Adoniram Judson's letter to ask permission to Court Ann

On June 28, 1810 Judson and others presented themselves to the Congregationalists for missionary service in the East. He met Ann that same day and fell in love. After knowing Ann Hasseltine for one month he declared his intention to become a suitor, and wrote to her father the following letter:

I have now to ask, whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of missionary life; whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean, to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India; to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death. Can you consent to all this, for the sake of him who left is heavenly home, and died for her and for you; for the sake of perishing, immortal souls; for the sake of Zion, and the glory of God? Can you consent to all this, in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory, with the crown of righteous, brightened with the acclamations of praise which shall redound to her Savior from heathens saved, through her means, from eternal woe and despair?

....That is a man who knew his calling, Loved his God, Loved the Lost, Loved a Woman, and Loved authority enough to ask, even such a hard thing and with such honesty as this...I want to be a man of God like this. I have no need to ask to court anyone, as I'm married to the greatest woman in the world, but I want to be a man of God like Adoniram!

Sam Storms Quoting amazingly from C.S. Lewis

At the 2010 Desiring god Pastors Conference, Sam Storms quoted C.S. Lewis Amazingly by saying thus:

7) God's passion for his glory is the consummate expression of love for you.

Considerate these words from C .S. Lewis in his essay, “The Problem of Praise in the Psalms” (found in Reflections on the Psalms):

We all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue, intelligence or delightfulness; we despise still more the crowd of people round every dictator, every millionaire, every celebrity, who gratify that demand. Thus a picture, at once ludicrous and horrible, both of God and His worshippers, threatened to appear in my mind. The Psalms were especially troublesome in this way - ‘Praise the Lord,' 'O praise the Lord with me,' 'Praise Him.' ... Worse still was the statement put into God's own mouth, 'whoso offereth me thanks and praise, he honoureth me' (50:23). It was hideously like saying, 'What I most want is to be told that I am good and great.' . . . It was extremely distressing. It made one think what one least wanted to think. Gratitude to God, reverence to Him, obedience to Him, I thought I could understand; not this perpetual eulogy...

We don't like the athletes who always show off or the cosmetically enhanced actress posture and pose on the red carpet, because we know they care nothing for anyone but themselves. Again, Lewis says,

...it is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men. It is not of course the only way. But for many people at many times the 'fair beauty of the Lord' is revealed chiefly or only while they worship Him together. Even in Judaism the essence of the sacrifice was not really that men gave bulls and goats to God, but that by their so doing God gave Himself to men; in the central act of our own worship of course this is far clearer - there it is manifestly, even physically, God who gives and we who receive. The miserable idea that God should in any sense need, or crave for, our worship like a vain woman wanting compliments, or a vain author presenting his new books to people who never met or heard him, is implicitly answered by the words, 'If I be hungry I will not tell thee' (50:12). Even if such an absurd Deity could be conceived, He would hardly come to us, the lowest of rational creatures, to gratify His appetite. I don't want my dog to bark approval of my books.”

Lewis is answering the question, "Why do we worship a God who has no needs?" Here's how he answers it:

But the most obvious fact about praise - whether of God or anything - strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless . . . shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise - lovers praising their mistresses [Romeo praising Juliet and vice versa], readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game - praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. . . . Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible. . . . I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: 'Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent?' The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can't help doing, about everything else we value.

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with ...

If it were possible for a created soul fully . . . to 'appreciate', that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beatitude. . . . To see what the doctrine really means, we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God - drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by, that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves as incommunicable, hence hardly tolerable, bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression, our joy is no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is separable from the brightness it sheds. The Scotch catechism says that man's chief end is 'to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.' But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.

If God is to love you optimally, maximally, for your highest good, then he has to impart the highest gift he can to you, which is himself. If God really loves you, he has to give himself to you. And then he has to work by his Spirit and grace to awaken you to him. He must work by all means to enlarge your joy and satisfaction in him. So he comes to you and says, "Here I am. Look at me! Look at me ... in Jesus! See me! Savor me! Enjoy me! Celebrate who I am ... the eternal God!"

Does that sound like God glorifying himself? Yes, you bet it does. But it's also the best way for you be enthralled and captivated and fascinated in pure joy. That's why our greatest joy is found in the enjoyment of God.

For God to work for his glory in you (which is his love for you) and for him to work for his glory in himself (which is his love for his own glory) is the same thing. If we don't capture this, we'll drive people into fear, depression, legalism, etc. The only way for God to consummate your joy is by making his glory great to you.

