BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

Men are the minority in Evangelical churches in Africa...

When did you last hear a church commended for her "manliness?" When did you last hear a missionary talk about the absence of men in Evangelical churches in Africa? Have you ever heard how a Christian "spearman" in Africa keeps the oodles of children in his church in order, or how he deals with the bones in his meat?

The author of the post, James Brinkerhoff, is the nephew of Scott Brinkerhoff. You and your church would do well to remove some of your missionaries who have long since turned away from Biblical doctrine and practice, and fill the holes that your due diligence opens up in your missions budget with Scott and James.

And what about the absence of men in African Evangelical churches? It may be the same reason men are absent or docile in American churches. Pastors run churches through the hard work of compliant women...

Election news from DRC...

For those interested in that troubled land that used to be called "Zaire" and now is the "Democratic Republic of Congo" or "DRC," here's a good news source. If you'd like to learn more, the blog's owner also wrote a good book titled Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: the Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa. Years ago, Dad wrote Congo Crisis. The crises have never stopped.

Please pray for those servants of God in DRC now as the thunderheads build.(TB)

What about women in combat...

Here is the Majority Report of the Presbyterian Church in America General Assembly's Ad Interim Study Committee on Women in the Military whose recommendations were adopted by General Assembly in 2002. Being this report's principal author, naturally I commend this document to our readers. If biblical Christians today studied this report and by faith embraced its doctrine of Creation Order sexuality, it would be a significant step toward the restoration of the unity of the Church. Too, these United States would again have salty salt and lighty light in the public debate raging over the meaning and purpose of sexuality. (TB)

* * *

MAN’S DUTY TO PROTECT WOMAN

We, the undersigned, endorse the Consensus Report, while realizing that Report lacks unity on the crucial matter of whether the recommendations it contains constitute the church’s wise counsel or a Christian’s scriptural duty. Believing that this is a matter of scriptural duty, we have joined together in writing this report to the end that we might set forth with confidence and clarity the full counsel—both New and Old Testaments—of the Word of God concerning this matter. Our report attempts to summarize three areas of evidence, as follows:

First, God the Father wages war in defense of Israel, His Bride; Christ our Savior fights to the Death defending His Bride, the Church; the Holy Spirit calls men as officers to guard and protect His Bride; the duty to protect the Garden of Eden and the warning not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was given by God to Adam; husbands protect their wives, not wives their husbands. Thus we are taught the binding nature of man’s duty to guard and protect his home and wife.

Second, woman is the weaker sex and part of her weakness is the vulnerability attendant to her greatest privilege—that God has made her the “Mother of all the living.” Men are to guard and protect her as she carries in her womb, gives birth to, and nurses her children.

Third, we are to renounce every thought and action which tends towards a diminishment of sexual differentiation since God made it and called it “good.” [E.g. Scripture’s injunctions concerning women exercising authority over men (1 Timothy 2), women or men wearing clothing of the opposite sex (Deuteronomy 22:5), sodomy (Leviticus 20:15-16), etc.] Rather than a stingy attitude which minimizes sexuality’s implications, we ought to rejoice in this, His blessing.

It is our conviction that these areas, taken together, provide a clear and compelling scriptural rationale for declaring our church’s principled opposition to women serving in military combat positions.

When a man loves a woman, he will lay down his life to defend her, just as Christ loved His Bride and gave Himself up for Her. Men have proudly fulfilled this duty from time immemorial, demonstrating what A. A. Hodge in his commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith referred to as the law of nature, common to all nations, that is “unchanged” to this present day. Dying for their wives, regenerate and unregenerate men have done “by nature (the) things required by the law.”[1]

Hodge divides the Old Testament law into four categories...

The wine of the passion of her immorality...

And another angel, a second one, followed, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who has made all the nations drink of the wine of the passion of her immorality.” - Revelation 14:8

Son-in-law Lucas forwarded this interview on the future of the internet with Dr. Hamadoun Touré, General Secretary of the International Telecommunications Union. The ITU is an agency of the United Nations with a mandate to make sure the internet "runs smoothly, and that governments don't get in the way of their citizens' unfettered access to communications."

Dr. Touré recommends that countries avoid English if they wish...

From the Far Side of the WORLD (ahem, ahem!)...

This just in from our American-African correspondent, David Wegener, and the TCCA students willing to humor him. (TB)

 

Thank you, WORLD...

WORLD just went to print with a cover story mentioning our son and his wife, Joseph and Heidi Bayly, and their adopted son, Tate. (The online version of the article includes the video below.) The piece is about African adoption. Mary Lee and I have two grandsons who came to these United States from Africa and we hope to have another, soon. Doug and Heather Ummel's son, Josiah, as well as Joseph and Heidi's son, Joseph Tate Bayly VII, are both from Ethiopia and Joseph and Heidi are working towards adopting another child from Ethiopia as soon as the Ethiopian goverment does its paperwork.

It would be churlish of me to keep my recent post critical of WORLD up on Baylyblog, so I've removed it. I thank WORLD for its advocacy work on behalf of orphans in their distress. This is true religion.

So this hip-hop star walks into our art gallery and he's like...

Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD. He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse. (Malachi 4:5, 6)

(NOTE: helpful obscenities ahead) Almost always, an absent father, father-hunger, and hatred define The New Yorker profiles of the purveyors of our Godless culture. Here we have a profile of the hip-hop group, Odd Future, and its best rapper, Thebe Neruda Kgositsile (alias Earl Sweatshirt) who at the time of the song's release was sixteen years old. From The New Yorker's profile, "Earl Sweatshirt begins one track by sneaking some autobiography into...

