The words ‘piety’, ‘holiness’, ‘righteousness’ amongst others are words few hear today from church pulpits without thinking of the evils of legalism. Even the word ‘religion’ has been lambasted to the point of being equal to that of the ideology of the Pharisees.
What has occurred though to a great degree is that the idea of piety itself, properly defined, in Biblical terms has been left by the way side, in the wake of moving from one extreme to the other. Personal holiness is something that is lightly if ever talked about. We talk about our mistakes or external sins here and there, for sure, but how often are we admonished to pursue virtuous piety, in the terms the Bible describes? It is a shame personal holiness is not advocated the way the Scripture advocate it. The problem is that you risk offending people, which is exactly what Scripture does to sinners (like myself) who are in violation of God’s law. It brings rebuke and correction, something our “enlightened” American society has a hard time with.
A champion of the Biblical concept of piety from historic evangelicalism is John Calvin. Calvin wrote extensively about holiness and personal piety in light of the work of Christ, particularly in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. This is something teachers and preachers need to recover. Watch below as Ligon Duncan discusses John Calvin’s life and his emphasis on personal piety in the life of the Christian and why it was so important to him.
“John Calvin is sometimes perceived as a dry and dusty academic whose writings deal only with abstract theological topics. To read Calvin, however, is to read one who was devoted to seeing God’s Word impact the lives of Christian people everywhere. In this message, Ligon Duncan explores some of Calvin’s most practical wisdom for those who seek to follow Christ.” – Calvin and the Christian Life, Ligon Duncan
For those who are not privy to nerdy, futuristic dystopian science fiction movies, Soylent Green is a classic. By today’s standards, it’s an awful movie (maybe even by that day’s standards as well). It’s pretty bad. Regardless, the plot is of particular interest here.
Released in 1973, the movie portrays a time in the future, specifically the year 2022, when the population of New York City (one slice of the world’s total population at the time) has exploded to a massive 40,000,000 people. Resources are scarce (especially food), poverty is rampant, streets are crowded, and all power has been consolidated into the hands of the government to control the masses of people who are out of control. Because of the lack of food, a company used by the government, Soylent Corporation, produces high-energy ration wafers that the people can consume for nutrition. There is Soylent Red, Soylent Yellow and a new product, Soylent Green. Long story short (here’s a spoiler), Soylent Green turns out to be processed dead people. It’s a sort of secret, government-sponsored recycling program. Yeah gross.
Finally, the long wait is over for the Westerfunk network … U-Verse will allegedly be installed on Saturday between 1 and 3 pm. We’ll see how that turns out. Just want to make everyone aware now that all sites will be unavailable until I can bring them back up on the new service.
Also, one of these days I’ll start blogging again. Had a long run of difficulties and well, laziness to some degree, spiritual and otherwise. So, I’ll be returning soon.
We have been blessed with yet a second healthy baby boy, Asher Reid Westerfield! He was born on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 10:13 am. He is 6 lbs, 8 oz. and 19″ long. We have received an unbelievable grace. My heart is overjoyed both with a wonderful wife who bore the burden of carrying the little guy, and the now two sons I’ve been blessed with. So exciting! I pray 1) for His grace to fall on them, that 2) they would be born again and brought to new life by the Spirit’s power, in order that 3) they may live lives for His glory and not their own, which will fade like a mist. He is their (and our) only hope of life now and for eternity. Only by His work and not our doing. Praise God for baby Asher!
I honestly haven’t been impacted by a sermon like this in a while. Justin Taylor has already blogged about this, but I think it’s worth repeating. God’s Outrageous Love is a sermon R.W. Glenn gave at John Piper’s church, Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, MN a couple of weeks ago. It’s a message on Jonah 4 and how outrageous it is that God loves any of us. Here is a quote: “Until you’re outraged by God’s love, you’ll never think it’s outrageous; until you’re offended by God’s love, you’ll never be overwhelmed by it.” This was really convicting and yet at the same time pointing to the greatness of the mercy of Christ. Highly recommended!
Yet another year has gone by. So much has happened on so many fronts and the world is changing at lightning speed. God is the sovereign King who reigns over all of it. Nothing catches Him by surprise … something to remember for the next year. Have a good one! Take care …
False flag attacks are not something that get discussed much when talking about the history of wars and conflicts. However, they have been used by governments for years to justify attacks on other countries, as well as create public support for whatever the authorities deem necessary to deal with the alleged/created threat.
Just what is a false flag attack? Here is an explanation on Wikipedia: “covert operations which are designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one’s own.”
Here are just a few examples, including a couple involving the US. Many historians have even come to the conclusion that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was a false flag attack orchestrated by the US, using old, empty destroyers as the targets, as a justification for the war in Vietnam. To my knowledge, this conclusion is unconfirmed, but being that the intelligence itself was skewed with documented proof of this fact, it seems at least possible these accusations could prove to be true.
Not pretty scenarios. Government spending has thrown free market mechanism’s into distortion and disarray. So it should shape up to be an interesting year.
There are various takes on how everything will pan out. The MSM (main-stream media) paints everything as a rosy picture: we’re coming out of the recession and things will only get better, we hear.
However, all of the realistic economists, the one’s who rightly predicted crashes in recent years, are predicting some hard events that will take place this year forward.
Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful “deal” so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen.
China’s strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks, and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the west had failed the world’s poor once again. And sure enough, the aid agencies, civil society movements and environmental groups all took the bait. The failure was “the inevitable result of rich countries refusing adequately and fairly to shoulder their overwhelming responsibility”, said Christian Aid. “Rich countries have bullied developing nations,” fumed Friends of the Earth International.
Copenhagen was much worse than just another bad deal, because it illustrated a profound shift in global geopolitics. This is fast becoming China’s century, yet its leadership has displayed that multilateral environmental governance is not only not a priority, but is viewed as a hindrance to the new superpower’s freedom of action.
All in all, China doesn’t give one rip what the West thinks or does, especially if what we are proposing threatens their dominance. Not only that, but they were even so bold as to exert the fact that the West has no control over what they do. This is all very concerning in light of the fact that China owns a great deal of our debt and has a large reserve of dollars they might be willing to dump if it goes down too much in value. Very interesting.
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For those who are not privy to nerdy, futuristic dystopian science fiction movies, Soylent Green is a classic. By today’s standards, it’s an awful movie (maybe even by that day’s standards as well). It’s pretty bad. Regardless, the plot is of particular interest here.
We have been blessed with yet a second healthy baby boy, Asher Reid Westerfield! He was born on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 10:13 am. He is 6 lbs, 8 oz. and 19″ long. We have received an unbelievable grace. My heart is overjoyed both with a wonderful wife who bore the burden of carrying the little guy, and the now two sons I’ve been blessed with. So exciting! I pray 1) for His grace to fall on them, that 2) they would be born again and brought to new life by the Spirit’s power, in order that 3) they may live lives for His glory and not their own, which will fade like a mist. He is their (and our) only hope of life now and for eternity. Only by His work and not our doing. Praise God for baby Asher!
I honestly haven’t been impacted by a sermon like this in a while. Justin Taylor has already blogged about this, but I think it’s worth repeating. God’s Outrageous Love is a sermon R.W. Glenn gave at John Piper’s church, Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, MN a couple of weeks ago. It’s a message on Jonah 4 and how outrageous it is that God loves any of us. Here is a quote: “Until you’re outraged by God’s love, you’ll never think it’s outrageous; until you’re offended by God’s love, you’ll never be overwhelmed by it.” This was really convicting and yet at the same time pointing to the greatness of the mercy of Christ. Highly recommended!