That is why Psalm 16 says that at his right hand are pleasures that never ever end. There are pleasures that satisfy the human heart forevermore.

Tim Challies Judo Chop to Brian McLaren and His False Religion

Tim Challies won the snarkey award of all time with this one. WOW!


TUESDAY FEBRUARY 16, 2010

A New Kind of Christianity

Early in George Orwell’s iconic 1984 is a particularly haunting scene. Winston, the hero of the story, is confessing to his diary a sexual encounter with a prostitute. Though Big Brother rigidly controls even sexual union and though sex is viewed as “a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema,” still Big Brother cannot remove from humanity the desire and the need for intimacy. One evening Winston spots a prostitute near a train station. “She had a young face,” he writes, “painted very thick. It was really the paint that appealed to me, the whiteness of it, like a mask, and the bright red lips. Party women never paint their faces.” In a society where abject fear and loneliness are the norm, Winston craves the intimacy of sex. But as he goes into this woman’s apartment and lies with her, he turns up a lamp, casting a bright light on her face. And immediately he sees that the appearance of beauty was a lie. “What he had suddenly seen in the lamplight was that the woman was old. The paint was plastered so thick on her face that it looked as though it might crack like a cardboard mask. There were streaks of white in her hair; but the truly dreadful detail was that her mouth had fallen a little open, revealing nothing except a cavernous blackness. She had no teeth at all.”

But, despite his horror, his revulsion, Winston continues. In his diary he writes “When I saw her in the light she was quite an old woman, fifty years old at least. But I went ahead and did it just the same.” Though the woman loses all sexual appeal, Winston continues in this act. He continues because, though his desire is quenched, still sex is an act of rebellion. By sleeping with this prostitute he is engaging in an act of heart-felt rebellion against Big Brother.

It wasn’t too long ago that I wrote about Brian McLaren and got in trouble. Reflecting on seeing him speak at a nearby church, I suggested that he appears to love Jesus but hate God. Based on immediate and furious reaction, I quickly retracted that statement. I should not have done so. I believed it then and I believe it now. And if it was true then, how much more true is it upon the release of his latest tome A New Kind of Christianity. In this book we finally see where McLaren’s journey has taken him; it has taken him into outright, rank, unapologetic apostasy. He hates God. Period.

“It’s time for a new quest,” write McLaren, “launched by new questions, a quest across denominations around the world, a quest for new ways to believe and new ways to live and serve faithfully in the way of Jesus, a quest for a new kind of Christian faith.” McLaren frames the book around “Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith.” They cut to the very heart of the faith, foundational in every way. He asks:
The narrative question: What is the overarching story line of the Bible?
The authority question: How should the Bible be understood?
The God question: Is God violent?
The Jesus question: Who is Jesus and why is he important?
The gospel question: What is the gospel?
The church question: What do we do about the church?
The sex question: Can we find a way to address human sexuality without fighting about it?
The future question: Can we find a better way of viewing the future?
The pluralism question: How should followers of Jesus relate to people of other religions?

The what-do-we-do-now question: How can we translate our quest into action?
His purpose, he insists, is not to answer the questions, but to provide responses to them. Answers indicate finality, responses indicate conversation and openness. “The responses I offer are not intended as a smash in tennis, delivered forcefully with a lot of topspin, in an effort to win the game and create a loser. Rather, they are offered as a gentle serve or lob; their primary goal is to start the interplay, to get things rolling, to invite your reply. Remember, our goal is not debate and division yielding hate or a new state, but rather questioning that leads to conversation and friendship on the new quest.” But that is mere semantics. Whether answering or responding (whether saying tomato or tomahto), what McLaren does through these ten questions is to completely rewrite the Christian faith. His “gentle lobs” rip the very heart out of the faith.

