Random Bits

"I walk through this sinful world as a 

pilgrim in a foreign country" - CH Spurgeon

It's been quite a week here, which explains why my Friday post ended up on a Monday. After giving birth to a beautiful baby boy our daughter succumbed to a mysterious illness (there really is such a thing, they're still trying to figure it out) so a few hours after coming home from the maternity ward, she entered the ICU while Grandma and I watched over her new born and the 2 year old Wonder Imp now known as Big Sister.

We truly love the children and the chance to spoil them non-stop for a few days was delightful, but it's been a quarter of a century since we had to endure the feeding schedule of a new born baby. I'm called The Baby Whisperer and can pacify even the most ravenous of infants but at 11:00 PM, 1:00 AM, 3:00 AM, 5:00 AM... not so much.

To those that have earned the title Later in Life (lets say those that know what the 70's were truly like) and think you can hear a biological clock ticking - that's not a biological clock, that's a time bomb. Unless you're in top physical form and routinely finish full marathons in under 4:00:00, please think again. Pounding out 23 miles through downtown Boston is a cakewalk compared to keeping up with a sugared up 2 year old with a basket full of crayons. The Lord is truly good and we thank Him for the chance to spend days with the babies, and praise Him for bringing our daughter and her husband home, we love Him for the help, support, and prayers from our little family of Bereans, and now we thank and praise Him for the invention of sleep, and the chance to catch up on it.

The "Church" of England has voted to celebrate a person's "gender transition" with a church service and has asked the House of Bishops to " consider whether some nationally commended liturgical materials might be prepared to mark a person’s gender transition.” I suggest starting with Romans 1:22

Not Clickbait! - Here are five "Fake News" stories that people actually believe about early Christianity and love to spread

Biblically-Anemic Preaching: The Devastating Consequences of a Watered-Down Message

by John MacArthur

Those who are familiar with my ministry know that I am committed to expository preaching. It is my unshakable conviction that the proclamation of God’s Word should always be the heart and the focus of the church’s ministry (2 Timothy 4:2). And proper biblical preaching should be systematic, expositional, theological, and God-centered.

Such preaching is in short supply these days. There are plenty of gifted communicators in the modern evangelical movement, but today’s sermons tend to be short, shallow, topical homilies that massage people’s egos and focus on fairly insipid subjects like human relationships, "successful" living, emotional issues, and other practical but worldly—and not definitively biblical—themes. These messages are lightweight and without substance, cheap and synthetic, leaving little more than an ephemeral impression on the minds of the hearers.

Some time ago I hosted a discussion at the Expositors’ Institute, an annual small-group colloquium on preaching held at our church. In preparation for that seminar, I took a yellow legal pad and a pen and began listing the negative effects of the superficial brand of preaching that is so rife in modern evangelicalism.

I initially thought I might be able to identify about ten, but in the end I had jotted down a list of sixty-one devastating consequences. I’ve distilled them to fifteen by combining and eliminating all but the most crucial ones. I offer them as a warning against superficial, marginally biblical preaching—both to those who stand behind the pulpit and to those who sit in the pew.

1. It usurps the authority of God over the soul. Whether a preacher boldly proclaims the Word of God or not is ultimately a question of authority. Who has the right to speak to the church? The preacher or God? Whenever anything is substituted for the preaching of the Word, God’s authority is usurped. What a prideful thing to do! In fact, it is hard to conceive of anything more insolent that could be done by a man who is called by God to preach.

2. It removes the lordship of Christ from His church. Who is the Head of the church? Is Christ really the dominant teaching authority in the church? If so, then why are there so many churches where His Word is not being faithfully proclaimed? When we look at contemporary ministry, we see programs and methods that are the fruit of human invention, the offspring of opinion polls and neighborhood surveys, and other pragmatic artifices. Church-growth experts have in essence wrested control of the church’s agenda from her true Head, the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Puritan forefathers resisted the imposition of government-imposed liturgies for precisely this reason: They saw it as a direct attack on the headship of Christ over His own church. Modern preachers who neglect the Word of God have yielded the ground those men fought and sometimes died for. When Jesus Christ is exalted among His people, His power is manifest in the church. When the church is commandeered by compromisers who want to appease the culture, the gospel is minimized, true power is lost, artificial energy must be manufactured, and superficiality takes the place of truth.

Random Bits

"I walk through this sinful world as a 

pilgrim in a foreign country" - CH Spurgeon

It's no surprise that to cripple the new president and thwart the will of the people the Democrats have been dragging their feet on presidential appointments. Foremost among them is moral narcissist Bernie Sanders who was brutally crushed with underhanded skulduggery by his opponent in the presidential election primaries. Nonplussed, Bernie Sanders imposes a religious litmus test on Christians who seek office in violation of the Constitution of the United States.

During an appointment hearing Mr. Sanders took opposition to a blog entry written by Russell Vought who was nominated by President Trump to be deputy director for Office of Management and Budget. Sanders. The blog entry in questions discussed John 3:18 and Muslims. The Attorney General has been asked to investigate the actions of Mr. Sanders. One thing you can say about Mrs. Clinton, she saved us from this man being in the White House - God does indeed move in mysterious ways.

Personally I'm not surprised at Mr. Sanders obvious persecution of a Christian, in this country there has been 76 percent increase in religious freedom violations and a 114 percent surge in documented hostility toward Christian views on marriage and sexuality in the last three years

Kill The Bereans – The Murder of Discernment in Modern Christianity

Vatican police break up a drug fueled gay orgy in an apartment owned by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the office that processes and evaluates all cases of priests accused of raping or molesting minors.

Spurgeon Thursday - Defending a Lion

Angels With Different Gospels

But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! (Galatians 1:8)

A couple of years ago we heard a lot about angels, of course it was a fad that we often see tear through the flock and drag away sheep with a lack of discernment. There were (and are) abundant images and talk about angels that promote these wonderful creations above what they truly are. An angel is a messenger, an envoy, a messenger from God, so if an angel preaches to you a gospel that is different from that which the Holy Spirit put forth in the pages of the scriptures, is it truly an angel? Have angels ever preached a gospel contrary to what is set in scripture?

Let's look at some angels and see what they taught;

We have all  heard the angelic doctrine "Every time a bell rights and angel gets  his wings" This of course was penned by the great theologian Frank Capra in his biblical commentary "It's A Wonderful Life". People tell us that when angels get their wings they tend to shed a few feathers. On page 78 of his book Miracles, Signs, and Wonders, Jim Murr tells tells of finding a feather on the floor of the Sunday school room and God told him it was an angel feather, and he was going to show it to his congregation but God made it disappear during the service saying "You will not merchandise my glory!" Believe me, the story gets better, full of suspense and spiritual warfare and demons and the sinners prayer. What it doesn't have is an explanation of why this particular angel had feathers. Feathered angels are a man made construct and not biblical at all.

The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) loves angels. Bill Johnson of Bethel Redding thought he had angels nesting in the air conditioning ducts as feathers and gold dust fluttered down on his goats congregation. Todd Bentley has a pet angel named Emma which he got from NAR superstar Bob Jones. But it was William Branham who as a youth in 1946 had an angel appear to him in a cave and revealed all kinds of interesting things. The angel promised William the gift of "divine healing to all the nations of the earth" and that "God would use him to start a movement that would “bring on the second coming of Christ”" That movement was called the Latter Rain and it became the NAR.