discernment – Page 18

Mailbag: Do people who commit suicide go to hell?

Posted on June 12, 2018 by elizabethprata

rope

Today’s question was Do people who commit suicide go to hell?

The query came on the heels of fashion designer and celebrity Kate Spade’s suicide on June 5, 2018 and celebrity chef, television personality, and author Anthony Bourdain’s apparent suicide on June 8. It was a devastating week for those two families, their work families, and the watching world. Once again people questioned why, if someone has it all, depression still creeps and suicide becomes a solution. The Christian knows it is the vanity of vanities to pursue all of life’s offerings without Christ, it only ever adds up to emptiness. One should read Ecclesiastes for wisdom on emptiness in life without Christ.

But the non-Christian world still reels in shock when they look to the pinnacle of success, see their idols up there, only to see them cast it all away and tumble.

David Leavitt, a freelance writer for CBS, Yahoo, and the Examiner, tweeted,

If you’re religious, then you believe there’s a special place in hell or purgatory for people like Anthony Bourdain who take their own lives.

His is a common view if one has been raised Catholic. They teach that to take one’s own life (and anyone helping to take a life) is in mortal sin. A mortal sin means you’ve now lost your salvation forever. They base their teaching not on the Bible, but on principles that the Christian can identify with nonetheless. For example, to take one’s life is to assert lordship over it, when it is God who gives and takes life. It is God who counts your days and sets the boundary line for when you step into eternity. Suicide also lets down the people you are connected to, either family by blood or church family by Jesus’ blood. We are each given the gift of the Holy Spirit to operate with in the gifts the Spirit in us has dispensed, and to take one’s life leaves a hole in the family fabric where God has installed you. Even the Christian can understand that suicide is a heavy sin.

But can we go so far as the Catholic to say that a Christian who takes his own life for sure will go to hell? No. Again, no. If a person is indeed saved by faith, they can never lose their salvation. The Spirit indwelling us is the secure guarantee of that. (Ephesians 1:14, 2 Corinthians 1:22).

We are careful with terms here, the original tweet said the religious believe there is a special place in hell for the successful suicide. Muslims actually believe jihadi suicide in Allah’s name gets you INTO heaven, so, not ‘religious’, but if one is Catholic, then they do believe there’s a special place in hell or purgatory for people like suicides.

Christians know than any person would be in hell only because they rejected the Gospel. The people in hell are the people who died in sin and not in Christ. The only unforgivable sin is rejecting the offer of salvation by Jesus. It stands to reason, though, that any other sin is possible for a Christian to still commit.

Can a truly Christian person even contemplate suicide, let alone successfully throw their life away? Perhaps, or perhaps not. It is not for me to say. I do believe that it’s possible there are many Christians struggling with depression. Charles Spurgeon famously struggled with depression, though he never attempted suicide.

Suicide is detailed in the Bible. Many people did kill themselves. Judas, King Saul, King Saul’s armor bearer, and many others. They were all men and they were all apostasizing or non-believers. No truly saved person is documented in the Bible as attempting or carrying out suicide, not even King David in the throes of his deepest depression. Jonah in fact, though seemingly depressed and unhappy, pleaded for his life in the belly of the whale.

Observations;
All of the biblical examples of successful suicide are men.
All of the biblical examples are dubious characters and none are personally praised for their actions.
All were spiritually bankrupt or went through a period of spiritual collapse before their suicide.
Many of the biblical examples were in pain and/or afraid before suicide.
Scripture generally presents these examples of suicide as a fitting end to a wicked and unrepentant life (cf. Judg. 9:56; 1 Ki. 16:19). (Source)

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote an enduring and classic Christian book called Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cure. He and preached on spiritual depression also, here. The entire series of 24 sermons on spiritual depression is here.

I think suicidal deaths could be the group referred to in 1 Corinthians 3:15,

If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

Here, Paul was teaching about the levels of rewards in heaven. Believers will appear before Christ to account for their lives, how they worked for His glory and in what level of obedience. Any person’s work that is not worthy will be burned up and works done in His name that glorify Him will be turned to gold and silver. (1 Corinthians 3:10-15).

In verse 15, there will be people who will have all their works burned up. Will some of those people lose their rewards because they ended their own life, effectively supplanting God for their own will be done, to the uttermost? Perhaps, because in throwing their own life away, they thus became God of their own days. It may be also that in so doing, they threw away all their works done in His name, their rewards, too. What else could engender a complete loss of rewards? Even the thief on the cross made three good stabs at bearing fruit; confessing his guilt, proclaiming Jesus as Christ, and rebuking the other thief for his blasphemies. It may well be that 1 Corinthians refers to some people who ended their life and thus, though salvation is eternal, they lost their reward in heaven.

David Murray with 7 Questions about Suicide and Christians, and many other good and helpful resources on that page.

The recent suicides are truly sad. It is written in the news reports that Bourdain was seeking help but had ignored his doctor’s advice. However, it is also reported that Kate Spade was doing everything right, heeding doctor advice, calling and checking in with her family. She still went through with it.

The ultimate tragedy and one that is unalterable, is that if a non-believer seeks suicide as a solution to their pain or despair, they wake up the next second in worse pain, unimaginable pain, and one that they can never escape. Not because they committed suicide, but because they had rejected Christ. Their hopelessness will go on and on.

In the Christian, depression is real, spiritual depression is real. One never knows what is going on in the mind of another. But we do have the mind of Christ. (1 Corinthians 2:16). The best we can do is encourage each other, come along side to help and love. We are not alone, we are tied with a threefold cord of scarlet to the King of eternal life. Cling to that.

discernment, Uncategorized

Christian feminism coming home to roost: Retrospective from 6 years ago

Posted on June 9, 2018 by elizabethprata

Today in evangelical circles we are dealing with an unthinkable situation: serious discussions of the possibility of a female President of the Southern Baptist Convention, and it’s Beth Moore of all people. I don’t think it will actually happen, but the trail has been blazed. The tweets have been sent. News articles have been written. The discussions have been significant. The possibility has been raised and not rejected. Next time the discussions will go further. That is the nature of sin.

We are reading news articles like this:
The Case for Electing Beth Moore President of the SBC

and seeing tweets like this:

russell moore

And we wonder, how did we get here? Slowly, incrementally, just as all sin happens. Sin has been tolerated, and once the camel has his nose under the tent, soon he enters fully.

Back in 2012 I wrote about how this creeping feminism would affect and harm the greater body. I said that the constant scenes of forward living women preaching and teaching men, being CEO of their own ~~corporations~~ ministries, globe-trotting, leaving children at home, and living lives that in the secular world are be called feminist, will come to roost.

Well, it has.

What you read below is an edited re-post of what I wrote in 2012. I pray that God has mercy on the young women who see the Christian feminists and become confused as to their roles. I pray that He is forbearing and patient a while longer, so the Bible teachers who live these Christian feminist lives would come to repentance. I pray He has mercy on the husbands who allow it. God did give the metaphorical Jezebel time to repent, and her daughters too, in Revelation 2 letter to the church at Thyatira. But He also threatened to strike her and her followers dead if they did not, and to repay those who tolerated her according to their deeds. Sin of whatever nature is serious, as when it is in the form of tolerating a false prophetess!

