Brent L. Top authored When You Can’t Do It Alone (Deseret, 2008).

He quotes C.S. Lewis:

You must realise from the outset that the goal towards which He is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in the whole universe, except you yourself, can prevent Him taking you to that goal. . . .

 

The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas.  Nor is it a command to do the impossible.  He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command.  He said (in the Bible) that we were “gods” and He is going to make good His words.  If we let Him—for we can prevent Him, if we choose—he will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly . . . His own boundless power and delight and goodness.  The process will be long and in parts very painful, but that is what we are in for.  Nothing less (Mere Christianity, 203, 205-6; emphasis added)

These are beautiful words and my confident expectation.  I am in union with Christ.  His atoning work brings absolute assurance.  But I don’t quite detect this assurance in Brent, especially with how he emphasizes the words of Lewis.

Ray taps into the Fundamental Evangelistic Association.

This is the very first time that I have seen bloggernacle link into a Christian fundamentalist website beyond my stripe of Christian fundamentalism.

Tonight, we are studying Jeremiah 7.  I wish you all could join in on the discussion. (more…)

This is interesting.

I have never read anything by Hank Hanegraaff on Mormonism.

 Back to Marsh’s Christmas book of 2008, what should I make of these quotes on the Restoration, the Joseph Smith Translation, and Martin Luther. (more…)

Here.

Michael Heiser is among the ranks for LDS perusal.

HT: Nick Norelli

Ok, one more quote: Alan Jacobs in his book, Original Sin (HarperCollins, 2008) puts Charles Finney in the same context with Joseph Smith. (more…)

Jacobs shares the bad side of the Pelagian Gospel and the good side of the Augustinian Gospel:

The Pelagian good news is that at every moment you are free to obey; the (unstated, hidded) bad news is that at every moment you are equally free to sin, and at the instant of choice a lifetime of strict spiritual discipline will avail you nothing. . . . Pelagianism is a creed for heroes, but Augustine’s emphasis on original sin and the consequent absolute dependence of every one of us on the grace of God gives hope to the waverer, the backslider, the slacker, the putz, the schlemiel.  We’re all in the same boat as Mister Holier-than-Thou over there, saved only by the grace that comes to us in Holy Baptism (52-54).

. . . “when Augustine spoke to his people of the terrible wrath of God, they would actually cry out in terror.*”

*Sermon 131:  “What then does the Lord say?  ‘Serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice unto Him with trembling.’ So the Apostle too, ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.  For it is God who works in you.’  Therefore rejoice with trembling: ‘Lest at any time the Lord be angry.’  I see that you anticipate me by your crying out.  For you know what I am about to say, you anticipate it by crying out.”