“Jesus paid it all; and he doesn’t want my two bits. He doesn’t want anything I do, and he doesn’t want my commitment – because he’s found out I lied about that two or three times! And don’t you look at me that way, because you’ve done the same thing. Thank God tonight for a Saviour who did it all.”
J. Vernon McGee, From “The Power of the Word of God,” preached at Shadow Mountain Community Church, San Diego, California
The forces of death are visible and active in this fallen world.
We should allow the Bible’s depictions of death to influence how we think about the problem of death in this world. Interpreters may not see how resurrection hope is present in some passages if they haven’t noticed how death is present in other passages.
The outworking of death takes manifold forms. Whatever inhibits, harms, or destroys life is a kind of death. When the biblical authors tell of God’s power that restores, frees, heals, or raises, you are reading about the power of life overcoming the forces of death. The reason resurrection hope is more prevalent in Scripture than it may first seem is because the promises and actions of the God of life pervade the testimony of the biblical authors.
Mitchell L. Chase, Resurrection Hope Is More Prevalent in the Old Testament Than It May First Seem
“‘Lowest common denominator theology’ is a rejection of the perspicuity of scripture. It undermines the certainty and conviction of God’s Word. Someone can always excuse his behavior and even his faithlessness, because he couldn’t know. Even if he does know, he could embrace the label of ‘non-essential,’ and excuse his behavior or provide deniability to his laxity. This is now the norm. Some even blame this on the Holy Spirit, who is the spirit of truth. The Holy Spirit didn’t provide the necessary conviction or feeling to believe or stand strongly enough.”
“The churches should care far more about the Bible says about them than what the Academy thinks and intimidates. Forsake any passion to be accepted by the Sanhedrin and join the ranks of Jesus’ fishermen. The Sanhedrin came to its end in AD 70 – the fishermen are still here, fishing.”
Peter Van Kleeck, Sr.
While, as you know, I am not Southern Baptist, I believe this comment below by Malcolm Yarnell is worthwhile for general instruction for all of us who are Baptists. Many Baptists seem to think they are just evangelicals, but there are reasonable reasons to understand that we actually are not.
“...Southern Baptists must never compromise those beliefs which have made us Baptists: specifically, the drive for a regenerate New Testament church membership, founded upon the biblical and historical doctrine of the divine–human covenant, evidenced at first in the ordinance of believers-only baptism by immersion, continually expressed in the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, lovingly maintained by the practice of local church discipline, and fervently expanded by the expository proclamation of the Word of God. Southern Baptists will endeavour to speak these and other non-negotiable truths in love, inviting evangelicals inter alia to join us in becoming consistent with Scripture, not only theologically but ecclesiologically.”“Are Southern Baptists Evangelicals? A Second Decadal Reassessment,” Malcolm Yarnell III, Ecclesiology 2.2 (2005) SAGE Publications, page 212
Cyrus Brown and his advisers, on the posture of prayer:
THE PRAYER OF CYRUS BROWN
– By Samuel Walter Foss (1858-1911)
David M. Ramsey recalled the following words, as spoken by the Baptist preacher E. R. Carswell, before baptizing several candidates in the Rocky River, Anderson County, South Carolina.
“And then, closing the book, the preacher said something like this: ‘Our Lord must have walked some forty miles across the desert country to come down to the Jordan to be baptized by John in the river. Jesus, calm and silent and unrecognized, had been working in the carpenter’s shop in Nazareth, but now he leaves these duties to enter upon his vast labors as the World’s Redeemer. First he must be baptized in the Jordan. Here stands his baptism on the threshold of his life-work. It was a solemn hour and tender experience, for Jesus Himself said it was necessary for him to be baptized to fulfill all righteousness. I know not all the deep meaning of that utterance. By example and precept he has taught us that it is our duty to be baptized, and I think if we love him it should be pleasant to keep his commandments.”
Excerpted from Baptist Why and Why Not, pp. 399-400.
David M. Ramsey, brought up in a strict Presbyterian household, left his home in Greenville County, South Carolina around 1875 to attend high school at the Carswell Institute in Anderson County, South Carolina. The principal of the school was a young Baptist preacher, E. R. Carswell.
