Christians, over the generations, have had various passages of Scripture to wrestle with to understand the mind and intent of God. Understanding the mind of God through the writing of Apostle Paul at Romans 11:26 has been one such passage.
Maurice Roberts, Editor of the Banner of Truth Trust, wrote an essay in Issue 304 of Banner of Truth Journal, January 1989, titled "The Mystery Concerning Israel". In his essay, Roberts said:
There are three principles of interpretation which need to be applied to Romans 11:26, as to any other hard passage of Scripture:
(1) terms are to be taken in their plain and obvious sense unless there is good reason to believe the plain sense to be inappropriate;
(2) the immediate context in which words are found will normally determine the sense in which they are used;
(3) every particular passage is to be compared with similar passages of Scripture. The rule of comparing Scripture with Scripture is one of the most fundamental safeguards we have when searching for the meaning of hard passages.
Roberts ultimately concludes that the Romans 11:26 passage indicated a future time when Jews 'come in'[my term]. His first of four concluding points warrants mention here:
First, we may be compelled to break the mould of our conception of the dealings of God with mankind. We all tend habitually to fall into a two-fold conception of the world's history: Old Testament and New Testament. This is natural enough because that is the form in which God has given his Word to us. But it appears from Paul's manner of arguing in Romans 11 that God in fact is purposing to bless the world by what may be termed a three-fold progression: first Jews, then Gentiles, then both together. Not till the Spirit is poured out on Israel in the future will the high-water mark of God's purposes be reached in his gracious dealings with fallen mankind.
Writers on this site have noted advocates of Theistic Evolution in the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney also advocate something of a replacement theology whereby the Israel of promise post Resurrection is Christians of Pentecost and beyond.
Theistic Evolutionists thereby demonstrate their failure to apply a formula for interpreting Scripture tried and proven for understanding the mind of God. Further, it exposes how they have fallen into the pit of ignorance which has brought them to their parlous synchretism of the world and God and resultant Cosmogony.
If Moore Theological College had been able to instruct them in the importance of applying all three principles of application to Scripture, as identified by Maurice Roberts and many before him, the Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney would not be in the state of declension currently experienced.
Sam Drucker
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
News Flash: Peter Jensen resigns his holy orders and becomes a Hindu
It had been the move many observers of this archbishopric had long been expecting. Having had problems knowing how to fit his view of origins with the biblical Christian data, Peter Jensen threw in the towel and began the debate with a mantra to Kali and Shiva. Of course this took the atheists by surprise but nevertheless they understood the man's stand as an apologetic for a schizophrenic god or gods of the far east and not the Christian orthodoxy handed down to us through the ages by Christ the Creator, the disciples and the early Church fathers.
In this week's debate Jensen, clearly demonstrating he's been “cheated through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ”, anaemically boasted that “it is not with evolution as science that I have a problem; it is with evolution as an idolatrous explanation of all things; it confuses mechanism with agency; science with theology.”
The atheist team perspicaciously responded to Pundit Jensen's calumny against the Creator by pointing out, “As we survey all the world's horrible circumstances, the endlessly varied kinds of excruciating pain, the deep suffering and sheer misery, inflicted on so many human beings and other vulnerable living things, it is not believable that a God of Love would have remotely adequate reasons to permit it all. And it's no use responding to such questions with talk of free will. If free will means anything, it means being able to act in accordance with your own nature and values. God is supposed to have free will, and yet we are assured by theologians that God will never act malevolently because it is not in his nature to do so. God will always freely choose to do good. Well, why wouldn't God create other beings with benevolent natures who will also freely choose to do good? Heaven is supposed to be like that, so why isn't Earth? And anyway, only a relatively small amount of the suffering there has been in the world over hundreds of millions of years could possibly have anything to do with the free choices of human beings. Why has an all-powerful, all-knowing God of Love brought about the world's current life forms through the process of biological evolution, which has, as God could have foreseen, led to untold misery in the animal world? Why would God choose this as the process to bring about beings like us? Biologists tell us that the evolutionary process inevitably produces design flaws - often painful or debilitating for the creatures concerned. These are present everywhere in the natural world, and in fact in the human genome itself. These flaws are just part of the evidence that life on Earth has diversified over time through the blind process of evolution, rather than being the product of a guiding intelligence. So why would an all-powerful, all-knowing God of Love choose a process that foreseeably produces so many atrocious outcomes for the creatures involved? Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing God of Love choose the cruel, brutal operation of evolution, in which species supersede each other? You can't reconcile the process of evolution with the existence of such a god.”
Well done, atheists! We salute you!
Jensen, you're an apostate knucklehead!
In this week's debate Jensen, clearly demonstrating he's been “cheated through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ”, anaemically boasted that “it is not with evolution as science that I have a problem; it is with evolution as an idolatrous explanation of all things; it confuses mechanism with agency; science with theology.”
