You have seen the house built, you have seen it adorned
By one who came in the night, it is now dedicated to GOD.
It is now a visible church, one more light set on a hill
In a world confused and dark and disturbed by portents of fear.
And what shall we say of the future?  Is one church all we can build?
Or shall the Visible Church go on to conquer the World?

(T.S. Eliot, “Two Choruses from ‘The Rock’”)

…and questions not allowed.

This is secular eschatology with a secular Messiah — meet the prophets:  Sheryl Crow (singer) and Laurie David (producer of An Inconvenient Truth).

“You [Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation] used the example of the great Asian tsunami.  We agree that, if there is a God, He did not find out about this disaster from CNN.  He governs the earth, and this was something that happened on His watch.  ‘If disaster befalls a city,’ the prophet Amos said, ‘have not I, the Lord, done it?’ (Amos 3:6).  And so when you say that a ‘theology of wrath’ has far more ‘intellectual merit,’ I agree.  It is consistent with the facts.  Those who are nicknamed Calvinists do not have any unique problems with the ‘problem of evil.’  They just get more attention than other Christians on this point because they are willing to speak directly into the microphone.  ‘Yes.  God did this thing.  And do you think that those on whom the tower fell were greater sinners?  Unless you repent you will all likewise perish’ (Luke 13:5).”

(Douglas Wilson, Letter From a Christian Citizen, pp. 49-50.)

R. Scott Clark has a “scare ‘em away from the FV” post at his blog, wherein he declares:

“We allowed this thing to grow and now it’s spreading. It’s time to move beyond reports. It’s time to act.”

How about acting via some dialogue with the FV proponents?  Better yet, how about taking Douglas Wilson up on his offer to a public debate?  Would that be acting?

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mattb

This was originally posted by Gary DeMar at AmericanVision.org on April 24, 2007, but is so good I am ‘borrowing’ it to aid in further dissemination <grin>.  Enjoy the post, then visit American Vision and purchase some of the great books they have to offer!

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mattb 

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MacArthur’s Prophetic Confusion

Guest: Gary DeMar

I just received a book notice from Moody Press for a new commentary on Revelation by John MacArthur with the title Because the Time is Near. At this time I will forego a critique of MacArthur’s use of “near” to describe an event he believes is “near” while the use of “near” by New Testament writers (e.g., James 5:8; Rev. 1:3) did not mean “near” when they used the same word. 

For years, I have been dealing with issues related to the last days. I got involved in this topic because Christians were using last-days theology as a way to explain the state of the world and why Christians can’t do anything to reverse present trends. MacArthur is representative of this view when he writes, “‘Reclaiming’ the culture is a pointless, futile exercise. I am convinced,” he writes, “we are living in a post-Christian society—a civilization that exists under God’s judgment.”¹ A good case could be made that the people in Europe in the fifteenth century were living under a similar “post-Christian society.” Here’s how Samuel Eliot Morison opens his 1942 biography on Christopher Columbus:

At the end of the year 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science, and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune [immature] and lifeless. Institution s were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through the study of the pagan past.Islam was now expanding at the expense of Christendom. . . . The Ottoman Turks, after snuffing out all that remained of the Byzantine Empire, had overrun most of Greece, Albania and Serbia; presently they would be hammering at the gates of Vienna.²

Sound familiar? Change 1492 to any modern date, and the above description of the world of Columbus would fit just as well today. All the major characters and signs are once again in place, or so it seems.

Prophecy pundits in the fifteenth century were sure that the end was near, just as those five hundred years before them knew it was near, and five hundred years before them.

The end of the world: the idea was taken quite seriously by Europe of the late fifteenth century—not as a mere conceit, not as a metaphor or theological trope, but as a somber, ter rifying prediction based solidly on the divine wisdom of biblical prophecy and the felt experience of daily life. . . .[I]n the words of Joseph Grnpeck, the official historian to the Hapsburg emperor Frederick III, “When you perceive the miserable corrupt ion of the whole of Christendom, of all praiseworthy customs, rules and laws, the wretchedness of all classes, the many pestilences, the changes in this epoch and all the strange happenings, you know that the End of the World is near. And the waters of aff liction will flow over the whole of Christendom.”³

As history attests, it was the end of the world, the end of a stagnant worldview that left people without any future hope. But a mere 25 years later, history took a dramatic change in direction. Through a single act, Martin Luther reclaimed the Bible, the gospel, and culture when he confronted a corrupt church. The rest, as they say, is history.

