Bully's Blog

Doug Wilson’s sermon yesterday at John Piper’s Calvin conference:
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I saw in my dream, that the Interpreter took Christian by the hand again, and led him into a very dark room, where there sat a man in an iron cage. Now the man seemed very sad. He sat with his eyes looking down to the ground, and his hands folded together, and he sighed as if his heart would break.

Then said Christian, “Who is this?”

“Talk with him and see,” said the Interpreter.

“What used you to be?” asked Christian.

“I was once a flourishing professor, both in my own eyes, and also in the eyes of others,” answered the man. “I was on my way, as I thought, to the Celestial City and I was confident that I would get there.”

“But what did you do to bring yourself to this condition?” Christian asked.

“I failed to keep watch,” the man replied. “I followed the pleasures of this world, which promised me all manner of delights. But they proved to be an empty bubble. And now I am shut up in this iron cage—a man of despair who can’t get out.”

No further explanations were given. No one said who put him there. But the Interpreter whispered to Christian:

“Bear well in mind what you have seen.” [1]

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

Another thought related to the ideas in Behind Closed Doors.

The whole aim of the construction process, whether in sex, foetal development, education, business, art, music, family or state government, is the ultimate revelation of a mature glory. We are given the opportunity to create, and that involves certain God-given freedoms. If the freedoms are abused, what we construct for ourselves is a cage. Lust is a cage. A dysfunctional family or state is a cage. Enforced egalitarian socio-economics is a cage. Undisciplined children are a cage.

Jesus laid down His life for this world, and the freedoms of western culture have been a direct outcome. In its final stages, we have rebelliously inverted each of these freedoms (including the economic ones) and turned both our Christian protection (including our God-given wealth) and Christian mandate into a cage. Ancient Israel did the same. Why does this inversion process seem such a logical path for fallen human nature?

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“Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.  
—Genesis 15:5-6

Abraham didn’t sleep in on the day he was to take his beloved son, his only son, to Moriah, kill him and offer him as an ascension. He got up early. By this stage in the narrative, Abraham had been tried and tested many times, but this seems just a little too keen.

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Daily Dose of Doug:

Yesterday at church I saw a bumpersticker on a friend’s car that summarizes a lot of things wonderfully. “Never trust a theologian who hasn’t been executed.”

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On the way in the next morning, Jesus saw a fig tree that was all leaves and no figs (vv. 12-13). The fig tree is Israel, all leaves, a fair profession, and no fruit. Jesus spoke to the tree and said that no man would eat fruit from it “into the age” (v. 14). And a lot of exegetes have wasted too much time, paper, and ink feeling sorry for the fig tree.

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or Common Grace, Uncommon Grace

“…love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” Matthew 5:44-45

Most “Bible contradictions” display our ignorance of literary forms, history, or customs. Further study always vindicates the Bible. Sometimes, however, the “contradiction” is just a misunderstanding of the way God works; a question of timing.

The supposed contradiction I want to discuss is this: if God punishes the wicked, how can He also send rain on the just and the unjust?

The content of this post has been revised and included in Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key.

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[1] Do you think I can find this when I need it?
[2] On the apostolic church as “two witnesses”, see: Slavery to Sabbath in Revelation 5-11

“Then they came to Jesus, and saw the one who had been demon-possessed and had the legion, sitting and clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid.” Mark 5:15

There’s a discussion about tatts and piercings going on at dougwils.com

Like Jello on a Plate and Unleashing Your Inner Fundamentalist

Here’s my 2 cents:

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from Manifesto on Psalms and Hymns

by Douglas Wilson (Introduction to the Cantus Christi Hymnal)

 

A common practice in our day is for Christians to speak of the “culture wars.” By this they usually mean the political and cultural skirmishes between leftist secular thinking and the more moderate and traditional thinking of believers. But the problem is that the phrase “culture wars” is a particularly inept way to refer to this problem. Continue reading

More on baptism (sorry). Douglas Wilson writes:

“You could even say that this is one of the differences between presbies and baptists — all Christians of course believe in “covenant baptism,” but for the baptists the relationship is between the individual being baptized and the covenant itself, Christ Himself — that’s what makes it a covenant baptism. But for the presbie, other people are involved.”

Good observation. But surely this is a contrast between good presbie practice and an error baptists are only prone to?

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“Nothing is plainer than that Paul sets his gospel over against all the doings of the carnal man, and not against the expectant but faithful Jew.”

Excerpt from Called To Be An Apostle
Sermon by Doug Wilson, Nov 25, 2008.

“In our overview of the entire book of Romans, we noted that chapter one showed the Gentiles were under sin, chapter two showed the Jews under sin, and chapter three showed them both up to their necks in the same kind of sin. This is important for us to note at the beginning of this book because the gospel set forth here is a gospel that liberates the nations from wickness, evil, sin, mortality, and so forth. This will be important for us to understand when we get to chapter seven, and Paul’s description of himself there as a representative Jew, but it is also important for us to see the nature of Saul’s conversion to Christ rightly. Otherwise, we will get everything confused. For now, we need to see that the gospel directly addresses what preachers in another era used to call sin.

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