The atheist team perspicaciously responded to Pundit Jensen's calumny against the Creator by pointing out, “As we survey all the world's horrible circumstances, the endlessly varied kinds of excruciating pain, the deep suffering and sheer misery, inflicted on so many human beings and other vulnerable living things, it is not believable that a God of Love would have remotely adequate reasons to permit it all. And it's no use responding to such questions with talk of free will. If free will means anything, it means being able to act in accordance with your own nature and values. God is supposed to have free will, and yet we are assured by theologians that God will never act malevolently because it is not in his nature to do so. God will always freely choose to do good. Well, why wouldn't God create other beings with benevolent natures who will also freely choose to do good? Heaven is supposed to be like that, so why isn't Earth? And anyway, only a relatively small amount of the suffering there has been in the world over hundreds of millions of years could possibly have anything to do with the free choices of human beings. Why has an all-powerful, all-knowing God of Love brought about the world's current life forms through the process of biological evolution, which has, as God could have foreseen, led to untold misery in the animal world? Why would God choose this as the process to bring about beings like us? Biologists tell us that the evolutionary process inevitably produces design flaws - often painful or debilitating for the creatures concerned. These are present everywhere in the natural world, and in fact in the human genome itself. These flaws are just part of the evidence that life on Earth has diversified over time through the blind process of evolution, rather than being the product of a guiding intelligence. So why would an all-powerful, all-knowing God of Love choose a process that foreseeably produces so many atrocious outcomes for the creatures involved? Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing God of Love choose the cruel, brutal operation of evolution, in which species supersede each other? You can't reconcile the process of evolution with the existence of such a god.”
Well done, atheists! We salute you!
Jensen, you're an apostate knucklehead!
Leupold Genesis part 64 verse 31
31. And God saw all that He had made and behold it was very good. Then came evening, then came morning--the sixth day.
The writer says with emphasis that no imperfection inhered in the work God had wrought up till this point: For after all preceding statements to the effect that individual works were good comes this stronger statement to the effect that it was "very good," making a total of seven times that the word is used--seven being the mark of divine operation. The thought that God might be the author of evil and imperfection must be guarded against most strenuously (Strack). The "behold" moves the expression "very good" prominently into the foreground (K. S. 341V). Kol before 'asher lies on the borderline between partitive genitive and appositional genitive (K. S. 337 h). "The Sixth" has the article with the numeral for the first time (G. K. 126 w), meaning: "the sixth day,'" that last memorable creative day of God.
The next three verses had best be taken as the conclusion of the summary creation account of the first chapter, because the record of this account cannot be complete till all of the seven days have passed in review. More appropriate would have been the chapter division at 2:4.
The writer says with emphasis that no imperfection inhered in the work God had wrought up till this point: For after all preceding statements to the effect that individual works were good comes this stronger statement to the effect that it was "very good," making a total of seven times that the word is used--seven being the mark of divine operation. The thought that God might be the author of evil and imperfection must be guarded against most strenuously (Strack). The "behold" moves the expression "very good" prominently into the foreground (K. S. 341V). Kol before 'asher lies on the borderline between partitive genitive and appositional genitive (K. S. 337 h). "The Sixth" has the article with the numeral for the first time (G. K. 126 w), meaning: "the sixth day,'" that last memorable creative day of God.
The next three verses had best be taken as the conclusion of the summary creation account of the first chapter, because the record of this account cannot be complete till all of the seven days have passed in review. More appropriate would have been the chapter division at 2:4.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
FEEDING SHEEP OR AMUSING GOATS
The Episcopalian Diocese of Sydney, having largely turned its back on the Word of God in Genesis 1, wrestles with how to reach the lost. To put it plainly, the Connect 09 strategy was not a blessed event, bringing only a patchy and mediocre (at best) result. Such as you would expect when the work is of man. Ought the Diocese expect better when it is the Lord's work to build His Church and is he likely to use blunt instruments?
The situation gets no better with the front page pronouncement in the Sept 2011 edition of Southern Cross (the Diocesan newspaper) that music is a vehicle for the Gospel. I wonder what someone like C. H. Spurgeon would say about this. Oh, goodness me, look here, some two centuries ago he had this to say:
An evil is in the professed camp of the Lord, so gross in its impudence, that the most short-sighted can hardly fail to notice it. During the past few years it has developed at an abnormal rate, even for evil. It has worked like leaven until the whole lump ferments. The devil has seldom done a cleverer thing than hinting to the Church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them. From speaking out as the Puritans did, the Church has gradually toned down her testimony, then winked at and excused the frivolities of the day. Then she tolerated them in her borders. Now she has adopted them under the plea of reaching the masses.
My first contention is that providing amusement for the people is nowhere spoken of in the Scriptures as a function of the Church. If it is a Christian work why did not Christ speak of it? 'Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.' That is clear enough. So it would have been if he had added, 'and provide amusement for those who do not relish the gospel.' No such words, however, are to be found. It did not seem to occur to him. Then again, 'He gave some apostles, some prophets, some pastors and teachers, for the work of the ministry.' Where do entertainers come in? The Holy Spirit is silent concerning them. Were the prophets persecuted because they amused the people or because they refused? The concert has no martyr roll.
Again, providing amusement is in direct antagonism to the teaching and life of Christ and all His apostles. What was the attitude of the Church to the world? 'Ye are the salt,' not the sugar candy - something the world will spit out, not swallow. Short and sharp was the utterance. "Let the dead bury their dead.' He was in awful earnestness!
