Theologian

Thousands of children missing in Uganda

Evangelical: Can the E-word be saved?

Cruise ‘is Christ’ of Scientology

Modern Pagans Honor Zeus in Athens

Kent Hovind gets 10 years for violating federal tax law

I will not be posting as much, if at all, for a while. My schedule is getting very busy so i have to take some time off.

I will still be reading my favorite blogs, and probably commenting from time to time on them, but i just don’t have the time to post here as much … at least not for a while.

Scripture
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1Jo 1:5-8, ESV)

Prayer
Lord, so many times this past week we have walked in darkness. Lord, would you forgive us and deliver us from our sins and have us walk in the light of your countenance. We know that our righteousness is not in ourselves but comes from Christ, and we long to be conformed to His image. Help us to recognize that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin, not that we may have a free pass to sin, but that we may be free from sin. Help us to walk as Christ walked, in the newness of life that He purchased for us by His death and resurrection. In Jesus name, amen.

The ESV Blog posts some great thoughts from To Tell You The Truth  on how to read Scripture.

Basically they are…

• Scripture as Story
• Christ-Centered View
• Never Read a Single Verse
• Scripture as Spoken Word
• Scripture as Prayer
• Knowing God
• Spend Much Time and Effort Studying Scripture
• Listen to Sermons
• Practice What You Read
• Rely on Grace

Reformation21 Has a funny blog entry on foeto-communion called “More trouble brewing for confessional presbyterians?”

Read it here.

In Dabney’s Systematic Theology, pg. 275, he says some great things about recurring suggestions that we can definitely apply to many things today including the type of entertainment we allow ourselves to partake of.

…vivid suggestions recurring too often always evoke a morbid action of the soul. The same subject of anxiety, for instance, too frequently recalled, begets an exaggerated anxiety…the victim of religious melancholy has no respite…[Satan] can help to propagate it by securing the too constant recurence of subjects of spiritual doubt or anxiety…the only successful mode to deal with the victims of these attacks is by producing diversion of the habitual trains of thought and feeling…How powerful is the motive to prayer…The duty of watchfulness against temptations…avoid overcoming and inordinate emotions about any object…abstain from a too constant pursuit of any carnal object…how beneficent is the interruption of secular cares by the Sabbath’s break.

I think that it’s telling  that the NT quotes much from the LXX. I think it shows the credibility of saying that a translation is authoritatively Scripture. Using the LXX translation the NT writers showed that the Scriptures can be translated and remain authoritative Scripture even though the translation has unintentional errors. Since the LXX was used by a large number of folks in the NT times, this gave them the assurance that the Bible they were reading was the Word of God. I think it is a shame when we shake Christian’s confidence in the Bible that they read by saying things such as, “in the Greek it really means this…” - when we have no example of this treatment of Bible translations in the NT even though they used the LXX quite frequently.

Why We Left the Episcopal Church

Moderate Baptists to meet in Atlanta on 21st century issues

France ‘no longer a Catholic country’

Yoga in school poses a problem for Christian mom

A really good article at Kingdom People Blog regarding limited and unlimited atonement. Here are some excerpts…

The atonement is limited in its application because Jesus’ blood covers only those who put their trust in him. In this sense, Jesus is the Lord over his church, a particular group of people who have been “called out” from among all tribes and tongues and nations.

In another sense, the atonement is unlimited, because Jesus did not come only to die for the sins of his elect (the limited position), nor even for the sins of all people (the unlimited position), but in order that the entire universe might be brought back into the shalom for which it was originally created. In this sense, Scripture can speak of Jesus’ atonement being universal in scope

Here are some interesting statements of faith regarding the preservation of the Word of God…

The original text has been preserved in the totality of the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts.

God’s Words are preserved in the multiplicity of manuscripts which must be compared to determine the wording of the originals.

The Ben Chayyim Hebrew OT and Scrivener’s Received Text of the NT are identical to the original autographs.

One particular family of texts preserve the autographs (eg: Byzantine, Alexandrian).

What is your statement of faith on the preservation of the Word of God?