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In an act of special grace, God has revealed Himself in the Bible as the Inspirer. God steps into our world, as it were from outside. Special revelation is not intrinsic to creation. However, things were not like this at the beginning before sin entered. This would not have been how God entered our consciousness before the fall. The present dualistic nature of revelation and of grace, common and special, will only disappear when in glory our consciousness is fully renewed. In our sinless Saviour, there was no such distinction. That which is today supernatural knowledge will one day be natural to us. In the place of our present incomplete understanding will come a seeing ‘face to face’.
“…whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.” (1 Corinthians 13:8-10)
In the process of inspiration the mind and consciousness of the writers of Scripture were so elevated that the thoughts arising there came solely from the Spirit of God, unhindered by the intervention of anything originating from within the individual concerned. Moved, or borne along by God’s Spirit, the thoughts of God become the thoughts of these men. Nevertheless, the functioning of the human personality was not set aside, but its faculties operated coincidentally and utterly in tune with the Spirit of God. We cannot think without words, the writer of Scripture would have been conscious of God’s thoughts as words. He then, still under the perfect guidance of the Spirit of God, commits these same words to writing without error. This is inspired Scripture.
Ever since Emile Zola uttered the words, “Families I hate you!” the attack on families has continued unabated. Arguments from those who support the family will often be simply pragmatic ones – it is the basic unit of society and has always worked well. However convincing this line of argument may be, ultimately the family can only be adequately defended as a creation ordinance, as something given of God and binding upon us all.
For thinking men of the twenty-first century, the Christian religion is a sheer fiction and the Bible a collection of ancient of myths – it is most certainly not a revelation of absolute truth. The Christian faith is written off as a world of the stupid. By this count, most stupid are those who fail to see that behind the façade of the Christian faith God is dying or even dead.
It is said there are two certainties in life – death and taxes. We can reduce this to one – the Day that is coming. It is drawing near and we should be preparing ourselves and watching – waiting for God’s Son from heaven (1 Thessalonians 1:10). It is strange that there is more confusion among the professing Church of Christ with respect to the return of Christ than almost any other subject. Surely an enemy hath done this? This is a subject that increases in relevance, in urgency, with every passing day. We need to get on board, make sure we are on the winning side.
There are two extremes to which one can go when speaking of the Lord’s coming. On the one hand, there is a position of extreme pessimism that all but forgets the glory and victory. On the other hand, many ignore the tribulations, the apostasy, the storms and plagues that will precede this glorious event. If we must choose between the two, then victory must win out, as it is impossible for the purposes of God to fail. The pain is but for a short time and the glory is for ever.
It has been said that a society can be judged by the way it treats its children and its old people, those among us least able to care for themselves. The Bible demands that we honour our parents and revere all those older than we are and there is good reason for it. ... It is a sinful and revolutionary age that cuts through this continuity, this historical umbilical cord, and turns on its elders with vitriol and hatred. We receive life from our parents; therefore to hate our parents is a form of self-hate. The expression heard all too often ‘I didn’t ask to be brought into this world’ betrays a love of death; it is a kind of suicide note.
When Caesar wants the things that are God's
Are we bound by Scripture to obey without question every every law our governments take it into their heads to put on the statute book? What the Bible says.
As godlessness increases in our western democracies, as our leaders seek to redefine morality, diminishing all real sense of right and wrong, so Christian believers are increasingly coming into conflict with the law. Our governments seem unable to bring themselves to punish wrongdoers adequately, and they are now frequently harassing the law abiding. This is a reversal of the godly order. The question now arises as to whether as Christian believers we are bound to obey every law our governments take it into their heads to put on the statute book. ....
Whose children are they anyway? (unabridged)
A biblical consideration of the children of Christian families and the goals of humanistic state education
We ought not to be at all surprised, if after having sent our children to be given an education in godless surroundings, an education specifically designed to prejudice them against the Gospel, that they eventually turn their backs on all that we as parents have sought to instil in them of the truth of God. What is really happening in government schools and educational establishments?
No Middle Ground (unabridged)
In this article on Christian education published first in DAYSPRING, we trace how ‘voluntary’ private and religious schools were deliberately squeezed out of existence by the radicals of the 19th century and replaced by compulsory state education. We shall continue by looking at some of the men and the ideology that has given us our modern secular education system and show how schools are used deliberately to undermine the Christian faith. This first article will then conclude with a brief outline of a Christian and biblical approach to education. To obtain your free copy of DAYSPRING go to the publications page.
INTRODUCTION ONLY (to read the complete text order DAYSPRING 14, click publications)
I have been suggesting for some years that historical evangelicalism is now dead or dying. Many are not sorry, but welcome the changes and talk of a need to move on. Others, of whom I am but one, see it as an abandonment of biblical teaching and a drift to another Gospel that is not another. I have also said publicly that unless there is a change of direction - of which at present there is no sign - I believe that within a generation all vestiges of Gospel truth will be gone from many churches once founded upon it. Let me just mention three areas, there are others such as the widespread compromise with the discredited evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin.
..or, can I be a Christian and still believe in evolution?