_____________________________

There are some celebrity woman Bible teachers today who say that they live a life of biblical womanhood but their lives show something different- and it’s equal to the secular feminists. Let’s take a look at what the new Christian feminism is.

“A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” was the feminist motto of the 1970s. The implication was that women didn’t ‘need’ a man at all.

Readers of the blog already know that I am not a fan of feminism. I wrote an essay called “The Eternal Discontent of Feminists“, in which I looked at the hypocritical standard secular feminists themselves apply to other women who are perceived as not doing feminism right. That, more than anything, lets us know that feminism is not about equal rights for women, it is about satan’s sowing of discontent among women and causing a division away from the Godly roles He has set up.

Feminism has encroached into Christianity. I think most people are still slumbering because I haven’t seen a hue and cry against it. Granted, it is subtle, especially in the women who claim to be evangelical in words but actually live a feminist life.

Source

There are now a number of popular Bible teachers/preachers who travel widely, filling arenas, marketing their books, selling their products, and leaving the husband at home to take care of the kids. These women have assumed the lead role in the marriage and are the main breadwinner, and/or the husband is the helpmeet, usually having set aside his career to work in his wife’s ~~corporation~~ ministry. While these women call what they are doing “ministry,” I call it “feminism”.

As with so much in evangelical Christianity, the waters are increasingly muddied on what should be clear. What is biblical womanhood? In today’s world is it the Bible preaching, sometimes ordained woman, traveling cross country, her husband at home helping with the kids, often having quit his job to help his famous wife perform her ministry?

Or it is a woman with a terribly flawed view of the Bible who sits in a tent when she has per period as a practice for what it was like to be a woman of the Bible for one year?

Or it is a new feminist who is open to women being ordained, to preaching, and/or to acceptance of gays into leadership positions while touting the rising up of women from subjugated roles?

There is something in between. It’s women who claim to be submitted Christian wives who just happen to teach the Bible but really are feminists living a life Gloria Steinem would envy. They are a new crop of what I’ll call Christian secret feminists. They live a feminist life inside of Christianity but call it ministry.

One woman who has much to answer for about this new role is Beth Moore. She was the one who broke new ground in how far a woman could go in attaining celebrity status, in workplace and homelife gender reversals, in being the main and sustained breadwinner of the family, and pr/teaching in a church and in the world. Mrs Moore, while speaking conservative values cloaked in all the right Christianese, lives a very forward life. You will see more details on this below.

A spiritual daughter of Mrs Moore in this generation of new Christian secret feminists is Christine Caine. Mrs Caine’s language is less cloaked in her declarations of what women can or should see as their roles in Christian home and work life. Mrs Caine is an ordained minister and part of Hillsong Church in Australia.

For example, in an interview reassuring Pastor’s wives that despite Caine’s visible usurpation of the traditional husband-wife roles, that their stay-at-home role is still viable: “Predominantly I might teach a little bit and I step out into what would be the more classic leadership gift, so a lot of people say ‘I’m not that, so therefore I must not have a role to play…'”

It is no wonder that woman are confused when they see leaders or peers taking on the ‘classic leadership gift’. And that is one way they cloak their rebellion in Christianese: it is not a role or a job, it is a ‘gift’.

Christine continues in the interview by acknowledging that there are “women who are gentle and loving and nurturing”, and there are other “women who come along side and do a bit more “non-gentle prodding help people go to the next level.” But that in “no way diminishes your role.”

Really? Sure it does. It sets up women to be discontent. By justifying herself in the leadership role as a gift from God (and who can argue with that?) and acknowledging that there are ‘levels’ and women need to get to, but at the same time saying it is important to stay at home and be nurturing…she has completely confused any listener as to the clear guidelines of the notion of what Biblical womanhood is. She says one thing (and not too clearly, either) and does another.

Jennie Allen is founder of of If:Gathering and one of the youngest of the feminist-living ladies on this list. IF is a tax exempt corporation, and shows founder Jennie as President and CEO, working 40/hours week, with husband Zac as board chair working 10 hours week. Allen is quoted in Christianity Today article as saying, “We’ve been slow to step into our giftedness or strengths. For a long time, that wasn’t an option,” said Allen.”

Discernment tip: one way to detect if a person is in the Word is to see if what they say and what they do match up over time. If what they say and what they do are different, run away.

Mrs Caine’s reassurances use a neat scriptural twist. The way satan works with any woman’s objection to women taking on home or ministry leadership roles is to acknowledge that the women feel weak or unsure in them, but to get around it by assuring them that all they need to do is have courage to step out and let Jesus work through their weakness, citing 2 Corinthians 12:9. Or simply as Jennie Allen encourages, ‘just do it because the time is now’.

In that same interview, Mrs Caine said, “The only way I was able to continue in my role is that my senior pastor’s wife stepped into her role and chose not to be threatened or intimidated because the giftings were different.”

Oh, I get it. Women are now complementarians to each other. It’s the height of irony that again, unwittingly, Mrs Caine acknowledges that these new ‘roles’ set up discontent and that she is glad that in her situation at least, the pastor’s wife wasn’t jealous of her fabulous gift of leadership. A good portion of the middle of the interview is Caine’s description of how women are to be complementarian of each other in church settings. One takes the wifely nurturing role so that the younger ones coming up can step out, so to speak.

Now, female support between and among ministries is a good thing, and it is biblically commanded. (Titus 2:4) but the description in Titus is for elder women to teach the younger is in their biblically defined helpmeet role, not to be a helpmeet to other women who usurp into classic male roles. It is another twist of using the Bible to justify what is not proper.

Priscilla Shirer is another of these new Christian secret feminists whose life is more forward than their spiritual mothers. I’ve posted this before but it bears repeating:

“This NY Times article notes that “Priscilla Shirer’s marriage appears to be just the sort of enlightened partnership that would make feminists cheer.”

The article describes what makes the liberal and secular newspaper and their readership, cheer. Mr Shirer, who quit his job to serve his wife’s organization ministry, spends much of the day negotiating Priscilla’s speaking invitations and her book contracts. In the afternoon it’s often Mr Shirer who collects the boys from school. Back home, Priscilla and Jerry divide chores and child care equally.

“Jerry quit his job to run his wife’s ministry. Priscilla now accepts about 20 out of some 300 speaking invitations each year, and she publishes a stream of Bible studies, workbooks and corresponding DVDs intended for women to read and watch with their girlfriends from church. Jerry does his share of housework and child care so that Priscilla can study and write. He travels with his wife everywhere. Whenever possible, they take their sons along on her speaking trips, but they often deposit the boys with Jerry’s mother,”‘ states the article.

If you delete the name Priscilla Shirer and substitute Gloria Steinem, and change the word ministry to job you have a description of a life that any feminist would be proud of.

