Not long ago my family and I attended a wedding. It was a wonderful Christian wedding, the bride is a daughter of a family in our church, the bridegroom is a committed Christian, young missionary in Eastern Europe. Both were homeschooled, both love the Lord, and the wedding ceremony was planned by them to be both a worship service to God and a witness to the unbelievers among those present. It was a delight to attend.
Full Story » Paul says, “For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone will not work, neither let him eat” (2 Thess. 3:10). Don’t feed a person who refuses to work. Lest any presume that I intend to bash government welfare with this thought, let me assure them that I reserve other Scripture texts and principles for that purpose, but here only intend to highlight the topic of “work” as the forgotten topic among many Christians. Why have I never heard a sermon on this topic, and why do so many Christians treat the subject as “secular” instead of as designed and ruled by God as anything else? Answers, of course, lie in the Gnostic, anti-earth mindset prevalent among the “heavenly-minded,” but I will leave these answers to another time. For now, I would like to reach into the past and bring to your attention a sermon once well-known throughout the English-speaking world – a sermon dedicated to the topic, “Against Idleness.”
Full Story » I believe that a preacher of the Gospel should know something about everything. Not be a know-it-all, but know something about it all. He should ably extract knowledge from every area and facet of life and use it in his message in an organic and fluid manner. If he cannot, he can only prove himself drone and drudger: competent to do busy work but not to teach.
Are these strong words? Yes. But not my opinion only. George Herbert, in his terse and powerful classic The Country Parson, writes of the parson’s knowledge (Chapter IV):
Full Story » Christian Reconstruction has taken some underhanded criticism from Michael Horton and the guys at the White Horse Inn radio, and we have responded to them in the past via the Gary DeMar show podcast. We recently received a real shock, however, when we heard an excerpt of popular preacher Alistair Begg blasting away at Christians for getting involved in politics. His rant – full of wonderful rhetoric – aimed at some vague monster but at least once singled out those Christians who want to “reconstruct” society. His arguments reiterate the same feelings as Horton and gang, but take the rhetoric to an astronomical level.
Full Story » At a moment in which we must fight the advancement of socialism into the field of healthcare, among other places, I think many may find the following excerpts from Charles Spurgeon helpful. Additionally, since so many American Christians – especially of the fundamentalist and Baptistictraditions – seem to believe that the Gospel does not pertain to or does not address politics, economics, and social order, I hope our more pietistic brethren will find the direction of a stalwart Baptist such as Spurgeon instructive.
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