Working Clothes

by Frank Turk

I’m thinking about work today because I have plenty of it to do. In one sense, I am feeling blessed by my own abundance of tasks and the fact that they aren’t going to change the locks on my door while I’m out for Christmas holidays because I know for certain some of my own friends are not so lucky. Some of you are getting notice that you have Fridays off indefinitely, but they’re going to cut your pay accordingly. Some of you wish you were only getting Fridays off, because let’s face it: CareerBuilder.com is not awash in great-paying, long-term career moves right now.

So today as I put on my working clothes – sport jacket, decent shirt, pressed jeans since it’s the week before vacation, shoes, socks, appropriate undergarments – I was thinking about the kind of work there is to do right now. And layered on top of that is the news article you see to the left over there (click it to blow it up to readable size) about a double-murder here in central Arkansas. You know: it’s Christmas, and you’d think human nature could take two weeks off to give us a break, but it never does. And I don’t know about you, but when I see kids in stories like that one, I think of my own kids, and because I know them and love them I pray to God that there is not an end like that in store for them.

Because let’s face it: there could be. Stories like that one are not only not uncommon, they are ubiquitous. When the world puts on its working clothes, this is the kind of thing that comes of it. This is the kind of world we live in. Usually I have some kind of pithy zinger to throw in to really make you not forget what I’m talking about here, but I got nothin’: if that story doesn’t burn itself into your memory, you’re dead inside – and it’s just 84 words.

And for that reason, we get stories/video like this one:



Which, let’s face it: this really is the work of Christian people. We’re splitting all the hairs over what it means to be “Christian people” over at Evangel this month because of the Manhattan Declaration and some of its more-convicted (to put it mildly) advocates, so let’s not get too bent out of shape here – you know what it means to read that phrase at this blog, so don’t pretend like I’m being vague. I will give you that there are a variety of items in that video which my wife isn’t going to list in my honey-do list, and things I wouldn’t spend the time listing because they are so implausible, but overall that’s how we Christians ought to see the world – as a place where we live out what we believe. While the world has its own work to do, and its own working clothes, we have a different job, and a different set of working clothes to get into and get after.

But here’s the thing: it seems rather obvious to me that the way this video frames it up, there’s no solution in that activity to the problem in the news story about the burned up bodies. If what’s in that video is what the church is all about, it’s a no-contest, one-round knock-out punch, and the world is going to win every time.

So I’m thinking about a different set of working clothes this morning – especially as I try to get myself ready for Christmas amid the busy-ness of life which I am right now blessed with. I’m think of the one who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

The working clothes of that guy is where the hope of the world comes from – not from our paltry efforts (however genuinely-good and genuinely-loving they are) to make the world a better place. We don’t believe in good works: we believe in a Lord and Christ, and Sovereign and a Savior who overcomes a world filled with burned-up bodies and the sinful hearts which cause them.

And that’s what we celebrate at Christmas: the working clothes that look like a baby in a feeding trough; the long-suffering and loving-kindness of a God who is with us.

I’ll have one more post before Christmas, but if you miss it or I don’t see you, good tidings of great joy this year.

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That thing missionary speakers do

by Dan Phillips

Listening through John Piper's Desiring God on audiobook (which I've also read more than once), I heard the good brother go on and on about missions, urging... well, apparently, every reader to go out to The Mission Field. Piper particularly leaned on pressing the point of taking the Gospel to people who had never had a Gospel witness before.

This passion is expressed by Paul in Romans 15:20-21, where the apostle says "I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation,
but as it is written, 'Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.'"

And I wondered, as I always do when I hear such talk, "Why do missionary speakers so seldom tell of doing that?"

Here's what I mean. I remember the very first missionary speaker I ever heard as a Christian, 35-36 years ago. It was in a Bible Presbyterian church. They were talking about a mission in India. What do I remember them sharing? They shared about a tiger attack... and about teaching the kids to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

That's right: Indian kids, in India, learning the American flag salute.

