On The Canon Of Scripture

The greatest gift God gave His covenant people is of course His Son Jesus Christ in all of His works and teachings and glory. The second greatest gift God gave His church is the Bible by which we can know about His greatest gift in the person of His Son. But how we got the Bible we have, why we have 66 books as opposed to the additional books recognized by Rome, why the Book of Mormon is not Scripture, etc. is given very little attention in the church. So I can recommend this fascinating conversation at the G3 conference between James White and Michael Kruger on the Biblical canon. It sounds like a very boring, esoteric topic and it can be kind of deep but if you are someone who loves Scripture and encounters people that don't, this is the sort of information you need to have.


At around the ten minute mark I think Kruger hits on a critical distinction. We shouldn't talk about the canon with an attitude of what books has the church accepted and instead ask what books has God given us.

The canon of Scripture is not primarily the result of an academic endeavor. We don't have a canon because of monks or church fathers. We have the Scriptures because God Himself decreed to reveal Himself to man in His own manner and ordained that these revelations that we call Scripture would be preserved in a way that His people would be able to access them throughout history, even though there were many times and many places, even now, when Scripture is hard to come by. To put it more simply, the Bible is the result of a supernatural action by God in the same way that the creation of the universe, the parting of the Red Sea and the resurrection of His Son were supernatural acts.

Watch this video and be sure to thank God that He made provision to preserve His Word for His people that they might come to know His Son.

Imprisoned For Sixteen Years For The Faith

Check out this video from James White, filmed while visiting the hole that Fritz Erbe, a 16th century Anabaptist who was, like so many others, imprisoned and tortured for the "crime" of refusing to baptize his children, was held by ostensibly "Protestant" men. What a cruel place to be imprisoned and what great faith he must have had to hold fast to the Scriptures in the face of such cruel torture because of his holding firm on a subject we consider today to be of secondary importance. There are men who say in error that water baptism saves us and those who, also in error, think that a days old infant incapable of professing faith should be baptized. On the one hand it is a sign of some maturity in the church that we don't put one another to death over these issues anymore but on the other it makes me wonder just how firmly we hold to any position in the church. Think about being lowered into that hole with no hope of escape and ask yourself just how strong your convictions truly are.

Happy Reformation Year And Why It Still Matters (And Matters Just As Much)

Happy Reformation Year!

2017 is the year which includes the date of the 500th anniversary of the "official" start of the Protestant Reformation on October 31st, 1517 with Martin Luther's nailing of the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg. With that one seemingly innocous act, Martin Luther forever changed the course of Western and world civilization, in some ways for the worse but for the most part for the better. Those of us who cherish our salvation by faith through grace recognize the debt we owe to those God lifted up at great personal danger to shine the light of the truth through the oppressive spiritual darkness of the day.

While many Protestants and others celebrate or at least recognize October 31st as Reformation Day, this being the 500th anniversary year means a lot of additional attention will get paid throughout the year to Luther and what he started. It is of course worth noting that there were many other individual and group reformers who preceded Luther but they mostly ended up dead at the hands of the Roman leadership and their willing executioners and torturers in the state. Luther was notable in large measure because he managed to survive long enough to see the embers of reform burst into the flames, sometimes literally, of Reformation.

While I expect to talk a lot about the Reformation throughout the year, it seems fitting that my first post of the year focuses on the on-going need for Reformation. It is the erroneous belief in many parts of the evangelical/Protestant world that the need for Reformation is long past. We have moved beyond silly squabbles and instead have moved closer together, propelled by our common foe of secularism and our common defense of religious liberty against godless liberalism. When engaged in an existential fight like we are the enemy of my enemy is my friend. All well and good except the mission of the church is not to fight for religious liberty but to preach the Gospel, in season and out, when it is welcome and especially where it is not, making disciples and teaching them the commandments of Christ. We cannot do that with one hand while with the other we hold hands with those who deny that very Gospel.

I have friends and family who are Roman Catholic and this post, and all subsequent posts in 2017, are not intended to be an insult, simply a statement of what should be clear. I don't attend the Roman Mass not because it just isn't my cup of tea but because I believe what happens in the Mass and elsewhere in the Roman religious system runs counter to and is affront to the Gospel of Jesus Christ we see in Scripture. The vast chasm between Rome and the Protestant world was always very apparent until recently and it is neither loving nor honest to anyone to pretend that those differences have faded with time or are no longer important.

