Why Celebrate Halloween…


When there is a much better alternative holiday to observe on October 31st!

‘What other holiday?’ you may wonder.

Well, let me enlighten you! The day we most commonly refer to as Halloween is also known as…

REFORMATION DAY!

95-theses.jpg

On October 31st, 1517, Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk, nailed his 95 theses on the castle church door in Wittenburg, protesting the sale of indulgences by the Roman Catholic church. Luther eventually went to trial for heresy at the Diet of Worms where he was asked to repent of his teachings upon penalty of excommunication. His teachings opposed many accepted doctrines and practices of the church. He also challenged the authority and infallibility of the Pope. Luther refused to recant, famously stating: Continue reading →

Blogger’s Block


I apologize for the lack of posting recently. The strange thing is, I have no shortage of topics to write about. In fact I have over 20 drafts awaiting my attention! However, I can’t seem to string two coherent sentences together.  I hear this is a common malady for writers and bloggers, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about it. I may know the root cause of it all – and will share that with you if it does in fact prove to be the case -but until then be patient and don’t abandon me. I will be back – for better or worse for all of blogdem. Please pray that this too shall pass.

God Bless

Brandon L.

The Responsibility-Index


Dan Phillips of Pyromaniacs has posted an excellent article on how every good scripture-driven sermon produces what he has coined as the ‘responsibility-index’. Here is an excerpt:

Perhaps I’ll develop this further another time, but the faithful sermon we hear changes our status before God. Of course, I’m not talking about justification, but about accountability. The pan-Biblical principle is: greater privilege = greater responsibility. In this particular connection, we certainly see it in Jesus’ words: “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin” (John 15:22).

So let’s say you are in a church that teaches the Word of God — which you should be. As you listen to the Word faithfully preached, something is happening to you. This is true whether you feel it or not, whether your behavior changes or not. Something is happening. What is happening?

What is happening is this: your responsibility-index is rising.

Click HERE to read the rest of the article. Continue reading →

Another New Look


Ok, I promise this is the last theme I will play around with – for now.

I’ll let my readers be the final judge on this. Which theme should I keep?

A.) Original theme with Bunyan pic and contrasting black, white and red.

B.) The clean and elegant (but Bunyan-less) blue-gray theme I have used for the past three days

C.) The current theme

Vote now in the comment section.

A New Look


Well, give it to me straight, is my new theme a thumbs up or thumbs down in your opinion? Tell me the truth, I can take it! And I’m not too full of pride to humble myself and revert to my old tried and true theme if public opinion should so necessitate.

What Can Separate Us From the Love of God?


Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died–more than that, who was raised–who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:33-39)

The Apostle Paul asks several important questions in this text. He also gives his readers profound answers.

Who can accuse God’s people of any crime?

No one. God alone justifies the guilty. He answers to no man. He has mercy on whom he will have mercy.

Who has the right to sentence his saints to death and hell?

No one. Christ took our condemnation up on himself. We are free from the sting of death and the punishment of hell.

Who can separate God’s people from the love of Christ, which has been freely bestowed upon them?

Nobody can and nothing will. No circumstance or trial can wedge apart this bond. Through God’s love we have been made more than conquerors. Again, he reiterates that no being (angels nor rulers), thing (the sword, death nor life, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth) or circumstance (tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger) can separate us from the love of God. He even goes so far as to say ‘nor anything else in all creation’. I think that pretty much covers everything, don’t you think? Continue reading →

Is Free Will God’s Greatest Gift?


I had lunch the other day with a good Christian friend. He brought up the issue of free will, a subject that had weighed heavily on his mind recently. He confided with me that he thought he heard the voice of God speak to him one day.

This is what the Lord supposedly told him.

“Free will is the greatest gift I have given to man.” – Or something close to that.

My friend did a remarkable thing after hearing the word of the Lord, something I see very few Christians do when they supposedly hear God speak to them.

He discerned the message.

He rightly divided the word of truth. He questioned the scriptural integrity of those words. He did as Spurgeon advised; judged the right from the almost right.

See, the words ‘free will is God’s greatest gift’ may sound good, right and true on the surface, especially in the midst of a doctrinally confused generation of semi-Pelagians dominating the face of evangelicalism.

But is the notion scriptural? Continue reading →

Pastor Bob DeWaay on Pietism


revival.jpgWhen I hear the word piety I immediately conjure an image of a self-righteous religious pharisee type, praying long-winded prayers, fasting with hunger pangs etched on his face, looking down his nose at the unclean mass of humanity who are not worthy to look up and behold his blinding glory.

A pious person in the world today denotes a religious hypocrite, a sanctimonious spirit, concerned more for dotting his I’s and crossing his T’s rather than walking in love, mercy and compassion toward others. So, if someone ever calls you a pious churchgoer, don’t say ‘thank you’. You’ve just been backhanded!

This caricature has been manufactured by a contemporary evangelicalism that disdains ‘dead orthodoxy’ and ‘dry doctrine’. It is not an accurate depiction of true piety. It actually once had a very positive, biblical definition. Piety meant a deep reverence for God and a sacred obligation to religious duties. Piousness parallels holiness. But there have been some in church history who have taken true piety to unhealthy extremes, creating a man-made system of sanctification outside of God’s ordinary means of grace.

Pastor Bob DeWaay of Twin Cities Fellowship in Minneapolis has written a superb and eye opening article on a heretical movement that has infected the church for centuries. It has taken on various forms and has been called by many different names, but at its core is called ‘pietism’. It is not the same as practicing true piety, but bases its belief off of it.

I’ll let Pastor DeWaay define the term: Continue reading →