My name is Jim Wilson. I am 88 years old, pastor of Word of Life Church in Moscow. I am Douglas Wilson’s father.
I am not a regular reader of what goes on in this blog. It would take up too much of my time. However, I have a few things I would like to say. Please do not feel that you must comment or reply; I probably would not see it.
I received Christ October 18, 1947, my second year at the U.S. Naval Academy. In basic beliefs in the gospel and in the moral, social, and ethical applications of the gospel, I am in complete agreement with Douglas. (Or I should say, we both are in agreement with the truths in the Bible.)
As far as the basic beliefs of the gospel, I can dogmatically assert that people who are not Christians are not biblically informed, and it often seems that the Christians are only a little bit more literate than the unbelievers.
This post is primarily for the strong dissenters who express themselves on this blog. It may sound like I think you are not Christians. True. You have not said anything that would make me think otherwise. I would be glad to be wrong in this judgment.
With this in mind, I thought I would take advantage of the prevailing ignorance to inform the unbelievers on Blog & Mablog—and remind the believers—of the life eternal and how to get there. My explanation will not be complete. Check it out with your Bible. If you do not have one, let me know, and I will send you one with a reading schedule for it.
Many years ago, I realized that if I were convinced that the world was round, my conviction would not make it round. If I believed that the Earth was flat, that belief did not make it flat. If I did not believe in the law of gravity, my belief would not change the law. If something is true, it is true independent of my belief or anyone else’s belief. What we believe does not make anything true.
This may be obvious to you, but it is not practiced by anyone. Atheists think there is no God because they believe there is no God. And if someone believes in God, his belief does not create God or recreate the God the atheists did away with.
There is a Heaven, and there is a Hell. There is a God, and He is a rewarder of those who seek Him earnestly.
There are only two types of people in the world. They are not men and women, black and white, etc. They are people who are going to Heaven when they die and people who are going to Hell when they die.
These types of people have one thing in common with each other: they are all sinners. If you do not like the word sinners, substitute “bad.” The Bible says, “the soul that sins shall die,” and “the wages of sin is death,” “there is not a just man on the earth who does good and does not sin,” and “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
The person who is going to Hell does not have to do anything wrong to go there. He has already done more than enough.
The one who is going to Heaven has also met the minimum qualification. He is also bad. Romans 5:6: “Christ died for the ungodly.”
You have to be bad to go to Heaven. Who goes to Heaven or Hell is not based on a scale of relative goodness or badness. Since everyone is bad, no one can go to Heaven as is. You must be clean to go to a clean place like Heaven. How do you get clean?
“Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:9-11).
The first two verses describe the dirt that would not allow anyone into the Kingdom. But some of them made it. They were washed, sanctified, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. All of them were dirty, and some of them got washed.
How was this possible? Jesus came to this world so that He could die for the sins of the world. In Heaven, He could not die.
“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Heb. 2:14-15).
apple – tree – gravity … as in, “it don’t fall too far from … .” Thanks for being a godly man and for raising one.
Nice to hear the the unsubstantiated nonsense Old School like I was brought up on without all the apologetic sidetracking. Take note you ‘sophisticated theologians’, that is how to deliver the real essence of it. Washed in the blood. Hell… or not. PM me for spare hand baskets.
Nice to hear how respectful atheism makes people.
Ideas do not deserve respect.
(edit for clarity) Teaching young children that a fiery hell of everlasting punishment awaits them unless they believe in the latest in a long line of gods is an idea worthy of as much disrespect as one can muster.
Yeah, man, life is nothing but sensations and then nothingness. How dare one give eternal hope to stardust!
Now, now. Let’s just pray for randman, old school!????????
The person who wrote this is not an idea.
I was quite serious in my post. It is nice to hear someone just come out with it- I was brought up in THAT church. So much more honest than of all the younger Wilson’s baiting, equivocation, semantic sand traps and rhetorical smokescreens. I still think the ideas (sin, hell, scapegoating, totem worship and salvation) garbage and I don’t care whose 88 year old dad you trot out to repeat them. Still wicked.
