Hound_Of_Heaven's Xanga

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 23:38:28 GMT

Machen on progress or lack there of:

“Scientific investigation, as has already been observed, has certainly accomplished much; it has in many respects produced a new world. But there is another aspect of the picture which should not be ignored. The modern world represents in some respects an enormous improvement over the world in which our ancestors lived; but in other respects it exhibits a lamentable decline. The improvements appear in the physical conditions of life, but in the spiritual realm there is a corresponding loss. The loss is clearest, perhaps, in the realm of art. Despite the mighty revolution which has been produced in the external conditions of life, no great poet is now living to celebrate the change; humanity has suddenly become done. Gone, too, are the great painters and the great musicians and the great sculptors. The art that still subsists is largely imitative, and were it is not imitative it is usually bizarre.”

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 23:35:22 GMT

A couple quotes by Machen that I like:

“The next thing less than the infinite is infinitely less.”

“Modern preachers are trying to bring men into the church without requiring them to relinquish their pride; they are trying to help men avoid the conviction of sin.” Consequently, the church “is busily engaged in an absolutely impossible task—she is busily engaged in calling the righteous to repentance.”

“This is the true order of Christian pedagogy— ‘trust in His redeeming blood’ first, and then ‘try his works to do.’ Disaster always follows when the order is reversed.”

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:44:15 GMT

“instead of investing energy in trying to demonstrate or prove the viability and truth of Christian belief, Barth assumes it and then seeks to describe it… From Barth’s perspective, theology could recover its essential integrity only when it came to realize that it was utterly dependent on God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, which constituted its only possible basis. Dependence on revelation means that we cannot assume that we know in advance what reality and the nature of rationality look like and then assess revelation and Christian faith by these predetermined standards. Instead we must begin with faith in Jesus Christ and only then attempt to explain the internal rationality and intelligibility of such faith.”

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Sun, 08 Apr 2007 00:41:25 GMT

A bit Michelle read to me from her book Disciplines of a Godly Woman:

“Fourth, begin (giving) now. The natural tendency is to put giving off until you feel able to give. Such thinking keeps many from ever giving. There’s an old story about the preacher who came to see a farmer and asked, ‘If you had $200, would you give $100 to the Lord?’

‘I would,’ answered the farmer.

‘If you had two cows, would you give one to the Lord?’

‘Sure.’

‘If you had two pigs, would you give one of them to the Lord?’

The farmer said, ‘Now that isn’t fair! You know I have two pigs’”

- Barbra Hughes

Saturday, March 31, 2007

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 23:55:15 GMT

He [God] cannot change for the better, for he is already perfect; and being perfect, he cannot change for the worse. - A. W. Pink

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 23:23:07 GMT

I thought I’d write some brief commentary on a phrase that, I believe, Christian’s are using quite erroneously.

“The reformed church is always reforming.”

I would like to note, first, that to be reformed is to hold to a specific set of ideals. Thus, the reformed church cannot keep endlessly reforming, because it would cease to be the reformed church. The interesting thing is that in many respects reformed churches have ceased to be reformed. You will find “reformed” pastors quite afraid of speaking the word predestination. In fact you find that they positively hold to some sort of good works religion – they give justification by faith alone lip service. The have “reformed” themselves out of the reformation. Thus, the whole concept lies on an error, the reformed church cannot endlessly reform, if it does so it ceases to be the reformed church.

Secondly, I would like to suggest that reform can only be reform when it is positive. On finds reformed churches embracing “engaging” R rated movies to “engage culture.” At first the concept seems rather normal – to reach out to the world and understand it to engage it. However, it soon becomes apparent that the majority endorsing this view simply live for the trill of these movies. They bask in the glory of the movie and never have Christ on their lips. When we “reform” the church we need to be sure that it is becoming more heavenly and less worldly. Reforming the church to “engage” culture is often a grand theological excuse to devour 5+ pg-13 or R rated movies over a long weekend. True reform is only reform if it brings us back to the gospel not leaving us constantly prostrate before a television.

