Judgment

(Tim, w/thanks to Taylor) Vladimir Ladyzhenskiy is dead. It had come down to the final at the World Sauna Championships in Heinola, Finland, last Saturday, and he placed second. But they couldn't give him his prize.

Seconds before he died Ladyzhenskiy was still competing, giving a thumbs up to the medics watching through a window (along with a thousand spectators). The sauna was above boiling--230 degrees fahrenheit, to be exact--but neither Ladyzhenskiy nor five-time champion Timo Kaukonen were willing to lose. The other finalists exited around three minutes and Kaukonen had just three minutes more to wait until Ladyzhenskiy's death crowned him the six-time champion.

When medics entered the sauna...

(Tim, w/thanks to Tenile: One blogger produced a very, very rough transcript of Martin Bashir interviewing Rob Bell and I asked Tenile Victorsen if she'd give us a good one. Here it is. If you find an error, please let us know and we'll correct it. Interspersed in the text are a few comments of my own in black text between brackets, italicized.)

Bashir: One mega church pastor has ignited a theological firestorm by suggesting that our response to the Christian message in this life will not necessarily determine our eternal destiny. In his book Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, Rob Bell says that ultimately all people will be saved, even those who’ve rejected the claims of Christianity. He argues people will eventually be persuaded by God’s love, postmortem, in the life to come. [Note how straighforward Bashir is stating Bell's thesis. As we enter the murkiness of Bell's words, we must remind ourselves of this straighforward warning from God:  "...it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment..." (Hebrews 9:27)] Pastor Rob Bell joins us now. Good afternoon, sir. Before we come to talk about the book, just help us with this tragedy in Japan. Which of these is true? Either God is all-powerful but he doesn’t care about the people of Japan and, therefore, they’re suffering, or he does care about the people of Japan but he’s not all-powerful? Which one is it? [Do we really have to choose between these two, Mr. Bashir?]

Bell: I begin with the belief [Let the listener understand he means no offense to those with a different belief.] that God--when we shed a tear, God sheds a tear. [Hallmark card sentiment, but the scale of the senitment doesn't match the scale of the horror. Pastor Bell trivializes the massive death and destruction of the earthquakes and tsunamis, or the terrible suffering of the Japanese people. Just one tear? Whole cities destroyed and "a tear" for Pastor Bell and "a tear" for God?] So I begin with a divine being [Speaking to the Areopagus surrounded by the pantheon of gods, the Apostle Paul declares: “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth..." (Acts 17:24). Speaking to the world today in the midst of our pantheon of gods, Pastor Bell can't even bring himself to use the definite article to refer to his god. It's not "the God Who is there" but "a divine being."] who is profoundly [Adverbs weaken arguments but strengthen sentiment. Pastor Bell adores adverbs.] empathetic, compassionate and stands in solidarity with us. [Actually, God stands in solidarity only with those who, by faith, are "in Christ" and His Church. Concerning all others, the ax is at the root. Thus note how, by leaving "us" undefined, Pastor Bell denies the distinction between the Church and the world. This denial of distinctions is central to his false prophecies and is a defining prejudice of post-moderns--Pastor Bell's target audience.] Secondly, the dominant story [To speak of the work of redemption recorded in Scripture as a "story" reminds me of what everyone said when the planes took down the World Trade Center on 9/11: "It was just like the movies." The false images of movies helped our mind's eye to see...

A father of the fatherless and a judge for the widows, Is God in His holy habitation. - Psalms 68:5

If Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, what judgment of His wrath must He be preparing in the face of the wholesale slaughter of our little ones? And what does it say about our love for Him that we claim to be His adopted sons, yet are unconcerned for these little ones He loves? Has He not told us He is a Father to the fatherless?

These little ones' blood flows day by day in your own city--just down the block from your church office and almost kitty-corner to the Kroger where you do your grocery shopping. When you're driving your car filled with much-loved children on your way to home school co-op, little babies are being ripped apart inside the brick wall of that building on your left three buildings back from the stop light.

Remember? Your God is a Father to the fatherless.

India's child murders are sex-specific. So many of her little girls have been killed that for every 1,000 boys under age six, there are only 916 girls. Most of them are cut apart while in their mother's womb. Some make it to birth, though, and are starved to death. Little baby girls with toothpicks for arms and everyone knows why...

Is Holiness Possible Today (With a Warning from Esau)

Along with a number of other dear brothers (Ron Scates, Gary LeTourneau, Jim DeCamp, Terry Schlossberg, Ben and John Sheldon), my friend Rev. Marty Radcliffe continues to languish in the heretical PC(USA). Pray for him. Marty was a godly encouragment to me in the work of the ministry back in the early eighties when we both were ordained and served within the PC(USA)'s John Knox Presbytery up in Wisconsin.

