Ancient Aliens Debunked! LOL.

The Creation of Giorgio Tsoukalos

Get it here.

Dr. Carl Trueman's Reaction...

...when asked about what he thought of Brian McLaren's solemnization of his son's same-sex marriage:

Brian McLaren Blesses Son's Swordfighting

Even an unbelieving father, who has the light of nature soundly lit in his life, would take pride in a son that exhibits masculinity and would consider himself a world-shattering failure if this did not become so. Imagine someone claiming to be a believer in Christ, and a supposed "minister" at that, officiating in his son's same-sex "marriage"!

Imagine no more! Emergent, soul-damning heretic, Brian McLaren, did just that.

A couple of pertinent links on homosexuality: The Pagan Roots of Homosexuality and Effeminacy in Leadership: More the Effect Than the Cause of God's Judgment

Van Til on Driscoll

Mark Driscoll's rejection of the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son of God (declared in ecumenical creeds and Reformed confessions) is discussed here (Part 1), here (Part 2), here (Part 3), and here (Part 4).

It appears Cornelius Van Til was on the mark once again when he said:

It is sometimes contended that ministers need not be trained in systematic theology if only they know their Bibles. But "Bible-trained" instead of systematically trained preachers frequently preach error. They may mean ever so well and be ever so true to the gospel on certain points; nevertheless, they often preach error. There are many "orthodox" preachers today whose study of Scripture has been so limited to what it says about soteriology that they could not protect the fold of God against heresies on the person of Christ. Oftentimes they themselves even entertain definitely heretical notions on the person of Christ, though perfectly unaware of the fact. (An Introduction to Systematic Theology [New Jersey: P & R, 2007], ed. William Edgar, 22)

The Pastor: What He Is and What He Is Not

The news of Yousef Nadarkhani, an Iranian pastor facing possible execution, has made the headlines. A good treatment of his case can be found here.

Now compare him with the brash and insolent Perry Noble:




Noble, who claims to be a pastor, doesn't want to spend time with the people of his pasture (they make him uncomfortable) and abhors the idea of doing hospital visitations while the sick person is still alive (he might agree to visit when they're dead!).

Square that with the words of the Lord Jesus Christ (the One Noble claims to serve!):

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?' And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me." (Matt. 25:31-40)

Can you come to grips with the idea of Noble being willing to die for his faith? I certainly cannot by any stretch of the imagination! If mere association with Christ's sheep rubs him wrong, then to claim love for the sheep owner is a blatant lie. In fact, "If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen" (1 John 4:20).

By now it must be pretty obvious what a real pastor is, and that Perry Noble does not measure up (not even an inch). If not, then the following lectures from Sinclair Ferguson should bring home the point pretty well, i.e., the pastor is called to give his life for his Master's sheep.

Mere Christianity: The Appeal to a Heterodox Past

It is often lamented that modern (or postmodern) evangelicalism does not look to the past for the foundations of its faith and practice. While this is certainly true in a strict sense, there is no escaping the universal truth expressed in Ecclesiates 1:9 and the fact that evangelicals today owe a lot to the legacies of those who've pandered a notion of mere Christianity in the past.

Claiming to get at the kernel and leaving behind the husk, these seemingly "radical" innovators are actually no more than current expressions of a rebellious individualism that has marked heretics of a bygone era. Tradition is stiff, "new measures" are where the Spirit's at, doctrine divides, and a host of other meaningless catch phrases comprise their rhetoric.

In fact, "Christian liberalism" is mere Christianity and this is what J. Gresham Machen fought against, not liberalism per se.

To C.S. Lewis fans this little snippet from Dr. Carl Trueman has much to say:

Pat Robertson: The Monster-Maker

I'm sure you're aware of the infamous "advice" that Pat Robertson gave this husband about the legitimacy of divorcing his "walking death" wife who suffers from Alzheimer's. See video below:






Square that with Paul's own "advice":

But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever (1 Tim. 5:8).

Got me thinking: What sort of being is actually worse than an unbeliever? Van Til's antithesis gives us only two kinds of human being, the believer and the unbeliever, so there must be something outside of this binary construct. Then it dawned on me: DEMONS.

