and the Spirit. Something he thinks he can control and receive by ritual. No, God is in control of regeneration. So how do you get it, Daryl? By not banning c.t.'s criticisms of you from your blog, for one. No, that isn't how you get it. You get it by humbling yourself to the word of God, really. And that would involve reading it. By yourself. Something you are telling others they shouldn't attempt to do.

Move close to God, and He will move close to you. You move close to God by engaging His revealed word.

Where is discussion of the theory of evolution in Michael Horton's systematic theology?

2011-11-05T02:16:00.000-07:00

Michael Horton apparently wanted to engage modern currents in philosophy in his new systematic theology *The Christian Faith*, yet no where in the big book can I find any reference to the theory of evolution.

It's easy to slam these guys, and Horton is on-the-mark regarding biblical doctrine to an unusual degree, yet he does belong to a tradition that also regularly produces Norman Shepherds and Peter Ennss (that would be the plural of Peter Enns), and that is because it is an academic culture before it is a doctrinal school.

Not even mentioning the theory of evolution in his new systematic theology lays Horton open to the fair speculation that he fears more what his academic peers (in the secular realm, which Horton consciously plays to) will think about him than he fears not holding to and proclaiming the truth.

It reminds me of Robert L. Reymond producing a new, big systematic theology and not once mentioning angels in it. (He later wrote a short article on the subject of angels, and methinks he did it as a result of criticism or speculation that he didn't believe in angels).

These guys actually leave other main things out of their systematic theologies. Spiritual warfare being a big one. Yet to not even touch on the theory of evolution, in a systematic theology that *tries* to engage modern currents of thought and belief, is rather strange.

Michael Horton interviews a mushy convert to Roman Catholicism

2011-11-04T02:26:00.001-07:00

Listen to this interview:

http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2011/10/31/whi-1073-should-we-reform-or-abandon-american-protestantism/

Michael Horton does an OK job. But this is how you answer somebody like Christian Smith:

"Doctrine is armor of God. It is practical. It effects you internally. It makes you God-centered or man-centered. It makes you fear God or fear man. I want real doctrine. I.e. I want real armor. Real armor of God. Your doctrine is cardboard. Evil is real. The Kingdom of Satan is real. Hell is real. I want - I need - the armor of God, pure and whole. And words that deliver doctrine, that you are happy to keep in a mush, define real doctrine. You have to see it, *accept it*, believe it. Again, *it effects your inner state.* When I see, and accept, and believe the truth of justification by faith alone (no mush of faith plus works, committee language, compromise, everybody can be happy with something in the middle) then I have pure doctrine that effects me internally, and I have real armor that can confront any accuser including Satan himself, because I confront him solely with the righteousness of Christ. You don't have that. You are still in darkness and in bondage to the Kingdom of Satan. You're likely to start begging Satan to not harm you. Pleading with Satan that you have done good works. Internally, your state is one of a tame slave in the Devil's Kingdom. You need to engage the word of God outside any context of, in your case, academia. You need to engage it humbly, simply, complete, in a truly dedicated manner. Regeneration is effected, when it is effected, by the word and the Spirit. At that point you won't care what man thinks about you. You won't fear man. You will fear God alone. And you will desire real biblical doctrine. Real armor. The real thing."

This just in: Peter Enns not really the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer

2011-11-03T14:49:00.000-07:00

Folks, this is the intellectual level of professors at major Reformed seminaries:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2011/11/taking-to-pastors-about-adam-and-evolution-options/

Not to mention all those pastors he was talking to.

And note that it's not just his subject matter, it's how shallow he is regarding the material itself.

A useful idiot in action.

Peter, why do you think there is evidence for macro evolution. Macro, mind you, not micro.

"'Cuz scientists say it, and stuff."

Do you realize the two worst witnesses for macro evolution (the theory that fish turn into race horses) are the fossil record and micro biology?

"'Cuz scientists say it, and stuff."

OK... Not to mention, origin of life itself aside, the chances of a single cell evolving mechanically are beyond impossible?

"'Cuz scientists say it, and stuff."

I suspect you have an Ivy League education, Peter. You know why? Because Ivy League graduates start sentences with "'Cuz" and end them with "and stuff." Anyway, most sentient scientists nowadays don't even believe in macro evolution anymore. Only the atheists among them like to keep it around in a bait and switch game with micro evolution because it's such good propaganda against Christianity and the Bible. At least it seems to have been. At least with shallow Christians. Nominal Christians. OK, dumb Christians.

"'Cuz, there's pictures in books, and stuff. Showing evolution, and stuff. 'Cuz..."

Enough. I get it. You're really stupid. Now what does that make all those pastors who came to be lectured to by you?

An active systematic theology

2011-11-03T02:39:00.000-07:00

Kingdom - For I am a great King, saith the LORD of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen.

Warfare - Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Holiness - Until Christ be formed in you.

+ + + + + + +

Ponder practical meaning and manifestation of Kingdom in thought, word, and deed.

Ponder practical engagement of Warfare in thought, word, and deed.

Ponder practical development in Holiness in thought, word, and deed.

Response to an email; subject: abomination

2011-11-01T23:29:00.000-07:00

I think it's that once you're able to know the truth you have little patience for what is false, including especially all the little degrees and shades of falsity that the world traffics in. You're able to see and feel abomination as well. Something the world doesn't see or feel. - C.

I did a search on 'what is the meaning of abomination.' I know the definition, but I wanted to see if there were some page out there that went into some deeper level. This link came up immediately. It's interesting because it lists all the things the Bible calls abomination. I don't know about the site overall, just sending this page:

http://richardwaynegarganta.com/abomination.htm

Again, being able to see such things as abomination is a mark of regeneration. Prior you are just not aware, or things are no big deal. Of course it's easy to mix this reaction up with caricatures of certain religious types, emotionally crazy, legalists, people who are repressed, etc. Yet being able to see and feel abomination is real. Really, it's seeing the Kingdom of Satan and all the features and practices and elements of it. - C.

Supernatural

2011-11-01T05:11:00.000-07:00

1. "The Bible's got a talking ass! Ha, ha!!"

Divine irony. Balaam the *prophet* needed an ass to signal to him that an angel was blocking his path. The presence of the angel was as supernatural as the speech of the ass. The Bible contains supernatural events. Being surprised that it does is like being surprised atheists are humorless. It's just what atheists are. Miracles are just what supernatural is.

2. "Your Bible says someone got swallowed by a fish and lived three days, ha ha!!" So did Jesus directly. It was an event - a supernatural event - that was to test certain types who demand to see a sign:

38 Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.
39 But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:
40 For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
41 The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.

3. "So what kind of snake was that that was talking in the Garden of Eden, ha, ha!!" It was a snake embodied by a supernatural being called an angel named Lucifer, or Satan:

Rev 12:9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

Atheists, you don't believe in the supernatural; we get it. Another way to say it is you don't believe in anything metaphysical, which, put that way, makes you sound really shallow. It's the same thing though. Naturalism, materialism, can't abide anything metaphysical. Which is why you don't discern levels of inspiration in such things as literature and music. Johann Sebastian Bach? To an atheist his music is no better or worse than John Cougar Mellencamp. The Homeric epics? No better than a common comic book. Whatever chemicals are operating in your brain at the moment. See how shallow you are, atheists?

You may not be where you think you are

2011-10-30T21:24:00.000-07:00

Why did I include churchians in the previous post? Because they refuse to take on the false teachers in their midst. I read a review by Beale of Enns main book, and it was so full of academic courtesy it was obvious Beale doesn't even know what it means to defend the faith. You don't confront a false teacher like that. That isn't even confrontation. You expose false teachers, and you ride them out of town on a rail. Actually you tar and feather them and set them on the road and warn them if they should ever think of coming back.

And look at Enns. A common deconstructionist of the '80s variety. They're at the level of 16-year-old atheists. And his peers are so stupid they can't see that or know what that means. And the churchians in general have no clue. Yet even if they all did have a clue they wouldn't confront him. Churchians aren't Christians, and they are responsible for these wicked souls teaching false doctrine so openly and in so accepted a way. Disgusting. Stop calling yourselves Christians.

An exact parallel: Christians who mock the King James Version and mock any who hold to it. Yet they've never said a word about the New Living Translation or even the various downgrades of the New International Version including the latest. Look what one could say about the NIV 2011, and yet on the usual sites you see the same continual mocking of the Received Text and the King James Version. Seeing a pattern here, churchians? You may not be where you think you are. You're in the Kingdom of Hell thinking you are safely in the Kingdom of God.

You churchians aren't innocent, you're evil

2011-10-30T05:14:00.001-07:00

Wow. I've been reading through some Peter Enns articles, and this guy is Rachel Maddow stupid. He's eagerly deconstructing Christianity like a first year Ivy League cipher in the '80s. "Your metanarrative of the Bible is being threatened and you are angry and fearful..." This sentence reminds me of the atheist 'intellectual' (Heather MacDonald) who admitted in an unguarded interview with a guy who usually interviews porn actors (Luke Ford) that in all the years in the 1980s she spent getting degrees from Stanford, Yale, and Oxford she wasn't *once* asked to read a single work of history. She added, honestly, that she wasn't smart enough to think that it might be a good thing to do just on her own. Give her credit she finally caught on that what she was studying was garbage (post-modernist literary theory, i.e. Lady Ga Ga vs. Shakespeare, no, wait a minute, Madonna vs. Shakespeare).

So this subject of Peter Enns really is the subject of the worth of institutions called seminaries. Very much including Reformed seminaries. And traditional notions of church leaders and Christian educators. Obviously standards in these places are as low as they are in secular institutions of so-called higher learning. Liberal arts anyway.

Good freaking God what hell this all is. You can't really even find words to describe how radically stupid these people are. And they are *intellectual leaders* in Christian environments. How disgusting and disappointing. How disappointing it is to see Christians being obsequious to such village idiots. Fear of man. Respecting of persons. You're not followers of Christ. You're the followers of village idiots. Really, just screw off with your "You need to be churched!" You're not my brothers and sisters. Churchian useful idiots of the Devil. There is no innocence in your situation. You are as evil as the false teachers.