I don’t see how you can consider a metaphysical idea wicked. Mistaken, yes, but not wicked–unless you are assuming that a bunch of people sat down and made up an entire religion for the purpose of tormenting the young and weak-minded. If I adopt an atheist viewpoint to critique Christian doctrine, I can see people hoping to appease an angry divinity. How is that belief wicked from your point of view? Was the Greek and Roman belief in all those deities wicked? Or just mistaken? If you could identify a vast majority of Christian leaders as preaching a terrifying truth,… Read more »
Jillybean, the Greek and Romans did not have the intellectual and scientific resources that we do to investigate and verify their claims. We know know what causes waves and tides, war and pestilence. Human belief in a hell and torturing the imaginations of children with that concept is a wicked pursuit (in my opinion) in the face of the information we have available in these modern times. I think ISIS throwing terrified doomed gays off of buildings are assured of their righteousness and the courage of their spiritual convictions. Not wicked? Let’s substitute immoral, awful. wrong. This question of yours… Read more »
So, the wickedness lies, in your opinion, in Christians’ continuing to believe in hell when they have the intellectual and scientific ability to disprove the existence of such a horrible concept. They are wicked because they lack the curiosity to evaluate and reject, as you did, the truth claims of the Christian faith and, even worse, they continue to share that faith with their children. (I don’t think you really need me to point out that the vast majority of believers in any religion whatsoever are not on board with throwing people off buildings; that the violent oppression of others… Read more »
First jilly, as a catholic, you have a different christian viewpoint than these (mostly) reformed calvinists. They probably wouldn’t even consider you ‘saved’. We didn’t in my church. I think to teach a child that there is hell is AWFUL (and no, most fundamentalists do not merely believe it is ‘being separate from god’. They believe it hell. An eternity of of firey torment.) And that satan is real. I would like to respectfully address your post. Before I continue, I would like to say, as always that I enjoy our discussions and none of this is personal. And I… Read more »
Actually Rand, I quite enjoyed the piece and was thinking just like you, how old school, but how sweet that is, how much I miss that, no equivocation, no rhetorical nonsense just the truth and purity of the gospel. How far we have strayed.
But that’s not what ails you Rand, it’s not the message at all, it’s really just the behavior and actions of those within “THAT” church that have offended you. People rob enough from us, don’t let them rob you of your faith too.
Intellect is interesting, but Grace is amazing!
Still, it’s always a good idea to have both, no matter how far anyone might stray from them. ; – )
Me, I don’t view faith as a virtue. I am happy not to have it. When I discarded my faith years ago, it initially felt a bit like that movie the Matrix: its a sometimes hard way to live, but at least it’s real.
Somewhat amusing Rand, those red pills I complain about all the time, say the precise same thing. “Its a sometimes hard way to live, but at least it’s real.” In fact, the Matrix is where they got their very name, they took the “red pill.”
I get a bit distressed when my atheists and my Christians seem to be on the same page, following the same cultural ideologies, named after the same popular movies. If y’all wouldn’t mind wearing tee-shirts or colors or something, that would be lovely.
Yes well, if you want to define ‘real’ here as belief in an intercessory deity requiring no actual evidence then I politely cede the metaphor to you.
Hey Randi. It’s a beautiful day here in New England! (Why am I on the computer?)
Anyway, I say with my smirk, that you do have faith!
Your position is that somehow, rocks, or some other form of matter, turned into people, somehow! You and Christopher Hitchens don’t know exactly how “rocks” (etc.) turned into people, but you have “faith” that they did! ; – )
Hope it’s a nice day out west as well!
A dad, I presume that you have access to a search engine. Try: evolution. UC Berkeley’s site. Happy to discuss with you when and if you read up on the basics. You will understand that rocks didn’t ‘turn into people’.