John Calvin deemed this third kind to be MONSTERS:

He says that they who do not care about any of their relatives, and especially about their own house, have 'denied the faith.' And justly; for there is no piety towards God, when a person can thus lay aside the feelings of humanity. Would faith, which makes us the sons of God, render us worse than brute beasts? Such inhumanity, therefore, is open contempt of God, and denying of the faith.

Not content with this, Paul heightens the criminality of their conduct, by saying, that he who forgets his own is worse than an infidel This is true for two reasons. First, the further advanced any one is in the knowledge of God, the less is he excused; and therefore, they who shut their eyes against the clear light of God are worse than infidels. Secondly, this is a kind of duty which nature itself teaches; for they are natural affections. And if, by the mere guidance of nature, infidels are so prone to love their own, what must we think of those who are not moved by any such feeling? Do they not go even beyond the ungodly in brutality? If it be objected, that, among unbelievers, there are also many parents that are cruel and savage; the explanation is easy, that Paul is not speaking of any parents but those who, by the guidance and instruction of nature, take care of their own offspring; for, if any one have degenerated from that which is so perfectly natural, he ought to be regarded as a monster. (Commentary on 1 Tim. 5:8)

So Pat Robertson is actually asking us to become DEMONS and MONSTERS given the right circumstances. Can't get more ANTI-CHRISTIAN than that!

Triperspectivalism and the Heretical Fringe

I decided to inform myself about John Frame's triperspectivalism using his own primer found here.

The impression that I got is that his method seeks to find a Trinitarian imprint to everything in reality. I would certainly agree with the premise that all of creation is indelibly marked with Trinitarianism in that the One-and-the-Many, evidenced in the universal-particulars relationship found in every created object, is a creaturely analogization of the mystery of God as being One and Three Persons. However, the aspect of Frame's take on this that rubs me wrong is that (based on my understanding of his proposition) if the complete picture view of truth (exhaustive) is only available to God, then the ectypal truth available to the creature (man) must consist in "perspectives" that cannot claim to be the single body of ectypal truth delivered to man, but that the various perspectives contribute to the apprehension of this true ectypal corpus.

In other words, my particular take on truth is always incomplete and necessitates that I engage the truth perspectives of others in order to progressively arrive at complete ectypal veracity. The implications on the Reformed creeds and confessions cannot be missed. Frame states,

"So I think that perspectivalism is an encouragement to the unity of the church. Sometimes our divisions of theology and practice are differences of perspective, of balance, rather than differences over the essentials of faith. So perspectivalism will help us better to appreciate one another, and to appreciate the diversity of God's work among us."

What I hear him saying is that the Reformed consensus is just a perspective among others, and that we would do well perhaps to hearken to the likes of Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, Rob Bell, etc. in order to progressively arrive at unified Christian truth. But then how would error be spotted? The determination of heterodoxy must necessarily be predicated on a perspective as being the only perspective. If he claims this as "the essentials," then by what overarching perspectival standard did he arrive at this delimiting conclusion?

His threefold division of normative (God's revelation), situational (objects, the created order), and existential (man in interaction with the former two) is well and good, in my opinion, but then the permutation of this triperspectivalism, as applied by him, into multiperspectives that are each given credence does give rise to a pluralism that is dangerous and precisely what the Reformed creeds and confessions were meant to curb.

Westminster Wednesday: What Is the Most Satanic Philosophy?

According to Cornelius Van Til, it is Karl Barth's:

"Total depravity. That means the whole glass is poisoned. It's not as poisoned as it could be, but it's all poisoned. The faculties of soul are all turned against God by nature. All are poisoned by sin. Wherever there is evidence of God, which is everywhere, man will deny it. You see, God must reach down and save dead men in their trespasses and sins. You do not heal a dead man. You resurrect him. Man is not sick, not drowning, but dead. Dead is dead. You can't throw him a rope. A dead man can't grab anything. Your mother is dead without Christ. Your culture is dead without Christ. This is the problem with Karl Barth, there's no space-and-time redemption by Christ. There's no change of the unbeliever to believer. There's no challenge to the natural man. That's why Barth is poison. Water and sulfuric acid look the same, right? If you drink sulfuric acid, it will kill you. Barth has placed sulfuric acid in our water bottles and told us it is water. Barth has created the systematically most satanic philosophy ever devised by the mind of man. Salvation is like cleaning a bad tooth. It's no good if your dentist tells you your tooth is okay when it's rotten. The dentist has to go down, drill out the decay and replace it with gold. This is what salvation is." (Van Til Made Me Reformed by Eric H. Sigward, emphasis mine)

For Van Til's essay in the Westminster Theological Journal entitled, "Has Karl Barth Become Orthodox?", click here.

