Paul Washer on the Invitation and Decisional Regeneration

The Pulpit

The pulpit, therefore, (and I name it filled
with solemn awe, that bids me well beware
with what intent I touch that holy thing;)
the pulpit (when the satirist has at last,
strutting and vaporing in an empty school,
spent all his force, and made no proselyte;)
I say the pulpit (in the sober use
of its legitimate, peculiar powers)
must stand acknowledged, while the world shall stand,
the most important and effectual guard,
support, and ornament of virtue’s cause.
There stands the messenger of truth. There stands
the legate of the skies; his theme divine,
his office sacred, his credentials clear.
By him, the violated law speaks out
its thunders, and by him, in strains as sweet
as angels use, the gospel whispers peace.
He ’stablishes the strong, restores the weak,
reclaims the wanderer, binds the broken heart,
and, armed himself in panoply complete
of heavenly temper, furnishes with arms
bright as his own, and trains, by every rule
of holy discipline, to glorious war,
the sacramental host of God’s elect.

William Cowper, 1731-1800.

HT: Christ Is Deeper Still

A Proposal for Obama’s Inaugural Address

For full version, go to Bayly Blog: Out of Our Minds, Too

What a wonder it would be if, to celebrate Lincoln’s 200th birthday, Senator Obama were to model his first after Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address:

Fellow-Countrymen: One-eighth of our whole population are unborn children, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the wombs of their mothers. These slaves constitute a peculiar and powerful interest. All know that these children are the cause of an impending war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend these little ones’ oppression and slaughter is the object for which the Democratic Party has made its name, being willing even to rend the Union to sustain that oppression. But the Republicans themselves claimed no right to do more than to seek a slow restriction of this bloodshed, and that half-heartedly.

Neither party expected the war over the unborn tearing apart the fabric of this Union to have either the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in the slaughter of their own progeny, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.

The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.”

If we shall suppose that American’s butchering of little children is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both Republicans and Democrats a terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that the mighty scourge of war may not be required to bring an end to the slaughter of our children. Yet, if God wills that the loss of the lives of our living children on battlefields be required for the blood of the fifty million unborn children already slain and buried, if He refuses to relent until every drop of blood shed by Planned Parenthood shall be paid by another drawn with bullets and bombs, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to end the slaughter of the unborn, the newborn, frail, and elderly, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace in the wombs of our mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives.

* * *

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, “…For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly practice justice between a man and his neighbor, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, nor walk after other gods to your own ruin, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever. Behold, you are trusting in deceptive words to no avail. (Jeremiah 7:3-8)

Batter My Heart

from Buzzard Blog

This morning I prayed one of my favorite poems, John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV:   
     

Batter my heart, three-person’d God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Biblical Thoughts on the Election Aftermath

James White presents an apologist’s viewpoint on the present state of our culture and our approach to it, as well as what the primary content of our prayers for Obama should be:

Constantly Nourished by the Word of God – Paul Washer

By Schism Rent Asunder, By Heresy Oppressed….

By David & Tim Bayly on Preaching

(Tim: This by Mark Chambers, although not the title. Incidentally, yesterday I received an e-mail from a longtime member of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan who estimated the number of Redeemer’s members who voted for Barack Obama was fifty percent.) There is nothing particularly unusual about the picture above; nothing fantastic or different. It is just the result and remains of the  typical abortion;  a bit of messy refuse to be discarded after the useful cells have been harvested. At least it is not an entire waste, we can be thankful for that after all. The decapitation is interesting. The heads of fetuses, being too large for the vacuum tube must be pulverized to facilitate removal. Similar to certain seed pods that find their way into my garage that are too large for the shop vac I must take steps to reduce the size of them in order to suck them up. I find that stepping on them works quite well, and it is only a minor annoyance. Not nearly so complicated as finding the obstacle via ultrasound in order to crush it with forceps. But doctors are adept at accomplishing the difficult and we must salute them… What admirable skills they have. How kind they are to minimize the trauma to the poor woman. This growth has caused enough pain already and there is no reason to make such inconveniences worse than they need be. Quick, easy and painless is the key here. One should not be punished for forgetting condoms or being carried away in the heat of the moment. Who can control such things? Careers must not be affected. Plans shouldn’t have to be changed. Lives must not be put on hold. We must help the poor victims if even they are victims of their own improprieties. And so we praise men like Barak Obama who understand such things and help make these acts of kindness possible.  Let us extend to him the right hand of fellowship and call him brother. And let us cease our unreasonable and reprehensible criticisms of those Christians who are able to see beyond such trivial things to look toward the important issues of coal and ice caps and banks and homophobia. Anything else would be uncivilized. O beautiful for spacious skies…

George Whitefield and Naps In Church

This approach may not be directly transferable to our day and context, but I think more men would do well to have Whitefield’s chutzpah:

He [Whitefield] had complete confidence in the authority of his message, and was determined that it should receive the respect it deserved as God’s Word. Once in a New Jersey meeting-house he “noticed an old man settling down for his accustomed, sermon-time nap”, writes John Pollock, one of his biographers. Whitefield began his sermon quietly, without disturbing the gentleman’s slumbers. But then “in measured, deliberate words” he said:

“If I had come to speak to you in my own name, you might rest your elbows upon your knees and your heads on your hands, and go to sleep!…But I have come to you in the name of the Lord God of hosts, and (he clapped his hands and stamped his foot) I must and I will be heard.” The old man woke up startled.

