BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

President Obama's totalitarianism...

Under the administration of President Barack Obama, the U.S. Department of Health has now declared that, by law, all health insurance companies will be required to provide birth control and sterilization, as well as drugs whose purpose is to kill unborn babies. Even self-funded health insurance provided by religious organizations who are opposed to this murder of unborn children will be required to provide these deadly pills.

Responding to the outcry, the Obama administration has decided to be magnanimous and provide religious groups an additional year to comply. In an effort to oppose this governmental oppression of babies' right to life and citizens' freedom of religion, U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry is sponsoring a bill--HR 1179--that would force President Obama to (at least) provide religious health care providers their right of conscience. Read more about it here.

Keep in mind...

Reformed pulpits today show Erasmus won...

In his Bondage of the Will, Luther opposes the Roman Catholic church's champion Biblical scholar, Erasmus of Rotterdam. In an earlier post, I put up an excerpt from the beginning of Bondage of the Will in which Luther tells his readers he will be making assertions because it's the character of the Christian mind to "delight in assertions."

One longtime Baylyblog reader who is a committed Roman Catholic thought to defend Erasmus here by placing a large quotation from Erasmus immediately under the Luther quote I had posted.

Reading the Erasmus excerpt, it was apparent Erasmus was saying one thing while doing another. The way Erasmus speaks in this excerpt is common among scholars today and, having put those scholars in charge of the training of our future pastors at our denominational seminaries, we've arrived at the place where preachers often are incapable of saying, "Thus says the Lord God Almighty."

Pastors preach for the approval of the lowest common denominator, scholars and the professional and chattering classes they manufacture, rather than the farmers, truckers, and coal miners who used to be Presbyterian but long ago left for Baptist and Pentecostal churches...

Roman Catholicism is a medieval heresy...

Under the post, Repenting of parachurch, Baptist childhoods..., one comment elicited this response from your scribe. I posted it as a comment, there, but also put it here for the benefit of those who don't keep track of comments. (TB)

Brothers, allow me a few responses, although they must be hopelessly brief considering the weight of these matters.

>>Be careful when you sling around words like apostasy, idolatry (Per Calvin we're all "fabricum idolarum") and heresy.

We are careful. That is, careful--very careful--to keep them alive. The proper word to use concerning Roman Catholicism is 'heresy'. Read Joe Brown's Heresies. Reformed pastors and elders use this word following our Reforming fathers's example because Roman Catholicism is a system of doctrine that leads souls to Hell. Systematically.

The center of Rome's system is the merchandising of salvation through...

Repenting of parachurch, Baptist childhoods; Home Sweet Romans...

Here's a revealing, Biblically inaccurate interview with another in a long line of Evangelical intellectuals who felt that repudiating--really, really repudiating--their Baptist roots required them to turn to the Roman Catholic heresy. Honestly, what's with these guys? Can I see the hand of a man--just one man--who repents of his parachurch, Baptist heritage without becoming a Sacramentalist (you know, ex opere operato and all that), and then a full-blown Roman Catholic?

This is why I've said to my F-V sympathizing friends that we have to find a way to innoculate our parachurch, Baptist brothers against feeling the need to take the most radical step possible to put the faith of their childhood behind them.

First they embrace infant baptism, and that's not enough; then it's the smells and bells of...

Not to worry, Congresswoman Bachmann's resigned membership in her WELS church...

The Wisconisn Evangelical Lutheran Synod sees the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and raises them one. Or maybe ten.

In my former home of Pardeeville, Wisconsin, the WELS congregation was the dominant religious presence in town. When they called a new pastor, Mary Lee and I decided to invite him with his wife and children over for dinner. After a cordial introduction, we sat down at the table and I turned to him and said, "I've heard lots of things through the years, but let me ask you directly: do you pray, do I pray, or do we not pray at all?"

He answered, "You go ahead and pray and we'll sit by," and immediately his good wife turned to their children and said, "We're going to pray; fold your hands and close your eyes." God bless her.

We had a pleasant evening. During the conversation the WELS pastor told us his grandmothers was a godly Baptist and that he didn't pray with her, either...

Pascal on the Radical Two-Kingdom (R2K) error...

Speaking of excellent summaries of aberrant movements within the Church, Darryl Hart has outdone himself with this one. If you read nothing else critiquing the Radical Two-Kingdom error, it's sufficient to read this and drop it. That's assuming at some point you've read any historic Church father or historic confession or catechism on God's Moral Law. Here's Son Joseph's comment:

(These men) are just casuists. I've thought that again and again. (They're) in fine form, claiming that states can't sin...; and that since states can't sin, individuals can't sin if they are pursuing anything in the political arena, including the legalization of prostitution.

Pascal refuted them adequately in the Provincial Letters. I've included a quote from Letter 7 below, which highlights how...

A prayer for the salvation of all men...

ClearNote Church of Bloomington holds both an evening service on Maundy Thursday and a noon service on Good Friday. Here's one of the prayers from our Good Friday service. Jody Killingsworth compiled it from historic sources and I post it here because I found it struck themes missing from our prayers in worship, and very necessary. I'm guessing this will be true of others, also.

* * *

O MERCIFUL God, You have made all men, and You hate nothing that You have made, nor do you desire the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be converted and live. Have mercy therefore, we pray, on all who reject the Gospel—on Pagans, and Atheists; on Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists; on Arians and Roman Catholics, and on all who, in their pride, like to make much of their own ability.

