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Yearly Archives: 2018

The Trip to Europe Continued (Nineteenth Post In Total)

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My wife, two youngest daughters, and I did a Rome walk on June 13, 2018, the late afternoon and evening we arrived in Rome, Italy.  The idea was the heart of Rome walk of travel expert, Rick Steves.  After eating supper, as I reported in our last post, we started at Campo de’ Fiori with the statue of Giordano Bruno, who died here, burnt at the stake.

I would call Camp de’ Fiori a trashy outdoor market.  We were introduced here to street sellers we did not see in Venice.  A big African-Italian man confronted us in a friendly way to tie little woven strings around our wrists as we said, “No, I don’t want one.” He smiled and kept tying the string, engaging in happy, broken English with a hint of violence.  You would want him to stay happy, so you let him keep tying.  He wants money.  I gave him something worth the peacefulness.

The fact that there are regular armed police and soldiers everywhere seems to avoid the worst of the hoi polloi.  Lots of grungy looking people are sitting around all over, and especially all around the statue of Bruno, who Steves says represents the spirit of Campo de’ Fiori.  He died at the hands of Roman Catholicism for bucking the system.  All those bucking the system gather there in happiness to be free thinkers.  I would say its not going well for them.

Steves says that at the spot of the building right to the left behind the statue (in the picture) is where Julius Caesar was killed, the site atop the ancient Theater of Pompey.

Next in the walk is Piazza Navona.  The streets are narrow leading there, something like those in Venice.  What’s amazing about this piazza is the three fountains and then the architecture of the buildings around the square, especially  Sant’Agnese in Agone, the work of the Italian architect, Francesco Borromini.

The Rick Steves walking tour includes an app for your phone that gives a description of the main points along the walk, and we paused at each fountain to listen to his explanations before moving on through the narrow walkways.  Along the route to the next major site is the actual Italian Senate building at the Palazzo Madama.  We stopped there long enough for a picture, but it is a site to behold as one turns the next corner, because there is one of the most astounding buildings in all of Rome, the Roman Pantheon, which was completed in 126AD.  It was built as a temple to Roman gods and it stands right in the middle of the city as one of the best preserved pieces of ancient Rome.  We couldn’t go in that evening — it was already closed — but it was breathtaking from the outside.  We went inside two days later, and I’ll tell you about it then.

Coffee was the most excellent in Italy and especially in Rome.  On the path away from the Pantheon to the next main stop was the La Casa Del Caffè Tazza D’oro.  This coffee shop apparently was the. model for the Starbucks, as the New Yorker explains:

Howard Schultz, who created Starbucks after a revelatory trip to Italy in 1983 convinced him that the Italian coffee cultured could be transplanted to Seattle.

Our last two stops, close together, for the evening, because it was getting late, was the front of the Italian Parliament building at Palazzo Montecitorio.  In front of it is the Obelisk of Montecitorio, which might be the oldest thing in Rome.  The obelisk was brought to Rome in 10BC by Caesar Augustus from a conquest in Egypt, and it dates to close to 600BC.  Then around the corner is another impressive column, the thirty meter high Marcus Aurelius Column,
Colonna di Marco Aurelio.  On the column is a relief that tells the story of Aurelius’s successful Danubian wars.  Once on the top was Aurelius, which was replaced by a statue of the Apostle Paul in 1589 after Christian saturation of Rome.  A lot of pagan Roman sites were Christianized after Roman Catholicism took over.

We caught the bus home and saw the Colosseum at night, which they keep all lit up.  It was spectacular.  We hadn’t seen the Colosseum yet, and it was so amazing that we weren’t even sure it was the Colosseum.  We would visit there the next day.

Evan Roberts & Ecumenical Feminism, Part 19 of 22

The content of this post is now available in the study of:

1.) Evan Roberts

2.) The Welsh Revival of 1904-1905

3.) Jessie Penn-Lewis

on the faithsaves.net website. Please click on the people above to view the study.  On the FaithSaves website the PDF files may be easiest to read.

 

You are also encouraged to learn more about Keswick theology and its errors, as well as the Biblical doctrine of salvation, at the soteriology page at Faithsaves.

