Today's Heresy

If there is one common theme that I've noticed in modern Christianity, it is the defamation of and obstinance to intellectualism and supernaturalism.

Even as I write these words the built in reponse may already be brewing; the response welling to the accusation of pride and arrogance. The lesson that I've learned over and over again as I've studied theology is that there are proper ways to think. Likewise, there are improper ways to think and as a result, unless we are wise to the possibility and the implication we will be totally blind to their effect.

The reason I begin with intellectualism is because it represents what our nation, more than ever, requires to understand the scriptures, apart from the Spirits revelation. One of the leading causes of spiritual stupor and gospel deafness is the lack of a pursuit of the scriptures. We see the scriptures as a coffee table emblem, or poetry that can lighten our spirit but not remove our problems; change our perspective but not our plight, gives us hope, but not save us. It's the very sentiment talked about above that leads to that blindness. One of the primary causes of this whole effect is the concept of libertine, or free-will, relative to God.

If I was the enemy and I had the ability to do nothing more than influence you, the first thing I would do is remove your interest in the key to knowledge about God, then when you were suffeciently insulated from it, I would propose a self-sustaining belief system, that, so long as you never look outside of it, seems purposed and completely suffecient to all the causes of the world...having nothing to do with God. This IS Free-Will, compounded by the sin of hardness and arrogance toward God's word - as if they were not as Peter said; ...'the words of life; to whom shall we go?'

You may say, we have free-will...God wants us to freely love him.

I say that you are totally blind to what you're saying. At this exact moment a healthy dose of intellectualism would alleviate frustration, because we could pursue with vigor, the meaning, implication and effect of all of those words, strung together so haphazardly. Many have attempted, I believe quite successfully, to prove the meanings of these words. I'll not do that again here, suffice it to say however, I'll do this through a word picture.

If you believe the scriptures and you must to even attempt to call yourself a christian, you know that Christ is the groom. The church is the bride and the church is made up of people. That makes you the bride.

Imagine the scene...

Christ is the Lion of Judah. My imagination of God's power sees it as limitless and this is not imagination, it's what the scripture makes quite plain. Consider that even on earth we have pictures of strength. Look at Arnold Schwarzzenegger. No one would want to arm wrestle him in his prime. And yet are we not talking about Christ.

His name is above all names!

His beauty is so much that we do not even know what it is, and so are we forbidden to even imagine it. For the scripture says do not create images of God, in the likeness of anything in Heaven, or on Earth, or in the Sea below.

To my most dull sense and by the weakest of comparisons, this makes Christ, Ken, from Ken and Barbie.

What does that make us? Well if you take the scriptures in mind and you read Ezekial 16, you'd see that we are a bloody mess, born of parents who are Godless and moronic, having left us to die in our own blood just after birth. But, if you believed in free-will, this makes you the highest pursuit of God. Surely God would not waste his time on the ugly and less desirable.

Even more so, according to free-will, God has placed all the power of this dating relationship in the hands of the church...

So, quickly the dating relationship is shaping up; Christ is magnificient and his bride must also be if Christ who is the King and has all power has bestowed some of it on His bride...to date Him..."if she wants..."

Is your God that weak that he needs your permission?

Or do you have no concept that what is right does not come by mutual agreement or assent? What is right, is right, independent of what you think about it, or even if you resist it in ignorance. And let me ask you this, of the two of us, God and man, which of us knows for sure which is which? And if God, being full of glory and is the fullness of all majesty and power says that you are to be His bride...under what circumstance do you think He would need your permission to effect what IS right in His eyes?

This is free-will. It makes God a welp, Christ impotent and the church the highest prize of pursuit and affection. I can find no evidence, even in syllogism that the people of this planet or any other hold such a high standing in the eyes of God. Nor can I reconcile free-will to do anything other than to make a clay pot god and the potter his slave to do it's bidding...called modern day christianity.

