Francis A. Schaeffer wrote around 40 years ago something that we could meditate upon for a few moments today:

Liberalism in theology is one unified system.  In a most basic sense, it did not change with the birth of existential theology.  The new existential theology is no closer to the historic, biblical Christianity than is the old liberalism.  It is really further away.  At least the old liberalism affirmed the concept of truth and spoke in antithesis.

Having come this far in our study of the new liberalism, it is obvious that it should be judged more completely than on some peripheral point which it produces in the area of morals or doctrine.  It should not be judged, for example, because its universalism weakens evangelism but because as a total unity it is wrong.  Unless we see the new liberalism as a whole and reject it as a whole, we will, to the extent that we are tolerant of it, be confused in our thinking, involved in the general intellectual irrationalism of our day and compromising in our actions.

The new theology is simply modern thought using religious words.  It is under the line of anthropology, dwelling only in the world of men.  It is faced with a “philosophic other” that is unknown and unknowable.  The new theology is in the circle of the finite, and it has no meaning and no authority beyond the authority and the meaning which finite men can give it.

In other words, not having any propositional, verbalized communication from God to man, in all forms of liberal theology, old and new, man is on his own with only religious words rather than religious truth.  Historic Christianity has nothing in common with either the old or the new secular rationalism, and it has nothing in common with either the old or the new liberal theology.  Historic Christianity and either the old or the new liberal theology are two separate religions with nothing in common except certain terms which they use with totally different meanings.

The Church Before the Watching World (IVP, 1971), pp. 33-34

See his article here.

HT: Aquinas

But I am not so sure that the growing unchurched in America will embrace Mormonism.  Is Mormonism booming in England or some of the other mainland countries of Europe?  Mormonism seems to grow in the pockets of the globe where Christianity is thriving.

One moment, I am so happy listening to this.

The next moment, I feel like I am going to throw up, reading this.

It is all about ideas.  One idea makes me cleave, cleave, cleave to its goodness in the message.  The next idea makes me shrink back and abhor its message.

Do I get emotional over ideas?  You bet I do.  I would make a horrible dispassionate academic.

Did you guys just hear those two songs right now sung on KBYI??!!

Come Thou Fount with the guitar (3:20 pm)

Be Still My Soul, men’s acapella (right after)

Listening to this music, I was ready to be translated like Enoch.  Wow.

We just finished a very important 11-week inductive, precept upon precept Covenant study last night.  I announced to the church family that we will begin a study of Hebrews next Wednesday night.

Interestingly, I found tonight this relevant material on Hebrews & JST.

HT: Sharon

On this particular Wednesday (and the next 40 days), it all begins with a right view of God . . .

Then Job answered the LORD, and said, I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee.  Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge?  therefore have I uttered that I understand not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.  Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.  I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.  Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

Job 42:1-6

Well, we all know about Idaho’s Baptists who are in Haiti.  How many front line articles have there been thus far?

Today’s article in the Idaho Statesman reminds me of a verse that I read early this morning in my personal Bible reading time – Proverbs 16:20, “He that handleth a matter wisely shall find good.”  Each day, as part of my reading, I read the corresponding chapter in Proverbs (chapter 16) to the date in the month (February 16).  How desperately I need wisdom for the daily circumstances of life.  As an Independent Baptist pastor in Idaho, I can not in any way be “independent” as we might think or propose in our culture here in the intermountain West.

Proverbs 11:14 comes to mind.

So does Proverbs 15:22.

Also, Proverbs 24:6.

We need to be dependent Baptists.  We cling to you, dear Lord, to help us in our troubles.  We ask for your mercies to be granted to the ten in Haiti and to the church family of Central Valley in Meridian, Idaho.

And as I meditate . . .

these words by Horatias Bonar echo the prayers of my heart:

No, not despairingly come I to Thee;
No, not distrustingly bend I the knee:
Sin hath gone over me, yet is this still my plea,
Jesus hath died.

Ah! mine iniquity crimson hath been,
Infinite, infinite—sin upon sin:
Sin of not loving Thee, sin of not trusting Thee—
Infinite sin.

Lord, I confess to Thee sadly my sin;
All I am tell with Thee, all I have been:
Purge Thou my sin away, wash Thou my soul this day;
Lord, make me clean.

Faithful and just art Thou, forgiving all;
Loving and kind art Thou when poor ones call:
Lord, let the cleansing blood, blood of the Lamb of God,
Pass o’er my soul.

Then all is peace and light this soul within;
Thus shall I walk with Thee, the loved Unseen;
Leaning on Thee, my God, guided along the road,
Nothing between.

God is so good.

On Superbowl Sunday evening (yea, I know I am nuts), I am beginning in my home a four week lesson study (utilizing TILM materials) on gospel witnessing in Southeast Idaho.

Each study session will begin at 5:30 pm and last for an hour.  Come join us.  1671 Brenthaven Street on the west side of town.  My house has the two big crosses in the backyard.

1) Have you been able to read any believing (and scholarly) commentary by authors who do not treat Genesis with higher criticism? 

2) Are you able to see how the KJV Bible equates Yahweh as the Most High?

3) Do you believe in a literal, six-day creation account?

4) Do you see the seeds of the redemptive gospel laid out in Genesis?

5) And tell me what you think about this opening quote on Genesis by my friend, Bob Gonzales:

In the beginning, the God of gods (elohim [I am transliterating the Hebrew words in parenthesis]), creates “all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days, and all very good” (Gen. 1:1-13).  But this “beginning” is only the beginning of King Elohim’s empire-building program because into the midst of his pristine creation, the heavenly Suzerain, also known as Yahweh (YHWH), places his image (tselem), that is, his visible resemblance and representative.  As Yahweh-Elohim’s image, man (adam) stands in covenant relationship to his Sovereign and is commissioned to subdue the earth as a loyal vassal and vice-regent to his Creator (Gen 1:26-28; 2:15-17).  That is, from the terminus a quo of Eden’s Holy Mountain garden sanctuary over the entire earth, following his Creator’s work-rest cycle (2:1-3), until the whole earth is filled with Yahweh-Elohim’s glory (Isa 43:7; Rom 11:36; I Cor 15:24-28; Rev 4:11).  Had mankind fulfilled his imperial commission in a way that accurately reflected his holy Suzerain’s character and that visibly manifested absolute submission to and dependence on the divine will (2:15-17), he would have inherited fullness of life as a royal grant and joined his Creator-King in an eternal Sabbath-rest (Heb 4:1-11).  What should have been, however, was disrupted when human sin and the divine curse entered the world (19-20, I inserted English letters for Bob’s Hebrew words lifted from the Bible text).

– Where Sin Abounds: The Spread of Sin and the Curse in Genesis with Special Focus on the Patriarchal Narratives (Eugene: WIPF & STOCK, 2009) by Robert R. Gonzales Jr.