There Are Two Sides, You Have To Choose One, Not Straddle Both, And This Has To Do With Everything

The Lord Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:24:

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.

Related to this is something the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 7:22-23:

For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord’s freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ’s servant.  Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men.

Furthermore from Paul comes Romans 6:16:

Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?

From these three passages or verses we get some basic, simple truths for all of life.

To put everything above together, every person has one master or lord, just one, and he is a slave to one or the other.  He cannot love them both.  He loves only one of the two and then hates the other.  If the master is Christ, then He is owner, based on the reality that he bought the person.  The slave obeys His master, whichever one it is.  Obedience will occur one way or the other.  This obedience to the master is yielding to the particular master, whichever one.

A person chooses his master or lord.  If he chooses Jesus as his Lord, this is faith.  He believes in Jesus.  The belief is a belief in reward or goodness (Rom 2:4; Heb 11:6).  If someone doesn’t think he will be better off, he will not choose that master.  For Jesus, it is a matter of faith, based on evidence (Heb 11:1-3).  God’s Word is true, so someone can trust what it says about his present and future.  He turns from the other direction, what would be an idol, to Jesus Christ.

Satan and the world system interacts with someone’s flesh to persuade him to take a different master than Jesus Christ.  The world offers someone things that seem like a lot to a person, feigning competition with God.  Paul calls it dung, whether it be possessions, positions, passions, or popularity (Philip 3:8).  The trade is nothing for everything, which is why Jesus said (Mark 8:36):

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

A person loses everything the world offers.  It is short term only.  Even then it doesn’t satisfy, which is why Solomon said it was all vanity.  It is about volume.  More and more.  Enough is never enough.

The choice is stark and plain.  You go one way or the other.  There is no middle ground.  That is reality.

A different picture is depicted than reality.  The false portrayal, that the god of this world and his world system present, is that both sides can be straddled.  You really don’t have to choose.  Many, if not most, churches participate.  People want the world, because of the short term benefits it offers, and because they don’t want what Jesus might offer in and for the short term, so churches turn the world into a church, so they’ll want the church.  The problem, of course, is that it isn’t exactly the church anymore, but it is a way of straddling the two masters.

In the end, there is still one Master.  It is Jesus.  It’s all true all the way to the end, that Jesus is Master.  Those who reject Him do not get the other way.  The world doesn’t have anything to offer.

The problem with blending the two Masters is that it confuses the world and the church about the One, True Master.  It’s true that no man can serve two Masters.  The people fooled aren’t serving Jesus.  They just think they are.  They are even being told they are with explanations that they are and how they are.

The people that make their way through to the kingdom relinquish themselves to Jesus Christ.  They choose Him as Goodness.  Jesus is the Master, but they are saved because they believe He is.  That is Who He is and they are acknowledging it and acquiescing to Him.  They gain everything.  Those who don’t, lose everything.

The Virtue of Nationalism

Wikipedia says concerning Yoram Hazony:

Yoram Hazony is an Israeli philosopher, Bible scholar and political theorist. He is President of The Herzl Institute in Jerusalem. Hazony is known for founding The Shalem Center in Jerusalem in 1994, and leading it through its accreditation in 2013 as Shalem College, Israel’s first liberal arts college.

Hazony’s book, The Virtue of Nationalism, released on September 4, 2018, a few months before French President Macron used the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I to bash nationalism in contrast to the views of President Donald Trump.  He said:

Nationalism is rising across Europe, the nationalism that demands the closing of frontiers, which preaches rejection of the other.  It is playing on fears, everywhere. Europe is increasingly fractured.

I wrote the following for our bulletin for Veteran’s Day, Sunday, November 11:

Scripture shows stable and cohesive national  identities are the will of God.  This is one means God has used to preserve the truth and His way of living in this world.  There is no unifying factor in the whole world and there never will be until the Antichrist takes it by force, and then more preferably, Jesus rules over the entire world according to His will.  Our soldiers fought for our nation and for principles that Americans had in common, which were worth dying for.  We can be thankful for them and those men and what privileges we still hold dear, that allow us to meet in freedom to worship God today as a church.