Knowing, Father, that You resist the proud but give grace to the humble, we ask that You...

From Dark Ages, Galileo speaks of literal interpretation of Scripture...

(Tim) It's central to our chronological conceit to reassure ourselves the Middle Ages were the Dark Ages crammed full of religious bloodshed, religious oppression of scientific progress, and the Plague. So we've all learned the lesson to keep church and state separate to the end that we won't have as many wars or as many people die in those wars.

Doing well are we? Paganism is the state religion almost everywhere and more people were sacrificed on the altars of paganism's idols (Communism, Zionism, Feminism, etc.) this past century than ever died from all the religious wars of the Medieval world combined.

But what of science? Our modern morality play smugly assures us the Enlightenment busted truth loose from the religious ignoramuses who had oppressed the great minds across many centuries. Finally we know it's not wrong to take the Pill, unborn babies aren't persons and can't feel the knives, the iPhone is cool, washing hands saves lives, you can make babies in the lab, you can end the war by blowing up the women and children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Earth isn't the center of the Universe.

"Poor Galileo! If only he'd lived today when every man finally knows religion has nothing to say to the state or the high priests of Science. The Bible's true when it talks about spiritual things--not political or sexual or scientific things. It's no history book or textbook on cosmology. It tells you how to feel--not what to think. Poor Galileo! He had it right and the church tried to shut him up. Stupid ignorant church. Stupid Dark Ages...

"This woman, at least, will be saved by childbearing..."

(Tim, w/thanks to Shelly) It disgusts me to have to direct Baylyblog readers to Roman Catholic sites as often as I do, but there's no helping it. Reformed men and women are so busy sinning so grace may abound that there's almost no comparable teaching in the Reformed world. And certainly not in the PCA--I defy you to show me one single article this spectacularly beautiful and sanctifying for women published anywhere under the auspices of the PCA. In fact, on any site having any affiliation to the PCA. Or rather, any site affiliated with any of the chest-thumping Reformed men: Together for the Gospel. Acts 29. Desiring God...

Brothers, if you want to do a more Biblical job of loving your wife, read this. Sisters, whether married or single, if you're willing to trade in your iPhone and laptop for the salvation 1Timothy 2:15 promises woman, read this.

There's nothing more foundational to godliness in Christ Jesus than your femininity.



Roman Catholic deacon renounces her ordination...

(Tim, w/thanks to Kamilla) Repentance is such a wonderful thing. When our church transferred from the PC(USA) to the PCA, during my transfer exam on the floor of Northern Illinois Presbytery I was asked what I believed about the ordination of women to the office of pastor and elder...

"Scholar-priests trained to decipher the arcane tongues..."

(Tim) From a January 3, 2011 New Yorker article titled, "God's Librarians: the Vatican Library enters the twenty-first century," here's an explanation of Rome's many-century opposition to laymen reading the Bible that strikes me as pertinent to the scientific exegetes who write books and teach in reformed and evangelical seminaries and colleges, today:

(The Vatican Library) may possess some of the most ancient manuscripts of Scripture in existence, but for centuries the (Roman) Catholic church held that ordinary people shouldn't be able to read the Bible--that the Old and New Testaments themselves should be a kind of "secret history" for everyone but the scholar-priests trained to decipher the arcane tongues in which they were written.

The modern scientific exegete has done the medieval equivalent of denying Scripture to the layman by...

Leading worship, I: singing praises...

Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples, Ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. Ascribe to the LORD the glory due His name; Bring an offering, and come before Him; Worship the LORD in holy array. (1 Chronicles 16:28-29)

(Tim) Young men reading the stuff published on worship today would be quite justified in fearing that worship is very, very complicated and only the people who buy lots of books and read lots of articles and think very deeply about this matter could possibly design and lead a worship service that does what it's supposed to do. Why, simply the debates over what the Regulative Principle prohibits and requires are endless! What's a poor boy to do?

In the interest of cutting through some of the verbiage and helping Reformed pastors who want to follow the early Reformers in worship as they follow them in preaching God's Word, here are a few reforms which take their cue from Geneva.

1. The main method of restoring congregational participation within Reformed worship was to call congregants to sing. Thus the music had to be (and was) quite simple. Under Calvin, the congregation sang only the melody; it was plainsong with no parts. Certain men of our time debate endlessly over whether popular tunes known outside the church were used during early Protestant worship. Both sides have their scholars, but my recommendation is that you not waste time on the argument. Leave it alone.

Following the Geneva pattern of repudiating the high style of the idolatrous Roman Mass and cultivating a simplicity that would encourage the common man to join in the singing, we ourselves should repudiate high classical style that communicates our most-excellent taste while masquerading as being all about reverence for God...

"He started disciplining me like I was one of his sons..."

(Tim, w/thanks to Taylor) Read this wonderful story and ask yourself where the church turns boys--undisciplined angry ones, at that--into men? Youth groups? Home school co-ops? Christian school science labs? Crew? Membership classes? Men's retreats?

You say your church is not a parochial school filled with inner city kids and your own fathers are the ones training their own sons. I say, "Yeah, right."

Face it. Each of our churches has a bunch of young men every bit as much in need of the discipline of playing on Bob Hurley's basketball team as the kids at St. Anthony High in Jersey City. In the ministry today, we're surrounded by man-boys whose fathers have turned their backs on them. These young men crave discipline--which is to say they crave fatherly love...

"Some of New York City's most prominent religious leaders" mourn city's aborted babies...

