End Times Debate Continued

Sam Waldron continues his response to MacArthur here.

George Whitfield's Biography

I want this book and this book! Read Tim Challies review of them here. If any of you are feeling generous, you would make me a very happy Vinnie if you bought on of them for me. Father's Day is coming up, as well as the 4th of July, my birthday and then Christmas. Rachel...

Help with the Sabbath (or the Lord's Day)

I am confused about this Christian Sabbath thing. My thing is this (a few things): I think that it is pretty clear that the Ten Commandments are binding for Christians because of the way that the new testament uses them and assumes that they are binding on Christians. However, it seems that there is little or no evidence that the Lord's day is to be practiced as a sabbath. Yet, Christians are the new and true Israel and it is true that the New Testament requires that Christians meet on the first day of the week for corporate worship. Further, the law of God (which I believe is the ten commandments) is written on our hearts. I believe this because of Jeremiah 31:31-34 and passages like 2 Corinthians 3 (where the contrast is between the law being written on tablets of stone and on tablets of human hearts). The only thing that was written on tablets of stone by God was the ten commandments, not any other laws. The other laws under the Mosaic administration were written down by Moses. Further, Paul talks about the doers of the law being justified in Romans 2. The law, I believe, is talking about the ten commandments (Romans 2:21-23). Therefore, it must be biding on the Christian as a rule of life (the historic third use of the law as set out by Calvin). What confuses me most about this issue is that Mohler, Luther, Calvin, and Gill (just to name a few) don't believe in a Christian Sabbath. Rather, they believe in the observance of the Lord's day with the emphasis on the positive importance of the corporate gather together in worship, fellowship, and praying with God's people. The emphasis is not on resting. Therefore, they would not call it a Christian Sabbath. What makes this more confusing is that Mohler says it is emphatically not a Christian Sabbath and then he quotes the Baptist Faith and Message (BFM), which says this:
The first day of the week is the Lord's Day. It is a Christian institution for regular observance. It commemorates the resurrection of Christ from the dead and should be employed in exercises of worship and spiritual devotion, both public and private, and by refraining from worldly amusements, and resting from secular employments, work of necessity and mercy only being excepted.

Mohler actually quoted this and still says that it is not a Christian Sabbath! I am confused. I'm even more confused because the BFM came from New Hampshire Confession which came from the 1689, which are both Sabbatarian. The New Hampshire Confession basically says the same thing, except the title is "The Christian Sabbath" instead of "The Lord's Day". It is almost like they want it to be called the Lord's Day but observed as a Sabbath...

Further, I have come to embrace the regulative principle of the Church, which is the opposite of the Anglican normative principle. The Anglicans say that, with regards to worship, anything that is commanded and anything that is not expressly forbidden is okay for the church to do in the activities of worship. The puritan regulative principle says that, for corporate worship, the tasks of the church, and the government of the church, only that which is either commanded or that which has Biblical precedence is true worship. Because it is God's house (or temple) He has the right to say what is and is not acceptable (1 Timothy 3:15). It is not the same as how I would do family worship or how I make many of the personal decisions I make. In our every day life we take the principles that we learn in God's word and apply them in the ways that we think best. Every situation is not addressed in scripture, but we can take the principles in God's word and apply them to those situations. Not so in the way that God's church is run because it is his place of special presence (Matthew 18:20). Much like God set out the specification of His temple in the OT, He has the right to determine how church is to be done. You get the point.

What does this have to do with the Sabbath? Well, if God is going to specify the way that worship is to be done, then would he not specify the day of worship?

Another thing I am wrestling with on this is the fact that the Bible does not trace the origins of the Sabbath back to the Mosaic Covenant but back to creation. Exodus 20 8 "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 "Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. 11 "For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy. Men like John Owen and Vos have argued that the Sabbath was a creation ordinance and, therefore, does not go away with the comng of the new covenant. According to them it is binding on all generations because it is part of the law written on the hearts (conscience) of all men from birth as Romans 1 and 2 set out.

Any help here? I am confused and need the help of my theologically-minded brothers.

Excellent Counseling Article!