Still a nice day here Randi, thanks for the ping back! I am being coy here of course, and I know the site says more than just the below, but it still says the following: “All available evidence supports the central conclusions of evolutionary theory, that life on Earth has evolved and that species share common ancestors.” U.C. Berkeley Speaking in gross terms, the Earth, at one point was a big rock, orbiting through space, right? (aka, matter) So isn’t the matter of the Earth, solids, liquids gasses etc., the common ancestor that all life on Earth evolved from? Or… Read more »
We don’t know how life began. But we probably will one day. Until then we can discuss the algorithm that lead us from microbes to the vast array of species that populate our planet. I appreciate you checking out that website. That took some guts. Well done.
Vegetarian tacos and california cab.
Your dinner sounds great!
Highly evolved even!????
RandMan wrote:
RandMan has faith that the atoms in his left hand came from a different star than the atoms in his right hand. This kind of faith apparently gives him access to therapeutic numinous beliefs about his existence.
“Professing to be wise, they became fools … for they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.”
Beside the obvious fact (I guess not to you katecho) that was a quote from another, I am starting to think this is a tech that I haven’t really seen codified out there yet- this apologetic insistence on defining everything as faith. A pretty flimsy katecho. Lacking the craftsmanlike layers of smoke your usual presuppositionalism billows.
Good! You’re starting to see the point! There is none righteous! Rom 3:10, Eccl 7:20. We are all wicked.
Wow.
Theistical vainglory much?
“Theistical vainglory “?????
Really 40′?
More like Theistical fortiutude! ; – )
(And what’s a bit of irony between carbon blobs anyway?)
When we consider that “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”
James 1:17
Everything else is more like undecended atheisticals. ; – )
Touche’?
Yes, it is nice. You will to appreciate it after you meet the Lord.
I went to WSU in the late ‘70’s. There must be hundreds of lost college students over the past 40 years, myself included, who have been steered to the gospel by Jim Wilson.
God Bless you Jim!
Amen.
If God grants me 88 yrs may I be as faithful as you have been
Preach it Pastor Jim!
That’s some old school Awesome Sauce there. Thanks to Doug, and Jim for the guest post. Please come back to post periodically. Every so often!
Sauce “not made with human hands,”! ; – )
Fun Gospel Fact of the Week: In the original biblical language, the name of Moloch, the Canaanite god parents sacrificed their children to, is MLK.
And Cain hated his brother as long as he was Abel.
Mr RandMan preaches about his reason, but as I read his posts here the evidence doesn’t impress me. He wants me to take his reason and science on faith, at least in these posts on Papa Wilson’s gospel. Reason and experiment: if atheism or ignorance were true, then praying in the name of Jesus would never be followed by a miracle (since either there’s no God to do one, or we cannot–absolutely don’t–know), and Jesus having been crucified would’ve stayed dead. But Jesus arose from the dead, and prayers in His Name have been known to result not just in… Read more »
Prayer may actually make things worse.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html
Your article points to the foolishness of believing that science can explain everything.
No it points to an unusual finding: that the group aware that they were being prayed for actually fared no different and possible even worse by a tiny margin.
Well we can say that praying doesn’t force God to take a particular action, and that knowing you are being prayed for doesn’t have a placebo effect.
What theory would you suggest might account for that finding?
I think the author suggested an anxiety on the part of the cardiac patients that knew that they were being prayed for is a possible accounting for why that group were slightly worse off. It was a very slight margin… but interesting.
It only shows that the science is inconclusive, which we predicted all along.
I must say Doug, how often I am impressed by how well you honour your father; not only do you clearly display respect for him, it is obvious that you deeply love him. It is both an encouragement and a challenge.
As to Jim’s books, I highly recommend How to be Free from Bitterness . Buy one for yourself and several to give away. The first essay can be found on the internet if you wish to read it before you buy.
Problems posting links. https://www.amazon.com/Bitterness-Other-Essays-Christian-Relationships/dp/1591280478/
Edit: fixed
Amen.
Dear Jim Wilson,
Thank you for sharing; we can always learn from people who have more life experience than we have :-)
God bless
Edna Davidsen
http://www.OurChristianBook.com
Thanks for this post, Jim and Doug. Praise the Lord for His work among sinners!