By now Beth Moore is one of the elders in this realm. Moore has been “on the ministry circuit” for 15 years. Thus, her rebellious example has been long in view for many women who have watched her since they were an impressionable teen. So is Sheryl Brady and Joyce Meyer. Those women were the trailblazers for women in male leadership ministry. Newcomers arriving on the scene such as Priscilla Shirer or Christine Caine, and the younger Rachel Held Evans and Jennie Allen, have learned from the best of the Christian secret feminists. For example:

Beth Moore said to Christianity Today in 2010 that her man demanded a regular home life so she only travels every other Friday and comes right back home the next day.

“We walk the dogs together and eat out together all the time and lie on the floor with pillows and watch TV,” Moore says. “My man demanded attention and he got it, and my man demanded a normal home life and he got it.”

Aww, isn’t that nice. But it’s disingenuous in the extreme. The reality is that Mrs Moore is not only gone from home at least 20 times per year on her Living Proof tours, which is a lot if you have kids and a husband. Mrs Moore appears weekly on the Life Today television show, travels for weeks on book tours, where she expounds on the burning question all women in America are apparently asking, “How can women find validation without a man’s affirmation?” and which her book So Long, Insecurity apparently attempts to answer.

She also spends extended private time for weeks in a cabin by herself in Wyoming to write (as stated in the preface to “When Godly People Do Ungodly Things”). She is the President of her own company that in 2011 brought in 4.1 million dollars, with an excess after expenses of 1.3M, stated working hours of 40/week. If you think all she does is lay around on pillows gazing adoringly at her man then all I can say is look at what she does, not what she says. Beth Moore is a Christian secret feminist because for years she has lived that way, no matter what blather she tells Christianity Today.

It is no wonder women are confused when they see Beth Moore telling us that you can have it all, and still be a Christian woman, if you call it ministry. Enjoli.

Rachel Held Evans “is one of the better known Christian writers in mainline and progressive circles these days. Her new book examines what it would mean to live life as a woman according to the Biblical laws for a year. It’s in the vein of books like AJ Jacobs’ “The Year of Living Biblically” and other “human guinea pig” projects. The book is funny, thoughtful and empowering for women seeking to understand where they fit within a faith that has largely been controlled by men for centuries” writes Patheos.

Ms Evans says she is an accidental feminist, writing on her blog, “Most of all, if these critics knew me, they would know that it isn’t feminism that inspires me to advocate gender equality in the Church and in the world; it is the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

That seems to be another approach to justifying Christian feminism, “it was an accident”, or “God surprised me with this ministry” as Priscilla Shirer says, as if stating that since it was all out of their hands they are not nor will be morally and spiritually culpable on the Lord’s day of Judgment. I can assure Mrs Evans that Jesus did not deliver the Gospel by His blood so she could use it to promote a different role for women than He has already ordained.

We have looked at some of today’s most popular Christian secret and open feminists, the old guard and the new pups coming up. I offered you some examples from their own statements of how their lives in reality more match the secular world’s view of a strong feminist woman rather than the biblical helpmeet.

The old saying from the 70s, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” was the feminist motto. Now the only difference for today’s Christian secret feminist is the logo on her purse.

Christian feminists part 2
Christian feminists Part 3

discernment, Uncategorized

A Comment to the Snowflake Society

Posted on June 5, 2018June 9, 2018 by elizabethprata

snowflakes

I’m over the victim culture.

Really over it.

I don’t doubt that there are real cases of abuse and intimidation and oppression out there. There always have been. What’s different is that due to the current ‘intersectionality’ culture, everyone feels like they have a victim story to tell, and that it’s all valid and without scrutiny, thank you.

Do I know what I’m talking about? Yes. I’m personally familiar with various abuses.

But you know what? Because I am not a snowflake, I don’t focus on any of that. It happened, it’s real, it hurt me or my family members, but it’s in the past. You move on. I am a new creature, a new creation, with a bright future to look forward to. I have a Father who will not disown me, who understands me because He made me, a church family, riches in heaven, fruit of the Spirit growing every day. I have a sweet life in Christ, and being a victim is not a part of that.
Some of the things I read women claiming is misogyny or oppression or abuse, just isn’t. It isn’t ladies! People like Beth Moore don’t help when she writes about her experiences of being “ignored” or “made fun of at team meetings”, “dismissed and ridiculed and talked down to”. Ladies, being talked down to is not abuse, it’s not misogyny, it’s not oppression. When someone “disrespects” you it isn’t necessarily “because of gender”, and even if it is, so what? No need to make a federal case. Ladies, just get on with things. It’s inconceivable that someone with the (sad) amount of influence Beth Moore has in our evangelical world would make a federal case of ‘being disrespected’.

Christian women in other parts of the world are being persecuted to such an extent that to be ‘ignored’ would be a blessing. One woman pseudo-named Maryam for safety purposes talks of her father being put in jail for complaining to police about the Muslims that block his store, and the threats of acid attacks on her sisters, and the Muslim gang of men that tried to stone her as she walked down the street.

One thinks of the Christian women that have come before us in history, like Amelia E. Barr in the 1800s, who with her husband emigrated to the US from England, lost the business opportunity they emigrated to, moved to Texas where her husband and 4 of her sons died of yellow fever. She was left alone to raise her daughters, and she worked tirelessly to do so- successfully, Barr had no time to whine about not being heard at team meetings. As a matter of fact, she said this:

“In my life I have been sensible of the injustice constantly done to women. Since I have had to fight the world single-handed, there has not been one day I have not smarted under the wrongs I have had to bear, because I was not only a woman, but a woman doing a man’s work, without any man, husband, son, brother or friend, to stand at my side, and to see some semblance of justice done me.”

As I discussed these things with some younger women on Twitter, the longest conversation I’ve had on Twitter for the last ten years, none of them got it. As a matter of fact, one woman posted the Wonder Woman gif (not this one but similar.)

wonder woman

I replied that they’re funny, thinking they’re all warrior princesses, while no one is making the armor, cleaning up after Wonder gal, or cooking her meals. Everyone is a warrior princess. No one is a servant. In today’s cultural language of “I’m empowered, because I recovered from my abuse” stances, being a servant (slave, gasp!) without an abuse story is distasteful and frowned upon. We’re all chiefs, no one is a bottle washer.

Amelia Barr was a warrior princess. So was Susannah Spurgeon, Katy Von Bora, Gladys Aylward, Susanna Wesley. They got on with things. They got things done. They didn’t have time to write whiny blogs and post gifs of Wonder Woman. I don’t mean to be mean, or dismissive, but I do mean to exhort our ladies for greater strength and restraint in touting one’s self, even when speaking of the negative that needs (does it really?) to be told.

I read this of the Apostle Paul’s constant thankfulness. Here was a man who really was abused, oppressed, and hated. He endured so much for the sake of the Gospel. And yet he never called himself a warrior prince, he never set out to grab empowerment from telling his story, never boasted except in Christ. John MacArthur Romans Commentary:

During his second Roman imprisonment, he may have spent time in the wretched Mamertine prison. If so, we can be sure he was thankful even there, although the city sewer system ran through the prison. I was told on a visit there that when the cells were filled to capacity, the sewage gates were opened and all the inmates would drown in the filthy water, making way for a new batch of prisoners. But Paul’s thankfulness didn’t rise or fall on his earthly circumstances but on the richness of his fellowship with the Lord.

