HeadTheology

Here’s an awesome game, turn up the volume and try to get to level 4
http://fun.sdinet.de/flash/games/lab.swf

Article on CNN

I doubt they have a problem with maintaining a pure church there.  I’ve got a test to study for but hopefully more to come later.

I recently listened to these on my way to and from Georgia to visit family.  This stuff is really good and don’t let the title throw you for a loop.  Here’s two recommendations; one for the married men, the other for us single guys.

For the Married Men on the Song of Solomon by CJ Mahaney

For the Single Men on how to date/court/etc…by Mark Dever and friends

I just returned from visiting with my family down in Georgia which mainly consisted of playing with my two neices ages 2 years and 8 months. If any person’s make me doubt original sin it is those two girls. Nevertheless, I must get back to my main point.

I visited my sister’s and brother-in-law’s church Sunday and while they went to Sunday School I went to the service. It being a Methodist church I wasn’t suprised to hear about free will but I didn’t think I’d hear this reason for it. He said, “just like the song, ‘if you love someone, set them free,’ that is God’s love to us” comparing God’s love towards us in that God set us free so that we could come back to him and give him love. His actual topic was prayer and how he got on free will from there I have no idea but there it was. In that line of reasoning I guess it would make sense for me to set my neices free in the street if I love them and then see if they will come back to me, I mean God, in this world full of tempations that would eternally separate us from him does the same to us so why shouldn’t we do it to the ones we love. (I hope you sense my sarcasm)

Actually, on the contrary, God does not set us free to do whatever we want IF HE LOVES US. Because we are as little children he keeps us from harm under his loving protection. Love is not setting someone free, love is giving someone what they need, which is often protection. So when God loves someone he gives them himself which was only accomplished by God through his son’s death on the cross. I do not love my neices by letting them roam free, I love them by protecting them by keeping them out of the street and danger.

It would be a crappy God who let me go every time I let go of him. Thank goodness his love for me is not conditional on my love for him. If God loves someone he does not set them free, he finds them and adopts them as a son or daughter and never lets them go out of his loving grasp.

I get a kick out of this everytime I read it. He preached this in his New Park Street church in December 1855.

“You have heard a great many Arminian sermons, I dare say; but you never heard an Arminian prayer—for the saints in prayer appear as one in word, and deed and mind. An Arminian on his knees would pray desperately like a Calvinist. He cannot pray about free-will: there is no room for it. Fancy him praying, “Lord, I thank thee I am not like those poor presumptuous Calvinists. Lord, I was born with a glorious free-will; I was born with power by which I can turn to thee of myself; I have improved my grace. If everybody had done the same with their grace that I have, they might all have been saved. Lord, I know thou dost not make us willing if we are not willing ourselves. Thou givest grace to everybody; some do not improve it, but I do. There are many that will go to hell as much bought with the blood of Christ as I was; they had as much of the Holy Ghost given to them; they had as good a chance, and were as much blessed as I am. It was not thy grace that made us to differ; I know it did a great deal, still I turned the point; I made use of what was given me, and others did not—that is the difference between me and them.” That is a prayer for the devil, for nobody else would offer such a prayer as that. Ah! when they are preaching and talking very slowly, there may be wrong doctrine; but when they come to pray, the true thing slips out; they cannot help it.”

Sorry I haven’t had anything original to post lately, seminary and work are getting busy.

Watch this video it’s hilarious.
http://26thman.blogspot.com/2006/02/perils-of-drinking.html 

II John 9 says; “Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.”

I have wondered for the past couple of months ‘who is my brother and sister in Christ?’ and this verse stuck out to me in reading it the other day for it seems to mark a importance in abiding in the teaching of Christ. So I thought what exactly is the teaching of Christ as witnessed by the whole Bible.
For instance, a couple of days after the tsunami hit south Asia I was watching the news and they interviewed a Episcopal priest about God’s place in that disaster. He stated in no uncertain terms that God had nothing to do with the tsunami and had no control over it whatsoever. Immediately when he said that I thought to myself that that man was not my spiritual brother for in no way do we serve the same God though regretfully we might be both called ‘Christian’. So my mind began this unofficial quest for the unbendable doctrines of Christianity. Basically, how do I determine who is and is not my brother in Christ by what they beleive.

This happened early on in Christianity in what led to the Nicene Creed from the Arian controversy. Basically the Nicene Creed explains that Christ is fully divine on the same level with the Father and eternal whereas the Arians believed ‘when he [Christ] was not] and is a little lower than the Father but still worthy to be worshipped. To make a long story short the folks who followed Arianism were condemned as heretics and considered anathema (cursed). That is a traditional line in the sand that a Christian must believe to be Christian but I wondered what were some of the others.
I have come up with a few based on my Bible reading and creeds that I have learned my church history courses: (feel free to comment and add some or argue for the removal of others for obviously if God wants us to abide in the teaching of Christ be must first believe it)

1. The reality of Adam and Eve

2. The virgin birth

3. The full deity and humanity of Christ

4. The Trinity (one God in three persons) FYI - TD Jakes (the preacher) and Philips, Craig, and Dean (these ‘Christian’ singers do not believe in this) - they are Oneness Pentecostals

5. The death and bodily resurrection of Christ

6. Christ is the only way to heaven (sorry Joel Osteen fans, if you think I am kidding read his interview with Larry King, or at the very least he needs to be kicked out of the pulpit cause he doesn’t know what it takes to get to heaven)

7. Reality of heaven and hell

8. The depravity of humanity (that’s not hard to believe just look at a two year old)

…Right now I can’t think of anymore and it’s late but I’m sure open to more suggestions but no I am not willing to make that the Calvinism and Arminian debate one of those lines.