Currently Reading SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine By Wayne Grudem see related

More on Edwards.

Hebrews 13: 7 Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. 8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Edwards is an intersection where so much comes together. I have found him through the trail left by my favorite dead preachers, the Serampore Trio (William Carey, Joshua Marshman, and William Ward). In him we find Reform and Revival, Preaching and Pastoring, Holiness and Hedonism, America and the Old world, Modernism and Puritanism. He stands by (to paraphrase Packer) the main stream flowing into the nourishing, rushing river of Christianity that extends all the way back to the foot of the Cross and rushes forward to the throne of God. Let us come and drink, may we be refreshed and hydrated to sing the song of the Glory of God.

Fun fact about Edwards:

When Edwards as a young man was engaged to Sarah Pierpoint, to fight "evil thoughts" [lust] he would do long math problems.

EDWARDS RESOURCES

Currently Reading A God Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards see related

A God Entranced Vision of All things

 (This is coming in the mail....yes I am a dork)

Psalm 79:9 

Help us, O God of our salvation,
for the glory of your name;
deliver us, and atone for our sins,
for your name's sake!

Yes indeed. I am still alive. I am alive for my happiness and the Glory of God, because they are one in the same. Pure Happiness is found in the Being who is Himself full of Himself, and His Glory, as I am learning from this great Dead Preacher, Jonathan Edwards.

Life has been busy, it has been a full summer, I will be updating more soon, but put on your seat belts if you plan to read because (Bobby) I may have a soap box or two.

Greetings to all, let me know how you are.

If you are ever in the New Orleans area, let me know. We will have to have breakfast at the Soul Food place across the street....It is amazing....I had catfish, grits, toast, eggs and sweet tea for breakfast. (Definitely a once or month or less kinda thing).

May the Lord bless thee and keep thee. May he make His face shine upon thee.

QOD__________________________________________________

“Prayer is as natural an expression of faith as breathing is of life”

Jonathan Edwards

Slow and Steady doesn't necessarilly get you across the street

Today, I committed a selfless and valiant deed of compassion. I say this not with an air of false humility, but with all the due reflection and introspection that is due such an event.

You see, as I was taking my morning stroll, I happened upon a fellow by the name of Mr. Heim A. Turtle. (or, perhaps it was his wife, Shelly, it is hard to tell.) Perhaps he had had too much breakfast, perhaps he wanted to take it easy, or perhaps he was just enjoying the sun, but there he was, in the middle of the road. So, placing my pointer and thumb from each hand on the rim of his mobile home I alighted him and placed him safely on the other side, with no word of thanks.

I could not, however, begrudge the little fellow, so I wished him well on his merry way.

Then my thoughts turned to myself. How often am I like this turtle? So set on being in the middle of the road, where I get the most attention and not in the danger of being solidly on one side or the other. Here I can see more, and perhaps am listened to more (indeed at least feel popular), but in the end I mostly likely just get squashed by a truck.

I hope that though I may snap, hiss, and back in to my shell as if nothing is happening, that I do have kind friends that would help me across the street. This amphibious life style of living between two worlds is unacceptable. I may come across as cold blooded, tough skinned, and stubborn, but I need guidance from time to time.

So my advice to you is, don’t sit in the middle of the road, and help someone across even if they give you “shell” (they will thank you when a big ole pick up truck comes rolling by).

QOD- “They say between heaven and hell there is a great chasm, but that chasm is no place for any man.”

– Johnny Cash

Currently Reading Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold By C.S. Lewis see related

Bottoms up?

 my cup overflows.

Psalms 23:5 (HCSB)

My cup overflowed immediately this morning.

I have this really nifty coffee maker in my dorm room at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary that does not require a pot, one is just to nudge the mug against a button and caffeinated nectar is dispensed and rolls out as black gold with its aromatic fragrance seeping across the morning’s grayness with eye opening sharpness.

This of course is the plan. However, if one has cleaned out his or her coffee cup to which the morning’s grayness is gray enough that he or she (in this case he) cannot tell the difference between the bottom and top of the cup, then there is a technical problem. Thus my traumatic early morning experience.

See, yesterday, I had the bright idea to clean my poor coffee mug that sees heavy usage and does not have the luxury of chewing Trident White gum© which removes 60% of stains! Every time I use the morning chalice, it is stained further by the java. So, I cleaned it. I cleaned it so well in fact, that the white shined so well ( no cavities!) that I could not determine this morning the difference between the top and the bottom. Dispensing the coffee, I was soon made aware of my mistake, my cup ran over immediately.