“Soon after I entered the Carswell institute, the young Baptist preacher in a spirit of pleasantry asked his Presbyterian pupil for a good text for a sermon on infant baptism which he intended to preach the following Sunday, stipulating to use the very strongest one favoring this custom which might be produced. The terms were agreed to and at once the search began in good earnest. The boy chuckled over the embarrassing predicament which the preacher and congregation would find themselves in the next Sunday.
“But soon the subject became distressingly serious. One of the first passages turned to of course was, ‘But Jesus said suffer little children and forbid them not to come unto me for of such is the kingdom of heaven.’ To my surprise there was not a word here about any kind of baptism. The Baptist minister could do all this for his own babe next Sunday at the close of his sermon, if he thinks there is nothing sacrilegious in a poor mortal man’s imitating the Divine Redeemer in bestowing a blessing. So one after another of the familiar passages were examined with similar results. The household baptisms mentioned in the New Testament failed me for they possessed no remotest hint that infants were present. On the contrary, I remember very distinctly that in every case studied in my crude way the startling fact came out prominently that there was proof that each one baptized had previously exercised faith for himself. The concordance was patiently consulted but no relief came. About Friday the preacher insisted on having his text. I think now that there was in his eye a twinkle of almost cruel pleasure over my discomfiture and awkwardness as I made my lame excuses of absence from books and counseling friends, lack of time, etc. With the assurance on my part that he should hear from me again on this subject, the preacher was left to select his own text according to his liking.”
“How many times we have heard a Preacher announce a text, and then immediately depart from it on an excursion over land and sea, and never come back to the text again. When the sermon is over we feel like saying what Mandy said to Sam after he had ridden the merry-go-round at the circus for one solid hour: ‘Sam, you’ve been gone an hour and spent a whole dollar, but you ain’t been nowhere!’ My father used to tell of a deacon who slipped a note on the preacher’s pulpit saying ‘Stick to your text—and some of it will stick to us.’ To advertise a text and then ignore it is fraudulent advertising!”
M. R. DeHaan, Bread For Each Day, Zondervan, 1962, June 30
“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”
Jehovah God, in Exodus 20:12
“Even if your parents share values and views and a world view you do not have, you are biblically obligated to honour them; which means to spend time with them and to love on them, and to go visit them.
“You will cease to have a strong country, America, if we do not have kids honouring their parents.
“The closer that you stay with your parents, even though you have disagreements, the better you will be and your nation will be.”
Charlie Kirk
Hebrews 11:21 By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.
“and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff; not that he worshipped the top of his staff, as the Vulgate Latin version renders it, either his own, or Joseph’s, or any little image upon the top of it; which would be an instance of idolatry, and not faith, contrary to the scope of the apostle; nor is there any need to interpret this of civil worship and respect paid to Joseph, as a fulfilment of his dream, and with a peculiar regard to Christ, of whom Joseph was a type; whereas, on the contrary, Joseph at this time bowed to his father, as was most natural and proper, Gen. xlviii. 12 nor is there any necessity of supposing a different punctuation of Genesis xlvii. 31 and that the true reading is not Mittah, a bed, but Matteh; a staff, contrary to all the Targumsf, and the Talmudg, which read Mittah, a bed, seeing it is not that place the apostle cites or refers to; for that was before the blessing of the sons of Joseph, but this was at the same time; and the apostle relates what is nowhere recorded in Genesis, but what he had either from tradition, or immediate revelation; or else he concludes it from the general account in Genesis xlviii and the sense is, that Jacob, having blessed the two sons of Joseph, being sat upon his bed, and weak, he leaned upon the top of his staff, and worshipped God, and gave praise and glory to him, that he had lived to see not only his son Joseph, but his seed also, see Gen. xlviii. 2, 11, 20.”
John Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament, Vol. III, 1746, p. 435
“Under no circumstances could we be induced to sprinkle or pour water upon a subject in the name of the Trinity and call it baptism. It is not only not commanded by Christ, but it is positively forbidden to be done by him for the act he commanded. If he did not specify the action of baptism, he did not enact a law for baptism, and it has no place in the Christian system. If Christ did specify the act, he did thereby prohibit any other than that act. If immersion be that act, and I have no more doubt of it than I have that the author of Christian baptism is ‘the Christ of God,’ then affusion is no baptism, but the counterfeit of, or human substitute for Christian baptism, and whenever performed for baptism is in contravention of the expressed will of Christ.”
