Bully's Blog

Is there another choice besides Barthian gnosticism and the fundamentalists’ cultural retreat?

Van Til believed, along with Augustine, Calvin, Kuyper, and Klaas Schilder that the building of a Christian culture is a biblical imperative. Van Til castigated the Barthians for their repudia tion of a Christian culture. “For them,” he wrote, “there is no single form of social, political, economic order that is more in the spirit of the Gospel than another.” Christians today are hearing a similar refrain from within evangelical circles. If there is no specifically biblical blue print, we are left with a pluralistic blue print, no blueprint, or a postponed blue print (dispensationalism)…

Read It Takes More Than A Theory (Part 1) by Gary DeMar, here and (Part 2) here.

An excellent post by Peter Leithart offers some balance for those tempted to swallow the entire anti-American propaganda hook, line and sinker.

Empires Of Trust

Thomas Madden offers a contrarian analysis of American and Roman empire in his recent book, Empires of Trust. Most empires in history, he says, “have sought to build their power in whatever way they can, making war on their neighbors when it seems advantageous and continuing to do so until stopped. They are trusted only to use power for their own benefit and to treat those they conquer as, well, conquered.”

Many believe that the Romans were the same. Not Madden.

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Evil Empire?

More and more today we hear that America has an empire, is an imperialistic nation, and therefore is increasingly evil. In my line of work I hear this all the time from liberal and neo-evangelical theologians. Empires are by definition evil. This is often linked up with the notion that violence is always evil…

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Dear Heathen:

The Lord Jesus Christ hath promised that the time shall come when all the ends of the earth shall be His kingdom. And God is not a man that He should lie nor the son of man that He should repent. And if this was promised by a Being who cannot lie, why do you not help it to come sooner by reading the Bible, and attending to the words of your teachers, and loving God, and, renouncing your idols, take Christianity into your temples? And soon there will not be a Nation, no, not a space of ground as large as a footstep, that will want a missionary. My sister and myself have, by small self-denials, procured two dollars which are enclosed in this letter to buy tracts and Bibles to teach you.

Archibald Alexander Hodge, and Mary Eliz. Hodge,
Friends of the Heathen.

(June 23, 1833. A letter to the “heathen” from ten-year-old A.A. Hodge and his sister Mary Elizabeth, given to J.R. Eckard, a Princeton Seminary graduate who was to go to Ceylon. Quoted in Princeton Seminary: Faith and learning 1812-1868,v. 1, p. 193).
From www.christkirk.com

“While he languished in prison, Joseph had no idea what was going on in Pharaoh’s heart. He did not realise that God the Holy Spirit was at work making Pharaoh dissatisfied. He did not know that one night God would bring His Word to Pharaoh and Pharaoh would need someone to interpret it. He did not know that one day his suffering would be rewarded, and he would stand before the king of the earth.

This should encourage us. We pray for our rulers and those in authority over us, but we don’t see them change. We have no way of knowing, however, what God may be doing. Our God is still the “God of Nightmares”! In our secular humanist society, Christians are often “in prison” in various ways. Yet God’s Word is faithful, and the time will come when secular society will turn to God’s people for help.

May we be ready for the day we stand before kings.”

- James B. Jordan, Primeval Saints, p. 140.

Former theist and now self-avowed atheist Dan Barker, who is co-president of the Freedom of Religion Foundation, is promoting a “Beware of Dogma” campaign using billboards that also include the line “Imagine No Religion.” The line is taken from John Lennon’s atheist national anthem Imagine. I wonder if the FRF’s call for everyone to “beware of dogma” includes the dogma of atheism which is funded by my tax dollars in government schools.

The French “enlighteners” worshipped reason… What was the result? The guillotine and blood in the streets. All together now, “Imagine no religion. It’s easy if you try.”

The atheism that spawned Communism was very reasonable and led to the deaths of 100 million people in the 20th century. When I made this statement in response to an email I received, I was met with this challenge: “Who are these high priests of atheism exactly? Name them and quote them. Then I want to know how many people were killed in what country during what period exactly and who killed them, within a million or so. I need you to account for all 100 million Gary, or close to it. I have history books in three languages and they don’t mention a word about atheists killing anyone.”

–Gary DeMar

…out of this crucible of failure and pain, a new Thomas Kelly arose, one who genuinely floated in the grace of God with a simple and childlike obedience and trust. This renewed Thomas Kelly is the one whose teaching and example have gained wide attention. Yet all of Kelly’s works represent a reaching for the same simple and pure devotional understanding.

In the following selection, which is taken from his masterwork, A Testament of Devotion, notice that he suggests some will be swept into holy obedience and some will have to wrestle for it…

Do not mistake me. Our interest just now is in the life of complete obedience to God, not in amazing revelations of His glory graciously granted only to some. Yet the amazing experiences of the mystics leave a permanent residue, a God-subdued, a God-possessed will. States of consciousness are fluctuating. The vision fades. But holy and listening and alert obedience remains, as the core and kernel of a God-intoxicated life, as the abiding pattern of sober, workaday living. And some are led into the state of complete obedience by this well-nigh passive route, wherein God alone seems to be the actor and we seem to be wholly acted upon. And our wills are melted and dissolved and made pliant, being firmly fixed in Him, and He wills in us.

But in contrast to this passive route to complete obedience most people must follow what Jean-Nicholas Grou calls the active way, wherein we must struggle and, like Jacob of old, wrestle with the angel until the morning dawns, the active way wherein the will must be subjected bit by bit, piecemeal and progressively, to the divine Will.

Read more:
Testament of Devotion, Thomas R. Kelly
http://www.bullartistry.com.au/pdf_bestill/010BeStill.pdf

As parents, teachers, elders, pastors, and as those in authority, we tend to fall into one of two errors as we seek to guide those who have been placed under our authority. One error is to be far too easily pleased. The other is to become impossible to please. For the former, not only is the glass always half full, but it is reckoned to be completely full because it is half full. For the latter, the glass is always considered to be completely empty because it is always half empty. Both of these approaches are destructive forms of leadership.

And apart from the work of the Spirit in our lives, we tend to fall into one of these two errors. But the work of grace sees what needs to be done, and also sees, in wisdom, what has been done. And the attitude that accompanies this wisdom is that of being extraordinarily easy to please, and extraordinarily difficult to satisfy. This is how our Father God is with us, and this is how we should be with one another. We don’t want to be easy to please and easy to satisfy. Neither do we want to be impossible to please and impossible to satisfy. The former type of parent produces well-boiled noodles. The latter gives us neurotic dry twigs, ready to snap.

To you as a congregation, how does this apply? God is extremely pleased with you, and with how far you have come. Is He satisfied? Not even close. We are still on pilgrimage, and are not yet conformed to the image of Christ.

Douglas Wilson, www.dougwils.com

“And you teachers, go on teaching the young the ways of God. In these days the State is giving them secular instruction all the day long, six days in the week; and religious teaching is greatly needed to balance it, or we shall soon become a nation of infidels.”

– C. H. Spurgeon (1834-1892)

“…the historic Protestant Church must reassert her prerogatives with regard to keeping the oracles of God. The rights to market the Bible were not sold by the Holy Spirit to Rupert Murdoch, the current owner of Zondervan. How in blue blazes did Mammon get the publishing rights to the Word of God? Who was involved in the transaction, and why hasn’t he been publicly flogged?”

– Doug Wilson, Mother Kirk, p. 59-60.