Had Christ introduced more of the bright and pleasant elements into his mission, he would have been more popular when they went back, because of the searching nature of his teaching. I do not hear him say. 'Run after these people, Peter, and tell them we will have a different style of service tomorrow, something short and attractive with little preaching. We will have a pleasant evening for the people. Tell them they will be sure to enjoy it. Be quick, Peter, we must get the people somehow!' Jesus pitied sinners, sighed and wept over them, but never sought to amuse them. In vain will the Epistles be searched to find any trace of the gospel of amusement. Their message is, 'Come out, keep out, keep clean out!' Anything approaching fooling is conspicuous by its absence. They had boundless confidence in the gospel and employed no other weapon. After Peter and John were locked up for preaching, the Church had a prayer meeting, but they did not pray, 'Lord grant unto thy servants that by a wise and discriminating use of innocent recreation we may show these people how happy we are.' If they ceased not for preaching Christ, they had not time for arranging entertainments. Scattered by persecution, they went everywhere preaching the gospel. They 'turned the world upside down'. That is the only difference! Lord, clear the Church of all the rot and rubbish the devil has imposed on her and bring us back to apostolic methods.
Lastly, the mission of amusement fails to effect the end desired. It works havoc among young converts. Let the careless and scoffers, who thank God because the Church met them half-way, speak and testify. Let the heavy laden who found peace through the concert not keep silent! Let the drunkard to whom the dramatic entertainment had been God's link in the chain of their conversion, stand up! There are none to answer. The mission of amusement produces no converts. The need of
the hour for today's ministry is believing scholarship joined with earnest spirituality, the one springing from the other as fruit from the root. The need is biblical doctrine, so understood and felt, that it sets men on fire.
In addition to an unhealthy elevation of music you can add drama as an unhelpful introduction to the church.
Sam Drucker
The situation gets no better with the front page pronouncement in the Sept 2011 edition of Southern Cross (the Diocesan newspaper) that music is a vehicle for the Gospel. I wonder what someone like C. H. Spurgeon would say about this. Oh, goodness me, look here, some two centuries ago he had this to say:
An evil is in the professed camp of the Lord, so gross in its impudence, that the most short-sighted can hardly fail to notice it. During the past few years it has developed at an abnormal rate, even for evil. It has worked like leaven until the whole lump ferments. The devil has seldom done a cleverer thing than hinting to the Church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them. From speaking out as the Puritans did, the Church has gradually toned down her testimony, then winked at and excused the frivolities of the day. Then she tolerated them in her borders. Now she has adopted them under the plea of reaching the masses.
My first contention is that providing amusement for the people is nowhere spoken of in the Scriptures as a function of the Church. If it is a Christian work why did not Christ speak of it? 'Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.' That is clear enough. So it would have been if he had added, 'and provide amusement for those who do not relish the gospel.' No such words, however, are to be found. It did not seem to occur to him. Then again, 'He gave some apostles, some prophets, some pastors and teachers, for the work of the ministry.' Where do entertainers come in? The Holy Spirit is silent concerning them. Were the prophets persecuted because they amused the people or because they refused? The concert has no martyr roll.
Again, providing amusement is in direct antagonism to the teaching and life of Christ and all His apostles. What was the attitude of the Church to the world? 'Ye are the salt,' not the sugar candy - something the world will spit out, not swallow. Short and sharp was the utterance. "Let the dead bury their dead.' He was in awful earnestness!
Had Christ introduced more of the bright and pleasant elements into his mission, he would have been more popular when they went back, because of the searching nature of his teaching. I do not hear him say. 'Run after these people, Peter, and tell them we will have a different style of service tomorrow, something short and attractive with little preaching. We will have a pleasant evening for the people. Tell them they will be sure to enjoy it. Be quick, Peter, we must get the people somehow!' Jesus pitied sinners, sighed and wept over them, but never sought to amuse them. In vain will the Epistles be searched to find any trace of the gospel of amusement. Their message is, 'Come out, keep out, keep clean out!' Anything approaching fooling is conspicuous by its absence. They had boundless confidence in the gospel and employed no other weapon. After Peter and John were locked up for preaching, the Church had a prayer meeting, but they did not pray, 'Lord grant unto thy servants that by a wise and discriminating use of innocent recreation we may show these people how happy we are.' If they ceased not for preaching Christ, they had not time for arranging entertainments. Scattered by persecution, they went everywhere preaching the gospel. They 'turned the world upside down'. That is the only difference! Lord, clear the Church of all the rot and rubbish the devil has imposed on her and bring us back to apostolic methods.
Lastly, the mission of amusement fails to effect the end desired. It works havoc among young converts. Let the careless and scoffers, who thank God because the Church met them half-way, speak and testify. Let the heavy laden who found peace through the concert not keep silent! Let the drunkard to whom the dramatic entertainment had been God's link in the chain of their conversion, stand up! There are none to answer. The mission of amusement produces no converts. The need of
the hour for today's ministry is believing scholarship joined with earnest spirituality, the one springing from the other as fruit from the root. The need is biblical doctrine, so understood and felt, that it sets men on fire.
In addition to an unhealthy elevation of music you can add drama as an unhelpful introduction to the church.