The Acid Test of Being a Christian : By Dr. Tim Keller

"See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is." (1 John 3:1-3)

The mark of knowing God is that you see God's love for you as a miracle. Notice this [text]: it says "how great". In the old King James it says "behold, what manner of love." Here it says, "how great a love" [NAS]. There is a Greek word that is used here that they are translating as "great" and the problem with the word is that it is an idiom. Idiomatic expressions are very hard to translate literally. We have an idiomatic expression: "its raining cats and dogs." Ok so if you are trying to translate that into Cantonese, German or into Japanese -- if you just say literally in those languages "it's raining cats and dogs" they will look at you: "what are you talking about?" You will have to find an idiomatic expression that is parallel or coordinate to that. Literally it says "behold, what country this love comes from" What this statement is really saying is "from what planet... how unreal...off the scale".

Remember there was a movie called "The Fisher King"? You wouldn't since hardly anybody saw this. Amanda Plummer plays this really klutzy, mousy, wallflower who has no friends. Robin Williams takes her out. At the end of the day he takes her in and says "I want to talk to you". She says "no, no, if you got to know me you would not like me. I am tired of rejection ... it was nice to go out. But everyone who gets to know me doesn't like me, so thanks." And Robin Williams says, "I do know you. I know that you think you are awkward. I know that you think you are clumsy. I know that you are kind of clumsy but I want you to know that I know who you are and I love you, and I will never leave you and I will never or forsake you." And she looks at him and its as if she is looking into the heart of what she thought was an enemy and she sees there understanding and love and she says, "Are you real?". This is a miracle that you love me.

[like this movie] This is saying, here is the way you can tell whether you are a Christian or just a moral person ... a Christian or a religious person. A real Christian is a person who says, "it is an absolute miracle that God's loves me. "It's just a miracle that I am a Christian." This is actually an acid test; let me just lay it on you here at the end. There are two kinds of people that go to church: there's religious people and real Christians. And the way you can tell the difference is that a Real Christian is somebody who sees everything that comes as a gift. In other words a real Christian sees that you are totally in debt to God, but a religious person is someone who is working hard and making an effort and trying to be good, going to Bible studies and just saying "no" everywhere, and denying themselves a lot of pleasures, and so forth, and a religious person is someone who is trying to put God in their debt. That is the difference. A religious person is someone who is trying to save themselves through their good works. A religious person is somebody who thinks they are putting God in their debt since they have tried so hard. A Christian is somebody who sees themselves as in God's debt.

Here is the acid test: If you are a Christian you have a spirit of wonder that permeates your life. You are always saying "how miraculous", "how interplanetary", "how unreal". You are always looking at yourself and saying, "me a Christian ... incredible, miraculous, unbelievable, a joke!!! " but a person who is trying to put God in their debt - there is none of that spirit of wonder at all. For example, when you show up to get your paycheck. I am assuming that most of you work hard for your money. When you show up for your paycheck do you say "Ah, BEHOLD!!!, you've paid me, you've given me money!!! Oh!! Are you real?." No, you don't do that, you say "of course you paid me, I worked." If you ask a religious person who does not understand the grace of God. you say, "Are you a Christian?" They say "Of course I am a Christian, I have always been a Christian. Sure I am a Christian. " My friends, if you are a Christian there is no "sure" about it and there is no "of courseness" about it, not a bit.