Christians should never be “country first,” but also should support nationalism.  God separated men into distinct lands at the Tower of Babel in response to something close to globalism.  Genesis 11:8-9:

So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.  Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

The founding fathers of the United States saw wisdom in separation reflected in God’s divisions into nations.  Hazony in an October 19 interview said:

Nationalism is a principled standpoint that sees the world as governed best when nations are given their independence and freedom to chart their own course on the basis of their own unique national, religious, and constitutional traditions.

I believe that nationalism is one of the most fundamental conservative ideals.  It is foundational to the protection of life, liberty, and property.  Conservation of ideals occurs within the borders of a nation.  I call on all professing Christians to support nationalism and reject globalism.

******************

I noticed at RCP today an article with the exact same name as this on The Atlantic, which isn’t a review of Hazony’s book, just making the same point with the same title.  Interesting.

Historic Fundamentalism: What is it?

Do you claim to be a Christian fundamentalist?  If, by this term, you mean that you seek to militantly defend all the truths of the Christian faith, and militantly stand against and separate from all error, well and good—you will then, if your confession is true, be a servant of Christ in a historic Baptist church.  Do you think that such a line is too strict, for “historic fundamentalism” was a para-church movement that only recognized a handful of “fundamentals” that were worthy of separation?  If that is truly “historic fundamentalism,” then you should reject such fundamentalism for the God-honoring true separatism only possible within a Biblical Baptist church that is unaffiliated with denominationalism, associationism, and all other humanly devised denominational structures. 
However, was there actually ever a unified “historic fundamentalism” in the first place?  The classic series The Fundamentals, for example, printed an essay by George Sales Bishop, who believed in the dictation of the original manuscripts and in Scripture’s perfect preservation—including the perfect preservation of not the Hebrew consonants alone, but also the vowels that were originally given by inspiration—in the Hebrew and Greek Textus Receptus.[1]
So is “historic fundamentalism” opposed to the Greek critical text—is it King James Only?  Why or why not?
However, The Fundamentals also reprinted articles
by Edwin J. Orr, who “
was unconcerned to defend a literal interpretation of
the early chapters of Genesis, and [who] took the view that an insistence on
biblical inerrancy was actually ‘suicidal.’”[2]
So
who represents “historic fundamentalism”—Bishop or Orr?  Does “historic fundamentalism” defend an
inerrant autographa, an inerrant autographa that is perfectly preserved
in the Textus Receptus, or errant
autographs and apographs?
Indeed,
while cessationists are amply represented in early fundamentalism, the writings
of Jessie Penn-Lewis appear also in The
Fundamentals.
[3]  So does “historic fundamentalism” follow
Scriptural cessationism and the sole authority of Scripture, or Mrs.Penn-Lewis’s fanaticism, radical demonology, Quakerism, date-setting for Christ’s return, and allegedly “inspired” extra-Biblical writings—one of which
is condensed in The Fundamentals?
So
which portion of the authors in The
Fundamentals
represent “historic fundamentalism”?  Is it the “Inner Light” that is allegedly equal to Scripture, as taught by the Quaker Jessie Penn-Lewis?  Is it the inerrant original manuscripts
perfectly preserved in the Textus
Receptus
as affirmed by George Sayles Bishop?  Is it the recognition that verbal, plenary
inspiration is a false and indeed a “suicidal” position, as affirmed by Orr?
Is
it whatever the person speaking about “historic fundamentalism” wants it to be?
A
unified “historic fundamentalism” is a chimera, and even if it had existed, it
would possess no independent authority—the Christian’s sole authority is the
Bible alone, and the Bible teaches that
every religious organization on earth in this dispensation, if it wants to have the special presence of Jesus Christ, must be under the authority of one of His churches.  Fundamentalist
para-church institutions are not churches. 
Do you value the Lord’s church in the way that One does who bought her
with His blood (Ephesians 5:25)? If you do not, but are following some
movement, whether evangelical, fundamental, or by any other name, your
organization does not possess the promises Christ makes to His church
alone.  Beware lest Christ say to you,
and to your organization, “cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?” (Luke 13:7).
The Bible teaches that the church is the
pillar and ground of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15)—the church, the local, visible,
Baptist congregation, is the place of God’s special presence, His special
protection from Satan and his kingdom, and His promises of perpetuity and
blessing until the return of Jesus Christ (Matthew 16:18).  No promises of Christ’s special presence or
protection are made to the mythical universal, invisible church, parachurch
institutions, human denominations, or inter-denominational movements such as
evangelicalism.
There never was a unified “historic
fundamentalism,” and, even if it had existed, it would have no authority
whatever to determine what are Biblical doctrine and practice for the Lord’s
churches.