The need for missions reform...

(Tim) Pastor Doug Wilson wrote comparing the limitations on risk that missionaries are provided through our present missions support system maximizing the number of supporting churches and individuals to that same limitation of risk provided investors through diversified mutual funds. Doug wisely points out that this system leads to diffusion of responsibility, and that's bad for both missions and their sending churches. I'd add it may also be intentional.

Anyhow, I commented under Doug's post and sent the link on to several friends who are missionaries. In response, I received the following comments from a brother who's a thirty-year missionary to an Eastern African country where he's focused on training church officers. My friend's Dad also gave his life to planting churches in that same country, so there's a lot of missions experience behind his response.

My brother, David, and I have often talked about the tragic condition of missions, today. It would take a book, but as one instance, Operation Mobilization has turned its back on the Word of God, intentionally promoting the leadership of women over men. And this promotion of feminism is rife within Evangelical missions agencies. Sadly, the PCA's Mission to the World is moving in this direction, also. It's more obvious in the European fields, but like all viruses, it will spread.

This betrayal of God's Order of Creation by missions is simply one indication of the rejection of Biblical doctrine that is pervasive within the American church, herself, and therefore exported around the world through our American missionaries. We're not talking about nitpickey details, either. It's central doctrines of Scripture like whether churches even matter at all, whether Jesus is the Only Way, whether the Sacraments are too divisive to be administered, and so on. These commitments are being jettisoned after 2,000 years of universal affirmation by the Church.

But getting at these issues is almost impossible given the view held by most believers that missionaries have piety and have made sacrifices that pastors and elders haven't, and therefore are above questions or review, let alone admonition or accountability.

Not only are many, many missionaries bad, doctrinally, but they're also overwhelmingly committed...

And from the sea there blossoms red, life that shall endless be...

(Tim, w/thanks to David W.) Concerning the most recent case of Somali piracy, two of the four murdered were the owners of the yacht, Scott and Jean Adam. The BBC reports: "Friends have described the Adams as adventure-seekers who were also driven by their Christian faith, at times distributing Bibles at ports of call." The BBC reports further that Scott Adams had studied at Fuller Seminary. May every last Bible the Adams gave away produce fruit for the Kingdom of God.

Letters to Paul, VI: It's God's glory to choose some, so why hide it?

“Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good” (1 Thess 5:21)

(Tim: Building on his series on Jonathan Edwards and the Atonement, here's another series--numbers one, two, three, four, five, and six--by our American African correspondent, David Wegener. At the end of the post is a note from David on the purpose of this series addressed to "Paul," a Zambian Christian leader.)

Letters to Paul, VI: Let's Stop Limiting the Greatness of the Atonement

Dear Paul: You may think that American Christians talk a lot about the elect, but I have to tell you, they don’t. You could attend a Bible-believing church for a long, long time (years) and never hear the word, “elect.” You could attend a Reformed church for a long, long time before you ever heard a sermon on the doctrine of election. 

And if a pastor does preach on election, he has to qualify it so many times in order to reassure his church and any visitors who might be attending and his elders and his wife, that he does not, in fact, believe in election. Whew! That was a close one...

So deeply ingrained is the egalitarianism of American culture that we will not...

Steven Mosher and the latest Rwandan genocide: your tax dollars at work...

(Tim, w/thanks to Dan R.) Back in 1983, a young Stanford anthropologist was booted from China for blowing the whistle on China's forced abortion policy. Steven Mosher (not the Mosher of Climategate) had been in one of China's rural provinces doing Ph.D. research when he discovered China's government forced mothers to murder their unborn children.

Mosher publicized this great oppression and China's government responded by expelling him from the country. Standford University also responded by expelling Mosher from his Ph.D. program. The Chronicle of Higher Education did long articles on the scandal and, despite Stanford's attempt to defend their actions, those of us who read about the case as it developed learned a lesson about the limits of Academic freedom.

Shortly afterwards, Mosher published his best-selling expose of China's mass murders of the unborn, Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese; followed a few years later by Allan Bloom's best-selling expose of the Academy, The Closing of the American Mind.

For some years, now, Mosher has been doing excellent work at the Population Research Institute. Here's a recent example exposing the abuse of our U.S. tax dollars for the coercive sterilization of Rwandan men.

Letters to Paul, V: the heart of the Atonement...

(Tim: Building on his series on Jonathan Edwards and the Atonement, here's another series--numbers one, two, three, four, and five--by our American African correspondent, David Wegener. But first, a note from David on the purpose of this series.)

Paul is a Zambian Christian leader, a graduate of the school where I teach. I’ve taken him as representative of one of my students so I can have a face to look at in my mind as I write these letters.

Often my students puzzle over what they hear coming from the church in the west. Much of their background has led them to accept without question what comes from western Christians. "After all, they brought us the gospel and keep coming back and helping us." My exhortation to Paul is the one given by his namesake: “Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good” (1 Thess 5:21).

Letters to Paul (V): The Heart of the Atonement

Dear Paul: When lecturers teach on the atonement, they often start by talking about various theories of the atonement that have come up in the history of the church. The Christus victor (Christ the Victor) theory talks of how our Lord defeated Satan by His work on the cross. The moral influence theory talks of how Christ was an example for us to follow. The penal substitutionary theory talks of how Christ took our penalty and bore it; He took our place and bore our punishment.

