“You might want to notice that in the most recent issue of Christianity Today, the April issue that arrived to me just days ago, in the cover story, Scot McKnight says, ‘I can count on one hand the number of historical Jesus scholars who hold orthodox beliefs.’ A fascinating statement. But the moment you begin to entertain the notion that there’s a distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, you have already bankrupted the faith.

“Adolph von Harnack, another one of the most important figures in modern liberal theology, made an argument that I have actually heard some evangelicals paraphrase without understanding the toxic source and the disastrous meaning. Harnack said Christianity is like a seed or a kernel that is surrounded by a husk, kind of like a coconut. And he said that the kernel is authentic meaning, but the husk is this … he called it the acute Hellenization of doctrine, it’s this elaborated doctrine, it’s creeds and confessions and propositional statements and Scriptural claims concerning Jesus Christ, Gospel, salvation, fall, eschatology. Long before Bultmann, Harnack said what we must do to rescue Christianity is to pay attention to salvaging the seed and let the husk go. Do you buy into that? You’ve already given it all away.”

MP3 Audio

Session 2 – R.C. Sproul – “The Defense and Confirmation of the Gospel – What I Have Learned in 50 years”

MP3 Audio

Session 3 – Albert Mohler – “How Does it Happen? Trajectories Toward an Adjusted Gospel”

MP3 Audio

Session 4 – Thabiti Anyabwile – “‘Fine-Sounding Arguments’ – How Wrongly ‘Engaging the Culture’ Adjusts the Gospel”

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Session 5 – John MacArthur – “The Theology of Sleep! (Mark 4)”

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Session 6 – John Piper – “Did Jesus Preach Paul’s Gospel?”

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Session 7 – Ligon Duncan – “Did the Fathers Know the Gospel?”

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Session 8 – CJ Mahaney with Matt Chandler – “Preparing Your Church for Suffering”

MP3 Audio

Session 9 – CJ Mahaney – “Ordinary Pastors”

MP3 Audio

In my yearly trek through the Scriptures, I have come today to the book of Ruth. I have read this book many times, but never studied it in depth. So I thought it would be good to look up a sermon series on this book and I came across some sermons by none other than John Piper, who preached on this book in four sermons in 1984. I really was taken aback by the first one in how he displays so clearly the beautiful providence of God in the midst of deep, bitter trial, designing and intending it for good. There are so many things I have missed in this wonderful little book. I highly recommend these sermons.

• Ruth 1: Sweet and Bitter Providence – John Piper (MP3)
• Ruth 2: Under the Wings of God – John Piper (MP3)
• Ruth 3: Strategic Righteousness – John Piper (MP3)
• Ruth 4: The Best Is Yet to Come – John Piper (MP3)

“Brian McLaren and his ilk of the emerging church … all it is, is late 19th century protestant [theological] liberalism in a postmodern dress. There isn’t anything new in it at all. And the only reason they can get away with it is because people are so a-historical and ignorant of theologies of the past.” – David Robertson, Emergent Calvinism (MP3)

Notice how McLaren doesn’t defend his orthodoxy (or lack thereof), he pleads the victim card and calls out the majority of evangelicals for essentially being separationists, you know, where seperationism actually matters. He clearly doesn’t see what is at stake. I mean even one of the New Atheists sees what’s at stake and knows where the dividing lines are! Christopher Hitchens is quoted as saying in a debate against a theologically liberal Christian, “I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”

I’m only speaking my conscience, McLaren says in the article in defense of his stance. Well, a great majority in evangelicalism, the group he alleges to be a part of, now are saying loud and clear that his beliefs of conscience concerning core doctrines are against historical Christianity and he should cease to take the name evangelical if he’s going to believe, proselytize and support these views. I mean when your views are closer to that of the arguments and rebuttals of agnostics and other secular, unbelieving skeptics, you might want to check the authenticity of your faith and its connectedness to historical, Biblical Christianity. These are not issues to play down lightly as periphery concerns. This is front and center, headline news; the very stuff of the meat of Christianity we’re talking about that he is redefining. This is not unimportant. His arguments, redefinitions and theology concern the very heart of the Christian faith, specifically within the evangelical context.

This is just New School liberalism, springing up now in the evangelical world. Don’t be fooled. Over time, and especially in his latest book, McLaren has been taking the mask off more and more. He may be speaking his conscience, as he says, but it shows his convictions do not rest in the historic Christian faith but in the (not-so-new) innovations of postmodern theology. And there is no reason to try and associate with our groups any longer.

“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.” – 2 Timothy 3:1-9

“always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” … I cannot think of a better description of his strain of “new” theology.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

It is amazing to me that after just celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we’re now implementing a similar system by fragments. Word is the next step for Democrats is to address ‘climate change’, which if this tells you anything we’ll be implementing more socialist policies. This trend had better start reversing in the next year or it may be a long time before we’re ever back to where we’ve been in the past. Praise God these things have not completely come to pass yet. But we are well on our way. Again, this is no reason for believers to fear in light of what was said in the last post. Yet at the same time, we must do our best to address what can really only be described as a creeping tyranny.

UPDATE: Must add this one from Ed Schultz … at least they’re just being candid about it now about what they want, instead of hiding behind the myth that they’re for free markets and individual freedom as the Constitution defines it.

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.

On a macro level, for the most part, they all see the same scenario emerging. Mish says it’s the year for the beginning of the Second Great Depression. In addition, he believes it’s likely we’ll hit a Y-shaped economy, that is, a W-shaped trend where we dip into recession a second time and re-test previous lows and then some.

Trends researcher Gerald Celente (not in this audio) is predicting the Greatest Depression in the next few years. Peter Schiff is predicting similar scenarios. By the way, these guys have been right for years on predicting future trends, not just months but years in advance many times. Economist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is saying the next shoe to drop around the world is sovereign debt, that is, debtor nations such as Greece, Spain, and the US, will pop or default. Here is Jim Rogers take:

Interesting quotes by Norman Thomas, six times candidate for President under the Socialist Party ticket, one of which is mentioned in the audio above:

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened.” – Norman Thomas, 1927

“I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democrat Party has adopted our platform.” – Norman Thomas