Take this test

http://www.selectsmart.com/plus/select.php?url=denomtradition

These were my results.

(100%) 1: Presbyterian/Reformed

(82%) 2: Anglican/Episcopal/Church of England

(76%) 3: Baptist (Reformed/Particular/Calvinistic)

(74%) 4: Congregational/United Church of Christ

(71%) 5: Eastern Orthodox

(69%) 6: Lutheran

(61%) 7: Roman Catholic

(58%) 8: Church of Christ/Campbellite

(41%) 9: Methodist/Wesleyan/Nazarene

(38%) 10: Pentecostal/Charismatic/Assemblies of God

(33%) 11: Anabaptist (Mennonite/Quaker etc.)

(30%) 12: Seventh-Day Adventist

(28%) 13: Baptist (non-Calvinistic)/Plymouth Brethren/Fundamentalist

The Tornado, the Lutherans, and homosexuality.

From John Piper’s Desiring God website.

I saw the fast-moving, misshapen, unusually-wide funnel over downtown Minneapolis from Seven Corners. I said to Kevin Dau, “That looks serious.”

It was. Serious in more ways than one. A friend who drove down to see the damage wrote,

On a day when no severe weather was predicted or expected…a tornado forms, baffling the weather experts—most saying they’ve never seen anything like it. It happens right in the city. The city: Minneapolis.

The tornado happens on a Wednesday…during the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America’s national convention in the Minneapolis Convention Center. The convention is using Central Lutheran across the street as its church. The church has set up tents around it’s building for this purpose.

According to the ELCA’s printed convention schedule, at 2 PM on Wednesday, August 19, the 5th session of the convention was to begin. The main item of the session: “Consideration: Proposed Social Statement on Human Sexuality.” The issue is whether practicing homosexuality is a behavior that should disqualify a person from the pastoral ministry.

The eyewitness of the damage continues:

This curious tornado touches down just south of downtown and follows 35W straight towards the city center. It crosses I94. It is now downtown.

The time: 2PM.

The first buildings on the downtown side of I94 are the Minneapolis Convention Center and Central Lutheran. The tornado severely damages the convention center roof, shreds the tents, breaks off the steeple of Central Lutheran, splits what’s left of the steeple in two…and then lifts.

Let me venture an interpretation of this Providence with some biblical warrant.

1. The unrepentant practice of homosexual behavior (like other sins) will exclude a person from the kingdom of God.

The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

2. The church has always embraced those who forsake sexual sin but who still struggle with homosexual desires, rejoicing with them that all our fallen, sinful, disordered lives (all of us, no exceptions) are forgiven if we turn to Christ in faith.

Such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:11)

3. Therefore, official church pronouncements that condone the very sins that keep people out of the kingdom of God, are evil. They dishonor God, contradict Scripture, and implicitly promote damnation where salvation is freely offered.

4. Jesus Christ controls the wind, including all tornados.

Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? (Mark 4:41)

5. When asked about a seemingly random calamity near Jerusalem where 18 people were killed, Jesus answered in general terms—an answer that would cover calamities in Minneapolis, Taiwan, or Baghdad. God’s message is repent, because none of us will otherwise escape God’s judgment.

Jesus: “Those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” (Luke 13:4-5)

6. Conclusion: The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction. Reaffirm the great Lutheran heritage of allegiance to the truth and authority of Scripture. Turn back from distorting the grace of God into sensuality. Rejoice in the pardon of the cross of Christ and its power to transform left and right wing sinners.

Tom is Wright and Wrong

Tom Wright is correct in identifying the context for Paul’s teaching on justification as the status of the Jew and the Gentile regarding God and each other.  He is right to see that Paul is dealing with the issues facing the original Christians, Jews to a man, who were being required to treat the believing Gentiles as full equals in the church, and before God.  The teaching on justification by faith alone apart from works has as its purpose the demonstration that being Jewish and a descendant of Abraham means nothing in the matter of forgiveness.  Both Jew and Gentile are under sin, both are condemned by it, and it follows that neither Jew nor Gentile can be justified before God by works.

Bishop Tom is wrong in his actual doctrine of justification.  He drags works into it, and, in so doing, he completely overthrows the gospel of free grace.  He roots the declaration of forgiveness in part upon the whole life lived.  Justification by faith alone means justification apart from works, so Bishop Tom is teaching justification by faith and works.  That is heresy.

An Examination of Trent

Reading Chemnitz’s Examination of Trent.  He devastates it.

Did Rome give Protestants the Bible?

They say that they did, but it is an outrageous fib.  The canon was not formulated or compiled by the Pope, but by the universal agreement of the undivided church.  At that time Rome was by no means the leader of all Christians, just of the Italians.  In Britain the church was decidedly not Roman, but Celtic, with its own laws and traditions.  The churches of Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople, if anything, had the pre-eminence at that time!