Response to hell boy

2011-10-30T01:36:00.001-07:00

To Peter Enns, who got upset enough by my previous post to write a long post about how Christians shouldn't be mean to Peter Enns, I would simply reply that we mean Christians save our meanness for false teachers, and really not only false teachers but false teachers who present themselves to be something they are not, such as Reformed (as in taking employment in Reformed seminaries). No, Peter, if you were just hanging around John Shelby Spong at a local Dennys, lapping up his every word of wisdom, and taking notes to Boswell out a big memoir of the great man, then I would likely be indifferent to you. But the truly, actively, consciously wicked false teachers tend to go where the truth resides and attempt to defile it within the temple, so to speak. This is what you've done. This is what you continue to do. You have the stench of hell fire on you. I will sound an alarm and call you what you are: a creep who loves darkness so much that he wants to do nothing more than to defile the truth his every waking day. And why do you, like all false teachers, love darkness so, Peter? Well, we can't know, can we? We don't have access to all the security cameras. But you false teachers always have *something* that you love and want to continue doing and so desire to keep in the dark. Hence your viciousness towards the light. It's a losing battle, Peter. You can annoy God's plan, but you can't defeat God's plan. Yet you think you can. Why? Sin is irrational to its core.

Heretics exist and they are the pure stench of hell

2011-10-28T14:16:00.003-07:00

If you don't read Peter Enns and see the influence he has on others and get the same feeling of revulsion and witnessing of abomination that you would get seeing a mother and father sacrificing their young child into the oven of a Molech idol then you aren't yet a born again Christian.

To see how revolting and odious real heresy, real heretics are see Peter Enns in action:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2011/10/al-mohler-adam-evolution-and-npr-final/

You are staring into death. Into the maw of hell itself.

They can't defecate on the word of God enough

2011-10-27T22:58:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry, but these people are pure sh--, trash:

http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=4839

Their obviously-directed hatred gives them away like atheists give themselves away. They focus their mocking and anger and hatred on the King James Version like atheists focus their mocking and anger and hatred on Christianity as a whole. If they just preferred a different Bible version they would be indifferent to the Authorized - King James - Version. But they're not indifferent. Just as atheists solely focus on Christianity and not Islam or Hinduism or what have you. They are angrily and in a very motivated way focusing their mocking and hatred at the Truth. They recognize the standard. They know if a standard didn't exist the Devil would have nothing to deviate from, and this fact angers them. They know their versions would be a pile of different attempts amounting to babble. Or Babel. (I.e. if the standard didn't exist, and this very fact that they have to rely on the King James Version for their own deviations angers them.) They hate the King James Version in the exact same way atheists hate the fact that they have to wake up every day and experience the reality that they live in Christian culture and civilization. That the pure and whole word of God exists, and that Christianity itself exists is like acid poured onto every moment of these unregenerate fools lives.

Step back and ponder this: you don't hear them or see them writing such mocking things about modern Bible versions that overtly pervert the word of God. I mean, think about that. They have no problem with those versions. But the King James Version? It makes their blood boil. That's how you know where truth and the standard is, folks.

Anyway, they've been disabused of their claims Easter is a mistranslation over and over. See here for a good explanation of it:

http://brandplucked.webs.com/easterreplenish.htm

Ephesians 6:10-18

2011-10-24T18:27:00.000-07:00

When I look at children, at innocence, in these dark times (as all times have been since the fall), and I feel the usual pain and anxiety for their situation and their future, and I ask myself what is it that they need? And not only that, but I ask myself what is the best way to sum up completely, foundationally, concisely what it is that they need? And I answer myself that they need the armor of God. That simple. They need the armor of God. With that they have everything. They can meet everything with success with that. It includes all. They don't need church. They don't need sacraments. They can get those and never get the armor of God. They don't need worldly wealth and power for protection. They need the armor of God, pure and simple.

. . .

2011-10-24T12:31:00.001-07:00

For I am a great King, saith the LORD of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen.

When I was mistaken for recommending anything other than Reformed Theology

2011-10-24T10:35:00.000-07:00

...but really, Reformed Theology *is* mystical. Because it is the most biblical. The more biblical your doctrine - the hard to accept biblical doctrine - the more truly mystical it is. The more it takes you away from yourself. The more it makes you God-centered rather than man-centered.

Just see doctrine as armor. The armor of God. You want real armor. Not something weak or fake that makes you feel more comfortable.

On Christian groups

2011-10-21T06:12:00.001-07:00

Glancing at the PuritanBoard just now, noticing once again how shallow that representative group Christian forum is: "What should I do with books I've already read? Should I put them on a shelf? or in a box? Anybody? (I DON'T WANT THIS THREAD HIJACKED BY KINDLE PEOPLE; I STRONGLY CAUTION ANYBODY WHO IS THINKING OF COMMENTING ALONG THOSE LINE TO START A KINDLE THREAD.) Suggestions appreciated."

I'm reminded once again how unteachable Christians in a group are. That forum has had events happen that should have taught them, as a group, that they are on the wrong track. Like, for instance, 280 of their main most interesting members becoming so exasperated with the tone and operation of the forum that they left, usually with parting advice that was routinely ignored. I'm not referring to Federal Vision advocates, or even people like me, but straight pillars of society, so to speak, of that forum's culture.

What is left behind are the most shallow and obsequious individuals, and the worst moderators ("I'M SHUTTING THIS THREAD DOWN DUE TO THE FACT THAT IT IS THREATENING TO BECOME INTERESTING AND PERHAPS OVER MY HEAD.")

So you have endless topics posted like: Is this book dangerous? Should I read it? Sorry if this is in the wrong category. Could a moderator kindly move it if I was so stupid and thoughtless to have posted this in the wrong category?

When Christians group together they are no different than the world. Everything is policed and pulled down to the lowest common denominator. It's like they say, through their dumb leaders, to the Holy Spirit: "Sorry, Spirit, we're pulling this down to *our* level."

What is a true group of Christians like? Like kings on a battlefield. Prophets, priests, and kings gathered together, natural equals. War fighting and ability in council appearing naturally with no 'accreditation' from institution or man given the time of day.

Christianity raises the bar. The Holy Spirit enables Christians to meet and exceed that bar. Man hates that.

Howard Stern, usually a predictable left-leaning New Yorker, when confronted with this level of stupidity can't help but show his common-sense

2011-10-17T19:13:00.000-07:00

The devil's greatest advantage - and the left's - is each new generation is born a blank slate. The left can cause epic, hallucinogenic levels of human suffering and death in just the last 100 years - murder to the score of 100,000,000 - and it's forgotten, or not known by the very next generations; and the devil grins, and his useful idiots and wicked followers laugh.

Hell awaits them all.

That's good for a laugh on everyone else's part.

The Stern show interviews the Occupy ~~Public Restrooms~~ Wallstreet Movement:

[Oh, no, language alert! (you'll survive).]

http://youtu.be/tsJPKMvWDmY

What Christians are missing (all Christians, from academic professors to new age mystics)

2011-10-13T10:36:00.000-07:00

You're here, you're reading this. Not many people read this blog, but you are here reading these words, so I'll continue to write this post.

Christians are missing a step in their development. The shallowness of Christians that is no different from the general shallowness of the world (also the vanity, worldly pride, self-will, fear of man, respecting of persons and similar features that Christians share with everyone else in the world) is due to Christians missing a vital step in their development.

There are 4 states, or levels, of consciousness. I'll briefly outline them:

Sleep. This is head-on-pillow sleep. Yes, it is a state of consciousness. The lowest. Perhaps some coma states are lower, but I speak of normal human states.

Waking sleep. This is the next step up in consciousness. This is the state all human beings are born into and stay in for their entire lives. If you tell a human being they are in a state of waking sleep they will deny it, and they may even wake up a bit just from the question, but they will fall straight back into the state once you walk away. You can do all that is done in the world in a state of waking sleep. You can be a doctor, an engineer, an athlete, a musician, whatever. It can and is all done in a state of waking sleep. To be able to 'see' your own state of waking sleep you have to make an aim and effort to be more awake (that's basically an 'I am here' sense of yourself and your surroundings, but it's more than that too), then unconsciously fall back into waking sleep, then *remember* you had made an aim to be more awake, and at that moment you'll be able to see the difference. You'll be able to see that you had *fallen* back into a state of waking sleep and to then know, ah, that period of time I have little or no memory of is waking sleep. That's a practical way to see the state of waking sleep. Yet to be able to make an effort to be more awake requires development most people don't currently have. What the effort to be more awake leads to is this next state, or level, of consciousness:

Self-Consciousness. Or self-awareness combined with self-consciousness. It's become an insult by the pseudo intelligent to accuse someone of not being self-aware. We're all not self-aware. We can only have rare moments of self-awareness and self-consciousness, but the vast amount of our waking life is spent in blissful unawareness of ourselves. This third state of consciousness, self-consciousness, needs some things we aren't born with. It needs regeneration by the word and the Spirit for one. That may be stating too much, but I'll say it anyway. It needs a degree of an unburied conscience. Normally our conscience is buried. We didn't lose it at the Fall, but it became buried. To greater or lesser degree. It varies with individuals, and with stages of development. It needs being broken to some extent by the world. Your vanity, worldly pride, and self-will have to be broken in a real way. A painful experience, or process to live through. You also need a basic level of development - a balanced development - of the physical, emotional, and intellectual parts of your being. This involves engaging influences that are above the influences of the world (food, sex, money, mother-in-law). Influences like imaginative literature, history, art, music, philosophy, religion, science, athletics, performing arts. That is a big subject that I'll just leave there. The state of self-consciousness is painful for human beings. It is hard to get into it, and much harder to *stay* in it. Our limits for being there are very restricted. We suffer when we are there as well. And to extend our limits for being in this state we have to suffer more. Seeing ourselves as we truly are and have been can be a very painful experience. In different ways. Things that normally remain in darkness in our inner being begin to have light shined on them and we can experience great scandal and embarrassment and remorse and one epiphany after another of just how embarrassing and stupid and wicked we are and have been in our lives. It's not fun. We'd rather slink back into waking sleep. It's more comfortable. Now I'll move along so as to not write a treatise...

Objective-Consciousness. If self-consciousness is having an understanding and awareness of yourself, then objective-consciousness is having an objective understanding and awareness of the external world, basically including everything. Not God-like understanding, but what is potential for a human being. This understanding will involve being aware of laws and forces and languages - not French or Spanish, but languages such as the language of cosmoses and the language of music and higher visual languages and so forth. Much more as well. Everything. Knowledge that generally is not taught in worldly schools or institutions. A big part of objective-consciousness, though, is knowing the Plan of God. Or the History of Redemption. This is the basic material of objective-consciousness. This knowledge gives you objective understanding of who we are, why we are like we are, our state vis-a-vis what is higher than us, or more powerful than us, why the world is like it is, what forces are at work in the world, etc.