At the center of his remix of the faith is the claim that most Christians look at their faith through a flawed Platonic, Greco-Roman lens instead of through a biblical, Jewish lens. “God’s unfolding drama is not a narrative shaped by the six lines in the Greco-Roman scheme of perfection, fall, condemnation, salvation, and heavenly perfection or eternal perdition. It has a different story line entirely. It’s a story about the downside of ‘progress’—a story of human foolishness and God’s faithfulness, the human turn toward rebellion and God’s turn toward reconciliation, the human intention toward evil and God’s intention to overcome evil with good.” This Greco-Roman God, the one that most Christians believe in, is a “damnable idol … defended by many a well-meaning but misguided scholar and fire-breathing preacher.”
McLaren plays the all-too-typical “everyone else has it wrong” card. It turns out that most of us (all but a handful of enlightened intellectuals, as it happens) have been reading the Bible through the distorted lens of a Greco-Roman narrative. This narrative produced many false dualisms, an air of superiority and a false distinction between those who were “in” and those who were “out.” These three marks of false narrative have so impacted our faith that we can hardly see past them. But Brian is willing and eager to play Moses, leading us out of the Egypt of our own ignorance and into the Promised Land of the new Christianity.
It would take more time than I’d be willing to give it to offer a point-by-point explanation of what responses McLaren proposes for each of the ten questions or to document the ramifications of his new theology. He denies the Fall, he denies original sin, he denies human depravity, he denies hell. And that is just in the first few pages. Needless to say, all of this leads him to a radically unbiblical view of the cross and the purpose and work of Jesus. Though he insists that he considers the Bible “inspired” (though certainly not in a traditional sense) he also says that most Christians have read it wrong, having viewed it as a kind of constitution in which God gives Spirit-breathed, inerrant revelation of himself. “I’m recommending we read the Bible as an inspired library. This inspired library preserves, presents, and inspires an ongoing vigorous conversation with and about God, a living and vital civil argument into which we are all invited and through which God is revealed.” After all, “revelation doesn’t simply happen in statements. It happens in conversations and arguments that take place within and among communities of people who share the same essential questions across generations. Revelation accumulates in the relationships, interactions, and interplay between statements.”

What does the Bible accomplish then? What does it teach us about God? “Scripture faithfully reveals the evolution of our ancestors’ best attempts to communicate their successive best understandings of God. As human capacity grows to conceive of a higher and wiser view of God, each new vision is faithfully preserved in Scripture like fossils in layers of sediment.” The Bible is an ongoing conversation about God’s character in which humans come to progressively more accurate understandings of who he is. There is no reason to think that any of them actually had it right. His reinterpretations of Job and Romans are a sight to behold, so muddled and so fabricated that they become absolutely nonsensical. There is a deliberate ignorance at work here.

The arrogance of it all is stunning. McLaren is angrier than he has been before and more scornful. Still, though, he presents his ideas coated with the veneer of a false humility. But, handily, he builds into the book the means he will use to answer his critics. He will simply accuse his detractors of having this old Greco-Roman understanding of the faith. We poor fundamentalists cannot be among the new kind of Christian until we have been enlightened to understand the Bible through an entirely new narrative structure. Only then will this all become clear. Until then, more to be pitied are we than any men.

Here, in A New Kind of Christianity it’s as if McLaren is screaming “I hate God!” at the top of his lungs. And swarms of Christians are looking at him with admiration and saying, “See how that guy loves God?” I don’t know what McLaren could do to make the situation more clear. In fact, his book is nearly indistinguishable from many of the de-conversion narratives that are all the rage today. Compare it with Bart Ehrman’s God’s Problem and you’ll see many of the same arguments and the same misgivings; you’ll find, though, that Ehrman is at least more honest. He at least has the integrity to walk away from faith altogether rather than reinventing God in his own image.

McLaren says he would prefer atheism over belief in the God so many of us see in Scripture. Well, he is not far off. This new kind of Extreme Makeover: God Edition Christianity is no Christianity at all. It is not a faith made in the image of Jesus Christ, but a faith made in the image of a man who despises God and who is hell-bent on dragging others along with him as he becomes his own god.
As Winston turned up the light, he saw that prostitute for what she really was. Here McLaren turns up the light and we see what his faith, what his Christianity, really is. We see it in all its toothless, caked-on horror. This new kind of Christianity is simply paganism behind a thick coating of false humility and biblical language. It is an expression of rebellion against God far more than it is a pursuit of new intimacy with the Creator.
And like Orwell’s whore, many will go to this book seeking intimacy with God only to content themselves with rebellion against him. For each is satisfying in its own way.

Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones talking about Matt 5:4 and Spiritual Mourning

If you have not read "Studies in the Sermon on the Mount" by Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, I would highly recommend that you do so. The book is Gold just about anywhere you touch it. In reading through his writing on Matt 5:4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted," he had some very good insights on the state of the Church and the world concerning Spiritual mourning and gauging out maturity in the faith. This is an extended quote, but like I said the whole book is gold, so extended quotes are sometimes in order.

