Robert, Restless and Always Reforming

Richard Mouw‘s book Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport is a new read provided to me for a book review. The book is not much of a biblical defense for the Calvinistic heritage but then that is not its prime objective. But much is to be learned from the humble & gentle tone in the pages of this book that at times is not found in some supposed Calvinist.

The book’s title draws from a scene in a movie entitled: “Hardcore” in which a man played by George C. Scott tries to explain his Christian faith using the TULIP acronym to an unsuspecting young girl who happens to be a prostitute. The setting is in the Las Vegas Airport – hence the title. I’ve never seen or heard of this movie but apparently the producer/director was at one time Calvinist and later rejected it along with Christianity as a whole. The Calvinist in the film is portrayed by the author was projected as uncaring.

Mouw who is the president of Fuller Theological Seminary, sees the humor in the film’s cold presentation of Calvinist doctrines to someone who needs salvation before a hearing a treatise in reformed theology. Dr. Mouw first sets out first by explaining why he says he is a Calvinist and the journey he took becoming one. The chapter “Mere Calvinism” is a summation of Calvinist soteriology, and his willingness to avoid division over Limited Atonement. I thought his description of Abraham Kuyper’s Calvinism was very helpful.

There was on problem however that surfaced in the book that you would have to overlook to enjoy the read. There is a chapter that Mouw emphasizes what he calls divine generosity where he explains his inclusivist understanding of salvation in which he hopes that some who don’t profess Christ still wind up in heaven anyway. Even though he says he is not a Universalist sure sounds like one. I find his call for pluralistic diaglogue with tolerance with other faiths a bit of a dangerous notion

What the book becomes is a gentle apologetic for Calvinism that avoids the sterile theological debates in which Arminians and Calvinist shout out Scripture passages to one another. In the end Dr. Mouw’s suggestions for communicating Calvinism in our contemporary culture with gentleness, care and respect are much needed within the Reformed community.

To close out his Next 2010 conference message, “The Church,” Kevin DeYoung gave a list of suggestions for how to be a difference maker in the local church. Many times people criticize and are quick to ridicule the church, even those who are in the chuch audience attending.

Jesus did not start any seminaries, libraries, synagogues, or write any books but he did start the church. We should not talk down even in all its imperfections the bride of Christ his church. We should in part out of gratitude for Him bring us our of darkness love the church and take part in it. 

Here is a list of suggestions that should hit home that he gave in the message. He said:  

• Find a good local church.
• Get involved.
• Become a member.
• Stay there as long as you can.
• Put away thoughts of a revolution for a while.
• Join the plodding visionaries.
• Go to church this Sunday and worship in Spirit and truth.
• Be patient with your leaders.
• Rejoice when the gospel is faithfully proclaimed.
• Bear with those who hurt you.
• Give people the benefit of the doubt.
• Say “hi” to the teenager that no one notices.
• Welcome the old ladies with the blue hair and the young men with tattoos.
• Volunteer for the nursery.
• Attend the congregational meeting.
• Bring your fried chicken to the potluck like everybody else.
• Invite a friend.
• Take a new couple out for coffee.
• Give to the Christmas offering.
• Sing like you mean it.
• Be thankful someone vacuumed the carpet for you.
• Enjoy the Sundays that “click.”
• Pray extra hard on the Sundays that don’t.
• And in all of this, do not despise the days and weeks and years of small things (Zechariah 4:8–10). 

I cannot recommend this message too highly. Please take time to download and listen to “The Church” by visiting the resource page at thisisnext.org.

Last week me and a group of men finished going through the devotional book A Call to Die: A 40 Day Journey of Fasting from the World & Feasting on God, which hands down I would consider one of the most solid devotional in print written by David Nasser.

The opening pages of the book start with the quote “”When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a challenge to its readers. As the foundation of the call to die is found in Luke 9:23: And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. This book has great depth that a number of devotionals are lacking.

