Here we go. Updates expected through noon, Texas time.
- First, all of the Sufficient Fire sessions are online, video and audio. You're welcome, and thank you who supported it by your attendance, giving, and prayers. Now please continue to pray for the outreach and ongoing impact of the conference, as the talks can go around the globe, wherever the internet reaches.
- For all my parts... I recommend the audio.
- "Pirate Christian" captain Chris Rosebrough created a series of false prophet billboards in the same spirit as Phil's classic and unrivalled Po-Motivators. Enjoy!
- Andy Stanley continues to wobble. Historically, wobbly wheels seldom fix themselves.
- These days it seems it's either the Moors or the Moores. On the latter, an article, and a commentary by Doug Wilson, Wilsonically titled Why We Need More of Moore, and Also Less of Moore, More or Less.
.@WestminsterTS @wtsbooks You should have said "for a LIMITED time"! Bwahhh hahahaha... ahem. Sorry.
— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) February 17, 2015
- English comedian Stephen Fry illustrates that even the most vacuous nonsense, given voice in a cultured English accent, can keep one from being instantly hooted off the stage.
- And then Doug Wilson comes along to expose it as the vacuous nonsense that it is.
- My own take on Fry's rant is briefer. Fry is asked to suppose that it's all true, only to reveal immediately that he has not the faintest notion of what it all being true would even mean.
- There is a new addition to Phillips' Axioms.
- The non-Christian loved one of a non-Christian friend dies. What do you say? Here are some concise, helpful thoughts.
- I'm not the only pastor who will profit from Todd Pruitt's thoughts for pastors in our public prayers.
- For my dear wife:
- It continues to be true that the best aspect of Justin Taylor's attempt to save face for day-wigglers is the posts generated in response, of which Dr. David Shormann's recent post is a particularly fine example.
- Denny Burk repeats some of the best advice you can give a pastoral candidate: get fired in the interview. I've said in interviews, "What I do is teach and preach the Bible, to the best of my ability, all the time, every time. If you don't want that, you don't want me. If you do, we should talk." One church said, "Thanks, goodbye." Another church said, in effect, "Welcome to Texas."
- Good heavens, what a foolishly and impossibly-worded poll. How would you even answer? Like, "I think children should always be spanked; I think children should be sort of spanked; I think children are dainty little angels best suited for ivory pedestals and cupcakes." What? Worse than meaningless.
- Finally in case you're not hungry enough already, mankind's latest essential invention: bacon-wrapped-crust pizza:
- To end on a deep note, or something like:
Liberalism is marked by a sense of moral obligation to force others to give money and resources to the idle, the immoral, and the illegal.
— Dan Phillips (@BibChr) February 20, 2015
14 comments:
Dan, those are some good links, but you might want to add one for Richard Carrier's tribute to secular ethics:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/6737
My favorite part is where one of the commenters encourages Carrier to "explore all those tastes that society, culture, your youth in your time may have repressed in you". He's glad that Carrier is "letting [his] freak flag fly". In a few years, maybe we'll get some posts from Carrier about how he's marrying his dog and having sex with his dead aunt's corpse.
You know, I'd absolutely pull the trigger on that bacon-wrapped crust pizza if it were made by anyone other than Little Caesar's. I'm fairly convinced those guys could find it in their hearts somehow to even ruin bacon for me.
Snob.
PIZZA.
Who has time to write a comment now that the conference audio is available for listening?
I was thinking the same thing, Frank. ;-D
I've always thought Andy Stanley is SLICK -- too slick to pin down on any problems. I guess that is just par for the course these days. Sooner or later, his true self will be revealed, and I don't think it will be flattering. Just my two cents.
High-light of the week for me Dan.
High-light of the high-light, the Sufficient Fire downloads.
Greetings Dan/Frank (and Phil)if you're reading this - Thank you so much for posting the audio for the conference. I downloaded them all from iTunes through Dan's Church.
As a regular listener to Dan's sermons and Phil's Grace Life audio, if it's possible to hear an extra "spring in your step" - I heard it with both of you. Frank - I related your Malachi Christmas blog at my recovery meeting - so "frankly" I just like the way you think and relate truth.
My biggest personal takeaway is that the sufficiency of scripture IS the issue where truth and error separate. I leaned more towards prosperity gospel, social gospel, ecumenism being the problems of the day, but your focus on the Word stirred my heart in ways the local "Holy Spirit stirring" I'm surrounded with has never done.
Thank you gentlemen for contending for the faith! Be blessed!
Sorry if posted twice...had password problems.
Greetings Dan/Frank (and Phil)if you're reading this - Thank you so much for posting the audio for the conference. I downloaded them all from iTunes through Dan's Church.