"We come not to a consideration of the second Beatitude- "blessed (or happy) are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted." This, like the first, stands out at once, and marks off the Christian as being quite unlike the man who is not a Christian and belongs to the world. Indeed the world would, and does, regard a statement like this as utterly ridiculous- Happy are those who mourn! The one thing the world tries to shun is mourning; its whole organization is based on the supposition that that is something to avoid. The philosophy of the world is, Forget your troubles, turn your back upon them, do everything you can not to face them. Things are bad enough as they are without your going to look for troubles, says the world; therefore be as happy as you can. The whole organization of life, the pleasure mania, the money, energy, and enthusiasm that are expended in entertaining people, are all just an expression of the great aim of the world to get away from this idea, of mourning and this spirit of morning. But the gospel says, "Happy are they that mourn." Indeed they are the only ones who are happy! If you turn to the parallel passage in Luke 6 you will find it is put in a still more striking manner, because there is the negative employed. "Woe unto you that laugh now!” our Lord says, “for ye shall mourn and weep.” This saying condemns the apparent laughter, joviality and happiness of the world by pronouncing a woe upon it. But it promises blessing and happiness, joy and peace to those who mourn. These preliminary statements, then, concerning the Christian are obviously of primary importance.

Once more it is clear, that we have here something which is entirely spiritual in its meaning. Our Lord did not say that those who mourn in a natural sense are happy, meaning by “mourning,” the sorrow experienced because of the death of someone. No, this is a spiritual mourning. As we saw that poverty of spirit was not something financial, but something essentially spiritual, so this again is something entirely spiritual and has nothing to do with our natural life in this world. All these Beatitudes have reference to a spiritual condition and to a spiritual attitude. Those who are commended are those who morning in spirit; They, says the Lord, are happy people.

This, as we have seen is something which is never found in the world, and it presents a striking contrast to what is found there. But, again, I am constrained to say that this is something which is not evident in the Church today as it once was and as it is in the New Testament. In a sense, as I said earlier, that is really our main reason for considering this Sermon on the Mount. We are concerned about the state and life of the Church at the present time. I have not hesitation again in asserting that the failure of the Church to have a greater impact upon the life of men and women in the world today is due entirely to the fact that her own life is not in order. To me there is nothing more tragic or shortsighted or lacking in insight than the assumption, made by so many, that the Church herself is all right and all she has to do is to evangelize the world outside. Every revival proves clearly that men who are outside the Church always become attracted when the Church herself begins to function truly as the Christian Church, and as individual Christians approximate to the description here given in these beatitudes. So we must start with ourselves, and see why, unfortunately, this description of the Christian as one who “mourns” is one that makes us feel that somehow or another is not as evident in the Church today as it once was.
The explanation of this is fairly obvious. It is partly a reaction against the kind of false Puritanism (I say false Puritanism, not Puritanism) which, let us be frank, was too much in evidence towards the end of the last century and the beginning of the present one. It often manifested itself in an assumed piety. It was not natural; it did not come from within; but people affected and assumed a pious appearance. It almost gave the impression that to be religions was to be miserable; it turned its back upon many things that are perfectly natural and legitimate. In that way a picture was given of the Christian man that was not attractive, and, I think, there has been a violent reaction against it, a reaction so violent that it has gone to the other extreme.

But I also think that another explanation of this is the idea which has gained currency that if we as Christians are to attract those who are not Christian we must deliberately affect an appearance of brightness and joviality. Thus many try to assume a kind of joy and happiness which is not something that rises from within, but is something which is put on. Now probably that is the main explanation of the absence of this characteristic of mourning in the life of the Church today. It is this superficiality, this glibness of joviality that is almost unintelligent. It is this endeavor to appear to be something and to cut a certain figure, instead of a life arising from within, which controls and determines the whole of our appearance and behavior.

I sometimes think, however, that the ultimate explanation of it all is something still deeper and still more serious. I cannot help feeling that the final explanation of the state of the Church today is a defective sense of sin and a defective doctrine of sin. Coupled with that, of course, is a failure to understand the true nature of Christian joy. There is the double failure. There is not the real deep conviction of sin as was once the case; and on the other hand there is this superficial conception of joy and happiness which is very different indeed from that which we find in the New Testament. Thus the defective doctrine of sin and the shallow idea of joy, working together, of necessity produce a superficial kind of person and a very inadequate kind of Christian life.