(Tim, w/thanks to Matthew M.) Religious leaders in New York City came together this past week to speak out against the pervasive slaughter of unborn children in their city. Of every one hundred babies given by God to women of the city, forty-one of these precious little ones are murdered by abortionists. (The figure is 48% in the Bronx, 38% in Manhattan; here are the stats.) The Sun reported:

Some of New York City’s most prominent religious leaders are making a public demand for answers as to why decades of social welfare programs aimed at making abortions a rarity have not only failed, but failed so dramatically.

The leaders — spanning Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant clergy — issued their demand at a press conference today at Manhattan. They said they are galvanized by new data showing that some 87,000 abortions were performed in New York City in 2009, a figure that accounts for 41% of all pregnancies across the five boroughs that year. That 41% rate is nearly double the national average.

“The Statue of Liberty should be the symbol of this city, not the grim reaper,” declared the current archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York, the Most Rev. Timothy Dolan.

Which religious leaders joined in the public lament? The New York Times...

Benedict XVI, woman officers, and the Creation Order...

(Tim, w/thanks to Kevin) Roman Catholic leader, Benedict XVI, recently responded to those critical of Roman Catholics for not having woman officers. He makes several simple statements you'd wait years to hear on the floor of most Reformed denominational meetings. When it comes to the foundational issue, though, he misses the ball.

The church doesn't have women officers, not because our Lord chose men as His Apostles, but because...

Joe Sobran, RIP.

(Tim) As a subscriber to Joe Sobran's e-text syndicator, last night I was sent word Joe had departed this life. Then friends sent me links to notices of Joe's death at other places including National Review and First Things. Both lamented his passing while going on to regret how Joe's great learning had made him mad. Not angry-mad but anti-Semitic-mad.

He'd criticized Israel's foreign policy, then gone on to point out how toxic Jewish influence on the affairs of men had been visible in the twentieth century in Marxism and the wholesale slaughter of unborn babies--a Holocaust that in simple gallons of blood drowns the evil of the Third Reich. Too, Joe had the chutzpah to point out how Europeans were gagging men who publicly questioned aspects of our received history concerning the Christian/Jewish/homosexual/handicapped German holocaust.

"He's a Holocaust-denier!" they huffed and puffed. But of course, anyone who actually read Joe through the years knew he wasn't denying the Holocaust, but that he had a much larger point--namely, the hypocrisy of public intellectuals...

Should pastors preach evangelistic sermons to their churches?

(Tim) Under "What is Gospel-centered ministry, really...," there's been a lengthy series of exchanges in the comments concerning whether it's proper to preach evangelistic sermons to established churches. This is an exceedingly important discussion and I want to encourage readers to go down and read those comments in their proper context. But knowing some won't go there, here is my most recent response which can, to some degree, stand on its own. Whatever else you don't read, make sure not to pass over the critically important quote from Luther here recorded.

* * *

Augustine said, "Many sheep without, many wolves within." From the founding of the Church, this has been the universal experience of pastors as we care for our flocks. Yes, the Epistles demonstrate a presumption that letters to believers are letters to believers. It's hard to imagine how they could have been written otherwise. "To those purporting to belong to Christ who are a part of that organization purporting to be a true church in Galatia?" It doesn't work.

But do the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles provide evidence that our Lord and His Apostles called the faith of those marked by the signs of the Covenant into question? The answer to that question is an emphatic, "Yes!" How long shall my list be? Think of those Christ contradicts, telling them their father is not God, but the Devil (John 8:38 & ff.). And if we want to let ourselves off the hook by dismissing Christ as our paradigm for pastoral care today under the rubric of His omniscience, let's move to the Apostolic warning given to Simon Magus in Acts 8. Or on to the many exhortations to baptized believers recorded in the Epistles carefully calculated to warn against and expose presumption--including the Letters to the Seven Churches (eg. Revelation 3:1-6).

So yes, we are to preach to our people normally addressing them as true believers. But we also must test ourselves to see if we are in the faith and call our flock to follow us in this discipline...

Joe Sobran: preaching to the conscience and the Roman Catholic error of transubstantiation...

(Tim) Ten years ago, I read this column by Joe Sobran. Joe's declaration of faith gave me joy, but what struck me, particularly, was this statement:

Great as Shakespeare is, I never lose sleep over anything he said. He leaves my conscience alone.

Still today, I find myself wondering whether what's lacking in Shakespeare is not also lacking in my own preaching? Do God's sheep leave my proclamation of the Word of God each Lord's Day morning with easy consciences? Is their sleep always peaceful? If so, what an unfaithful minister of the Gospel I am.

Then we hit Sobran's promotion of the Roman Catholic error of transubstantiation. If you think it scandalous that I'd give any space to Sobran's defense of transubstantiation, never fear. Think about this.

Jesus didn't say, "this wine which is poured out for you," "this wine is the new covenant in my blood," or "for as often as you eat this bread and drink this wine...."

Rather, He said:

“This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood" (Luke 22:20b). And the Apostle Paul said, "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. (1 Corinthians 11:25-28).

Reformed Protestants have no need to fear the Roman Catholic dogma of transubstantiation. If their claim to hold to the literal meaning of these texts were true, it wouldn't be the wine, but the cup that becomes our Lord's blood. Have you ever tried to drink a cup?

Men, too, need rooms of their own...