Even if Paul was never incarcerated at Mamertine prison, you know for sure other Christians were, and more thanlikely died that way.

Do you know what Christian women do? They persevere. They endure to the end. They forgive. They know that love covers a multitude of sins. If there’s abuse like physical beating, we go to a shelter. If there is rape or harassment or stalking, we go to the police. But not every slight is abuse. Not every want that’s denied is oppression. What we do is as Jimmy Buffett sang.

“Breathe in, breathe out, move on.”

Let’s stop gazing at the lint in our bellies and thinking it is the thorn in our side. The American-female empowerment through abuse-story telling culture has to stop. Women, Sisters, breathe in, breathe out, (tell the authorities if necessary) and move on.

discernment, Uncategorized

Word of the Week

Posted on June 3, 2018 by elizabethprata

word of the week word cloud
We’re losing the meaning of our uniquely Christian words.

I listened to a Phil Johnson interview where he talked about being caught off guard this spring with the flooding-in and vehemence of the social justice movement and the racial equality woke movement.

It is a true fact that many of our younger people think that ‘social justice’ is the same thing as ‘biblical justice’ when they certainly are not.

Biblical illiteracy is high, and with the lack of actually reading the Bible, younger people are losing the meaning of foundational words like justification, sanctification, glorification. It doesn’t help when venerable theologians choose to use phrases like “future justification; instead of ‘justification’ and confuse, well, just about everybody.

Some years ago I enjoyed the Apologetic Index’s listing of the Emerging Church: Glossary of Emergent Terms For Those New to the Conversation. It was funny, if you were up on the movement. It was also sad to see how devastatingly accurate those writers were about the co-opting of normal terms and made to mean something new. Like this entry to their ‘dictionary’-

Christ – An incredible, outstanding man in the Bible who left behind a valuable story that enables us to make the world a better place. Some people (including some in the emergent conversation) say he is a divine being, but this concept is subject to deconstruction.

Since we in our native countries speak a language to each other and are subsequently understood, we tend to think that language stays the same. It doesn’t. Language isn’t static. Meanings shift and move all the time. Hogwash was a word that came into use, rise int he 1700s, peaked in the 1800s and now you rarely see it written anymore and even more rarely, spoken. Lots of words that are currently in use weren’t a existence when I was a kid, because the thing the word refers to wasn’t invented. Compact Disc (and even that is dwindling as digital music takes over), surf-n-turf, head trip, grok, miniseries, and biohazard were words that were new when I was growing up.

New words today would include adulting, sup, suh, trill…sigh, are currently trendy words.

Or words still exist but change meaning. When I was growing up, incontinent means liable to pee one’s pants. 2 Timothy 3:3 uses the word incontinent-

Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,

No it does not mean that men everywhere will be dribbling. The word in the 1300s-1400s used to mean without self-control emotionally and physically, now it evokes only the lack of control over the bladder. We don’t use the word dayspring much anymore. Suffer in the old translation of “suffer the little children to come unto me” has a different meaning now. We don’t see words like froward, graven, cleave, or husbandman in common use these days.

So words fall in and out of use, new words emerge, and old words shift meaning.

However the thread of Christianity depends on a unity from one generation to the next of mutual understanding of our important words. Words handed down that form the bricks of our faith must be used, taught, and widely understood. We must understand the important terms.

Hence the Word of the Week.

JUSTIFICATION

Defined by Baker’s Exegetical Dictionary, public domain. More at link

Justification is the declaring of a person to be just or righteous. It is a legal term signifying acquittal.

Accordingly it is not surprising that salvation is often viewed in legal terms. The basic question in all religion is, “How can sinful people be just (i.e., be justified) before the holy God?” Justification is a legal term with a meaning like”acquittal”; in religion it points to the process whereby a person is declared to be right before God. That person should be an upright and good person, but justification does not point to qualities like these. That is rather the content of sanctification. Justification points to the acquittal of one who is tried before God. In both the Old Testament and the New the question receives a good deal of attention and in both it is clear that people cannot bring about their justification by their own efforts.The legal force of the terminology is clear when Job exclaims, “Now that I have prepared my case, I know I will be vindicated” ( Job 13:18 ).

Justification means that God brings down the gavel and declares a person righteous, despite their crimes, because they have passed through the Righteous Door of Jesus. This was enacted when Jesus died on the cross, becoming sin for us, and then His righteousness was imputed to us. Therefore God can and does declared His elect justified, i.e. no longer under penalty for their crimes.

Phil Johnson wonderfully explains it here in this sermon-

Who Can Condemn Us?
May 27, 2018 | Romans 8:34

——————————————–

More explanations here

Got Questions: What is Justification?

Ligonier: What Are Justification and Sanctification?

discernment, Uncategorized

Act your age

Posted on June 2, 2018June 5, 2018 by elizabethprata

old women youths
Our church has a healthy demographic of college kids. The other day I was watching an Instagram video story a young friend posted of a bunch of the youths in high spirits romping around the college campus at midnight, then heading to CVS for sodas, laughing and pushing and giggling.

I smiled, remembering my own hi-jinks and clean fun- road trips and loud laughter and silly fun. Ahhh, youth.

Those kind of memories are satisfying because that is how youths act, college or no. They’re boisterous, they’re lively, they’re carefree, they’re happy.

Kim Shay at The Upward Call blog published a good essay a few days ago about older women not being a trope. (In TV or Movies a trope is a common overused theme or device). In many TV shows, the older women is depicted as silly, or a gossip, or a busybody. Think Hyacinth Bucket (Bou-quet) or the sanctimonious Church Lady of Saturday Night Live by Dana Carvey. Or Mrs Bridgette McCarthy on Father Brown, a church secretary, gossip, and often at odds with and acerbic toward other characters.

It was a look at how older women should act according to Bible verses that command reverence and sober-mindedness.

I’m an older woman now I’m almost 58 years of age. I have completely white hair, overweight, a lumbering stiff walk, and oh my achin’ back. All the things that come with old age, including sagging skin, age spots, and general droopiness.

I remember being a teen at a friends’ house listening to the latest music laying upside down, college road trips, my car stuffed with gangly youths, a young adult with my posse playing bar trivia…it was yesterday. Ladies, age creeps up on silent cat feet (with apologies to Carl Sandburg). The boisterous hi-jinks no longer suit. If I were to gadabout at CVS at midnight with pals, they’d lock me up for being crazy. Why? That’s not how older women act.

They line the wall at dances sitting in folding chairs, purses firmly atop lap. They tut-tut at the beauty and litheness of the young ones sailing by. They cook and serve the meals with a knowing nod and quiet hospitable satisfaction. They accept collect calls from grandkids at midnight when the car breaks down on the way home from hi-jinks. They rearrange the potlucks on the sagging table, they form the cleanup swat team afterwards. I should say instead, we. I’m a we now.