Now to the point of this post (read the title). Christians can get some understanding of the Plan of God and of basic biblical doctrine. We can get to know our true state (sin, for instance). We can understand the mechanics of the plan of redemption. All that. We need the Spirit to really be able to see it and accept it, but I'm just saying an average, everyday mainstream Christian can get that understanding. That is the material of objective-consciousness.

But what is missing with that everyday Christian (professor or pastor or church goer or whatever) is the third state of consciousness described above. Self-consciousness, or self-awareness. This necessary step in real development is skipped over. This is why you can listen to a very learned theologian, on-the-mark with biblical doctrine, yet he doesn't strike you as a very developed human being. I'm not saying people need to be wearing white robes and affecting postures of wisdom and holiness. But that third state of consciousness - self-consciousness, self-awareness - is rare. You actually may not be able to detect it in another human being, at least not superficially. If you spend some time around that person you may. But there is a general law that we can't know when another person has a higher level of development of being than ourselves. We can be honest and know if they *know more* than ourselves (hence we'll show deference to an engineering teacher). But we will rarely if ever grant another person as having a higher level of development of being than ourselves. Most fallen human beings won't even grant that to God Himself.

But anyway, without this third state of consciousness you will be just as shallow and worldly as any other person who doesn't know the plan of God will be. Really in very foundational and mundane ways.

So now you know what Christians - what you - are missing. It's been outlined above very clearly. Now seek wisdom, and with your wisdom get understanding. And remember: fear God alone. When you fear God alone you don't fear man. And when you don't fear man but only fear God it enables you to pursue and find wisdom.

This is all actually getting boring - the devil's spirit is boring as hell

2011-10-12T22:37:00.001-07:00

Don't even bother going to this link:

http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/the-leithart-trial-dr-jack-collins-defense-of-peter-leitharts-view-of-the-covenant-with-adam/

it's not worth your time (and it's very annoying to read).

I'll summarize it: never - never - underestimate the ignorance of human beings credentialed by institutions of higher learning. Including institutions going by the name Reformed seminaries.

I suppose we can still be confident engineers and doctors and those in similar disciplines are still being taught sound basics, but theology? ...no.

Anyway, sound biblical doctrine can only be understood by individuals who have been regenerated by the word and the Spirit. Signing up for Reformed seminary classes doesn't regenerate you.

What more to say. I feel like really hitting these credentialed morons (and worse) hard on this. And also hitting those who are obsequious to credentials even despite all evidence that the credentialed ones are more ignorant (and worse) of the subject matter their credentials refer to than the average socialist is ignorant (and worse) of how wealth is created.

It brings up the fact that seminaries really aren't even anything to do with the faith to begin with. Seminaries just inject all the vanity (and worse) that is found in academia into churches. All the shallowness as well. All the man-fearing and respecting of persons as well.

It also brings up the fact that God's people are always a rather small remnant in any era. And we are never very prominent in any worldly sense. No credentials, usually, for instance. We're just sort of brought along by the Holy Spirit. Yes, we exploit sources and influences that are the result of the understanding and effort of individuals that have gone before. But they are usually very well-vetted by time.

Notice seminaries today usually stake their claim for legitimacy on the teaching of languages. This is petulant and juvenile. If Christians live in an era where Hebrew and Greek need to be known and known well Christians learn Hebrew and Greek. In our era the learning of Hebrew and Greek is mostly an initiation of the shallow into an asserted authoritative (clergy vs. 'lay people') permission to be authoritatively shallow and petulantly heterodox in all the ways dictated by whatever spirit is floating around, that isn't the Holy Spirit. I.e. he can't distinguish between law and Gospel, or begin to know the power of Federal Theology, but he has been through See It and Say It in Biblical Greek, Vol. 1, so...listen to what he has to say.

I honestly hate this world I'm in right now. It's so shallow. So flowing with the easy and dumb current of the devil. Everywhere I go, everywhere I move, I'm surrounded by lunatics. Vain, shallow, dead asleep, in total bondage to the illusions and delusions and temptations of the devil's kingdom, and seemingly in most all cases totally unreachable souls (as in various degrees of sociopathy).

Which is why the fact that seminaries - Reformed seminaries - and churches are so much the same as the world is so disappointing. I wouldn't expect it to be different regarding those things, but it is obvious that God's remnant is small. Always, in every era. The remnant though is big in influence. This is a big thing to see and appreciate. Small in numbers, big in influence. And obviously that big influence, the vast majority of it, is derived not just from living Christians, but from the work of long passed Christians. And not just their written word (which is very, very big), but from their other work as well.

A comment I wrote...I'm very wise...

2011-10-09T21:17:00.001-07:00

c.t. said...

Another thing that may happen is a person can start to question the fact that the Bible is without error or something similar. There are very persistent writers who want to dispirit people about the Bible in that manner.

Just know that if you know the Bible 99% of such examples they give can be explained easily. I mean if you also know biblical doctrine. But the difficult ones can be explained too. But here is something about that:

At first those types start out by saying the Bible is all Chinese myth and NASA astronaut recordings and Assyrian short stories. I.e. it's all just crazy fairy tale nonsense. Of course that claim doesn't hold up, so they end up saying things like, "Well, why in 1 Kings does it say so and so fought and killed 300, yet in 2 Chronicles it says the same person went against 3000?"

So you see they have come a long way from Chinese myth to the latter. So first of all recognize that.

Second of all even the most difficult challenges like that (asserted mistakes) can be defended when you really get into the text. I use to do it all the time on various hostile websites even asking them to give me the most difficult cases. (I recall the Companion Bible was often very uniquely helpful for such things).

And remember, overall, that once you really begin to see *biblical doctrine* you then see how the Bible is all, from Genesis to Revelation, a unified work. Like a finely cut jewel where each part reflects all the other parts. This realization, or ability to begin to see this, takes you up a level from the level where such attacks as mentioned above can even effect you. (It's like you will have a beautiful woman before you and they will be saying, but what about that toenail on her small toe on her right foot? And you will be thinking, wait a minute, I can see her in the whole, and in any case that toenail doesn't even look so odd to me.)

This is why I point out that systematic theology works probably much more effectively than commentaries in enabling one to see the whole and thus the parts in relation to the whole of Scripture.

C. S. Lewis also stated that doctrine such as you find in systematic theologies is as *devotional* as actual devotional reading. Or more so even. That's because doctrine truly gives you practical understanding of the entire Bible.

You need to be churched!

2011-10-08T20:08:00.000-07:00

Presbyterian organization ordains first openly gay minister

"You need to be churched, ct! That's your problem!"

Lutherans to hold same sex marriage ceremonies, says Reverend Sheila Smith of the First Lutheran Church of...

"You need to be churched!"

Anglican leader pronounces new translation of the Bible that makes homosexuality OK and deletes the Book of Revelation a step forward

"You need to be churched!"

Movement with Roman Catholic soteriology infiltrates and takes over Reformed Protestant churches and denominations rather easily

"You need to be churched!"

More institutional child abuse uncovered in the Roman Catholic Church

"You need to be churched!! You need to come under care of a church!!!"

4 out of 10 scholars working on new Bible translations used in 90% of churches avowed atheists

"You need to be churched!"

Most pastors graduating from seminaries proclaiming the Bible to be full of errors

"You need to be churched!"

Not just liberal but now even conservative churches seeing the bar as being low and talking to congregants as if they are half mentally deficient

"You need to be churched!"

If you come to our church with a King James Bible we will mock you because you aren't educated.

"You need to be churched, ct! Can't you see it? You need to 'come under care' of some good man-fearing mediator - not Jesus! - and a good shallow congregation! That's what you need! We'll also mock your anti-tyranny politics! Because we fear the world!!!! You need to be churched!!!"

Pastor takes 40 years to preach through New Testament once

"Can't you see you need to be churched?!? Look what you're missin' out on!!"

You ever step back and ponder...?

2011-10-06T11:16:00.001-07:00

You ever step back and just ponder how low Christian academic institutions have brought discussion and debate of Christianity?

Beale vs. Enns.

Why not Beale vs. Anton LaVey?

"In his third book which has reached a popular audience Mr. LaVey has stated that the Bible is full of errors."

Really? He's Anton LaVey. Oh, you mean some guy at Westminster Theological Seminary is/was teaching the same thing? Really?

You ever step back and just ponder how low Christian academic institutions have brought discussion and debate of Christianity?

Getting real understanding of the word of God

2011-10-06T03:36:00.000-07:00

[Note: I wrote a post about my latest complete reading of the Bible elsewhere which brought to mind this:]

To an academic (seminary type) reading that post they would grin when they read that I didn't start getting understanding of certain whole parts of the Bible until a third or fourth complete reading.

The fact is I could have gone straight to commentaries and so forth. And you know what? I probably did.

Yet there are different kinds or levels of understanding of the Bible. The way I did it was a very organic (from the inside out) growth in developing understanding of the Bible.

The commentary route and other secondary reference material is a surface approach. One wonders even if some seminary types have ever read the Bible cover-to-cover, i.e. a straight-through dedicated effort. It requires not only effort and time but valuation for the word of God as something worth committing yourself to in that manner. There is one well known seminary type who is a pastor who makes endless lists of Bible book commentaries as if he is assembling a large canonical book of Bible commentaries and gives the impression that all he reads is commentaries.

Systematic Theology is underrated as a source for getting commentary on the whole of the Bible, by the way. I mean that role ST plays is understated. Commentaries just as a form are pretty impractical. Like reading a phone book. All bark and no forest. Obviously they have a role once you have the foundation. Get the foundation first though.

I learned early on that I would get almost nothing from reading outlines of books of the Bible, for instance. But when you enter the text in that complete, cover-to-cover dedicated reading way that requires time and effort you are really engrafting the real thing, the living word, into you. Fusing it into you. And at first it is all a muddle, out of focus, etc.; yet with repeated reading it all slowly comes into focus and into understanding. Understanding the parts in relation to the whole.

You also pick up even in the first seemingly most unprofitable complete readings very big things you don't even realize you get at the time of the reading. Like for instance you go through Samuel and Kings and can't discern a Joab from an Abner or know what is going on in the most basic narrative sense, yet you subtly pick up very new knowledge and awareness of the deep subject of idols, which runs through those books like a subterranean stream.