Over the years, I've heard missionary speakers go on at length about visas, landing strips, diet, diseases, and various social projects.

One missionary talked about how important it was to regain what we had lost at the Reformation (!) — by which he meant monastic disciplines. You know, learning to be silent, to listen for God's extra-canonical voice in the stillness. We were too obsessed with the Bible, demanding that practices be found in the Bible.

(I talked with him afterwards to make sure I'd heard him right. I had. He was also a huge Blackaby fan. Surprise! Ideas have consequences, and horrible ideas have horrible consequences.)

The man did mention a boy becoming a Christian, but that was just in passing. It wasn't his focus.

What I have almost never heard a missionary talk about, in thirty-six years of churchgoing from both sides of the pulpit, is preaching Christ in foreign cultures, to people who had never heard of Him.

This has been consistent, in my experience. When people (like Piper) are trying to pressure folks to go "to the field" (i.e. not-America), it's all about preaching Christ to those who have never heard. But when I hear missionaries in church telling us what they actually do, it is virtually always about anything but that.

Why the disconnect?

It's an odd thing. I have the minority view that any church not located in Jerusalem is a missionary church. It isn't a "not where Christ has already been named" church, but it's still a mission. Those pastors and workers preach Christ all the time. When (say) folks like Ray Comfort share about their work, they don't talk about how hard it is to get a driver's license or how high taxes are. They relay stories about telling sinners of Christ, and pointing them to the Savior.

But when a missionary gets a pulpit... well, do you think I've just been in the wrong place? Almost always? For thirty-six-plus years, including Missions Week at Biola University? Has your experience been different from mine?

See, if I'm going to participate in some missionary endeavor, I'm going to ask myself some questions. One big consideration is going to be, "Why do you need to travel ___ thousand miles to do that? Aren't there people there, indigenous folks, already doing that? Wouldn't it be wiser just to send them money to do what they're already doing, than to relocate a person or a family to duplicate labor?"

One response might be that these tales of odd clothes and visas are meant to involve hearers in the details of the mission's work.

It seems to me however that, given the brief opportunity missionaries have, the time is better spent talking about preaching Christ to those who haven't heard. Isn't that what the mission is about? Are they doing that? It isn't supposed to be a travelogue, right? The goal isn't to inspire people to want to see the world, right?

Isn't a talk about preaching Christ to the lost likelier to stir Christian hearts to want to support a ministry that isn't merely building clean bathrooms or teaching English, but is actually preaching Christ?

This isn't an attack. It's a question, a thought, and a concern.

Discuss.

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Latter-Day Ecumenism

by Phil Johnson

Peddling Mormonism as mainstream Christianity

Why the Campaign to Seek Rapprochement between Evangelicals and Cultists?

(First posted 07 September 2005)

ack in May [2005], a few weeks before I joined the Christian blogosphere, there was quite a lot of controversy when an erstwhile evangelical publisher (Eerdmans) released a book by Mormon scholar Dr. Robert Millet (professor of religion at Brigham Young University). The book, (A Different Jesus? The Christ of the Latter-day Saints) was Millet's attempt to argue that Mormonism is both biblically and creedally within the bounds of historic Christian orthodoxy.

I realize the controversy over that issue is yesterday's news as far as the blogosphere is concerned. Both Eric Svendsen and James White (among others) did a superb job responding to some of the post-evangelical quislings who thought it was wonderfully even-handed and genteel for Eerdmans to be broad-minded enough to publish an apologia for Mormonism. (Ironically, some of these very same quasi-evangelicals who plead for pious deference to Mormon theology can't seem to find it within themselves to treat Baptists with any kind of respect at all.)

Even though I missed the initial buzz about Millet's book, I still want to weigh in on a certain aspect of this controversy that has annoyed me for some six or seven years. I'm talking about way Dr. Millet and his fans (both Mormons and post-evangelicals) continually invoke my pastor's name as if he were friendly to their cause.

He's not.

