Reformed. Christianity. Evangelism. Modern Culture.
If you are church shopping [this article was first published in OCTOBER 2011] or looking for a local Christian fellowship a Reformed Baptist Church may not be your cup of tea 🙂
Well you see, Dr. James White has (honestly) noted that in a Reformed Baptist Church…
You don’t get to leave after every sermon feeling good about yourself. You may even desire repentance.
- You don’t get to hear the sermons in the same way you may be used to. It’s frequently verse by verse, maybe not even relevant to your current situation.
- You don’t get to be entertained. We don’t want to entertain you. Read more of this post
So imagine the theological police round you up in a dark street corner and as they breathe down your neck and one asks you,“so, little helpless brat are you a Calvinist?” With the microphone firmly planted to your upper lip say, “You decide. Here is what I believe . . .”
I believe I am so spiritually corrupt and prideful and rebellious that I would never have come to faith in Jesus without God’s merciful, sovereign victory over the last vestiges of my rebellion. (1 Corinthians 2:14; Ephesians 2:1–4; Romans 8:7).
I believe that God chose me to be his child before the foundation of the world, on the basis of nothing in me, foreknown or otherwise. (Ephesians 1:4–6; Acts 13:48; Romans 8:29–30; 11:5–7)
I believe Christ died as a substitute for sinners to provide a bona fide offer of salvation to all people, and that he had an invincible design in his death to obtain his chosen bride, namely, the assembly of all believers, whose names were eternally written in the book of life of the Lamb that was slain. (John 3:16; John 10:15; Ephesians 5:25; Revelation 13:8)
When I was dead in my trespasses, and blind to the beauty of Christ, God made me alive, opened the eyes of my heart, granted me to believe, and united me to Jesus, with all the benefits of forgiveness and justification and eternal life. …Read More!
There are many who say why emphasize sound doctrine? Why dont we just lay our differences aside, get along together and just love one another? Well, sound doctrine will divide and rightly so. It will seperate unsound teaching from sound biblical teaching. If you love somebody who is imbibing unsound doctrine you will alert him, rebuke him and earnestly point him to what is right. Depraved indifference urges us to keep quiet as our fellow man un wittingly drifts to their ship wreck and destruction. What would you do if you saw fellow Christians babbling in strange fires and delving in questionable practices? Would you love them enough to point them back to the bible or “love them” by leaving them to drift on? Charles Spurgeon said:
A religion which is all excitement, and has little instruction in it, may serve for transient use; but for permanent life-purposes there must be a knowledge of those great doctrines which are fundamental to the gospel system. I tremble when I hear of a man’s giving up, one by one, the vital principles of the gospel and boasting of his liberality. …Read More!
I have always wanted to go through the Heidelberg Catechism from beginning to end. We once started as a family and it was great learning the precepts of Christian faith. So, here I am once again reminding myself from the first principles. To begin with what is a catechism? It is in short a summary or exposition of doctrine. Heidelberg catechism was composed in Heidelberg at the request of Elector Frederick III, who ruled the Palatinate, an influential German province, from 1559 to 1576. The Catechism is an introduction to the Christian worldview and the basic teachings of the Bible; it is divided into fifty-two sections, called “Lord’s Days,” which were designed to be taught on each of the 52 Sundays of the year. Elders and deacons were required to subscribe and adhere to it, and ministers were required to preach on a section of the Catechism each Sunday so as to increase the often poor theological knowledge of the church members. This catechism or exposition of doctrine follows the outline of the book of Romans and thus clearly explains the gospel by hitting on the main points of man’s sin, Christ’s redemption and man’s gratitude. Read more of this post
There are many who say why emphasize sound doctrine? Why dont we just lay our differences aside, get along together and just love one another? Well, sound doctrine will divide and rightly so. It will seperate unsound teaching from sound biblical teaching. If you love somebody who is imbibing unsound doctrine you will alert him, rebuke him and earnestly point him to what is right. Depraved indifference urges us to keep quiet as our fellow man un wittingly drifts to their ship wreck and destruction. What would you do if you saw fellow Christians babbling in strange fires and delving in questionable practices? Read More
God has recently given us the opportunity to discuss some theological issues with other Christians who believe differently than we do on a number of points, most notably the doctrines of grace. [This post was adapted from Monergism] In such a circumstance, given the overwhelming supply of scriptural evidence that comes to bear on the topic, it seemed to me that the best approach would be a simple categorized scripture list: the fact that the entire paper would be scriptures, with the exception of a few brief explanatory notes, would underscore the truth that this is God’s own word and teaching; and the fact that it would be categorized would facilitate the ready comparison of scripture with scripture so as to lead one to a full-orbed understanding of the biblical teaching. Although I found a few good scripture lists of that nature available online, none of them was laid out in quite the progression that I was looking for, and so I developed my own. I’m posting it here with just the scripture references. Below, for your convenience I have provided a condensed version and a full version of the study. The study is also available in print from Monergism Books. Read More
Red to Blue. Now I wonder what will happen next?
It is unthinkable that a God of infinite wisdom and power would create a world without a definite plan for that world. And because God is thus infinite His plan must extend to every detail of the world’s existence. If we could see the world in all its relations, past, present, and future, we would see that it is following a predetermined course with exact precision. Among created things we may search where we will, as far as the microscope and the telescope will enable the eye to see, we find organization everywhere. Large forms resolve themselves into parts, and these parts in their turn are but organized of other parts down as far as we can see into infinity. There’s More
A Twisted Crown of Thorns ® 