Category Archives: Uncategorized

Terry Jones, burning Qurans and true Christianity

Tom Ascol wrote an outstanding article in the Tampa Bay Examiner today on the fiasco surrounding the outrageously foolish plans on the part of Terry Jones of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida to burn Qurans on September 11 (Saturday), supposedly in honor of the innocent lives lost nine years ago on that date. An excerpt:

As a Christian pastor who has more than a casual interest in what happens to Muslim friends and fellow believers living in the Muslim world, I want to offer a few thoughts on this fiasco:

1. Jones has justified burning the Quran because it is an “evil book” that leads people away from the true God. Consistency, then, should lead him to add countless other titles to his bonfire, including many that are written by authors who purport to be promoting Christianity but who miss the gospel altogether.

2. This proposed burning, coming as it does at the end of Ramadan, is severely damaging opportunities that Americans and Christians living in Muslim countries normally have to deepen relationships and share in the goodwill that is typically shown by Muslims to their neighbors in the celebration of Eid, the breaking of the fast. Instead, a cloud of suspicion is gathering over the heads of American Christians living in Muslim countries because of the actions of a small group of people in Florida. If you doubt this, you are simply naive and it is certain that you had no Muslim friends living near you on September 12, 2001.

3. Burning copies of the Quran in Florida may appear to be courageous to some who think only superficially about such things. In reality, it is closer to cowardice. If Jones were genuinely courageous he would go to Kabul or Tehran and hold his bonfire. Better yet, if he were both courageous and wise he would go to those place, or others like them, and learn how to live among and love Muslims for the sake of teaching them the gospel of Jesus from the Bible.

4. Burning Qurans is more about publicity than it is about honoring Jesus Christ or advancing His kingdom. It is an unbiblical activity. By that I mean, there is nothing in the Bible that directs Christians to do such a thing, especially in conjunction with a day of national remembrance.

Read the whole thing. I received an e-mail this week from a dear friend who lives and works in Afghanistan. He was a personal friend of one of the victims from the recent Taliban attack that killed ten aid workers near Kabul. My friend has every reason to fear for his life if Jones follows through with his cowardly and self-serving plans.

Continue Reading »

Welcome to the New Web Site

Many of you have seen the preview of our new site over the summer, but we’ve cleaned out the remaining errors and ported over all of the content into this fresh new site.  Everything you see except for the store has been rebuilt from the ground up with the goal of better serving the global church, starting with you.

The changes we’ve made were focused on making it easier for you to find, read (or listen or watch), and share our resources with your friends and the world.

Over the next several days we will be posting small instructional posts highlighting each of the new features of the site. For now, create an account (if you need help, see the video below), and start exploring!

If you’re having trouble and need help, visit our support site and ask a question, make a comment, or suggest an improvement.  We’re here to serve you and want to know how we can best do that.

Ad?8d8726e976

Continue Reading »

Ur Video: Skye Jethani from “The Nines”

Are we inoculating people to the gospel by talking more about living FOR God rather than WITH him?

Continue Reading »

The Five Solas of the Reformation

The Five Solas of the Reformation

Subsection @Monergism.com updated!

Continue Reading »

Walter Benjamin: 13 theses on writing

One of my favourite accounts of writing is Walter Benjamin’s “The Writer’s Technique in Thirteen Theses”, from his 1928 book One-Way Street; published in Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913-1926 (Harvard UP 1996), 458-59. Here are his thirteen theses in …

Continue Reading »

The Kids Downtown

Let’s go downtown and watch the modern kidsLet’s go downtown and talk to the modern kidsThey will eat right out of your handUsing great big words that they don’t understand

-Arcade Fire, “Rococo”-

I had a meeting today with a nice young man…

Continue Reading »

The Five Solas of the Reformation by James Montgomery Boice

gospelgrace-boice.jpg“1. Scripture alone. When the Reformers used the words sola Scriptura they were expressing their concern for the Bible’s authority, and what they meant is that the Bible alone is our ultimate authority—not the pope, not the church, not the traditions of the church or church councils, still less personal intimations or subjective feelings, but Scripture only. Other sources of authority may have an important role to play. Some are even established by God—such as the authority of church elders, the authority of the state, or the authority of parents over children. But Scripture alone is truly ultimate. Therefore, if any of these other authorities depart from Bible teaching, they are to be judged by the Bible and rejected.

2. Christ alone. The church of the Middle Ages spoke about Christ. A church that failed to do that could hardly claim to be Christian. But the medieval church had added many human achievements to Christ’s work, so that it was no longer possible to say that salvation was entirely by Christ and his atonement. This was the most basic of all heresies, as the Reformers rightly perceived. It was the work of God plus our own righteousness. The Reformation motto solus Christus was formed to repudiate this error. It affirmed that salvation has been accomplished once for all by the mediatorial work of the historical Jesus Christ alone. His sinless life and substitutionary atonement alone are sufficient for our justification, and any ‘gospel’ that fails to acknowledge that or denies it is a false gospel that will save no one.

3. Grace alone. The words sola gratia mean that human beings have no claim upon God. That is, God owes us nothing except just punishment for our many and very willful sins. Therefore, if he does save sinners, which he does in the case of some but not all, it is only because it pleases him to do it. Indeed, apart from this grace and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit that flows from it, no one would be saved, since in our lost condition, human beings are not capable of winning, seeking out, or even cooperating with God’s grace. By insisting on ‘grace alone’ the Reformers were denying that human methods, techniques, or strategies in themselves could ever bring anyone to faith. It is grace alone expressed through the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that brings us to Christ, releasing us from our bondage to sin and raising us from death to spiritual life.

4. Faith alone. The Reformers never tired of saying that ‘justification is by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone.’ When put into theological shorthand the doctrine was expressed as “justification by faith alone,” the article by which the church stands or falls, according to Martin Luther. The Reformers called justification by faith Christianity’s “material principle,” because it involves the very matter or substance of what a person must understand and believe to be saved. Justification is a declaration of God based on the work of Christ. It flows from God’s grace and it comes to the individual not by anything he or she might do but by ‘faith alone’ (sola fide). We may state the full doctrine as: Justification is the act of God by which he declares sinners to be righteous because of Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone.

5. Glory to God alone. Each of the great solas is summed up in the fifth Reformation motto: soli Deo gloria, meaning ‘to God alone be the glory.’ It is what the apostle Paul expressed in Romans 11:36 when he wrote, ‘to Him be the glory forever! Amen.’ These words follow naturally from the preceding words, “For from him and through him and to him are all things” (v. 36), since it is because all things really are from God, and to God, that we say, ‘to God alone be the glory.’”

–James Montgomery Boice, Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace? (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2001), pp. 65-149.

Continue Reading »

On Specialization (Justin Taylor)

I appreciated Carl’s call for generalists in the church.

Made me think of Matt Might’s “Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D”:

http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

Continue Reading »

Sola Gratia – Grace Alone (John 6:35-45)

Sola Gratia – Grace Alone (John 6:35-45)

Dr. James White (MP3 Lecture)

Continue Reading »

How can you tell if you are in a movement rather than an institution?

This article by Tim Keller explains the following characteristics of a movement. According to Keller it is:A vital, dynamic human organization Marked by an attractive, clear, unifying vision for the future Has a strong set of values or beliefs This unifying vision is so compelling that it takes pride of place. Generous flexibility The accomplishment of the vision is more [...]

Continue Reading »