Sam Drucker
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Angel of Light (Part 2)
This is the second and concluding reproduction of the Maurice Roberts essay in the December 1988 edition of the Banner of Truth journal.
2. CONFUSING US WITH 'LOOK ALIKE' DOCTRINES
We do not always at first sight detect the difference between the real doctrine and its imitation any more than we do between real gold and cheap alloy which looks the same. The nineteenth-century apostasy took place under the noses of ten thousand theologians, who confused scholarship with infidelity. Professing themselves to be pioneers of a deeper knowledge of the gospel, they all but destroyed the gospel. The key of Higher Criticism did not unlock the door of the treasure-house but effectively shut, bolted and barred it to men
This method of blinding us to truth by 'look-alike' substitutes is an age-old invention of Satan and deserves to be called the 'joker' in his pack. What mirth hell has had with it!
In the fourth century, the true doctrine of Christ's person differed from the false by no more than one iota. He is 'homoousios' (of one essence with) the Father, not merely homoiousios (of similar essence), as the Arians of the day asserted. These 'look-alikes' of Satan have cropped up over and over again in first one and then another department of church doctrine: faith, the Lord's Supper, the ministry, authority, the treatment due to 'heretics'. Church and State, theories of Atonement.
The needle of truth needs only to be pushed a little to this side or to that and it becomes generically different. Justification pushed to one side becomes Antinomianism; pushed to the other, it is legalism. Faith, when overdone, is fancy or fanaticism; when immature, it is bare notion or bald supposition. The Reformed view of the Lord's Supper lies in the mean between the Romish and the Zwinglian, so-called.
Long and hard has hell laboured to rob the church of blessing by such substitutions! Satan lays his cuckoo's egg in the nest and waits to see how his bastard doctrine confounds God's people. How else can we account for the way Calvinism became Hyper-Calvinism so quickly in some circles? Or true Ecumenism the false ecumenism of the World Council of Churches?
Our fathers enjoyed true revivals. But they did not all recognise that the Revivalism of some American theologians is a serious error. 'Revival' is something that man 'can do', said C. G. Finney, in his lectures entitled Revivals of Religion. It is 'the right use of the appropriate means'. Between this theory which we call 'Revivalism' and true revival there lies a world of difference. Much that claims to be a resurgence of the supernatural in the modern church is really nothing but Mediaeval superstition under a new disguise.
3. TURNING DOCTRINES INTO SLOGANS
The strength of churches is their orthodoxy coupled with their spirituality. Orthodoxy will not save churches from decline if spirituality is lost. 'Hold on to your orthodoxy' is advice which Satan will find no fault with provided we can be induced to grow steadily weaker in the love of our orthodoxy.
There are groups which venerate 'the Reformation', 'the Glorious Revolution' and 'the Westminster Confession' and yet whose adherents are virtual strangers to heart-religion, repentance and a holy life.
Every great movement tends to expire with some orthodox breath upon its lips. The Mediaeval church revered Augustine, while it systematically denied Augustine's creed. Methodism expired with the names of its great founders still nominally cherished and yet their high view of Scripture abandoned. The term 'Disruption' still held for Scottish ears a ring of glory long after the central theology of the Disruption forefathers had been watered down into Liberalism.
The same is fast becoming true of the phrase 'the new birth'. As doctrine, the devil detests it; as slogan, it is as harmless to his kingdom as a dead lion.
The trouble is that we are generally two or three generations into a state of declension before we wake up to the fact that we have taken our orthodoxy for granted. We did not see that we had slidden imperceptibly into greater and greater nominalism. Once let our creed be taken with a pinch of salt and we can be as orthodox as we like. Satan will have won the contest with us. The rising generation of young Christians will then not deny the great doctrines of the faith. They will pay lip-service to them—and wink with amusement at the stricter way of life which once went with them.
Truth and spirituality wear out as good carpets do. The pattern is still seen when the pile is gone. Provided there is still some pattern visible we flatter ourselves that the carpet is not worn out. Thus truth is trodden by the foot of complacency until it is threadbare. Truth is reduced to a shadow of its former self It has become a slogan. What began as a living force has degenerated into a dead form.
4. ALTERING THE TRUE NAMES OF THINGS
A common piece of duplicity found in the armoury of the angel of light is the alteration of names. This is a trick of Satan's which much resembles the second point made above but which is worthy of distinct and separate treatment. A man will drink paraquat for lemonade if the label is suitably changed and he will pay the penalty for his mistake. Such is man's gullibility, that he commonly allows himself to be deceived by Satan through the switching of ethical and spiritual labels.
No words are more respectable than the famous church words 'Orthodox' and 'Catholic', for example. Orthodoxy refers to soundness in doctrine. Catholicity to our relationship with all the members of Christ upon earth. Could two more wholesome words possibly be found to describe true Christians everywhere and in all ages? But the angel of light early stamped them with connotations all their own. They first became party-words and then developed meanings the very reverse of their original sense. Historically the 'Orthodox' have sadly embraced much heterodoxy and the term 'Catholicism' has all too often been synonymous with the most narrow bigotry.
