From our Sunday School lesson this week:

“Have you noticed how much praying for revival has been going on of late–and how little revival has resulted? I believe the problem is that we have been trying to substitute praying for obeying, and it simply will not work. To pray for revival while ignoring the plain precept laid down in Scripture is to waste a lot of words and get nothing for our trouble. Prayer will become effective when we stop using it as a substitute for obedience.”

A.W.Tozer

Doug Phillips at Vision Forum Ministries has written a response to the news that Dr. George Tiller, a practicing abortionist, was killed. His closing summary is this:

First, we mourn for the many children he murdered whose names will never make headline news, but whose murder were painful, violent, and bloody at the hands of this man. Second, we mourn for the future children who may be killed as a result of the way the pro-abortion movement will capitalize on this unlawful killing. Third, we mourn for a nation that has broken covenant with God, and that is deserving of God’s just wrath for its complicity in child sacrifice.

Finally, our mourning must lead us to prayer for the Church. God forbid that the blood of the innocent would be on our hands. If we would humble ourselves before the Lord and simply refuse to tolerate abortion in our own ranks, who knows what great things might be lawfully done, with God’s blessing, to bring murderers like George Tiller to an appropriate and earthly justice?

The complete article is here.

This is a great sermon on election preached 26 years ago almost to the day by W.A. Criswell the pastor (at the time) of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. The video certainly gives evidence of the age but the message is clear.  God chooses according to His good pleasure and for the sake of His glory those that will be saved. The video is here and the transcript is here.

Below is a short biography of Dr. Criswell taken from the Criswell Sermon Library:

W. A. Criswell was born December 19, 1909 in Eldorado, Oklahoma. He received his B.A. from Baylor University, and his Th.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He served as pastor of First Baptist Church Chickasha, Oklahoma and First Baptist Church Muskogee, Oklahoma prior to being called as pastor of First Baptist Church Dallas in October of 1944. He served for fifty years as senior pastor of First Baptist Church, for many years the largest church in the Southern Baptist Convention, and preached more than four thousand sermons from its pulpit. He became Pastor Emeritus in 1995.

Dr. Criswell published fifty-four books and was awarded eight honorary doctorates. The Criswell College, First Baptist Academy, and KCBI Radio were started under his leadership. He served on the board of trustees of Baylor University, Baylor Health Care System, Dallas Baptist University, and The Baptist Standard. He also served as a member of the Annuity Board and as Chairman of the Trustees of the Baptist Sunday School Board (now LifeWay Christian Resources). The Baptist Banner characterized his contribution to the Southern Baptist Convention as “historic”:

He is known as the patriarch of the “conservative resurgence,” returning the
SBC to its Bible-believing roots. Twice elected president of the SBC, in 1968
and 1969, during the 20 years that followed he was perhaps the most popular
preacher at evangelism and pastors’ conferences in America, while also preaching
extensively to mission fields worldwide.

As founder and chancellor of the Criswell College, Dr. Criswell gave his later years to preparing young preachers to preach the Word of God, emphasizing that a sermon should take God’s truth and “make it flame, make it live!” “The word we preach from our pulpits,” he declared, “ought to be like the Word of God itself–like a fire and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces (Jer 23:29).”

W. A. Criswell went home to be with the Lord January 10, 2002. His ministry continues through the messages he preached and the lives he touched during seventy-five years of pastoral service.

Tim Brown over at The Reformed Gadfly keeps an eye out for videos of Paul Washer and posts them from time to time. That is where I found these videos.  They consist of all three parts of Todd Friel with Wretched TV interviewing Paul Washer.  Last there is a video of Paul Washer street preaching in Peru. Be humbled and challenged.  I always am when I listen to Paul preach. His ministry is Heart Cry Missionary Society if you are interested in finding out more about him.

I have been disconnected from the blogging world for awhile.  I moved my website hosting and changed/tweaked my Wordpress template. It is a new look with better reliability down the road. I hope to have some original content soon but for now here are some links that interested me and I hope will interest you.

Evidence That The Southern Baptist Convention Is Beginning To Turn Toward Christian Education- Voddie Baucham declares that the SBC is finally acknowledging the need for Christian education for the k-12 grades.