(Tim, w/thanks to Kamilla) One more bit of evidence Calvinists are so busy defending the spirituality of the Church that only Roman Catholics have courage or interesting proposals for cultural reform. Check out this piece from InsideCatholic.com by Anthony Esolen titled, "Brothers, Sing On," arguing for single-sex education.

Righteousness by good doctrine...

(Tim) This just posted as a comment by Craig French. Never read it before, but it puts into words a conviction David and I've had for quite a while, now. Thank you, Craig.

[W]e must remind ourselves that the Catholic righteousness by good works is vastly preferable to a protestant righteousness by good doctrine. At least righteousness by good works benefits one’s neighbor, whereas righteousness by good doctrine only produces lovelessness and pride. -Herman Bavinck

Woman theologian wants to replace the Cross with a...

(Woman) by nature (that is, by the ordinary law of God) is formed to obey; for the government of women has always been regarded by all wise persons as a monstrous thing..." (John Calvin)

(Tim, w/thanks to Jeff M.) It's worth noting how southern Presbyterianism's Union Theological Seminary has left the faith of her fathers for the heresies of her mothers.

Back when I was a minister in the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA), I noted how "out there" the woman pastors were compared to the men pastors. Whether the issue was political, ecclesiastical, or theological, they brought a whole new level of error into the church that even apostate men hadn't given themselves to.

Eve is vulnerable. Can I get an "Amen" from a man who loves his mother, sisters, daughters, and wife?

Priestly celibacy is the context for the sodomitic rape of children...

An investigation last year revealed that church leaders in Dublin had spent decades protecting child-abusing priests from the law while many fellow clerics turned a blind eye. (There were) decades of sexual, physical and psychological abuse in Catholic-run schools, workhouses and orphanages. ...a succession of archbishops and senior aides had compiled confidential files on more than 100 parish priests who had sexually abused children since 1940 (but the) files had remained locked in the Dublin archbishop's private vault.

...Clogher Bishop Joseph Duffy said resignations were not on the agenda in Rome...

In recent weeks, a new sexual abuse scandal involving Catholic clergy has erupted in Benedict's homeland of Germany. -read the AP story, "Irish Bishops meet Pope in summit on sex abuse"

(Tim, w/thanks to David C.) I've commented before that the Roman Catholic's unscriptural insistence on celibacy for the priesthood is directly tied to priests' predations against their flocks. Something about it's better to marry than to burn...

Compounding that error is the silence of Reformed men in the midst of this scandal...

The invisible woman...

(Tim) My friend Bob Patterson forwarded a pre-release copy of the Winter 2010 issue of The Family in America: A Journal of Public Policy which he edits, and it's the point of this essay to get you to subscribe. For many years I've been reading this and other publications of what is now called the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society, and they've been foundational to my work as a preacher, pastor, and father.

This particular issue's cover article details how, over the past thirty years, homemakers have been forced to subsidize the lives of privilege lived by other women who have forsaken marriage, the home, and childbearing for degrees and professions.

Professional women with salaries high enough to allow them to pay for day care and still turn a profit have not simply been content to leave their homemaking sisters behind, but have built their lifestyle on the backs of those sisters and their hardworking husbands. To anyone who matters, these homemakers are invisible.

Equal Employment Opportunity laws have piled up a legacy of systemic injustice throughout the wage earning world, leaving half the fairer and weaker sex to raise the children the other half will depend upon for their Medicare and Social Security payments when their life of childless privilege is drawing to an end. Meanwhile, the husbands of these housewives and mothers are in free-fall, trying to support the mother of their children as she gives herself to work that, despite those bright boys and girls in Economics Departments, still hasn't shown up on their gross domestic profit tally sheets...

The pope with rouge, mascara, and a perm...

(Tim, w/thanks to David L.) Priceless. Brilliant. MSNBC.

Check out the first few comments...

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...

Does the Indiana Supreme Court consider the First Amendment helpful? Pertinent? Binding?

(Tim, w/thanks to a brother) Wondering if and where there are violations of the First Amendment in these United States? Look no further. Here's an entirely believable account of the method used to bar Roman Catholic attorney Bryan Brown from practicing law in the state of Indiana. If even partially true, this is a sordid tale. But I'm betting it's all true being quite similar to accounts I've heard privately of intimidation and persecution for the Faith.

Seeking to evaluate Brown's psychological fitness, representatives of the Indiana Supreme Court asked him these questions:

Do you believe that you should be punished for your sins?

Idolatry of the state: the thunderheads gather...

(Tim, w/thanks to David L.) On the occasion of another thematic Bible, this one titled The American Patriot's Bible...

Recently, I've been explaining to younger believers that we must beware the idolatry of the state--particularly now when so many are crying out for Washington D.C. to heal them. We're well on our way to granting the civil magistrate unlimited authority and the consequences for followers of Jesus Christ will be catastrophic.

Thunderheads are gathering on the horizon and those who don't see them must not want to.

Here's a sampling of current cases where religious liberty is under attack. And note, these stories are all from this past week. 

First, the Roman Catholic church is threatening to pull out of diaconal work in the District of Columbia rather than submit to the District of Columbia requiring them...

Marxists killed their hundred million, feminists their billion...

Lots of Berliners talked of Ronald Reagan’s speech, delivered in Berlin, almost two years earlier, when he demanded:”Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down this Wall!” Was President Reagan’s dramatic call about to happen? Some Berliners worried the soldiers would take charge. No one knew.