Case in point, Jorge Bergoglio, aka "Pope Francis" tweeted out this message to ring in the new year:

Let us entrust the new year to Mary, Mother of God, so that peace and mercy may grow throughout the world.

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) January 1, 2017

Rather than putting together a response I am instead going to just reprint James White's response from a public Facebook post because he pretty much nails it (get it? nails it? 95 Theses?):

Why is the Reformation still important? Why is it proper for us to focus upon it this year in celebration of 500 years? Why do I pray that by the end of 2017 more and more of God's people will embrace the Reformation, and Reformed theology as a whole? Well, here is a tweet from the current Pope. He encourages Roman Catholics to "entrust the new year to Mary." Doing this, evidently, will result in "peace and mercy" growing throughout the world. And here I thought that could only happen as men and women bow the knee not to Mary, but to the Lord Jesus, in repentance and faith, trusting in His once-for-all work upon the cross as the perfect Savior. Rome's departure from the Gospel remains complete, and defiant. She continues to blaspheme the cross every time a man-made "priest" pretends to "re-present" the once-for-all sacrifice of Calvary upon a Roman altar. And she continues to enslave men with her endless gospel of sacraments and penances, which can never bring them peace. And in this tweet the Pope demonstrates once again the grossly idolatrous nature of modern Roman teaching concerning Mary.

How many non-Roman Catholics today understand why they do not bow the knee to Rome? In what is loosely called Evangelicalism, very few. One either has the wild-eyed bigotry of the Jack Chick variety anti-Catholicism, or the luke-warm "it's just a matter of taste" variety of synergistic Tiber-paddling that is so common today. May the number of those who knowingly, and out of a true commitment to sound biblical doctrine, reject Rome's pretensions, grow in this the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

The fawning, fan-boy fascination many "progressive" evangelicals have for Jorge Bergoglio is not surprising while it is still troubling but many who would consider themselves "conservative" have no clue what the differences are between Roman teaching and Scripture. When so many in the church have no idea why they don't attend Mass instead of going to what are most often silly and vacuous "worship services", there is clearly a lot of work to be done. Likewise tens of millions of people are still caught up in the Roman system and have never even heard the Gospel presented clearly and these people are in the same need for hearing the Gospel as poor peasants in 1517 who had been taught that buying an indulgence with the money they could scrape together instead of buying food for their children would somehow purchase favor with God.

Do not for a second think the Reformation is unimportant in 2017 or that we have outgrown the need for what are considered petty theological squabbles or that winning political and cultural victories is critical enough that we ought to make common cause with enemies of the Gospel. As Jorge Bergoglio's tweet proves, Rome is still selling a false gospel that cannot save and only serves to obscure the true Gospel and preserve a corrupt religious system. I think that if Luther could see the church today he would marvel at many things but I also think he would desperately want someone to walk up to our own equivalent of the church door in Wittenberg, take out a hammer and a nail and declare boldly that the Gospel is the one place that we will not, that we cannot, compromise for the sake of any other issue. In the end, only the Gospel of Jesus Christ really matters.

Why So Many Leave The Calvinst Club

No, I am not talking about the doctrines that make up Calvinism proper, when it comes to that I am more solidly in agreement than I have ever been in spite of my more new found affinity for Anabaptism.

I am talking about the subculture that surrounds Calvinist thought, the subculture that charges around with pixels formed into torches and pitchforks to smite anyone who is insufficiently "Reformed". Calvinism attracts all sorts of people from all over the spectrum, I would argue as James White does in the video below, because a consistent hermeneutic reflects divine sovereignty, election, predestination, eternal preservation of the redeemed, etc. It also tends to attract people who are eggheads and argumentative, quarrelsome people for whom Calvinism is a way to lord over the little people just how intellectually superior you are. Like James in the video below I just have little use for the Reformed subculture and it is really a shame because I am sure a lot of people just reject out of hand anything to do with Calvinism without much study because they have run into a few of these frothing at the mouth types (and I used to be one, I admit to my shame).

James White on R. Scott Clark

I was glad to see yet another brother taking R. Scott Clark to task for his pompous and divisive stance on who deserves the title of "reformed". James White takes Dr. Clark to the theological woodshed for his inconsistency and his over the top statements. Dr. White makes the perfectly valid claim that while we stand shoulder to shoulder with many of our paedobaptist brothers on so many issues, when it comes to the 16th century cultural holdover of infant baptism their hermeneutic completely changes. Dr. Clark's outrageous claims have been noted here before, including his contention that any church that doesn't baptize infants is not a "true"church.