I believe the Holy Spirit rewards time and effort spent reading the actual word of God.

As I write this I'm currently in my 7th dedicated complete cover-to-cover reading of the Bible, AV1611, almost through Isaiah.

Pre-flood levels of violence and evil?

2011-09-26T13:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I happened to be at LiveLeak (that *English* website) when a video was uploaded (then pulled) showing Mexican cartel killers killing two rival cartel members. The video was close and in full focus and daylight lighting. They first interrogated the two men (who were sitting against a wall with their hands tied behind their backs and their feet tied, shirtless). Then about half way into the video one masked executioner arrives (from the right side of the scene) with a *chainsaw*, starts it up, and proceeds to cut off one of the men's head with it. Probably the most violent snuff film ever shown on public media. Even more violent in its way than Jihadist beheadings, though those made one sick when we first saw them years back. Then another masked executioner arrives from the left side of the scene with simply a long knife and proceeds to cut the other man's head off in the usual way, though slowly, and the man's chest was heaving for air pretty much all the way through the ordeal.

What was striking was when the first man was having his head chainsawed off the other guy was just sitting there thinking, "The guy right next to me is having his head cut off with a chainsaw, and I'm next." The two were almost touching they were sitting so close to each other.

Another striking thing was the guy who had his head chainsawed off had an interesting reaction. He had his head tilted back against the wall when the chainsaw first contacted his throat. The killer just kind of first 'tapped' the guy's throat with the chainsaw (which was on) causing a deep gash and blood gushing out of the main arteries. The man made an immediate agonizing facial expression when the chainsaw tapped him, then *instantly* he took on a spiritual look like he was seeing the spiritual world. Then the killer just launched into the cutting off of his head and he collapsed onto the shoulder of the guy sitting next to him.

The video was taken down by LiveLeak stating its rules had been violated, but I suspect the video was too hardcore violent and criminal even for that site. (Perhaps the criminal element as opposed to warfare footage is what made it violate some rule? I don't know, they show murders caught on video, I think it was just too uniquely savage even for LiveLeak.)

My thought in seeing it was this is the level of violence and lack of valuation for human life that one thinks about as having happened just before the flood, when humanity had become as evil as it possibly could become. Of course it's not uniquely violent compared to the Rape of Nanking, the Killing Fields, what went on in Mao's China or the Soviet Union or Hitler's Third Reich and so forth, but for pure terroristic violence it seemed unique. (Actually I'll say it is not so unique, we just have it on tape, but it does remind us of just *how violent*, or the *degree of violence* that has been happening in places around the world for the last hundred years or so has been.) The Bible says that that time before the flood will resemble the time just before the Second Coming.

When on that evil day, in the spiritual realm

2011-09-24T12:43:00.000-07:00

I can't find the post, but someone left a comment to a post I'd written wherein my post was talking about how the word of God becomes practical to a new degree when we die and are in battle with spiritual forces and so forth.

The comment writer wrote a typical, shallow: "Show where it says that in Scripture. Show it. Show where it says we will be in battle with spiritual forces when we die." He only didn't add: "Typical oogie boogie stuff!!"

I didn't answer him because I saw the comment about four months after he'd written it. But in reading the Book of Psalms today I was reminded of it.

Psalm 20 in particular reminded me of the challenge:

1 The LORD hear thee in the day of trouble; the name of the God of Jacob defend thee;
2 Send thee help from the sanctuary, and strengthen thee out of Zion;

That phrase, the day of trouble. I associate it with physical death. Ephesians 6:

13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Day of trouble... Evil day. In Ephesians the context is the armor of God of course. Why do we need it? To stand in the evil day. To stand against what?

11 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

This is always, but 'the evil day' is singled out as well.

I discern Psalm 18 as well as describing physical death and the battle against spiritual forces that commences.

The word of God becomes practical in a new way then because what now seems overly simple or obvious takes on basic, foundational meaning in the spiritual realm. (It does *now* too, but I am speaking in particular of the day of physical death.)

Like for instance, the word of God will say, don't lie, tell the truth. In Proverbs somewhere, say. Well, we think, yes, that is pretty straight forward, simple advice. Yet in the spiritual realm it becomes something more, something practical to a specific event or encounter.

Fallen angels: "Who are you? Where do you think you are going?"

Fearful Christian: "I am someone who is just walking around. I don't mean any harm! Do you think I should turn back? I will!"

Now here is the scenario of a Christian who knows the word of God and fears God only:

Fallen angels: "Who are you? Where do you think you are going?"

Christian with bold truth: "I am a child of the living God, and a subject of my King Jesus Christ; and in fact I am a king myself, and a subject in good legal standing in the Kingdom of God by faith in the work and the voluntary death of my King in His life and on the cross. I have a swift horse and a deadly Sword, and I don't even plan on having to use this Shield. That's right, fly away. I'll see you at the final battle. Give my regards to your creepy leader. No, I have no sympathy for him, as some do. Zero."

Note to Churchians

2011-09-24T06:31:00.000-07:00

To increase understanding you have to increase *capacity* for understanding.

This is another way of saying you have to increase level of Being. (Note: if you mock the phrase 'increase level of Being', which you will, then I'll turn it back around and say to increase understanding you have to increase *capacity* for understanding. You can't win. You can only be juvenile and shallow.)

This means you have to become more self-aware and increase your limits. (These two things have to do with your ignorance and your weakness.)

Increasing self-awareness is something you hate most of all. It causes real suffering.

Increasing your limits is something you hate too because it severely restricts your pleasure in indulging in fake suffering. You want to indulge your fake suffering.

This has been a concerned note to Churchians. Carry on.

An email, on kingdom, warfare, holiness

2011-09-20T00:25:00.000-07:00

Kingdom, warfare, and holiness (or godliness). These are central themes for when you go beyond what the mainstream theological works offer.

On spiritual warfare, I was looking through some of those types of books this evening, and one was talking about how we are *constantly* surrounded and accompanied by demons and so forth, and it made me think about it, and methinks he was over-egging the pudding (as I heard one English blogger say in a different context).

I think there has to be obvious breaches (alcohol, drugs, nefarious activity, etc.). Some people can be full of demons of course, but to say everybody is constantly surrounded by them is a bit much. I think most people are 'tame slaves' in the Kingdom of Satan, and thus not noticed much by the Devil. And their use to the Devil comes in their playing unconscious and mechanical roles. General Law [worldly values, worldly influence, and the policing done collectively against individuals] type of force.

Also, part of God's sovereignty in providence is he limits the activity of the evil realm, and of our own fallen nature. He puts limits on our ability to be as bad as we can be. (You can see this lifted in history, like in the recently mentioned Rape of Nanking, or any such similar historical events, and *why* God didn't restrain is probably due to judgment being made on all concerned in the event. We tend to see an evil actor and an innocent victim, when they both can be and often are not very innocent.)

There are also good angels who take our side in matters. This may cause a general stand-off most of the time in the spiritual world.

I'm going to try to get a handle on all these spiritual warfare books. There are probably a thousand of them, from classics to the dime a dozen Christian bookstore variety. But they aren't all the same. One I was looking at had the subject of 'shouting' in it. How shouting plays a role in fighting demons. It reminded me of the last encounter I had with the sociopath I've been writing about. I shouted him away once and for all. (At the end of my rope.) And it's worked. I can 'feel' that the connection that I'd let him form has been cut off. I've had to do this shouting thing before regarding a drug addict and her terroristic behavior towards her family, and even with a parent who was aiding and abetting the other. It might be that you're getting something out of yourself at the same time. You're re-establishing autonomy in your own inner domain. The only problem is shouting is stupid human behavior. I don't recommend it. We don't want a reason to justify boorish behavior. The shouting I refer to though is the type you can't help. You are at a limit and you need to take control.

All this stuff happens all around us. Once we are regenerated we are in a different position regarding it all (we are targeted in a unique way, no longer an asleep tame slave and thus we are noticed). Different as well in terms of our protection too. - C.

ps- It's not a great coinage, but I was thinking of KIWARHOL CHRISTIANITY to remember Kingdom, Warfare, Holiness. Darn it, Andy Warhol, messing with my coinage.

Oh, I lost patience long ago...

2011-09-16T23:16:00.000-07:00

2 Chronicles 21:16 Moreover the LORD stirred up against Jehoram the spirit of the Philistines, and of the Arabians, that were near the Ethiopians:

The Lord has recently stirred up the spirit of the Arabians and other Muslims against the Christian nations. Are Christians too afraid of the opinion of man to say that? Fear man much, Christians? Oh, and... Your idols, acknowledge them much? Statism, multiculturalism, environmentalism. You're scared of those things, aren't you, Christians? You fear upsetting their adherents. Fear of man is big among Christians of this era. The statism allows the child sacrifice, by the way. For those of you who can only think of abortion as the great national sin. Stop fearing and supporting statism and you will go a long way to controlling the child sacrifice.

Against God

2011-09-16T01:20:00.000-07:00

"Someone has said that no theology is worth believing that cannot be preached standing in front of the gates of Auschwitz."

- Roger E. Olson, Against Calvinism

Because, you see, the death of Jews is a holy thing, and God Himself must approach Auschwitz on His knees.

Olson is an Arminian, and not a very bright one. He's also a moralist who really is not very approving of God. The above quote exposes that. His argument against Calvinism also comes down to equating Calvinists to Nazis. And hence God to Hitler. He really doesn't like God very much, not very much at all.

He also unconsciously uses the term theology as if it's something we choose to accept from a smorgasbord of choices, and our choice determines how moral we are. He doesn't see theology as something that is objective and outside us, needing the Spirit in us to be seen, valued, and accepted, by the grace of God. To Olson theology is whatever meets his demands as a moral and correct-thinking human being.

Are Arminians Christians? If one believes in faith alone then yes, one doesn't need to understand apostolic biblical doctrine to the level of Federal Theology to be saved. Yet this can be said about that: without understanding (and accepting) apostolic biblical doctrine you won't have the complete armor of God and hence you won't be much of a soldier of Christ. Calvinists, real Calvinists, are soldiers of Christ in real armor of God. Arminians may be the water-carriers or something like that. And maybe reluctant ones at that.

I'm not going to deny the work of the Holy Spirit in any self-identified Christian. Man-centered and making demands on Scripture to satisfy our fallen nature, disdainful of real armor (doctrine is armor of God) is a bit telling though. Though again I won't deny the work of the Holy Spirit in any self-identified Christian.