I know some of these are a writing trope in themselves, but they are tropes because they are true.

Kim wrote: “My husband once asked me with regard to the women who have spoken at my church’s women’s conferences: “Why is the speaker always young and beautiful instead of old and plain?”

old women
I was noticing that, too. So many of the speakers at conferences now are younger women (in addition to all ages of men). Do younger women have something to say? Yes, but so do older women. And the elder females have been at it longer.

So since we have been at it longer what do we say about how to conduct ourselves? Well, whatever the Bible says about our conduct. Before I get into the nuts and bolts of biblical behavioral standards, I’ll mention that whenever I discuss behavioral standards, particularly applied to false teachers, these comments receive the most negative feedback of all the kinds of comments I make online. People hate to be reminded that the Bible endlessly outlines behavioral standards of any kind. There are general calls for certain kinds of good behavior, there are specific calls for individual demographics, and there is a reminder that we will be judged on how we behaved as well as what we believed.
old women 3.jpg
In one set of verses we read about how we are to act, and the reason for it-

as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5 beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6 by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; 7 by truthful speech, (2 Corinthians 6:4-7a)

Why? “so that no fault may be found with our ministry” (2 Corinthians 6:3b).

But what specifically of elder women? If we are married to a overseer, act in ways that aid him in keeping order in the household. (1 Timothy 3:4). If married to a deacon, the same, (1 Timothy 3:12. Additionally, deacon’s wives must be dignified, not slanderers, but sober-minded, faithful in all things. (1 Timothy 3:11). I am assuming that wives of pastors and deacons aren’t entirely youthful because the qualifications for pastors are not to be recent converts (1 Timothy 3:6) and to have built up a good reputation- which takes time. (1 Timothy 3:7).

If we are a widow, Paul in 1 Timothy 5 described real widows as: “Now she who is a widow indeed and who has been left alone, has fixed her hope on God and continues in entreaties and prayers night and day.” Which reminds me of Anna at the temple in Luke 2.

A widow could be put on the list for church aid if she had behaved in the following way-

A widow is to be put on the list only if she is not less than sixty years old, having been the wife of one man, 10having a reputation for good works; and if she has brought up children, if she has shown hospitality to strangers, if she has washed the saints’ feet, if she has assisted those in distress, and if she has devoted herself to every good work.

An elder married woman is not to be contentious, as Syntyche and Euodia were. (Philippians 4:2). Titus 2 is the famous verse that outlines how older women are to act-

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

Reverent in behavior. Self-controlled. Kind. These are not hard to understand and not unreasonable to ask. When I write about behavioral standards other women rush to scream and rant, but really, what is there to rant against? They want to lose control? Be irreverent? Unkind?

Anyway, the Bible outlines behavioral standards for all ages. As I pass through the aging eras and enter the golden gate of elder womenhood, I’ll try to be mindful of how the Bible expects me to behave, so as not to discredit the ministry. Plus, I’ll try not to be a trope!

Gladys_Kravitz

Discontented Women

Posted on May 31, 2018October 17, 2024 by elizabethprata

I was destined for great things. My mother promised. Women can do anything. My mother said. We should be feminists. My mother urged. All in our family are successful- entrepreneurs, professors, businessmen, doctors. So that was proof.

I was indeed on that trajectory when Christ interrupted my plans, humbled them, humbled me, and plucked me from the secular notion of success and began the long road of transforming my mind into acceptance of Christian success.

It took a long while of shaving, sharpening, and altering before I ceased to yearn for the worldly conception of fame, honor, and prosperity. Perhaps that is why I’m so sensitive to unsuitable female Christian yearning. Perhaps there are still vestiges of the old yearnings in me still. Likely both.

It’s been discouraging to see the speed with which women who claim to be Christian push and clamor for secular notions of worldly success. They set aside the Bible’s promises, commands, and duties for greener grass. They know not that the grass will wither and burn. The biblical framework for female duty and contentment is no longer enough, if it ever was, and swing out sister there they go into the world of fame, honor, and prosperity.

We read recently of so-called Bible teacher Beth Moore’s yearning for opportunities for leadership she lamented would never come her way, so she quit seminary.

1988:
“After a short time of making the trek across Houston while my kids were in school, of reading the environment and coming to the realization of what my opportunities would and would not be, I took a different route.” (source)

And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Luke 12:15).

We read of author Sarah Young, author of Jesus Calling, and her yearning ‘for something more’ … because the Bible wasn’t enough.

2004:
I knew that God communicated with me through the Bible, but I yearned for more. Increasingly, I wanted to hear what God had to say to me personally on a given day.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, (2 Timothy 3:16).

We read of Elizabeth Graham’s letter to the Southern Baptist Convention, and her yearning to be more than just a wife and mother, sent in 2009 and resurfaced this week.

2009
“I have aspirations of being a wife and mother, but I also desire to be more than that, and I see very few opportunities within the SBC to do so.”

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

Discontent! Feminism, First Wave, Second Wave, Third Wave, wave upon wave of secular assault has taken its toll. It has infected women. Gangrenously killing the healthy flesh even while it races about the body calling for more, ever more yearnings that suck the blood from healthy tissue and turns it dead as it stands.

Discontent is a killer.

Satan whispers to women that being a wife and mother isn’t enough. That unless you are a leader, out there, in front, you’re behind. That staying at home means you are missing all the opportunities, all of them! … for what, he doesn’t say. He just stirs up discontent with where women are, with what they have.

Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. (1 Timothy 6:6-8).

If there is great gain in contentment, there is great loss in discontentment. It’s safe to say that is a corollary.

From the 1990s television comedy show Seinfeld, we see a conversation between Kramer and George. It takes Kramer less than a minute to infect George, who goes from jaunty and content, to craving, to yearning, to having no reason for getting up in the morning. Discontent works just that fast in the Christian body.

How long has this discontent in women been present on earth? Since the beginning. Eve had a conversation with Kramer, the serpent, and suddenly she was discontent because she wasn’t like God, she didn’t know good and evil. She yearned.

In researching for this essay, I discovered an incredible, hilarious, and bulls-eye essay about the poison of “Discontented Women”. It was written in 1896 in the height of the Suffragette movement of First Wave Feminism. Its author Amelia Barr (1831-1919) was a mother, widow, and novelist. The 10-page essay is found easily online in lots of places, and I am also going to quote liberally from it below. It was published in the North American Review in 1896.