[1]
          See the “Inspiration of the Hebrew
Letters and Vowel Points,” pgs. 43-59 of The
Doctrines of Grace and Kindred Themes,
George Sayles Bishop (New York,
NY:  Gospel Publishing House, 1919;  note as well his “Relative Value of the Old
Testament” (pgs. 88-100) and “The Testimony of Scripture To Itself,” pgs.
19-42).  The KJV-only, Landmark Baptist
periodical The Plains Baptist Challenger,
a ministry of Tabernacle Baptist Church of Lubbock, TX, on pgs. 3-8 of its
July 1991 edition, reprinted George Sayles Bishop’s defense, based on Matthew
5:18, of the coevality of the vowel points and the consonants.  Bishop was a contributor to the epoch-making
volumes The Fundamentals (“The
Testimony of the Scriptures to Themselves,” pgs. 80-97, vol. 2, The Fundamentals, eds. R. A. Torrey, A.
C. Dixon, etc., Grand Rapids, MI:  Baker
Books, 1970, reprint of the original 1917 ed. of the Bible Institute of Los
Angeles), writing:  “We take the ground
that on the original parchment . . . every sentence, word, line, mark, point,
pen-stroke, jot, tittle was put there by God” (pg. 92, The Fundamentals, vol 2.).
[2]
           Pg. 492, Biographical
Dictionary of Evangelicals
, “Orr, James,” ed. Timothy Larsen, referencing
Orr’s Revelation and Inspiration
[1910], p. 198.  See, e. g.,  “The Holy Scriptures and Modern Negations,”
“The Early Narratives of Genesis” (Chapters 5 & 11 The Fundamentals, ed. Torrey, vol. 1;  Orr wrote other articles also).
[3]
          Pgs. 183-199, Chapter 13, “Satan and
his Kingdom,” The Fundamentals, ed.
Torrey, vol. 4.  Her chapter is condensed
from The Warfare with Satan and the Way
of Victory
.


Audio and Video of 2018 Word of Truth Conference — The Gospel (Part Four)

At THIS LINK you can listen to what is downloaded in audio at the Word of Truth Conference for 2018.  This is our fourth year and last on The Gospel.

When video arrives for the sessions, it will be at THIS LINK and music will be at THIS LINK.

The War Against Biblical, God-Ordained Child Discipline

How many “social scientists” do you think would be allowed in state schools who support spanking children as a form of child discipline?  The Bible without doubt teaches spanking as a method, a required one, for child discipline, so for successful child discipline.  Parents, who would obey God, are required to do it this way.

Elizabeth T. Gershoff is a professor of human development and family sciences at The University of Texas at Austin and CNN published just yesterday, November 6, 2018, an article she authored against spanking children, entitled, “The era of spanking is finally over.”  Gershoff gave her opinion, but was also reporting that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended in a new policy statement published in the journal Pediatrics on Monday, November 1, 2018, that “parents not spank, hit or slap their children.”

I believe the Bible is the Word of God and what Gershoff wrote clashes with scripture.  It also contradicts what I see with my own eyes with years of experience.  As spanking has diminished good behavior in children and adults has also decreased.  She says, however, in her first line that “years of research have shown that spanking children is ineffective and potentially harmful,” and later that “spanking does not make children better behaved in the long run, and in fact makes their behavior worse.”  My instant thought is, “what planet is she living on?”