Today, the Christus victor view is “popular”. It lets us talk way over our head about the powers of darkness and corporate evil and the sins of warfare and elitism and consumerism and on and on, as if we even know what we’re talking about. The moral influence theory is also popular. When we see what Christ has done, doesn’t it kindle within you a flame to be like Him? Doesn’t it make you want to ask, “What would Jesus do”? Doesn’t it make you want to be a better person?

Letters to Paul, IV: the blood Atonement was necessary...

(Tim: Building on his series on Jonathan Edwards and the Atonement, here's another series--numbers one, two, three, four, and five--by our American African correspondent, David Wegener. But first, a note from David on the purpose of this series.

Paul is a Zambian Christian leader, a graduate of the school where I teach. I’ve taken him as representative of one of my students so I can have a face to look at in my mind as I write these letters.

Often my students puzzle over what they hear coming from the church in the west. Much of their background has led them to accept without question what comes from western Christians. "After all, they brought us the gospel and keep coming back and helping us." My exhortation to Paul is the one given by his namesake: “Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good” (1 Thess 5:21).

Letters to Paul (IV): The Blood Atonement was Necessary

Dear Paul: The world we live in is violent. You know that from your background as a soldier. The violence in our world is a result of sin. My sin. Your sin. The sin of Ian Smith, the sin of Kenneth Kaunda, the sin of Joshua Nkomo, the sin of Robert Mugabe, the sin of the OAU, the sin of the leaders of England, the sin of Jimmy Carter, etc.

Jonathan Edwards tells us it all goes back to God’s command (“you shall not eat” from that one tree in the garden), the penalty (if you do, “you shall surely die”) and man’s specific disobedience (they “ate”). He is surely correct...

Letters to Paul, III: language in the Emergent Church...

(Tim: Building on his series on Jonathan Edwards and the Atonement, here's another series--numbers one, two, three, four, and five--by our American African correspondent, David Wegener. But first, a note from David on the purpose of this series.)

Paul is a Zambian Christian leader, a graduate of the school where I teach. I’ve taken him as representative of one of my students so I can have a face to look at in my mind as I write these letters.

Often my students puzzle over what they hear coming from the church in the west. Much of their background has led them to accept without question what comes from western Christians. "After all, they brought us the gospel and keep coming back and helping us." My exhortation to Paul is the one given by his namesake: “Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good” (1 Thess 5:21).

Letters to Paul: The Atonement as Cosmic Child Abuse

Dear Paul: Leaders in the Emergent church like Brian McLaren and Steve Chalke have criticized the Bible’s teaching on the atonement. Of course, they don’t put it like that, but this is truly what they are doing. They say they’re criticizing one popular theory of the atonement and use that criticism to undercut the teaching of the Bible.

They say that the way the doctrine is traditionally formulated amounts to child abuse...

Letters to Paul, II: language in the Emergent Church...

(Tim: Building on his series on Jonathan Edwards and the Atonement, here's another series--numbers one, two, three, four, and five--by our American African correspondent, David Wegener. But first, a note from David on the purpose of this series.)

Paul is a Zambian Christian leader, a graduate of the school where I teach. I’ve taken him as representative of one of my students so I can have a face to look at in my mind as I write these letters.

Often my students puzzle over what they hear coming from the church in the west. Much of their background has led them to accept without question what comes from western Christians. "After all, they brought us the gospel and keep coming back and helping us." My exhortation to Paul is the one given by his namesake: “Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good” (1 Thess 5:21).

Letters to Paul: Let’s Stop Trying to be More Holy than God

Dear Paul: Certain Christian leaders in America are spreading confusion on the doctrine of the atonement. They don’t like the way the Bible and the Christian tradition have put things about the death of Christ so they’re proposing “new models,” “a new way of thinking about the death of Christ,” “a new vision,” “an exciting proposal that retains the best of the old and recasts it with a fresh perspective.”

Notice the emotions that come from the way they express themselves. It all sounds so promising, so inviting, so reassuring. It makes you ready to reject the old and accept the new, not for any real reason, but just because of the words they use...

Letters to Paul (I): language in the Emergent Church...

(Tim: Building on his series on Jonathan Edwards and the Atonement, here's another series--numbers one, two, three, four, and five--by our American African correspondent, David Wegener. But first, a note from David on the purpose of this series.)

Paul is a Zambian Christian leader, a graduate of the school where I teach. I’ve taken him as representative of one of my students so I can have a face to look at in my mind as I write these letters.

Often my students puzzle over what they hear coming from the church in the west. Much of their background has led them to accept without question what comes from western Christians. "After all, they brought us the gospel and keep coming back and helping us." My exhortation to Paul is the one given by his namesake: “Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good” (1 Thess 5:21).

Letters to Paul: Language in the Emergent Church

Dear Paul: I want to write a few letters to you about the atonement of Christ, criticizing several teachings that are coming from the west. But first I need to write one about language and communication styles.

A number of American Christian writers today have adopted a style that feels very inviting. They ask a lot of questions. They word their statements in a way that seems humble. They admit that they don’t have all the answers. They show an admirable hesitancy in making truth statements. They don’t rebuke people but want to leave us all feeling affirmed, one of the group, encouraged, like a fellow pilgrim on a journey...

