God’s Lambs

I have posted before on Calendrical Cosmology and the impact it has on the behavior of all peoples throughout the world. Background and geographical location are not a problem in order to maintain a chronological system of sorts, every tribe, nationality, and peoples have a concept of time and those beliefs affect their respective behavior. The axiom is indeed true, your view of the future affects how you behave and what you do today. The Aztecs and Mayans, for example, understood this and were famous for developing elaborate calendrical systems which were fully dependent on their beliefs and cosmology.  These groups sought to declare that their conception of time did indeed affect their life and behavior and today there are some who are fully convinced that the Mayans were on to something. For the record, this writer is not in the least convinced that the Mayans have predicted anything!  But given that in the west our intellectual sentiments have been so twisted by our postmodern indoctrination it seems that we don’t think twice about time except when it comes to far fetched ideas like the Mayans and their 2012 predictions, not so throughout the Islamic world.

As is generally the case it appears that Muslims are epistemologically more self conscious about the implications of their beliefs than are Christians. Muslims are now demonstrating this reality by giving preeminence to the concept of time and its implications for the advance of Islam throughout the world. For you see, in Mecca a building has been erected right the next to the holiest site of all of Islam to remind the 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide that Mecca, and not London (Greenwich Time), is indeed the new center of the world.

To moderns this may not seem like much but make no mistake about it, both to self conscious Muslims and Christians, what has happened in Mecca carries a whole lot weight because to define time, as the Muslims are clearly attempting to do, is to govern the conception, meaning, and destiny of history, indeed, as one friend said, it is to shape the destiny of the world. Ideas do have consequences.

As I watch my two boys grow and transition into their early teenage years I am realizing, more and more, that whatever time I get to spend with them is indeed priviliged time. Whether its time spent on the pitch working to improve their soccer skills or time spent at family worship teaching them the Word and answering their tough questions, I always end up thinking; ‘You only get one shot in life with them at this stage of their lives, make every moment count and spend as many of them together as you can.’ So the other day as I was doing one of my favorite activities, perusing through Youtube and watching all sorts of interesting videos, I came across this thought provoking and godly piece of advice from the unlikeliest source.

Knowledge of the traditions that have shaped us, for good or ill or some of both, is not a sufficient preparation for the kind of future that will face our children and our grandchildren in the twenty-first century-not a sufficient preparation, but a necessary preparation. The rediscovery of tradition belongs to the design of the curriculum, and to the definition of the goals and the content of general education, also in a nation that has-if I may say so, traditionally-been more hungry for its future than addicted to its past. That rediscovery is made possible, and made necessary, by the continuity of tradition, what Edmund Burke called a “partnership in all science, all art, every virtue.” But, Burke added, “As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” And that, come to think of it, is not a bad definition of living tradition.

The Vindication of Tradition By Jarislov Pelikan., Pg. 20

In its effort to give religion a clear field, it [pietism] seeks to destroy culture. This solution is better than the first. Instead of indulging in a shallow optimism or deification of humanity, it recognizes the profound evil of the world, and does not shrink from the most heroic remedy. . . . Therefore, it is argued, the culture of this world must be a matter at least of indifference to the Christian. . . . Are then Christianity and culture in a conflict that is to be settled only by the destruction of one or the other of the contending forces? A third solution, fortunately, is possible–namely consecration. Instead of destroying the arts and sciences or being indifferent to them, let us cultivate them with all the enthusiasm of the veriest humanist, but at the same time consecrate them to the service of our God.

“Christianity and Culture” in The Princeton Theological Review (Jan. 1913)

Now that the world cup is over its time to get back to writing and posting. Taking off the extra month after the Cup was just what the doctor ordered and it is only appropriate to tell you that I appreciate your patience and bearing with me throughout this entire world cup process.  I’m certain that anyone who saw the games recognized that this Cup had everything; excitement, vuvuzelas (bzzzzbzzzzbzzzzz), terrible and controversial calls, excellent play, anger, sadness and the unexpected. All of this combined madness made for one memorable Cup. Thank you South Africa for hosting such an incredible World Cup.

