Happy 11th Birthday Megan!

The Universe is Deflating!

Ron Paul on Mad Money

Huckabee Huckster?

In order to avoid being controversial I've been keeping away from the subject of politics......just joking. In all honesty, I'm ashamed to say it, but I haven't been paying that much attention to politics. From what I've heard from the media it seemed like the same old two-faced compromising nonsense that we see every few years from the same old politicians; a speedy destruction of our country by the Democrats or a possible slightly slower destruction of our country by the Republicans.

But recently I started to pay a little bit of attention, after my dear wife read me a few articles, and I've got to say I really like some of the stuff I've heard from Ron Paul!

Anyway, here's a really good article from Mary Pride concerning Huckabee; a must read for all you home schoolers out there:

Huckabee Not the Best for Homeschoolers

A Tragic Ignorance Part 7

The Churches Tragic Ignorance of Church History Part 7
Some Applications

5. The “No Book but the Bible” crowd is being unbiblical.

While the Bible is always our one and only ultimate authority, the ever popular ideas that “we don’t need commentaries” or slogans such as “no book but the Bible” or “no creed but Christ” are simply unbiblical. While they may give the appearance of honoring the Scriptures, they contradict the wisdom that the Scriptures try to convey to us and dishonor the gifts of Christ to His Church.

While many things in Scripture are plain and straight forward there are many other things that are confusing and difficult to understand (2 Peter 3:16), many things appear to be contradictions at first glance (such as Matthew 12:37, Romans 3:28 and James 2:21) and many other truths seem to be broken in pieces and scattered to the four winds of the Scriptures.

For two thousand years now the Lord of the Church has been sending teachers to his Church to help instruct it. Men who have given much of their lives to studying the Word of god, men who have wrestled and agonized with the truths of Scripture, men who have argued with each other, learned from each other, refined each others thinking and spent a great deal of time hammering out the difficult truths of Scripture.

What an amazing amount of accumulated wealth we have from these men. We have the fruit of hundreds of years of prayer, study and thought in the form of creeds, commentaries and other books! What an advantage this gives us in Christian doctrine and practice! What a waste to push it aside as if it’s not all that important. How arrogant to act as if we don’t need what Christ has given to us!

Such statements and pithy little mottoes only serve to sever the people of God from the historical flow of the Church by making the opinions of godly men seem unimportant, unnecessary or even unbiblical.

Christ gives teachers to His Church (Ephesians 4:11); are we to think that this only refers to those who teach in our own pulpits? Are we to think that this is limited to teachers who happen to live at the same time we do? Of coarse not, Christ has been giving teachers to the Church for two thousand years now, by what right do our modern day teachers get in the pulpit and teach us that we don’t need to learn from all the other teachers that Christ has given us?

The dictatorship of the 51%

Democracy: “The dictatorship of the 51%, with no controls and nothing with which to challenge the majority”

-Francis A. Schaeffer

The Death of Law in America

The computer is still down, so I can't do much with the web site but if I could I would definitely add this audio message by Gary DeMar. A must hear message about the death of Law in America.

• Censoring America's Christian Heritage
  Gary DeMar

What is the Difference?

Q: What is the difference between God and a social worker?
A: God doesn't pretend to be a social worker.

A Tragic Ignorance Part 6

The Churches Tragic Ignorance of Church History Part 6
Some Applications

4. If Christ is building His Church and equipping it for good works through, or by means of, the doctrinal understanding of the teachings of the prophets and Apostles; then the distain for doctrinal thinking in many parts of the Church is spiritual suicide and self-destruction.

The truths of Scripture are addressed first of all to our minds (we study it) and then we are to put it into practice (we do it). We cannot skip the doctrinal and move on to the practical or our practice will be uninformed and unbiblical. The Word of God, the doctrines of Scripture, give us our building material and tell us how we are to use it; the Kingdom of God grows as we follow these instructions. Despising doctrinal study and understanding is equivalent to throwing out our blueprints and instructions; it must of necessity have a negative effect upon the Church.

Many in the church these days are telling us that doctrinal matters are unimportant and in some cases even harmful, but the foolishness of such statements is quickly seen if the statements themselves are simply given a little thought. “Doctrines” is simply another way to say “teachings” and those who teach such things are teaching us that we don’t need “teachings”; now what kind of nonsense is that?

The same may be said of those who tell us that theology is unimportant. “Theology” is simply the putting together of thoughts about God. The idea that theology is unimportant is itself a way of thinking about God; a theological thought. Those who tell us theology is unimportant are simply telling us that what they have to say is unimportant, and in this instance we would do well to agree with them.

Evangelism

It was the very end of 1994 or very, very early 1995. I was sitting in a pew at Indian Hills Community Church in Lincoln Nebraska when the pastor preached an excellent sermon challenging us to share the gospel more in the up coming year. Though I’ve moved away from Nebraska and moved on from Indian Hills, I remember that sermon every year about this time.

