Evangelism and Missions in the Family Intergated Church
Voddie Baucham
Answering Objections to Uniting Church and Family
Voddie Baucham
"Those who hold the material-energy, chance concept of reality, whether they are Marxist or non-Marxist, not only do not know the truth of the final reality, God, they do not know who Man is. Their concept of Man is what Man is not, just as their concept of the final reality is what final reality is not. Since their concept of Man is mistaken, their concept of society and of law is mistaken, and they have no sufficient base for either society or law.
They have reduced Man to even less than his natural finiteness by seeing him only as a complex arrangement of molecules, made complex by blind chance. Instead of seeing him as something great who is significant even in his sinning, they see Man in his essence only as an intrinsically competitive animal, that has no other basic operating principle than natural selection brought about by the strongest, the fittest, ending on top. And they see Man as acting in this way both individually and collectively as society.
Even on the basis of Man's finiteness having people swear in court in the name of humanity, as some have advocated, saying something like, "We pledge our honor before all mankind" would be insufficient enough. But reduced to the materialistic view of Man, it is even less. Although many nice words may be used, in reality law constituted on this basis can only mean brute force."
From:
A Christian Manifesto: 25th Anniversary Edition | Scottish Puritans: Select Biographies (2 volume set) By Banner Of Truth |
 | They Were Pilgrims By Marcus L. Loane / Banner Of Truth CBD Says: "They Were Pilgrims is the story of four remarkable men who shared a common spiritual aim and ideal. They were David Brainerd, Henry Martyn, Robert Murray M'Cheyne, and Ion Keith-Falconer. Their average life-span was only thirty years, but they left a spiritual impact on their generation which was altogether out of the ordinary. Their lives covered the period of history from 1718 to 1887. A clear line of spiritual descent can be traced from David Brainerd to Henry Martyn, from Brainerd and Martyn to Robert Murray M'Cheyne, and from Martyn to Ion Keith-Falconer. They were all linked to the missionary movement which had its birth in the great spiritual awakening of the eighteenth century. They were pioneers in this missionary movement: Brainerd with the Native North Americans, M'Cheyne with the Jews of Palestine and Central Europe, Martyn and Keith-Falconer in the Muslim world of Persia and Arabia. Their contribution to missionary work would be enough in itself to invest their lives with outstanding interest. But the greatest single feature in their lives was their unqualified self-surrender to the claims of God. This book tries to pull up the blinds so that readers can see through the window and can trace the inner spiritual development of these exemplary Christians. It is the freshness and clarity of this record of personal devotion which makes the story of their pilgrimage so relevant for the whole-hearted disciple of Christ today" |
Antarctic ice is growing, not melting away
According to this article at news.com.au ice on the eastern side of
This news prompted my 15 year old son to speculate on the next cockamamie dooms day scare; global tipping. Perhaps we’ll have to take all the fat people (who, by the way, are causing global warming according to another news story) and move them west to
A Post, Post Preface
After listening to a great many Christians trying to prove that God exists to the “new atheists” crowd I started writing a series of articles on why we do not need to prove that God exists. But I should have prefaced these articles with a few clarifying thoughts on my part. So this is my post, post preface I guess.
I don’t want to be misconstrued as saying that there is no place for “proofs” of Gods existence. There are many “proofs” of Gods existence and we ought to be familiar with them. They are a good way to strengthen the faith of Gods children and we ought to be able to explain them to those who are sincerely seeking some answers to the many questions raised by the unbelievers around us. If we can take some stumbling blocks out the unbeliever’s way then by all means let’s do it. But, we should never do so out of the context of the fact that all men do know that God exists deep down in their hearts and that this is at the very root of their sinfulness; in the light of this knowledge they have chosen to avoid that God and be a law to themselves. If we do not make this fact clear somewhere along the way then we are simply inviting men to sit in judgment of God and that is always unacceptable.
This fact especially needs to be brought to the fore when dealing with those of a haughty, arrogant attitude who are merely out to mock and ridicule Christianity and could care less about facts. They know that they are wrong. Offering a thousand “proofs” to such people will not change anything, there is always someway to get around these facts to someone who is pre-committed to any amount of foolishness in order to avoid them. But what they can not avoid is the condemning voice of their conscience when we expose the fact that deep down in their hearts they know that what they are saying is not true and that they are rebels living in rebellion against this God. And while this will almost always make them very angry, this is exactly what they need to hear most. Their anger is simply a further proof of Gods veracity; men hate the light because their deeds are evil (John 3:19,20).