Now this is obviously extremely important, especially as regards the matter of evangelism. It is not surprising that the Church is failing in her mission if her dual conception of sin and joy are thus defective and inadequate. And, therefore, it comes to pass that so much evangelism, whether organized on a large or a small scale (in spite of all that is claimed for it in figures and results), is obviously not affecting the life of the Church deeply. Indeed, the very statistics prove the failure in this respect. For this reason it is surly a very fundamental subject for us to consider. That is why it is so important that we should approach it all in terms of this Sermon on the Mount, which starts with negatives. We have to be poor in spirit before we can be filled with the Holy Spirit. Negative, before positive. And here again is another example of exactly the same thing- conviction must of necessity precede conversion, a real sense of sin must come before there can be a true joy of salvation. Now that is the whole essence of the gospel. So many people spend all their lives in trying to find this Christian Joy. They say that would give the whole world if they could only find it, or could be like some other person who has it. Well, I suggest that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred this is the explanation. They have failed to see that they must be convicted of sin before they can ever experience joy. They do not like the doctrine of sin. They dislike it intensely and they object to its being preached. They want joy apart from the conviction of sin. But that is impossible; it can never be obtained. Those who are going to be converted and who which to be truly happy and blessed are those who first of all mourn. Conviction is an essential preliminary to true conversion.”

Temple Prostitution: A Modest Proposal

Temple Prostitution: A Modest Proposal

This bitting satirical article lays bare the absurd and unbiblical liberal hermeneutic that led the ELCA and other liberal denominations astray regarding homosexuality. Below are the opening few paragraphs of this brilliant piece.


Temple prostitution: a modest proposal
by Peter Speckhard, associate editor

November 2009 Forum Letter

Every now and then a new way of looking at things not only solves a problem but opens up unexpected opportunities for that one solution to lead to a whole host of related solutions. The recent decisions of the ELCA regarding homosexuality solved the problem faced by gay couples seeking church weddings. But even better, the new way of looking at the issue could solve several more perennial problems in the church with one grand innovation.

Facing our problems

What are the biggest problems, practical and theological, that Lutheran churches in America face today? I would submit the following:
—Inability to retain or reach out to young, single people, especially men. Think about it—on a typical Sunday in a typical Lutheran church, how many 28-year-old single men are sitting in the pews? How might we draw them in? What are their felt needs?
—Failure to use the gifts of the laity. Sure, it is easy to use the gifts of creative, educated, energetic, talented people. But many Christians are none of those things. Like the Little Drummer Boy, they have not much to offer. But if they sincerely, humbly, and faithfully offer whatever gifts they’ve been given, shouldn’t they expect their offering to meet the approval of their God?
—Declining revenue. Especially in a tough economy, we need new and creative ways to raise money if we’re adequately going to fund critical ministries such as feeding the hungry or blanketing Africa with condoms.
—Legalism. We can’t be a gospel-centered church with a do-this, don’t-do-that mentality. Legalism, a focus on rules and moralistic preaching have always threatened the freedom of the gospel.
—Biblicism. Too often we use selective proof-texts merely to maintain traditional opinions rather than really listening to the Spirit.
—Irrelevance. We need to address the real social needs in and of the world as it exists around us, not as it supposedly was in the 1950’s or how we might wish it were. We must face the joyful challenges of today.
—Worship without impact. Too often our worship is only a matter of words and music rather than an expression of radical freedom that encompasses the whole person.

Prostitution solution
Now imagine all those problems solved with one simple innovation. The answer: temple prostitution.

I know, I know. Outrageous and offensive. I can hear readers already dismissing the idea out of hand. And I admit that we may not be ready for it quite yet. But please hear me out on this.

First off, let’s address the common objections. Sure, there are a handful of Bible verses that might seem to condemn the practice. But all the condemnation of temple prostitution involves pagan practices or worship of false gods. The objectionable thing is the idolatry, not the physical act itself. Sanctified, faithful prostitution in service of the true God is a new thing. The Biblical writers never foresaw or contemplated sanctified, faithful, God-pleasing prostitution in the churches and thus never wrote about it. Attempts to find a Biblical injunction against the practice therefore fall short.

Interpretive nuance
Secondly, let’s not cherry-pick verses selectively. We don’t stone disobedient children to death. We don’t refrain from pork or sodomy merely because this or that verse says we should. We have to look at the whole Biblical witness in light of the freedom we have in Christ. For example, God ordered Hosea to marry a prostitute. Such Biblical precedent offers interpretive nuance to seemingly black-and-white prohibitions.

Thirdly, Jesus himself seemed to have a soft spot for prostitutes. Many reputable scholars today think he may have been married to one. And Jesus showed radical inclusivit