The pestilence of the authority of God

2011-09-15T20:57:00.000-07:00

Thanks go out to James White's Alpha and Omega Ministries for alerting Christians once again to the pestilence that is the King James Bible. This time the good people over there are warning people about the connection the King James Bible has with child molesters. Apparently a child molester was convicted in a courtroom *while* he was holding a King James Bible. This is *sad*, as James White would undoubtedly put it. Can't we just burn all the King James Bibles?

Two states

2011-09-11T18:53:00.000-07:00

You either learn and accept the mechanics of salvation, the plan of God from eternity, and you rest in it; or you continue in blithe, shallow, asleep distraction (what people call life, comedy or tragedy) looking forward to continuing to live in such a state.

By "continuing to live in such a state" what is meant is asleep in a wheel of revolving living time. Or dead in sin, take your pick. Revolving only in a metaphorical sense, the only way our minds can perceive higher aspects of time. Not reincarnation (all you shallow, man-pleasing heretic hunters), but recurrence (no, not anything to do with Nietzsche, all you shallow academic philosopher types).

Recurrence. Don't try to figure it out. Just ponder this: some dogs seem to want to move on when they are dying. Like up the great chain of being. Other dogs seem to still want to be dogs.

Recurrence doesn't survive the end of the great age though. The harvest. The end of time. Recurrence is a little wheel inside the big wheel. Once the big wheel makes one revolution the wheat is separated from the chaff. This is why you don't rely on recurrence.

And once you learn the truth your time is counted. Graduate or fail. Failing means hell. And to understand that in the context of monergistic regeneration failure means committing the unforgivable sin. Denying the work of the Holy Spirit.

Calvinists get too clever with God's sovereignty in grace. I.e. monergistic regeneration. If you are there you are there. If awake to it then awake to it. And if the unforgivable sin means anything it means you can commit it. If you have the work of the Spirit and you deny the work of the Spirit you get hammered. And good riddance. One thing I hate more than anything, as a regenerated Christian, is the double hearted.

"Oh, my God, America got attacked by terrorists in New York. I am in support of America!" - 36 hours later - "Um, no, I hate America still. Sorry!" (As much as I don't care about those people, or what they support or hate, God doesn't care about the doubled hearted towards Him. Once the period where His long-suffering is over.)

Reconciling King Solomon's idol worship with his famous Godly wisdom

2011-09-09T17:56:00.000-07:00

Finishing 2 Kings I started to lose my patience with all the new kings announced followed by "and he did evil in the sight of the Lord as his father did..." Then I started thinking about King Solomon, who made altars to three of the most wicked false idols of the nations:

2Ki 23:13 And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had builded for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile.

I was thinking, he was just as bad as the kings that followed him, yet he is supposed to be the wisest human being who ever lived (other than Jesus Christ of course), and he of course wrote the Proverbs and the Book of Ecclesiastes. So you wonder how to put this together. I went to the commentaries and found the best defense of King Solomon, in this regard, from Keil and Delitzsch:

"The idolatry into which Solomon fell in his old age appears so strange in a king so wise and God-fearing as Solomon showed himself to be at the dedication of the temple, that many have been quite unable to reconcile the two, and have endeavoured to show either that Solomon's worship of idols was psychologically impossible, or that the knowledge of God and the piety attributed to him are unhistorical. But great wisdom and a refined knowledge of God are not a defence against the folly of idolatry, since this has its roots in the heart, and springs from sensual desires and the lust of the flesh. The cause assigned in the biblical account for Solomon's falling away from the Lord, is that he loved many strange, i.e., foreign or heathen, wives, who turned his heart from Jehovah to their own gods in his old age. Consequently the falling away did not take place suddenly, but gradually, as Solomon got old, and was not a complete renunciation of the worship of Jehovah, to whom he offered solemn sacrifices three times a year, and that certainly to the day of his death (1Ki_9:25), but consisted simply in the fact that his heart was no longer thoroughly devoted to the Lord (1Ki_11:4), and that he inclined towards the idols of his foreign wives and built them altars (1Ki_11:5-8); that is to say, it consisted merely in a syncretic mixture of Jehovah-worship and idolatry, by which the worship which should be paid solely and exclusively to the true God was not only injured, but was even turned into idolatry itself, Jehovah the only true God being placed on a level with the worthless gods of the heathen. - Love to foreign wives no doubt presupposed an inclination to foreign customs; it was not, however, idolatry in itself, but was still reconcilable with that sincere worship of Jehovah which is attributed to Solomon in the earlier years of his reign. At the same time it was a rock on which living faith and true adherence to the Lord might at last suffer shipwreck. And we may even infer from the repeated warnings of God (1Ki_3:14; 1Ki_6:12; 1Ki_9:4), that from the earliest years of his reign Solomon was in danger of falling into idolatry. This danger did, indeed, spring in his case from his inclination to foreign customs; but this inclination was again influenced by many of the circumstances of his reign, which we must regard as contributing more remotely to his eventual fall. And among the first of these we must place the splendour and glory of his reign. Through long and severe conflicts David had succeeded in conquering all the enemies of Israel, and had not only helped his people to peace and prosperity, but had also raised the kingdom to great power and glory. And Solomon inherited these fruits of his father's reign. Under the blessings of peace he was not only able to carry out the work of building a splendid temple, which his father had urged upon him, but was also able, by a wise use of the sources already existing and by opening new ones, still further to increase the treasures which he had collected, and thereby to exalt the splendour of his kingdom. The treaty with Hiram of Tyre, which enabled him to execute the intended state buildings in Jerusalem, was followed by alliances for the establishment of a widespread commerce both by sea and land, through which ever increasing treasures of gold and silver, and other costly goods, were brought to the king. As this accumulation of riches helped to nourish his inclination to a love of show, and created a kind of luxury which was hardly reconcilable with the simplicity of manners and the piety of a servant of God, so the foreign trade led to a toleration of heathen customs and religious views which could not fail to detract from the reverence paid to Jehovah, however little the trade with foreigners might be in itself at variance with the nature of the Old Testament kingdom of God. And again, even the great wisdom of king Solomon might also become a rock endangering his life of faith, not so much in the manner suggested by J. J. Hess (Gesch. Dav. u. Sal. ii. p. 413), namely, that an excessive thirst for inquiry might easily seduce him from the open and clearer regions of the kingdom of truth into the darker ones of the kingdom of lies, i.e., of magic, and so lead him to the paths of superstition; as because the widespread fame of his wisdom brought distinguished and wise men from distant lands to Jerusalem and into alliance with the king, and their homage flattered the vanity of the human heart, and led to a greater and greater toleration of heathen ways. But these things are none of them blamed in the Scriptures, because they did not of necessity lead to idolatry, but might simply give an indirect impulse to it, by lessening the wall of partition between the worship of the true God and that of heathen deities, and making apostasy a possible thing. The Lord Himself had promised and had given Solomon wisdom, riches, and glory above all other kings for the glorification of his kingdom; and these gifts of God merely contributed to estrange his heart from the true God for the simple reason, that Solomon forgot the commandments of the Lord and suffered himself to be besotted by the lusts of the flesh, not only so as to love many foreign wives, but so as also to take to himself wives from the nations with which Israel was not to enter into any close relationship whatever."

The Mosaic Covenant and republication for the 837th time

2011-09-08T01:07:00.000-07:00

The eyes of academic Reformed theologians and those who follow them are no more turned away from Christ than when they are debating the Mosaic Covenant with regards to republication.

And yes that means this: when you see the issue as Jesus Christ came to fulfill what the first Adam failed to fulfill; and Jesus Christ was born under the law; and national Israel was a prototype of the coming Jesus Christ; then you can take it from there. (Hint: note the name Jesus Christ put three times in the above sentence. Does it anger you? Apparently it does. Many of you.)

I've kind of personally given up trying to explain it to the average Reformed believer. They seem to be petulant to a degree that suggests it's a discernment issue only the Holy Spirit can cure.

[Note: for beginners to Reformed Theology this subject is complicated for other reasons. Just learn Federal Theology, the spine of which is the two Adams, Adam in the Garden, and Jesus Christ.]

Good article on science and Christianity

2011-09-06T03:36:00.000-07:00

This is not a book but a 26 page article:

http://www.archive.org/details/IsChristianityACauseOfScienceTheDuhem-jakiAndMertonThesesExplained

It's easiest to read if you just download the PDF and save it. It's good because in a concise way it gives the 7 reasons why science flourishes in any culture/civilization, then it compares the Chinese, Hindu, and Islamic cultures/civilizations to Christian culture and civilization regarding these 7 points.

Turn if off

2011-09-01T01:13:00.000-07:00

Just now I was listening to James White's internet broadcast. He was making comments on a sermon given by a preacher who doesn't believe in the Trinity. About a quarter of the way in White compares these people who reject the Trinity to people who value the King James Version. Just out of nowhere his usual juvenile delinquent slam of Christians who value the King James Bible. What is James White? He's a mocker and a fool. And he is an angry boy as well. James White is angry. He's angry at God for some reason. Something is in his past unreconciled that he is holding against God. He knows the authority of God is in the Received Text, Hebrew and Greek, of the Authorized King James Version. He hates the authority of God. His giggly mocking of Christians who of all things value the Bible of English speaking Christians since 1611 can not be based solely on his sharing the shallow intellectual vanity of the priesthood of scholars who produce the mutilated trash of the corrupt modern versions. It can't be just that. James White is an angry boy. He is angry at God. He needs to reconcile whatever is in him and in his past that is making him angry and making him mock Christians who value the King James Version and making him mock the King James Version itself.

So anyway at that point where he mocks the King James Version I just turned the broadcast off. What does the Bible teach us about mockers and fools? Continue to listen to them? No, don't suffer them.

Altered consciousness vs. increased consciousness

2011-08-30T18:57:00.000-07:00

This is from a blog that hates me. It has nothing to do with me. I'm just lifting it because it's a theme I tend to gravitate towards and write about now and again:

This is a brief follow-up to my earlier post. It’s one thing to spontaneously experience an altered state of consciousness, quite another to practice various techniques designed to actively trigger or cultivate an altered state of consciousness. I think the latter is foolhardy. It exposes you to malevolent spiritual forces that are more powerful that you. Once you open that door, you may not be able to close it.

Even in the case of a spontaneously altered state of consciousness, that still needs to be scrutinized (e.g. 1 Jn 4:1-3).

There is truth in this statement, but it also presents a very common limited view of 'altered consciousness.'

