The Book of the Acts of the Apostles, chapter eight:

[18] And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money,[19] Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.[20] But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.[21] Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God.[22] Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.[23] For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.[24] Then answered Simon, and said, Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me.

For many years now over the last two centuries, men have blithely and boldly come to the Church of Jesus Christ and have offered their ideas about bargaining with the power of God. Foolish men have offered to bring everything to the table from rock-music 'evangelism' to 'casual church' that is light on doctrine and heavy on spiritual 'comfort food' for the fat, lazy, indolent masses. Whatever esteemed thing men have held in high regard, they have always, at one time or another, carried it like Cain's sacrifice to the altar of God. Just like Cain's sacrifice, these prideful offerings have been rejected by God altogether. Oh, the numbers may have swollen, and the approval ratings of the preachers may have risen some significant amount, but the Spirit of God has not been pleased to do anything at all except allow these Pied Pipers of shallow spirituality to lull the unbelieving children of wrath to sleep.

If there has been one constant ruse that Satan has employed to trick the lost sinner into a false sense of security in his compromised beliefs, it is the idea that giving to a worthy cause or making a show of charity towards the church might somehow procure blessings for the giver. In the above passage, we see Simon, one who has spent his time for years fooling people with magic and trickery. Doubtless, he made his living by performing in this way. When he saw the real, God-given ability to preach and see God's sovereign grace displayed in the lives of sinners, however, he simply had no choice but to try and get in on what these men were doing. The only way he saw to do so was to offer money; he had no reason to act as though he believed this activity was truly spiritual. He guessed, however wrongly, that the secret to doing what these men did could be learned if he made a contribution to their well-being and got in good with them.

Watch, friends, the change that came over the heart of Simon when he realized that these Apostles were indeed speaking of and acting within the bounds of a deep and powerful spiritual reality! When it was revealed to Simon that his motives were not only misguided, but were the fruit of an unregenerate heart, he cried, convicted, PRAY FOR ME! PRAY! All of a sudden, all of the very best intentions and sincere attendance to matters religious have failed to produce God's approval, and so the heart-cry becomes prayer, deep and earnest and sorrowful prayer, because the impending judgment of God's wrath is due to arrive in its fullness at this professed believer's doorstep soon!

When the Holy Spirit truly visits the people of God, there is a genuine hunger for prayer that has preceded His arrival. Prayer is the 'straight highway' in the desert that we are called to make for our God! Have we, like Simon, believed that programs and financial growth and even personal enthusiasm are the keys to the ability to minister in the power of the Holy Ghost? Have we seen the human organization called the church as some 'boy's club' that we would do well to ingratiate ourselves to? Let the truly fire-branded prophet of God in his generation look those foolish ideas and their thinkers in the eye and pronounce their impending death, and watch the Spirit of God move an impenitent heart to prayer and repentance.

God Almighty, we beseech Thee that thou wouldst tear asunder the blueprints of sinful man's designs upon Thy Church and instead visit us with Thy fire which consumes dross and purifies souls. Sovereign Lord, do not leave us with only our failed and foolish programs to guide us, but instead take hold of our hearts and set them ablaze with zeal for the glory of the triune God. Move us, Thou helper of the helpless, to pray and be vigilant against the pride of life that would cause us to trust in riches or degrees or the esteem of men. For this we ask in Jesus' Name, Who alone is the Baptizer with fire. Amen.