This is neither mine nor John MacArthur's first attempt to set the record straight. (I'll be posting some past correspondence on the issue in the next few days.) John MacArthur has repeatedly attempted to make his position absolutely clear: He does not regard Mormonism as legitimate Christianity—not even close. But you might get the opposite impression from some of Millet's publicity, and especially from his Internet groupies' postings.

Tuesday I read an Internet forum where a Mormon missionary was attempting to convince some naive evangelical that MacArthur's "lordship doctrine" asserts the very same soteriology as Mormonism. The Mormon guy claimed the Bible is full of verses that deny the principle of sola fide and make salvation a cooperative work between God and the sinner, just the way the Mormon "gospel" teaches. That, he insisted, is also John MacArthur's view.

No, it's not.

Millet's Internet fan club also seems intent on trying to get as much public-relations mileage for their side out of the fact that MacArthur once met personally with Millet (at Millet's request) to discuss theological issues. Floating around in various Internet forums are some romanticized accounts of the Millet-MacArthur talks that would have you believe the two men see one another as fellow-warriors in a common battle against easy-believism.

Millet's book itself strives to leave that same impression. Although Millet hasn't really grasped the first principles of what MacArthur actually teaches, he quotes frequently but selectively from MacArthur, apparently attempting to give the impression that MacArthur believes the sinner's own works are instrumental in justification.

How familiar, really, is Millet with the doctrinal stance of John MacArthur? The publicity for Millet's book at Amazon.com includes a snippet from a Publishers Weekly review that says, "Millet is as at home in the writings of such evangelical heroes as C.S. Lewis, J.B. Phillips, John MacArthur and Max Lucado as he is in the teachings of LDS prophets like Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and Gordon Hinckley."

"At home in the writings of . . . MacArthur"? Hardly. No one who has been even casually attentive to John MacArthur's ministry could possibly imagine that Millet is representing MacArthur correctly. MacArthur has always regarded Mormonism as a dangerous, heretical cult that is opposed to true Christianity. And he said so plainly to Millet when the two of them met.

It was a conversation between theological adversaries, not a conclave of potential allies.

John MacArthur's meeting with Dr. Millet took place in August 1997. That meeting was nothing more than a discussion of Mormon-evangelical differences in a cordial environment. It was not, as some have suggested a "dialogue" about Mormon-evangelical rapprochement. MacArthur was congenial but clear. In the meeting itself he repeatedly stressed his conviction that there is a great gulf between Mormonism and true Christianity. He told Millet in plain, unvarnished words that Mormonism worships a different god, follows a different christ, and proclaims a different gospel from authentic New Testament Christianity.

MacArthur's position on this has never wavered. He believes and teaches that Mormonism is not true Christianity in any historic or biblical sense, but is a classic cult. Indeed, Mormonism is similar in many ways to the Gnostic heresies that plagued the church for centuries. Mormonism and genuine biblical, evangelical Christianity are in effect antithetical, sharing no common spiritual ground whatsoever.

Mormonism is pseudo-Christianity.

In the eight years since his meeting with Dr. Millet, MacArthur has often summarized his concerns about Mormonism by pointing out four significant, unbridgeable chasms between Mormonism and authentic biblical Christianity. Here, in writing, is MacArthur's own list of four foundational truths where Mormons and evangelicals take perfectly incompatible positions. (This list is routinely sent to people who ask about MacArthur's stance on Mormonism).

1. The issue of authority. Christians believe the Bible is God's authoritative, inerrant, unchanging and complete self-revelation (Jude 3). Scripture is the touchstone to which all other truth-claims must be brought (Isaiah 8:20). The sole and sufficient authority by which all controversies in spiritual matters are to be determined is none other than God's Spirit speaking through Scripture.
        By contrast, Mormons consider The Book of Mormon, The Pearl of Great Price, and Doctrine and Covenants as additional authoritative revelation, thereby undermining the true authority of Scripture and violating the principle of Revelation 22:18.
   
