Who Said That?

Who Said That?

"The apostle, in this passage [Romans 7], is not treating about a man who is already regenerate through the Spirit of Christ, but has assumed the person of a man who is not yet regenerate. . . . But since it is certain, that the apostle has not, in this chapter, treated of himself personally, as distinguished from all other men of whatsoever condition or order they may be, but that he, under his own person, described a certain kind and order of men, whether they be those who are under the law and not yet regenerate, or those who are regenerate and placed under grace. . ."

Leave your guesses in the comments section below.  No google searches!  The fun is in the guessing!

Update on Monday, May 7, 2007 at 02:29PM by Kim Riddlebarger

As many of you guessed, this quote comes from James Arminius in his lectures on Romans 7.  According to Arminius, this not autobiographical, but reflects the attitude of someone under the conviction of the law.

Is Andy a "He" or an "It"?

Peta is at it again.  The animal rights Nazis are actually requesting that the editor of the Associated Press Stylebook (Norm Goldstein) revise current AP practice so that animals mentioned in news stories no longer be referred to by impersonal pronouns, "it" and "which," but by personal pronouns "she" "he" and "who."

According to Peta's letter (which can be found here: Click here: PETA Media Center > Recent News Releases : PETA CALLS ON AP STYLEBOOK GURUS TO STOP CALLING ANIMALS 'IT',) "As 'the essential global news network,' the Associated Press (AP) should take a progressive step and give animals the respect that they deserve by revising AP style guidelines to reflect the usage of personal pronouns for all animals.  While the world accelerates through the 21st century, progressive ideas are challenging and changing conventional perspectives.

Recently, the American legal system recognized that nonhuman animals deserve legal status beyond that of mere `property' and that abusive treatment of animals is more than simple vandalism.  The public now recognizes that whales, who sing across oceans; great apes, who share more than 98 percent of our DNA; sheep, who can recognize as many as 50 faces after not having seen them for two years; and pigs and chickens, who can learn to operate switches in order to control heat and light in factory-farm sheds, are feeling, intelligent individuals—not objects. Our language should reflect this."

You gotta be kidding me!  Yes, I am a dog-lover.  And yes, Andy's my buddy--even in his old decrepit state.  But he's also my property.  The proof is if he bites someone!  He's not liable, I am!  And while he's my buddy, he exists at my good pleasure.  I own him.  I pay city taxes to have him on my property.  I told him to get a job once, but to him, that means chasing cats off the property.

Only a society as wealthy and godless as ours could even dream of such nonsense as "animal rights" and the editorial use of personal pronouns for animals. 

On the one hand, Andy is clearly a "he."  He has a name (a human one at that). But legally speaking he's an "it"!  If Peta's willing to assume all liability for what he does, I'll consider giving him a few rights . . . Unless and until that happens, he's all mine.
 

New URC Forming in the Washington, DC Area

For anyone interested, there is a new URC congregation forming in the Washington, DC area.  Here's their website if you want more information. Click here: www.urc-dc.org.

If you know anyone in the DC area looking for a confessional "Three-Forms" church, please let them know about this new work.  The church planter is a good friend, and has long been associated with Modern Reformation magazine and the White Horse Inn.  Here's his bio:  

Dr. Brian J. Lee has worked as an editor and writer for Modern Reformation Magazine and the White Horse Inn, a nationally syndicated radio program. A founding member of Christ Reformed Church in Anaheim, California, he led evening worship and taught adult education courses as a seminarian. He is licensed to preach in the United Reformed Churches in Michigan. He holds degrees from Stanford University (B.A.), Westminster Seminary California (Masters) and Calvin Theological Seminary (Ph.D.). He has taught at the Washington, DC and Atlanta campuses of Reformed Theological Seminary, as well as Calvin College and Calvin Seminary, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

 

Here's Your Big Chance . . .

According to a recent article (Click here: TBN on the lookout for 'innovative' Christian programming (OneNewsNow.com), our friends at TBN have "launched a contest in search of quality, independently produced programming that is family-friendly." 

This could be your big chance to propose new programming for Paul and Jan and the TBN network!

"The contest is called the `INNOVATE Program Challenge' and involves each of Trinity Broadcasting Network's four digital networks. Entrants could submit programs at the recent Radio-Television News Directors Association meeting in Las Vegas. Submissions can also be mailed to the network's California offices.

According to TBN's Bob Higley, the content of Christian television is changing. `We are trying to change the face of Christian television and to take it to the next level with all the user-content that's going out on the Internet with YouTube,' he says; `and I understand there's a new website called 'GodTube.' `Well, why not get some of these creative shows and submit them to us and let's see if we can get them on television?'

