Iran Changes Charges on Pastor Youcef

Posted on October 3, 2011 by blund

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Matthew 5:11-12

Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani was arrested and sentenced to execution by hanging for refusing to recant his Christian beliefs and apostatizing from Islam. After considerable international pressure (finally) began denouncing and condemning Iran’s actions, now the charges are being changed. “Iran said on Saturday that Christian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani was sentenced to death for rape, not for the crime of abandoning Islam.”“His crime is not, as some claim, converting others to Christianity,” Gholomali Rezvani, the Gilan province deputy governor, told Farsn news agency. “He is guilty of security-related crimes.” (source)

Of course, the only problem is the record of Pastor Youcef’s trial that doesn’t hint at any sexual crimes and explicitly mentions only the religious “crimes.” A December 2010 court ruling issued and signed by Supreme Court judges Morteza Fazel and Azizoallah Razaghi mentions the religious charges against Nadarkhani and nothing more.

“Mr. Youcef Nadarkhani, son of Byrom, 32 years old, married, born in Rasht in the state of Gilan, is convicted of turning his back on Islam, the greatest religion the prophesy of Mohammad at the age of 19,” the document states.

You can read the full release here.

Please continue to pray for Pastor Youcef and the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Donne’s Holy Sonnets

Posted on October 1, 2011 by blund

Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste,
I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday;
I dare not move my dim eyes any way,
Despair behind, and death before doth cast
Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it t’wards hell doth weigh;
Only thou art above, and when towards thee
By thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one hour my self I can sustain;
Thy Grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart.

Taking the Sermon To Go

Posted on September 30, 2011 by blund

Dear Zion,

You’ve just heard the benediction; the Sunday morning service is over. So now what? We disperse to go with our own families to our specific vocations and tasks. But just because the service is over does not mean that we can forget about everything we heard in the sermon or during worship, or that God is any less interested in how we live Monday through Saturday. Last time we looked at how to hear the sermon, now we will consider a few things about how to live based off of the sermon. For example:

Believers should meditate on God’s Word throughout the week. The truth of God that we hear – during the Scripture readings and sermons – on Sunday should occupy our thoughts Monday through Saturday. Jesus told His disciples to “Let these words sink down into your ears” (Luke 9:44); in other words, He didn’t want His teaching to bounce off our ears like a glancing blow, but rather to take root in our minds. “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it” (Hebrews 2:1). Does this describe how you think about what you learned in worship? Do you pay closer attention to God’s truth than anything else?
Believers should talk about God’s Word throughout the week. Continue reading →

Christianity vs Evangelicalism

Posted on September 27, 2011 by blund

Maybe you saw this linked from The Gospel Coalition, but if you haven’t read President of Asbury Dr. Timothy C. Tennent’s fall convocation entitled, “The Clarion Call to Watered Down Evangelicalism: Our Mission to ‘theologically educate,’” well then you should go read it now.

Tennent starts off by noting, “Tragically, Niebuhr’s devastating critique [of liberalism] is on the brink of being equally applicable to contemporary, evangelical Christianity.” From there, he turns both barrels on the current state of evangelicalism in America today. Here are some of the heavier quotes:

If liberalism is guilty of demythologizing the miraculous, we have surely been guilty of trivializing it. If liberalism is guilty of turning all theological statements into anthropological ones, surely we must be found guilty of making Christianity just another face of the multi-headed Hydra of American, market-driven consumerism. If liberalism can be charged with making the church a gentler, kindler version of the Kiwanis club, we must be willing to accept the charge that we have managed to reinvent the gospel, turning it into a privatized subset of one’s individual faith journey. I realize that there are powerful, faithful churches in every tradition who are already modeling the very future this message envisions, but we must also allow our prophetic imagination to enable us to see what threatens to engulf us.

Continue reading →

I Am Not My Own

Posted on September 27, 2011 by blund

For what is a man? What has he got? / If not himself – Then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels / And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows / And did it my way. / Yes, it was my way.

“My Way” Frank Sinatra

It’s my life / And it’s now or never / I ain’t gonna live forever
I just want to live while I’m alive / (It’s my life)
My heart is like an open highway / Like Frankie said I did it my way
I just want to live while I’m alive / ‘Cause it’s my life

“Its My Life” Bon Jovi

Tell my mother, tell my father / I’ve done the best I can
To make them realize this is my life / I hope they understand

“Second Chance” Shinedown

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My only comfort in life and death is that I am not my own, but belong body and soul, in life and death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.

Heidelberg Catechism Q. #1

“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

Owen’s Two Definitions of Sanctification

Posted on September 26, 2011 by blund

Compare these two definitions of sanctification. The first comes from John Owen’s Works, the second from the Savoy Declaration of Faith, a document Owen, Goodwin,and many other influential congregationalist ministers had a large role in forming.

Owen’s Works, 3:386

Sanctification is an immediate work of the Spirit of God on the souls of believers, purifying and cleansing of their natures from the pollution and uncleanness of sin, renewing in them the image of God, and thereby enabling them, from a spiritual and habitual principle of grace, to yield obedience unto God, according unto the tenor and terms of the new covenant, by virtue of the life and death of Jesus Christ.