2. The doctrine of God. Christians believe there is one God who eternally exists in three co-equal Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
        Mormons reject the doctrine of the Trinity, believing that there are many worlds controlled by different gods.
   
3. The supremacy of Christ. Christians believe Jesus Christ is pre-existent God who became a man in His incarnation while maintaining His full deity.
        Mormons claim Jesus was a "spirit child" of Mary and Elohim (and the brother of Lucifer) who has now been elevated to the level of deity.
   
4. The means of justification. Christians believe justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
        Mormons believe a person's works in this life will determine his or her status in the life to come, and that "salvation" is actually a progression toward godhood.

Why is Dr. Millet nonetheless courting evangelical acceptance?

Robert L. Millet

I have no way of knowing whether Dr. Millet's meticulous attempt to reconcile Mormon doctrine with certain evangelical ideas and terminology reflects an authentic interest in better understanding the biblical principle of grace—or a carefully-crafted PR campaign to gain mainstream acceptance for Mormonism. I wish I could believe it is the former. It has all the earmarks of the latter. After all, a few other cults and "-isms" have already successfully mainstreamed themselves by simply appealing to the ever-broadening evangelical consensus. Most of the books that ever treated Seventh-Day Adventism as a cult are now deemed out of date and unsophisticated. Roman Catholicism has sought and received the evangelical imprimatur from dozens of key evangelical leaders in recent years. Even the Worldwide Church of God—a cult that was virtually a monument to one man's ability to assimilate almost any heresy into one elaborate labyrinth of spiritual mischief—sought and received widespread evangelical acceptance by tweaking their beliefs and adopting evangelical terminology, but without ever formally renouncing their founder's religion as false. After a decade-long public-relations campaign, the WWCOG has still not settled into a truly evangelical doctrinal position, but they have nevertheless found warm acceptance from the evangelical mainstream. Hey, if it worked for them, why shouldn't the Mormons try it, too?

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A Disease of Wind on the Brain

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson





The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from a sermon titled "Waters to Swim In," originally preached on a Thursday evening, 25 April 1872, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London.



hese are days of "modern thought;" as you are all aware men have become wondrously wise, and have outgrown the Scriptures. Certain unhappy children's heads are too big, and there is always a fear that it is not brain, but water on the brain; and this "modern thought" is simply a disease of wind on the brain, and likely to be a deadly one, if God does not cure the church of it.

Within the compass of the orthodox faith—within the range of the simple gospel—there is room enough for the development of every faculty, however largely gifted a man may be. No matter, though the man be a Milton in poetry, though he be a master in metaphysics, and a prince in science, if he be but pure in his poesy, accurate in his metaphysics, and honest in his science, he will find that the range of his thought needs no more space than Scripture gives him.

It has been thought by some that these persons who run off to heretical opinions are persons of great mind; believe me, brethren, it is a cheap way of making yourself to be thought so, but the men are nobodies. That is the sum of the matter.

We are satisfied with the theology of the Puritans; and we assert this day that, when we take down a volume of Puritanical theology we find in a solitary page more thinking and more learning, more Scripture, more real teaching, than in whole folios of the effusions of modern thought. Modern men would be rich if they possessed even the crumbs that fallen from the table of the Puritans. They have given us nothing new after all. A few variegated bladders they have blown, and they have burst while the blowers were admiring them; but, as for anything worth knowing, which has improved the heart, benefited the understanding, or fitted men for service in the battle of life, there have been no contributions made by this "modern thought" worth recording; whereas, the old thought of the Puritans and the Reformers, which I believe to be none other than the thought of God thought out again in man's brain and heart, is constantly giving consolation to the afflicted, furnishing strength to the weak, and guiding men's minds to behave themselves aright in the house of God and in the world at large.

There are "waters to swim in," in the Scriptures. You need not think there is no room for your imaginations there. Give the coursers their reins: you shall find enough within that book to exhaust them at their highest speed. You need not think that your memory shall have nothing to remember; if you had learnt the book through and through, and knew all its texts, you would have much to remember above that, to remember its inner meaning, and its conversations with your soul, and the mysterious power it has had over your spirit, when it has touched the strings of your nature as a master harper touches his harp strings, and has brought forth music which you knew not to be sleeping there. There is no faculty but what will find room enough in the word, if we will but obediently bring it to the service of the Lord.

