Fire By Night

     As a man that grows weary of David French trying to flush the Church down the secular immorality toilet, let me just state simply that, as faithful Believers, we should not want the most liberties, or want protected the most liberties, but the most just liberties.       A classically liberal society doesn’t protect or represent the most liberties, as French seems to think. Anarchy actually presents the most liberties, but it is the most untenable and unjust system of all, if it can even rightly be called a system, as it is ruled entirely by hedonistic might-makes-right. Anarchy is pure chaos made barely-political, the most extreme sins given form in political individualism, the equal opposite of Knox-opposed tyranny, making the individual the governing tyrant instead of the corrupt body.       No, we don’t want unfettered Liberty, as man is wicked by nature. Rather, we want the most just liberties, liberties granted by God and ...

     A pastor in my area, a long-time friend of mine and someone I might’ve once considered theologically conservative, said recently to my wife at a gathering that, “not all Scripture is relevant for today.” This infuriated me for a number of reasons, and so I’m going to spend a few lines examining those reasons.       To deny the relevancy of all Scripture, the entirety and breadth of the canon of God’s Word, to say that some may not be culturally relevant (Genesis 6:5-13), is to firstly deny God’s place in culture (Romans 2:15), more importantly to say that culture is denied separately from Christ (Hebrews 1:3), that Christ does not rule as King and define our culture sovereignly (Ephesians 1:20-21, Revelations 1:4-5). As well, it is to deny Christ, or deny Christ’s role as the Word of God (John 1:1-3), complete and perfect, and to deny His teachings which are for all of life (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Thirdly, it is to remove by verbal doctrine or belief...

     An argument was put to me recently that “objective facts” are rooted in truth (little “t”) that is not connected to Scripture, to the Holy Spirit, to the God of reality who created reality, like gravity not being connected to the God who controls it, or nature not to its Creator.       It was patently absurd.       To start, expecting objective truth from those who deny objective truth is like being able to smell the color seven: those that deny absolute truth probably “can,” but in the light of actual truth it is utter madness.       Nature was created by God, nature which is governed by laws, by physics, by absolutes, by mathematics, and these things are unchangeable because God Himself, the God of order, the God who created order, structured order, desires order, and who rules over order, rules over reality and reigns over His creation meticulously (Colossians 1:15-17). To deny God is to deny nature, and ...

Amidst the uncertainty, chaos and sin, the leaves still turn.  The seasons still change.  The beauty still shines.  The leaves still turn because there is still order.  The leaves still turn because God is good.  The leaves still turn because God is gracious.  The leaves still turn because Jesus is Lord.  Christ still came.  And we are still very much without excuse. 

  You cannot "unearn" what you did not earn.  You cannot "undeserve" what you did not, do not, and will not deserve.  You cannot redefine what you did not define.  You cannot purpose what you did not create.  Let's break this down, shall we?  Our salvation cannot be "unearned," because we did not earn it. Same with love.  We cannot "undeserve" our salvation, our every day filth undeserving of that which we did not, and will never, deserve in the first place. These things are called grace. It is unmerited, unearned, undeserved, and it is thrust upon us by a Living and Infinite God who justly must rend us with His holy wrath, but instead poured out his radical grace upon an unmeriting, unearning, undeserving race of evil things that deny and defy his state of Holiness at every turn. We hated Him, and He loved his with the blood of His Son. As for definition, we cannot redefine ourselves, find ourselves, discover ourselves, name ourselves, p...

     During the Exodus, Yahweh traveled in front of the Israelites as a column (or pillar) of smoke by day and a column of fire by night (Exodus 13).  In the beginning of John 1, Jesus enters our world as a Light in the darkness.  The Psalmist declares in Psalm 119 that the Word of God is a lamp and light that guides our feet along the path.  It seems to me that we live in darkness, and that we need light.  Hopefully this blog will grant some of that to some of you.      Oh, where are my manners?  I am truly terrible at introductions.  A little bit about myself, I suppose, would not be out of order, am I right?  Let's see, now.  I am a bearded man of many flaws and imperfections, a father and humorist, a storyteller, a theological obsessive,  a reformer, a Chestertonian, a logician, a Fire handler, a covenanter, a baptizer, a servant of the True King, a citizen of both Middle Earth and Narnia, and more to come in...