LIBERTY AND LEGALISM

There is always a raging controversy in the churches between the saved and the unsaved over the definitions of "Christian liberty" and "legalism". I have found, in my experience, that legalism is the term thrown around by people who want to derive every aspect of their Christian worldview and theology from a completely individualistic standpoint. In short, these people are willing to deny the historical tenets of the Reformation, the sound and altogether Biblical teaching that has maintained the integrity of the pulpit ministry and evangelistic efforts for centuries. They are willing to dispose of any sense of debt to those Christians of times past who have been instruments of God used to formulate our right understanding of God's truth. All this they are eager to undertake in order that their compromised lifestyles of conformity to secular, unregenerate, humanistic culture might be seen as normative rather than as aberrant and abhorrent. The term "legalism" gets used by these people as a perjorative in identifying those within the churches who strive daily to maintain a proper attitude towards the world and its ways. "Liberty" is their battle cry; a liberty to indulge in whatsoever they feel is "not a conviction" of their hearts. Never mind that our hearts are "desperately wicked" according to the Word of God.
Liberty, understood in its proper Biblical context, is NOT a license to commit sin. Liberty is first a setting free FROM something, namely, the condition of being damnably lost in sin and under the wrath of a holy God. Paul asks us this: "How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?" He is making the case that if we have truly been born again from above by the good pleasure of God's sovereign will, we should see sinful compromise with the world, the flesh and the devil as the bondage we were once under. It should cause us to tremble that we might ever be tempted to return to that bondage. The FRUIT of a tree says to the world what the tree is; if we are found still playing with sin as though it were not so totally abominable in God's holy sight that death and hell are its recompense, what does the fruit of our lives say to us, to the world and to God about what kind of tree we are? May God in His mercy grant us the grace to see sin as hateful and disgusting and to flee any notion of "liberty" that would act as some permission to return to mud or vomit as our delight.
God, all-holy and righteous King, we petition Thy throne who have received Thy gracious clemency. Help us, Father, by Thy Spirit's enabling power, to hide ourselves in the shadow of the Almighty and never to run after the corruption that is satisfaction of our flesh. Unworthy as we are, Thou hast granted unto us repentance unto life; may we always be humbled at the thought that Thou hast not left us to die in sin and sure damnation. These things we ask for the sake of Christ and for Thy glory alone. Amen.

Temporary delays have slowed the frequency with which I have been able to post. This reminds me of the words of Paul, who says to the Romans that he wished to come to them and bless them with some spiritual gift, but he was "let hitherto". He recognized that no matter what means were used, it was always actually God's sovereign will that dictated his success or failure in any endeavor.
Let us always be mindful that it is God's good pleasure that has caused everything from creation to redemption in Christ to the ways and means through which He directs our steps. Eternal God, grant by that grace which is all of Thee that we might never question any means Thou hast ordained to bring us to Thy desired end, even our sanctification and conformity to the image of Thy Son, our Savior, in whose Name we beseech Thee. Amen.

Matthew J. Slick, CARM and the Catholic Whore

"Christian Apologetics Research Ministry", or CARM, written and maintained by a man named Matthew J. Slick, had this to say about whether Roman Catholics are Christians:

"Finally, I believe that there are truly regenerate Christians in the Roman Catholic church. But, they are truly Christians in spite of official RCC theology and in spite of the ritualistic offerings of this ancient church which has had too many hands meddling in it through the centuries, gradually moving it away from orthodoxy and into apostasy. Yes apostasy. The Roman Catholic Church is no longer representing true Christianity." (emphases mine)

Mr. Slick claims that they "are truly Christians in spite of official RCC theology". What Mr. Slick fails completely to understand or to make clear is that these people are not suffering patiently while waiting for someone to redeem their corrupt 'church'. These so-called "tru(e) Christians" are bowing to images, offering prayers to the dead, venerating 'Mary', depending upon priestly absolution of their sins and calling a mere man their 'Holy Father'. No, Mr. Slick, these are not people who are saved in spite of wrong church teaching. These are unregenerate sinners who are weekly or even daily taking part in the whoredoms of Rome's false religion.
Secondly, Mr. Slick says that "this ancient church" gradually moved away from orthodoxy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The church that existed before these heretical inventions still exists, and it has never drifted into heresy and apostasy. These damnable heresies were introduced to the world by people who founded a false church whether they realized it or not. The sinful practices of Romish apostates were never part of the worship of the true church. As soon as the first of these disgusting practices were made 'official' doctrine, the 'church' that promoted that doctrine became as a matter of fact a new and opposite religion to the religion of the Christian church. No saved person ever bowed down to Rome's idols while they were in a regenerate state. Luther, Hus, Calvin, Zwingli and the other Reformers saw the destructive and altogether hellish root of the 'church' they once professed, and, God having opened their eyes, they departed as fast as they could. The words the Reformers used, yes, even the word Reformation itself, were simply God's means to accomplish His end of saving those in the world who were bound by Romish or other satanic religion. There could be then nor could be now a true reformation of Rome; there was simply an opportunity created and taken to declare God's truth against the opposition of the heretical Romish hierarchy.