Our own Stars and Stripes played really well and at times they gave us near heart attacks, at other times they gave us joy inexplicable, and Donovan! Well! He was simply clutch - Thanks for the great memories. The Chilean team was equally awesome. A 12 year absence from the Cup seemed like a 12 hour absence and Chile’s play, which rendered two memorable victories, did not disappoint one bit. Like many Chileans and some Americans I cried as the national anthems of Chile and the United States played. Had you seen the video footage of Chilean fans during the Cup you would have been moved at the sight of so many Chileans celebrating throughout the streets of Santiago, Valparaiso, and Vina Del Mar.  That said, up until today I am still uncertain as to the status of Bob Bradley and his future as coach of the US National team. Bielsa, on the other hand, is confirmed through 2015 and it will be very exciting to see what ‘La Roja’ will do at the Copa America in 2011, the World Cup in 2014, and the Copa America in 2015.

For now, stay tuned for up and coming posts that will deal with demographics, culture, children, and life. In the mean time let’s enjoy the summer and remember South Beach where my beloved Hurricanes reside. Go Canes!!!

Sooner or later the relevance of the Bible story to the reader or hearer must be reconsidered if we are to think about it as part of God’s word to us. Biblical theology is a means of looking at one particular event in relation to the total picture. This total picture includes us where we are now, between the ascension of Jesus and his return at the end of the age. Biblical theology enables us to see ourselves in relation to the far-off events in the Bible narratives. To uncover our relationship to a particular event is to uncover its meaning for us.

According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible By Graeme Goldsworthy

By: Bojidar Marinov

I am greatly indebted to R.C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries. R.C. has written many books that explain the Reformed doctrines in a simple, accessible way. He has acted as the “salesman”—in a very positive sense of the word—for Calvinism, and his salesmanship has been unsurpassed in the 20th century. In a time in history when so many Christians have abandoned the sound doctrine and followed wolves in sheep’s clothing into emotionalism, mysticism, and subjectivism, R.C. took the task to bring them back gently, carefully, and lovingly to the beauty of the Biblical doctrine, to the understanding of who God is and how His sovereignty applies to their salvation. Several of his books were translated in my native language, Bulgarian, and they had a tremendous impact on the spiritual growth of Christianity in my native country. I can say, R.C.’s books did more for the propagation of the Reformed doctrines in Bulgaria than the dozens of Reformed missionaries who visited and stayed in the country for the last 20 years. R.C. Sproul’s work has been of great value to the church, both in the United States and abroad.

To use the words of Jango Fett, “I am just a simple man trying to make my way in the universe.” And like every simple man, I have my heroes. And R.C. Sproul is one of my heroes. But heroes can be disappointing at times. And this time I am disappointed.

The reason for my disappointment is the coming Ligonier Conference. The topic of the conference is appealing: Tough Questions Christians Face. In these tumultuous times, when there are more and more questions asked, a conscientious, active Christian would be attracted to a topic like this. And I was attracted. I considered going there. Until I saw the specific topics of the sessions. Here are some of them:

Why Did Jesus Have to Die?

Is the Doctrine of Inerrancy Defensible?

What Is Evil and Where Did It Come From?

Why Do Christians Still Sin?

Is the Bible Just Another Book?

Can We Enjoy Heaven Knowing of Loved Ones in Hell?

And so on.

Now, these are important questions. Christian authors in history, from the early church to our days, have written books on them. Christians must know the answers to these questions, just as they must know the answer to every other question in the universe. No doubt, these are valid questions for a Christian to ask. But are they really “tough” questions?