Below is an illustration used by several different people. Harry Ironside told of hearing it when he was a small boy. This particular one is from M. R. DeHaan:
“Some early settlers were traveling together across the western prairies of the United States. One day they were horrified to see a fire fanned by strong wind coming their way.
“As the flames raced closer and closer, one man, to the amazement of the others, set fire to a large patch of grass downwind. The tinder-dry grass burned quickly and left behind a charred and barren area. Then he told them to move onto the burned-over place. They watched as the fire swept toward them until it reached the burned area—and then stopped! They were safe as the fire passed by them on both sides.
“The fires of God’s judgment will descend on a wicked world, but God has provided a burned-over place. At Calvary, the fire of God’s justice was met by Jesus. He bore our sin there and fully paid for our transgressions. He made full satisfaction for our sins, and we who have taken our stand by faith in the finished work of Christ are safe in the burned-over place. There is nothing left to burn.”
The fires of God’s judgment burned themselves out on Jesus Christ. The death of Christ is the burned-over place. All who are in Jesus Christ are forever safe. In Christ they are found standing where the fire has already been!
The Baptists of England from this date [1575] to 1641 underwent severe persecutions, but they increased in numbers. After the abolition of the Court of High Commission and the Court of Star Chamber in 1641, when they were able to assert themselves, there were a surprising number of them in London and throughout England. Dexter himself gives the names of eleven churches in England as early as 1626. (The True Story of John Smyth, p. 42).
...
It is altogether possible that these ‘dissenters’ [mentioned in Kiffin manuscript] may not have known that there were immersionists in London, and that such persons may have lived on the same square with them. Under the persecutions of the Court of High Commission and the Court of Star Chamber it was not safe for one to announce himself a Baptist.
John T. Christian (1854-1925), Did They Dip? pp. 35, 156.
“It is noteworthy that Tyndale never thought to adopt such a strategy, despite his concern that the boy at the plow know the Bible. He understood perfectly well that many of the English words a faithful translation required him to employ would be unknown to many of his readers; however, his response to this problem was not to use only common words but to append to his translation a glossary of difficult terms. (At a time when real dictionaries were unheard of, this was a brilliant and innovative solution. Alas, Tyndale did not live to implement it.) Otherwise, readers would be in the lamentable situation of being unable to distinguish Tyndale’s words from those of the text; and if he intruded his own words—even if those words were only meant to clarify or explain the Bible’s—he would, by his own lights, have become a traitor rather than a translator.“...Wycliffe: ‘The faithful whom he calls in meekness and humility of heart, whether they be clergy or laity, male or female, bending the neck of their inner man to the logic and style of Scripture will find In it the power to labour and the wisdom hidden from the proud.’ God indeed reveals to the ‘little children’ what is hidden from the ‘wise and understanding,’ but transforming oneself into a little child is the arduous work of a lifetime. Christ’s yoke is easy and his burden light, but we don’t like bending our necks to receive it—and no translation, however it accommodates itself to our language and understanding, can change that.”
Alan Jacobs criticizes the trend in modern translation toward preferring clarity for the reader above fidelity to the original.
“In translation, fidelity is the ultimate imperative and trumps every other virtue: even clarity or readability…modern translations operate under the (perhaps unconscious) ‘feeling that the Bible, because of its canonical status, has to be made accessible—indeed, transparent, to all.’…
“…later translators of Scripture have operated under the (again, often unconscious) assumption that the ideal experience of reading Scripture is one in which clarity manifests itself fully and immediately.
“Undergirding this assumption is, I think, a memory of Christ’s disturbing statement: ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.’ Does this suggest that any translation that presents more difficulties to the ‘little children’ than to the ‘wise and understanding’ is somehow un-Christian? The idea may seem absurd, but it would be unwise to underrate the pressure of such thoughts in an assertively egalitarian, democratizing, and anti-elitist culture like our own today. Only in such a culture would something like ‘dynamic equivalence’ models of translation be developed, because dynamic equivalence—which encourages translators to ask how we in our time and place might say whatever the Bible is taken to say—allows one to deal with difficult passages in the original text not by translating them but by interpreting their obscurities out of existence. Such passages must be cleared away, whenever possible, in order to make the crooked places straight and the rough places plain. The simple and problem-free translation then offers itself as evidence of the simplicity and problem-freeness of the biblical text itself. The translators thus stand to their readers in loco parentis: the ‘little children’ never have to know what struggles their scholarly fathers undertook in order to protect them from the agonies of interpretive confusion.”