A friend and I (we worked together at the time) took the message to heart and began praying that the Lord would allow us to share the gospel with at least one person each week of the year and the Lord always seemed to answered this prayer (sometimes in some rather strange ways).

As I kept this prayer request in mind I found myself constantly looking for that person. I began keeping track of everyone that I that I spoke with about spiritual things and often jotted a little note of what we spoke about. While I didn’t share the gospel with a different person every single week, the Lord opened many doors of ministry to me that year and I frequently got to speak to many more than one person. When the year was over I had personally shared the gospel with hundreds of different people, it averaged out to a little over one different person a day.

While I haven’t been so faithful at keeping track of those who I’ve shared the gospel with over the years, I usually think about it at the beginning of each year and start keeping track again, for a while at least. I now have a small booklet full of names and dates and occasionally something about our conversation.

I have personally found this practice helps keep me focused on the subject of evangelism and always looking for the next person to speak with about eternal matters, not to mention, it’s always interesting to go back and look at the booklet every now and then. I would highly recommend it to everybody.

The agony of defeat and the thrill of victory

Michael getting whupped (again) by Uncle Kevin "Bucktooth" at a game of Connect Four.

Michael shouting in victory as he finally beats Uncle Kevin "Bucktooth" at a game of Connect Four.

A Tragic Ignorance Part 5

The Churches Tragic Ignorance of Church History Part 5
Some Applications

3. The doctrinal understanding of ages past provides us with a reference point which lies outside of the cultural surroundings in which we find ourselves immersed.

As one writer put it; modern Evangelicalism is a thousand miles wide and a half an inch deep. It is very shallow, and yet it has no idea just how shallow it really is because it has no reference point by which to measure its self. For the most part the modern Evangelical Church has no concept of the ground that it has lost because it has no idea of where the Church has been in the past.

A brief survey of some of the Churches writings from ages past would quickly reveal the degree to which we have departed from a Biblically thoughtful and deeply experiential religion. We tend to think that our generation is surely the greatest and that we have reached the mountain peaks of Biblical understanding and insight, but truth be known, if we would simply look at where we have come from we would see that we are now in a dark shadowy valley of arrogant self-centeredness with little understanding of where we have come from and often times no vision of where we should be going.

As new generations of Christians arise out of the culture, they often tend to think in terms of the paradigms of the culture in which they have come out of; such a historical myopia only helps to retard the progress of the Church in shedding its worldly thinking and practices. History is a mirror of sorts by which the modern Church could measure and judge it’s own reflection and perhaps escape some of the unbiblical cultural iinfluences that continue to cling to us, but we must pick the mirror up and look deeply into it.

A Hard Day

It isn't easy being four.

A Tragic Ignorance Part 4

The Churches Tragic Ignorance of Church History Part 4
Some Applications

2. If we as Christians remain willful ignorant of the works of Christ in church history and historical theology we cannot obey the scriptures.

In 1 Corinthians 10:1-12 we are told twice that the things that happen in history happen as an example for us:

“Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted.
Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.
Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.
Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents.
Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer.
Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.”

1 Corinthians 10:6-11

The history of the people of God gives us examples to be followed and examples to be avoided both in practice and doctrine, an ignorance of both history and theology leave us unable to do either. History, both in practice and theology, is a means which God has graciously given to us to help us avoid errors of the past that displease Him and arouse us to follow examples of the past that do please Him. We are fools indeed to ignore this help to our sanctification.

We hurt ourselves a great deal when we ignore a help and a means that God has given unto us for our growth and progress in the faith, but we hardly just hurt ourselves alone. We all have spheres of influence in which we live and exist and there are probably many around us who would benefit from our own growth in the grace of the Lord. The Church especially is a body and the grace (or lack of) in one life will undoubtedly rub off and affect the other parts. Both in the Church and in the rest of life we cannot escape having an effect, for good or evil, on those around us.

Foremost in this concern should be our own families! Psalm 78 commands us to relate the works of the Lord to our children that they might “set their hope in God, and not forget the works of the Lord, but keep His commandments.”

"We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done.
For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children:
That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children:
That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments:
And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not stedfast with God."

Psalm 78:5-7

Do you love your children? Do you desire their conversion? Do you want them to “set their hope in God” and “keep His commandments”? Do you want them to grow up to pass on the testimony of the Lord to their children and their children’s children? Then study the works of God, learn its lessons, apply them to your own life and share them with your children.

A Tragic Ignorance Part 3

The Churches Tragic Ignorance of Church History Part 3
Some Applications

From this simple and basic truth come many profound implications and applications and it is my desire to simply draw out a few of them, the ignorance of which seems to be causing numerous troubles in the church today.

1. If we are ignorant of Church history and historical theology, we are ignorant of the great and mighty work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

The Church is the magnificent and glorious bride of Christ. It is His central and greatest work; the building He has been constructing for many a year now. It is the work of His hands, the apple of His eye, His new creation.