I don’t know of many Christians that lay awake at night wondering if Jesus had to die. I don’t know of any church or group that is troubled by the issue whether the Bible is just another book. These “tough” questions weren’t tough even for the pastor of the small Pentecostal church in Bulgaria where my wife and I became Christians. He had no systematic theological education and yet he had solid Biblical answers to those questions just by reading his Bible. Even as new converts we knew our relatives and friends may go to hell if they did not repent, and while this thought wasn’t comforting, we knew it was God’s will—and we weren’t even Calvinists at the time. We knew why we as Christians still sinned, and we had in a rudimentary form the doctrine of progressive sanctification. The doctrine of inerrancy has never been an issue from the moment we believed, and I am not aware of any Christian who has any problem with the fact that the Bible isn’t “just another book.”

Far from being “tough questions,” these are fundamental questions that shouldn’t be an issue for a Christian. A new convert must learn the answers to these questions at the very start of their walk with the Lord. If they don’t, then their pastors haven’t done their job well; then what they need is not another Ligonier conference but another church. If the pastors have done their job well in teaching those fundamental doctrines of the faith and the person still has problems, then they need repentance and faith, not a conference. If a person still has doubts about fundamental tenets of their faith after many sermons, teachings, and Bible studies by their pastor and elders, then such a person will hardly learn anything from a conference—and most probably won’t even sign up for such a conference.

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews talks about such fundamental questions of the faith in Hebrews 5:11–6:3. He very clearly says that these questions—repentance, faith, baptism, resurrection from the dead, eternal judgment—are stoicheia and  archēs, “first things,” “elementary doctrines.” He doesn’t say they are “tough questions” that need to be discussed over and over again. To the contrary, he enjoins his readers to not  lay again those elementary doctrines for a foundation, but “press on to maturity.” These things are “milk,” he says, and milk is the food for babies, not for mature men. Mature men eat solid food, and he tell his readers, “by this time you ought to be teachers.”

He is writing to the Hebrews who by that time had had the Scripture for about 1,400 years; and not all of it at once, but books were added one after another. In reality, they had had the complete canon for only 400 years. The law was read only in the synagogues, and the average person most probably couldn’t afford a Bible in his home. For several generations the Law was lost and it had to be found and recovered. There were no commentaries, concordances, no printing presses, no mass production of Bible study tools. The touch with the written word wasn’t as thorough as it is today. Besides, those elementary doctrines weren’t as clearly expounded in the Old Testament as they are in the New; Christ was revealed and yet in a sensehidden  until the day of His appearance. And yet the author rebukes them that they haven’t become teachers by the time he is writing his letter.

In comparison, the Christian Church has had the Bible for over 1,800 years now. For 500 years we have had the printing press, and we have used it to produce billions of Bibles and Bible study tools. The Information Revolution that started with Gutenberg favored mostly Christianity because it was the Christians who first made use of it, and they are still the best in using it for their testimony to the world. In the last 20 years the world made an enormous leap in making all kinds of information available, and there again, Christians are leading the pack by using the Internet disproportionally better than any other group in the world. No other intellectual movement has the abundance of concordances (in fact, no one else has anything like a “concordance”), study tools, dictionaries, thesauri, different translations of the Bible, picture dictionaries etc., etc., etc. And in addition, the elementary doctrines are open and revealed in the New Testament in a much clearer way than in the Old.

In short, there is no excuse for us as Christians to go back to the elements of our faith and lay them as a foundation over and over again. The answers to those questions—“Did Jesus have to die?” or “Is the Bible just another book?”—must be taken for given, for a foundation that is firmly established and proven. If the Hebrews were supposed to be teachers by first century AD, we today must be professors, and we must be eating solid food. Elementary doctrines can’t be “tough questions.” Ligonier Ministries have no reason to label them “tough”; by doing so, they are not helping Christians, they are only encouraging immaturity, irresponsibility, and laziness in Christians, in their attitude to studying and applying the Word of God.

So obvious it is that those questions are not “tough” at all, so blatantly obvious, that I am tempted to think that Ligonier Ministries are self-consciously trying to divert the attention of their audience from the real tough questions of the day. That same author of Hebrews tells us what the real tough questions for mature men are:

But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil (Heb. 5:14).