For a PDF copy, email me.

Next to the Bible, What Is the Second Most Important Book?

According to Carl Trueman, it is J. Gresham Machen's Christianity and Liberalism, a book that tackled an issue that will stay an issue up until the eschaton finally breaks in.

A Pre-Hip Mike Vs. the Televangelists

Is it just me or do our esteemed theologians tend to "grow into" coolness as they age? LOL.

At any rate, Dr. Michael Horton was already brilliant then:

The Camping-Finney Connection

May 21, 2011 came and went, the sands of time still trickle down, redemptive history is still playing out, Harold Camping has once again been proven a false prophet, and the status quo has been maintained—or has it?

If Christianity is painted with a broad brush (as it usually is by those antagonistic to it), then the latest Camping episode might prove to be another color option in the palette of the perceived untenability of Christianity.

It's bad enough that true, historic, catholic, biblical, and Reformed Christianity has Finney's fiendish formula to contend with, but with the massive media coverage that this latest Camping debacle has generated, it would not be difficult to see that more hardening and darkening are inevitable.

Horton on Bell (UPDATED - 03/31/2011)

I hope you appreciate the appropriateness of the picture. LOL!

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Part VII

New link added on 03/30/2011:
Part VIII

New link added on 03/31/2011:
Part IX

Rob Bell, Hell, and the Party for Everyone (Part II: 10 Questions to Ask Him)

The following are 10 penetrating questions to ask Rob Bell, and those of his ilk, on the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ's own view regarding the ultimate state of man in the consummation:

"1. During one of his frequent confrontations with the Pharisees, Jesus told them, 'I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come' (John 8:21). Why did he damn them in this way if he knew perfectly well that eventually, along with the rest of humanity, they would be with him in heaven?

Rob Bell, Hell, and the Party for Everyone (Part I: A Brief History of Universalism)

By now, to state that Rob Bell is a hell-denying universalist is almost a moot point. How ever he tries to evade the label by a well-crafted blend of ambiguous speech and smirking, it really just sticks.

But it must be noticed that there are actually two basic kinds of universalism. The first, "in its simplest form...claims that everyone goes to heaven immediately after death, regardless of what they have believed or how they have behaved; regardless, even, of whether they were religious or irreligious. R.C. Sproul summarizes this position: 'A prevailing notion is that all we have to do to enter the kingdom of God is to die. God is viewed as being so 'loving' that he really doesn't care too much if we don't keep his law. The law is there to guide us, but if we stumble and fall, our celestial grandfather will merely wink and say, 'Boys will be boys''." [1]

Bell's position is of the second sort:

The 5 Points of Moralistic, Therapeutic, Deism

In Dr. Michael Horton's lecture entitled, "Christianity and Liberalism Today," delivered at Westminster Seminary California's 2011 annual conference (Christianity and Liberalism Revisited), he made mention of the 5 points of "Moralistic, Therapeutic, Deism."

The 5 points of MTD are as follows, along with my very brief commentary on each:

Point 1: God created the world.

With logical positivism dead, and with none but the stubbornest of thinkers holding on to it as a valid epistemology, it comes as no shock that the intelligent conclusion of any philosophical process is that the existence of deity at the end of all causal chains is the only rational option.

However, this output of natural revelation only gives us the "what?" and not the "who?" For the determination of the latter, we need the inerrant, inspired, and authoritative Word of God, the Bible.

To those under the vise-grip of MTD, knowing that God created the world comes as no consolation, for every human being, being made in the image of God, knows this:

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things" (Romans 1:18-23)

Point 2: God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other as taught in the Bible and most world religions.