What makes today’s speculations about the end any more reliable? Why are today’s prophecy writers any more trus tworthy? They aren’t. Prophetic texts that applied to the generation of Jesus’ day (Matt. 24:34) are being misapplied to our generation. This is a huge mistake that has significant implications theologically and culturally. Prophecy books like those of Mac Arthur are only adding to the confusion.

Gary DeMar is president of American Vision and the author of more than 20 books. He and his wife Carol have two grown sons. He is a member of Midway Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Marietta, Georgia, and has been an occasional contributor to Postmillennialism.com since 2001.

Notes
1. John F. MacArthur, The Vanishing Conscience: Drawing the Line in a No-Fault, Guilt-Free World (Dallas, TX: Word, 1994), 12.
2. Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1942), 3.
3. Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy (New York: Alfred F. Knopf, 1990), 29–30.

This is what is going on in your child’s public school classroom.

There are many reasons to either homeschool your child or send him to a classical Christian school, this is just one of them

(Thanks to Battle Axe for the link!) 

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mattb

Who needs Jesus to be our Great Physician when we’ve got Uncle Sam?

Feds to Regulate Natural Substances as Medicines

The guidance being put forward by the FDA to make this law can be read on their website here.  This guidance includes language such as:

Second, neither the Act nor the PHS Act exempts CAM [Complementary and Alternative Medicine] products from regulation. This means, for example, if a person decides to produce and sell raw vegetable juice for use in juice therapy to promote optimal health, that product is a food subject to the requirements for foods in the Act and FDA regulations, including the hazard analysis and critical control point (HACCP) system requirements for juices in 21 CFR part 120.

In other words, the Federal Government will control raw vegetable juice as if it were some sort of pharmaceutical drug!  Here comes the Messianic State to act as our Great Physician.

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mattb

In regards to the faith discussed previously (as a result of the PCA report on the Federal Vision), it should be noted that this is the faith also described by Jesus in His ‘Parable of the Sower’.  He describes faith in four ways:

Mark 4:15-20 And these are the ones along the path, where the word is sown: when they hear, Satan immediately comes and takes away the word that is sown in them. 16 And these are the ones sown on rocky ground: the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy. 17 And they have no root in themselves, but endure for a while; then, when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately they fall away. 18 And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, 19 but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. 20 But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”

1. No faith, the word is not received (taken away by Satan).

2. Temporary faith, the word is received with joy but fades away with persecution or tribulation.

3. Dead faith, the word is received but turns out unfruitful.

4. Living faith, the word is received and bears fruit.

From the previous discussion on Col 1:21-23, Paul is warning against the Colossians falling into catergory 2 or 3, he wants them to continue in the faith and bear fruit as members of category 4, and he speaks knowing they are already not members of category 1.

It is our preconceived system of theology that trains us to interpret this passage where categories 1,2, & 3 all have no faith at all, where only he of category 4 has any kind of faith, when Christ clearly teaches that 2,3, & 4 did have faith–albeit 2 a faith that faded and 3 a faith was dead.

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mattb

In Letter From a Christian Citizen, Douglas Wilson mounts a heroic defense of the Christian view of life against Sam Harris’ increasingly inconsistent view.

On pages 32-33, he points out that Mr. Harris had previously commended the Jains moral view of protecting all life (to include sweeping bugs so as not to step on them, or wearing face masks so as not to breathe them in), but then ridicules Christians for defending the unborn (either in abortion or embryonic stem cell research).  He also points out that Harris does so by arguing against the idea of a soul inside someone small enough to live in a petri dish.

To this argument he pithily replies:

“In blunt terms, you are prepared to sacrifice the small for the sake of the large, not having learned the important lessons taught by Horton Hears a Who, which is, that a ‘person’s a person, no matter how small.’  But at the same time this oversight is not consistent at all.  You are prepared to praise those who defend the small [Jains], provided that defender is not a Christian.  This betrays your prejudice against Christians, regardless of what they do.  It appears that your interest is to throw something at the Christians, and you don’t really seem to mind what it is so long as it’s hard.”  (Douglas Wilson, Letter From a Christian Citizen, pp. 33-4.)

It is a beautiful thing when an atheist’s inconsistencies are thrown back at him.

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mattb

For those of you who are unaware, this is not my first blog.  I have another Bound Dragon blog at www.bounddragon.com, being hosted on another server using WordPress.  However, www.reformedblogs.com offers a more customizable and user friendly version of WordPress and so I have been tempted this way (in addition to the already established community).

I have transferred some of my old posts to this site, but not all.  For those interested, you can go to my old blog and check out the archives.  And, it is possible that I may switch back, but for the time being I am here and will be primarily updating the blog here.

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mattb