A Christian can *increase* consciousness without necessarily altering their consciousness. You can alter your consciousness by smoking pot or getting drunk or doing some more hardcore drug. This usually lets the spirits in *because there is no control* on the part of the person taking in the consciousness altering substances. There may not even be much of a developed essential core in the individual to fall back on once their surface personality is wiped off the map.

For instance, some people take a recreational drug or get drunk and they're pretty much still the same person, just some motor skill deterioration and what not. Others take a drug or get drunk and they metamorphose into an explosively angry human pit bull or a totally inappropriate quasi-rapist...or worse. The former has an essential core built up, to some degree. The latter is hollow, so to speak, and thus at the mercy of channeling the spirits unimpeded.

But this isn't serious spiritual development or the way to any kind of spiritual development.

In serious spiritual development you really don't want to *alter* your consciousness. You actually want to *increase* your consciousness, or, to put it more plainly, you want to be more awake.

A person has to be ready for it though. A person who is not ready for it could just end up building up features of their fallen nature. Or, prior to that - with little discernment - they could just connect with a teaching/teacher/group that is offering devil-inspired nonsense or worse.

Here's where it can get tricky. When you test your limits for being awake you provoke all the features of your inner fallen nature. You also attract the ire of the world and the attention of the devil. Fun!

Those are the three fronts of the battle that make up spiritual warfare.

This is not necessarily letting demonic forces into you (though admittedly it can seem that way, for anybody who has experienced it). It's just simply becoming known as a soldier of Christ on the spiritual battlefield. Regeneration itself effects this. You're no longer a tame slave in the devil's kingdom going along with the flow. You're now noticed and a threat. The key is having a basic degree of understanding of what is going on and having a basic degree of control that you are able to operate from.

I.e. you need knowledge and you need being. That is to say, we are ignorant and we are weak. We generally don't even know what the features of our fallen nature are. Talk about being an easy victim, when you don't even know what you are in bondage to. But even once we get knowledge of them we find that we are very weak in our ability to go against them.

Individuals - Christians - don't even usually get to this point unless they are able to basically survive it. Having discernment for what is true. Seeing what is on-the-mark and what is off-the-mark. Having a basic level of internal development which is similar to regeneration by the word and the Spirit but is more a basic level of internal awakeness.

In my experience - and others I know - you are naked at first on the battlefield. You are pretty much at the mercy of the forces you are up against. Though obviously you have some protection or you'd be jumping out a window or something. This is where God and the Bible come in. I instinctively avoided such things until I was regenerated by the word and the Spirit. Though I was always working and developing towards it. But the real thing, where you provoke limits in a serious way, I avoided. Until I had the Spirit of Christ in me. Even then I didn't know how naked I was on the battlefield. Eventually you have to don the armor of God. With experience you learn you can't proceed on your own and that you need the armor of God including prayer.

At that point though it's easy to back off, feeling you're already 'there.' Moving forward into that battle needs a degree of valuation for the activity and the goal that is a whole battle on its own. Easier to become a fat monk pouring over the same books - old ground - until death sneaks up on you...

In this post I have not mentioned any teachings or 'schools' or material or influences or anything like that because really a person has to find that on their own. It requires development and a degree of separation from the world. You have to get knocked down pretty good by life too. You have to see your own nothingness. You have to have help, really, from God to even get out of the unconscious patterns of life. This touches on higher aspects of time as well that I won't go into (I have before on this blog though!)...

Suffice to say *increased consciousness* (or will, or conscience for that matter) is not the same as what is commonly known as *altered consciousness.*

"You must learn of the sacraments!" they shouted to Christian from the sidelines of the Way that is straight and narrow

2011-08-28T12:52:00.000-07:00

Of course one(CT or whoever) would think Winzer is FV if they are a baptist, because we who adopt infant baptism are seen as a type of Romanist no matter what our views on Regeneration/Justification are just because of our belief that baptism can further bless or further curse, baptism DOES SOMETHING in our view, which baptists totally disagree with and hate! CT should take a break from FV and get back to studying the sacraments...OOPS! I mean.."THE ORDINaNCES" :P

The Holy Spirit Himself is my teacher regarding what is symbolized by baptism and the so-called Lord's Supper. The Holy Spirit doesn't say it is about crackers and grape juice. Any more than you are supposed to actually eat Jesus' flesh. Jesus kind of disabused the apostles of that notion as Scripture tells us. Neither did the more bright Reformers like Zwingli and Calvin think it was about crackers and grape juice. The problem with the Reformers on this subject is they feared man more than God and taught what they knew to be shallow nonsense so as not to upset man in such a politically tense time.

Of course there's also more going on regarding 'sacraments.' For them to be so entrenched in Christian experience it has to be due to there being different levels of Christian experience (a subject establishment Christians suppress with the same vehemence they suppress any talk of spiritual warfare or the subject of regeneration by the word and the Spirit itself). The unregenerate, or the regenerate-though-shallow, who by constitution gravitate towards ritual, need their ritual sacraments. It's kind of funny that there are only two for them and one of them is a once and done experience. Actually one can make the case that they cling to the lone remaining 'sacrament' as a way to wash their hands of any necessity to make any effort at all in accumulating the Spirit and being in union with Christ (and of course their justification is it is not *our* effort, yet once regenerated you have *ability* to make efforts, pilgrim). Really, when seen in this light, the Christians who champion ritual sacraments are the most willfully delinquent Christians among us.

So what has the Holy Spirit taught me regarding the 'sacraments' (and did He talk to me audibly and in the King's English? ha ha, yes, it's always fun mocking the work of the Holy Spirit, isn't it, churchians?). Oh, that parenthetical aside is the 'mean' side of me. I'm trying to not be so brutal on this blog.

Well, it's a hard subject to approach, simply because it comes under the category of 'talking out of school.' And why are we not suppose to 'talk out of school'? For the same reason Scripture tells us not to cast pearls before swine.

So it's a hard subject to approach. I'm really left to approaching the subject by citing the rare instances where mainstream Reformed Theology touches on the subject. For instance, in Grudem's Systematic Theology he touches on the subject of baptism being an ongoing process and being about accumulating the Spirit. He does it mostly in a foot note, but it is there. It's kind of silly for me to have to cite Grudem, but there it is. As for the so-called Lord's Supper, that is a subject - regarding the deeper understanding of it - that Reformed Theology really avoids altogether. It wasn't a good start when the apostles themselves thought Jesus was talking about cannibalism. That is the revealed word of God kind of signaling to us that the deeper teaching is rare and not for everybody. Available to anybody, but not for everybody. Probably not mandatory for salvation either, but there is degree of reward in Heaven. (The word 'probably' doesn't even need to be in that last sentence.)

So, swine, if you ever begin to lose your desire to be swine, and you begin to value things of higher value than barely edible garbage and slop, just know that the higher teaching exists and is available to anyone with the will to seek it.

In 'be awake' and 'love your enemy' is a world of sophisticated mystical doctrine. Mystical in regards to the mystical union with Christ.

To find the practical teaching you need to begin to fear God more than you fear man. When you fear God alone you don't fear man. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

(And see this post:

http://electofgod.blogspot.com/2011/08/summit-vs-foundation.html

to make sure you don't go getting too crazy... Though you may have to get crazy for a league or two to get at what you need... Ironically to get to where you fear God alone you will seem like a rebel to all that people hold dear, though you will just be a rebel to the world and to the Devil and to your own inner fallen nature.)

The Praise of the Holy Scriptures

2011-08-27T15:21:00.000-07:00

"It is not only an armor, but also a whole armory of weapons, both offensive and defensive; whereby we may save ourselves and put the enemy to flight. It is not an herb, but a tree, or rather a whole paradise of trees of life, which bring forth fruit every month, and the fruit thereof is for meat, and the leaves for medicine. It is not a pot of Manna, or a cruse of oil, which were for memory only, or for a meal's meat or two, but as it were a shower of heavenly bread sufficient for a whole host, be it never so great; and as it were a whole cellar full of oil vessels; whereby all our necessities may be provided for, and our debts discharged. In a word, it is a Panary of wholesome food, against fenowed traditions; a Physician's shop (Saint Basil calleth it) of preservatives against poisoned heresies; a Pandect of profitable laws, against rebellious spirits; a treasury of most costly jewels, against beggarly rudiments; finally a fountain of most pure water springing up unto everlasting life. And what marvel? The original thereof being from heaven, not from earth; the author being God, not man; the inditer, the holy spirit, not the wit of the Apostles or Prophets; the Penmen such as were sanctified from the womb, and endued with a principal portion of God's spirit; the matter -- verity, piety, purity, uprightness; the form -- God's word, God's testimony, God's oracles, the word of truth, the word of salvation, etc.; the effects -- light of understanding, stableness of persuasion, repentance from dead works, newness of life, holiness, peace, joy in the holy Ghost; lastly, the end and reward of the study thereof -- fellowship with the Saints, participation of the heavenly nature, fruition of an inheritance immortal, undefiled, and that never shall fade away: Happy is the man that delighteth in the Scripture, and thrice happy that meditateth in it day and night."

[From the translators of the Authorized - King James - Version to the readers. Found this excerpt here: http://upper-register.typepad.com/blog/2009/08/preface-to-the-king-james-version-quote-1.html ]

A great pageant of religion

2011-08-21T02:04:00.000-07:00

Ha, ha... Sitting here listening to Five Mystical Songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams it came to me that all of history, particularly in mind the totalitarian movements of the last hundred years, is a great pageant of religion, only the religion of the Kingdom of Satan and its unconscious though also willful followers. A great pageant of idol worship and human sacrifice. All of it.

And what I mean is it is *actually* religion. All the effort and striving put into it, to effect such outcomes, such tyranny, such suffering. Religious activity. As if human beings can do nothing else. Just as we are either in the Kingdom of Satan or in the Kingdom of God, no in between, no neutral position, just so we can do nothing else but worship in either Kingdom.

Don't read this and say "obvious." It's not obvious. It's actual *religious* activity. Not political, not war, not revolution, not ideological strife, but underneath it all...religion. Human beings can engage in nothing else. The goals are the same, create as much human suffering and death as possible to feed the Kingdom of Satan. They'll sport different ideologies, different justifications, different historical resentments, etc., but the goals are the same underneath. See the church of Communism, the church of Nazism, the church of Italian Fascism, the church of Mao, the church of the Khmer Rouge. These were big productions. They aren't easy to get started. The usual is a more low level of scattered activity here and there. A low boil of hedonism, say. Or what have you.