Again, this is a product of natural revelation, with the Law being ingrained in the heart of every man. The trouble is that most, if not all, MTD-ers don't realize that God requires perfect obedience to His Law. One's estimation of what counts for goodness, niceness, and fairness will never measure up to God's standard. We need perfect obedience to be counted as righteous in God's sight.


Point 3: The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

Considering Point 2, the MTD man's conception of happiness is essentially existential, not coming to grips with the true nature of his problem, i.e., the wrath of God that weighs heavily upon him. As long as the endorphins are kept pumping, everything is fine with the world—the world revolving around me, of course!


Point 4: God doesn't need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a personal problem.

Knowing that God created the universe (Point 1), it obviously is the case that He alone knows and has the ability to keep the MTD man happy and feeling good about himself (Point 3) when bumps or potholes along the road of life make the joyride less than enjoyable.


Point 5: Good people go to heaven when they die.

See Point 2.


More on MTD by Dr. Horton below:

The Gospel: Message and Method

Pastor Nicholas T. Batzig makes the following remark in a sermon of his entitled, "Hard Pressed on Every Side": "Why are Gospel-preaching churches so small? Gospel-preaching churches are so small because the natural man hates the Gospel and will try to keep even his enemies from hearing the Gospel." The context of the statement is Acts 14, where we see the Gospel-antagonistic Jews shedding off their bigotry towards the Gentiles if only to prevent them from hearing and responding to the Gospel of the crucified Jesus. Such is the ignominy of the Gospel that other hatreds becomes loves if only to make it more hateful!

If such is the case, it may be asked to what message have these hordes of people who warm the seats of these ultra-mega-churches responded to, and by what means? Of course, mere numerical statistics don't mean error prima facie, but a mere cursory observation of the methods and doctrines (or lack thereof) of these churches would lend immense viability to Nick's statement.

For one thing, most of these churches subscribe to a paradigm of conversion that is best described as moralistic, therapeutic, deism. Preach on a subject that will foster discontent in the audience, though not about God's Law and sin—that's sure to cut the attendance by half the next Sunday! Let it be about relationships, how to carry on great marriages; or about the career, how to always be on top at the office. So you've been a failure as a husband or father; you've not been promoted in 3 years. Well, you need a Savior! Needless to say, the Gospel is not about eliminating the pet peeves from your life, but about what God has done, in Christ, to save you from Himself—with Christ living a perfectly righteous life (to satisfy God's demand of perfect obedience to the Law), dying on the cross (to satisfy God's demand of payment for your non-obedience to the Law), and rising up from the dead in order to secure for Himself a people imputed with His righteousness and declared justified by grace, through faith.

Secondly, they operate on a paradigm of conversion that is epochal. Given perhaps that the person and work of Christ was adequately preached from the pulpit (the Gospel), the working assumption is that this one time of having heard the message is enough to effect conversion, so then we have the proverbial "altar call" and "sinner's prayer." While the Lord is free to effect His saving work in such a case, it is more the exception than the rule. John Calvin states, "We are converted little by little to God, and by stages." Instead of the revival type of evangelism, it appears that the biblical mold is progressive indoctrination through Sunday preaching and Bible studies. The Holy Spirit uses the biblical truths of the Gospel as expounded in these venues, assimilated through the mind (noticia), to break its way through to the sin-hardened heart, making it realize (assensus) its need for a Savior (fiducia). This approach takes the radical depravity of the human heart and God's promise to bless His ordained means seriously. Dr. Darryl Hart gives a treatment of this in two blog posts: "The Unconverted Calvin: Part One and Two."

The Gospel's message and method are not the rave these days. No matter. Not a single one for whom Christ died shall be lost, even if his church is micro. ;-)

Calvin on the Church Growth Movement

I am convinced that the vice behind much of the "seeker-sensitive" and "church-growth" movements is impatience. The natural human impulse is to want results—and to want them now! So we dream up ways and means to make the "church experience" palatable to the unregenerate, instead of breaking their hearts with the Law and providing the remedy through the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The failure to make people understand their true condition before God, not in the level of their "felt needs," needs that are perceived through the filter of the carnal mind, but in the relationship of the Creator who demands His image to be perfectly represented in the only creature who bears it, effectively closes the door to the good news—the news that God has made a way, through His Son, for His demands to be spotlessly met in man if only man would know who this Son is, believe in Him, and trust Him for the solution to the problem—for if the problem is a lack of self-esteem, a lack of leadership, a lack of success, then only a false gospel will suffice.