Marty just commented under the post, "Death of an eighteen-year-old brother...," that he'd recently listened again to my Dad's final sermon given from the pulpit of College Church in Wheaton a few weeks before he died. After Dad's death, I had three-hundred cassettes of this sermon duplicated and sent them out to many friends.

This is the sort of preaching almost completely absent from the PCA and other conservative Reformed circles today. And it's tragic. Out of fear of being labelled a "pietist" by godless hypocrites who persecute those pursuing the sanctification without which no man will see God...

Lord Christ

Your servant

Martin Luther

said he only had

two days

on his calendar

today

and that day

and that’s

what I want too.

and I want

to live

today 

for

that day. 

- Joe Bayly, "Psalm of Anticipation," Psalms of My Life

(TB: This piece by Dad (Joe Bayly) originally ran in his "Out of My Mind" column in Eternity magazine back in August, 1970. That's three years prior to the slaughter begun in our nation by Roe v Wade.)

Is God concerned with nations, or only individuals? Is the state subject to moral law?

My favorite spot in Washington, D.C., is the Lincoln Memorial. I like to visit it at night.

One Sunday night last May, I walked up the long steps in the warm darkness, and came out into the great open space before that compassionate white stone, the statue of Mr. Lincoln.

Some oddly garbed students, probably left over from the previous day’s demonstration at the Ellipse, stood silent before the statue.

On the left-hand wall, carved in stone, is the Gettysburg Address. I walked over to read it. I remembered how my second grade teacher didn’t believe me when I said that my grandmother shook hands with President Lincoln after he spoke. But she did; she was a little girl who lived just outside Gettysburg.

Then I walked to the opposite wall and read his Second Inaugural Address. The students were there, reading it...

You know, wherever the apostle Paul went, there was a revival or riot. Everywhere I go, they serve tea. - an Anglican cleric

What happens when you attack an idol?

On Friday, April 13th, the college ministry of Clearnote Church sponsored a lecture series on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University called Sexual by Design. Indiana University is a notorious party school in one of the most gay-friendly towns in America. It's also the home of Alfred Kinsey and the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction.

So we invited Pastor Doug Wilson to Bloomington to address God's design for sexuality on campus. We wanted him to join us in our attack on the idols of our community and to aid us in the work of seeing souls saved from eternal destruction. As you can see from the sneak peeks above, chaos ensued.

Doug spoke to a hostile crowd of 350-400 people...

At 7:08 ET on this 31st day of July, 2012, the leading text on the Google news page is from ABC News: "The firestorm ignited last week after Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy said that those who support gay marriage are 'inviting God's judgment on our nation,' is not over."

Indeed, the firestorm is not over, but it's not the firestorm ABC News is fulminating over.

The people of these United States call evil good and good evil. We have hands covered with the blood of our own and our neighbors' unborn babies and elderly parents. Our conferences and megachurches multiply offerings and mission trips. Yet there is no fear of God in our Land.

In just such a time, the prophet Isaiah bore this message...

(TB: On the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I post this sermon preached yesterday, Sunday January 27, 2013, at Clearnote Church, Bloomington.)

* * *

The Lord'€™s Throne Is in Heaven

(For the choir director; a psalm of David.) In the LORD I take refuge; how can you say to my soul, "Flee as a bird to your mountain; for, behold, the wicked bend the bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string to shoot in darkness at the upright in heart. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?" The LORD is in His holy temple; the LORD'€™S throne is in heaven; His eyes behold, His eyelids test the sons of men. The LORD tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates. Upon the wicked He will rain snares; fire and brimstone and burning wind will be the portion of their cup. For the LORD is righteous, He loves righteousness; the upright will behold His face. (Psalm 11:1-7)

Forty years ago this past Tuesday, on January 22nd, 1973, the Supreme Court of these United States issued its infamous ruling, Roe v. Wade, in which the Court declared that a mother's intentional killing of her unborn child was a fundamental right guaranteed under our Constitution. Since that ruling, it has been a commonplace to observe that Roe v. Wade, the Court's repeal of the laws prohibiting abortion on the books of all fifty states, was simply the exercise of raw judicial power with a legal justification based upon a mist and a vapor--€”or as the Court itself might put it, emanations from penumbras.

Our Supreme Court: intentionally conniving at murder...

Since 1973, no one has made a name for himself defending Roe. v. Wade’s history, biology, ethics, logic, or justice; and only a few have been foolish enough to claim this ruling will stand the test of time...