Posted on 01/27/2008 7:56:14 PM PST by Manfred the Wonder Dawg
January 25, 2008
ESV Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
In recent days I have spent time in Lima and Sullana Peru and Mexico City and I have discovered that people by nature are the same. Man has a heart that is inclined to selfishness and idolatry. Sin abounds in the remotest parts of the land because the heart is desperately wicked. Thousands bow before statues of Mary and pray to her hoping for answers. I have seen these people stare hopelessly at Mary icons, Jesus icons, and a host of dead saints who will do nothing for them. I have talked with people who pray to the pope and say that they love him. I talked with one lady who said that she knew that Jesus was the Savior, but she loved the pope. Thousands bow before Santa Muerte (holy death angel) in hopes that she will do whatever they ask her. I have seen people bring money, burning cigarettes, beer, whiskey, chocolate, plants, and flowers to Santa Muerte in hopes of her answers. I have seen these people bowing on their knees on the concrete in the middle of public places to worship their idol. Millions of people come into the Basilica in Mexico City and pay their money, confess their sins, and stare hopelessly at relics in hope that their sins will be pardoned. In America countless thousands are chained to baseball games, football games, material possessions, and whatever else their heart of idols can produce to worship.
My heart has broken in these last weeks because the God of heaven is not honored as he ought to be honored. People worship the things that are created rather than worshiping the Creator. God has been gracious to all mankind and yet mankind has hardened their hearts against a loving God. God brings the rain on the just and unjust. God brings the beautiful sunrises and sunsets upon the just and unjust. God gives good gifts unto all and above all things he has given his Son that those who would believe in him would be saved. However, man has taken the good things of God and perverted them unto idols and turned their attention away from God. I get a feel for Jesus as he overlooked Jerusalem or Paul as he beseeched for God to save Israel. When you accept the reality of the truth of the glory of God is breaks your heart that people would turn away from the great and awesome God of heaven to serve lesser things. Moses was outraged by the golden calf, the prophets passionately preached against idolatry, Jesus was angered that the temple was changed in an idolatrous business, and Paul preached to the idolaters of Mars Hill by telling them of the unknown God.
I arrived back at home wondering how I should respond to all the idolatry that I have beheld in these last three weeks. I wondered how our church here in the states should respond to all of the idolatry in the world. What are the options? First, I suppose we could sit around and hope that people chose to get their life together and stop being idolaters. However, I do not know how that could ever happen apart from them hearing the truth. Second, I suppose we could spend a lifetime studying cultural issues and customs in hope that we could somehow learn to relate to the people of other countries. However, the bible is quite clear that all men are the same. Men are dead in sin, shaped in iniquity, and by nature are the enemies of God. Thirdly, we could pay other people or other agencies to go and do a work for us while we remain comfortably in the states. However, there is no way to insure that there will be doctrinal accuracy or integrity. If we only pay other people to take the gospel we will miss out on all of the benefits of being obedient to the mission of God. Lastly, we could seek where God would have us to do a lasting work and then invest our lives there for the glory of God. The gospel has the power to raise the dead in any culture and we must be willing to take the gospel wherever God would have us take it. It is for sure that our church cannot go to every country and reach every people group, so we must determine where God would have us work and seek to be obedient wherever that is.
It seems that some doors are opening in the Spanish speaking countries below us and perhaps God is beginning to reveal where we are to work. There are some options for work to be partnered with in Peru and there could be a couple of options in Mexico. The need is greater than I can express upon this paper for a biblical gospel to be proclaimed in Peru and Mexico. Oh, that God would glorify his great name in Peru and Mexico by using a small little church in a town that does not exist to proclaim his great gospel amongst a people who desperately need the truth.
I give thanks to the LORD for allowing me the privilege of going to these countries and broadening my horizons. The things that I have seen will be forever engraved upon my heart. I will long remember the pastors that I spent time with in Peru and I will never forget Adolfo who translated for me in Mexico. I will relish the time that I spent with Paul Washer and the others. When I think of church I will forever remember being on top of that mountain in Sullana at that church which had no electricity and no roof. I am convinced that heaven was looking down on that little church on top of that mountain and very few people on earth even know that it exist. Oh, God I pray that the things of this world will continue to grow dim and that God’s people will be caught up in his glorious presence.