Ironically, the worst source of information was the media, perhaps because in 1987 so many had underestimated the importance of Reagan’s speech. The New York Times declared that Reagan had “lost the air of authority” and suggested that Reagan’s Berlin Wall speech was “surreal” and indicated that the “presidency had ceased to function.” The Washington Post, and U.S. News & World Report has also been highly critical.

But, in November 1989, Berliners remembered the power of a U.S. president calling for the hateful wall to be torn down. Each person to whom I spoke, seemed to know someone, a family member or friend, who had been trapped on the other side of the wall. Hope was alive, powerful and focused on tearing down the Wall. -"I Helped Tear Down the Wall"

(Tim) Grant Olson, the producer of the video at the bottom of this post, was an elder at our church some years back. Since then, he's gone on to serve in Campus Crusade's work in Eastern Europe. Although I'm in strong disagreement with Crusade's relegation of the Church to the sideline of evangelism and discipleship, since the fall of communism twenty years ago, it's been a great joy to see how Crusade has poured men into Eastern Europe where they've boldly proclaimed Jesus Christ.

There was some glamor in the early years, but that glamor has long since departed. The callouses Marxism left on men's hearts are real. Also, the systemic poverty and corruption that is Communism's legacy remains intractable in many of the Eastern European countries. The glory days of the first opening of Eastern Europe are long gone and what's left for those giving themselves to the people of countries such as Albania, Hungary, and Romania is very tough slogging.

So God bless Campus Crusade and her men and women who have loved Eastern Europeans with the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

All this on the occasion of our arrival, today, at the Twentieth Anniversary of the act of God pulling down the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. Men of towering courage and strength like Lech Walesa, John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn were putty in God's hands to bring down the bloodiest ideology and greatest oppression man had known up until that time. (It's since been dwarfed by feminism's victims, one billion and counting.)

In my office is a picture Dad had been given by the artist who drew it. He had the drawing on the wall of his study and loved it...

The dangers of insomnia...

(Tim: This post by our dear sister, Kamilla Ludwig.)

So, here I am at something past 5 am with insomnia for the third night running. I never know what to do, but it seems the best solution is to get out of bed and out of my bedroom for a while. I usually come downstairs to surf the internet. It's amazing the number of people who are voluntarily up at this hour on a regular basis! So, tonight (this morning, rather), with all the news and gossip about the Vatican's offer to disaffected Anglicans, I checked on an AMiA-related blog I hadn't read in a while to see what was going there.

AAAAARRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They aren't discussing married Anglican priests becoming RC priests and how this is the end for clerical celibacy -- nooooo sirreee Bobby. They're discussing Mark Driscoll and Doug Wilson (now isn't that an interesting pairing?) and how evil complementarians are for encouraging -- or, alternatively -- ignoring wife abuse. The blogmaster is making a valiant effort to keep them honest (God bless him!), but it seems to be the lie which simply will not die...

Validity of this and that baptism...

(Tim) Often, our session wrestles with the question whether this or that baptism is valid. For instance, if a young woman has come to faith through the ministry of Campus Crusade here at Indiana University, following which several of her Crusade sisters baptized her in Showalter Fountain, should we require her to be baptized again for membership in Church of the Good Shepherd?

We did.

More common are questions related to the validity of baptisms done by churches holding membership in non-profit religious organizations where the marks of the Church are absent and the organization publicly confesses that, for instance, sodomy and baby-slaughter may be acts of faithfulness before God. From my years in the PC(USA), it will increasingly be true that baptisms under the aegis of these non-profit religious organizations and their affiliates are not done in the Name of the Triune God, but rather using the modalistic language of "Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer." 

Good brother, Andrew Webb, has a helpful blog where he recently wrote about this question, giving a history of the debate among Reformed churches with particular emphasis on North America, and linking to a number of helpful historic documents related to this matter...

An interview with Elisabeth Elliot...

(Tim) During four years in the late nineties and early two-thousands while pastoring Church of the Good Shepherd, I also led the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood as its Executive Director. My brother, David, joined me in that work and was a great help, designing our first web site and providing invaluable counsel while also serving in the pastorate.

Part of my work was editing CBMW's journal. Periodically, we ran interviews--one being with my hero, Elisabeth Elliot. Naturally, I did the interview myself.

Growing up, the Bayly family had a long personal association with the Howards of Philadelphia--particularly Dave Howard and his sister, Elisabeth Elliot. A couple months ago, Elisabeth's husband, Lars, wrote me telling of a recent trip he and Elisabeth had taken to visit family down in South America. For those of you who know and love them, Lars and Elisabeth are doing well.

So then, here's the interview from CBMW's Journal, Volume 5, No. 1.

* * *

PLAIN AND SIMPLE: AN INTERVIEW WITH ELISABETH ELLIOT

JBMW: We are delighted to be able to speak with you. Why do you think you've been a lightning rod in the evangelical world on this particular issue?

EE: I didn't know I was! I have just proceeded the way I've tried all my life to proceed-by studying what the Bible says and living by it. If I'm asked to talk about it, of course I have a responsibility to talk about it. It is from this that I have learned that I'm not wanted in many circles...

Thoughts on children, death, and eternity (II)...

(Tim) We are examining the teaching of Scripture concern matters related to the state of the souls of children of believers who die in the womb, as infants, or as very young children. And in the course of this discussion, under the first post in this series, Pastor Dave Curell made reference to Calvin’s comments on 1Corinthians 7:14. For the record, here are Calvin’s comments pertinent to this discussion. There’s a reason Calvin is widely recognized as the prince of exegetes. No one comes close to his precision and judicious restraint in explaining Scripture.