Savoy Declaration of Faith

Chapter XIII: Of Sanctification
They that are united to Christ, effectually called and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created in them, through the virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection, are also further sanctified really and personally through the same virtue, by his Word and Spirit dwelling in them; the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened, and mortified, and they more and more quickened, and strengthened in all saving graces, to the practice of all true holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.

What strikes you from these two definitions? The first seems to emphasize the Spirit while the second emphasizes (union with) Christ. The first mentions the imago Dei while the second mentions other facets of the ordo salutis. The first treats sin in its staining effects, whereas the latter looks at sin in its power. The first thinks of vivification in terms of “obedience” while the latter speaks of “holiness.” Only the first mentions covenant (“new covenant”), while only the latter mentions mortification. Both are clear that it is by “virtue” of Christ’s death and life/resurrection. Both are speaking of progressive, not definitive, sanctification.

So why the difference(s)? Can any Owen scholars weigh in and touch on the various emphases? Clearly, Savoy 13 is not very original to Owen or the congregationalist ministers, as it reads very similar to the WCF (click here for a comparison and scroll down). Is that the only difference here, or are there other factors at play behind these two very similar yet different definitions of sanctification?

Christians, Sports & Sundays

Posted on September 22, 2011 by blund

Euan Murray is a modern day Eric Liddell. Like Liddell, the protagonist of Chariots of Fire who didn’t run in the Olympics because his race landed on a Sunday, Murray will not scrummage for Scotland because the match would land on a Sunday.

It’s basically all or nothing, following Jesus. I don’t believe in pick ‘n’ mix Christianity. I believe the Bible is the word of God, so who am I to ignore something from it?

I might as well tear out that page then keep tearing out pages as and when it suits me. If I started out like that there would soon be nothing left.

I want to live my life believing and doing the things (God) wants and the Sabbath day is a full day.

It’s not a case of a couple of hours in church then playing rugby or going down the pub, it’s the full day.

Parents in the US are increasingly facing more and more activities for their kids on Sundays. (Let’s not get started on NFL Sunday football!) Here’s an individual in Murray who is giving up a major aspect of his career to obey a command that most Christians haven’t kept their entire lives. I don’t know the first thing about Murray (or rugby!). But examples like these should make us all pause and reflect on how we are obeying the 4th Commandment.

Two Parenting Resources

Posted on September 22, 2011 by blund

Here are a few resources for busy parents trying to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord for the 21st century.

5 Lessons for Parenting in the Digital Age
Facebook has recently announced that they will be rolling out even more additions to the largest social media engine to entice more users and keep current users on longer. How will this affect your family, or your parenting? The five lessons may be helpful for thinking through with your spouse as you raise young men and women to become godly, responsible consumers of technology. Continue reading →

Reformed Exclusivism

Posted on September 21, 2011 by blund

How do the various claims to truth of world religions relate to one another? Further, how should Christians think of salvation for those who have never heard? The traditional distinction to answer this question breaks into three categories:

Exclusivism: Jesus is the only Savior of the world, and one must believe God’s special revelation culminating in the gospel of Christ to be saved.
Inclusivism: Jesus is the only Savior of the world, but one does not have to believe the gospel to be saved.
Pluralism: All paths are valid and lead to God.

Andy Naselli points to Christopher W. Morgan’s “Inclusivisms and Exclusivisms” in Faith Comes by Hearing: A Response to Inclusivism (WTS books). Morgan drills down into these categories, and notes that while most theologians still operate within these traditional sectors as a framework, in reality there are nine discernible categories:

Church exclusivism: No, outside the church there is no salvation.
Gospel exclusivism: No, they must hear the gospel and trust Christ to be saved.
Special revelation exclusivism: No, they must hear the gospel and trust Christ to be saved, unless God chooses to send them special revelation in an extraordinary way—by a dream, vision, miracle, or angelic message.
Agnosticism: We cannot know.*

Continue reading →

A Short Biography of Gisbertus Voetius (1589 – 1676)

Posted on September 19, 2011 by blund

Gijsbert Voet (English – Gilbert Foot) not only overlapped with Herman Witsius (1636 – 1708) for 40 odd years, but he was an important subject in the Dutch Reformed world in which Witsius lived and breathed. Not only was Witsius heavily influenced by Voetius, but Witsius’ own work was – in a sense – an attempt to reconcile the best of Voetius and Johannes Cocceius and their respective methodologies. Any careful study into Witsius must grapple with Gijsbert Voet, and hopefully the following biography presents a clear albeit brief look into this important Dutch father.

Biography of Voetius
Born in the small fortified city of Heusden as the son of Paulus Voet and Maria de Jongeling, Gisbertus (or Gijsbert) Voetius’s early years were dominated by the experience of war. Heusden was on the front line in both a military and a religious sense, as it was situated on the southern bank of the river Meuse that would later form the borderline dividing Catholic and Protestant parts of the country. Voetius’s relatives were directly involved in the conflict with Spain. Grandfather Nicolaas Dirkszoon Voet, heir to a Westphalian noble family, died in prison in ’s Hertogenbosch where he was kept on account of his support of William the Silent. Several members of Gijsbert’s mother’s family would flee the city, leaving all their possessions behind in order to accompany the Prince of Orange to Breda. Voetius’s father meanwhile saw his own property being demolished in the rampage around Heusden. Having joined the State militias for a second time in 1592, he was killed in the siege of Bredevoort in 1597, leaving behind the sickly Maria with four children. Continue reading at Witsius On the Web…