“Trained to discern good and evil”! Indeed, this is the mark of a mature, responsible man: He can apply the standards for good and evil in his life and in the society around him, he knows good when he sees it, and he knows evil when he sees it. He has a practical standard for action, he understands the times and he knows what Israel should do in those times. A mature and responsible man doesn’t need to lay for foundation the elementary things of his faith. He applies them in practice.

We are in times that require maturity, understanding, and practical Christian standard for action. These are not times for babes, these are times for real men. And if Ligonier wants some really tough questions for their next conference, I have some suggestions:

How Does a Christian Man Leave Inheritance to His Children in a Time of Runaway Inflation?

How Do I Teach My Children a Biblical Worldview?

How Do I Create a Successful Christian Enterprise?

How Do We as Christians Preserve Our Liberties in This Nation?

What Should Be Our Political Program For Action?

What Do We Do about the Public Schools?

Why Haven’t We Stopped Abortion Yet?

What Law Does God Want for Our Nation?

What Law Does God Want for Other Nations?

Are We Assured of Victory or Defeat in History and on Earth?

How Do We Baptize a Nation?

Etc., etc.

It’s about time for Ligonier Ministries to come out of the nursery. R.C. Sproul helped so many of us to make steps forward toward developing a solid Biblical worldview. This conference is a step back, a return to our days as infants. We don’t need that, and the Church doesn’t need that. The Church needs a clear, relevant, victorious call for battle (1 Cor. 14:8). These are times when people and ministries either lead or follow. If they neither lead nor follow, they better get out of the way. I know Ligonier has all the resources to lead. It’s about time they use them.

Bojidar Marinov is the founder and director of Bojidarmarinov.com.  He has served as a missionary and translator to Bulgaria, currently he lives in the US.  His writings appear on the American Vision blog.  For more information about the Bulgarian Reform Ministries go to: www.bulgarianreformation.org

The Christian calendar is a twelve month celebration depicting the earthly life of the Lord Jesus Christ beginning with His birth, on to His ascension, followed by the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Church over the last 2000 plus years. This celebration is visibly demonstrated by God’s people to all nations through feasting, fasting, worship, prayer, preaching, and the sacraments for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom throughout the earth.

Whatever else might be lost, and however dark might be the prospects of Western society, the sacred order of the liturgy remained intact and, in it, the whole Christian world, Roman, Byzantine and barbarian, found an inner principle of unity. Moreover the liturgy was not only the bond of Christian unity. It was also the means by which the mind of the gentiles and the barbarians was attuned to a new view of life and a new concept of history. It displayed in a visible, almost dramatic form what had happened and was to happen to the human race-the sacred history of man’s creation and redemption and the providential dispensation that governed the course of history, the great theme which is so majestically unfolded in the prophecies and prayers of the Paschal liturgy. For while the liturgy had the same key significance in the culture of an ancient Christendom which it had possessed in the archaic cultures, its spiritual content was entirely different. As we have seen, the archaic ritual order was conceived as the pattern of the cosmic order, and consequently its typical mysteries were the mysteries of nature itself represented and manifested in the dramatic action of a sacred myth. Such were the mysteries of Eleusis, such were the still older and more venerable mysteries of Sumerian and Egyptian religion, like the myth of Tammuz and Ninanna or Isis and Osiris-all of which centre in the mystery of the life of the earth and the cycle of the agricultural year. The Christian mystery, on the other hand, was essentially the mystery of eternal life. It was not concerned with the life of nature or with culture as a part of the order of nature, but with the redemption and regeneration of humanity by the Incarnation of the Divine Word.

Christopher Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture: The Classic Study of Medieval Civilization, Pg 41-42

Here is a nice little video to help silence the nay-saying socialists over at MSNBC and CNN. If you want to ruin somebody’s career, according to the communist playbook, just smear the opposition or make them out to be the boogeyman. In the case of the Tea Party, just call or label them racist, as MSNBC & CNN do all the time. But what do the Tea Partiers themselves say?