Mr. Slick, recant those false words and repent of such a blasphemous position before you find your slippery slope giving way, and yourself on the road to 'fellowship' with the idolaters in Rome.

AN EXHORTATION TO HOLINESS AND REVIVAL

I have read recently some posts from people like Phil Johnson and his friends who are lamenting the lack of truly Reformed (Calvinist) evangelists. There are those in the churches who feel that Calvinism is either become altogether too scholarly and thus lacking real-life zeal, or that it has become too polemical, that is, interested only in giving their opponents a good drubbing in the Internet boxing ring. The time has long since come for such nonsense to stop being so appropriate in describing those who have been saved by God's great and free grace to sinners.
"Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin." (Hebrews 12:4) We have cried copious literary tears over false doctrines, and we have filled web page and book page alike with rantings about the TRUTH, but we have not yet seen God's mighty power in the evangelistic field, and this is for LACK of STRIVING against sin! We have no business telling the world to repent and turn from sin in between our bouts of chasing after the vanities of Babylon's marketplace! We fill our minds with yet more filth in this generation day after day, yet the things we ingest into our spirits were once in our own cities considered CRIMINAL! The most 'modest' 'decent' 'respectable' or at least 'not that bad' TV programs today lend NOTHING to the increase in holiness that our Lord would see us experience! The tamest and most supposedly benign of the secular music performers out there are simply uninterested in the glory of the sanctified life that is necessarily and specifically set apart unto the service of the Lord! It is the WORD OF GOD that is alive! "Thy WORD IS TRUTH" saith the Master (emphasis mine, although I scarcely believe it is more than His was). We NEED, more now than ever, a resurgence of dependency of the soul of the Christian on the sovereign and almighty power of the Holy Ghost! Enough of all the piling up of the literary accolades, you scholars! Forget the accumulation of your Internet awards and the ranking of your inflated and self-congratulatory blogs, you lurkers in the darkened corners of cyberspace! Where are the tears? Where is the urgency? Enough of this beating of the dead Roman horse! She lacks only the call of the executioner to her place of final judgment; the Whore's fate is sealed. The cry from the seminaries and the pulpits and the web logs must no longer be "ATTACK!", but rather, "COME OUT OF HER, MY PEOPLE!"
I hear the voices clamoring already: Legalism! Legalism! To that charge, I dare say that I have never, NEVER exhausted myself in a full day of prayer and supplication before the Lord I claim to serve! I have NEVER run so far away from the carnival of flesh that is the world that I could no longer hear their siren songs beckoning me! I have NEVER been pressing in to the point of collapse in my intercession for my fellow pilgrim Christians nor for the lost and perishing all around me! I confess! I throw open the doors of my prayer closet and find more dust than desire, more emptiness than enthusiasm, more excuses than excitement! Where is that saint that is ready to lead a new and fearless charge up the hill of apathy to lay siege on the stronghold of Satan? Can I, so swollen with the tiny little bites of sin that I have stolen from the devil's table time and again, shake my fist at an unbelieving world? Can I demand Gospel repentance and holy obedience from a person who sees me sitting in the same ease as all their neighbors? Where, figuratively, are the tattered skins that make for the Baptizer's raiment? Clothes like those are not the finery of princes; they are shredded by years of harsh self-denial in the wilderness of prayer and fasting. Are we, so finely arrayed in our Reformed cap and gown, our Christian silks and ribbons, the progeny of the Brainerds and the Edwards and the Calvins and the Baxters and the Luthers? John Knox implored the Throne of Grace that he MUST have Scotland's souls! Andrew Bonar would watch the world go down the streets, ignorant of the wrath they stored up against the day of wrath. Unaware, every one, and none considering God; Bonar cried to the Lord, "Oh, they perish! They perish!"

