Spurgeon's account of a visit to a Roman Catholic Church

Here is an account of Spurgeon's visit to a Catholic service in Belgium, when he visited there with his wife in 1860:

In Brussels, I heard a good sermon in a Romish church. The place was crowded with people, many of them standing,though they might have had a seat for a halfpenny or a farthing; and I stood, too; and the good priest — for I believe he is a good man, — preached the Lord Jesus with all his might. He spoke of the love of Christ, so that I, a very poor hand at the French language, could fully understand him, and my heart kept beating within me as he told of the beauties of Christ, and the preciousness of His blood, and of His power to save the chief of sinners.

He did not say, ‘justification by faith,’ but he did say, ‘efficacy of the blood,’ which comes to very much the same thing. He did not tell us we were saved by grace, and not by our works; but he did say that all the works of men were less than nothing when brought into competition with the blood of Christ, and that the blood of Jesus alone could save.

True, there were objectionable sentences, as naturally there must be in a discourse delivered under such circumstances; but I could have gone to the preacher, and have said to him, ‘Brother, you have spoken the truth;’ and if I had been handling the text, I must have treated it in the same way that he did, if I could have done it as well.

I was pleased to find my own opinion verified, in his case, that there are, even in the apostate church, some who cleave unto the Lord, — some sparks of Heavenly fire that flicker amidst the rubbish of old superstition, some lights that are not blown out, even by the strong wind of Popery, but still cast a feeble gleam across the waters sufficient to guide the soul to the rock Christ Jesus.” (Quoted in Lewis Drummond, Spurgeon: Prince of Preachers, 343-344).

This came from Mouw's Musings.

Quote of the Day

Life actually is a dress rehearsal
John Richardson, aka The Ugley Vicar

The silent period?

Protestants often call the intertestamental period The Silent Period, emphasising that the writings between the OT and NT are not to be considered Scripture.

But I had not realised that 1 Maccabees itself tells us that the intertestamental period was a silent period, where folk were waiting for a genuine prophet to arise. The article in the new Lutheran Study Bible cites 1 Macc 4:46; 9:27 and 14:41, all of which make this assertion.

Interesting!

Hat tip to Justin Taylor

Listening to Leon

From time to time some of my international internet buddies have expressed their appreciation of Leon Morris, Australian author of commentaries and theological books.

I listened to his talk on Christians in Relation to Society yesterday, which is his exposition of 1 Corinthians 8 and 10. He would have also spoken on chapter 9, but passed over it as the time allotted was running out.

It is most interesting to hear him speak so colloquially, after having read his books in formal prose.

You can download some talks of his, including this one from Gospel Coalition

In the middle of the talk he cracks a joke, but writes the punchline on the whiteboard [I presume], so I never got to hear it!

He uses the fairly conservative verse by verse expositional method, but manages to make this interesting.

The article about him in Elwell's Bible Interpreters of the 20th century: a selection of evangelical voices was a great read. He was born in Lithgow, about forty minutes closer to Sydney from where I live, and he served the Bush Church Aid Society, one of the Christian charities I support. One of his pastorates was in the bush at Warren, which is a few hours further west from where we live.

Joan and I have a family photo of me with my first-born, aged about 10 months or so on a blanket at a picnic in Warren. I also have students from there whom I teach at a local independent high school.

If you haven't heard him speak, I think you would find it interesting. At one point in the talk, he betrayed his age, which you will definitely notice if you listen carefully.

The Yarts

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10. The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.
SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.

NIV2011 FAQs

There are two interesting pages of answers here to questions many people would ask about the NIV to be updated and released in 2011, the 500th anniversary of the release of the King James Version.

Tim Keller resource

A lot of good sermon material is freely available on the internet. John Piper's sermons are available in text, audio and the later ones in video format.

Other speakers choose to sell their talks, but may give some away.

Tim Keller, of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York has a few that are provided freely, and the link points you to a collection of 150. The titles are intriguing. If the talks are as as good as the titles, they should be terrific.

I have usually found his messages to be easy to listen to and faithful to the Bible's message. I am expecting this is the case with this collection.

Bill Mounce joins NIV2011 team

It has recently been announced that Bill Mounce, chair of ESV NT committee, has joined the NIV2011 committee.

As one who has appreciated and read all of the NIV, the TNIV and the ESV, I welcome this addition to the committee.

I wonder if there will be less histrionics by the ESV crowd about the new NIV, than there was over the TNIV? I certainly hope so.