Finally, humanity is not progressing. This phrase seems to somehow have been endorsed to indicate human progress. Today, it seems is always the most correct form of religion. In fact, to be truthful every day era for religion. Each era is riddled with its own time periods misconceptions. To truly reform the church today is to seek to rid the church of tis age's misconceptions while not falling into other age's misconceptions.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 12:12:17 GMT

“I remember a young man coming to see me when he had just left school and begun to work in London. He had given up going to church, he said, because he could not say the Creed without being a hypocrite. He no longer believed it. When he had finished his explanations, I said to him, ‘If I were to answer your problems to your complete intellectual satisfaction, would you be willing to alter your manner of life?’ He smiled slightly and blushed. His real problem was not intellectual but moral.

This, then, is the spirit in which our search must be conducted. We must cast aside apathy, pride, prejudice and sin, and seek God in scorn of the consequences. Of these hindrances to effective search the last two are the hardest to overcome, intellectual prejudice and moral self will. Both are expressions of fear, and fear is the greatest enemy of the truth. Fear paralyses our search. We know that to find God and to accept Jesus Christ would be a very inconvenient experience. It would involve rethinking our whole outlook and life and the readjustment of our whole manner of life. And it is a combination of moral and intellectual cowardice that make us hesitate…”

– John Stott

Friday, January 19, 2007

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 23:44:39 GMT

A bit from Kris Lundgaard:

Two enemies, no matter how deep the river of their bitterness runs, can make peace—but only if the hostility between them is destroyed. It is impossible to make peace with hostility itself. So when Paul identifies the flesh with enmity and hatred of God, he cuts off any hope that the flesh will bow to God or befriend him. A treaty between God and the flesh is impossible.

In Romans 5:10 Paul says that we were God’s enemies—we were all of us Captain Ahabs. Christ is the peacemaker in the gospel using his death to put to death the hostility between us and God. Our “old man” (the flesh) was crucified with Christ (Romans 6:6), rendering it powerless to rule over us and enslave us and bear the fruit of eternal death in us. When he appears, he will annihilate the flesh forever. This is the only way to deal with enmity: destroy it.

But ever drop of poison is poison; ever spark of fire is fire; and the last bit of flesh that remains in the believer is still enmity. When God’s grace changes our nature, it doesn’t change the nature of the flesh. It conquers it weakens it, mortally wounds it, so that we are no longer Captain Ahabs by nature; yet his defiant malice smolders in our flesh. By the time Paul wrote Romans, he must have been as Christlike as anyone can expect to be this side of heave, and he surely spent his days putting his flesh to death. Still he cried out for deliverance from this irreconcilable enemy.

What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (Romans 7:24)

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 23:18:13 GMT

A bit from a Piper sermon:

“Don’t be tricked by people who talk about how far we have come in science since the industrial revolution or since the enlightenment. And say, ‘how can you believe an old fashioned religion?’

Just look at them kind of blank and say, ‘I don’t get what you are saying. What you are saying makes no sense to me at all. Because my faith makes no difference whether you are bothered by a chariot wheel or a computer. But, whether you have a guilty conscious because of what you have done with your chariot wheel or your computer. The question is how do you get right with God…’”

Friday, January 05, 2007

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 01:53:26 GMT

"The thing that we regard as surprising is that any member of the human race, any of those excellent creatures known as men, who are supposed to be doing the best they can and be guilty, at the most, of merely trifling and thoroughly forgivable faults, should ever fall under divine displeasure. But the thing the Bible regards as surprising is that any of those fallen creatures known as men, all of whom without exception deserve God’s wrath and curse, should be received into eternal life. We regard it as surprising that any are lost: the Bible regards it as surprising that any are saved. Naturally it is the surprising or unexpected thing that upon which the chief stress is laid. It is for that reason, or at least partly for that reason, that the Biblical doctrine of predestination is concerned chiefly with the predestination of the saved to their salvation rather than with the predestination of the unsaved to their eternal loss." – Gresham Machen