Death for many, the very mention of the word can conjure feelings of fear and uncertainty. In the Christian life, we are called to pursue a daily death as though our lives depend on it. The scriptures are filled with such paradoxes. To be set free, you must become a slave. To be filled, you must hunger and thirst. To become greater, you must become less. And the hardest of all. . . to live, you must die. This is what the apostle Paul meant when he declared, “To live is Christ, and to die is gain…”

A Call to Die is an intensive devotional, beckoning the reader to dare define Christ’s radical call. Full of raw honesty and relentless passion, this forty day journey is not for the faint of heart, but for the one who longs to answer the call…the call to die. This book examines some of the hard teachings of Christ, as well as God’s disciplines for believers. Each day is spread over several pages of devotional thought preceded by a text of scripture. It takes time (one hour suggested) each day to take in what David has to say, to journal the answer to his thought provoking, personal questions, to memorize scripture and to chart a plan to implement what you learn.

The illustrations and anecdotes are very easy to relate to, and often because of that, they push us and challenge us. This is an essential resource in helping students as they go through it every day for forty days. I would encourage everyone who is willing to die to your flesh to read this incredible, life-changing book. Take up the challenger and buy it, read it, live it.

I would like to congratulate by fellow laborers for the sake of Christ that went on this 40 day journey with me Jessi Cardoso, Joey Castillo, Efraim Enriquez, and Aaron Bernal. For there zeal and being real even in there failures. God Bless!.

One of the least likely men to attend the Itinerant Evangelists’ Conference in Amsterdam sponsored by the Billy Graham Association was a Masai Warrior named Joseph. But his story won him a hearing with Dr. Graham himself. The story is told by Michael Card:

One day Joseph, who was walking along one of these hot, dirty African roads, met someone who shared the gospel of Jesus Christ with him. Then and there he accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior. The power of the Spirit began transforming his life; he was filled with such excitement and joy that the first thing he wanted to do was return to his own village and share that same Good News with the members of his local tribe.

Joseph began going from door-to-door, telling everyone he met about the Cross [suffering!] of Jesus and the salvation it offered, expecting to see their faces light up the way his had. To his amazement the villagers not only didn’t care, they became violent. The men of the village seized him and held him to the ground while the women beat him with strands of barbed wire. He was dragged from the village and left to die alone in the bush.

Joseph somehow managed to crawl to a water hole, and there, after days of passing in and out of consciousness, found the strength to get up. He wondered about the hostile reception he had received from people he had known all his life. He decided he must have left something out or told the story of Jesus incorrectly. After rehearsing the message he had first heard, he decided to go back and share his faith once more.

Joseph limped into the circle of huts and began to proclaim Jesus. “He died for you, so that you might find forgiveness and come to know the living God” he pleaded. Again he was grabbed by the men of the village and held while the women beat him reopening wounds that had just begun to heal. Once more they dragged him unconscious from the village and left him to die.

To have survived the first beating was truly remarkable. To live through the second was a miracle. Again, days later, Joseph awoke in the wilderness, bruised, scarred—and determined to go back. He returned to the small village and this time, they attacked him before he had a chance to open his mouth. As they flogged him for the third and probably the last time, he again spoke to them of Jesus Christ, the Lord. Before he passed out, the last thing he saw was that the women who were beating him began to weep.

This time he awoke in his own bed. The ones who had so severely beaten him were now trying to save his life and nurse him back to health. The entire village had come to Christ.

This is another clear example of what the Apostle Paul meant when he said, “I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body.” Those whom Christ calls to suffer and rejoice for the sake of the gospel are men in whom the world is not worthy of. Jesus is enough!

Original source: Michael Card, “Wounded in the House of Friends,” Virtue (March/April 1991): 28-29.

As I had the opportunity to speak this past Friday at the 737 young adults gathering at New Life Baptist Church I was given the task to preach on an apologetic theme. I chose to deal with the question What is Truth? Is it possible to know what it is? as the topic of preaching.

Our concept of truth is the basis of our morality of mankind (choosing right from wrong). When we examine the Holocaust and question the “wrongness” and the “rightness” of the event we are confronted with the basis for what makes wrong and what makes right. What makes Hitler’s Nazism wrong in wanting to conquer the world and kill innocent people in the process? After WWII, this is one of the questions faced at the Nuremberg trials. What basis can the Nazi’s be prosecuted for the acts in the WWII.

