Regeneration vs. the Idolatry of Decisional Evangelism

It was about the time I heard this sermon that I was only 90% sure how I felt about the “sinner’s prayer.”  After this sermon, I was 100% sure.  I put the “sinner’s prayer” in the ground, buried it, and put up a tombstone that said “anathema.” Our evangelism is weak, unbiblical, and it is eternally destroying some.  What are we preaching? See for yourself, and examine yourself. What are you preaching?

The New Atheism and the Endgame of Secularism

Dr. Mohler’s lecture last year at Dallas Theological Seminary.  I plan on quoting it in my final paper for the class entitled  The Victorian Period.  He speaks of “the Victorian Loss of Faith.”  My working title is: “The Ebb of Faith’s Sea: Doubt and Modernism in Tennyson and Arnold.”

“The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.” -From Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold

Embryonic Stem-Cell Research History: Just in Case You Missed it…Like I did.

I haven’t been living under a rock or anything, but on many issues, my cultural engagement is pretty weak.  Embryonic Stem-Cell Research has been thrown around near my ears, but only over the past year or so have I given myself to trying to stay informed.  Here’s an article summarizing the history and controversy of Embryonic Stem-Cell Research since the first invitro fertilization baby was born in 1981.  It is very helpful for people like me who need a little bit of help understanding the basic facts of the issue.  This is a much needed review in light of President Barack Obama’s woeful decision on Monday March 9, 2009 to repeal President George W. Bush’s 2001 ban on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research.

Here is an exhortation for the Church:

We are called to stay informed.  We are the people who know the dignity of human life from conception until natural death.  We are the people whose love for the glory of God in all things must stay engaged in this issue in which the glory of God in the Imago Dei is being destroyed and dishonored.  We are the people who are called to love our neighbor by warning them of lies and deceit while working to think through the same concerns that even the lost world cares for.  We must work to provide biblical and honest answers while not straying or compromising from the integrity and truth of God in his word.   This is a time for God’s people and his scientists to rise up and provide, for the glory of God, an honest alternative.  Pray for the scientists, pray for those whose hurts and afflictions have called for these questions, pray for the families who just wanted to have children but did not think through the reprecutions of this issue, and most of all, pray for the lives that will be intentionally destroyed in the name of human progress and human glory.

I’m still praying for you Mr. President.  God have mercy on you.

Working with you for life,

Vince R.

Echoes of the Reformation in 2009

Check out this article from Time Magazine: Ten Ideas Changing the World Right Now: #3 The New Calvinism.

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Thanks Sareena for finding this.

Few of Days and Full of Trouble: What is the End of the Matter?

Charles Haddon Spurgeon had me thinking just the other night.  I was supposed to be reading the devotional for March 9, but somehow, I had been reading from March 10 that day.  Well, it was exactly what I needed to read at that moment for God had ordained it.  Read it here, but these words that stung hard.

“Let us recollect the frail tenure upon which we hold our temporal mercies. If we would remember that all the trees of earth are marked for the woodman’s axe, we should not be so ready to build our nests in them. We should love, but we should love with the love which expects death, and which reckons upon separations. Our dear relations are but loaned to us, and the hour when we must return them to the lender’s hand may be even at the door.”

My heart began to melt for I sickened myself.  So I turned to the text on which Spurgeon was writing.

“Man who is born of woman is few of days and full of trouble.  He comes out like a flower and withers; he flees like a shadow and continues not.” Job 14:1-2

And so I began some meditations on the fleetingness of man, the finitude of life, and the fragility of plans.  I was brought low in a moment.  Everyone I know will go away in the end.  What is the point? Why study so much? Why labor as I do?  Why care?  I turned to Ecclesiastes and read the simple phrases again:

“For in much wisdom is much vexation; and he who increases knowledge increases sorrows.” Ecclesiastes 1:18

I have turned sorrowful of late, vexed with much wisdom and increasings of knowledge.  The closer I grow to the Lord, the more sorrow is mixed with the joy.  The closer I get to God, the more I know my own sinfulness.  The more I know my own sinfulness, the more I know the grace of God.  The more I know the grace of God, the more joyful I am to know him.  The more joyful I am to know him, the more sorrowful I am that others do not.

The sinfulness of sin has vexed me much of late.  I see it in others, and no longer does it make me mad.  It has truly rended my heart in two.  What have we done?

“The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh.”  Ecclesiastes 4:5

Man destroys himself, smiling and indifferent to his own decadence.  I am seeing it all around.  We drink down iniquity like water.  There is much bread and idleness.  And we sink lower and lower, deeper and deeper into self-mutilation.  I was particularly sorrowful as I thought of these things.

“All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied.” Ecclesiastes 6:7

We cannot get enough.  Our hearts are drawn to iniquity.  Only recently I had been reading through the first three chapters of Romans.  Paul’s main objective there:  To crush man under the condemnation of sin.  Even as I read it, my flesh ached and my heart hurt.

“Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.” Ecclesiastes 7:20

My heart was engulfed with the exceeding sinfulness of sin.  What is wrong with us?  We supress the truth in unrighteousness and we destroy our own flesh with self-hatred.  Though we love ourselves, we really hate ourselves if we love not God.

What hope is there for mankind?  I was particularly distraught with hopelessnes.  But then I knew…I looked to the cross and read.

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.  For one will scarcely die for a righteous person-though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die–but God shows his love for us in that while were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” Romans 5:6-9

“The cross has set me free,” I said.  “All our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh” I recited Psalm 90:10-11. “The years of our life are seventy or even by reason of strength eighty, yet their span is but toil and trouble.  They are soon gone and we fly away,” I continued quoting.

But the cross has set us free to fear God in our passing days.

“The end of the matter; all has been heard.  Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” Ecclesiastes 12:13

And that is the end of it.  What else are those saved from God’s wrath to do but fear him and obey him?  We are free, counted righteous by the one who once stood in judgment over us.  We were objects of wrath, but now we are objects of delight.  We can now enjoy his pleasure.  We can now enjoy him.  We can now enjoy his blessings.  There is nothing better under the sun in the few days that God has given us.  This is the end of the matter. 

Working with you in these few days,

Vince R.

Albert Mohler and the City of Man: A Book Review

"In the end, the culture and its challenges will pass away. But our Lord has left us here for a reason-as His people, we are to be salt and light to a dying world."

As I finished Dr. Mohler’s book Culture Shift: Engaging Current Issues with Timeless Truth, I realized the unrelenting importance of cultural engagement.  I may not be one called toward academic cultural apologetics, but as a Christian, I have a responsibility to know the place where the people dwell.  As I recall Discern Your Culture at New Attitude 2007, I remember a profoundly affecting and simply stated truth Dr. Mohler brought, “The only reason we care about the culture is because the culture is where the lost people are.”  Very simple; but often overlooked.  In the name of cultural engagemet, Christians often forget their responsibility to holiness and Christ-centeredness.  And just the same, in the name of holiness and Christ-centeredness, Christians often forget their responsiblity to love their neighbor.

This book heightens my intensity and passion for engaging the City of Man.  Here is an excerpt that powerfully portrays the necessity for Christian engagement with the culture.  Dr. Mohler springs off the shoulders of St. Augustine with simple theological dexterity:

“The City of God is eternal and takes as its sole concern the greater glory of God.  In the City of God, all things are ruled by God’s Word, and the perfect rule of God is the passion of all its citizens.

In the City of Man, however, the reality is very different.  This city is filled with mixed passions, mixed allegiances, and compromised principles…citizens of the City of Man demonstrate deadly patterns of disobedience, even as they celebrate moral autonomy, and then revolt against the Creator.

Of course, we know that the City of God is eternal, even as the City of Man is passing.  But this does not mean that the City of Man is ultimately unimportant, and it does not allow the church to forfeit its responsibility to love its citizens.  Love of neighbor–grounded in our love for God–requires us to work for good in the City of Man, even as we set as our first priority the preaching of the gospel–the only means of bringing citizens of the City of Man into citizenship in the City of God…

Love of neighbor for the sake of loving God is a profound political philosophy that strikes a balance between the disobedience of political disengagement and the idolatry of politics as our main priority…we are concerned for the culture, not because we believe that the culture is ultimate, but because we know that our neighbors must hear the gospel, even as we hope and strive for their good, peace, security, and well-being.”-pp.3-4

If you are looking for a work that serves as a nice introductory seque into worldview apologetics and cultural engagement, I strongly suggest you begin with Dr. Mohler.  He is a nice bridge into more thorough and dense works from Francis Schaeffer, C.S. Lewis, David Wells, and many more.  As C.J. Mahaney puts it in his review of the book,

“Al Mohler is a unique gift to the church.  His writing combines penetrating theological discernment and insightful cultural analysis with a passion to faithfully proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

I must agree.  Dr. Mohler refuses to leave the gospel.  For him, cultural engagment means that we go straight to the need of the lost–a regenerated soul.  For without that happening to us first, our worldview would not be any different from theirs.

Working with you to bring a gospel-centered worldview to the market place,

Vince R.

The Root of Roe v. Wade: The Contraception Mentality

Here is a powerful examination of the current “contraception mentality.”

Check out this compelling excerpt:

“We submit, therefore, that children are now being aborted in the flesh, because they have already been, in large measure, aborted from the mind.”

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Thank you to Bro. Hank for bringing this the current issue of Touchstone Magazine to my attention.  Go visit his biblicaly charged engagment with the Pro-life movement over at Lawn Gospel.

Working with you for Life,

Vince R.