Introduction: I think it is safe to say that many Christians have extricated themselves from the materialistic account of the cosmos. This is great, so far as it goes, but we have now entered an era ...
Things That Go Bump in the Night
Genuine Health and Wealth/Psalm 144
Sermon Video Introduction: This psalm overlaps a good deal with what David prayed in Psalm 18, as well as in 2 Samuel 22, near the end of his life. His life had been one long series of battles ...
An Odd Accusation, I Feel
“Sometimes I feel like a speaker at a Fourth of July picnic who gets himself accused of being un-American because I mentioned that ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights’”
Well, Then, We Succeeded
Retro-Interpretation
“In conservative American Presbyterianism, the governing doctrine is not the Westminster Confession, but is rather the agreed-upon consensus of what the Westminster Confess must have meant.”
Grace and Sanctions
“The cup is described as the cup of blessing, not the cup of blessings and curses. But, because certain Corinthians despised that blessing, many were sick and some had died. Huzzah died because he got too close to the mercy seat”
Content Cluster Muster [01-11-24]
Nicely Done: The Car Must Have Been Going Too Slow: More here. A Song I Really Like for Some Reason: One of My Songs From the Archives: HT: Samuel Cherubin: Vadim Sekatski Practicing for His Promotion: Are You Referring to St. George?: Me Too: Featured Product: Letters on Homosexual Desire:In this series of (fictional) letters, …
Where Westminster Sounds FV
“My central point here is that if heresy charges can be leveled on the basis of ‘ambiguous’ language, then the bapterians have only succeeded in indicting the Westminster Confession. It is the Westminster Standards that say both sacraments are effectual means of salvation to worthy receivers. It is the Westminster Confession that says one of the things signified by baptism is regeneration. It the Westminster Confession that says the things signified by baptism (among which we include regeneration) are really exhibited and conferred by baptism at the time of the effectual call. So fine. Don’t use the language of baptismal regeneration if you don’t want to. I don’t want to either. That is not a problem. But it is a problem when you reluctance to use that language yourself prevents you from reading a seventeenth century document in its historical setting.”
Exhibited and Conferred
“I got accused of holding to baptismal regeneration, and a bunch of other unflattering things, but a number of hostile Injuns who had the warpaint on, and who were wearing the Westminster Confession of Faith as a ceremonial headdress, feathers and all. Without me having used this kind of language provocatively (for obvious reasons of prudence), I was accused of holding to the substance of baptismal regeneration by men who did not know the history of their own confessions. Because of their compromises with the American baptistic ethos, they had institutionalized a number of ‘workarounds’ to the language of their own confession and baptismal formulae.”
Book of the Month/January 2024
Apologies for the delay in getting to this. Life keeps happening, and my days fill up with excuses. This month’s selection is a delightful little book called Rabbit. It is by one Charles Higgins (a pen name, so don’t hunt around for a Facebook page), and it recounts a number of adventures/mishaps involving a monosyllabic …