More recently, the term 'Neo-Orthodox' has been minted to describe a certain type of attitude to the Bible. But it is by no means the old orthodoxy of the Apostles and Reformers. The poison is there as before. All that has changed is the label.
Infidelity never presents itself as such. It comes to mankind packaged as 'Science'. Sodomy is not now to be thought of as the old sin which the Lord punished with fire and brimstone as a warning ever after to mankind. It is something quite harmless and 'gay'. Ministers and church people who commit it are 'gay Christians'. They are nice, harmless persons, presumably, who will go to heaven the same as others, and to whom the New Testament warnings have no relevance. O! poor, blind humanity whom Satan so easily deceives by no more clever trick than a change of label! We cannot too often be reminded that God is not mocked although man may be. 'Science', if it contradicts Scripture, is not science but a species of blasphemy. Human behaviour, if it conforms to forbidden patterns, is not excusable because 'gay', any more than that of the men of Gomorrah. And for a modern preacher to arrogate to himself the title of 'Apostle' is not to wield apostolic power but merely to rob words of their meaning and to confuse the church of God.
There is a stern judgment threatened by the Almighty against all those who change the labels and thereby spread confusion among God's people: 'Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!' [Isa. 5:20]. It is our wisdom to call things by their proper names, in religion and in ethics, as in all else.
Lovers of Christ's gospel everywhere must be aware of the mists of false charity which envelop them. Men hold out to us the right hand of fellowship. But the price is always the compromise of some truth or Other. The angel of light invites good men to swallow first one hoof and then another, in the hope they will eventually swallow the entire camel. Truth is lost by littles if men are not careful. God has drawn the lines of true religion m the holy Scriptures. We are not free to rub out those lines and redraw them. Our consciences are captive.
Written more than twenty years ago, Roberts' article bears reproduction as a warning to the Church to be alert to the working of the Angel of Light. Theistic Evolutionists, for one, should abandon the one who has led them into compromising the Word of God with the prevailing world view on Origins.
Sam Drucker
2. CONFUSING US WITH 'LOOK ALIKE' DOCTRINES
We do not always at first sight detect the difference between the real doctrine and its imitation any more than we do between real gold and cheap alloy which looks the same. The nineteenth-century apostasy took place under the noses of ten thousand theologians, who confused scholarship with infidelity. Professing themselves to be pioneers of a deeper knowledge of the gospel, they all but destroyed the gospel. The key of Higher Criticism did not unlock the door of the treasure-house but effectively shut, bolted and barred it to men
This method of blinding us to truth by 'look-alike' substitutes is an age-old invention of Satan and deserves to be called the 'joker' in his pack. What mirth hell has had with it!
In the fourth century, the true doctrine of Christ's person differed from the false by no more than one iota. He is 'homoousios' (of one essence with) the Father, not merely homoiousios (of similar essence), as the Arians of the day asserted. These 'look-alikes' of Satan have cropped up over and over again in first one and then another department of church doctrine: faith, the Lord's Supper, the ministry, authority, the treatment due to 'heretics'. Church and State, theories of Atonement.
The needle of truth needs only to be pushed a little to this side or to that and it becomes generically different. Justification pushed to one side becomes Antinomianism; pushed to the other, it is legalism. Faith, when overdone, is fancy or fanaticism; when immature, it is bare notion or bald supposition. The Reformed view of the Lord's Supper lies in the mean between the Romish and the Zwinglian, so-called.
Long and hard has hell laboured to rob the church of blessing by such substitutions! Satan lays his cuckoo's egg in the nest and waits to see how his bastard doctrine confounds God's people. How else can we account for the way Calvinism became Hyper-Calvinism so quickly in some circles? Or true Ecumenism the false ecumenism of the World Council of Churches?
Our fathers enjoyed true revivals. But they did not all recognise that the Revivalism of some American theologians is a serious error. 'Revival' is something that man 'can do', said C. G. Finney, in his lectures entitled Revivals of Religion. It is 'the right use of the appropriate means'. Between this theory which we call 'Revivalism' and true revival there lies a world of difference. Much that claims to be a resurgence of the supernatural in the modern church is really nothing but Mediaeval superstition under a new disguise.
3. TURNING DOCTRINES INTO SLOGANS
The strength of churches is their orthodoxy coupled with their spirituality. Orthodoxy will not save churches from decline if spirituality is lost. 'Hold on to your orthodoxy' is advice which Satan will find no fault with provided we can be induced to grow steadily weaker in the love of our orthodoxy.
There are groups which venerate 'the Reformation', 'the Glorious Revolution' and 'the Westminster Confession' and yet whose adherents are virtual strangers to heart-religion, repentance and a holy life.
Every great movement tends to expire with some orthodox breath upon its lips. The Mediaeval church revered Augustine, while it systematically denied Augustine's creed. Methodism expired with the names of its great founders still nominally cherished and yet their high view of Scripture abandoned. The term 'Disruption' still held for Scottish ears a ring of glory long after the central theology of the Disruption forefathers had been watered down into Liberalism.
The same is fast becoming true of the phrase 'the new birth'. As doctrine, the devil detests it; as slogan, it is as harmless to his kingdom as a dead lion.