A voice for the voiceless...

(Tim) Think about this. Ms. Carolyn Custis James is married to Frank James who for years served as president of Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. With this entree, Carolyn was uniquely positioned to introduce feminism into the world of Biblical (which is to say Reformed) faith. And this she has done and is doing.

Check out her blog and you'll see how sotto voce she is in her rebellion. She's only helping women to "ask why." She's only trying to get one half of the church to recognize there's another neglected half sitting quietly, waiting to be allowed "to serve." She's overwhelmed by global implications and suffering–-such as South Africa's apartheid and Rwanda's genocide.

She's feted by Westminster in Philadelphia, Park Cities in Dallas, her editor at Zondervan, and Campus Crusade everywhere. If you doubt it, just ask her; she'll tell you herself...

Advertising Sorcery

(Tim: a series on beliefs about spirit beings in Zambian culture by David Wegener) 

Editors note: Here is a lightly edited version of an advertisement for a Traditional Healer (taken off a tree) in our neighborhood. This doctor knows his clientele and the items he mentions are typical reasons why people come to see him. I'm still not totally sure what #9 means.

Witchdoctors in Zambian Culture

(Tim: a series on beliefs about spirit beings in Zambian culture by David Wegener) 

** Editors Note: Readers in the US may not understand just how prevalent these beliefs are in African culture. Witchdoctors, or "Traditional Healers", are regularly consulted by Africans both inside and outside of the church. In other words, this report from David doesn't represent anything exotic where he lives. Rather, it's "business as usual". **

I’ve been teaching class on Spirit Beings this fall at our theological college. As one of their assignments, I asked the students to interview a witchdoctor and ask him a set of questions. They also interviewed a local pastor and asked him the same set of questions and then they were to evaluate the answers of both from Scripture and write things up in a paper.

The United Nations is utterly corrupt...

(Tim, w/thanks to Kamilla) We were privileged to have dear friends who serve in DR Congo with us for a week, recently. The husband grew up an MK in Congo and he and his wife have given their lives in service to Africa.

One evening, the discussion turned to the United Nations and I was shocked to hear the strength of this godly couple's condemnation. The wife said something like, "The United Nations is totally corrupt." What she said, though, was even worse--I just can't remember her exact words. I asked if she'd meant what she said and she intensified the condemnation.

The United Nations is perversely wicked in its work in Africa, and this extends not simply to its policies, but also to UN individuals profiteering both financially and sexually. Along with many of the NGOs, these UN men and women are the new colonialists.

If I were running for President...

Disciplining racism: It all came down to just a couple votes...

(In September of 2008, preaching in the midst of a raging controversy over racism that was dividing his own congregation) Pastor Bulkeley condemned the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations, saying its leader taught that Nazism was the "racial order" of God and that Jews should be eliminated. "This teaching was evil," Bulkeley told his congregation. "It is heretical. It is from the pit of hell and it's a direct offense against the gospel. There should be no mistake about that. It is completely contrary to everything the Bible teaches."

(Tim, w/thanks to Joel B.) Here's an article and sidebar from the Summer 2010 issue of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report telling the story of good church discipline carried out in Friendship Presbyterian Church outside Asheville, North Carolina. The discipline ended up also being adjudicated by the congregation's appellate court, Western Carolina Presbytery (PCA). (And if you don't understand why I'd refer to a PCA presbytery as an appellate court, read Brother David's superb commentary on the state of the PCA post-General Assembly union, here.)

Racism was the sin, and thus the Southern Poverty Law Center this one time stood on the side of the angels. Both the article and the sidebar attempt to provide some of the historic context for the battle against racism throughout the history of the PCA--very much a southern denomination with its roots deeply embedded in "The Recent Unpleasantness."

These articles have both the weaknesses and strengths of their origin outside the PCA. I hope you'll take the time to read them.

First, though, one prefatory remark. Dealing with abortion or racism or feminism is a bloody work...

"Gender is not a black and white issue..."

Readers looking for the moral behind the Caster Semenya morality play are to understand: 

The lesson of the past 11 months is that gender is not a black and white issue but the IAAF must surely be satisfied that it is now a level playing field.

The original concern was that if Semenya’s testosterone levels were raised, she could be receiving a muscle-building advantage. One can only assume that this has now been addressed.

"Been addressed?"

So we presume the IAAF--appointed medical committee has doped this black South African athlete...

World Cup South Africa...

(Tim) This is a safe place to talk about that unAmerican activity known as World Cup soccer. We've made more seats at the table for the younger generation, women, ethnic leaders, and global church representatives. So talk away, dear brothers and sisters, and let's see if we can become more diverse; more inclusive of different voices.

That first goal was...

ClearNote Church of Indy: please pray...

(Tim) Over the years of teaching God's Word on Baylyblog, warning our readers day and night with tears, I've occasionally come face to face with the lack of commitment blog readers have to life outside of the internet. It's been discouraging, personally, yet I continue to expect that in this ministry, as with any other where men and women are build up in our most holy faith, there will be those who obey the Apostle Paul's command, that "The one who is taught the word is to share all good things with the one who teaches him" (Galatians 6:6).

So if Baylyblog has taught you God's Word, please share all good things with David and me. And specifically, tonight I'd ask you to pray for my son, Joseph, and his wife, Heidi, as well as David and Vanessa Abu-Sara, as they work planting ClearNote Church Indy. If you're in the Indy metro area, join their work and put your shoulder to the plow with them. Indy needs Protestant churches that are Biblical, vital in their fellowship, given to prayer, and not modulating their message to tickle the ears of their sheep. In other words, Indy needs churches reformed and always reforming.