(John Stott, Between Two Worlds, 32-33)

HT: The Fool’s Gold

A Lament for America

I could not agree more with the following post by Dan Phillip. You can find it at Biblical Christianity.

By popular demand, public and private, here it is. I wrote it early this morning. Today, a lament. Tomorrow or Monday, I hope to provide further theological reflection, and the start of stategerizing. Delicate (or guilty) souls may want to stay out of the blast zone. Perhaps you shouldn’t. And so…..If the title gives you the impression that this won’t be a happy-face, good-loser post, you are correct. Be warned. I’m in earnest. If you keep reading — which I seriously do not necessarily advise — you’ll have that same experience that, to my bafflement, keeps surprising people. That is, you’ll find that (oh, no!) I really meant everything I said.I’ve mulled and tossed what to write. Some of you are here to gloat and lecture, some just to observe, and some wanting comfort and encouragement. What do I have for you here? You’ll find some gallows humor, a wry comment or two. But the theme of this post could not be summarized as, “Ain’t life grand right now?”Wish I had that to give, at the moment. In due time, perhaps. I remember after the horrid election in which Bill Clinton first lied his way to the White House, Rush Limbaugh was very heartening. He observed that conservatism had actually won, because Clinton deceptively positioned himself to the right of Bush, Sr.

You could say that here, to a degree. Obama actually campaigned for cutting taxes and spending. It was a lie, of course, but McCain did not counter it effectively enough. Obama defeated McCain, and the perceived Bush legacy, and the recent GOP. Not conservatism, well and clearly and passionately articulated.

But anyone with two live neurons to rub together could have seen through The One’s charade. Obama’s mentors and allies are hardcore Marxists, socialists, racists. He marinated in anti-American, racist hatemongering for twenty years. His backers included the worst within America, and enemies outside America. It was all a paint-thin facade.

But, as David Wells has argued convincingly, people like paint. It’s all about image.

So what do I write for you today? I think of Jeremiah, looking at the ruin of his beloved nation. Did the prophet write a happy-face booklet about how glorious God’s sovereign providence always is? I don’t think so. There’s a reason that the 25th book in the Canon isn’t titled “Happy Giggles,” or “Jeremiah’s Jolly Jokes.”

There is, as Ecclesiastes 3:4 says, “a time to mourn.” If you love what America was, what it should be, and what men with a Biblical worldview crafted it to be, this begins such a time.

I’ll say one happy horizontal thing: I think it is a good thing that a black man won the presidency. It shows that America has long-since ceased being the country that Obama’s bitter, angry, self-absorbed wife imagined.

But most of us already knew that. It is a bad thing that that black man won. I actually think it may well cause long-term harm to other blacks’ presidential aspirations, which is a pity. Obama does not have the unsought blessing Bill Clinton had: he will not have robust opposition in Congress. So he may actually do many of the harmful, disastrous things he proposed. And future voters may, if unfairly, look even at totally-different black candidates and think, “Didn’t we try that already?”

So who’s in the Hall of Shame for this debacle? Too many to name. But here are a few.

Bush. I blame President Bush. Not for what the wingnuts blame him for; he was right about those things. History will view Bush as a visionary, amply-accomplished president.

But where W did miserably fail was as a politician. He did not learn from Bill Clinton, who got right the fact that he needed never to stop campaigning. Bush was like the anti-Clinton in that regard. W focused completely on governing, and did nothing about keeping the American people with him. Bush evidently thought results would speak for themselves, and people would figure things out. He was wrong.

Clinton always had instant-response squads, who overwhelmed all the media with unified, sharp, aggressive responses geared to make sure Clinton’s view always prevailed. Bush couldn’t be bothered. You can call it arrogance; I actually think it was misplaced modesty. But the net sum was that W left a disastrous political situation for his would-be successor.

Dick Cheney was an excellent VP (— you can tell that simply by the deranged sorts who hate him). But Cheney was never going to succeed Bush. So Bush should have replaced Cheney in his second term, and groomed a presidential replacement.

Bush was right in not being a slave to opinion polls; he was wrong in not trying to bring people along with him. As a consequence, McCain had two bad options. He could try to make up for eight years of Bush’s failure to defend himself in his campaign, which he wasn’t equipped to do. Or he could distance himself utterly from Bush, which McCain tried but found impossible to do.

And that’s largely Bush’s fault. It took down McCain, as well as GOP candidates for both houses. W’s refusal to defend himself cost others badly.

MSM. Light a candle of mourning for the mainstream media. Obama lied and deceived and hid, true; but he never could have gotten away with it if we’d had a vigilant, ethical, non-partisan press. However, the MSM acted not as the press, but as Obama’s press secretary.

