What Is Hell? What is Heaven?

Tim Challies quotes Ligon Duncan: "Hell is eternity in the presence of God without a mediator. Heaven is eternity in the presence of God with a mediator."

This Week in Calvinism - April 24, 2009

• A student says that we do right to call ourselves Calvinists because we do not believe Christ.
  
  
• Phil Johnson comments, "In all candor, sometimes saving Calvinism from abuse at the hands of young Calvinists seems a bigger challenge and tougher problem than defending Calvinism from the Arminian misreresentations."
  
  
• Matthew Svoboda discusses why he is a Calvinist.
  
  
• Finally, after hundreds of years, someone has managed to disprove Calvinism. And he did it with only 39 verses!
  
  
• Regarding the Calvinist belief that God wills all things, Paul argues that we have no answer for Jeremiah 7:31, a verse he thinks explicitly says that certain human actions never occurred to God. He quotes the King James: "And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart." OK, so God never commanded them to burn their children, and he never considered commanding them to burn their children. Where's the dilemma here? Surely he isn't suggesting God was caught off-guard.

How Is Your Quiet Time?

From Tim Challies:

Perhaps you, like me, have too often turned quiet time into a performance. If you perform well for God, you enter your day filled with confidence that God will bless you, and that He will have to bless you. You feel that your performance has earned you the right to have a day filled with His presence, filled with blessings, and filled with confidence. And, of course, when you turn in a poor performance, you feel that God is in heaven booing you and heaving proverbial rotten vegetables in the form of removing His presence and, in the words of a friend, dishing out bummers.

Quiet time becomes tyrannical when you understand it as a performance. ...

... So do not allow quiet time to become performance. View it as a chance to grow in grace. Begin with an expression of your dependency upon God’s grace, and end with an affirmation of His grace. Acknowledge that you have no right to approach God directly, but can approach Him only through the work of His Son. Focus on the gospel as the message of grace that both saves and sustains. And allow quiet time to become a gift of worship you present to God, and a gift of grace you receive from Him.

Read the full post here.

Tune in if You Can

What Christians Should Wear

There are areas of liberty in our lives as Christians, but not when it comes to what we should wear. Here's what Paul writes in Colossians 3:12-14:

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

So go ahead and be a legalist on this point.

This Week in Calvinism - April 17, 2009

• SweetSomber asks, "Was Calvin really a Christian?" She wonders because "Calvin's ONE brief account of his conversion, (and that says something right there, considering his life work of writing) contains nothing about receiving Christ as his Savior." What then are we to make of all the conversion experiences documented in the Bible? After all, not a single one talks about "receiving Christ."
  
  
• If you completely ignore history, you too might believe the lie that John Calvin was responsible for having Servetus burned at the stake.
  
  
• Calvinism, the elect, and children.
  
  
• Joshua prefers Universalism over Arminianism and Calvinism. I guess that means God does everything for us rather than his own glory. Sorry, but we are not more important than God.
  
  
• Jonathan Girotti on man's "free" will.
  
  
• Who really limits the atonement?
  
  
• Paul Manata addresses Brian McLaren's "disingenuous orthodoxy."
  
  
• Dan Phillips reminds us that faith really does matter.

A Message to Pastors and Churches

The Power of the Cross

This Week in Calvinism - April 10, 2009

• Paul (the blogger, not the apostle) breaks down Ephesians 1:3-6 in an attempt to prove that predestination doesn't actually mean predestination. (Part 1, Part 2)
  
  
• Triablogue on confessional Calvinism.
  
  
• "With more than 360 historical documents, works of art, and liturgical objects," the German Historical Museum in Berlin has put together the largest European exhibition devoted to John Calvin and his influence.
  
  
• Kevl uses Nicholas Cage's latest movie to expose Calvinism's "determinism" and thereby reveal the difference between Calvinism and Christianity.
  
  
• Denny revisits the tired argument that John Calvin's God is not the God of the Bible. Oh, and he has plenty of links to prove his point.
  
  
• Dan Phillips reminds us that today may be a holy day, but it isn't a pretty day.
  
  
• James White addresses the question, "Was anyone saved at the cross?"

It Was Finished There...

...but the story didn't end there.

(Photo: Alex Haynes)

"My Kingdom Is Not of This World"

A "sermon jam" from Alistair Begg.



(Source: Relevant Revolution)

This Week in Calvinism - April 3, 2009

• Paul Wallace explains why he is saying "Goodbye" to blogging.
  
  
• John MacArthur audio series on the doctrines of grace.
  
  
• Here is Mark Driscoll's closing statement in Nightline's Satan debate that wasn't aired on TV. (You can watch the full debate online here.)
  
  
• When Calvinism wasn't cool.
  
  
• John Piper asks (and answers), "Does God 'lead us into temptation'?"