Training Men- This article is written by the Christ Fellowship elders. Christ Fellowship is a church made up of home congregations in the Kansas City, Missouri area. Have you have ever wondered where all the male leadership has gone in the local church? Have you ever wondered how to get them back? This article explains how one church has used the biblical model of mentorship to grow men and then use mature men to develop leaders.

Better Prayer Meetings and Prayer Groups- Steve Burchett gives practical advice on the traditional prayer meeting and our responsibility

The Single Woman and the Modesty of Personal Restraint- Lydia Brownback addresses the problem of immodesty of the heart.

Make Your Own Blank Bible- A blank Bible is a Bible that has the spine cut off (creating loose pages) then is reassembled with extra blank pages put in between the printed pages.  The point is to have plenty of space for personal notes. What results is the opposite of a trimline or slimline Bible. I have not made one but it sounds interesting.

Some Criteria for Evaluating Preachers and Preaching- helpful advice for evaluating preachers and preaching

What follows is an open letter written by Tony Miano at The Lawman Chronicles.

Dear President Barack Obama,

My name is Tony Miano. I am a citizen of the United States and you are my president.

While we live in the same country, we also live worlds apart. We are very different–you and I. You are a politician and the most powerful man in the world–known to virtually everyone. I am a retired deputy sheriff, who is now serving in the ministry–known to very few.

Yet while we are different, we have several things in common. We are about the same age. We are both married to lovely, supportive women. We are raising daughters (although two of mine are now in college). We’re protective of our families. And we both profess to be followers of Jesus Christ.

Here are some of the statements you have made about your faith:

“I am a Christian, and I am a devout Christian. I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life.”

“I am a Christian. So, I have a deep faith. So I draw from the Christian faith.”

“I’ve been to the same church– the same Christian church– for almost 20 years . . .I was sworn in with my hand on the family Bible.”

“It is a precept of my Christian faith that my redemption comes through Christ, but I am also a big believer in the Golden Rule, which I think is an essential pillar not only of my faith but of my values and my ideals and my experience here on Earth.”

“My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I go out and do the Lord’s work.”

Mr. President, you profess to be a follower of Jesus Christ, yet you have said nothing about this…

You have said nothing publicly about the use of your image to blaspheme God.

The artist canceled the public unveiling of this blasphemous work, due to the public, moral outrage over the work’s content.

Mr. President, since your image was used to blaspheme the God in whom you say you believe, why hasn’t your voice been the first and the loudest to be heard? As a professing Christian and the present leader of our country, why aren’t you the leading Christian voice to say that you do not condone or appreciate the use of your image to blaspheme the Lord Jesus Christ?

If you were to try to make the case that as a “community organizer” you want to bring people together, and to speak publicly about this would alienate non-Christians; or if you were to try to make the case that this is a “freedom of speech” issue and you would not want to be seen as infringing upon the artist’s right to free expression; then I would humbly submit to you, Mr. President, that anything and/or anyone you place before or above God, is your god.

Mr. President, any time you refuse to make a stand for God you are denying God. And the Word of God is clear. “So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 10:33).

Could making such a public stand for the name and holiness of Jesus Christ prove costly? Could it cost you your popularity among the masses, both here and abroad? Could it cost you support within the halls of government? Could it cost you the White House? Could it cost you your very life? Jesus had an answer for concerns such as these.

“And calling the crowd to Him with His disciples, He said to them, ‘If anyone would come after Me, let Him deny Himself and take up His cross and follow Me’” (Mark 8:34).

Mr. President, whatever you are unwilling to sacrifice (even your life) for the sake of Jesus Christ is, in reality, your god. Whatever you love more than Christ; whatever you treasure more than Christ; whatever you will not forfeit for Christ is your god.

While there is only one Lawgiver and Judge and while there is only One who is able to save and destroy (James 4:12), and while I cannot know your heart, because I care about you as a human being I must tell you this. Your seeming indifference to this latest effort to dub you messiah, coupled with many things you have said in the past that run contrary to the Christian faith and the infallible Word of God; I must tell you that I do not believe you are a Christian. While you assert that you believe in Jesus Christ (even the demons believe and shudder–James 2:19), I do not believe you have received Him as Lord and Savior. I believe you are lost and in need of salvation.