The basis of truth used by Germany was the Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest. The leaders of Germany saw their nation as a superior group a “Stronger People” and the rest of the world as an inferior people, a “Weaker People”.  The source of truth derived from german philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche taught that man is the source for good and evil. A form of philosophical relativism.

“Since there is no God to will what is good, we must will our own good.  And since there is no eternal value, we must will the eternal recurrence of the same state of affairs.”  -Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Hitler adopted Nietzsche’s view of truth and incorporated this in his own view of what is truth.  The Holocaust and the death of millions was the result of this truth.

The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature.  Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he does so it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development  of organic life would not be conceivable at all…If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.  -Adolph Hitler

The questions faced by Nuremburg trials, is the same question we face today.  What truth is the basis of our Moral Law and is truth subjective or objective? First Truth by definition is that which corresponds with reality. I could say that George Washington is the 1^st president of the U.S.A. and you can say he was the 3^rd president. What is the Truth? It is that which corresponds with reality. We would look up the historical documents of the government and eyewitnesses and assess that he was the first president since that corresponds with reality. Truth is not determined by what we feel or defined by what the majority say.

Secondly a relavist might say that truth does change over time. For example the world in early history was thought to be flat. Then we explored and discovered it was round so the truth changed. The truth did not change at all though just our understanding of the truth changed since the world was always truly round.

Thirdly we must distinguish between subjective and objective truth. Subjective truth is truth that is relative & subject to the holder of truth. For example what is true for you is not true for me. Objective truth is that which is true for all people, at all times and in all places regardless of what we think of it. It corresponds with reality. Lastly Jesus claimed to be objective truth: John 14:6: Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me”. This is the truth we should respond with to a world that says Truth does not exist! Sola Dei Gloria.

When reading the text of Romans this week in 10:15: How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, “How beautiful are the FEET of those who bring good news of Good things!” I recalled a story of the feet of a missionary in India. I discovered this delightful testimony in John Piper’s book Let the Nations Be Glad, a story that demonstrates how the suffering of Christ messengers ministers to those they are trying to reach and may open them to the gospel. J. Oswald Sanders the great missions leader was speaking at the chapel service at Trinity Seminary and said:

There was once an evangelist in India who tromped across the roads to various villages preaching the gospel. He was a simple man, no education, loved Jesus with all his heart, and was ready to lay his life down. And he came to a village that didn’t have the gospel. It was late in the day and he was very tired. But he goes into the village and lifts up his voice and shares the gospel with those gathered in the square. They mock him, deride him, and drive him out of town. And he was so tired—no emotional resources left—that he lies down under a tree, utterly discouraged. He goes to sleep not knowing if he’ll ever wake up. They might come kill him, for all he knows.

And suddenly, just after dusk, he is startled and wakes up. The whole town seems to be around him looking at him. He thinks he’s a goner. He starts to tremble, and one of the big men in the village says, “We came out to see what kind of man you were, and when we saw your blistered feet we knew you were a holy man. We want you to tell us why you got blistered feet to come talk to us.” So he preached the gospel and, according to J. Oswald Sanders, the whole village believed. That’s what Paul means by “I complete in my sufferings what is lacking in the afflictions of Jesus.”

Charles Wesley gives us an example of how one might obey Hebrews 13:13 and go “outside the camp” and bear the abuse he endured. On July 18, 1738, two months after his conversion, Charles Wesley did an amazing thing. He had spent the week witnessing to inmates at the Newgate prison with a friend named “Bray,” whom he described as “a poor ignorant mechanic.” One of the men they spoke to was “a black [slave] that had robbed his master.” He was sick with a fever and was condemned to die.

On Tuesday, Wesley and Bray asked if they could be locked in overnight with the prisoners who were to be executed the next day [this is outside the camp!]. That night they spoke the gospel. They told them that “One came down from heaven to save lost sinners.” They described the sufferings of the Son of God, his sorrows, agony, and death.