The universal church of that time did not recognize the Pope as the Vicar of Christ, and refused to allow him this title and authority.

During the Middle Ages Rome refused to allow translations of the Bible into the language of the people, insisting upon the Latin translation known as the Vulgate.  In England ordinary people were executed for saying the Lord’s Prayer and Apostle’s Creed in English.  When Tyndale translated the Bible into English he was murdered by Rome and its allies, and every copy that the Bishop of London could get his hands on, he burned in huge piles.  Papists were Bible-burners, not the benevolent Bible-givers that they now present themselves as.

The truth is that we gave the Bible to the church, who had hidden it away as a book too dangerous to be read.  Protestants read it out loud to the people in their own languages in church, over the murderous protests of Rome.  Now the Romans are doing it too, and they are following a Protestant tradition in doing so.

We also gave communion to the people, and that weekly.  In medieval Romanism the people got it once a year, at Easter, and then only half.  To this day they may be denied the wine. Now RCs can have it daily, but only because Protestants blazed the trail.

We also gave congregational worship to the people.  In medieval churches the people were silent spectators, watching the priest and his assistants do everything.  Protestants included the people’s responses into their liturgies, and gave them Psalms and Canticles to sing.  Later what we know as  hymns were written, and in time they became a universal practice.

So when you see Roman Catholics responding during the liturgy, taking Communion regularly, and singing in church, know that they are  being Protestant!

At least they had the good sense eventually to fall into line, even if it was through gritted teeth, and at the cost of much blood and suffering.

The truth is that Rome refused to read the Bible, it prevented people from doing so, and it murdered those who did.  

Our Protestants fathers got hold of copies of the Greek NT from Greek scholars fleeing the fall of Constantinople, translated them into the languages of the people, and put it into their hands, ears, hearts, and minds.  Rome did everything in its power to withhold the Bible, but the Reformers would not allow it.

Anglicans who hate Anglican Doctrine

“And while the Orthodox Church is filled with errant sinners at all levels, and took its time developing sound doctrine over the centuries, it has never canonized error. The CoE, on the other hand, seems only capable of defending and requiring their priests and seminarians to believe the most un-Apostolic and abominable things, such as the Calvinism of the 39 Articles”.  (Quoted from Father Paul Taylor’s website).

Isn’t it astonishing that so many who cling to the name  of Anglican hate and detest the doctrine of the very religion that they claim to love?  It is a source of never diminishing astonishment to me.

The Two Opponents of the Reformation

… were Rome, of course, and the Anabaptists.  Evangelicalism is the modern heir of Anabaptism, not excluding those paedobaptists who make the sacraments into empty signs, and go on about free will in the matters of justification and election.

Evangelicalism is Part of the Problem

The heading says it.  A movement that worships church growth, meaning bottoms on seats, and serves it by reducing the Bible to an absolute minimum, that refuses to teach both the easy and the difficult doctrines – because they do not help to increase numbers – is part of the problem.

A church that reduces salvation to “having a personal relationship with Jesus”, a term that is so amorphous that it is impossible to say what it means, is part of the problem.

The answer is a return to the Catholic and Reformed Faith.  Evangelicalism is a catastrophic departure from the faith handed down to us.

Liberalism a Folk Religion

Would it be fair to say that the general view of God and salvation is that as long as a man is not evil, or impossible to like, then he will “go to heaven”?  The issues of what a man believes about God and Christ, of regular attendance at the means of grace – the church service of the faithful – are really unimportant.  The only thing that would disqualify a man from “going to heaven” is actual evil, as evil is understood by the ordinary man, such as murder.

If this is the case, and I suspect that it is, then what we call Liberalism is just folk religion with a label.

A Liberal Funeral

I was asked to play the pipes at the funeral of an ex-serviceman last Friday.  I piped the coffin into the church, played a traditional lament in the middle of the service, and piped the deceased out to the traditional return to Barracks tune, the Black Bear Hornpipe.

The message was the sort heard at almost every funeral that I have piped at, and there have been a few.  God loves everyone.  He couldn’t possibly love us more, and there is nothing we can do to make him love us more.  The deceased is in heaven, which is where we are going too.

The deceased was a very good man, loving, and loved by his family, and will be sorely missed.

What received no mention at all were the bodily resurrection of the dead, the judgement of our works, the separation of mankind into sheep and goats, and the rewards and punishments handed down from Christ’s throne of judgement.  The renewed earth was replaced by a present, ghostly, heavenly post-mortem disembodied bliss.

It was a Christian service without the Christian religion.