The MSM kept the ugly and inconvenient truth out of the spotlight, diverted the public’s attention, ran interference, carried water for his lies, and served as Obama’s opposition research. Only a fool will trust them ever again. For that matter, only fools trusted them this time ’round.

An aside: I wonder how many Obama revelations will start seeing the light now? Or will they wait until after his first or second inauguration?

Voters. But of course that doesn’t give the electorate a pass. Thirty years ago? When there were only CBSABCNBC and The Timeses? Maybe. But now, alternative news and analysis sources are readily available. For now. Look for the new triumvirate to target a free press and all soapboxes, cyber and otherwise. Perhaps even pulpits. Think Canada.

Government reeducation camps. The government school system didn’t help, creating uneducated, uninformed, fact-starved glandlings, who mistake emoting for rational thought. These folks have been raised from toddlerhood on the state’s teat. The State is a kindly face embodied in Miss Parkins in pre-school; when you’re eighteen, you’ve long-since learned to see The State as your friend and guardian. As designed. And so you vote.

Quislings. But the most disgraceful of all are professedly Christian enablers.

[Last warning: this is going to be brutal.]

These are the hand-wringing, conflicted souls who just can’t figure out whether or not it’s a good thing to sweep aside thirty-five years of hard-fought, hard-won advances in the pro-life cause. Who just can’t agonize themselves into seeing that they have a clear-cut moral obligation to stand athwart the most remorselessly, unrepentantly vicious pro-death advocate ever seriously to seek the White House.

How wretched are such souls?

It’s like this. A man comes to attack your wife, or your child. You professed Christians who voted for Obama, you had every reason to know what that man was going to do. And your response was to toss him a knife, and tell him “Have at it, sport; I prayed about this, and I feel good about it. I’ll just stand over here being deep and conflicted and nuanced, mocking anyone who tries to stop you, and congratulating myself on my new friends who cheer you on.”

Your candidate was charismatic and confident. The people you wanted to accept you and think well of you swarmed after him. He was different, and novel, and exciting.

And when he said that his very first act in office would be to remove all legal restrictions against gassing Jews, and would compel taxpayers to pay for the gassing of Jews in foreign countries? Oh, well. It wasn’t as if you would be pulling the lever yourself, right? Besides (you tried to convince yourself), removing all restrictions on Jew-gassing would actually result in fewer Jews being gassed!

This is what you’ve done. Obama was evasive and inconsistent about a great many things. Not about this. About this, he was emphatic, and crystal-clear: “first act as President.”

And you knew it.

You Christians who did not vote or went third-party, you can tell yourselves you did otherwise. You didn’t allow the attacker to assault that helpless victim. No, not you. You drew a picture of a devastating raygun, and waved it at him vigorously, yelling “Zap! Zap!”, hoping he’d fall over.

Alas, he did not.

To both of you, I offer this: “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper,
but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy” (Proverbs 28:13).

You want to keep insisting that you did the right thing? Can’t help you. Won’t try. After January 20, you go to the dumpsters behind abortion clinics and explain to the sad, tragic, forsaken contents just how deep and nuanced you are.

But repentant believers in Christ always find mercy and forgiveness. And that’s all the happy I have for you.

And you pastors who could not find it in yourselves even to say, from the pulpit, that life is an important consideration when voting… I don’t know what to say to you. I know some very fine men are absolutely convinced that all politics should be kept out of the pulpit. But is life politics? Is the stewardship of one’s vote politics? Are we really called to give no guidance whatever for the pressing moral issues of citizenship? Look at Roman Catholics, who deny and pervert the Gospel, who don’t cherish the truths you cherish, and yet who managed to speak up for the unborn. Are you sure you did the right thing?

I’m really not.

We have grim days ahead, very grim days. We’ll need to look to God more than ever, and that’s a good thing. We’ll need to cling to the Cross more than ever, and that’s a good thing. We’ll need to study and practice the Word more than ever, and that’s a good thing.

But what President-elect Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid mean to do to our children’s America?

That isn’t a good thing.

What to do now? We’ll talk about that in the future, Lord willing. “Pray for Obama,” we’re told. Indeed. Pray that Barack Obama be soundly converted to faith in Christ as his Lord and the only Savior. Pray that, evidently for the first time in his life, he’ll take on Christ’s yoke and learn from him. Pray that he will repent of his false beliefs and values, and embrace God’s point of view, learning to think His thoughts after Him. Pray that President-elect Obama will repent of the evil he means to do, before he does it.

Pray for the church, where judgment will begin. Pray for pastors. Pray for America.

Then we’ll have to figure out what the Nehemiah pattern of praying plus doing will mean for us.

I had a bad feeling when my Bible reading the morning of the 5th turned out to include 2 Kings 17. I gulped.

A Conversation with Paul Washer

Outstanding video in which Paul Washer discusses the true Gospel, the needs in the Church today, the function of pastors, and other things particularly relevant to today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRQdn5c8tQ0