After Calvin's comments, we'll pick up our theme as it is opened up by God's Covenant promises and work.

First, then, the text, followed by Calvin's explanation.

And a woman who has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to live with her, she must not send her husband away. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy.(1Corinthians 7:13, 14)

Verse 14: "For the unbelieving husband is sanctified."

Paul therefore declares here, that marriage is, nevertheless, sacred and pure, and that we must not be apprehensive of contagion, as if the wife would contaminate the husband....

Thoughts on children, death, and eternity (I)...

(Tim) Recently, I've done some reading on the teaching of Scripture concerning children who die early in life, whether in the womb, at birth, or before the age at which they are able properly to discern the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ--to examine themselves as they come to His Table.

First, we have to admire the single-mindedness of the Roman Catholics. Although the doctrine of limbo is widely reported to be on life support at the Vatican right now (and I'm sure abortion has played a key role in bringing it into question), we can see they acted on principle in their manufacture of this dogma. (And yes, despite their efforts to deny it, this doctrine has been dogma until now.)

From conception, children are corrupted by Adam's sin; therefore children, too, need to be saved from that corruption if they are to enter Heaven; baptism washes off the corruption of original sin, saving a man; children who die in the womb are not baptized; therefore, children who die in the womb are not saved. Thus such statements as these...

Recommendation of National (Roman) Catholic Bioethics Center...

(Tim, w/thanks to James) Comparing the witness on bioethical issues of any number of Roman Catholic organizations to that of any Protestant organization--any one at all--is depressing. Several times I've gotten hopeful only to see evangelicals prove once again that ethics to them consists of taking a position halfway between Scripture and the world's current practice. And of course, the world's current practice is a target that never stands still.

Nevertheless, here's another excellent Roman Catholic resource. It's the web site of the National (Roman) Catholic Bioethics Center and all of us committed to opposing the wholesale slaughter of men made in the image of God who are unborn, newborn, feeble, and aged would do well to familiarize ourselves with its resources.

President Barack Obama rocks XXII: But count Mary Ann Glendon out of the festivities...

(Tim, w/thanks to several) Lots of readers have sent links to pieces commenting on President Barack Obama's invitation to give the Commencement Address at Notre Dame University this spring despite Notre Dame's purported affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church and President Obama's consistent ghoulish advocacy of baby-slaughter.

Honestly, I've not had the heart to say anything about it. Not out of respect for Notre Dame or the lowest-common denominator Roman Catholicism she's represented for decades, now. To me, Notre Dame is football, a good home for the world's top sorta-reformed, kinda-Protestant, sorta-evangelical scholars like Marsden, Hatch, and Plantinga; but mostly the school that resides in the same town a few hours north that's called home by E. Michael Jones.

Then, today, several of you sent me the letter just released by Mary Ann Glendon announcing her change of mind concerning being present at Notre Dame's Commencement to accept Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal. God bless Mary Ann Glendon!

Here's her letter...

Dead babies who don't count: The Pill's bloody future...

...the proven ‘anti-implantation’ action of the morning-after pill is really nothing other than a chemically induced abortion. (Pontifical Academy for Life)

(Tim) Today, twenty-two percent of our nation's children are murdered in the womb, and a growing proportion of those murders are what our nation's merchant of death, Planned Parenthood, euphemistically refers to as "medical abortions"--abortions committed by chemical rather than steel weapons. Pro-life leaders have been dreading this change for decades knowing how much more difficult it will be to oppose abortion as it moves toward the earliest weeks and days of pregnancy, and into the privacy of the home.

The change has come quickly...

Already, chemical abortions comprise over twenty percent of current abortions, and the proportion is growing rapidly. In a private e-mail sent to Planned Parenthood Federation of America on July 9, 2007, Danco Laboratories LLC (the pharmaceutical firm distributing one of the chemical abortifacients, Mifeprex) reported: "In the five years following FDA approval (2000-2005), more than 750,000 U.S. women have used Mifeprex."

This means over 150,000 women per year are taking Mifeprex to kill their unborn child. But Mifeprex is only one of the growing list of chemical agents being deployed...

Food as fetish...

(Tim) Food. People today can't make up their minds whether it's erotica or The Meaning of Life. For men whose god is their belly, lust and appetite feed off each other and produce similar neuroses. Computer pornography. Obesity. Hooking up. Anorexia. Abortion. Veganism. Birth control.

Enslaved to our appetites, we'd do well to learn a word almost never heard outside Roman Catholicism: concupiscence.

Here's something true: Christians today turn the marriage bed over to a mutual concupiscence we refer to as "making love." But there's little love, and no making of anyone at all.

True love can't possibly be self-gratification by other means...

Obama supporters claiming to be "pro-life" were never, really, opposed to abortion...

(Tim, from LifeSiteNews.com) Prior to the election, I found those who called themselves "pro-life" while shilling for Senator Barack Obama to be morally repugnant. Now, these hypocrites have had more than enough opportunities publicly to acknowledge their mistake; they've had weeks to cry "foul" or "I was misled by Senator Obama's lies concerning abortion;" yet they are silent.

Where are their protests? Where are they denouncing the aggressive promotion of abortion, internationally, that President Obama has given himself to since taking office at the White House? Where have the voices of Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo been raised in protest of President Obama's advocacy of child-slaughter? And turning to McLaren's and Campolo's useful simpletons, do any of them feel just the least bit betrayed and ashamed of their naivete?