There are not two people of God as some would have us to believe, but only one; the Church! You are either in Adam or in Christ (Romans 5:12-21, 1 Corinthians 15:22). Christ gave himself for the church (Ephesians 5:25) and you are either one of those for whom he died or you are lost, there is no tertian quid, no third group to be a part of. It is through the Church that Christ will receive glory “throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:21)

Christ is not disinterested in His church nor unconcerned about its history, growth and progress; for us to be uninterested in and willfully ignorant of Church History and historical theology is therefore completely un-Christ-like.

World View

While work, continuing education, an injury and the final crash of our four and a half year old motherboard have kept me from doing very much with the website and blog for the past couple of weeks, I’m planning on adding a World View page to Polemos when I get the opportunity. Anyway, here are a couple of good audio messages by Gary DeMar I plan to link to when I get the chance.

• The Effect of the 60s on Today
  Gary DeMar
• Worldview of UFOs
  Gary DeMar

A Tragic Ignorance Part 2

The Churches Tragic Ignorance of Church History Part 2

Ephesians 1:20 speaks of the Church being “built” upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets. Is Paul speaking in numerical terms here? Does he mean that God saved the Apostles and prophets first and then the rest of the church? Of coarse not! When Paul speaks about the Church being built upon the Apostles and prophets he is speaking of the Church being built upon the Word of God as it has been revealed through them. It is the Word of God that saves, gathers, governs, directs and leads the Church; it is the foundation and it keeps the building from shifting.

Think about it, nothing could known about God if He had not revealed it too us. The triune nature of God, His hatred of sin, His mercy towards sinners, His love for His children, the possibility of redemption, His will for the Church and an infinite number of other things are revealed to us now by words in the Scriptures. We would know none of them for sure by feelings, impressions or by human ingenuity, but we do know them through the revelation given to us by the prophets and Apostles.

The prophets and Apostles left us a written revelation of all that God wanted to reveal to us. When we study these words and how they relate to the words around them, when we study how these words form sentences and paragraphs, when we study the thoughts and ideas contained in them and how these thoughts and ideas relate to the rest of the Scriptures and apply to us; we are learning the very thoughts and will of God.

We learn the will of God through studying the teachings, or literally the doctrines, of the Apostles and prophets. So when Christ speaks about building His Church upon the Apostles and prophets, He is speaking of conforming His Church to their teachings and doctrines. He is speaking of building the Church in terms of its doctrinal understanding; not simply for the sake of knowing certain facts, but that we might change our lives to conform to those facts. We learn the doctrines or teaching of Scripture

“For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:…”

Ephesians 4:12-15

Once again, if we will but pay a little attention to church history that is exactly what we find; the Lord Jesus Christ slowly building up His Church in terms of its doctrinal understanding.

Christ gave teachers to the Church (Ephesians 4:11) to explain the truths of God to the people of God. Others learned from them and built upon what they had learned from those before them. Still others came along and built upon those, or perhaps corrected some of the errors of those who went before them. Thus we have in Church history a constant building and correcting, correcting and building; sometimes taking many men, many, many years to hammer out the truth of a matter.

But even though progress has been slow sometimes and sometimes seemingly non-existent or even backwards; there has been, none-the-less, a constant flow and progression of doctrinal understanding streaming through the midst of the true Church of Jesus Christ for the last 2000 years. For all these many years the Lord of the Church has been giving the gifts of teachers to the Church in order to build it up in its doctrinal understanding to the end that it might be sanctified (John17:17) and more accurately conformed to the image of the Lord Himself (2 Corinthians 3:18) in order to carry out its appointed mission.

A Tragic Ignorance Part 1

The Churches Tragic Ignorance of Church History Part 1

Jesus told His disciples in Matthew 16:18 that He would “build” His Church and that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it. And if we will but give the subject a little bit of study, that is exactly what we see happen.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is planted in a small group of twelve disciples and slowly begins to spread to a few of their fellow countrymen. Then, on the day of Pentecost, it rushes forth from a little house where some of the disciples are gathered together and converts several thousand Jews. And within a very short time it has spread all over the Roman Empire. It spread so quickly that by around 200 A.D. (only 170 years after the death and resurrection of Christ) Tertullian could write to the pagans of his day;

“We are but of yesterday, and yet we have filled all the places that belong to you- cities, islands, towns, exchanges, the military camps themselves, tribes, town councils, the Palace, the senate, the market-place; we have left you nothing but your temples.”

And despite the fact that wave after wave of violent Roman persecution crashed against the Church and covered it in the blood of the martyrs, the Church continued to spread at an unbelievable rate and plunder the kingdom of Satan. Even as the great Roman Empire fell before the barbarian hordes, many of the barbarians fell before Jesus Christ; and so His Kingdom has continued to spread throughout the earth and conquer the nations. Now here we are, 2000 years later and the Gospel message has encircled the globe and there are true Christians here and there all over the earth.

As we follow the Church through history, we certainly see Christ building His Church numerically, but this is not the only way in which we see Christ building His Church. In fact, I’m not convinced that this is even the primary way in which the term is being used.