Discontent is a vice six thousand years old, and it will be eternal; because it is in the race. Every human being has a complaining side, but discontent is bound up in the heart of woman; it is her original sin. For if the first woman had been satisfied with her conditions, if she had not aspired to be “as gods,” and hankered after unlawful knowledge, Satan would hardly have thought it worth his while to discuss her rights and wrongs with her. That unhappy controversy has never ceased; and, with or without reason, woman has been perpetually subject to discontent with her conditions and, according to her nature, has been moved by its influence. ~Amelia Barr, 1896

Puritan Thomas Boston argued that discontent is actually a violation of the Tenth Commandment, expressed in his monumental sermon “The Hellish Sin of Discontent.” He wrote:

Question: “What is forbidden in the Tenth Commandment?” Answer: “The Tenth Commandment forbiddeth all discontentment with our own estate, envying, or grieving at the good of our neighbor, and all inordinate motions and affections to anything that is his.” … [Discontent] is the hue of hell all over.

ameliabarr — Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

“But, but”, women say, “changing diapers and wiping noses is boring! Tedious! Monotonous! Being out in the world is better!” Mrs Barr replies,

In the van of these malcontents are the women dissatisfied with their home duties. One of the saddest domestic features of the day is the disrepute into which housekeeping has fallen; for that is a woman’s first natural duty and answers to the needs of her best nature.

It must be noted that this revolt of certain women against housekeeping is not a revolt against their husbands; it is simply a revolt against their duties. They consider house- work hard and monotonous and inferior, and confess with a cynical frankness that they prefer to engross paper, or dabble in art, or embroider pillow-shams, or sell goods, or in some way make money to pay servants who will cook their husband’s dinner and nurse their babies for them. And they believe that in this way they show themselves to have superior minds, and ask credit for a deed which ought to cover them with shame. For actions speak louder than words, and what does such action say?

In the first place, it asserts that any stranger — even a young uneducated peasant girl hired for a few dollars a month — is able to perform the duties of the house-mistress and the mother. In the second place, it substitutes a poor ambition for love, and hand service for heart service. In the third place, it is a visible abasement of the loftiest duties of womanhood to the capacity of the lowest paid service. A wife and mother can not thus absolve her own soul; she simply disgraces and traduces her holiest work.

Mrs Barr pulls no punches! Of these women who eye the world as their salvation and a salve for their discontent, I am reminded of one of the women of the She Reads Truth Bible study online organization. Diana Stone loves to write, so much so that at first she employed a nanny in the home part-time to help with her daughter, and then decided to load her daughter to day care, so Diana could return home and write. And so, any stranger could and did substitute a poor ambition for love.

Mrs Barr continues:

Suppose even that housekeeping is hard and monotonous, it is not more so than men’s work in the city. The first lesson a business man has to learn is to do pleasantly what he does not like to do. All regular useful work must be monotonous, but love ought to make it easy; and at any rate, the tedium of housework is not any greater than the tedium of office work. … And as a wife holds the happiness of many in her hands, discontent with her destiny is peculiarly wicked.

Lest one think that Mrs Barr was writing from a catbird seat, she emigrated to New York from England with her husband, leaving her home country behind forever. Her husband’s business prospect failed, so they moved from New York to Texas, where her husband and four sons promptly died of yellow fever, she lost many other of her 12 children, she managed on her own, eventually moving back to NY and began teaching and writing novels and poetry. She never remarried.

Mrs Amelia E. Barr wrote, like Sarah Young, Beth Moore, Diana Stone wrote. Mrs Barr did it out of necessity, working away so as to put food on the table for her children. Not, as Diana Stone says, because she made writing a priority over her children and returned to a comfy home after unloading her kids at a daycare. Not like Beth Moore, who wanted ‘opportunities’ but quit seminary because those opportunities (read, teaching men) were denied her because she is a woman. Not like Sarah Young, who yearned for more besides the only truth given to us (the Bible). Writers all. Whiny discontents, all.

Mrs Barr wrote in her autobiography,

“In my life I have been sensible of the injustice constantly done to women. Since I have had to fight the world single-handed, there has not been one day I have not smarted under the wrongs I have had to bear, because I was not only a woman, but a woman doing a man’s work, without any man, husband, son, brother or friend, to stand at my side, and to see some semblance of justice done me.”

She did it, and she did it cheerfully and wholeheartedly. In 1850, without air conditioning, without kitchen appliances, without word processors, without a smart phone, and with 12…9…6…3 kids under her feet. She wrote:

Don’t fail through defects of temper and over-sensitiveness at moments of trial. One of the great helps to success is to be cheerful; to go to work with a full sense of life; to be determined to put hindrances out of the way; to prevail over them and to get the mastery. Above all things else, be cheerful; there is no beatitude for the despairing. ~Words of Counsel: 9 Tips for Success, Amelia E. Barr

Mrs Barr concludes her essay Discontented Women,

In conclusion, it must be conceded that some of the modern discontent of women must be laid to unconscious influence. In every age there is a kind of atmosphere which we call “the spirit of the times,” and which, while it lasts, deceives as to the importance and truth of its dominant opinions.

Many women have doubtless thus caught the fever of discontent by mere contact, but such have only to reflect a little, and discover that, on the whole, they have done quite as well in life as they have any right to expect. Then those who are married will find marriage and the care of it, and the love of it, quite able to satisfy all their desires; and such as really need to work will perceive that the great secret of Content abides in the unconscious acceptance of life and the fulfillment of its duties — a happiness serious and universal, but full of comfort and help. Thus, they will cease to vary from the kindly race of women, and through the doors of Love, Hope and Labor, join that happy multitude who have never discovered that Life is a thing to be discontented with.

Happy is the woman who unashamedly says “I am a wife.” “I am a mother.” If we are not ashamed of the Gospel, we are not ashamed of any element within it, including the role He has given us to reflect His glory and image. ‘Just a mom’? Might as well say ‘Just a Christian’ when in fact being a woman, a wife, or a mother is all, because we have all, in Christ.

Further Reading

I heartily recommend the full Amelia Barr essay Discontented Women. And these other items as well

Some Puritan works on dis/contentment

The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs,

The Art of Divine Contentment by Thomas Watson

The Crook in the Lot by Thomas Boston,

Thomas Boston sermon titled The Hellish Sin of Discontent.

The Art and Grace of Contentment compiles several Puritan books, sermons, and articles on contentment into an eBook on Amazon.

Modern essays on dis/contentment-

Destroy Her with Discontent: Satan’s Aim for Every Woman

The Three Sins Behind Your Discontent

Discontent with Discontentment

discernment, Uncategorized

Do believers need the Gospel?

Posted on May 29, 2018May 29, 2018 by elizabethprata

Paul opens his massive and majestic letter to the Romans with effusive rhapsodies of his love for the Roman believers and his gratitude for their faith- which he said is known the world over. He speaks of his intense desire to come to them so that he can be encouraged by their faith. Paul mentions them all the time to everyone. And so on.

First, we note Paul’s ministerial desire for his flocks and his obedient submission to his ordained role as Christian, pastor, sufferer. He is surely a super-Christian, if one such designation existed.

In the iconic movie The Princess Bride, Inigo is sailing a boat with all due speed in attempt to get away with a kidnapping. He looks back at one point and sees a distant boat on the horizon. The breeze is gentle and the night is long, so he has no worries. When he looks up again, he sees the boat is now close. And after a while, closer, then closer… This perplexing phenomenon causes him to utter the well-known line,

I wonder if he's using the same wind we are using.