Calvin thus speaks the truth:

"And, therefore, though some may murmur, and others scorn, and others slander, and though many differences of opinion may arise, still the preaching of the Gospel will not be without effect; so that we must sow the seed, and wait with patience until, in process of time, the fruit appear" (John Calvin, Commentary on John — Volume I (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classic Ethereal Library), John 7:31).

A Zombie Walks Amongst Us (Logical Positivism and Adam)

Philosopher John Arthur Passmore has stated that, "Logical positivism...is dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes. But it has left a legacy behind." If the recent trend of formerly orthodox, evangelical scholars embracing theistic evolution is any indication, then it does seem that the zombie of logical positivism still walks amongst us!

Of course, the first thing to walk out the door when evolution is considered as the more tenable explanation for the origin of man is the historicity of the one whom the Bible calls "the first man" (1 Cor. 15:45), Adam: "Was Adam an Historical Person? And What Difference Does It Make?" If Adam is merely a creature of mythology, then the biblical-historical account of the Fall did not actually happen, we were not created by God as good (Gen 1:31), and there never was a need for Christ to take on humanity in His redemptive work. In short, the whole of biblical Christianity disentangles and dissipates.

See also: Theistic Evolution: A Hermeneutical Trojan Horse

Evangelical/Gnostic Voyeurism

Martin Luther has said that every human being is intrinsically a mystic. The claim is indicative of the proverbial "vacuum" that every man longs to fill with God (or notions of God); and yet it is also "human" to want to "get into" this God through means other than that which He has prescribed in His Word. It is a desire to peer into, as Luther calls it, "the naked God."

This Gnostic voyeurism is very much apparent in the many mutations of modern Evangelicalism. From the hyper-faith, hyper-supernaturalism, and experientialism of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement, to the extrabiblical, pragmatic, pietistic, and individualist "innovations" of the church-growth, purpose-driven, megachurch movement (interestingly, the Emergent Church movement merely gave the megachurch movement a "cooler" face, with essentially the same brain behind the operations), Gnosticism is alive and well.

The dangerously false assumption behind all this is that God is a God who can be approached, as Air Supply would put it, "Just As I Am." Yet the biblical account teems with examples of God meting out swift and final judgment on those who failed to approach Him, sincere or otherwise, in the means that He has prescribed. In the OT, we have Nadab and Abihu, beloved sons of Aaron, incinerated, and Uzzah struck dead. Especially in the case of the latter, sincerity and a desire to serve God were not, and will never be, mitigating factors. In the NT, we have Ananias and Saphira, the couple of deceit, snuffed of life by the same transgression. Fervent affection and devotion matters nil if recognition of the "otherness" of God, which is the reality behind God's use of physical and temporal means to interface with man, is rejected.

The Gospel is that God, through His Son Jesus Christ, became flesh, to the consternation of the Gnostics. Just as no Israelite could approach God unmediated by either Moses or the priesthood, so is it that only though the mediation of the God-Man, Christ, can anyone come into the presence of God without suffering the same fate as those sincere enthusiasts who gave no thought to God's prescribed means but thought of Him as like unto themselves. But then, even in the appropriation of Christ's merits, Gnosticism and Evangelicalism walk hand-in-hand in seeking out a private, personal Jesus who is accessible through techniques, methods, and devices, rather than the historical, objective, and enfleshed Christ who takes the initiative to reveal Himself to those whom the Father has chosen. It is "me and my God-ness" uniting with God, not God in His holiness and transcendence condescending to elect, justify, sanctify and eventually glorify me, all because of what Christ has done that is external to myself.

There are a host of other instances wherein this voyeurism is obvious. Suffice it to say that the only remedy to this insidious malady is the recovery of the great truths of the Reformation.