So when I say that we do not need to prove Gods existence, what I mean is that “proving” should never be our objective, men already know it. Their problem is not an intellectual problem, it is a moral problem and they look for “intellectual” problems to hide behind. Whenever we start arguing for the evidence of Gods existence apart from the fact that men know Him, know His Law and are living in rebellion against Him we have completely missed the gospel message which calls on mankind to repent of their rebellion and submit their minds to His revealed Word at the very outset and foundations of their thinking concerning everything.
“…many Christians do not mean what I mean when I say Christianity is true, or Truth. They are Christians and they believe in, let us say, the truth of creation, the truth of the virgin birth, the truth of Christ's miracles, Christ's substitutionary death, and His coming again. But they stop there with these and other individual truths.
When I say Christianity is true I mean it is true tototal reality—the total of what is, beginning with the central reality, the objective existence of the personal-infinite God. Christianity is not just a series of truths but Truth—Truth about all of reality. And the holding to that Truth intellectually—and then in some poor way living upon that Truth, the Truth of what is— brings forth not only certain personal results, but also governmental and legal results.
Now let's go over to the other side—to those who hold the materialistic final reality concept. They saw the complete and total difference between the two positions more quickly than Christians. There were the Huxleys, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), and many others who understood a long time ago that there are two total concepts of reality and that it was one total reality against the other and not just a set of isolated and separated differences. The Humanist Manifesto I, published in 1933, showed with crystal clarity their comprehension of the totality of what is involved. It was to our shame that Julian (1887-1975) and Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), and the others like them, understood much earlier than Christians that these two world views are two total concepts of reality standing in antithesis to each other. We should be utterly ashamed that this is the fact.
They understood not only that there were two totally different concepts but that they would bring forth two totally different conclusions, both for individuals and for society. What we must understand is that the two world views really do bring forth with inevitable certainty not only personal differences, but also total differences in regard to society, government, and law.
There is no way to mix these two total world views. They are separate entities that cannot be synthesized. Yet we must say that liberal theology, the very essence of it from its beginning, is an attempt to mix the two. Liberal theology tried to bring forth a mixture soon after the Enlightenment and has tried to synthesize these two views right up to our own day. But in each case when the chips are down these liberal theologians have always come down, as naturally as a ship coming into home port, on the side of the nonreligious humanist. They do this with certainty because what their liberal theology really is is humanism expressed in theological terms instead of philosophic or other terms.”
From:
A Christian Manifesto: 25th Anniversary EditionSpeaking of Lex Rex, I found a copy of A Christian Manifesto by Francis A. Schaeffer at a library book sale for just $.25. What a steal! I'm ashamed to say it but I really haven't read much of Schaeffer but this little book looks really good. In the dedication he makes the following mention of Samuel Rutherford's Lex Rex mentioned a couple of posts ago:
"To all those who have said: "Here I stand" facing oppressive authoritarian civil and church power.
There were Peter and John who said to the Sanhe-drin: "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God." (Acts 4:19)
There were the Reformers of the sixteenth century when they had to decide whether they were going to obey God or man.
And most of all, to Samuel Rutherford. He has meant much to me for many years, but especially so from the time I began working on the material for the book and films How Should We Then Live? At that time I understood increasingly that Samuel Rutherford's Lex Rex was an important trailmarker for our day. In the times I have spoken at St. Andrews University, the most outstanding thing for me was a feeling that Samuel Rutherford was not far away, that the old Rector was close by, and very contemporary!"
From the Dedication to
A CHRISTIAN MANIFESTO
By Francis A. Schaeffer
A Christian Manifesto: 25th Anniversary Edition
I have no idea what this was all about.
The Life and Diary of David BrainerdPaul warns us in 2 Timothy 3:1 that in the days between Christ’s first coming and His second coming that perilous or dangerous times would come to the church. Matthew uses this same word to describe the demoniac in Matthew chapter 8 when he says that this man was so violent that nobody could pass by that way.
So what exactly will make these times so dangerous for the church? The answer never ceases to amaze me because the answer is the church! What will make things so dangerous for the church? The church will. This passage is talking about those who have a form of godliness (the outward trappings and profession of Christianity) but they deny its power (no inward change brought about by the Spirit of God) (3:5). It’s talking about imposters who deceive and are deceived (3:13) and those who hear sound doctrine (4:3) but turn away from it.
The first “turn” in 2 Timothy 4:4 is active; they do the turning, they don’t want the truth. The second turn in 4:4 is passive, the idea being that as they turn their heads away from the truth something grabs them, as it where, and leads them still further away from the truth. They are given over to believe lies (2 Thessalonians 2:11).