It is easy to see that Gershoff is spewing her own propaganda for whatever reason, especially evidenced by both this statement,

[W]e need to stop hitting our children in the name of discipline. And yes — spanking is just a euphemism for “hitting children.” We do not allow adults to hit each other, but for some reason American society has decided it should be legal and even desirable for adults to hit children. We need to end this double standard and provide children with the same protection from hitting that is given to all adults.

and these ones,

We consistently find that the more a child is spanked, the more aggressive he or she will be in the future. 

Spanking also teaches children that it is acceptable to use physical force to get what you want. It is thus no surprise that the more children are spanked, the more likely they are to be aggressive or to engage in delinquent behaviors like stealing.

These are false statements.  Calling spanking, “hitting children,” and comparing adults hitting each other, are atrocious, abhorrent lies.  It is a serious attack on God, the Bible, the Christian faith, Christian parents, and religious freedom.  Spanking is not hitting children.  It does not encourage or cause violent behavior.  It is just the opposite.  Children, who are not spanked, are far more greatly out of control, and more likely to get violent with others.

I don’t trust the studies.  They are disputing scripture, flying in the face of God.  I do. not. think or believe that children, who are not spanked as a form of child discipline, are better behaved.  A lot of the “studies” or “research” of psychiatrists and in the social scientists are junk science.  I’m saying they are not science.  They are fake.  This has been proven many times.  Very often the “studies” or “research” contradicts each other.  There are many examples, but even the Smithsonian in a massive project proves that more than half of psychological studies, when replicated, got different results.

It’s actually worse than “they’re wrong.”  When they’ve been wrong, people have moved to follow their “science.”  They’ve been given the respect of science.  People have to change now, because their studies show.  They don’t, and they can be proven wrong.  Most of the time, their false results proceed from their own presuppositions.  They want to find a result, so they do.  People don’t want a God, so they use “science” to prove He doesn’t exist.  Studies show.  Studies showed that self-esteem was important and we entered the self-esteem era, ruining children and people, and now they say, we were wrong, so we live in a narcissistic society.  Ooops.  A generation of parents did it wrong, telling their children how great they were, speculating about every possible problem due to low self esteem.  Meanwhile, horrific damage.  No children think they are as great and wonderful as American children.

“Studies” have to be done.  People have to prove they are studious and students.  It helps if someone can come up with something new that no one has heard before.  It proves how smart the student is.  He found this.  No one else had.  It doesn’t make you look smarter to say, this is something people have known for centuries and it works, so keep doing it.

Gershoff is a progressive.  This is the curse of progressivism, where people think that they will progess, in their own depraved, proud thinking.  They think we’re evolving and we need to progress to evolve further.  It is also at the base of Marxism and almost entirely of these “social sciences.”  They have been given the elevated status of “science,” what scripture calls “science false so called” or how we would put today, “so-called science” (1 Timothy 6:20-21).  Observations of men are not superior to revelation of God.

I do believe that parents abuse their children in the name of spanking and religion.  They don’t follow the biblical pattern.  I believe far more unbelievers, who don’t believe in spanking, actually abuse their children and do not get in trouble for it.  Their children become criminals and murderers and they take no responsibility, because they did the favored thing of not spanking and trusting the government institutions for the behavior of their children, “taking a village,” code language for “not taking responsibility.”  They’re fools.

Enemies of the biblical way latch a hold of any parent who does a bad job of parenting, that uses spanking as one of the methods as proof that it’s a bad way.  No, it’s one bad parent, who really isn’t following the biblical way.  Abusive methods abound, even abuses of spanking.  Yes, parents can “beat” their children and “hit” them, but this is not related to biblical spanking.

Something Gershoff is very happy about is that there is less spanking today, giving her encouragement that the world can be rid of spanking totally, even as the title of the article explains.  She seems to be encouraging the forces against spanking to keep up their good work, their war against spanking.  There is less of it.  Governing regions and institutions have done away with it, made it illegal.  She celebrates that and is calling for more regulation against.  She wants to stop it.  She wants to take away the right, criminalize it.

Why is there less spanking?  It’s not because the state has done a good job of persuading.  It hasn’t.  There is less of it, because there is less obedience to God, less Christianity.  It’s hard to be a good parent.  It takes discipline of the parent to discipline of children.  There is more laziness.  In general, there is more sin, and that’s why there is less spanking.  I foresee more sinning and less good parenting, less spanking.  It is a symptom of more falsehood, turning away from God, more apostasy.  It does not portend for anything good in the future, only evil.