Check out this great article about counseling (which has implications for the entire Christian life) here. A little controversial...

New Affections!

I got this excellent Thomas Chalmers quote from Piper's book, Future Grace:

"There are two ways in which a practical moralist may attempt to displace from the human heart its love of the world-either by a demonstration of the world's vanity, so that the heart shall be prevailed upon simply to withdraw its regards from an object that is not worthy it; or, by setting forth another object, even God, as more worthy of its attachment, so that the heart shall be prevailed upon not to resign an old affection, which shall have nothing to succeed it, but to exchange an old affection for a new one. My purpose it to show that from the constitution of our nature, the former method is altogether incompetent and ineffectual, and that the latter method will alone suffice for the rescue and recovery of the heart from the wrong affection that domineers over it."

So let us preach and counsel, yes, against sin and wickedness but also for the beauty and excellence of God and all the he is for us in Christ. Let us emphasize the greatness of God over the futility of the world.

Waldron Posts Chapter 4!

Finally, Sam Waldron has posted Chapter 4 in his blog book in response to MacArthur's sermon at the Shepherd's Conference here.

Books I have Read

First I must qualify that I have not read ALL of each of these books. In other words, I have chosen to list the books that I have read either all the way through or most of the way through (I have a bad habit of starting new books before I finish the ones I am already reading). These are only the ones I can think of off the top of my head without giving it much thought:

Piper
Desiring God
When I Don't Desire God
God's Passion for His Glory
The Hidden Smile of God
Future Grace
Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ
Legacy of Sovereign Joy
Don't Waste Your Life
Counted Righteous in Christ
The Supremacy of God in Preaching
God is the Gospel
The Innkeeper
A Hunger For God

Sam Waldron (my professor at MCTS)
Reformed Baptist Manifesto
End Times Made Simple
In Defense of Parity
Biblical Baptism
To Be Continued?
Who Runs the Church
We Must Obey God

John MacArthur
The Gospel According to Jesus
The Murder of Jesus
Battle for the Beginning
Why One Way?
Fool's Gold
Successful Christian Parenting

Others
The Cross - Lloyd-Jones
The Cross Centered Life - Mahaney
Sex, Romance, and the Glory of God - Mahaney
God at Work - Veith
Mortification of Sin - Owen
The Doctrine of Repentance - Watson
The Mischief of Sin - Watson
Is God Really in Control - Bridges
Some of Systematic Theology - Grudem
An Eschatology for Laymen - Ladd
Religious Affections - Edwards
The Complete Husband - Priolo
Heart of Anger - Priolo
Shepherding a Child's Heart - Ted Tripp
Age of Opportunity - Paul Tripp
Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life - Whitney
The Church - Clowny
Chose by God - Sproul
Grace Unknown - Sproul
The Sovereignty of God - Pink
Spurgeon Versus Hyper-Calvinism
Tell the Truth - Metzger
Today's Gospel - Authentic of Synthetic - Chantry
The Gospel According to Dispensationalism - Kimbro

That's all I can think of right now...

Historical Theology

After some of Greg Stancil’s posts on historic premillenialism, I am leaning toward historic premill as my view on the end times. A big part of that has to do with the wide acceptance of it in the early church. It also occurred to me (again) that historical theology can be very helpful in developing our own theology. Of course, we don’t come to our conclusions based solely on church history. For that would be a return to Roman Catholicism. Exegesis is our primary epistemological source. But it is an unwise overreaction to Rome to ignore church history in formulating our own system of theology. This got me thinking about some other areas that I have been wondering about and led me again to contemplate the role that Ten Commandments are to have in the Christian life, particularly, the fourth Commandment regarding the Sabbath Day. I asked the question, “What did the early church think about the Sabbath Day and how did it affect their practice?”. You can see for yourself in this article by Philip Schaff.

Sale at Westminster Bookstore

The CCEF (Christian Counseling and Education Foundation) books are on sale at the Westminster bookstore right now at half price!

Historic Premil

My friend, Greg Stancil, is posting some blogs about historic premil and how it compares to other eschatological systems here.

Living the Christian life

Mark Redfern posts this great James McDonald quote here.