I especially liked what Dr. White said about infant baptism and Acts 2:39:

2) Evidently there is a Presbyterian Codex of the Bible that has a variant reading at Acts 2:39. All texts that I know of read as follows:

For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.

But I cannot tell you how often I hear my Presbyterian brethren handle this text in the exact same fashion as the Jehovah's Witnesses handle John 14:28 (it ends up being merely "the Father is greater than I am") or Arminians handle Matthew 23:37 ("how often I wanted to gather you but you would not"). The clear indication of tradition is seen in how Acts 2:39 is truncated in the thinking of my brothers so that it is simply "the promise is to you and to your children." What is the promise? What is the context? Why leave off the rest of the sentence both in meaning and application? The promise is for the Jews who heard Peter, to their children, and to all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself." The promise of forgiveness upon faith and repentance, along with the promise of the Holy Spirit, is for Jew ("you and your children") and Gentile ("to all who are far off") based upon God's electing grace ("as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself"). Changing this to merely a statement about "you and your children" involves an eisegetical shift in hermeneutics that my Presbyterian brethren would never allow in discussing the Trinity, justification, or the resurrection, but when it comes to this one topic, all of a sudden things change.

That is excellent stuff. Using Acts 2:39 as a support for infant baptism is so incredible, such a stretch that is boggles the mind that paedobaptists still use it (at least parts of it "your children", while ignoring the context of the passage which has nothing to do with infant baptism). The fact that Acts 2:39 is so often cited as New Testament support for infant baptism is proof positive of how weak the argument really is. I don't always agree with Dr. White in content or in tone but in this case he is right on the money.

33,000 Protestant denominations?

Interesting video from James White. A lot of groups who claim that their organization is the "one, true church" organization throw out the "Protestantism has splintered in 33,000 denominations" claim and then suggest that "That is not what Jesus wanted". The implication of course is that unity in Christ must equal conformity to a church organization. Dr. White is specifically dealing with Roman Catholicism here, but it also applies to mormonism and other, smaller groups claiming the mantle of "one, true Church".



It is hardly preferable to have one, authoritarian unBiblical organization with heretical practice and doctrines in place of a bunch of smaller groups that at least get the Gospel right (in some cases) and need work on their ecclesiology. Replacing some minor errors with a bunch of huge ones is not an improvement! Whenever someone starts off with a defense of their organization as being the only true organization, that should be a warning to you that some is awry!

I would say that those Dr. White refutes in this video are correct in one respect. I don't think that the various and sundry competing Protestant denominational organizations are what Christ instituted or the New Testament shows us by example. But until we shed our "my organization is better than you organization" mantra, we will have a hard time seeing the Church as it should be: a simple gathering of Christians, whatever the location, who fellowship, pray, break bread and teach one another.

John Piper is indeed fallible...

...and he is dead(ly) wrong in this case

In a brief and kind of random post, Pastor John Piper posted a brief note on the Desiring God blog regarding the recent decision overturning the D.C. gun ban. His full post reads as follows:

What do the supreme court ruling on guns and the martyrdom of missionaries have to do with each other?

Noël and I watched Beyond Gates of Splendor, the documentary version of End of the Spear, the story of the martyrdom of Jim Elliot, Peter Fleming, Ed McCully, Roger Youderian, and Nate Saint in Ecuador in 1956. That same day we heard that the Supreme Court decided in favor of the right of Americans to keep firearms at home for self-defense.

Here’s the connection. The missionaries had guns when they were speared to death. One of them shot the gun into the air, it appears, as he was killed, rather than shooting the natives. They had agreed to do this. The reason was simple and staggeringly Christlike:

The natives are not ready for heaven. We are.

I suspect the same could be said for almost anyone who breaks into my house. There are other reasons why I have never owned a firearm and do not have one in my house. But that reason moves me deeply. I hope you don’t use your economic stimulus check to buy a gun. Better to find some missionaries like this and support them.

With all respect due to John Piper, and he is a man I respect theologically as much as almost anyone out there, that is a poor argument. Should these missionaries, intentionally in harm's way to bring the Gospel to an unreached people have shot the natives? Of course not. But is it the same thing as defending your home against a criminal? What if the natives had attacked the family of the missionaries?

Dr. James White responded on his blog and his response is far better thought out than John Piper's original statement.

This is the best part of his response...