DOING JUSTICE: Weighing Problems in a Just Manner

We do not know how many people to whom Peter preached in Acts 2 on the Day of Pentecost, at least 3,000 and likely ten plus thousand.  That mammoth number of people was told that the one they had killed in fulfillment of Psalm 110 was now sitting at the right hand of God the Father, ready to make His enemies His footstool.  A large number in the crowd sought what to do in order to deal with this problem.  They should have been, and likely were, afraid of the consequences, but it seems that they also were affected by their knowledge that they had so offended God.  If they thought about how good God had been to them, it would have seemed like a gigantic injustice to have offended Him in so many ways.

Their problem, as they should have seen it, was akin to what the people had when Noah was preaching.  There was the physical problem for them of being physically destroyed, but the worse one was eternal punishment.  It is appointed unto man once to die, but after this the judgment (Heb 9:27).  Their problem was not high rental prices in Jerusalem.  Peter wasn’t even making the problem mistreatment by the Romans, who very often would kill massive numbers of people for no good reason.  Their problem was their problem with God.  They were already disobeying Him and then they murdered their Messiah.
All injustice is bad, but justice itself requires judging problems as to their most severe.  People should think of this as a judicial triage.  Not doing this is not just.  If there were three people in the emergency room, and the severity of the problems were paper cut, sprained ankle, and tourniquet on artery bleeding.  Getting to the paper cut or the sprained ankle first isn’t just.  I say this only as an illustration, so please don’t try to ruin the illustration.  I’m asking you to get the point.
The eternal problem is a greater one than the temporal one.  In most cases at least and maybe all the cases, the solution to the eternal problem solves the temporal one too — I’ll come back to that.  Eternal death is worse than temporal death.  On top of that, eternal death results from offenses directly against God.  It’s worse to offend God than it is some person on earth.  It’s not that offending a person isn’t bad.  It’s just that it is worse to offend God.  Making a bigger deal about offending people than offending God itself is not just.
Temporal problems, and we know this from God in His Word, so it is right, come either from direct or indirect consequences of sin.  Their best solutions are biblical ones that relate to sin.  Men are blinded by sin and deluded by sin.  They have reprobate minds, because of sin.  The bigger solution takes care of the smaller solution.  Solving the bigger problem really isn’t ignoring the smaller one.

Justice, as I wrote in an earlier post on justice, and what many know, is based on equal retribution, the so-called scales.  Scales weigh.  The problems must be weighed.  Offending God is of greater weight than offending a person.  Eternal problems are bigger than temporal ones.  However, the just weighing of problems relate also to judging between only temporal ones.  Again, as a reminder, this doesn’t mean that temporal problems aren’t also eternal ones.

In an act of injustice, a black man is shot down in a criminal way by a white police officer.  Let’s say this is the worst case scenario for the thought experiment on justice.  It’s not true though.  In 2016, the FBI statistics say that 2,570 black people were killed by other black people.  243 black people were killed by white people.  On the other hand, 533 white people were killed by black people.  169 total unarmed people were killed by police (of any race) in 2016.  53% of those unarmed killed by police were white and 24% were black.  That is 90 white people and 41 black people.  If the killings were not justifiable, then those were unjust.  2,570 weighs more heavy than 41.  That is without bringing up the matter of abortion and the killing of the most vulnerable and innocent of human beings.  926,200 abortions occurred in 2014 in the United States.  In 2014, 28 percent of abortions were black, which is 259,336 people.

Murder is an offense to God.  The more murder the worse it is to God and offending God is the worst problem.  That is an eternal problem.  41 police officer killings of unarmed blacks (not assuming they are all murders) and then 2,570 black on black murders and 259,336 murders through abortion are different in weight.  If you are a person for justice, you have to look at the latter more seriously than the former, and then apply most efforts to the latter.  When the latter are ignored to look at the former, then justice is not the motivation any longer.  Justice is not being done.  It is such a vast difference, a just thing to say is that it is unjust to put much time at all into the 41, let alone focus on it.