The Christian broadcasting entity hopes to `capture the imagination' of its viewers, says a press statement about the contest, and to move past the status quo. `The stereotype is that Christian television is basically the TV evangelists up there [delivering] fire-and-brimstone preaching, waving the Bible, and asking for your money,' says Higley. `We don't believe, at TBN, it's like that anymore -- and with the creation of our digital networks, we're really trying to have something for every member of the family.'"

OK, so here's your big chance!  What "innovative programming" would you propose for TBN?  How about an "American Idol" type competition for the best faith-healer? What about a show like "The Osbournes" (remember?  Ozzy and Sharon?), only set around the daily life of Paul and Jan? 

The imagination runs wild with possibilities . . .   Leave your idea in the comments section!

Who Said That?

Who said that?

Our faith, from our ancestors, which we have learned also from you, is this.  We know one God--alone unbegotten; alone everlasting, alone without beginning, alone true, alone possessing immortality, alone wise, alone good, alone master, judge of all, manager, director, immutable and unchangeable, just and good, God of Law, Prophets and New Testament--who begat an only begotten Son before eternal times, through whom he made the ages and everything."

Leave your guess in the comments section below!  No google searches! 

Update on Monday, April 30, 2007 at 11:26AM by Kim Riddlebarger

As some of you guessed, these words come from the arch-heretic Arius (in his letter to Alexander of Alexandria).  Sneaky heretic that he was, Arius goes on to define his earlier statement "begotten before eternal times" to mean, "he [the Son] was created by the will of God before times and ages."

Bad Karma!

For some reason, this picture (and news story--Click here: Buddhist monks clash in Cambodia amid anti-Vietnam protest ) cracked me up--Buddhist monks duking it out with each other in Cambodia.  This monk looks like he knows a thing or two about throwing a punch! 

But the Buddhists are not alone.  Here's a recent story about two people stabbed during a fight between priests and nuns in a convent on the island of Cyprus.  Unfortunately, there were no pictures (Click here: Two stabbed and two arrested in convent fracas - Yahoo! News).

Yes, ours is a fallen race!  The vows undertaken by those in religious orders don't do much to control human sin.  In fact, I'll bet they just make things worse . . .

Now This Is Interesting . . .

According to a recent article in the Jerusalem Post (Click here: Israeli researchers: 'Lucy' is not direct ancestor of humans | Jerusalem Post), it seems like Lucy might not be my second cousin a gazillion times removed after all.

"Tel Aviv University anthropologists say they have disproven the theory that `Lucy' - the world-famous 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found in Ethiopia 33 years ago - is the last ancestor common to humans and another branch of the great apes family known as the `Robust hominids.'  The specific structure found in Lucy also appears in a species called Australopithecus robustus. Prof. Yoel Rak and colleagues at the Sackler School of Medicine's department of anatomy and anthropology wrote, `The presence of the morphology in both the latter and Australopithecus afarensis and its absence in modern humans cast doubt on the role of [Lucy] as a common ancestor.'  The robust hominids were discovered in southern Africa 69 years ago and are believed to have lived between 2 million and 1.2 million years ago. Their jaws and jaw muscles were adapted to the dry environment in which they lived.  Rak and colleagues studied 146 mature primate bone specimens, including those from modern humans, gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans and found that the `ramus element' of the mandible connecting the lower jaw to the skull is like that of the robust forms, therefore eliminating the possibility that Lucy and her kind are Man's direct ancestors. They should therefore, the Israeli researchers said, `be placed as the beginning of the branch that evolved in parallel to ours.'"

Shucks!  I'll guess I have to revise my family tree, again!  At least I had an ancestor on the Mayflower! 

Seriously, as more and more work is done in genetics, the whole evolutionary hypothesis will eventually collapse.  It probably won't change much however, because even if someone rises again from the dead, people still won't believe the gospel (cf. Luke 16:31)--that is unless and until God grants them faith and repentance.  But is sure is interesting to watch the old "consensus" collapse as evidence of a common (and fairly recent) origin of man begins to mount.

Top 25 "Live" Albums

Here's an interesting list of the top 25 "Live" albums of all-time.  Live albums are great because you not only get a "best of" set, you hear the band in the raw, without too much studio trickery.  Not everyone likes them, however, for precisely those same reasons.

I really take issue with this list.  Deep Purple's "Made in Japan" didn't even score an honorable mention, nor did Grand Funk's "Live Album."  No mention of Cream's "Wheels of Fire," or Humble Pie's "Rockin the Fillmore" (which just I fired up in honor of this list).  Hendrix's "Band of Gypsies," got an honorable mention, as did the soundtrack from Woodstock--which I never really liked, except for the Ten Year's After set.  You can tell that my tastes go to sixties rock.