It’s like that with Paul. We might say, “I wonder if he is using the same Spirit we are using?” and the answer would be “Yes”. I am awed by Paul’s fervor, dedication, diligence and deep obedience never having wavered. He died poured out as a drink offering, a rushing torrent of obedience and love spilling across the altar of his beloved Savior.

Then in verse 15 of chapter 1, Paul says this-

So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. (Romans 1:15).

Wait, what?

Hadn’t Paul confirmed the Roman believers’ solid faith, their well-known faith, their doctrinal and loving faith? Yes.

Some could interpret the verse as Paul being anxious to come minister to them, which is definitely true. But he didn’t say only that. He said he is eager to come preach the Gospel at Rome to Greeks and barbarians, to the wise and the foolish, “and also to you.” The Greek word for Gospel in this verse is euaggelizó which means bringing or preaching the full Gospel of Christ.

Some could interpret this as Paul’s eagerness to preach the Gospel indiscriminately to all, and that would also be true.

But do believers need the Gospel?

The answer would be “Yes.”

The Gospel is not a once-for-all mechanism that saves a person from the wrath of God and installs him into the kingdom as a child of God. Not only. It is the launching pad, and the eternal linchpin. It is the indispensable necessity for life eternal in the believer on earth and forever. The Good News is always Good News, and it continues being so, even for believers. Especially for believers.

The Good News is the fullness of Jesus, the encompassing message, the total plan of God, the victory of Jesus over sin, death, and hell. It is a message of resurrection, triumph, power, and abundant life. We all need this message, every day! Paul knew this. The Gospel is the mighty rushing wind of power and sustenance for every believer on earth who lives by the Spirit. We are reminded of the verse from 1 Thessalonians 1:5a

because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.

Paul said in the very next verse, Romans 1:16 these famous and everlastingly glorious words:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith,e as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

The faith we live by is that Gospel, Good News of the savior Jesus Christ. We needed it when we were foolish, wise, Greeks, and barbarians. Now that we are saved, it’s a message “And also to you.” The gospel necessity never ends.

gospel

discernment, Uncategorized

Thoughts on introspection and journaling

Posted on May 18, 2018May 18, 2018 by elizabethprata

DebbieLynne Kespert wrote a great piece about journaling the other day. I recommend it. I linked to it below, too.

Journaling is the act of consistently writing down one’s thoughts, feelings, and events in a notebook, as the definition goes. Some people do that to track growth, or to leave as a legacy to coming generations, or to vent. Journaling is distinct from many other kinds of diaries, like food diaries people keep for medical reasons, or weather diaries farmers keep, stress or anger management diaries, and the like. Journaling expressly focuses on one’s conscious inner thoughts, sensations, and feelings. It is a method of emotional self-examination.

I’ve never gotten into journaling. I like to experience the day and then move on. As someone on the autism spectrum, I’m not that in touch with my feelings anyway, seeing them as not precisely unnecessary, but usually as unhelpful. Yet many others see journaling as very helpful–

Ever wondered why history’s great minds including Isaac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, Andy Warhol, Leonardo Da Vinci, Marcus Aurelius, Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, Benjamin Franklin, Ernest Hemingway, George Bernard Shaw and Maya Angelou would spend so much of their precious time writing things that will never be seen by another soul? … Many famous creatives, writers, innovators and original thinkers of our generation keep journals— for many, it is a creative necessity, for others, a place for exploration, and for some an art form in and of itself. (Source)

For Christians, some self-examination is good. It is worthwhile to examine one’s self to see if one is in the faith. Scripture admonishes us to do just that. (2 Corinthians 13:5, 2 Peter 1:10-11).

In the Christian spheres, Charles Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers, kept a diary and also wrote letters constantly. Those became his autobiography after he died. The great theologian Jonathan Edwards kept a journal. In it, he penned his famous 70 resolutions. As the pastors say at the Netherlands Heritage Reformed Congregation, “these resolutions were birthed out of his felt weaknesses and known deficiencies, not his personal attainments. They represent, therefore, his sanctified, biblically-conditioned aspirations.”

My personal journal: In my journal below, I am trying to figure out from the Bible
about the different resurrections.

Christian journaling can be very good.

However caution abounds. Ligonier says that self-examination is important, but must be done rightly. Faulty self-evaluation, the passage tells us, is an obstacle to walking by the Spirit. If after examining ourselves we “conclude that we are superior to others” the self-examination is faulty, but alternately if we conclude that “if we consider our gifts inferior to those of others, thinking we are unable to assist burdened believers” it is also faulty.

So the Bible does call for some self-examination to be done, and there is a right way and a wrong way to do it.

But is a good thing, ever too much of a good thing? It can be. In her article, Journaling: The Pitfall We Should Recognize, DebbieLynne Kespert says that she journaled for 17 years, venting feelings, writing experiences, and meditating on her disappointments, her frustrations and her fears. Then she had an epiphany. She wrote:

So when someone uses a personal journal to ruminate on their feelings, should it surprise us that we wind up wallowing in self-absorbtion? Self-absorbtion, however, is the antithesis of Biblical Christianity. Christ demands that His followers actually die to ourselves for His sake.

It’s the tendency of sinful man to wallow in self-absorption to begin with. Journaling only increases that tendency. Excessive navel-gazing is not good as it takes our eyes off Jesus, upon whom we are supposed to fix our eyes. (2 Corinthians 4:18, Hebrews 12:2).

Jared Mellinger wrote about excessive self-examination in his piece “Self-Examination Speaks a Thousand Lies. He said,

Unhealthy introspection is a daily threat to our joy in Christ. Many of us tend to examine ourselves in a way that is excessive, inaccurate, and leads to discouragement. God calls us to examine ourselves (2 Corinthians 13:5; Lamentations 3:40), but healthy self-examination is a difficult and dangerous duty. The flesh seizes self-examination as an opportunity to turn our thoughts against us. Introspection is deceptive because it often looks like we’re doing the right thing: we’re not indifferent to our sin — we want to seek it out! But when that introspection makes us self-absorbed instead of Christ-absorbed, we undermine our faith.

Providentially, Randy Alcorn wrote an interesting piece a few days ago as well. It didn’t center on journaling per se, it was about self-control, but it speaks to the where we want our mind to go:

What is your mindset? Do you dwell on selfish, envious, jealous, bitter thoughts? Or do you dwell on what pleases God? Do you focus on God, His Word, and His mighty works on our behalf, or do you focus on woes and misfortunes and abuses suffered at the hands of others? According to Scripture, the choice is yours.

The choice is yours. Journaling can be good when the Christian employs self-control during the introspection process. Do you journal? Do you enjoy it? Has it become simply a way to focus attention on one’s self? Let me know int he comments what your experience has been.

Throwback Thursday: Are there codes in the Bible?

Posted on May 17, 2018May 18, 2018 by elizabethprata

This essay first appeared in November 2010 on The End Time

I hear people all the time say that there are bible codes. That there is some secret, esoteric knowledge hidden within the 66 books of the bible that only people perspicacious enough can unlock and benefit from. This is bunk. God is not the author of confusion and He laid everything out plainly within those pages, so that His knowledge, plan, and wisdom for us would be clear.