With everything that I have written about temporal and eternal problems, the greatest justice issue is the offense of God and the eternal punishment of Hell.  When professing Christians are more concerned about the 41 killings of unarmed black men by police in the United States in one year than the 2,570 black murders and 259,336 murders through abortion, this is not doing justice, because it is giving greater weight to the wrong problem.  The scales of justice are moving down on the wrong side.  This is unjust.

Even further, if professing Christians are more concerned about physical death than eternal death, as seen in less effort given toward evangelism, than, say, feeding impoverished people, whether spiritually saved or lost, this is also unjust.  It is ignoring the eternal offense of God.  It is also not making the connection between temporal impoverishment and the effects of the lack of conversion.

Even Christians are moved by the idea of orphans or starving children in third world countries.  This physical concern surpasses in many instances the offense of God and the eternal detrimental effects of the lack of salvation.  Most often the two are related.  People are physically suffering because of spiritual problems, but even professing Christians would rather try to deal with the physical problem first, as if a spiritual concern is less credible when it starts with a spiritual concern and not a physical one.  All of this is not to understand justice.  This is not to do justice.  This is injustice.

Why the actual injustice posing as justice?  I think it is pandering.  It is about looking compassionate, because reprobate minds judge justice in a corrupt manner.  People attempt to impress them or try to fit in with them. They don’t really care about justice because this isn’t that complicated.  The people who really care are not focusing on the police.  They are looking at people of every race as to whether they are hearing a true gospel.  Preaching the gospel will not be rewarded by society or culture.  People who do so will not be judged as to care more than those who focus on the relatively minor problems.

Trying to look good is also corrupting the problem.  The problem is an internal one, not an external one.  It is a form of self-righteousness.  It is proud, thinking of what one looks like, looking compassionate to a crowd, who cannot really judge in a just manner.  It is Pharisaical, acting like a Pharisee, who put the external problems ahead of internal, spiritual ones.  Not caring about poor people, not caring about starvation, that’s a problem, but it is evidence of a spiritual problem, and the spiritual problem is a bigger problem than it’s symptoms.  People need to be saved.  This is bigger.

What else happens?  Social do-gooders, social justice warriors guilt people into temporal problem focus.  This includes evangelicals.  They try to get you to take your eye off the ball by making the eternal problem look less than the temporal one.  They mock people who spend almost all the time preaching, because they don’t care.  They might even “not be saved,” is also how it is being presented today.  Those “saved” are putting massive effort into short term social problems, whether they are even solving them or not.  They look like they “care” (if it is even care in light of the eternal problem).  The people who care, really care, know what the biggest problem is, the weightiest.  They also know that more temporal problems would be solved long term with the emphasis on the eternal ones.

Jesus, the Apostles, and Paul did not attempt to change societal or social structure.  They didn’t give their lives to change economic status of people.  They were pedal to the metal attempting to get the truth out, spread the gospel.  They went just the opposite direction.  Jesus said you’ll always have the poor with you.  Paul said servants submit yourselves to your masters.  It wasn’t that injustices weren’t being done, but that it wasn’t just to focus on temporal things, when the eternal issues were far more important.  The solution was a kingdom where Jesus reigned for 1000 years.  He would change the world.  This is the justice of weighing problems in a just manner.

Evan Roberts & the Rise of American and Continental Pentecostalism II, Part 18 of 22

The content of this post is now available in the study of:

1.) Evan Roberts

2.) The Welsh Revival of 1904-1905

3.) Jessie Penn-Lewis

on the faithsaves.net website. Please click on the people above to view the study.  On the FaithSaves website the PDF files may be easiest to read.

 

You are also encouraged to learn more about Keswick theology and its errors, as well as the Biblical doctrine of salvation, at the soteriology page at Faithsaves.

A Fascinating Jordan Peterson Interview and a Genius Account of Media Insanity

Here is the Jordan Peterson interview by a feminist for British GQ:

People should see this and let it affect their view of certain media, essentially the mainstream.

AUTHORS OF THE BLOG

  • Kent Brandenburg
  • Thomas Ross

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