It would be hard to prove, but I'm convinced that many of those who supported Senator Obama's presidential aspirations while claiming, themselves, to be Christian and pro-life were not pro-life at all, but rather, themselves often had had one or more abortions (or helped others to get one) and voted for Senator Obama as a coping mechanism employed to silence their conscience. And I do not say this from any anger at President Obama being elected to our nations highest elected office. Rather, it's my own personal observation.

Well, again, when guilt and complicity have silenced Emerjellicals, Rome speaks.

Here's Roman Catholic leadership that I, a Protestant Presbyterian pastor, agree with entirely..

Trust me, bookmark MoralAccountability.com...

(Tim) No links to Rob Bell's schlock, the deep and sensitive thoughts of Brian McLaren, the Christian Medical and Dental Society, Talbot Seminary's groundbreaking ethics and public policy think tank, faculty members at Wheaton College, or CTi journalists on this site. Ron Sider and Jim Wallis haven't made an appearance just yet--nor their "me too" buddy, Al Gore. There's been no sighting of Niel Nielson or Bryan Chapell--nor any of their professors, for that matter. In fact, no sign of anyone in the Presbyterian Church in America...

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am...

(Tim) With Bishop Gene Robinson on their left and the Traditional Anglican Communion on their right, are there any Anglicans left who still affirm the Biblical doctrine of the Reformation?

A friend on the advisory board of Touchstone magazine, an ecumenical venture I subscribe to, writes: "Were this ever to happen it would be huge." He's referring to the rumored creation of another personal prelature, following in the Opus Dei pattern, of about half a million Anglicans from the Traditional Anglican Communion. The deal goes something like this: The Traditional Anglicans promise full submission to the Pope in exchange for the Pope welcoming them into full communion while holding their submission in his own hip pocket.

And what, pray tell, does that full submission look like?

It's not pretty. Specifically, they signed the Catechism of the Roman Catholic church stating by their signatures: "We accept that the most complete and authentic expression and application of the Catholic faith in this moment of time is found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and its Compendium, which we have signed, together with this letter as attesting to the faith we aspire to teach and hold."

Here then are a few excerpts from that Catechism indicating what they believe to be the most complete and authentic expression of the Christian faith at this time:

In praise of sheepdogs...

I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. (John 10:11)

(Tim) One of the men just interviewed and accepted into ClearNote Pastors College for matriculation this coming September is a middle-aged recently-retired law enforcement officer whose gift is keeping the peace. He's trained men for SWAT team duties and has a deep understanding of the weaknesses and strengths of warriors. What will he add to CNPC's curriculum?

This morning, this brother sent me the poem below which has been widely circulated within the law enforcement community in recent years. As I read, I found myself thinking what an excellent commentary it is on Jesus' teaching in John 10 on hirelings, wolves, the flock, and the Good Shepherd.

Fellow pastors and elders: We're all happy to live in a nation that's never suffered any serious invasion by hostile forces, but we are silent when our President is attacked precisely for his vigilance in our behalf. We're all pleased as punch to live in the suburbs where we never hear the crackle of gunfire as we watch our male soaps of urban warfare, but we look askance at discussions of weapons, wondering what kind of monsters have a zeal for this or that brand of hand gun? We worship in Protestant churches holding to Protestant doctrine faithful to Scripture, but our skin crawls when our pastor warns us against heresy. Any heresy. Any heresy at all--but particularly Roman Catholicism.

In other words, we live in peace given to us by the Man of Blood; we live in the midst of a civil security given us by men of blood who laid down their lives for the sheep; but then we pull back in horror when one of them barks, kills a wolf, or comes to church with blood on his hands. "He's so dirty! He should be Baptist or Pentecostal."

Cardinal Mahony faces scrutiny...

(Tim, w/thanks to David C.) From both outside and inside the Roman Catholic church, we've watched the exposure of sodomite priests across North America this past decade or so--priests who have raped minor boys they vowed to protect as church fathers. We've read the secular media's investigative reports. As a subscriber, I've also read the most conservative publications of the Roman Catholic communion respond to each revelation. Then too, I've followed the matter through personal letters received from a friend who was a priest, but now is doing prison time for crimes he claims he's innocent of.

Three things have stuck in my mind...

Down under, the drift toward domesticity...

(Tim, w/thanks to Kamilla) Since moving to Bloomington, I've often read aloud to one of my younger brothers or sisters in Christ, seeking to innoculate them against this or that part of our cultural decadence. Scripture always and foremost. But also Bonhoeffer (Life Together). Calvin. Kierkegaard (Attack Upon Christendom). A. A. Milne. The "Preliminary Principles" from America's first Presbyterians. Blamires. Baxter. Bayly--Dad of course. Sayers...

In frequency and zeal, though, my use of Chesterton far surpasses the others. For the lies popular among young men and women today, particularly those being propagandized on university campuses, Chesterton is God's man on the spot. Specifically, no one does a better job of exposing feminism's humorless and bloody corpse.

Among Chesterton's essays, read "The Drift from Domesticity" found in The Thing. (You'll find the full text at the bottom of this post.)

Sit your mother down; call your daughter or wife; read it to the woman of your love right now. You'll both laugh with delight.

Then buy Chesterton's What's Wrong With the World and read the essays comparing the work of husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. You'll never again think big thoughts about business and small thoughts about motherhood. Chesterton will have given you a lifelong innoculation against such stupidity.