The acid test is your spirit of wonder stays there even when things go bad. You see when things go bad, when problems happen, here you can tell the difference between a moralist and a Christian. A moralist says, "what good is all my religion, what good is going to God, I have tried hard to be a Christian, I am trying hard to be obedient to God, and what good is it? God owes me." And you see you get mad. You say, "I have been trying hard and look what's going on in my love life, look what's going on in my career", and you get bitter. Why? because God owes you. But A Christian keeps that spirit of wonder. A Christian may say "my career has not gone too well, my love life has not gone too well, it's astonishing... Its amazing that God is as good as He is to me. Its all grace. Its all grace. That spirit of wonder. That sense of being a miracle. That everything that comes to you being an absolute mercy. That is an acid test. In fact, in some ways I have made a dichotomy that is unrealistic. Christians, to the degree that you behold the free grace of God, to the degree that you meditate on it and you let it become a holy fire in your heart, to the degree you experience and behold the love of God, to that degree you are going to find that to difficulties you will be able to say "oh well, my Father must have a purpose here because He loves me, and besides that, He does not owe me a good life. He owes me a far worse life than I've got." You can handle anything. And when good things come you will say "Behold! what a miracle" And the very fact you can get up in the morning and say, "I am a Christian. Who would have thought it?" There is a spirit of wonder about you, and if you have lost that you are slipping back into moralism, you are slipping back into thinking "well I guess what it means to be a Christian is just to do." Here is Christianity:

And can it be that I should gain
an interest in the Savior's blood!
Died he for me? who caused his pain!
For me? who him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be
that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

The wonder is a mark that you know the Lord. The ability to handle anything with that sense of almost childlike wonder. That sense of being a miracle. That tells you that you know him.

Let us love and sing and wonder,
Let us praise the Savior's Name!
He has hushed the law's loud thunder,
He has quenched Mount Sinai's flame.
He has wash'd us with His blood,
He has brought us nigh to God.

 

 

Excerpt from the Sermon Series: Beholding the Love of God: Knowing that We Know God - 1 John 3:1-3" Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA)

Posted to Servant of God   by: Andrew Smith

Untitled

Rock of Ages

 

1.          Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

let me hide myself in thee;

let the water and the blood,

from thy wounded side which flowed,

be of sin the double cure;

save from wrath and make me pure.

 

2.         Not the labors of my hands

can fulfill thy law's commands;

could my zeal no respite know,

could my tears forever flow,

all for sin could not atone;

thou must save, and thou alone.

 

3.         Nothing in my hand I bring,

simply to the cross I cling;

naked, come to thee for dress;

helpless, look to thee for grace;

foul, I to the fountain fly;

wash me, Savior, or I die.

 

4.         While I draw this fleeting breath,

when mine eyes shall close in death,

when I soar to worlds unknown,

see thee on thy judgment throne,

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

let me hide myself in thee.

 

Author- Augustus M. Toplady, 1740-1778

Composer-Thomas Hastings, 1784-1872

Tune Name-"Toplady" Meter-77.77.77

 

Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers ... did all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: And that Rock was Christ. I Corinthians 10:1, 4

 

 This hymn has traditionally been ranked as one of the most popular hymns ever written. It is certainly one of the best-known in the English language. It has been described as a "hymn that meets the spiritual needs of all sorts and conditions of men from the derelict snatched from the gutter by the Salvation Army to Prime Minister Gladstone, at whose funeral it echoed through the dim spaces of Westminster Abbey. " Whereas most hymns have been written out of some deep personal need or experience, this hymn evidently was born in a spirit of passionate controversy.

 Augustus Toplady was converted to Christ as a young boy of sixteen years of age while visiting in Ireland. Of his conversion Toplady has written, Strange that I, who had so long sat under the means of grace in England, should be brought right with God in an obscure part of Ireland, midst a handful of people met together in a barn, and by the ministry of one who could hardly spell his own name. Surely it was the Lord's doing and is marvellous.

For a time Toplady was attracted to the ministry of John and Charles Wesley and the Methodists. As time went on, however, he became a strong follower of the "election" doctrines of John Calvin and was vehemently opposed to the Arminian views promoted by the Wesleys and their supporters. By means of public debates, pamphlets and sermons, Toplady and the Wesleys carried on theological warfare. The following are several of their recorded statements:

Toplady-I believe him (John Wesley) to be the most rancorous hater of the gospel system that ever appeared in this Island.... Wesley is guilty of Satanic shamelessness ... of uniting the sophistry of a Jesuit with the authority of a pope.