The next day the men were loaded onto a cart and taken to Tyburn. Wesley went with them. Ropes were fastened around their necks so that the cart could be driven off, leaving them swinging in the air to choke to death. ¹ The fruit of Wesley and Bray’s nightlong labor was astonishing. Here is what Wesley wrote:

They were all cheerful; full of comfort, peace and triumph; assuredly persuaded Christ had died for them, and waited to receive them into paradise…. The black [slave] … saluted me with his looks. As often as his eyes met mine, he smiled with the most composed, delightful countenance I ever saw. We left them going to meet their Lord, ready for the Bridegroom. When the cart drew off, not one stirred, or struggled for life, but meekly gave up their spirits. Exactly at twelve they where turned off. I spoke a few suitable words to the crowd; and returned, full of peace and confidence in our friends’ happiness. That hour under the gallows was the most blessed hour of my life. ²

Two things amaze and inspire me in this story. One is the astonishing power of Wesley’s message about the truth and love of Christ. All the condemned prisoners were converted. And they were so deeply convert that they could look death in the face and give up their lives with confidence that Christ would receive them. The other thing that amazes me is the sheer fact that Wesley went to the prison and asked to be locked up all night with condemned criminals. It was a huge risk. These men had nothing more to lose if they killed another person. Wesley had no supervisor telling him that this was his job. He was not a professional prison minister. It would have been comfortable and pleasant to spend the evening at home conversing with friends. Then why did he go?

God put it in his heart to go. And Wesley yielded. I believe there are hundreds of strange and radical things God will call us to. Not everyone will hear the same call. It will be unique. It may be something you never dreamed of doing. It may be something you have only dreamed of doing. I am praying that you will be courageous and yield. Open to God’s new doings,

E.M. Bounds (1835–1913) was a pastor and author of eleven books, nine of which focused on the matter of prayer. As part of the Christianaudio review program  I had the opportunity to listen to one of his classical works. Power Through Prayer is one of those prolific classic writings brought here in an audio production. Power Through Prayer has been called “one of the truly great masterpieces on the theme of prayer.” The term classic can appropriately be applied to this outstanding work.

In twenty brief but inspiring chapters Bounds begins each chapter with delightful quotations on the greatness of prayer from spiritual giants of the Christian faith. Then he continues to stress the vital necessity of prayer in the entire life of a pastor. Though it is aimed toward the pastoral ministry it can be easily applied to any believer’s spiritual life & ministry. It is one of those works that could be listened to time & time again and still gain continuing fresh insight and inspiration for one’s prayer life.

Throughout this book Bounds makes the point of demonstrating that the pastor can not depend on his intellect, scholarly study, and any other skill and talent he possesses to impact and change the people of his flock for it all is powerless if he has not unction to start and finish on his knees. He states this soberly like this:

Preaching which kills is prayerless preaching. Without prayer the preacher creates death, and not life. The preacher who is feeble in prayer is feeble in life-giving forces. The preacher who has retired prayer as a conspicuous and largely prevailing element in his own character has shorn his preaching of its distinctive life-giving power.

Bounds was a tireless man of prayer, whose words ring with authenticity, passion, and conviction. He calls for the Christian to keep God first in your morning thoughts and Holy character is formed by real praying. For the preacher to be a great thinker and student must be a great prayer or else they will be the greatest of backsliders and be heartless in ministry. On a final note Hovel Audio’s narrator Mr. Doren Elias skillfully speaks with a voice that conveys the richness of Bounds work. I would hope that many would get the chance to read this book and that we all would endeavor to find Power Through Prayer.

Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another obscure village. Where he worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.

He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never traveled more than two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things that are usually associated with greatness. He had no credentials but himself….

While still a young man of 33 years of age, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While dying, his executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth – his coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today Jesus is the central figure of the human race and the leader of mankind’s progress. All the armies that have ever marched, All the navies that have ever sailed, all the parliaments that have ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned put together, have not affected the life of mankind on earth as powerfully as that one solitary life.

Critics have not been able to obliterate him. Contrary views have not been able to smother him. And somehow within the deepest recesses of the human heart for millions of people in this world the name of Jesus Christ still brings the concept of hope.  

These words were adapted from a sermon by apologist Dr. Ravi Zacharias the director of RZIM “The Uniqueness of Christ in History” You can listen to the entire mp3 of the sermon (The Uniqueness of Christ in History Part 1, Part 2)