Paul goes on in chapter 4 to tell us that days are coming when these professing Christians gathered in the church will no longer endure sound doctrine and wanting to have their ears tickled they will pile up teachers claiming to speak for God but telling them whatever they want to hear rather than what God says. What an amazingly accurate picture of a vast majority of churches in our day!
There it is, right in front of our eyes, written a couple thousand years ago describing with amazing accuracy a vast majority of churches in our day and those that it is speaking of hardly give it any pause and ever consider that it is speaking of them. Amazing!
They “will be lovers of themselves (they will have high self-esteem), lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” and still gather in the church and still profess to be Christians.
And how should the true child of God respond to these people? Refuse to pass judgment on their behavior because we are all sinners? Love them unconditionally? Invite them to get involved in the church? Not at all, Paul tells us explicitly to turn away from them.
But Jesus tells us to “judge not,” doesn’t He? Yes He does but in the very same passage He tells us not to throw our pearls “before swine” thereby calling on us to judge some men to be swine. He also tells us to "...Judge with righteous judgment." in John 7:24. And in Matthew 18: 15-20 He commands us to judge a professing brothers actions, call on that brother to repent in cases of flagrant sin and if that professing brother refuses he is to be removed from the church until he does.
Likewise, Paul commands us in 1 Corinthians 5: 1-12 to remove the unrepentant sinner from the local body of Christ (the local church) before that persons sin spreads like a cancer through the rest of the body.
Jesus called some men hypocrites, snakes, blind guides, fools, whitewashed tombs and more (Mathew 23 for instance). Paul called some men evil workers, dogs, false apostles and made crude remarks about their meaningless circumcision (Philippians 3:2). John called some men anti-Christs (1 John 3: 18), liars (1 John 2: 4) and children of the Devil (1John 3: 10). In saying these things we are being called to recognize the truthfulness of them and make judgments about them.
So how do we square these things? Is the Bible contradicting itself? Is it telling us in some places to make judgments on other peoples behavior and in other places warning us not to? Not at all, God never contradicts Himself. The answer is fairly simple. We are to use judgment. We are even to judge other men, but it must always be done in great humility, soberness and fear before the face of God knowing that we have the same propensities in our own hearts and if it were not for the grace of God we could just as well commit the same sins.
We must not judge others in contempt (Romans 14: 10) as if we are somehow intrinsically better than them but neither should we refuse to judge others because we too are sinners. Such actions, while pretending great humility, are really the fruit of great arrogance and are themselves a sinful disobedience of the Word of God.
Just as refusing to discipline our children is an act of hatred towards them (Proverbs 13:24) because we are leaving them to error when we could have helped them correct it, refusing to talk to others about their sin is also an act of hatred. Exposing people’s sin is the first step of sharing the good news of the gospel. If people are not brought to recognize their sin they will not seek a savior and if they never find the Savior they will die in their sins and experience the just wrath of God for all eternity. So how can we call it “loving” to refuse to make judgments about the sins of other men? What are we doing but sending them to hell with a warm feeling in their heart and calling it an act of “Love”.
New @ Pol'-e-store
Politics/Government/Law
I heard a man on a talk show the other night insist that the United States of America could not be founded on Christian principles because the Bible does not espouse democracy. He was half right, the Bible does not espouse pure democracy but neither was our country founded as a pure democracy. The
One of the most widely read books at the time of the American Revolution (besides the very Calvinistic
The book is organized into 44 questions and
When all is said and done Rutherford’s arguments basically boil down to this; Scripture teaches us that Government rules by the consent of the people and it doesn’t legitimately just make up law out of thin air but is responsible to administer the Law of God to those under it’s authority. And when that government starts operating outside the Law of God, breaking the Law and harming those under its care those people have legitimate avenues to resist their government and even abolish it and create a new one.
Who can deny that this was the sentiment of the writers of the Declaration of Independence? Just read the second paragraph:
“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, that among these are Life,
I know this flies in the face of the modern notion of many who seem to believe in endless blind submission to a law breaking government but Rutherford’s arguments are entirely Biblical and thoroughly refute such shallow views of the Bible and Government.
Lex Rex is written in the context of a King or monarchy but the application to our own governmental situation isn’t that difficult. I must confess it is some rather difficult reading at many points but for someone who interested in stretching their thinking and understanding in this area it is well worth the difficulties.
Institutes of Biblical Law
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The Geneva Bible: 1560 Edition, hardcover The Bible of the Protestant Reformation By Hendrickson Publishers |
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1599 Geneva Bible, Bonded leather, black By Christian Resources |
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The Forgotten Spurgeon By Iain H. Murray / Banner Of Truth |
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Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography By Iain H. Murray / Banner Of Truth |
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George Whitefield By Arnold Dallimore / Crossway Books & Bibles |