Because of the truth: Pastor: J. Randall Easter II Timothy 2:19 "Our God is in heaven and does whatever He pleases."(Ps. 115:3) "He predestined us according to the good pleasure of His will."(Eph. 1:5) Those who have been saved have been saved for His glory and they are being made holy for this is the will of God. Are you being made holy? Spurgeon says, "If your religion does not make you holy it will damn you to hell."
By your own standards you cannot possibly know this. You are merely assuming whatever you want to assume. Do you have anything to back this up? How do you know that Moses and Joshua and David and the rest of them were not reporting what they saw, but you believe that the Gospels were "factual" reporting? You can't prove that.
I tend to agree with your position, although since God the Holy Spirit, in this age, always glorifies the Son, I suspect the identity of the person providing the epistles is not sourced in the Son, as much as it is in the Spirit.
Amen, Dr. E.!! Excellent post. I can't imagine what my faith would be like if I thought that I or other humans were the boss. A very dismal prospect.
And glory be to God for showing us that He does not change and the God of the OT is exactly the same as the God of the NT.
To God be the glory!
You are correct that it is the “ministry” (if you will) of the Spirit to speak of and glorify the Son, not Himself.
AMEN.
What they "saw" and "heard" was not a physical, inarnate God, FK. Now, you can believe whatever you want, but Christians believe no one has seen God in person except in Christ. The beauty of the Gospels as a witness is that more than one person saw and heard Him.
This is not the case with the OT, where God is revealed to specific individuals in a mysterious way through visions, dreams even hallucinations.
No, FK, we are having a lawyer moment here. :) What the OT says is "any work" (on more than one occasion and by more than one author), which really leaves no wiggle room, and we are looking (hopelessly I might add) for a legal "loophole" in order not to admit that Christ disputes Moses on this.
***What they “saw” and “heard” was not a physical, inarnate God, FK. Now, you can believe whatever you want, but Christians believe no one has seen God in person except in Christ. The beauty of the Gospels as a witness is that more than one person saw and heard Him.
This is not the case with the OT, where God is revealed to specific individuals in a mysterious way through visions, dreams even hallucinations.***
Well spoken.
Exodus 33:
17
The LORD said to Moses, “This request, too, which you have just made, I will carry out, because you have found favor with me and you are my intimate friend.”
18
Then Moses said, “Do let me see your glory!”
19
He answered, “I will make all my beauty pass before you, and in your presence I will pronounce my name, ‘LORD’; I who show favors to whom I will, I who grant mercy to whom I will.
20
But my face you cannot see, for no man sees me and still lives.
21
Here,” continued the LORD, “is a place near me where you shall station yourself on the rock.
22
When my glory passes I will set you in the hollow of the rock and will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.
23
3 Then I will remove my hand, so that you may see my back; but my face is not to be seen.”
Colossians 1:
13
He delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,
14
in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
15
6 He is the image 7 of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
1 Timothy 1:
17
To the king of ages, 8 incorruptible, invisible, the only God, honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
1 John 4:
12
No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us.
Those who have ‘seen’ God have seen the shape, shadow, image, what have you, that God has shaped for us to see.
We cannot ‘see’ God as He is. Our human bounds will not permit it.
Through the Gospels, we lose some of the Hebrew OT misinterpretation of God, FK, i.e. reject "eye for an eye" (proportional justice) and do not return evil for evil, or "love your enemy" and do not hate him (as the OT says), and be merciful so that you too can ask for mercy, etc.
Sure there is Christ-like God all over the OT, but He is hidden and can be found only through the prism of God witnessed in the Gospels.
Which is precisely the reason Christ instituted His Church, lest we fall into misinterpretation and stray from Christian teachings.
Those sects that try to stuff Christ into the mold of the OT God are diminishing Christ's full divine revelation and are making Christ conform to that which He redefined and reinterpreted correctly.
The purpose of the Church is to guard against such misinterpretations by holding on to the tradition passed on by the Apostles, which has been safeguarded for 2,000years by One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
But the Apostolic Church condemns your personal view of the scriptures. The Apostolic Church holds that the scriptures are Holy, and you do not. Your true Bible is only a few pages long
You have a remarkably short memory, FK. Not so long ago I posted the official position of the Orthodox Church on the Scriptures, and this was actually my third such post.