What are ClearNote Church of Indy's needs? Here's a letter Joseph just sent out explaining the challenges he and David face...

I should pay to be browbeaten?

(David) ByFaith Online, the Presbyterian Church in America's (PCA) virtual broadsheet, has been putting out a steady drumbeat of email and articles in support of the PCA's "2010 Strategic Plan."

In theory, I'm for better supporting the PCA's Administrative Committee's work as the Strategic Plan seeks. It's the various accretions to that committee I find myself questioning--and none moreso than ByFaith itself. In both print form and its more expansive online edition, ByFaith is a tedious exercise in the peculiar form of missional, artistic, citified pietism beloved of the PCA elite.

The appropriateness of turning a denominationally-supported organ into a shill for one particular party in that denomination seems never to occur to ByFaith's editors.

Of course, those editors think they take pains to represent both sides of issues...

More on the Pill's 50th: the ironclad link between the Pill and AIDS...

(Tim, w/thanks to Kamilla) For many years it's been clear physicians are up to their necks in complicity in the spread of AIDS. Think, for instance, of the refusal of our Surgeon General, longtime Tenth Presbyterian Church of Philly member C. Everett Koop, to quarantine men spreading AIDS when the disease was running like wildfire across our country. The most basic public health measures normally taken in the face of epidemics were anathema to the AIDS lobby, so our number one public health officer chose condoms over quarantines (note particularly pp. 11,12). In fact, with only a few exceptions, pubic health physicians didn't even shut down sodomites' bath houses where the spread of the disease was most deadly.

Since then, physicians have done even less to warn against, or take steps to stop, the destruction of women by AIDS caused by the use of oral contraception. This has been particularly evident in Sub-Saharan Africa where rich nations spend hundreds of millions trying to get poor nations to get their women on oral contraceptives so those women won't bear any more children.

Here's a short excerpt from an article on the subject...

African faith and practice...

(Tim) Although the Pew Research Center has surely missed something in the translation, here's a fascinating 331 page survey on Sub-Saharan African views on religion and morality. (Or, here's the Executive Summary.)

In "Ten things we have learnt about Africa," the BBC reports: polygamy is alive and well, although there's a notable gap between belief and practice. Concerning sodomy, Africans aren't interested in R2K's separation of church and state: they're agin it, by a healthy 98% in several countries (including Zambia). Christians are overwhelmingly opposed to divorce while, in some countries, the majority of Muslims think it's OK. About 40% of Africans believe in witchcraft and visit traditional healers...

Endlessly interesting...

(Tim; this just in from Son Joseph, the analytical one) He writes: You've got to check this out.

Don't miss the slider at the bottom. Life expectancy shows countries being decimated at particular times. Go back to 1992 and you will see the effects of the Rwandan genocide. 1977 shows Cambodia.

Also, don't miss the fact that you can change the data you are looking at. Click on the blue triangle at the end of one of the axis. You can compare anything you want, and track it over time.

Here's one I just created that compares fertility rate to infant mortality rate, grouped (with color) by income level.

Pure and undefiled spirituality of the Church...

Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. (James 1:27).

(Tim) Comment #16 under Mr. Kristoff's blog follow-up to the oped piece he ran in the Times, today:

No church in the country has had a higher visibility in evangelical leadership during the twentieth century than Boston's Park Street Church where, for decades, Harold John Ockenga formed the consciences of coming generations of evangelical leaders. Go back to the eighteenth century and it's Park Street on Boston Common where William Lloyd Garrison spoke, repenting of his colonization compromise on the slave question, announcing his new commitment: "No union with slaveholders." Before that, Park Street was central to the Sunday school movement--another national work of the Christian social conscience.

This to say that the sort of evangelicals tracing our theological heritage back to men like Jonathan Edwards (who suffered in his second pastorate for his unflinching defense of the native Americans in his small village) have always been the bleeding edge of liberal when liberal means loving and generous and, like good Job, snatching the innocents from the jaws of the wicked.

To those who know historic--not mass-market blowhard evangelicalism, the suggestion that President Bush was a sea-change in our concern for the poor and disenfranchised is humorous. Jim Wallis has never spoken for us...

Nicholas Kristoff on evangelicals' street cred...

(Tim) The oped piece by Nicholas Kristoff in today's Times argues that liberals should cut evangelicals some slack on the compassion scale, recognizing they do a lot of what even secularists would recognize as good deeds. It takes him by surprise, but really it shouldn't. The Western world is living off the capital of godly men and women who, from the love of Jesus Christ, have loved their neighbor and done what is necessary to help him. AIDS patients and orphans, slaves, Jews under the Third Reich, disenfranchised black Americans, prisoners, the sick, small children working and dying as chimney sweeps, the hungry ad thirsty, the unborn...

But of course, not the unborn. Never ever the unborn.

This is the reason David and I bring these little ones up so often. Yes, there are many who pay lip service to the unborn, claiming to be opposed to abortion, personally, but to think it's a states rights issue. Or a religious issue: "While I'm personally opposed to abortion and think the fewer of them we have, the better; still, every child should be a wanted child and our Supreme Court has declared it's a woman's right to choose."