As a regular listener to Dan's sermons and Phil's Grace Life audio, if it's possible to hear an extra "spring in your step" - I heard it with both of you. Frank - I related your Malachi Christmas blog at my recovery meeting - so "frankly" I just like the way you think and relate truth.
My biggest personal takeaway is that the sufficiency of scripture IS the issue where truth and error separate. I leaned more towards prosperity gospel, social gospel, ecumenism being the problems of the day, but your focus on the Word stirred my heart in ways the local "Holy Spirit stirring" I'm surrounded with has never done.
Thank you gentlemen for contending for the faith! Be blessed!
One of the handful of best blog posts I ever read was called "Assuming Jesus lied and is dead". It's an older Pyromaniacs article, and as it said, they phenomenon is so commonplace that I never noticed it before, but once pointed out, you start to notice it everywhere. When I read the "non-Christian loved one of a non-Christian friend dies" article, this old Pyromaniacs article just screamed out at me. The "3 Things to Say to a Grieving Non-Christian" is a classic example of what this article is talking about. Those 3 points could be made by anyone, Christian, Atheist, or Buddhist. Nowhere in the article is there anything about mentioning the Gospel or Judgement -- I guess just worry about that later. In the meantime, just worry about making the person feel better. After all, we won't be lying. The pagan just isn't ready to hear the whole truth, yet. And it's great for the Christian too. He need not worry about confrontation. And our ultimate goal is just to make sure the person feels loved and temporarily feels better about the death. Nevermind that they will learn the complete truth about their friend when they die as well. And nevermind that if there one time in people's earthly lives where they are wondering about what happens after they die, it's when someone they know dies.
Like the advice for community prayers at the Mortification of Spin. And thanks for the links to the Sufficient Fire links!
I was surprised you didn't mention Rob Bell's latest "Oprah-tic" outrage....
Bacon is synonymous with embracing the New Covenant through Christ our Lord. Surely it should be upheld in all food-stuffs. Sorry Old Covenant Jew's and vegetarians, but it's a matter of faith.
Tolkien did, at least, write a fair portion of the extra content in The Hobbit film trilogy. In saying that, money is handy and I believe the old saying goes '3 movies make more moneys than 1 movies'.
Liberalism? Sure you don't mean Socialism? I actually agree with the latter much more than the former, and I'm not sure I agree with the sentiment of your Tweet.
Does the word 'gleaning' ring a bell? Leviticus 19:9-10 doesn't sound like a capitalist principle...
Was the Levitical law optional when it said you 'shall not reap to the edges'? Wouldn't reaping to the edges make for a richer business and a 'better' economy?
Also, doesn't the Bible have some story about a Moabitess migrating to Israel then somehow making a living to support herself and her bitter old step mother?
The passage is definitely not anti-capitalist.
And it's definitely not socialist, or modern-day leftist. If it were, it would read "And when you harvest, reap to edges, give everything you don't need to the priests, who will distribute it as they see fit."
Still watching / listening ... No time to eat; even bacon/pizza.
I am filled.
Lowell, I'm not sure how you perceive 'capitalism'. In saying that, the fact is that Leviticus commands something that opposes the idea of a farmer being economically independent. I'd say it does sound 'anti-capitalist'; though I admit that depends how far something has to be away from the purest notion of capitalism to be 'anti', so that's a somewhat subjective argument(I, for one, live in a 'capitalist' nation that has some 'socialist' legislation).
However, the fact that it's "not a capitalist principle" is definitively accurate; and that is what I was claiming. Capitalism doesn't inherently support anything but the rights of different companies, businesses and individuals to obtain and control wealth, usually in a competitive environment. That's beneficial for an economy as a whole, but supporting the poor or 'aliens' is not the prerogative of capitalism.
Erroneous rhetoric aside, the fact remains that leaving the edges of their fields was commanded(legislated) and the purpose cited is that the produce in question be left 'for the poor and the alien'(ie, transferal of grain someone rightfully owned to those who owned little or nothing). So no, the verse in question wouldn't need to be re-written for it to correlate with 'socialism'. It does that well enough implicitly. It even implies that the property is free to be walked upon by the general public; completely denying most Western notions of land ownership and'trespassing'.
'Re-distribution' may look different in practice, but that's to be expected given how different Western society is compared to the Hebraic, agrarian society of several thousand years ago. If you'd like some more literal examples of how this isn't applied in contemporary Western civilisation, then here you go:
I'm not about to go onto a construction site and grab any spare bricks lying around. That would be illegal. Same thing if I went and harvested any part of someone else's crops.
If you want to talk about the priesthood I'm happy to, but I expect it will hurt your case more than helping it. I've written enough without that, though, so I'll leave it up to you as to whether I bring that into the equation.
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