"And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake..." (Hebrews 12:21)

Have we had such a terrible and holy vision of God's majesty and Divine justice that we should exceedingly fear and quake? Have we found refuge in our doctrinal diatribes, or are we resting, as the hymn says, each moment in the Crucified? Should our safety in the cleft of the Rock make us any less awestruck at the limitless glory and fathomless power of the great and mighty One we serve as He passes over us, announcing His mercy and compassion solely upon whom He will?

By God's great and awesome grace, I shall be spent at His service. Let us press on.

"Christians expect everyone to believe the way they do..."

This is just a simple little post that I am inserting here for the benefit of those who make statements like the one above.

PLEASE... DO NOT believe the way I do. I am a wretched sinner with nothing good in my flesh at all. The holy law of God condemns every effort of my failing flesh as filthy rags. I am commanded by the Word of God to obey perfectly every precept therein, and I often resolve in my mind to do anything other.

Believe, instead, the way the Word of God tells you to believe; absolutely dependently and wholly upon the work of Christ on the cross to save sinners. Believe in a Sovereign God who has ordered all things according to His absolute and unchanging will. Believe that an everlasting and torturous Hell awaits the damned who are subject forever to the wrath of God against sin. Believe that there is no escaping hell for you by any designs of human imagination whatever. Believe that there is no recourse for sinners at all but that mercy which he pours out upon undeserving mankind so that His elect might live long enough in the valley of sojourn to hear His gospel of grace. Believe in the truth of the infallible Word of God; don't believe like I do.
Eternal God, grant that the preaching of Thy Gospel might, by the effectual work of Thy Spirit, work to gather unto Thy folds a people for Thy glory and Thy inheritance. Let the awesome fear of Thy judgments be the terror of sinners, and the beauty and power of Thy Christ their refuge, as Thou wouldst deign in Thy mercy to reveal His perfect satisfaction of Thy law. Grant these things for the sake of Christ and for Thy glory. Amen.

"Repent, and believe the Gospel"
"I am not ashamed of the Gospel"
"Woe unto me if I preach not the Gospel"

I have heard a lot of bantering on the Web these days about whether or not someone must be a Calvinist to be saved. I find the entire enterprise of discussing the matter laughable. The Bible tells us that it is by the hearing of faith (the hearing of the Gospel call to sinners) that the sinner is saved. The Spirit works His effectual and powerful work in the soul of the sinner to testify to the Gospel and to impart saving faith.
How can it be, if the above is true, that belief in another method of salvation is proper to the soul of a regenerate person? In other words, if I have been saved by grace through faith upon the hearing of the true Gospel, how is it that I could profess another? Those who profess another way of salvation, such as man's free-willed choice of God or some concatenated mess of the sinner's co-operation with God, are simply professing heresy and damnable untruth.
If I were to be hired by a major manufacturer of some product, and were to be paid handsomely for the purpose of using my skills to promote that product, would it not seem strange, after my training and considering the benefits which I derive from my employer, to go about disowning his product and instead extolling the virtues of another? I dare say that my job would be in jeopardy all because I put my company's product in an altogether bad light. There is simply no way that a person who has been presented with the Biblical gospel, of which 'Reformed' or 'Calvinist' are simply convenient man-made appellations, could be convinced that they were, or people must be, saved by the God of the Arminian or some other heretic. Enough already; the Word of God is true, and every man is indeed a liar.

Sola Fide
Sola Gratia
Solo Christo
Soli Deo Gloria
Sola Scriptura