The unborn never quite make the cut as legitimate victims needing the protection of the civil magistrate. Lots of professed concern, but nothing approximating Righteous Job's snatching them from the jaws of the wicked...

"Go into all the world" and culture shock...

(Tim) Earlier today, son-in-law, Lucas Weeks, told several of us the story of his map on the wall of his pastors college office. I asked him to write it up, and a few hours later, here it is. Lucas' parents are missionaries living in the Congo (DRC) where Lucas' grandparents were missionaries before them.

* * *

A few years ago, my older sister gave me a world map called, What's Up? South, as a Christmas gift. I love maps, and so I was delighted. When I opened it up, I discovered that it wasn't just any world map: the entire image had been flipped so that North was at the top, and South at the bottom...

TBN's false shepherds and Thomas Brooks' "Seven Marks of False Shepherds"...

(Tim) One of the themes in Scripture is false shepherds--those men (and women) who claim to speak for God when God hasn't called them and their message isn't from Him, but from the Evil One. As pastors, we should make careful note of the identifying marks of false shepherds, first for our own flock and souls, that we not be found to be false shepherds, ourselves. And as it is our duty to protect our flock from destruction at our own hands, it's also our duty to defend them against the hands of others. The good shepherd lays down his life in defense of his sheep.

A dear friend who's a missionary to Africa tells men there that he'd rather his children look at pornography than Trinity Broadcasting Network. They're strong words, but travel through townships and neighborhoods in Africa and see how many homes have it on. You may turn to strong words yourself if you love the souls under your care.

Trinity Broadcasting Network is the real deal--a group of men and women who claim to speak for God but speak for the Devil. They are false shepherds and shepherdesses, and every one of us who's been entrusted by God with a part of His Flock ought to have gone on record in our pulpit condemning TBN's heresies as well as their fleecing of their sheep. Without mincing words--think Jude or the Apostle John's Letters to the Seven Churches.

Here's a Facebook group intent on exposing TBN for what it is...

A prayer request from David Wegener...

(Tim) Please pray for Francois Murekezi's healing. This just in from David Wegener:

Serious situation at Theological College of Central Africa (Ndola, Zambia) tonight. Got a call around 7pm that one of our lecturers, Francois Murekezi (from Rwanda), was trying to get admitted to the hospital with cerebral malaria. That is very severe and people can often die within a short period of time, days or even hours.

So I decided to go over there even though visiting hours were over. (Francois) couldn't talk. Hopefully the quinine can arrest the malaria quickly.

Please pray.

The Santa Claus ordeal...

(Tim: This original piece is by my nephew, Isaiah Taylor, from his blog for kids, Bosaiah's Blog. I'm sure our readers agree his creative ability is undeniable. Here's the young gentleman all decked out with his sibs. If you're a child and would like to read Isaiah's blog, send him an e-mail.) Now before I get into this, if you have any siblings (or you yourself) who believe in Santa Claus and the parents want it to stay that way, don't read this to them. I'm giving you you a fair warning because I could get in big trouble if I caused a little kid to drop their belief in Santa when their parents wanted them to think he was real.

The first point I want to make is that Santa Claus is taking the place of Christ in the Christmas season. The name Christmas has a simple meaning: Christ Worship Service. This is supposed to keep the focus on Christ, but the human mind is very inattentive. Most people don't know how this new religion came to be. It starts with a very generous man.

The story of Saint Nicholas tells of a poor man with three daughters...

Loveless, bland, and left behind...

Jesus said: "You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men. (Matthew 5:13).

(Tim) Explaining to a friend the other day that I've found Roman Catholics writing about almost anything other than the five solas of the Reformation infinitely more interesting and helpful than Protestants, I lamented the inability of Reformed men to go against the flow. Why is that?

We went against the flow in the Reformation; and for years after, critical thinking under the Word of God belonged to us. But now, the only ones doing good critical (and often Biblical) thinking about ethics and war, sex, medicine, politics, art, demographics, culture, fertility, and the list goes on are almost exclusively Roman Catholic. About the only thing Protestants, and particularly Reformed Protestants, today are able to think about in an interesting way is how best to trim the coin of the doctrines of Scripture in such a way as to lower the hurdle barring entry to the Church for pomos who hate light, authority, meekness, humility, and truth. All our creativity goes toward church growth. Which is to say, all our creativity goes toward perfecting the idolatry Vernon Grounds warned against when he pointed out that the evangelical world worships at the altar of "the bitch goddess of success."

Show me any evangelical who's written on the place of vampire flicks in the sodomization of the Western world as...

Children are slaughtered while dogs are blessed...

(Tim, w/thanks to Kamilla) Early church fathers rebuked Christians for paying money to feed their dogs while leaving abandoned children to die on the slopes behind their homes. But today, no one calls Christians to consider the love and affection and wealth we shower on our precious pets while turning cold hearts to the handicapped, the elderly, illegal aliens, AIDS orphans, and the unborn children slaughtered each week at the abortuaries just down the street from our churches.

In fact, some churches are leading the way in making a principle of such perversity. Blathering on about dogs' deep feelings and souls, Covenant Presbyterian Church of Los Angeles, for instance, has begun holding worship services for dogs and their people...

"You can do it, man..."

(Tim) Recent tests showed South African runner, Caster Semenya, had three times the normal level of the male hormone, testosterone, prior to her latest competition. This led sports authorities to order what are widely being called "gender tests" to determine whether, when she blew her fields away in recent races, Miss Semenya had an unfair advantage. An errant fax number brought what should have been a private matter into the public eye.