Mr. President, I do not make such a statement–one that many professing Christians and non-Christians alike would wrongly deem judgmental–with any ill-will toward you whatsoever. On the contrary, Mr. President: I make such a statement because I care enough about you as a human being to tell you the truth. I love you enough to tell you the truth and run the risk of having you hate me for it.

Mr. President, there is yet another way you and I are very similar. We are both sinners. We have both violated the Law of God. Mr. President, if you have ever lied, stolen, taken God’s name in vain, looked at someone other than your wife with lust, or ever hated anyone then God sees you as a lying, thieving, blasphemous, adulterous, murderer at heart.

Because God is good–because He is holy, righteous, and just–He must punish your sin. All sin is against God. The punishment God has ascribed for sin is eternity in hell, Mr. President. When you die and stand before Almighty God, He will not see you mounted on a donkey. He will not see you wearing the crown of thorns He allowed His only Son to wear. He will see you naked–clothed only in the filthy garments of your sin. And He will say to you on that great and terrible day, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you worker of lawlessness” (Matthew 7:23b).

Mr. President, I do not want that for you. My wish for you is a very long and healthy life on this earth. I wish the same for your wife and your children; as well as your children’s children. But I want so much more than that for you. I want you to receive the free gift of eternal life that only God can give.

Mr. President, allow me to introduce you to the real Messiah–the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

Two thousand years ago, God the Father sent His Son Jesus Christ (fully God and fully man) to this earth (John 1:14). He lived the perfect life that you cannot live. He was nailed to a cross, shed His blood, and died taking upon Himself the wrath of God sinners deserve (Mark 15:22-26). Three days later, He rose from the dead defeating sin and death. As a result of Jesus Christ’s perfect life, shed blood, death, burial, and resurrection, God grants forgiveness of sins and eternal life to all who believe (John 3:16). But in order for this to happen, Jesus said you must be “born again” (John 3:3). Being born again is a supernatural work that only God can do when He gives you a new heart and dwells in you in the person of the Holy Spirit. This change results in a hunger for righteousness that will cause you to repent, turn from your sins, and put your faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior.

Please, Mr. President, repent and believe the gospel. Turn from your sins and receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Neither you, nor the ecumenical, pluralistic, unjust god you have fashioned in your mind are the true Messiah. There is only One. His name is Jesus Christ–the God of the Scriptures–the Living Word.

Mr. President, it matters not to me whether thousands of people join me by signing this letter or it bears only my signature. What matters to me, Mr. President, is where you will spend eternity. What matters to me, Mr. President, is whether you will stand with me to exalt and glorify the name that is above every name–the name before which every knee will bow and every tongue will confess–Jesus Christ the Lord.

Respectfully yours,

Tony Miano
A Bondslave of the Lord Jesus Christ

At times we (I say we because I don’t want to be alone in this) read or hear something that draws our attention because we know someone that “needs to read/hear this”. We know that this person, by our assessment, is struggling with a problem, a sin, a weakness, an attitude that would be instantly solved if only they would read this new book we found or would listen to a particular teaching. With that in mind, I direct you to Porn and Paper Pastors by Dan Phillips at Pyromaniacs. In this case, though, the person that needed to read this post is me. It hits a big nail on the head with a bigger hammer.  Read it and see if it might also help you and your pastor.

Horatius Bonar writes in The Rent Veil:

“Sin is a real thing. Men do not think so, even when with their lips they utter the word. It is but a shadow to them, a mere name, no more.

Sin is a sore evil. It is not felt to be so, yet it is not the less truly such. It is not hated, it is not shunned as an evil,—an evil whose greatness no one can measure or tell. When men speak of it they do so as painters speak of shade in a scene or picture; as rather a needful thing, nay, a thing of beauty in its own way. They have no due sense or estimate of it at all. It is not to them what it is to God. It is not by any means in their books what it is in the book of God.

