Subversive Christian Unity

This is a duck. I, of course, as a Christian with Pentecostal leanings, am hard to sell on cessationism . It is like explaining to a duck farmer that ducks are extinct, like the dodo. So, what is that pudgy bird I just saw waddling by and quacking? The cessationist can only answer that what I saw isn't really a duck. On such a view, a word of knowledge that proves true and useful was just a really good hunch. Something similar is said of a prophetic utterance that brings clearer light to a situation--it was just really good extemporaneous preaching manufactured by the speaker's subconscious. Tongues in contemporary use are simply gibberish and interpretations are the same, or at best, like the so-called prophecy, a sensitive use of intuition. A great concern of cessationist theology is that new prophecy might somehow undermine the authority of scripture. But how can that be, when real deal Pentecostals and charismatics use scripture as their yardstick? The canon is clo...

It is a strikingly odd thought. You can work for Christian unity by preaching the wrath of God, for doing so is a corrective for both antinomian and legalistic heresies. There is an appalling tendency in some circles to preach about God's mercy without preaching about his wrath. As a friend of mine says, "If not for the wrath you don't need the mercy." That is very astute. Salvation is being saved from something. It is not only being saved from our own folly either, but from eternal consequences of that folly. It is fashionable to preach in an antinomian tone that suggests that all of the gospel is sweetness and light. That kind of preaching is not the whole counsel of God. It leaves the hearers thinking that bedrock Christian ideas about right and wrong are sort of optional and nice and it will be no great problem if you continue to do your own thing. God's grace will cover it, surely? That is a point of schism in the church world. If you do not take note...

"The traditional viewpoint makes our families inherently part of the sacred order of things, a consistent part of, and continuous with, what the church says, is and models to the world." I here revisit the topics of the bride of Christ and human marriage. To the extent that churches do not honor Christian marriage in its historical, first and lasting meaning they mar their witness about Christ and the way he honors his church. The one is our example to understand the other. If we say that men may marry men, or women women, or that marriage is not that important and Christian men and women can casually cohabit and have affairs or divorce for convenience just like their worldly neighbors, we do not have an example to use in illustration when we talk about Christ and the church. We also have lots of people not as happy as they ought to be, in a matter that should be joyous, even profoundly so, the joining of women and men. So then, consider this a plea, pleadingly plead...

Via Facebook: As I have noted previously, Christian service is not only the right thing to do; it can be a powerful force for Christian unity. When people of different churches do the works of the gospel together it creates a strong sense that we are in fact on the same team. So we should not only be doing those things, we should all be doing them together where possible.