Regeneration

The message of the gospel is simple enough for little children to understand, but the heart of man is corrupt and will not absorb the things of God.  A person may sit in church for forty years and hear the gospel time and again until he can recite it by rote, yet never comprehend or trust.  Such is the depth of our depravity.

Such people sit there weekly in your church and in mine.  Merely brushing shoulders with us doesn’t do anything for them.  You can take a corpse to a crowded ballpark, but he won’t watch the game.  Unless the Spirit grants resurrection, the dead remain dead.  The only hope of any person, regardless of his church or family background, is that the Spirit of God will call him savingly unto Christ.  

Excerpt from an article by Pastor Tom Chantry

http://chantrynotes.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/calvinism-and-the-presumed-gospel/

The Choice of Words

OK, so why do we insist on changing the words to old hymns?  I mean, what is the point of changing some of the words in our classic songs?  Is it because we’re more intelligent or poetic than the author?  Because we know the intent of the use of our word versus the word choice of the one who wrote the song?

One Sunday the choice for the opening hymn in church was “Holy, Holy, Holy” by Reginald Heber (1783-1826).  According to Wikipedia, “Reginald Heber was an English clergyman, traveler, man of letters and hymn-writer who, after working as a country parson for 16 years, served as the Anglican Bishop of Calcutta until his sudden death at the age of 42.” He was also an admirer of John Newton and William Cowper and wrote 57 hymns himself.  He was, one would presume, a man who chose his words carefully.  So when he writes the stanza,

“Holy, Holy, Holy! Tho’ the darkness hide Thee. 

Tho’ the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see.”

Did he not purposely choose each of those words for a reason?  Most poets are careful about words.

This is a hymn I have been familiar with and sung as a child many years prior to my conversion. Why would anyone change the term “sinful man” to “sinfulness” as was done in The Christian Life Hymnal (Hendrickson Publisher, Inc. c.2006) ?  What is the purpose?  I admit I’m stymied.  Are those who arbitrarily change the wording of our Hymns feel the same responsibility to change the text of our Bibles as well?

I believe the term “sinfulness” as used in the Christian Life Hymnal to be ambiguous and relates to no one in particular whereas “sinful man” as originally written by Heber is a pointed reference to personal sin.   

Perhaps the “word changers” feel threatened by too personal an application?

How We Come To Be In This Mess.

In ancient Israel, when the nation had turned from God and from his truth and commands as given in Scripture, the prophet Jeremiah cried out that there was death in the city.  He was speaking not only of physical death in Jerusalem but also a wider death.  Because Jewish society of that day had turned away from what God had given them in the Scripture, there was death in the polis, that is, death in the total culture and the total society….

Humanists have been determined to beat to death the knowledge of God and the knowledge that God has not been silent, but has spoken in the Bible and through Christ – and they have been determined to do this even though the death of values has come with the death of that knowledge.

We see two effects of our loss of meaning and values.  The first is degeneracy….The marks of ancient Rome scar us: degeneracy, decadence, depravity, a love of violence for violence’s sake.  The situation is plain.  If we look, we see it.  If we see it, we are concerned.

But we must notice that there is a second result of modern man’s loss of meaning and values which is more ominous, and which many people do not see.  This second result is that the elite will exist.  Society cannot stand chaos.  Some group or some person will fill the vacuum.  An elite will offer us arbitrary absolutes, and who will stand in its way?

Will the silent majority (which at one time we hear so much about ) help?  The so-called silent majority was, and is, divided into a minority and a majority.  The minority are either Christians who have a real basis for values or those who at least have a memory of the days when the values were real.  The majority are left with only their two poor values of personal peace and affluence.

With such values, will men stand for their liberties?  Will they not give up their liberties step by step, inch by inch, as long as their own personal peace and prosperity is sustained and not challenged, as long as the goods are delivered?  ….Much of the church is no help here either, because for so long a large section of the church has only been teaching a relativistic humanism using religious terminology.

I believe the majority of the silent majority, young and old, will sustain the loss of liberties without raising their voices as long as their own life-styles are not threatened.  And since personal peace and affluence are so often the only values that count with the majority, politicians know that to be elected they must promise these things.   Politics has largely become not a matter of ideals – and truth – but of supplying a constituency with a frosting of personal peace and affluence.  They know that voices will not be raised as long as people have these things, or at least an illusion of them.

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794 in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire said that the following five attributes marked Rome at its end:  first, a mounting love of show and luxury (that is, affluence); second, a widening gap between the very rich and the very poor (this could be among countries in the family of nations as well as in a single nation); third, an obsession with sex; fourth, freakishness in the arts, masquerading as originality, and enthusiasms pretending to be creativity; fifth, an increased desire to live off the state.  It all sounds so familiar.  …….we are back in Rome.

(Excerpted from How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture by Francis A. Schaeffer, Published by Fleming H. Revell Company, 1976. Chapter 11, Our Society – pgs. 226- 227)

We're In the Army Now.

I found this "letter from the Army" in my old files and thought I would share it (with revisions) in light of my grandson recently joining the ranks and scheduled to depart for his basic training this month.  Hope you enjoy this lighter fare. 

Dear Ma and Pa,

            I am well.  Hope you are.  I sure miss Wisconsin.  Tell Brother Walt and Brother Elmer that the Army beats working for old man Minch by a mile.  Tell them to join up quick before all the places are filled.  I was restless at first because you got to stay in bed till nearly 6 a.m., but am getting so I like to sleep late.

            Tell Walt and Elmer all you do before breakfast is smooth your cot and shine some things.  No hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to split, fire to lay.  Practically nothing.  Men got to shave but it is not so bad, there’s warm water.

            Breakfast is strong on trimmings like fruit juice, cereal, eggs, bacon, and such, but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, ham, steak, fried eggplant, pie and other regular food.  But tell Walt and Elmer you can always sit between two city boys that live on coffee.  Their food plus yours holds you till noon, when you get fed again.  It’s no wonder these city boys can’t walk much.

            We go on “route marches” which the platoon sergeant says are long walks to harden us.  If he thinks so, it is not my place to tell him different.  A “route march” is about as far as to our mailbox at home.  Then the city guys get sore feet and we all ride back in trucks.  The country is nice but awful flat.  The sergeant is like a schoolteacher.  He nags some.

            The captain is like the school board.  Majors and colonels just ride around and frown.  They don’t bother you none.

            This next will kill Walt and Elmer with laughing.  I keep getting medals for shooting.  I don’t know why.  The bullseye is near as big as a chipmunk head and don’t move.  And it ain’t shooting at you, like the Higgett boys at home.  All you got to do is lie there all comfortable and hit it.  You don’t even load your own cartridges.  They come in boxes.

            Then we have what they call hand-to-hand combat training.  You get to wrestle with them city boys.  I have to be real careful, though.  They break real easy.  It ain’t like fighting with that old bull at home.  I’m about the best they got in this except for that Tug Jordan from over in Barron County.  He joined up the same as me.  But I’m only 5'6" and 130 pounds and he’s 6'8" and weighs near 300 pounds dry.

            Be sure to tell Walt and Elmer to hurry and join before others get onto this setup and come stampeding in.

Your loving daughter,

Gail