Saturday, January 3, 2009

Calvinism is the gospel. (There I said it)

The nineteenth century Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon said it this way:

“I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith, without works; nor unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel, unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen people which Christ wrought out upon the cross; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called, and suffers the children of God to be burned in the fires of damnation after having once believed in Jesus"

"John Calvin A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine and Doxology"

Sunday, November 9, 2008

John Calvin

John Calvin, in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, brings up a point about our motives when we are faced with sin:

"He restrains himself from sin, not merely from a dread of vengeance, but because he loves and reveres God as his Father, honours and worships him as his Lord, and even though there were no hell, would shudder at the thought of offending Him. See, then, the nature of pure and genuine religion. It consists of faith, united with a serious fear of God, comprehending a voluntary reverence, and producing legitimate worship agreeable to the injunctions of the law."

From Book One, Chapter 2

FYI, Calvin wrote this 1,600 page book as an introduction to his commentaries. Spending most of his life writing exegeting scripture through his commentaries (almost the entire NT and most of the OT), he died mid-sentence in Ezekiel 22 at the age of 55 in excrutiating pain. Often, he would be told to rest and he would reply "Will the Lord come and find me idle?"

He died writing instead of resting.

Praise God for the men and women who devote their life to knowing God through his Word!

Thursday, October 2, 2008

David Livingstone

David Livingstone got on his knees one day and prayed this prayer

“Send me anywhere, only go with me.
Lay any burden on me, only sustain me.
Sever any ties but the ties that bind me to your service and to your heart
Thru it all the words of God came to me
‘Lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the age’”


May that be our prayer.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

For the Grace of God Orphans

'While I am a great advocate of looking to the past, I would warn anybody against living in the past. The only justification for looking to the past is that we may learn great lessons from it and apply them.' Arguing that, 'the gospel is literally the only hope for the world today', he showed how the gospel always makes a powerful effect upon the world after there has first been a distinct quickening in the life of the church. The modern church was bypassing her primary need. She was adopting 'methods of big business and advertising' instead of praying for a visitation of God. As the Belfast press reported his words: 'The Church has never tried so hard to deal with the situation as she has tried in this century. We have never had so many organizations, we have never worked so hard, but we are not touching the situation.' –D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Fight of Faith, Iain Murray, p. 371.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Amazing Grace

"I may not be that mature man or woman that I long to be but thank God that I am no longer that old man or old woman I once was."

~Sinclair Ferguson

Thank you Lord for your grace for raising me from the dead to life.
may I be worthy of your calling Lord.

Saturday, September 27, 2008

The Bleeding of the Evangelical Church

Here are some amazing quotes from The Bleeding of the Evangelical Church written by David F. Wells regarding the Evangelical church and today:


"..what people who are coming in these church doors today are thinking about, and what they want, is not primarily personal salvation. What they want is a sense of personal well-being however momentary and fragmentary that personal sense of well-being is and our churches are beginning to cater to this. I have no doubt at all that they are going to become very successful. Indeed, some are successful already and they are going to become more and more successful because marketing in America is what makes the wheels go around. They are, in other words, simply doing what Pepsi has done, what self-help groups have done, the auto maters, the makers of jeans, the makers of movies, and what Madonna herself has done. Why shouldn't churches do this? Why shouldn't they want to be successful in the same way Pepsi and Madonna are? The answer is that marketing will produce success but not necessarily the kind that has much to do with the Kingdom of God"

His response to WHY this is happening:

"The reality that we have to face today is that we have produced a plague of nominal evangelicalism which is as trite and as superficial as anything we have seen in Catholic Europe. Now why is this? Well, I would suggest that it begins with the crumbling of our theological character. I have spoken of this in my book, No place for Truth, in terms of the 'disappearance of theology.' It is not that theological beliefs are denied, but that they have little cash value. They don't matter. I likened the situation to that of a child who is in a home but who is ignored. It is not that the child has been abducted; the child is there. The child is in the home, and research which I have conducted strongly points to the fact that where this kind of theological character is crumbling, there the centrality of God is disappearing."