What is the unborn?

Scott Klusendorf says that the abortion debate turns on one key question.

What is the Unborn?

I find his arguments compelling. But I know that others will not want to concede that he is right.

Pro-life advocates contend that elective abortion unjustly takes the life of a defenseless human being. This simplifies the abortion controversy by focusing on just one question: Is the unborn a member of the human family? If so, killing him or her to benefit others is a serious moral wrong. It treats the distinct human being, with his or her own intrinsic worth, as nothing more than a disposable instrument. Conversely, if the unborn are not human, elective abortion requires no more justification than having a tooth pulled. As Gregory Koukl points out, "If the unborn are not human, no justification for elective abortion in necessary. But if the unborn are human, no justification for elective abortion is adequate." (Koukl, Precious Unborn Human Persons, p. 7)

This is not to say that abortion is easy for most women. To the contrary, a decision to have one may be psychologically complex and perhaps even agonizing for some. But the topic today is not psychology, but morality: Can we know what's right even if our emotions are conflicted?

Everyone agrees that abortion kills something that's alive. After all, dead things don't grow! But whether it's right to take the life of any living being depends entirely on the question: What kind of being is it?

Some people want to ignore that question altogether. They simply assume the unborn are not human beings like you and me.


Here's how to clarify things: Whenever you hear an argument for elective abortion, ask yourself if this particular justification would also work to justify killing toddlers or other humans. If not, the argument assumes the unborn are not fully human, like toddlers. But again, that's the issue, isn't it?


"Women have a right to make their own private decisions."

Imagine that a woman has a two-year-old in front of her. May she kill him or her as long as the killing is done in the privacy of the bedroom? Of course not. Why not? Because the child is a human being. If the unborn are also human, they should not be killed in the name of privacy any more than we'd kill a toddler for that same reason.

Of course, abortion advocates respond that killing a toddler and killing a fetus are two different things, like comparing apples with oranges. But that's the issue isn't it? Are the unborn human beings, like toddlers? That's the one issue that matters. We can't escape it.

"But many poor women cannot afford to raise another child."

When human beings get expensive, may we kill them? Suppose a large family collectively decides to quietly dispose of its three youngest children to help ease the family budget. Would this be okay?

Abortion advocates agree it's wrong to kill the children, but insist that aborting a fetus is not the same as killing a child. Ah, but that's the issue: Is unjustly killing a fetus morally the same as unjustly killing a two-year old? So, once again, the issue is the same: What is the unborn?

"A woman should not be forced to bring an unwanted child into the world."

Abortion advocates sometimes argue that killing the fetus is the more humane thing to do. "Who wants to be part of a family that rejects you? Everyone has a right to be wanted." And if you aren't wanted, may we kill you? Suppose a toddler is unwanted and we have good reason to think that by the time he's five, he'll also be abused and neglected. Should we kill him now to spare him future trouble?

The answer is obviously no, but it brings us back to the one issue that matters: What is the unborn?

"No woman should be forced to raise a child with physical disabilities."

Suppose that you have in front of you a small boy who is mentally disabled. He's not very bright, cannot speak or understand much of what is said, and looks strange from head to toe. Would it be morally permissible to kill him because of his condition?

Abortion advocates agree that we cannot destroy him, that we should treat him with the same care we provide all disabled human beings. But again, this raises a prior question: If the disabled unborn are human, like the disabled toddler, should we kill them for not meeting our standard of perfection? Thus, the issue that matters most in the abortion debate isn't disability. It's "What is the unborn?"

"Every woman has a right to decide what is right and wrong for herself."

Would you force your morality on an abusive mother who was physically mistreating her two-year-old? You better. No human being should be abused.

You see the issue is not about forcing morality; it's not about privacy; it's not about economic hardship; it's not about physical disabilities; it's not about unwantedness. The issue is reduced to one question: What is the unborn?

How God called John Piper to become a pastor

I love this story and am posting it here so that I may be able to find it again. I discovered John Piper about 16 years after he began at Bethlehem Baptist Church, when his church was generously posting the text of his sermons online.

There is now a Desiring God Ministry website with the audio and video of his messages as well, and also the full text of many of his books freely downloadable.

John Piper gets his share of criticism, mainly for his conservatism and for his stance on the roles of men and women. I think that we can thank God for the vast majority of what Piper says and does. We can thank God that he models in his life the things he says in his talks and writings.

I love what he is doing with Facebook and Twitter, his latest attempt to use the modern technology in Christ's service.