The question is of course, is there any wisdom, whatsoever to be strained from this experience? Yes. (1) If you are thinking of cleaning your favorite coffee mug, think “Is this really what I want to do?” (2) If your intention is for the Lord to fill your cup, make sure it is right side up! In fact, some of us are so afraid of getting dirty, we do not allow the Lord to fill our lives with the things He wants to put there. Somehow we have convinced ourselves we must have  a “neat and clean” existence rather than getting our hands stained with the world.

Remember, in this case, “bottoms up” is not a good thing.

Death...Jesus made it all different

†DEATH ITSELF HAS TURNED BACKWARDS-

Aslan from the Chronicles of Narnia

†In the Russian church people greet one another with the expression:

“Christ is Alive.”

Paul wrote that Jesus would be the firstborn among “many brethren.”

The Empty Tomb

     ¹ Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. ² So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!"

     ³ So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. ⁴ Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵ He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. ⁶ Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, ⁷ as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. ⁸ Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. ⁹ (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)

John 20:1-9 (NIV)

It’s not who gets there first….who are you bringing with you? We tend to get there and hang out at the empty tomb, and forget there are others who have not heard.

†GREEK WORD
Αναστάσεως, - Anastaseos

The importance of the verb form in the gospels is that it should be translated “Christ was raised.” Meaning God the Father did the raising through the Holy Spirit. This is important given that many have suggested a “swooning theory” or that Jesus passed out for ‘three days.’ He was dead.

Can God make a stone so big He cannot move it? Yes, He did….then He moved it.

This is why the Trinity is so important.

†CENTRAL TO CHRISTIANITY

¹² But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? ¹³ If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. ¹⁴ And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

1 Cor 15:12-14 (NIV)

Paul would say, “we are of all men to be most pitied.”

†PAUL IN ATHENS

¹⁸ A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, "What is this babbler trying to say?" Others remarked, "He seems to be advocating foreign gods." They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.

Acts 17:18 (NIV)

Here Paul preached so much about “the resurrection” that they thought he was preaching about two separate deities.

†^{BAPTISM AS A SYMBOL OF RESURECTION}

⁴ We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Romans 6:4 (NIV)

“Raised to walk in Newness of life.” The Christian life is meant to be lived in the “power of the resurrection.”

†Power of the Resurrection

¹⁰ I long to know him in the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, by sharing the likeness of his death; ¹¹ if by any means I might attain to the resurrection from the dead!

Pressing Toward the Mark

¹² I do not say that I have already won, or am already perfect, but I am passing on to lay hold on the prize for which also Christ has laid hold of me. ¹³ Brothers, I do not regard myself to have yet laid hold of it; but this one thing I do, forgetting what is behind me, but straining every nerve toward that which lies ahead, ¹⁴ I am ever pressing on toward the goal, for the prize of God’s heavenward call in Christ Jesus.

Phil 3:10-14

Paul gives us the context of "the goal" that we allegorize to death. The Resurrection!

†Where is that tomb anyway?

Simple answer: Jerusalem

Gordon’s Calvary vs. Church of the Holy Sepulcher

New and Ancient Ruins....recent column by John

Ruins take on many guises. Perhaps the closest we could come up until recent history here in Mississippi are the remains of the Windsor mansion not far outside Port Gibson Mississippi. Here in the middle of nowhere are towering Corinthian style columns set against the backdrop of woodlands silhouetting the skyline. This evidently large home survived the Civil War having served as Grant’s headquarters only later to be victim to a fire caused by a burning cigarette. Still, if one just imagines he or she can envision a bygone day in which banquets and balls were the norm.

I had some introduction to ruins last year in a February trip to Italy where we spent much of our time observing Roman sites and identifying piles of rocks and some remains as one thing or the other. Some well preserved and some not so well preserved from the Pantheon and Colloseum in Rome to Pompeii which was destroyed by a blast from Vesuvius in 79, AD.

In Israel this past spring break we had opportunity to view more ruins and celebrated sites. Some of them are questioned as to whether or not they could have been the site in which whatever Biblical event may have taken place there. One such debated site is the place in which Christ was crucified and buried, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher being the long recognized Orthodox Christianity, the other being “the Garden tomb” celebrated by Anglicans and various other protestants for just over a century. Then the question comes….is it the significance of the event that is the most real or is it the actual place in which it happened?

This question certainly resounded in my mind as we viewed several sites in the land of the Bible but actually rang true when we were flying back in to Gulfport, Mississippi. There were real live ruins in my own backyard.  I looked up and down a coastline that used to be familiar to me, and still eerily was, but only recognizable in my memory. Having spend the last three summers on the Mississippi coast I have had the opportunity to form many indelible and special memories, but now the places in which many of those memories were formed are no longer there. I am forced of no choice of mine to only visit and visualize in the realm of memory. I cannot go to the actual place physically. This is what it is like to live on the other side of history