Summit vs. Foundation

2011-08-15T16:30:00.000-07:00

The problem is the moment a seminary level Christian thinks of the possibility of jumping out of the surface level intellectual doctrinal nursery (and I am posing a seminary level Christian that is on-the-mark with biblical doctrine) they think - and their peers think - that they, by default, have to jump into a downgrade on doctrine or new age this or that. They're thinking in the wrong direction.

They are thinking like they are on a summit and any other direction is down. No, they're on a foundation, and the direction to go is up, as in building on the foundation.

One of the fathers of the Dutch Second Reformation, Willem Teellinck, is said to have become a mystic in later life. Something tells me, his having attained the level of being able to be on-the-mark with pure biblical doctrine, that he didn't abandon that foundation but built upon it. Yes, I'm sure he freaked out his contemporaries, to use a modern term, but it's not difficult to freak out Christians with a shallow level of understanding of what is to be built upon the foundation of pure biblical doctrine (pure biblical doctrine being five solas, doctrines of grace, classical Covenant - Federal - Theology).

Of course 'mystic' is a word with as many meanings as the tangled foliage of an Amazonian forest; though, as Reformed Christians, we can keep it simple and cite the unio mystica, i.e. the mystical union with Christ.

The shallow, who think they are standing on that summit, rather than on a foundation, will cite the 'means of grace'. What is the means of grace? The word of God. OK, so far. What else? The two sacraments. Oh, so, the faith is about ritual. That would follow, if you are a shallow Christian who thinks you are standing upon a summit of understanding of the faith with no where to go but in a downgrade fashion downward, then empty ritual until the return of the King would be the order of the day. Empty ritual justified as being not-empty, usually appealing to the presence, somehow, someway, of the word of God as being part of the ritual.

No, the faith isn't about ritual. For instance, Jesus said watch and be awake. This is infinitely more meaningful in regards to building on the foundation of regeneration and justification and faith and knowing the Truth than ritual.

Jesus said love your enemies. The shallow on the summit can only see this in moralizing terms, if they choose to recognize the command at all.

Yet to a mystic, a true mystic who has understanding of the word of God and is standing upon that aforementioned foundation, can see everything in just these two commands: be awake, and love your enemies.

In esoteric Christian teaching these two commands are called 'conscious shocks' (because they aren't mechanical shocks), because they are things you have to *do.* And with regeneration comes ability to do.

The shallow on their perceived summit, performing their ritual, are already mocking such a notion. Their shallow minds have a vast store of downgrade phenomena to free associate with such notions. (The mocking is a sign of the spirit of disobedience, by the way. It's not good.) Teellinck no doubt was mocked. I have no idea what Teellinck got into, but let's assume, again, that he didn't start worshiping crystals, and let's assume he began to focus on the teachings of Jesus that the seminarians are blind to (and let's assume he did it while standing on the foundation of regeneration and justification and faith and an understanding of pure biblical doctrine).

But who really cares about shallow, mocking Christians.

A mystic, pursuing union with Christ to ever greater degree, fears God alone; and when you fear God alone you don't fear man. Man the mocker. Mockers of the end times.

Bottom line on so-called sacraments

2011-08-10T03:04:00.000-07:00

Bottom line, people who have been regenerated by the word and the Spirit don't have any reason to care about ritual water baptism or the so-called Lord's Supper. Why would we? We've been baptized by the Holy Spirit Himself, and we have union with Christ Himself. Visual parables, or whatever, are for those who need them, but the bar is raised a bit higher than ritual in real Christianity, and any who have had ritual performed on them need to at some point engage the actual word of God, which - the churchians need to admit - is something most self-identified Christians never do in a serious way; including academic Christians and church leaders who engage endless Christian books yet never the actual word of God in a serious way.

Will Kinney exposes the devil's spirit in James White

2011-08-10T01:33:00.000-07:00

James White was stung - by his own admission - by some men who approached him at some talk he had given and told him he didn't give the impression of brokenness. I.e. he didn't give the impression of being a regenerated Christian.

White is an example that you can be on-the-mark all you want regarding doctrine but if you've yet to have your vanity, and pride, and self-will broken and you've yet to humble yourself to the word of God you can be a walking computer regarding doctrine all you want, but you aren't saved.

A love for the word of God which has the authority of God in it (the Received Text), not the authority of man (scholars or any other men constructing texts from myriad corrupt manuscripts) is a foundational mark of regeneration. (Also, it should be noted, having a love for other believers is a foundational mark of regeneration, and White gives himself away here as well. He hates Christians who hold to the Received Text. He compares them to Muslims often. He mocks them. He mocks them for the sole reason that they hold to the Received Text.)

White has an abiding hatred for the Received Text. He claims he doesn't hate it, but his words and his emotions give him away. He even stated in one of his internet shows that when he was in England he visited the library or museum that keeps editions of his favorite corrupt manuscripts - satanicus and vaticanus - and then he said he noticed not far away in another glass case was an original edition of the 1611 Authorized Version and that the fact that it was in the same room with his precious corrupt manuscripts made him "sick."

This is a devilish soul.

See and hear Will Kinney expose White's spirit of disobedience.

White even turns red in this video. It reminds me of the pictures of Vladimir Lenin days and hours before his death where he began to take on the physical appearance of a demon already in the fires of hell.

And count the times White engages in mocking Kinney's intellect, as if White, or any of his seminary educated peers, with his one course in See it and Say it in Biblical Greek, makes him anything close to the translators of the AV1611.

You wonder why the visible Christian church is so shallow these days? Look at this wet church leader and educator screaming into his microphone defending his wet vanity and worldly pride, all in the service of demanding that the word of God needs him more than he needs it.

Postscript: There is another aspect to White and his position among other so-called church leaders and educators. None of his peers ever remark on Whites immaturity. Set the manuscripts issue aside. White has the maturity of a junior high school kid. On his internet show his producer, on air, told him a woman was on the line who wanted to talk with him because she was very depressed. White proceeded to giggle at the woman for about fifteen minutes, mocking her based on her supposed craziness and ignorance in not going to her pastor with such an issue. Giggling like a little boy at this woman and her request.

White has recently picked up on using the word 'shallow' (which he got from my use of it on this blog) in describing his doctrinal opponents. This is always the danger in using language in a creative or unique way in a church Christian environment. They inevitably pick up on your language and rather than being influenced by the language to see themselves a bit they use the language in their own self-serving manner remaining dead asleep to themselves. That White's peers seem to think there is nothing wrong with him exposes them as well. May all such shallow, mocking church 'leaders' and 'educators' get their just reward, and may it be a great surprise to them when it happens.

Reformed theologians against body, soul, and spirit

2011-08-06T16:51:00.000-07:00

This is true for the person who wrote it, and this isn't a statement that says truth is relative, I simply mean that for this person what he has written here is true for him.

It's certainly not true by the tribunal of Scripture or by the experience of obviously many regenerated Christians.

One thing we can't do as Christians, though, is deny other Christians' experience. Doing that is similar to the non-believer telling a Christian that he isn't a Christian, or that he doesn't even understand Christianity (said in a way to deny the Christian's professed faith). It borders on a serious boundary crossing act to say such a thing, and maybe is a wicked transgressing act for which the person who does it will get slammed pretty good by the Almighty in time. I.e. it's a degree or form of denying the work of the Holy Spirit.

One point about dichotomy vs. trichotomy: we don't mold doctrine based on concerns it could be taken wrongly. This is merely justification for a Christian to deny doctrine that stings him.

Another point: when we physically die we leave our bodies as a complete microcosmos, i.e. as body, soul, and spirit. More or less consolidated, more or less developed. Theologians seem to want to leave out 'body' in what leaves the flesh body.

1Co 15:44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

So in death we are still a contained body, soul, and spirit. Our spirit will be connected with the Holy Spirit of the Kingdom of God or with the spirit of disobedience of the Kingdom of Satan.

More on true false idols (yes, 'false idols' is redundant, but many don't know idols are all false)

2011-08-01T07:17:00.000-07:00

To really see the depth of true false idols as opposed to temptations (money, sex, power) see if expiation of the inherent sense of guilt in fallen human beings is occurring. Environmentalism is a good example in our day. It includes the deification of 'Gaia' or Mother Earth. "We must sacrifice for the Earth. We are nothing. If you don't sacrifice for the Earth we will have to kill you." Cultish. Sacrifices are demanded from all and given willingly from active adherents.

Multiculturalism is another. It is the old worship of the noble savage by another name. With the twist of self-flagellation. "That North African Muslim immigrant just raped my daughter, but it's OK, I deserve it. We all deserve it." If the noble savage burns down their very neighborhood the worshipers of that idol accept it. Their idol can't mock them enough. It feeds their expiation of guilt.

Leftist politics is another, where the state (socialism, communism, fascism) becomes God (is idolized, fetishized, worshiped); and sacrifices - including human sacrifice, sometimes to the degree of genocide - are made to it. The state can't torment them enough. Can't kill them enough. Can't tyrannize over them enough. It expiates their inherent sense of guilt.

All the above expiates fallen human beings' inherent sense of guilt. They can't bring themselves to recognize their Creator, or the Mediator Jesus Christ, but they still feel a strong need for expiation of their inherent guilt. So they turn to the creation rather than the Creator. And humans and human institutions.

There is a category of false idol that seems more shallow which is the cult of personality that happens in the entertainment/celebrity fascination area. You see it in politics too, of course. Rock stars are the generic term. Both words metaphorical - even biblical - words for Jesus Christ. But nobody makes sacrifices to Lady Gaga (I don't think) like they do to multiculturalism.

The Covenant of Works and its republication as the Mosaic Covenant on Sinai, simply clearing up the confusion

2011-07-29T00:19:00.000-07:00

The Covenant of Works and its republication as the Mosaic Covenant on Sinai...

This subject is made much too complicated by people who don't yet grasp the subject matter.

Jesus came to fulfill what Adam in the Garden failed to fulfill.

So there is a correlation between the command God gave to Adam in the Garden and the law Jesus was *born under*, the law given on Sinai. The law given on Sinai was the law God gave to Adam in the Garden, only it was republished on Sinai in obviously elaborated form.

People who write: "People who say the law given on Sinai (the Mosaic Covenant) is the Covenant of Works from the Garden republished are Pharisees who think their own works can save them, and I'll stand to my dying day and confront them by God!!!" are people who don't yet have understanding of the doctrinal matter and are being fervently silly.