Returning to Johannesburg following stunning victories at the World Athletics Championships, Miss Semenya told reporters...

Joseph Tate Bayly VII...

He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will... (Eph. 1:5)

(Tim) Since their return from Ethiopia where they spent two weeks, starting May 17, and picked up their son, Joseph and Heidi have been learning to be father and mother. Recently, they returned from a trip to Sawyer, Michigan and Pardeeville, Wisconsin, where they spent time with the Taylor and Staveness/Healy clans, respectively. All of us here in Bloomington have been rejoicing at God's kindness to Joseph and Heidi (and the rest of us) in giving them this wonderful child to raise as a Covenant child. What a joy he is to us!

During the bloodshed, what did Rwanda's pastors do?

(Tim) Below is an excerpt from Philip Gourevitch's history of the Rwandan genocide, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families. This book should be read by every believer committed to opposing the slaughter of the feeble, elderly, newborn, and unborn upon which our civil compact has been built for decades, now.

A few years ago, a godly Rwandan was preaching to us here at Church of the Good Shepherd and he took the occasion to rebuke us, saying we Americans had no authority to condemn Rwanda's genocide when we were slaughtering 1.3 million children in our own nation, year after year, with no sign of the bloodshed ending.

Truth is, many, many denominations, churches, elders, and pastors have endorsed the slaughter of the unborn here in these United States. And even among those pastors who claim to be pro-life, precious few are anti-abortion. Like the Rwandan priests and pastors, many of us...

And He will give you the desire of your hearts...

(Tim) Praise the Lord! He has seen the affliction of his beloved and comforted them! Joseph and Heidi just heard the Ethiopian court has approved their adoption of Mamush, here pictured. Lord willing, they'll be travelling to Ethiopia this Saturday to begin the process of bringing their son home. Read more about it, here.

Lord willing, Ethiopian court will act this Monday on Joseph and Heidi's adoption...

(Tim) Our eldest son, Joseph, and his wife, Heidi (see pic), are in the late stages of adopting a child from Ethiopia. This coming Monday, the Ethiopian court will act in their case, Lord willing, after which they may be free May 16th to travel to pick up their little boy. As longtime readers will remember, Doug and Heather Ummel (Heather is our firstborn) have a son, Josiah, who was adopted from Ethiopia a couple years ago.

Here's a pic of Josiah, along with some helpful adoption resources.

Would you please keep Joseph and Heidi, and the Ethiopian authorities, in your prayers? And if you're interested, here's the blog where Joseph and Heidi update us on their son's entry into God's Covenant Community. Here's Heidi's latest update...

A reformed congregation that doesn't use grace to silence the fear of God...

(Tim) Conrad Mbewe serves as the pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia--one of the more vital reformed witnesses the Lord has raised up in our time. The congregation is known for reaching into the dregs of society in a non-patronizing way, doing frontline evangelism, training pastors at a pastors college they sponsor, planting churches around the country, etc. As I said, the Lord's presence and blessing are obvious to those familiar with the congregation. This is a reformed congregation with a large heart, no censorious spirit, expansive in its witness and hopes, and living in the fear of God.

Maybe that's the thing that most strikes me about Pastor Mbewe and his people: they have not used reformed doctrine as a pathway to cheap grace that silences the fear of God. Everything is not "grace, grace, grace" to them. Their harp of ten thousand strings does not harp on that one string so long.

This is a test. Read through Kabwata's prayer letter noting the parts we must admit would never be written; or, if written, never quite make it past the editor's keyboard of our own churches' newsletters. To help with the task, I've put several in bold italics.

If the letter piques your interest, here's Pastor Mbewe's blog where you'll find a truly Biblical apostolic African voice.

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KABWATA BAPTIST CHURCH PRAYER LETTER

“Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17)

March 2009

Dear brothers and sisters,   

We open this prayer letter with the words of Scripture, “Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him” (Psalm 126:5-6). That is our testimony as a church as we review the last few months of the year 2008, including the first few months of this year.

MEMBERSHIP
The year 2008 was full of tears, as we lost precious church members who graduated from the church militant to the church triumphant. We also wept much over the excommunications that were necessary in order to avert the judgment of God upon the church...

Lucas Weeks on AIDS in Africa, particularly Uganda...

(Tim) Four years ago, Lucas Weeks wrote a paper on AIDS in Africa for a class he was taking at Indiana University. He focused particularly on the politicization of the issue and some of the success one nation, Uganda, had achieved in protecting the public health of her citizens. But of course no one wanted to know about the reason for Uganda's success because it demonstrated the immutable glory of God's Law.

Recent crud on Her.minutiae prompts me to make Lucas' paper available here for any interested in this issue. Lucas' parents are lifelong missionaries to Africa, focusing particularly on the same country his grandparents served as missionaries which in the past has been known as Congo or Zaire, but now is called the Democratic Republic of Congo.

To Mary Lee's and my joy, Lucas is now our son-in-law, married to our youngest daughter, Hannah. Currently a second-year student at ClearNote Pastors College, I hope you enjoy his paper. As you read, please keep in mind Lucas wrote this back in 2005.

Pastor Conrad Mbewe issues African caution about President Obama...