Alan Jacobs, Wayfaring: Essays, Pleasant and Unpleasant, Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010, pp. 12-14
“The New World Translation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses uses the name ‘Jehovah’ to translate κύριος in many places, so as to prevent anyone from identifying Christ with God.
“Other ‘Sacred Name’ cults put great emphasis on the use of the tetragrammaton, and also upon the supposed Hebrew form of the name of Jesus, for reasons that are not always clear. Some seem to believe that particular Hebrew pronunciations of the names for God and Christ are a mark of the true Church, and that there is even something wrong with using the Graecized and Anglicized form ‘Jesus’ instead of ‘Yeshua,’ or ‘Jehoshua,’ ‘Yahshua,’ or whatever pronunciation is being put forth as most authentic. The New Testament writers obviously cared nothing for all that. It stems from the dilettantish interest in Hebrew that one often finds among modern Pentecostals, Adventists, and other unorthodox people, who fancy that they are ‘restoring’ something essential to true Christianity by using Hebrew names and words which the writers of the New Testament did not feel any need to use. These Hebrew words are then invested with sectarian significance. We sense that their desire to use a different name for God is connected with a tendency to reject the concept of God associated with historic Christian orthodoxy. Their Yahweh is not our Lord, their Yeshua is not our Jesus, their Messiah is not our Christ. Probably an inordinate interest in using the tetragrammaton also involves the same superstitious thinking that led some people in ancient times to use it as a magical word, with the idea that the power of the Deity can be summoned by the correct intonation of his name. This does not honor God, it spurns the custom of the apostles, and it would probably not have been tolerated by them.”
Michael Marlowe, Bible Research: Internet Resources for Students of Scripture
“Instructively, the first three heroes of faith listed in Hebrews are from Genesis 4-6: Abel, Enoch, and Noah. All believed God, but their destinies were significantly different. Abel believed God and died. Enoch believed God and did not die. Noah believed God, and everyone else died in the Flood; eventually he died a natural death at the good old age of 950 years. We cannot dictate where faith will lead. The human tendency is to see only Enoch as the example of faith, but Abel is also given as our example. What all three have in common is that they walked by faith and pleased God. That faith is an example to us.”
“Yet Noah was not perfect. The striking parallel and contrast between the saintly Noah before and during the Flood (6:8-9) and the drunken sinner, who exposes his nakedness after the Flood (9:21), directs the audience to look to God, not humans, for salvation.”
Bruce K. Waltke, Cathi J. Fredricks, Genesis: a Commentary, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001, p. 155
“Let us correct our attitude of getting older. Believers must not allow the carnal thinking of this world to form our opinions and attitudes. The reason so much emphasis is placed on youth, physical strength and beauty, riches and possession is because this is all that the worldling has and when these are gone-all is gone! Actually age, while it mars outward beauty, should bring us real lasting beauty-which is inward grace, mercy and peace. Age will decrease our physical strength but should increase our spiritual strength. We grow in faith, love, and patience. Age may make our arms weak and tremble, but it should establish us more firmly on the everlasting arm. Age may make the present less sure, but it gives us assurance of the certainty of the future. I’ll always be young in Christ! My steps may be slower, but I walk with the King. My eyes may be dimmer, but as I see less of the world, I see more of my Lord. My ears may be dull, but I hear His Voice more clearly. My body may be weak, but I am stronger in faith. I may not know the latest story, but I know the old, old story a little better. I may not be surrounded by as many human admirers, but I am surrounded by a heavenly host which waits to take me home.”
Henry T. Mahan, 13th Street Baptist Church
The true Christian was intended by Christ to prove all things by the Word of God, all churches, all ministers, all teaching, all preaching, all doctrines, all sermons, all writings, all opinions, all practices. These are his marching orders. Prove all by the Word of God; measure all by the measure of the Bible; compare all with the standard of the Bible; weigh all in the balances of the Bible; examine all by the light of the Bible; test all in the crucible of the Bible. That which cannot abide the fire of the Bible, reject, refuse, repudiate, and cast away. This is the flag which he nailed to the mast. May it never be lowered!
A church which does not honor the Bible is as useless as a body without life, or a steam engine without fire. A minister who does not honor the Bible is as useless as a soldier without arms, a builder without tools, a pilot without compass, or a messenger without tidings.
J. C. Ryle, Light from Old Times
