Is N.T. Wright a Christian?

This is an excerpt of John MacArthurs address to the 2017 Lingonier National Conference

Maybe more subtle and certainly more pervasive is what is currently being called the new perspective on Paul. It’s been propagated by a man by the name of N.T. Wright. You could kind of shift that a little and make it New Testament wrong, and you’d be closer to reality.

But N.T. Wright has written hundreds and hundreds of pages on the gospel, and the more you read of it, the less you understand what he affirms. It is confusing, it is ambiguous, it is contradictory, it is obfuscation of the highest level. Academic slight of hand. But while I cannot figure out what it is that he does believe, even after hundreds of pages, it is crystal clear what he does not believe.

More recently, he has written a book ‘The Day the Revolution Began’ and in that book he says this, “We have paganized our understanding of salvation, substituting the idea of God killing Jesus to satisfy his wrath for the genuinely biblical notion we are about to explore.” So, all of us who believe in the substitutionary death of Christ on the cross have been worshiping a paganized perversion of biblical truth now to be clarified by him.

Another quote, “That Christ died in the place of sinners is closer to the pagan idea of an angry deity being pacified by a human death than it is to anything in either Israel’s Scriptures or the New Testament,” end quote. He’s clear on what he rejects; he rejects substitutionary atonement of Christ, he rejects imputation, he rejects the gospel. He says, “To worship God as one who justifies through sacrifice and by imputation is nonsense.”

Random Bits

"I walk through this sinful world as a 

pilgrim in a foreign country" - CH Spurgeon

Moon Madness Special!

Sometimes putting this blog together is too easy. On Monday the moon will come between the Sun and Cheyenne Wyoming which makes a full eclipse the second coolest thing to happen in Cheyenne. With a regularity that makes waterfowl migration look impromptu, the eclipse forces the wolves and weirdos come out of the woodwork to spread their own Gospel inspired by a normal. natural occurrence. Gone is the atoning sacrifice of Jesus to be replaced by charts, numbers, calculations, and talk about apocalypse, tribulation, and end times.

I just want to shout from the rooftops "It's Just A Shadow!" and foaming multitudes reply "It's a sign!" So What? Everything is a sign! Every breath you take, every smile on every child, every drop of rain is a sign of God's love, Look around you at what society is doing, it's a sign of God's wrath! You need a shadow? And Jesus' words ring in my head: Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times? (Matthew 16:3) Oh well, here's 10 of my favorites

Moon Madness 1 - Eight "Christian Leaders" tell us exactly what to think of the eclipse

Moon Madness 2 - Can "America's Eclipse" truly be a prophetic sign if John Hagee didn't write a book about it?

WWUTT Wednesday - Return Traffic

Once upon a time our computers actually used a wire (shocking as it may seem) to speak to another computer. When your computer tried to communicate with another computer the sound it made was akin to someone throwing a tomcat into a room full of ducks. 

This was the modem, which is short for Modulator - Demodulator. two devices built into one box. The demodulator converts signal to something your computer understands, the modulator converts your computers signal to something other computers understand. In the outside world, the mod and the demod may not be in the same device, or even on the same network, but they work together to provide two way communication between device A and device B. When device A talks to device B it sends the info out of the modulator, B replies which A receives with its demodulator. We call this reply "Return Traffic"

We have two way communication with God too. He has many devices which He can use to speak to us, primary being His word; the bible. Return traffic from us is prayer, our modulator is the Holy Spirit;

26 In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; 27 and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Romans 8:26-27)

Guilt By Association

Not long ago I was rebuked by a reader for implying that Steven Furtick was less than a legitimate teacher because he associated with TD Jakes and handed $35,000 to Jakes, which is the average annual income of a member of Jakes' church. The reader was a bit upset because in his thinking Furtick's association with TD Jakes didn't make Furtick a heretical false teacher too, and I was just being judgmental. 

When I see false teachers like Mark Driscoll and Perry Noble team up with Steven Furtick what am I to think about Steven Furtick? And when there's another name on the program, do you think Pastor XYZ is going to be any different? Speakers are not invited to a conference to contradict what the other speakers are saying. When I look at conference announcements and I look at the lineup of speakers I may see known wolf after known wolf after known wolf on the 'bill'. What then am I to expected to think when I see names I don't recognize? Am I being  uncharitable if I label them "Wolf" also? 

I freely admit that when I do this I am being judgmental. That's not just how my mind works, that's how everyone's mind works. I call it the "Birds Of A Feather" reaction. Let's go back to Aesop and his fable of the Farmer and the Mule:

Random Bits

"I walk through this sinful world as a 

pilgrim in a foreign country" - CH Spurgeon

I was blessed to have the opportunity to chat with Rev. Joe the other day, and what a great chat it was! He was helping his son the realtor by placing a sign in front of the house across the street and we went to ask him about the asking price. Rev. Joe is an old school Latino SBC preacher who is semi retired but still has the fire in his belly to share the True Gospel; the birth, the life, the death, and the resurrection of our Lord, Christ Jesus. I invited him to join our little brotherhood of Bereans in worship and his eyes lit up when I told him that we sang actual hymns out of a hymnal and a smile covered his face. 

He told Mrs. WideAwake and I of the early years preaching in the southwest on sometimes as little as $7.15 a week - all that these impoverished communities could give - and he remembered those times with joy. Then the conversation changed to certain modern pastors who demand six figures to "grace" a congregation with their presence for a year and how that love of money is polluting the house that Jesus built. I wish I had read this article before I talked to Rev. Joe, because his words to me echoed the article, and the final quote in the article does a good job of summing up Joe's life.

A recovered transgender agrees with Donald Trump

Christian owned bridal boutique had to close due to death threats from homosexuals and their supporters they received after they declined lesbian business