We must lay before him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.
- C. S. Lewis
“The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity” -Andre Gide
"Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and can't really get rid of it."
–The Case for Christianity
"You and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness. CS Lewis The Weight of Glory
A couple of days ago The Wartburg Watch received a very harsh comment which condemned the evangelical church. My first reaction was one of defensiveness. How dare he?! Look at how much the church has done for the world. I was about to make a clever comment incorporating various proofs such as the work of William Wilberforce.
At long last T4G 2010 is almost here! Looks like around 7,000 attendees will be heading to Louisville next week for what will certainly be dubbed as the “best ever Christian pastors’ conference…”
The George Burroughs incident proves that the Salem Witch Trials were not just about superstition.
It should come as no surprise that the “New Calvinists”, who are attempting to build their 21st century “City Upon a Hill”, have been greatly inspired by another group of Christians who attempted such a feat in a new land around 400 years ago – the Puritans. Of course, the Puritans were inspired by their hero John Calvin, whose goal was to build a city upon a hill (inspired by St. Augustine’s City of God) in Geneva, Switzerland.
“This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.” CS Lewis
A commenter who goes by the moniker “info” graced us with her presence at TWW this morning. Here’s what she wrote on Dee’s Hank Hanegraaff post:
Are Christian conferences just an American phenomenon? Across the pond in jolly old England, Christian leaders can attend a conference that involves “teaching” and “worship”. This annual event held in Brighton is designed primarily for Christian leaders, but welcomes students and twenty-somethings. Incredibly, 5,000 delegates from 50 nations attend this annual conference.
Since Dee and I began our investigation of the “New Calvinists”, we have become increasingly concerned that this hot new theological movement may have a very serious downside, namely, hero worship. We are becoming extremely familiar with the leaders of this movement because their names and faces seem to be everywhere on the internet, among other places. You likely know them, too. Let’s begin with the Fab Four of “Together for the Gospel” aka T4G – Al Mohler, Ligon Duncan, Mark Dever, and C.J. Mahaney, not to be confused with those whom we call the Fab Five (the Fort Lauderdale Five of the 1970s Shepherding Movement who were Bob Mumford, Derek Prince, Charles Simpson, Don Basham, and Ern Baxter).
“That is why the church, the whole body of Christians showing Him to one another, is so important. It is so easy to think that the church has a lot of different objects – education, buildings, missions, holding services…the Church exists for no other purpose but to draw men to Christ. to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose”. C.S. Lewis
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Joshua Harris, C.J. Mahaney’s successor at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland, has risen almost as fast in reformed circles as his mentor. Josh has learned how to play the SGM game well as he follows in C.J.’s footsteps. The first endorsement in Mahaney’s masterpiece Living the Cross Centered Life is written by Josh.
My counterpart recently wrote a fascinating article on the contributions that Sovereign Grace Ministries, along with its fearless apostle, Mahaney, have made to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. This seminary is the flagship seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention. It is also home to one of C.J.’s best buddies, the very reformed president, Al Mohler. A number of past and present SGMers have commented that they couldn’t understand these donations. Their primary reasons for concern are:
As I mentioned in the post “How I Discovered Mahaney Mania”, I purchased C.J. Mahaney’s so-called masterpiece when it first came out in 2006. Had I read it back then, I probably would have concluded: well, at least the author focuses on the cross, which has been shunned by so many mainline churches. Then I would have put it away — out of sight, out of mind. However, that’s not what happened… Having acquired considerable knowledge about C.J. Mahaney, Sovereign Grace Ministries, and their connections to the “Reformed Big Dogs” over the past year and a half, I have a much different perspective on Mahaney’s book.
As we have been following Tullian Tchividjian, we took note of the following blog posts which can be found at this link: http://www.crpc.org/blog/?m=200904
Here are excerpts from these posts:
Read the rest of this entry »
We build fences to keep ourselves from committing certain sins. Soon these fences – instead of the sins they were designed to guard against- become the issue. We elevate our rules to the level of God’s commandments. “
Jerry Bridges
http://www.christianrecovery.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-16.html
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”
We believe the events that occurred at Prays Mills Baptist Church are a microcosm of what is increasingly happening in the evangelical church in America. We know that there are great churches out there. I (Dee) has been blessed to be a member of several great churches. But, both of us have been recently hurt by the action of some arrogant pastors.
"Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men's belief that they "own" their bodies – those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another!"
C S Lewis
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/c__s__lewis/quotes