Bully's Blog

Before Jesus ascended into heaven, He assigned an apparently overwhelming task to His disciples (Matt. 28:18-20). Like many familiar words, these often just float by us. We think we understand them simply because we are accustomed to them.

But an understanding of this passage must always be at the centre of any thought of a distinctively Christian culture — not because our Lord’s words are primarily concerned with politics, but because they are not.Following the Lord’s authority, one of the distinctives of Christian cultural understanding is that it is also minimally concerned with politics. The restoration of the nations is not, in any important sense, a political process. Rather, the process is one of baptism and catechism. The means given for the conversion of the heathen were the waters of baptism and the words of instruction. When the lessons have been learned, there will of course be some political consequences. But they will be minimal for the simple reason that the state itself, in a nation that has come to repentance, will also be minimal. For the Christian, the political realm is a creature to be redeemed, sinful like the rest of us and with a long way to go before it retires to more biblical proportions.

- Douglas Jones, Douglas Wilson, Angels In The Architecture, p. 201-202

An Examination of Both the Federal Vision and the New Perspective on Paul

http://www.biblelighthouse.com/covenants/within_the_bounds_of_orthodoxy.htm

by Joseph Minich – April, 2006

This essay is neither a defense nor a sustained critique of either the Federal Vision or the New Perspective on Paul. The exclusive aim of this presentation is to ask the question, “Can advocates of either of these positions be considered as within the bounds of Reformation orthodoxy?” That is, whether or not one agrees with one or the other of these movements, or whether or not one agrees with how they word certain things, can they nevertheless be interpreted in such a way as to be within the broad parameters of the Reformed faith?

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“…since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us…” (Hebrews 12:1)

NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN REMIXED AND INCLUDED IN GOD’S KITCHEN.

To defeat Satan is to expose his lies to the truth – to unmask him. We see lots of unmaskings in the Bible. Many of these use the saints as bait. The true natures of Pharaoh, of Job’s accusers, and of Haman and the enemies of God in Esther were all exposed when God’s people became weak. A corpse always brings out the dirty birds (Matthew 24:28), the ‘Edomite’ false brothers waiting to loot a razed Jerusalem.

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Some postmillennial POPtimisim from Newsboys:

Wherever we go, the dumb get wise
And the crime rates drop
And the markets rise
It’s a curious thing
But it’s just our thing

Bullies make nice, crooks repent
And the ozone layer shows improvement
It’s a curious thing
And it’s humbling

Wherever we’re led
All the Living Dead
Wanna leave their Zombie Mob
It’s a touching scene when they all come clean
God help us, we just love our job

Lyrics from Wherever We Go

or Hyperpreterism: stuck on the starting line

Hyperpreterists take great delight in pointing out the inconsistencies in what they refer to as “partial” preterism. Matthew 25 is a good example. If we are going to (rightly) interpret Matthew 23 and 24 as referring to the destruction of centralised worship (the old age) and the beginning of a new age of righteousness, surely Matthew 25 is within the same context?

On this one, I agree with the hypers. Matthew 25 is fulfilled… Continue reading

“In orthodox Christianity, salvation is not primarily deliverance from Satan’s realm, for Satan has no real realm; rather, salvation is deliverance from the wrath of God. Satan’s oppression of men is but an expression of the wrath of God, and it is not Satan who must be dealt with, but the wrath of God.”

There are many descriptions of Gnosticism, but the best is that which recognizes that Gnosticism is the great counterfeit of Christianity, which has hounded it since the beginning. Gnosticism sees the issues of history in terms of knowledge and power, instead of in terms of faith and obedience. Gnosticism approaches history in terms of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, rather than in terms of the Tree of Life (which is approached on the basis of faith). Continue reading