 Wesley- I dare not speak of the deep things of God in the spirit of a prize fighter or a stage player, and I do not fight with chimney sweeps.

 In 1776 Toplady published this hymn text in The Gospel Magazine as a climax to an article attempting to prove his argument that even as England could never pay her national debt, so man through his own efforts could never satisfy the eternal justice of a holy God. He entitled the hymn "A Living and Dying Prayer for the Holiest Believer in the World. " Some of the expressions in Toplady's hymn text are quite obviously satirical swipes at such Wesleyan teachings as the need for contrite and remorseful repentance and the Arminian concept of sanctification-the belief that it is possible for any believer to live without consciously sinning and thereby to find the promised "rest, " the state of moral perfection as described in Hebrews 4:9. Note Toplady's rebuttal in the second stanza:

 Could my tears forever flow, could my zeal no languor know, these for sin could not atone-Thou must save, and Thou alone.

Dr. Louis J. Benson, a noted hymnologist, in Studies of Familiar Hymns, calls attention to the fact that Toplady actually plagiarized his text from a hymn Charles Wesley had written thirty years earlier in a collection, Hymns on the Lord's Supper. A paragraph of the preface from this collection reads as follows: O Rock of Israel, Rock of Salvation, Rock struck for me, let those two streams of Blood and Water which once gushed out of Thy side, bring down Pardon and Holiness into my soul. And let me thirst after them now, as if I stood upon the Mountain whence sprang this Water; and near the Cleft of that Rock, the Wounds of my Lord, whence gushed this Sacred Blood.

Augustus Montague Toplady was born at Farnham, England, on November 4, 1740, the son of a Major Richard Toplady, who died in the service while his son was in infancy. Later young Toplady was graduated from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and was ordained in 1762 to the ministry of the Anglican Church. His various pastorates included the French Calvinist Chapel at Leicester Fields, London, where he was known as a powerful and zealous evangelical preacher. Because of his frail constitution he died of overwork and tuberculosis at the early age of thirty-eight. Though known as a controversial preacher in his crusade against Arminian theology, Toplady was highly respected as a deeply spiritual, evangelical leader. His final statements just before his death are noteworthy: My heart beats every day stronger and stronger for glory. Sickness is no affliction, pain no cause, death itself no dissolution.... My prayers are now all converted into praise.   The tune for Toplady's text was composed in 1830 by a well-known American church musician, Thomas Hastings. Hastings was the first musician of sacred music to dedicate his life to the task of elevating and improving the music of the churches in this country. He once wrote, "The homage that we owe Almighty God calls for the noblest and most reverential tribute that music can render. " Thomas Hastings was born on October 15, 1784, at Washington, Connecticut. Though his formal musical training was meager, and as an albino he was afflicted with eye problems throughout his life, yet he wrote no less than fifty volumes of church music, including 1000 hymn tunes and more than 600 original hymn texts as well as editing more than fifty music collections. In 1858 the University of the City of New York conferred the degree of Doctor of Music upon him in recognition of his accomplishments. Along with Lowell Mason, Thomas Hastings is generally credited with being the person most instrumental in shaping the development of church music in the United States. Other hymns by Thomas Hastings include "From Every Stormy Wind That Blows" (No. 24), "Majestic Sweetness Sits Enthroned" (No. 56), and "Come, Ye Disconsolate" (101 More Hymn Stories, No. 17). It is encouraging to realize that, despite the original belligerent intent behind this text, God in His providence has chosen to preserve this hymn for the past two hundred years so that congregations of believers of both Calvinistic and Arminian theological persuasion can sing this hymn with spiritual profit and blessing.

 

Posted by: Andrew M. Smith

 

Kenneth W. Osbeck. 101 Hymn Stories (Kindle Locations 1812-1823). Kindle Edition.