The Demise Of Gospel Preaching In Modern Evangelicalism - Part 3

A great post from Truth Matters:  There are problems even when some are actually converted through the popular “decision for Jesus” approach. If they eventually do find out the true nature of the gospel, those truly converted then realize that they have been sold a bill of goods. The gospel does not promise better living in this world through a simple decision. The gospel calls us to take up our cross and live in this world as ones already condemned to die. Furthermore, the truly converted who are in the evangelical culture soon find themselves dying of spiritual starvation because the Word of God is not being preached. How much better to tell our hearers up front what the gospel is, and then when they come on that basis they can, like the early Christians in Acts, “rejoice to be counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.”

Effects of Calvinism

“These ten points are my personal testimony to the effects of believing in the five points of Calvinism. …….. but I will write them here in the hope that they might stir others to search, Berean-like, to see if the Bible teaches what I call “Calvinism.” John Piper

1. These truths make me stand in awe of God and lead me into the depth of true God-centered worship.

2. These truths help protect me from trifling with divine things.

3. These truths make me marvel at my own salvation.

4. These truths make me alert to man-centered substitutes that pose as good news.

5. These truths make me groan over the indescribable disease of our secular, God-belittling culture.

6. These truths make me confident that the work which God planned and began, he will finish – both globally and personally.

7. These truths make me see everything in the light of God’s sovereign purposes – that from him and through him and to him are all things, to him be glory forever and ever.

8. These truths make me hopeful that God has the will, the right, and the power to answer prayer that people be changed.

9. These truths reminds me that evangelism is absolutely essential for people to come to Christ and be saved, and that there is great hope for success in leading people to faith, but that conversion is not finally dependent on me or limited by the hardness of the unbeliever.

10. These truths make me sure that God will triumph in the end.

(HT:  The Expositor)

J.I. Packer Interview on Election

What is meant by the phrase “unconditional election”?
Why do we need an election?
Doesn’t this detract from our responsibility to respond to the gospel?
If I’m one of the elect, God will save me, and if I’m not, I cannot be saved anyway, so why worry about it?
Isn’t foreknowledge the basis of election? Didn’t God choose us because he looked down into the future and foresaw that we would believe in him?
Wouldn’t it be unfair for God to elect one person to heaven, but then not elect my next-door neighbor?
How essential is this doctrine to our understanding of salvation in general?
Is this something really practical for the Christian and not something that should be left in the seminary classroom for theological debate?
If this doctrine is true, is there any reason to believe that the gospel invitation is genuine?

Read Dr Packer’s brief answers to these questions here.

(HT:  Reformation Theology)

Where’d All These Calvinists Come From?

Mark Denver discuss’s the role John Piper has played in the resurgence of Calvinism.

If nothing else, when he preaches, John makes it clear that the sovereignty of God he’s talking about is not the sovereignty of some musty philosophical argument.  No, it’s the kind of dangerous sovereignty that means God may demand anything–or everything–from you at any time.  (And God will never demand as much as He’s already given.)  And it’s the kind of comforting sovereignty which points us to God’s kind providential care of his own, and which allows the believer to get through some otherwise desperate nights by considering Christ’s love at Calvary.

Perspectives on Predestination

This is a sermon preached by Rev. Hofstetter attempting to give a good perspective on what predestination is, what it is not, and what it is for.  

Christian, if by now you are not immensely encouraged, then you must spend much time deeply thinking on these things. We certainly this morning have not answered every question raised by the concept of predestination, but we have seen that the idea is far richer and deeper than it is otherwise portrayed. It is not simply about who gets in and who doesn’t; it is about God’s character and God’s love. It is not simply about doctrine, but about God’s love to us, and about all the plans which God has and in which he includes us as an integral part. And we have seen that the reason God includes this truth is to encourage us and to reveal to us the true foundation for our relationship to him.

Mark Webb on Election

Mark Webb:

“Election keeps no one out of heaven who would otherwise have been there, but it keeps a whole multitude of sinners out of hell who otherwise would have been there. Were it not for election, heaven would be an empty place, and hell would be bursting at the seams… If you perish in hell, blame yourself as it is entirely your fault. But if you should make it to heaven, credit God, for that is entirely His work! To Him alone belong all praise and glory, for salvation is all grace from start to finish.”

Mark Webb, What Difference Does It Make? Reformation & Revival Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1, Winter 1994, pp. 53-54

(HT: Reformed Geek)

Calvinism in History

Calvinism in History (1882) by Nathaniel S. McFetridge is available online here.

Calvinism in History (from The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, 1932) by Loraine Boettner is available online here.

The current need of the church

“It is being said that the chief need of the Church today is to repent because of its ‘lack of unity’… we would suggest that before she repents of her disunity, she must repent of her apostasy. She must repent of her perversion of, and substitutes for, ‘the faith once delivered to the saints.’ She must repent of setting up her own thinking and methods over against the divine revelation in Holy Scripture. Here lies the reason for her lack of spiritual power and inability to deliver a living message in the power of the Holy Ghost to a world ready to perish.”

-Matin Lloyd Jones, given at the annual meeting of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship in 1954

(HT:  Irish Calvinist)

Objections to Calvinism

Think Wink is starting a series looking at the objections to Calvinism.

I want to begin a post series trying my best to answer some objections to the doctrines of Grace that I have encountered over the last two-plus years. The ones that I will attempt to answer are these: Election leads men to be proud and arrogant because they are “elect;” Why should I pray according to Calvinism; Why should I evangelize; Why should pursue holiness. I will take them in the order listed.

Clyde Kilby’s Resolutions

John Piper is his sermon offers his former teachers, Clyde Kilby, practical steps to stay alive to the beauty of God’s world.

1. At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above me and about me.
2. Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall suppose the universe guided by an Intelligence which, as Aristotle said of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle and an end. I think this will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russell before his death, when he said: “There is darkness without and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendour, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing.”