The trouble is that we are generally two or three generations into a state of declension before we wake up to the fact that we have taken our orthodoxy for granted. We did not see that we had slidden imperceptibly into greater and greater nominalism. Once let our creed be taken with a pinch of salt and we can be as orthodox as we like. Satan will have won the contest with us. The rising generation of young Christians will then not deny the great doctrines of the faith. They will pay lip-service to them—and wink with amusement at the stricter way of life which once went with them.
Truth and spirituality wear out as good carpets do. The pattern is still seen when the pile is gone. Provided there is still some pattern visible we flatter ourselves that the carpet is not worn out. Thus truth is trodden by the foot of complacency until it is threadbare. Truth is reduced to a shadow of its former self It has become a slogan. What began as a living force has degenerated into a dead form.
4. ALTERING THE TRUE NAMES OF THINGS
A common piece of duplicity found in the armoury of the angel of light is the alteration of names. This is a trick of Satan's which much resembles the second point made above but which is worthy of distinct and separate treatment. A man will drink paraquat for lemonade if the label is suitably changed and he will pay the penalty for his mistake. Such is man's gullibility, that he commonly allows himself to be deceived by Satan through the switching of ethical and spiritual labels.
No words are more respectable than the famous church words 'Orthodox' and 'Catholic', for example. Orthodoxy refers to soundness in doctrine. Catholicity to our relationship with all the members of Christ upon earth. Could two more wholesome words possibly be found to describe true Christians everywhere and in all ages? But the angel of light early stamped them with connotations all their own. They first became party-words and then developed meanings the very reverse of their original sense. Historically the 'Orthodox' have sadly embraced much heterodoxy and the term 'Catholicism' has all too often been synonymous with the most narrow bigotry.
More recently, the term 'Neo-Orthodox' has been minted to describe a certain type of attitude to the Bible. But it is by no means the old orthodoxy of the Apostles and Reformers. The poison is there as before. All that has changed is the label.
Infidelity never presents itself as such. It comes to mankind packaged as 'Science'. Sodomy is not now to be thought of as the old sin which the Lord punished with fire and brimstone as a warning ever after to mankind. It is something quite harmless and 'gay'. Ministers and church people who commit it are 'gay Christians'. They are nice, harmless persons, presumably, who will go to heaven the same as others, and to whom the New Testament warnings have no relevance. O! poor, blind humanity whom Satan so easily deceives by no more clever trick than a change of label! We cannot too often be reminded that God is not mocked although man may be. 'Science', if it contradicts Scripture, is not science but a species of blasphemy. Human behaviour, if it conforms to forbidden patterns, is not excusable because 'gay', any more than that of the men of Gomorrah. And for a modern preacher to arrogate to himself the title of 'Apostle' is not to wield apostolic power but merely to rob words of their meaning and to confuse the church of God.
There is a stern judgment threatened by the Almighty against all those who change the labels and thereby spread confusion among God's people: 'Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!' [Isa. 5:20]. It is our wisdom to call things by their proper names, in religion and in ethics, as in all else.
Lovers of Christ's gospel everywhere must be aware of the mists of false charity which envelop them. Men hold out to us the right hand of fellowship. But the price is always the compromise of some truth or Other. The angel of light invites good men to swallow first one hoof and then another, in the hope they will eventually swallow the entire camel. Truth is lost by littles if men are not careful. God has drawn the lines of true religion m the holy Scriptures. We are not free to rub out those lines and redraw them. Our consciences are captive.
Written more than twenty years ago, Roberts' article bears reproduction as a warning to the Church to be alert to the working of the Angel of Light. Theistic Evolutionists, for one, should abandon the one who has led them into compromising the Word of God with the prevailing world view on Origins.
Sam Drucker
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Angel of Light (Part 1)
The essays of Maurice Roberts, former Editor of the Banner of Truth Journal, are always helpful reading. His essay on The Angel of Light in the December 1988 Journal number 303 is worth repeating here in two parts because we will all encounter the Angel of Light or those unwittingly acting for him:
The Christian who is to get through this life unscathed must learn to fight Satan not only as an angel of darkness but also as an angel of light. Even the world has the wisdom to see that 'the devil you know is better than the devil you do not know'. The point is that we do not recognise an unknown enemy so easily and an enemy in the guise of a friend is obviously the worst combination imaginable. The terrorist who approaches us dressed as a policeman is the most deadly foe of all
because he has all the advantages of surprise and deceit. So is the devil to God's people when he poses as 'an angel of light' [2 Cor. 11:14] The velvet glove of hell's diplomacy succeeds where the mailed fist of persecution fails. We are accustomed to meeting Satan as a devil but not as an angel and we are trained to expect him wearing the mantle of darkness but not the garment of light.
It goes without saying that the devil's motive and intention is always precisely the same. He aims to drag God's Name down into the dust. Satan cares comparatively little for the creature. It is the Creator's declarative glory he intends to destroy. In striking at the church, he is aiming his blow at God. But because God is eternally beyond his reach and because Christ, since his exaltation, is beyond the power of temptation Satan directs his fury against the church. The church is almost all that is left to Satan to attack. It is, so to speak, the Achilles' heel of Christ, the only place where Christ is vulnerable. The world lies already in his power [1 John 5:19], So not a day nor a part of a day elapses but all hell schemes fresh attacks upon the kingdom of grace. Every move and counter-move of the devil is made with the end in view of mining God's honour by leading His people into sin.