Of course, evolution has little or nothing to do with what we think about fossils and dinosaurs. What we are discussing here amounts to two rival faiths. Both believe in miracles. One says God wrought them, the other claims they were brought about by powers within nature over billions of years. Between these two belief systems there is no position of reconciliation still less one of compromise. One is false if the other is true.
The Squandered Legacy
THIS ARTICLE IS BEING CURRENTLY UPDATED AND RE-WRITTEN AND FOR THE PRESENT IS UNAVAILABLE
A denial of the past is an exercise in self-deception. It assumes that what we are today is so fixedly determined by our past that if we get rid of it we are rid too of our present woes. We need to experience some kind of spiritual regression therapy, to re-enter the womb and make a new start. It is blaming the past for the faults of present. The ‘moderniser’s’ perspective also assumes that change is irresistible and wholly necessary, that a self-sustaining historical process always carries us forward to better things. Evangelicals and fundamentalists of all colours in trying to ‘drag the Gospel into the 21st century’, in trying to make it ‘relevant’, have forgotten that the sin of man is the same as it ever was and the Gospel provides the same answer as it ever did. What is really happening under the cloak of such slogans is that the message of the Gospel is being manipulated, its emphasis moved, its fundamentals modified.
If the Son therefore shall make you free...
In seeking to be free of God, man has lost what freedom he thought he had, becoming now being the plaything of chance, or the object of soulless determinism. Of course, in truth he is neither, his view of the world is a complete myth. He is born free only to sin. With no sovereign God, with no sovereign plan, there can be no certain salvation and no freedom of any kind for men at all! Only a sovereign God, One who can ensure all that He wills and all that He promises will surely come to pass, only the God of the Bible, can make it possible for us to exercise our wills in a way that has meaning, can enable us freely to love and serve Him. He has determined that this should be so; nothing is left to ‘chance’. Without the sovereign God of Scripture, heaven would forever remain empty.
All modern bible translations, but especially those translated by ‘dynamic equivalence’, are largely designed for ‘dynamic’ reading. The reader is not recovering a communication given by God once-for-all-time in the past, but listening for the voice of God from a string of words that have no fixed meaning. They may say one thing to one person and something quite different to someone else, depending upon the circumstances. The same words may even say something different to the same person on different occasions. Truth is in the end what the reader makes it. There is no underlying fixed meaning. No single reading of this bible is right or wrong, just different. The reader is not a passive recipient but an active co-creator to whom the bible text provides reading ‘cues’. Any translation methodology, such as that used for the New International Version and most modern versions, that is based on this view of language cannot give us access to the unchangeable Word of God, ‘for ever settled in heaven’.
The true nature of Gospel preaching: John Elias of Anglesey
Preaching in the open-air, John Elias would address crowds of up to ten thousand or more. His concern was for the terrible condition of those ready to die with no saving knowledge of Christ. This was a Gospel for the whosoever, "no matter what nation, no matter how wretched or unworthy he might be; whosoever believeth." Elias saw himself as God’s messenger with a solemn responsibility to speak of the seriousness of man’s dreadful condition in sin. We should not imagine that the soil in which the good seed of God’s Word was planted in those days was any more ready to receive it than today, or that men’s sins were less and their hearts less hardened. What then is lacking but those who will go in God’s name to call men to Christ?
Whatever happened to the originals?
Do we or do we not have God's inspired Word in our hands today or has it disappeared for ever? Where there is no one Word, there is no one authority.
The textual integrity of the Word of God can only be guaranteed by a work of God in its preservation equal to that displayed in its original inspiration. Those who tell us that the only inspired Bible that ever existed is now gone for good as we no longer have the original manuscripts are deceived. If God cannot keep a promise to preserve His Word, how can we be sure He can keep His promises concerning salvation through repentance and faith in His Son? The concessions made to godless rationalist theology by Benjamin Warfield and others since are a departure from the pathway of faith. Only a Bible upon which we can depend is a Bible we can defend.
The rise of rationalist criticism within conservative theology
We have a clear choice between one of two diverging pathways, the road of faith or the road of human reason and unbelief. Do we begin with the Word of God or do we begin with the word of men? This is the question and it has in the first instance little to do with texts, but with the faithfulness of our God. To decide these things we need only a believing heart and the ability to read. Of course, textual scholars will deem all non-academics meddling in what they regard as their exclusive area of work unworthy to tie their bootlaces, still less to steal their clothes! Only after giving a positive answer to this question, do we turn to the manuscripts and texts, and scoop away the dross and scum from the gold, to uncover the authentic Word of God. For it to be of any use, textual study must be grounded upon what the Bible already says about itself. If we do not begin with the Word of God, we shall never end with it!
The
Alignment of New Evangelicals with Apostasy
by former Roman Catholic priest, Richard Bennett
Evangelicals throughout the centuries have maintained that by justification by faith—and by faith alone—sinful human beings are in Christ made right before the all Holy God. ...“New Evangelicalism”, which willingly compromises with and accommodates another Gospel, has gained ground everywhere, beginning in the early 1960s. Since then, the Evangelical world has changed beyond recognition.