(Tim) Readers may remember our introduction of Pastor Conrad Mbewe, leader of Zambia's vital Reformed churches. Conrad has started blogging. For several months we've had a link to him here at Baylyblog.

Two recent posts merit our readers' attention. The earlier one is a meditation on the current state of South Africa and the reformed church's witness there. David Wegener commends this post to us. The more recent post is Conrad's caution to fellow Africans caught up in the Messianic (my word) hopes of their continent concerning our latest president, Barack Obama. Both are worth your time.

As always, Pastor Mbewe is a wise living demonstration of the power of the Word of God wielded by a man of faith.

Soft pillows, comfy chairs, and holiness...

(Tim) Entertainers are the only ones permitted to be honest, today. But sometimes, scientists are cut some slack and are allowed to speak their minds, too. In that vein, did you notice yesterday's news that women are hard wired not to lose weight as easily as men. WebMD titled their article on the study, "Hunger Control: Women the Weaker Sex?" Turns out if we pay scientists to study the difference between the sexes, one of the results we'll get is that the sex that carries and nurses our children is hard wired to...

Well, to what?

Amazingly, to carry and nurse our children. Brilliant! Which got me thinking...

Anyone who's viewed a Reubens has to be skeptical of the cult of the thin body rampant in the American church. Only the perfectly naive would see it as a battle for holiness, the repentance of those who recognize their god is their belly.

When I was in Africa several years ago, David Wegener cautioned me to watch how I spoke about weight. Over there, he explained, any reference to one's weight (if one is adipose, as I am) is seen as arrogance. In other words, Africa is normal across history in thinking a fat wife contented and prosperous. Not sinful.

Through the years, I've had a number of wives come to me and ask me to pray that they'd lose weight...

President Obama: "Meet the new boss, same as..."

(Tim) Here’s the truth. Obama is the oppressor of children, born and unborn. But since his skin color is black, we can’t believe he’d oppress anyone. So we come out with all this blather about other social justice issues equally commanding our attention as Christians. Our goal, of course, is to obscure the fact that abortion absolutely dwarfs the death toll of all other forms of oppression around the world combined. That’s combined, brothers and sisters!

Why, just in these United States alone, since the bloody decision, Roe v. Wade, was issued, our nation has torn limb from limb, leg from torso, body from mother’s womb, over fifty million—50,000,0000—of our little children.

This number is so large that it makes Africans' Rwanda, Asians' Pol Pot, and Europeans' Hitler look tame by comparison. The only bloody oppressors who are even close to slaughtering the numbers we have slaughtered by our own national, systemic, bloody, oppressive, enslaving child-murders are Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong.

But, get this: If instead of talking about the death toll in our nation alone, we consider the international death toll from child slaughter through the murders we call “abortions,” then we’re talking about one Joseph Stalin every year. That’s well over 50,000,000 children slaughtered EVERY SINGLE YEAR!

It’s disgusting for otherwise educated and thoughtful men to seek to legitimize their conniving at this great bloody oppression that defines our nation by sniveling about systemic poverty and education and secondhand smoke and carbon emissions and AIDS.

If men who claim to know the Triune God want to vote Democratic; if men who claim to know the Triune God and have faith in Jesus Christ have black skin and want to vote for another man with black skin; we’d all be better off if they’d have the courage of their prejudices and admit them... You know, something like, “I’m afraid of not appearing progressive enough.” Or “I’m afraid my congregation would have my hide if I didn’t speak up for the brother.”

An open letter to African brothers in Christ on the occasion of Obama's Inauguration...

(Tim; this from and by Rev. David Wegener of Ndola, Zambia)

* * *
This is an open letter from an American Reformed Christian living in Africa to my African Christian friends on the occasion of the Inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the U.S.A.

20 January 2009

Dear African Christian Brother:

I would ask you to pray for your brothers and sisters in Christ in the church in America, particularly for those who believe in the complete truthfulness of Scripture.

I’ve just begun a new term at the college and one of the courses I teach is a survey of church history. Last week we learned about Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, who was asked to curse Christ or die. The old man replied, “for 86 years I have served Him and He has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?” Minutes after making this good confession he was burned alive... We also read about Blandina, a slave girl who endured indescribable tortures before being killed for her faith. In a few weeks we’ll study Athanasius, who was exiled from his pastorate five times because of his faith in our triune God and his willingness to stand alone against the world for the faith once and for all delivered to the saints.

"As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God."

(David) A fascinating article on Africa's need of Christian faith by an African expatriate in the London Times... (Thanks, Alex)

Those who have read David Wegener's assessments of Africa's needs on this blog will find this article especially interesting. Here's a taste:

I used to (applaud) the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith. But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

It's still a dream...

(Tim) At the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King preached a sermon calling our nation to repentance. That sweltering afternoon before a quarter million souls, King cast a vision of what America would be like when white racism finally bled itself to its long-deserved ugly death:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Many are declaring the election of Barack Obama as the fulfillment of Martin Luther King's dream. In truth, it's the very opposite.

As Martin Luther King defined racism, what we've done has been racist to the core...

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...

(Tim) The emoting over Obama's blackness is cloying hypocrisy. If an African American ascending our Imperial Throne means anything, its meaning is bound up with the end of the oppression of a group of persons formerly declared not full persons under our Constitution due to the color of their skin.

Instead of learning the lesson of his skin color and descent, though, Obama glides into office on the blood of an entire generation of souls, red and yellow, black and white, who aren't enslaved, but slaughtered...