Here is how to see it...

National Israel is a *unique player* in God's plan of redemption. (First misunderstanding that has to be cleared up: this doesn't mean individual Israelites were saved in any other way than having faith in the *coming* Messiah, just as we are saved by having faith in the already come Messiah. No, individual Israelites were saved by faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone just as we are. For them it was looking forward, for us it is looking back.)

So, national Israel is a unique player in God's plan of redemption. As unique as pre-fall Adam and as unique as Jesus Christ Himself. How is national Israel unique in God's plan of redemption? National Israel was unique in three ways:

1. National Israel was a type for the coming Messiah, Jesus Christ.

2. National Israel was the very *substance* of the written word of God. Their very history - actual lived history - is what communicates God's revelation to us in His word.

3. National Israel had responsibilities put on it by God namely to keep the Royal bloodline pure from Adam to Jesus Christ; to keep separate from all the filthy and violent idol worshiping nations they were surrounded by; and to keep together as a national, political, family unity.

These three aspects that make national Israel unique in God's plan of redemption *give them a unique relationship to the law.* A relationship that we as fallen human beings and who are not national Israel do not have. (National Israel becoming defunct after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.)

So, the law given on Sinai to Moses (the Mosaic Covenant) was a republication, in elaborated form, of the Covenant of Works in the Garden, and it's relationship to *us* (fallen man) is different from its relationship to national Israel.

To us the law is still a curse. After the fall there was no salvation by works possible. Original sin alone shuts that door, not that fallen man could live perfectly from birth without original sin because sin - and active sinning - is of the nature of fallen man.

Having said the above, it is *important* to realize that there is *one* way to be saved: *works.* Yes. Works. Either our own (good luck with that), or Jesus Christ's (His fulfilling of all the law), appropriated by faith in Him. The latter route to salvation is the Covenant of Grace. It only requires faith alone, in Christ alone, by grace alone. Though the internal *revolution* that happens in a fallen human being who comes to faith is much bigger and real than the mere words 'faith alone' suggest, which is why faith alone is 'foolishness' to unregenerate, fallen man.

So, in effect, the law given on Sinai, the republished Covenant of Works, is 'works' for Jesus, and 'grace' for us. Jesus had to fulfill it. And only He *could* fulfill it. Of all born to woman after the Fall only Jesus was born without original sin. And only Jesus - the God-man - could live a perfectly sinless life. I.e. only Jesus could fulfill the law for salvation. He then, of course, also voluntarily died on the cross to pay the penalty of death for all the elect (the penalty Adam incurred by not fulfilling the law was death for himself and all under his federal headship, which is all humanity after the Fall). Jesus could stand in for all the elect and die for them *because* Jesus is the *federal head* of all the elect, just as Adam is the federal head of all humanity until an individual is regenerated by the word and the Spirit and comes under the federal head of King Jesus Christ.

This is why the Bible calls Jesus the second Adam. He fulfilled what the first Adam failed to fulfill. The two Adams are the spine of Federal Theology.

So that's what the law given on Sinai (the Mosaic Covenant which is the Covenant of Works republished) is to us.

What that law is to national Israel is, as mentioned above, different. Again, it's not different regarding individual salvation of Israelites. They were saved by faith in the coming Messiah just as we are saved by faith in the already come Messiah. But it was different in the other ways having to do with the unique aspects of national Israel as a unique player in God's plan of redemption (the three numbered aspects above).

As a type for the coming Messiah national Israel had a works relationship to the law, just as the future incarnated Messiah, Jesus Christ, did. Because national Israel is merely a type for the coming Messiah that works relationship to the law is not a direct parallel to Jesus' relationship to it. Because salvation was not possible for individual Israelites through law-keeping their typical relationship to the law took on other meaning. Staying in the land, for instance. This for some reason confuses people endlessly. Follow my law, God says, and stay in the Promised Land. Cease to follow my law and get kicked out of the Promised Land. Because salvation is not at stake this becomes similar to the experience of the Israelites wandering in the desert for 40 years. They waxed and waned on following God's law too, and they were punished and rewarded for it as well. In the very same manner, really. So it shouldn't be confusing to see the same thing regarding national Israel in the Promised Land.

As the substance of the word of God (their history communicated God's revelation in His revealed word) national Israel became an example to all of how the law doesn't save because fallen man can't fulfill the law perfectly. All of national Israel's history is an object lesson to fallen man via the revealed word of God regarding the need for grace. But national Israel *had* to have some kind of - some degree of - binding relationship to that law to make it an effective object lesson.

Finally, national Israel carried within its collective womb, so to speak, the future incarnate Messiah. For this reason the laws given on Sinai, the judicial laws, the moral laws, the ceremonial laws, played a real role in national Israel bringing this about. The ceremonial laws pointed to the coming Messiah which is how individual Israelites could have faith in the coming Messiah. To just know about the coming Messiah they needed the ceremonial laws as types pointing to Him and His work of salvation. They may have also had other direct special revelation in their day. Prophets, etc. They also needed the harsh judicial laws to keep themselves together, and to keep their bloodline pure - at least in the Royal line from Adam to Christ - while being surrounded by idol worshiping nations that were continually tempting them. The moral laws - the Ten Commandments - were the same for them as they are for us. They are for all generations.

Also, the issue of memory and how in just one generation all that God taught them could be lost (this is really the Devil's biggest advantage in this world) required God to give them the law as He did after the fall and to have them write it down and teach it continually to each generation.

For all the above reasons this is why it is said the Covenant of Works in the Garden was republished on Sinai (the Mosaic Covenant).

This doctrine must be held to because it is biblical and because it is part and parcel of 'seeing' the Covenant of Works to begin with. False teachers mainly want to keep people in bondage to the Beast system of works righteousness (of one stripe or another), and false teachers always have to attack justification by faith alone and eventually attack the very existence of the Covenant of Works in the Garden (that is confusing to people who are beginners in doctrinal matters). So, ironically, people who are yet naive to these issues attack republication thinking they are *defending* justification by faith alone when they are naively *doing the opposite* and falling into the very hands of the false teachers who hate the biblical fact of justification by faith alone.

I know that is confusing to them (the false teachers grin at how easy it is to fool and confuse, but God's elect won't be fooled, not for long anyway, and none of them are lost, and the Devil and his children can only play for time, i.e. the false teachers can annoy God's plan, but they can't defeat God's plan), but if you can understand all that is written in this post then you can understand this last point.

They want you to feel shame that you hold to the Received Text

2011-07-18T06:24:00.000-07:00

A mark of regeneration is a high valuation for the word of God. Not the word of man, the word of God. Not what a priesthood of scholars - most of them self-professed atheists at that - determine the word of God to be, but the actual word of God.

When you are in an environment where showing preference for the Received Text and the Authorized - King James - Version makes you suspect you are going to be banned (or scolded, or mocked) then you are in an environment where the unregenerate are exercising power and authority and it is no place for a follower of Christ to be.

Fearing God alone means not fearing man; and part of not fearing man is not being in environments where man demands fear from you. The word of God is the foundation of the faith because it is, with the Spirit, what regenerates when regeneration happens. This is why the Roman Catholic Church called people to be baptized and attend their Mass all day and all night but kept the word of God away from people at penalty of torture and death. The Devil knows what regenerates, and it's not ritual or church buildings or clerics, it is the living word of God. This same Satanic spirit is at work in Protestant environments when you see anger and mocking towards the Received Text. They are no different than the Beast clerics of the Romanist domain. They hate the word of God that has the authority of God in it - rather than the authority of scholars - and that regenerates. They hate it like Cain hated Abel and like the Devil hates Jesus Christ and His elect.

Disgusting

2011-07-17T14:30:00.000-07:00

Some Christian forums on the internet are perfect little microcosms of 'church' in the world today, and of how churchians behave in 'churches.'

The PuritanBoard is about as disgusting a display of modern day churchians you can find.

You would think they'd show some shame and humility regarding all the people who have left their little stench-filled 'church' forum. But no. They have the hatred Cain had for Abel regarding Christians and the word of God.

A new person comes on and writes a little one-line post displaying that he values the King James Version, then one of their shallow little 'pastors' calls him, bluntly, "weird." In the real world this piece of filth 'pastor' would get a real world lesson in how to behave in the world of men, but in a 'church' forum (or physical churchian 'church') these little creeps know they have protection from their father the devil. They know they can *tempt* Christians to harm them knowing it will harm the Christians in doing so.

I hate these people. I hate anybody who self-identifies as a Christian and acts in the way these churchians act. I actually hate them. I want to judge them personally at the final judgment. I want to escort their filthy souls down to hell, drop them off, no words, no gestures, just leave their wicked souls in darkness with no trace of their wicked, filthy existence to remain in the memory of God's elect.

When you mock and attack the Received Text the world *loves* you.

When you defend the Received Text the world *hates* you.

May the rest of your weak, shallow, obsequious members see the light and find the strength to leave your wicked, man-fearing, stench-filled environment, PuritanBoard.

Message in a bottle to the atheists of the future (current atheists seem to be already digested food for the devil)

2011-07-14T01:37:00.001-07:00

Only God can make you a Christian; but your brain (your reason) can make you not be an atheist.

Brokenness

2011-07-08T16:58:00.000-07:00

I was listening to a James White internet podcast, and in an aside he mentioned that at an event some guys came up to him after he finished talking and told him he didn't seem to demonstrate 'brokenness.'

Pretty direct to say that to someone, but that aside, it is something I harp on regarding him and others like him, but I've never used that evocative word 'brokenness.' I usually use shallow, asleep, giggly, ha... (Here's how you'll know when James White begins to experience some true brokenness of spirit: he'll accept the Received Text. He'll recognize the word of God as something that is above him, and as something that he needs more than it needs him.)

Once I kept seeing a woman asking for money at a certain street corner, so one day I parked and walked up to her to give her ten dollars (she had a lot of people giving her money). She had a graceful, slim body, and shocked me when I saw her up close as having no teeth (probably meth). But in the quick exchange of money and words I got the quick impression that she was just as vain and shallow as any woman her age. Her condition, her state, hadn't 'broken' her in the way that the Bible speaks of. Psa 51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

Maybe she was putting up a front, but that too is exposing the lack of development that a truly broken spirit evinces.

It's a good word to use to describe that difficult-to-describe boundary between the shallow, vain world and separation unto the Kingdom of God.