In the spirit of Christian freedom and with the deepest respect for brother Piper, I could not disagree more strongly with the sentiment here expressed. First, I see no parallel whatsoever between missionaries in the jungle seeking to open contact with a violent and primitive tribe and a meth-laden gang member seeking to rob, rape, and murder. In fact, I see many, many reasons to view the two very, very differently. The gang member in the streets of Phoenix has every possible opportunity to do good, to obey the gospel, to work and abide by the law. But he chooses, purposefully and knowingly, to do otherwise. He chooses to enter into my home, threatening the lives of my family. And he comes armed. In the second place, I don't believe a Christian is a martyr if they fall prey to the random, drug-induced violence of a gang member or criminal. There is a difference between being a victim because you did not take the proper precautions and being a martyr because you purposefully expose yourself to danger and even death in the service of the gospel.

From my stand point, in agreement with Dr. White...First, we are not called on to cast our lives aside randomly, for no reason. Should a Christian not drive a car because he might get in an accident and kill someone else? Well it is OK if I die, but I might kill an unbeliever!

Second, I would imagine that John Piper, a man who has published a number of hugely successful books, lives in a pretty decent house in a nice neighborhood. And good for him, he is a talented and blessed writer and speaker. Unfortunately the people who are left defenseless under confiscatory gun laws probably don't live in a similarly nice neighborhood. Dr. Piper has never really had his gun rights under our Constitution violated, but those who live in D.C. have. They have lived in fear all of these years and been left with a choice: arm themselves against violent criminals and in doing so become law breakers themselves or leave themselves at the mercy of the worst criminals in our society and hope the cops show up before the criminals get in.

Third, Piper is one of the strongest proponents of the sovereignty of God in salvation. I hardly think that God would permit one of His elect sheep to break in my house, only to have me gun him down defending my family and thwart His will to save that person. He will let no one snatch from His hand any of those given Him by the Father. There is no exemption there for knuckleheads who break into my house.

Again, Dr. Piper and his ministry have blessed me greatly along with countless other Christians, but I believe in this case he has let an emotional reaction override his judgment. If Dr. Piper chooses to not have a firearm in his home, that is his right and I respect that. But when he suggests that I ought not defend my family from potential harm, with faulty reasoning I believe, I choose to respectfully let him know he is wrong. I am in total agreement with Dr. White's closing statement:

And should any evildoer think of looking up my home, thinking he will find an unarmed victim, think again. I will be glad to proclaim the gospel to you today, but if I find you coming through the window of my bedroom tonight, you will be ushered into eternity post-haste. Some decisions are, indeed, final.

What happens when emotion is pinned down by the Word of God

Many false belief systems rely on emotionalism to trump the plain teaching of the Word of God. It helps to avoid the serious questions when you can appeal to the sinner's emotion. Who wants dry, old, dusty teachings when I can feel good about myself? No false system encourages this more than mormonism. Watch the following video of Dr. James White cross-examining a mormon apologist. When forced to interact with the Biblical text, he is finally forced to admit that he doesn't know the answer, because (he doesn't say this) mormon beliefs have no standing when examined in light of the Word of God.



That is not to say that mormonism is the only system that does this. Any deviation from the Gospel is heresy, pure and simple. There is plenty of teaching going on the church that can fall under no other label other than heresy. The mission of the church is not merely a heresy hunt, sniffing out the slightest deviation in our ranks. In fact, as the Together for the Gospel statement makes clear we can have very strongly held beliefs and differing views on some matters of doctrine and still be united with one another in Christ. But whenever the Gospel is watered down, even slightly, whenever manmade doctrines slip in we need to be ready to give a defense, to show from the Scriptures where the error lies.

Good stuff on baptism!

Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega ministries and Dr. Gregg Strawbridge, author of The Case for Covenental Infant Baptism had an online debate, sort of a follow-up to the earlier debate between Dr. White and Bill Shisko. I have only listened to bits and pieces, but I am sure of two things: a) it will be very charitable, well-thought out and interesting and b) Dr. White will win because he is on the right side! I downloaded the mp3 for later review...

The audio is available to listen to or download for free by clicking here.

Good stuff from James White

Dr. White has a real knack for clearly presenting the doctrines of grace, and this interview on predestination is a perfect example of it.



I liked the comment from Dr. Tony Lane, when he states that the question of whether we choose God or He chooses us is answered yes and yes, but the real question is whther or not we choose God because He first chose us, or God chooses us based on our eventual choice of Him. That is good stuff, clearly stated and the English accent gives it extra gravitas!

Here is part two...



Here is the part three...



Dr. White brings up Acts 13:48, And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. This is a rock solid verse that supports predestination and effectual calling.