Sin is seldom, if ever, original. The newest vices of our modern world appear to have all had their counterpart in the ancient world, and, no doubt, were practiced before the Flood. Similarly, the devil's temptations have no need to be original because the old, well-tried snares of the past are usually successful enough in each succeeding generation.
Our particular concern here is not with Satan's fiery darts' [Eph. 6:16] so much as with those subtler methods which he employs as an 'angel of light'. The twentieth-century western church is not so much under attack from Satan's bloodthirsty and brutal attacks as from his 'cunning craftiness' [Eph. 4:14]. It is all the more necessary that we should become a little more familiar with some of the tricks which belong to his 'velvet-glove' diplomacy.
1. DRIVING US TO AN EXTREME
This is a marvellously successful mode of temptation, remarkable alike for its simplicity and effectiveness. The perfection of both doctrine and practice always lies in the mean between two extremes. Christ, so to speak, is always between two thieves, one on the right and the other on the left.
It is the devil's task, therefore, to drive us to one extreme or the other. This he does, not by force of arms, but by the suggestion of serving God more consistently. The movement which extolled virginity and celibacy in the early church did so with the laudable motive of consecrating the whole of life to God's work. Marriage was degraded as a consequence and, by the Middle Ages, the monastic life was marked by the vices which result from sexual repression. The devil foresaw it. Earnest churchmen like Jerome did not.
Generally speaking, Satan will lead us along the path of temperamental inclination so that we end up by making vices out of our virtues. The man (and more especially the minister) who excels in culture and courtesy ends up in compromise. The independent thinker becomes autocratic and ends up a tyrant. The efficient congregation becomes so smooth-running that it resembles a machine rather than a church for needy sinners. What begins as virtue ends up as vice. 'Pray be more like your virtues,' says the angel of light, till extremes are reached and we undo the good we intended to do. To turn the paraffin lamp up too high gives, not more light, but more smoke. It is a common device of our adversary. The history of the church of Christ illustrates his successes in both theory and practice.
Final instalment in a few days.
Sam Drucker
The Christian who is to get through this life unscathed must learn to fight Satan not only as an angel of darkness but also as an angel of light. Even the world has the wisdom to see that 'the devil you know is better than the devil you do not know'. The point is that we do not recognise an unknown enemy so easily and an enemy in the guise of a friend is obviously the worst combination imaginable. The terrorist who approaches us dressed as a policeman is the most deadly foe of all
because he has all the advantages of surprise and deceit. So is the devil to God's people when he poses as 'an angel of light' [2 Cor. 11:14] The velvet glove of hell's diplomacy succeeds where the mailed fist of persecution fails. We are accustomed to meeting Satan as a devil but not as an angel and we are trained to expect him wearing the mantle of darkness but not the garment of light.
It goes without saying that the devil's motive and intention is always precisely the same. He aims to drag God's Name down into the dust. Satan cares comparatively little for the creature. It is the Creator's declarative glory he intends to destroy. In striking at the church, he is aiming his blow at God. But because God is eternally beyond his reach and because Christ, since his exaltation, is beyond the power of temptation Satan directs his fury against the church. The church is almost all that is left to Satan to attack. It is, so to speak, the Achilles' heel of Christ, the only place where Christ is vulnerable. The world lies already in his power [1 John 5:19], So not a day nor a part of a day elapses but all hell schemes fresh attacks upon the kingdom of grace. Every move and counter-move of the devil is made with the end in view of mining God's honour by leading His people into sin.
Sin is seldom, if ever, original. The newest vices of our modern world appear to have all had their counterpart in the ancient world, and, no doubt, were practiced before the Flood. Similarly, the devil's temptations have no need to be original because the old, well-tried snares of the past are usually successful enough in each succeeding generation.
Our particular concern here is not with Satan's fiery darts' [Eph. 6:16] so much as with those subtler methods which he employs as an 'angel of light'. The twentieth-century western church is not so much under attack from Satan's bloodthirsty and brutal attacks as from his 'cunning craftiness' [Eph. 4:14]. It is all the more necessary that we should become a little more familiar with some of the tricks which belong to his 'velvet-glove' diplomacy.
1. DRIVING US TO AN EXTREME
This is a marvellously successful mode of temptation, remarkable alike for its simplicity and effectiveness. The perfection of both doctrine and practice always lies in the mean between two extremes. Christ, so to speak, is always between two thieves, one on the right and the other on the left.
It is the devil's task, therefore, to drive us to one extreme or the other. This he does, not by force of arms, but by the suggestion of serving God more consistently. The movement which extolled virginity and celibacy in the early church did so with the laudable motive of consecrating the whole of life to God's work. Marriage was degraded as a consequence and, by the Middle Ages, the monastic life was marked by the vices which result from sexual repression. The devil foresaw it. Earnest churchmen like Jerome did not.