I've listened to a lot of music through the years, and I have never even heard of the winner,  "801" Live.  U2's "Under a Blood Red Sky" finished at # 2 (which is fine by me).  The Who's "Live at Leeds" came in at number 8--that's a great album.  I'd have also like to have seen Edgar Winter and the White Trash's "Roadwork" at least get an honorable mention.  That's one of my all-time favorites.

To see the list, Click here: IGN: Top 25 Live Albums.

Leave your comments below. 

Some Memories of Meredith Kline

Upon hearing the news that Meredith Kline had died (Friday, April 13), came that all-too familiar bittersweet reaction.  On the one hand, I was saddened but not really surprised, since I knew that Dr. Kline had been ill for some time.  On the other, I recalled the words of Psalm 116:15:  "Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints."  I would ask you to pray for Dr. Kline's wife and children (one of whom, Meredith M., was my Hebrew teacher), especially that our gracious God will comfort this family with the promise of Jesus Christ's victory over death and the grave.

I didn't know Dr. Kline very well, if at all.  In fact, I was one of twenty or so students who had him for a course in Peneteuch and then for another class in the Old Testament section of our hermeneutics class.  This was back in the days when Westminster Seminary California had just opened its doors in San Marcos, before the current Escondido campus was ready for students. 

When I was a student at Westminster--back in 1982-84--I was a five-point Calvinist, but was still a functional dispensationalist and adamantly rejected paedobaptism.  I sat through Dr. Kline's lectures struggling to make sense of them, and trying to understand why everyone else felt that it was such a privilege to study under him.  I was just plain lost.  If you've read Kline, you know what I mean.

At the time, my primary theological interest was apologetics.  So, I was especially interested in Dr. Kline's lecture on the documentary hypothesis (JEDP).  I was dismayed when Kline called our attention to JEDP by drawing the letters on the board.  He then drew a red circle around these letters, and dramatically added a slash across them.  And that was it!  I thought he'd go through the evidence point by point which showed this critical reading of the Old Testament to be fallacious.  Instead, Dr. Kline went on to lecture about the fact that the Book of Deuteronomy was structured along the lines of an ancient near-eastern Suzerainty treaty, and made the case that if Deuteronomy was such a treaty document, it must have been written in the middle of the second millennium B.C.  If true, this absolutely destroyed JEDP, by demonstrating that the "D" source was written at one time, nearly a thousand years before the time of Josiah, when critical scholars claim that Deuteronomy was written.  That places one of the books of the Pentateuch back in the days of Moses.  I have used that argument ever since. 

Therefore, it troubles me greatly when some who disagree with Kline's "framework" hypothesis about the creation days (which is a debatable issue), unjustly imply he was some kind of closet liberal.  Kline defended inerrancy loudly and often in class, and his lecture on JEDP was among the most profound and decimating arguments against critical methodology I have ever seen!

And then there was the day when Dr. Kline was late to class.  From the room in which we met, we could look out the window and see off in the distance the freeway off-ramp which people took to exit the freeway and enter the industrial park where the seminary held classes.  Someone noticed a CHP officer giving a ticket to a very unhappy motorist who was gesturing emphatically. You guessed it, it was Dr. Kline.  By the way, his lecture that afternoon was on "cult and culture" and the "two kingdoms."  Dr. Kline didn't think it very funny, but we giggled through the whole lecture.

On another occasion, John Gernster came to lecture on his version of classical apologetics.  Dr. Gerstner said something about Cornelius Van Til, with which Dr. Kline took great umbrage.   Although it was a friendly debate, Dr. Kline was so upset that someone had misrepresented Dr. Van Til (he believed), that his hand was shaking visibly as he raised it to challenge Gerstner's assertion.  Right then and there I understood the influence that Van Til had upon the Westminster faculty.

Upon my graduation from Westminster, I went back and read and then re-read (and then read again) Kline's Structure of Biblical Authority, Kingdom Prologue, and a host of journal articles Dr. Kline had written on eschatology and various biblical passages.  And if you've read my stuff and heard my sermons, you know how Kline has influenced me in so many areas.  Although I didn't really know him personally, I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to sit at his feet, even though it took a while for me to realize the value of what I had heard. 

How many times I have wished that I could go back and take those same courses over again . . .  But at least I have his books and journal articles.  So, even in death, Dr. Kline still speaks.
 

Who Said That?

OK . . .  Who Said that?

"We are not into partcular love or limited atonement.  As a matter of fact we consider it heresy."

Please, no google searches or cheating.  Leave your guess in the comments section below.

Update on Monday, April 23, 2007 at 11:37AM by Kim Riddlebarger

As many of you pointed out, these words came from Jerry Falwell in a recent speech.  Particular redemption is heresy?  What then do we do with a doctrine of the atonement in which Jesus saves no one in particular and only makes it possible for us to save ourselves with God's help--Falwell's view.