Thank you, Mark, for showing supporting biblical verses.
Everything before were mere foreshadowing of what was to come. In the eyes of the Protestant world, mostly the Reformed, the Gospels are but a small cog in the big wheel that completes the 360 degrees needed for a full circle.
Without the Gospels, there is no Christianity, that much is certain, and the writings of Paul and Peter would be in vain.
The teachings of every major church in Christianity, including your own, must be thrown out to hold this view
The Eastern Orthodox Church has a very clear teaching on what the Bible is and I have posted it to you specifically on more than one occasion.
FK: Christ was not a salesman. The predestined elect were always going to be saved, and the lost will always be lost. Christ completed the revelation God wanted us to have.
Kosta: That's nonsense, with all due respect, FK. Then what was His preaching all about? He never said what you wrote above.
FK: Jesus said this: Matt 5:17-18 : 17 "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.
F:: That is what I said above. As far as the predestination, Jesus speaks of never losing one that the Father has previously given Him.
Well, He said on the Cross "It is accomplished." If He spoke if God's revelation then all subsequent revelations (i.e. Paul, John of Patmos, etc.) were false. He was speaking of God's economy of our salvation. Christ fulfilled the task by dying for our sins so that we may be free again to choose God and live, and not be subject to death's hold. Two different things.
And when His mission was accomplished, the full revelation of God's message was made known, the humanity was saved, and the New Covenant was established, which—as The Book of Hebrews reminds us—made the Old Covenant obsolete.
***Thank you, Mark, for showing supporting biblical verses.***
I pray that it will not be as inconsequential as it has been on some other threads. Entire swathes of the Bible are dismissed out of hand either with or without comment. Unrelated verse are then produced in order to counter the Scriptural arguement that we are putting forth.
However, we are directed to bear witness the best we can.
Yeah, hidden all over the Psalms. Can't find it anywhere.
***The purpose of the Church is to guard against such misinterpretations by holding on to the tradition passed on by the Apostles, which has been safeguarded for 2,000years by One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.***
Holding on to the traditions of the Apostles, but ignoring, forgetting, and generally disregarding the WRITINGS of the Apostles. You disavow the writings of Paul and Peter and the epistles of John as either secondary, or, lately, hallucinatory
***Holding on to the traditions of the Apostles, but ignoring, forgetting, and generally disregarding the WRITINGS of the Apostles. You disavow the writings of Paul and Peter and the epistles of John as either secondary, or, lately, hallucinatory***
Hi Irish, long time no debate.
I posted a few articles ago about the Scripture that has God saying that humans cannot see Him as He is or they will be destroyed. Christ is the human face of God; all other apparitions are what He chose to show us so that those who saw any aspect of Him would not die.
The writings are not dismissed. The interpretation of those writing are what is in question.
Yes, psalmology is the most used part of the OT in the Orthodox Church. Lots of Christ-like God there, but also mixed with OT misconceptions, often in one and the same psalm.
Holding on to the traditions of the Apostles, but ignoring, forgetting, and generally disregarding the WRITINGS of the Apostles. You disavow the writings of Paul and Peter and the epistles of John as either secondary, or, lately, hallucinatory
I do not disavow the wrtings of the Apostles. I just don't consider the copies of the copies attributed to them to be "infallible." I also do not dismiss the reality with which the Apostles were faced in the firts century AD, and the task they had to accomplish to save the Church. They did their work in good faith to save the Church from certain destruction.
Yes, Revelation and some of the dreams and "trans" states described in the NT and OT border on hallucinations. Just as some stories (i.e. Jonah) sound like a fairytale with a moral twist.
Vis-a-vis the blessed Apostles: we all individually make mistakes and the Apostles admit they did too. The Church, however, is immune from error in a collective sense. The Church will not fail, even if its individual members do.
So, while some succumbed to Gnosticism and Arianism, others held the orthodox line. While some bought into inconoclasty, others didn't. Some fell for the Protestant error while most of us didn't.
There will always be those who will individually or in groups fail, but the Church will remain steadfast as it did until this day.
OK, your first statement is perfectly accurate. But, the conclusion doesn't follow. I think we get into dangerous territory when we start assuming what God's motives and purposes are when they are not explicitly stated. That is especially so when common sense doesn't even give a clear answer. In no way does common sense call for God creating satan because He was impotent in power, and so He NEEDED satan. That makes no sense to me. God in His sovereignty obviously decided that this is the existence that He wanted us to have, and that includes the role that satan plays.