All this comes to mind with this from Australia recording the growth in love for the household arts among women there. Now that's good news!

By the way, when I recommend Chesterton, people occasionally get a look of horror on their faces and inform me that he's Roman Catholic and hates Calvin...

Richard John Neuhaus, 1936-2009.

(Tim) Father Richard John Neuhaus has passed through the valley of the shadow of death. May God have mercy on his soul. His death is a great loss for Roman Catholics and Protestants, alike. But maybe even more for Protestants since there are few men of his Biblical understanding, discernment, and courage among us. Toll the bell.

From Joseph Bottum, the editor of First Things:

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away today, January 8, shortly before 10 o’clock, at the age of seventy-two. He never recovered from the weakness that sent him to the hospital the day after Christmas, caused by a series of side effects from the cancer he was suffering. He lost consciousness Tuesday evening after a collapse in his heart rate, and the next day, in the company of friends, he died...

An odious comparison: Evangelicalism's Baalam and Rome's Jeremiah...

(Tim) So everyone's talking about Rick Warren's payoff. He gets to pray in front of millions during Senator Obama's inauguration, calling down God's presence and blessing on a ceremony centered around the national politician most committed to the slaughter of his nation's children taking God's Name in vain as he falsely promises to uphold the Constitution of these United States.

When our nation was founded, our Declaration of Independence declared our commitments this way:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".

Thus, in the "Preamble" to our Constitution, we state the Constitution's purpose to be to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."

Precisely how does a man swear by God's Holy Name to secure the blessings of liberty to our posterity who himself is our nation's political leader most committed to the slaughter of that posterity? The wickedness of Governor Blagojevich pales by comparison.

Selling an appointment to the U.S. Senate is child's play compared to the child slaughter which was a central plank of Senator Obama's campaign. Talk about wickedness in high places!

But no one's watching. We're all transfixed by our nation's little morality play over there on Chicago's South Side.

Also, by the vision of Evangelicalism's own Balaam, the Warrenmeister, thinking gentle thoughts about how his invocation of the Triune God can help heal our nation as we all unify behind our new President. So Rick Warren, prophet of Israel, hoists himself on his donkey...

The Papists, the Turks, and the Jews...

"...we affirm our fundamental unity with all the saints within the body of Christ, including those in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches..." -Trinity Reformed Church

(Tim) It's hip today for a man to identify himself with the "ancient" Christian church and faith. The early ecumenical creeds and the writing of the early church fathers are all the rage. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I sense this movement often carries with it a dismissal of church history between the first centuries and today. It's as if all that happened in the intervening millenia and a half is brushed aside. The Reformation and Council of Trent were only bad dreams; it's time to wake up and smell the roses.

For instance, Trinity Reformed Church (where PCA pastor Peter Leithart serves) just issued a Statement on Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Reformed Catholicity which begins...

Calvinist pastor welcomed to the Roman Catholic Mass by...

(Tim, w/thanks to James) There's some truth to the statement that foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Still, a Protestant Calvinist pastor who has never been received into the Roman Catholic Church, yet for much of his life is granted Table Fellowship there? And both Cardinal Ratzinger and Pope John Paul II knowingly gave him Communion?

Well, it couldn't happen to a better man.

The Protestant logic of non-procreative hedonism...

(Tim) From Joe Sobran's latest column celebrating the fortieth anniversary of "one of the most prophetic documents of the last century," Humanae Vitae:

* * *

Strange as it may seem, nearly all Christians used to agree that contraception is contrary to God's law.  This began to change in 1930, when the Church of England decreed at its Lambeth Conference that married couples might licitly use contraceptives in cases of hardship. Other Christians were shocked, discerning that the floodgates had been opened by this first fatal concession.

One might mention countless baleful results, such as the current demand for sodomite "wedlock." The real sexual revolution, however, occurred not in the noisy or flamboyant homosexual precincts, but quietly, in the marriage bed. Everything else is an offshoot, a byproduct of the compromise of the marital act, a perversion that has become the norm in the "advanced" countries of the West. In view of this, the perceptive homosexual advocate Andrew Sullivan has gloated, "We are all sodomites now," and he is not far wrong. Gay activists are merely acting out the logic of non-procreative hedonism...

Heavy metal Capuchin monk...

(Tim, w/thanks to Ben) Well, he's honest--you've got to give him that. Not Christ, not the church, not religion, but life.

Roman Catholic and Protestant divorce and remarriage...

(Tim) Divorce is one of the most difficult questions pastors and elders face as we shepherd God's flock. Providing spiritual counsel in cases where husband and wife don't get along is relatively easy. Much harder are those cases in which husbands or wives physically abuse their spouses, fathers or stepfathers sexually abuse their children, husbands or wives commit serious sexual sin (what Jesus refers to as "porneia" in the exception clause of Matthew 19), or husbands demand their wives and children deny the faith. Each of these matters requires the most careful study of Scripture, prayer, and pastoral counsel. Sometimes the result is a session (board of elders) recommendation of divorce.

In the twelve years since Church of the Good Shepherd was founded, our session has made such a recommendation two or three times, each by unanimous consent. Sometimes it's hard to say whether the believing or unbelieving spouse is the one taking the initiative in the divorce. This is why it's impossible to say precisely how many times we've counseled divorce. We don't make the decision--the innocent party does. Yet neither do we abandon that innocent party to their own counsel. Our Westminster Standards are correct..