Don’t take your iPod to church!
“Reading the Bible in electronic format makes it easy to chase down cross-references, to read notes related to the content, to find word definitions and so on. But all of this is at the cost of the natural, God-given flow of the text. As we use our iPods in place of our Bibles, we begin to understand Scripture as we do Wikipedia, a text suited more to browsing than deep study.…”
– Food for thought as Tim Challies reflects on how the medium affects how we read the message. Part 1, part 1.5, part 2.
The Anglican Church in North America – Hidden reefs ahead
“The launch of the Anglican Church in North America this week should be a cause of great thanksgiving to God for all who long to see the Anglican Communion united in the gospel, rather than a counterfeit unity engineered through endless ‘conversation’ and artful ambiguity.
However, we can be certain that this new stage of the global Anglican realignment will be opposed. …”
– Charles Raven writes at SPREAD.
Piper on Parker on Calvin
To mark the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, Desiring God have reprinted T.H.L. Parker’s classic 1954 biography.
Not only is it available to be purchased, but a free PDF download is also available – both via this link.
You can see John Piper speak about why they did it at Desiring God.
T.H.L. Parker –
“When I was asked to write a life of Calvin for the S.C.M. Religious Book Club, there were reasons why I was happy to agree. For one thing, it offered a pleasant relief from the arduous task of translating Karl Barth’s Kirkliche Dogmatik into English, which had taken up much of 1950 and 1951. More importantly, there had been no biography of Calvin for many years. Moreover, I saw this as an opportunity to correct some of the commonly held misunderstandings and prejudices clustered around his name. …
Now, what do I at the age of ninety-two make of this book that I wrote in 1952 and 1953 in my mid-thirties?”
– read it and come to your own conclusion.
A Trite Habit?
“It is a slowly growing pattern of life. So slow in its development that we do not even notice it happening to us. We make a thousand little decisions and finish with a way of living that we never planned or meant to happen. …”
– Phillip Jensen, Dean of St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney, writes about the great danger of living in the Western world.
Money, Sex, Indaba: Corrupting the Anglican Communion Listening Process
“The Listening Process, also known as the ‘Continuing Indaba Project’, was announced last month at the Kingston, Jamaica meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council after a briefing by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Anglican Communion Office (ACO).
The staff of the ACO, under the direction of the Archbishop of Canterbury, announced that a $1.5 million gift was given to fund this project-a gift 2-3 times the size of any previous gift received by the Anglican Communion Office for its work… The delegates to the Anglican Consultative Council were told that the money was coming from a grant through the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.
After subsequent questioning at press conferences, it turns out that the Satcher Institute is not the source of the $1.5 million dollars.
So where did the money come from?…”
– Ralinda B. Gregor, writing for The American Anglican Council asks some uncomfortable questions of the Anglican Communion Office.
It is God’s battle
“We are always looking inwards and pitying ourselves and being sorry for ourselves, and looking for something to help us. Get rid of that outlook, forget yourself for a moment; the battle is the Lord’s! Salvation is His. It is for the honour of His great and holy Name.
But go further and realise that because it is God’s battle this almighty power is being exercised on our behalf even when we do not realise it. Things are being done in this great campaign of which we are not aware. We may perhaps be half-asleep at our post, and we do not realise that the great Captain is planning something with respect to us. We are unconscious of it. We would all be lost were it not for that. He, I say, is exercising this power on our behalf.”
– Martin Lloyd-Jones, The Christian Solider (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1977), 30. With thanks to Of First Importance.
We need to be reminded: Don’t waste your life
A thought-provoking 3 minute video using preaching from John Piper – from Desiring God.
Christ’s atoning death
“Christ’s atoning death ratified the inauguration of the new covenant, in which access to God under all circumstances is guaranteed by Christ’s one sacrifice that covers all transgressions (Matt. 26:27-28; 1 Cor. 11:25; Heb. 9:15; 10:12-18). Those who through faith in Christ have ‘received reconciliation’ (Rom. 5:11) ‘in him . . . become the righteousness of God’ (2 Cor. 5:21). In other words, they are justified and receive the status of adopted children in God’s family (Gal 4:5). Thereafter they live under the motivating constraint and control of the love of Christ for them as made known and measured by the cross (2 Cor. 5:14).”
– J. I. Packer, “Sacrifice: Jesus Christ Made Atonement for Sin” (with thanks to Of First Importance.)
Sometimes you need to be blunt
This 4 minute video on BlipTV doesn’t pull any punches. Sobering viewing with a strong exhortation. Is your Christianity genuine? Do you care for the lost? (h/t Tim Challies.)
There were some Anglican Puritans also
“I think that it is important to appreciate the continuity between Puritanism and Evangelicalism. 18th Century Evangelicals were spiritually strengthened and influenced by the Puritan literature which they read. With the term ‘Evangelical’ being so broadened today to include many who are neither ‘Reformed’ nor ‘Puritan,’ those of us who want to remain faithful to the teaching and practice of Scripture, should regard ourselves as ‘Reformed’ and ‘Puritan.’…”
– David Hilton writes in Cross†Way, Spring 2009 (PDF – direct link), asking who are the heirs of the Puritans.
Building Healthy Churches
The audio files from the just-concluded Toronto Pastors Fellowship conference are now available. The theme?’Building Healthy Churches’.
Mark Dever and Matt Schmucker were the main speakers. (h/t Tim Challies.)
New Westminster — New Gospel; the ANiC trial
“So for the future, the very clear lesson emerging from this case is that moratoria and incremental negotiation over covenant clauses are futile strategies. The revisionist aim is not, initially, to exclude orthodox ministry, but to neutralise it through defining the church institutionally. …”
– Charles Raven writes at SPREAD.
TEC Presiding Bishop: from whence did the office come?
Christian lawyer A S Haley, who blogs at Anglican Curmudgeon, has done some research on how the office of Presiding Bishop evolved to where it is now. His article is entitled “Know the Enemy”: the Office of the Presiding Bishop and was posted in November 2008.
Last week, he followed up with comments on the huge increase in litigation and in the deposition of ministers.
“What may be surprising to some is that the Presiding Bishop is doing nothing more, and nothing less, than she said she would do if the House of Bishops chose her for that office.”
(h/t Stand Firm. Photo: Episcopal Life Online.)
More than you could read in a month of Sundays
Don Carson is well-known and loved as a clear and insightful teacher of God’s word. He is also an amazingly prolific author.
Andy Naselli, his full-time research assistant, has just made available a comprehensive list of Don Carson’s publications – and also links to free PDF files of several books, including Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor.
Read about this wonderful resource here. (h/t Justin Taylor.)
Little Evils, Little Sins
“The Pacific Campaign of the Second World War has always fascinated me. In many ways, it seemed like a nonsensical series of battles between the United States and Japan…
There are many lessons we can learn from the Pacific Campaign. Some apply to warfare, but others apply far beyond. One of the most important is this: little things lead to big things. This is as true in warfare as it is in the hearts of men and women.”
– Tim Challies writes helpfully on declaring war on sin.
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…