They cite, for example, Bullinger, who derived a whole system of meanings from numbers in scripture. Some numbers do have meaning, but not to the extent Bullinger worked up. And anyway, Bullinger believed that the soul died between life and resurrection. He was also an ultradispensationalist, believing that (among other things) the church did not begin at Pentecost but at Paul’s conversion. Um…no.

In another code, “The Bible Code”, it is purported in a paper by Yoav Rosenberg that there was strong statistical evidence that biographical information about famous rabbis was encoded in the text of the Bible, centuries before those rabbis lived. Wikipedia says of the method of extracting the meaning from the coded language is

“the Equidistant Letter Sequence (ELS). To obtain an ELS from a text, choose a starting point (in principle, any letter) and a skip number, also freely and possibly negative. Then, beginning at the starting point, select letters from the text at equal spacing as given by the skip number. For example, the bold letters in this sentence form an ELS. With a skip of -4, and ignoring the spaces and punctuation, the word safest is spelled out.”

No again.

Of course, the primary fault with Bullinger’s numerical code and Rosenberg’s word codes is that the Holy Spirit is taken out of the equation. Believing in codes means man in his own mental acuity can unlock the secrets of the bible, the Spirit is not needed…which is exactly the opposite of what God said would be so.

The question is, “Are there hidden codes in the bible?” The answer is NO. John Macarthur addressed this question quite well, here. His short answer is below.

One of the foundational qualities of the Bible is its clarity (sometimes called perspicuity). That means Scripture’s main teachings are plain enough to be understood without the need of special expertise or church-sanctioned interpretations.

The Bible frequently speaks about its own clarity. Psalm 119:130 says, “The unfolding of Thy words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.” The average person who humbly reads the Bible can say, “I have more insight than all my teachers, for Thy testimonies are my meditation” (Psalm 119:99). Psalm 19:7 teaches, “The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.”

The idea of hidden codes in the Bible contradicts all of that by limiting accessibility to the real message of the Bible to so-called experts who can decipher the cryptic messages God “hid” in the Scriptures. But such “experts” aren’t needed because the Bible contains no hidden codes.

One hidden-code theory works like a common word-search puzzle–hidden messages are supposedly embedded diagonally within the Hebrew text. But that’s as foolish as turning your daily newspaper into a word-search puzzle and expecting to find meaningful stories hidden in it. Newspapers aren’t written to convey messages in secret code, and neither was the Bible. Both should be read using ordinary rules of language.

Of course there are concepts in the Bible that are hard to understand–even the apostle Peter admitted that (2 Peter 3:15). But the way to discover the meaning of those hard passages is not by seeking out hidden messages, but by engaging in diligent study that accurately handles the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15).

Take heart! The Bible is clear and even the most untrained reader can understand it. God wants you to understand the Bible, and He has provided the Holy Spirit as a guide. After all, “man does not live by bread alone, but…by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 8:3).

The LORD is not the author of confusion (1 Cor 14:33) but reveals Himself to one and all. If you have the Holy Spirit in you, you have an equal chance to understand what He wrote in it as anyone else. As MacArthur said, prayer, study, and diligence will “unlock” His Word. Not codes. If you believe codes exist in the bible then you accept that the Spirit is out of the equation and people like Bullinger have extra advanced knowledge that you must rely on HIM to unlock for you. No, let it not be so!

discernment, Uncategorized

What is blasphemy, exactly?

Posted on May 12, 2018 by elizabethprata

One thing I get tired of is the culture blaspheming the Lord.

Psalms 74:10 O God, how long shall the adversary reproach? shall the enemy blaspheme thy name for ever?

Deuteronomy 16:21 – “Do not set up any wooden Asherah pole beside the altar you build to the LORD your God,”

Barnes’ notes on blasphemy:

The word “blaspheme” originally means to speak evil of anyone; to injure by words; to blame unjustly. When applied to God, it means to speak of him unjustly; to ascribe to him acts and attributes which he does not possess; or to speak impiously or profanely. It also means to say or do anything by which his name or honor is insulted, or which conveys an “impression” unfavourable to God.

Eaton’s Bible Dictionary: sacrilege-

The sin or crime of violating or profaning sacred things; the alienating to laymen, or to common purposes, what has been appropriated or consecrated to religious persons or uses.

In 2 Corinthians 6:16 Paul was urging the new believers not to join in with the wicked and the profane, not to attend the festivals where vestiges of the old false gods and the vibrancy of the new false gods still were worshiped openly. He said not to join in any way with their sacrilegious activities. Believers must separate from these activities, soundly and firmly, visibly and demonstrably. Paul wrote: “What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

John MacArthur:

The issue here is an issue of sacrilege. All false religion is demon worship. Listen, now remember an idol is nothing. You can carve an idol out of wood, you can make an idol out of stone, you can make an idol out of silver, you can make one out of gold. You can do whatever you want to paint one on a wall. You can form one out of marble, whatever it is. When you’re done with it, it’s nothing. But the religion and the ideology that it stands for is the teaching of demons. It is lies from the pits. It is the doctrines of demons coming from seducing spirits. So that what happens is demons impersonate the idol and you worship a demon in the idol, though you don’t know it. It is a demon who creates the religion, who conducts the relationship with the worshiper. It is demon communion.

MacArthur was speaking of Manasseh in 2 Kings 21:1-4-

Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-five years. His mother’s name was Hephzibah. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he also erected altars to Baal and made an Asherah pole, as Ahab king of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshiped them. He built altars in the temple of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem I will put my Name.”

He put the idols back into the Temple where the name of the ONE HOLY God’s name resided! One of the false gods they worshiped idolatrously was Asherah. Those old gods are NOT GONE. Satan still perpetuates them, or recycles them. In Josiah’s day it was Asherah. In Paul’s day it was Diana. In our day, Molech has become “Abortion.” The queen of heaven mentioned in Jeremiah 7:18 and Jeremiah 44:17-25 is now Mary, Co-redemptrix of the Catholics.

GotQuestions explains that blasphemy is:

to speak with contempt about God or to be defiantly irreverent. Blasphemy is verbal or written reproach of God’s name, character, work, or attributes.
Blasphemy was a serious crime in the law God gave to Moses. The Israelites were to worship and obey God. In Leviticus 24:10–16, a man blasphemed the name of God. To the Hebrews, a name wasn’t just a convenient label. It was a symbolic representation of a person’s character. The man in Leviticus who blasphemed God’s name was stoned to death.

The truth is, every time we misrepresent God in word or in behavior, we blaspheme. It’s not just actively worshiping a stone false god that enacts a blasphemy but our own misrepresentation of Him. He is holy and perfect. We should be careful, oh so careful, to ensure that our lives and our words represent Him rightly as the God He is.

Who is like You among the gods, O LORD? Who is like You, majestic in holiness, Awesome in praises, working wonders? (Exodus 15:11).

majestic