In other words, is this the best the Reformed God can come up with?
Yes, this is the best God can come up with to accomplish God's wishes. Our assent or agreement is neither asked for nor required. If you believe God has chosen poorly, then you can take it up with Him. :)
Surely you don't presume God does anything that He doesn't deem absolutely necessary and that what happens is the best possible choice He will come up with.
Yes, but I don't frame it as putting God in a box with only one choice. As you have pointed out God does have choices. Common sense tells me that the choices He makes are the BEST ones in order to accomplish His overall plan.
So, yes, according to this mindset, the Reformed God created the world with evil as a, no pun intended, being a necessary evil.
That is perfectly fair as long as it doesn't mean that God is the author of evil. God created the circumstances such that evil would occur, but He did not instill evil into any being.
Kosta: Now you are telling me that God absolutely hates this absolutely needed accomplisher of God's "plan" and that, in fact, God created His own enemy" not only to use but also to hate!
FK: LOL! OK, from now on I will consider the Orthodox God as a satan lover. I will also assume that the Orthodox version of Christ died on the cross FOR SATAN!!!
Kosta: Where are you getting this from?
From your post. What else could you possibly mean but that God loves satan if you are criticizing me for saying that satan is God's enemy?
Who said anything about God loving Satan? You called Satan God's enemy. Well, God didn't create His enemy so He can hate him.
He knowingly created what would become His enemy. I'll let you say it in your own words, how does God see satan today? Does He love satan, does He hate satan, or is He indifferent?
Wait, is this the same God who sends "perverse spirits?" You call that Christian?
YES and YES! The Bible is filled with examples of God using the lost to accomplish His plan. The only way around these many many passages is to disregard them.
The potential for [satan's] evil was his free will, which the Reformed deny. We choose our own perdition by rejecting God.
What do we deny? God created some angels knowing they would always remain loyal to Him. He created other angels knowing they would break away. He could have created all of one kind or the other, or no angels at all. He created what He wanted. From satan's POV he chose, even though all was predestined by God. It is the same with people, so we would agree that (in most cases at least) people choose their own perdition by rejecting God.
I infer from this:
Matt 5:27-28 : 27 "You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Presumably, going ahead with intercourse would qualify as committing adultery with the body. :) It seems reasonable to me that Jesus is talking about any sex between any man and any woman who are not married to each other.
Then we agree that any (unrepentant) sin leads to "death" in a sense that it will result in eternal separation from God?
Yes, assuming that there remains no atonement for that sin.
And that means, in the eyes of God, one sin is no different than another.
For that purpose, YES. Since Christ atoned for all sins of the elect, we can also discuss that committing one sin three times is worse than committing the same sin once because the Bible teaches that we should NEVER sin, and that every commission of every sin is an offense against God. While salvation may not be at issue, punishment and discipline certainly are. The regenerated mind should not want to habitually sin because the regenerated mind wants to please God.
The murder [of Uriah] was an after thought, and a separate sin. If she did not conceive, he would probably not have murdered her husband, and still get away with adultery.
OK, I agree with that. I thought you were trying to say that the murder didn't really matter if David just wrapped everything up into the sin of adultery and confessed only adultery.
Thank you for the kind words, and I agree with your above completely. The Epistles amplified the Gospels and showed us how to look at them. Not a single wasted word.
ALL of the Gospel records (Matthew through John) are true, but they are not ALL the truth. There is subsequent revelation -— the pinnacle got even higher.
Well said. And there is prior revelation too in the OT that the Gospels don't repeat in toto. It doesn't make it any less true. We should treat the OT as Jesus did.
So what if it wasn't a physical and incarnate God in the OT? Is that the only way you believe God can or chose to communicate with us? If so, then you do not believe in an indwelling Holy Spirit.
The beauty of the Gospels as a witness is that more than one person saw and heard Him.
You yourself have pointed out that there are several passages in the Gospels in which there could have been no other direct witnesses, such as His trials in the desert and when He prayed to take the cup away. Yet, (I hope :) you accept those as true. The scriptures are authenticated by GOD, not by how many humans were around to vouch for them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.