Yet, right views of sin are the key to the Bible, the key to the history of the world, and the key to God’s purposes concerning it. He who does not know what sin is cannot understand the Bible. It must be a dark and strange book to him. He cannot solve the difficulties of the world’s history. All is perplexed and contradictory. He cannot enter into God’s purposes respecting it either in curse or in blessing, either in condemnation or redemption. Sin is not misfortune, but guilt; not disease, but crime; not an evil, but the evil, the evil of evils, the root of all evils; terrible in itself as fraught with all that we call “moral evil,” and terrible in its judicial effects as necessarily and inexorably bound up with irresistible and irreversible condemnation.

In spite of all the divine teaching, both in God’s book and in the world’s history, man refuses to believe that sin is what God has proclaimed it, and what its own development, in the annals of the ages, has shown that it really is.

The first and fundamental lesson of the Levitical service is the infinite evil of sin. Sacrifice is God’s declaration of His estimate of SIN. Strike this thought out of it, and sacrifice is simple barbarism,—a coarse emblem of the vengeance of a Jupiter, or a Moloch, or a Baal upon helpless creaturehood.”

Because sin is so evil is the reason Good Friday is so good.  Good Friday recognizes the submission of God the Son to wrath of God the Father to pay the penalty for the sins of the redeemed.  If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus for your salvation then Good Friday is not just good, it is great. It commemorates the day that the eternal penalty for your sins was paid. We will never know how precious that sacrifice is until the day of judgment. But I pray that we will grow in our thankfulness each day.

Tim Challies at challies.com reviews the book, “The Shack” by William P. Young. Of the reviews I have read, his is the most even toned. I warn you, he does not recommend the book.  But he does takes the time to give biblical responses to the doctrine presented in the book.  He covers the topics of the Trinity, submission, free will, forgiveness, Scripture and revelation, and salvation. As a result of  the popularity of the book and his review of it, Tim later expanded his review and now provides it in pdf form here. Tim summarizes his view of  “The Shack” at the end of his expanded review:

“Focusing on just three of the subjects William Young discusses in The Shack, we’ve seen that errors abound. He presents a false view of God and one that may well be described as heretical. He downplays the importance and uniqueness of the Bible,subjugating it or making it equal to other forms of subjective revelation. He misrepresents redemption and salvation, opening the door to the possibility of salvation outside of the completed work of Jesus Christ on the cross. We are left with an unbiblical understanding of the persons and nature of God and of His work in this world.

But this is not all. The discerning reader will note as well that the author muddies the concepts of forgiveness and free will. He introduces teaching that is entirely foreign to the Bible, often stating with certainty what is merely speculative. He oversteps the bounds of Scripture while downplaying the Bible’s importance. He relies too little on Scripture and too much on his own theological imaginings.

All this is not to say there is nothing of value in the book. However, it is undeniable to the reader who will look to the Bible, that there is a great deal of error within The Shack. There is too much error.

That The Shack is a dangerous book should be obvious from this review. The book’s subversive undertones seek to dismantle many aspects of the faith and these are subsequently replaced with doctrine that is just plain wrong. Error abounds.

I urge you, the reader, to exercise care in reading and distributing this book. The Shack may be an engaging read but it is one that contains far too much error. Read it only with the utmost care and concern, critically evaluating the book against the unchanging standard of Scripture. Caveat lector!”

More from  The Soul Winner by C.H.Spurgeon in the chapter titled How To Win Souls For Christ:

Dear brethren, if we are going to win souls, we must go in for downright labour and hard work.

And, first, we must work at our preaching. You are not getting distrustful of the use of preaching, are you? (”No.”) I hope you do not weary of it, though you certainly sometimes must weary in it. Go on with your preaching. Cobbler, stick to your last; preacher, stick to your preaching. In the great day, when the muster-roll shall be read, of all those who are converted through fine music, and church decoration, and religious exhibitions and entertainments, they will amount to the tenth part of nothing; but it will always please God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. Keep to your preaching; and if you do anything beside, do not let it throw your preaching into the background. In the first place preach, and in the second place preach, and in the third place preach.

Believe in preaching the love of Christ, believe in preaching the atoning sacrifice, believe in preaching the new birth, believe in preaching the whole counsel of God. The old hammer of the gospel will still break the rock in pieces; the ancient fire of Pentecost will still burn among the multitude. Try nothing new, but go on with preaching, and if we all preach with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, the results of preaching will astound us.