Generally speaking, Satan will lead us along the path of temperamental inclination so that we end up by making vices out of our virtues. The man (and more especially the minister) who excels in culture and courtesy ends up in compromise. The independent thinker becomes autocratic and ends up a tyrant. The efficient congregation becomes so smooth-running that it resembles a machine rather than a church for needy sinners. What begins as virtue ends up as vice. 'Pray be more like your virtues,' says the angel of light, till extremes are reached and we undo the good we intended to do. To turn the paraffin lamp up too high gives, not more light, but more smoke. It is a common device of our adversary. The history of the church of Christ illustrates his successes in both theory and practice.
Final instalment in a few days.
Sam Drucker
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Atheists and Their 'Bedfellows'.
Periodically, a Biblical Creationist is accused by Atheists of being a 'Flat Earther' i.e. someone who's science is so lacking that they are capable of believing the earth is flat.
Such a 'slag' has returned to bite Atheists on the backside via the following article
It seems Atheists are those who have the strange 'bedfellows' because the leader of the Flat Earth Society believes, like Atheists, in Evolution!
Sam Drucker
Such a 'slag' has returned to bite Atheists on the backside via the following article
It seems Atheists are those who have the strange 'bedfellows' because the leader of the Flat Earth Society believes, like Atheists, in Evolution!
Sam Drucker
The World Marches On
Ironic to hear the Archbishop of Sydney and one of his Bishops, Glenn Davies, objecting in the media about the new [Australian] national history curriculum removing reference to BC and AD as historical time markers. It's ironic because both gentlemen have been known to make comments which, at the very least, cloud the issue of the historicity of Genesis 1 Creation account.
By equivocating on the historicity of the Creation account the Church has given ground to the 'world' and that ground has turned out to be a vantage point to make further assaults on the significance of biblical history. Having taken the earlier battle with hardly a whimper from the Church the 'world' is all the more confident of victory in the battleground that is the New Testament.
Sam Drucker
By equivocating on the historicity of the Creation account the Church has given ground to the 'world' and that ground has turned out to be a vantage point to make further assaults on the significance of biblical history. Having taken the earlier battle with hardly a whimper from the Church the 'world' is all the more confident of victory in the battleground that is the New Testament.
Sam Drucker
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Leupold Genesis part 63 verse 30
30. So it will also be observed that the directions that obtain for the other living creatures are not exhaustive. Fish are not mentioned. But, no doubt, this word was merely to inform man in reference to the creatures with which he had the more immediate contact. So all living creatures are summed up in this verse in three classes: wild beasts of the earth, birds, and reptiles--and, summing up still more, comes the closing phrase applicable to all, "in which there is a living soul." The food, however, that by God's ordinance is appointed for all these is described as "all the green herbs." It is taken, therefore, from the second of the three classes of v. 11 and the restrictive modifier preceding yereg, yielding the expression "greenness of herb," which we have rendered "the green herbs." That cannot be identical with everything that comes under the class of "herbs." Meek, therefore, renders quite appropriately "all the green plants." The verb of the main clause of this verse is missing; "I have given" is best supplied from the preceding verse.
In brief, this verse is an indication of the perfect harmony prevailing in the animal world. No beast preyed upon the other. Rapacious and ferocious wild beasts did not yet exist. This verse, then, indicates very briefly for this chapter what is unfolded at length in chapter two, that a paradise-like state prevailed at creation.
Skinner pronounces v. 29.and 30 to be an indication of one of the sources which P worked into his account, because these verses, as he says, "differ significantly in their phraseology from the preceding sections.". The trifling difference of an abbreviated summary is exaggerated into what is said to "differ significantly." The critics need far more substantial arguments than untenable exaggerations. The same author claims that we have in these verses an "enrichment of the creation story by the independent and widespread myth of the Golden Age." Why, pray, cannot the simple unadorned account merely be a narrative of things as they actually transpired? Answer: the critics have decreed that such accounts cannot exist; all such narratives must be patchwork in which a generous measure of myth has been incorporated. But decreeing that it must be as the critics surmise is not proof. We refuse to be intimidated by claims which lack actual substance.
Let the student of the original note in v. 29 an instance where the relative is not separated from its adverbial term belonging to it 'asher-bo (K. S. 58).
In brief, this verse is an indication of the perfect harmony prevailing in the animal world. No beast preyed upon the other. Rapacious and ferocious wild beasts did not yet exist. This verse, then, indicates very briefly for this chapter what is unfolded at length in chapter two, that a paradise-like state prevailed at creation.
Skinner pronounces v. 29.and 30 to be an indication of one of the sources which P worked into his account, because these verses, as he says, "differ significantly in their phraseology from the preceding sections.". The trifling difference of an abbreviated summary is exaggerated into what is said to "differ significantly." The critics need far more substantial arguments than untenable exaggerations. The same author claims that we have in these verses an "enrichment of the creation story by the independent and widespread myth of the Golden Age." Why, pray, cannot the simple unadorned account merely be a narrative of things as they actually transpired? Answer: the critics have decreed that such accounts cannot exist; all such narratives must be patchwork in which a generous measure of myth has been incorporated. But decreeing that it must be as the critics surmise is not proof. We refuse to be intimidated by claims which lack actual substance.
Let the student of the original note in v. 29 an instance where the relative is not separated from its adverbial term belonging to it 'asher-bo (K. S. 58).
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