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How do you like them Apples now?

by Phil Johnson



everal readers have asked for some closure to this story, which actually began here.

It's a happy ending—finally.

The new iMac arrived in pristine condition Monday morning.

(I know. I was supposed to be in London Monday. But if you follow me on Twitter, you know that my flight was canceled four hours after the plane officially departed LAX. Actually, it only taxied from one gate to another, where we were held captive on the tarmac whilst engineers tried to fix a problem the pilot kept assuring us was "insignificant." It seems the auxiliary power on the plane was malfunctioning, and two of the plane's computers crashed along with it. Every time the plane would try to back away from the gate, the cabin would go dark and silent, signifying a total power failure. After four aborted attempts at reaching the runway, several passengers revolted, many of them loudly refusing to fly anywhere in that plane. Finally, four hours into the ordeal, the captain angrily announced that the flight would have to be canceled because "a few passengers are refusing to fly." The entire cabin immediately erupted in happy applause. It's the only time so many passengers have been deliriously happy to have an international flight summarily canceled. Some of them would have to wait 48 hours to be rebooked. Since I was going for a board meeting and couldn't possibly make it in time with such a delay, I didn't go to London at all. I'll try again in February. But that's another story. Still, one of the happy side-effects of the canceled trip is that I was here when the new computer was delivered.)

Of course the first thing I did was check the screen, which was intact and working perfectly. I had the computer set up and running within 15 minutes, and it took only about 3 hours to transfer all my data and software from the old iMac. (That machine, which runs just fine if you don't try to run Windoze on it, is going to be inherited by Pecadillo and wife). Compare Monday's 3-hour data transfer to the three-day ordeal I went through when I set up my final PC laptop a few years ago.

The new iMac is lightning fast and beautiful. It has 8 gigabytes of RAM and a quad-core i7 processor, which did solve every problem I was having with sluggish performance on the Windoze virtual machine I am running on my Mac. I can't tell you what a joy it is to be able to work without little ten-second delays every time I try to move the cursor. Everything on the new computer is almost instantaneous. (Except the indexing of my iTunes library, which, after all, has 40,134 tracks and 165 days' worth of music. Indexing iTunes took an extra 3.5 hours after my data were all transferred.)

Anyway, I'm happy with Apple again. I'm glad they finally came through for me, and while I think there are yet some great improvements needed in their customer service, I have no complaint with their hardware. Take a look:



That's actually my computer with a full-screen photo of the soul of the new machine as temporary wallpaper. (I downloaded the big photo from some Web site. I didn't really crack into the case.) I've got all my mods done and my software settings set. Couldn't be more pleased with it. It's much more fun than the trip to London would have been. (No offense to my friends in London.)

Now my next task, if I can find a 2-day window before Christmas, will be to try again to install the Logos Bible software update. It kept crashing the old machine. The real problem may be something in my VMware Fusion settings or the way I have Windoze XP configured. We'll see. I also expect to try a new Windows 7 virtual machine on the iMac very soon, and if I can carve out three more days for another big project, I'll install all my Windows essentials there, and I might be able to dump XP completely. Wouldn't that be nice?



PS: for those who invariably complain when I post something that lacks any spiritual substance, I feel your pain. But I've got overdue deadlines, and I needed a quick blogpost/update. I'll try to do better next week. But this morning you can head over to the Pulpit blog, where John MacArthur will be continuing his series blasting the charlatans who dominate religious television. That should give you something fairly substantial to chew on.

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The you-don't-care-about-babies dodge (NEXT! #20)

by Dan Phillips

Challenge: We must sign The Manhattan Declaration, or we don't care about the lives of babies.

Response A: When did caring about physical life and the non-negotiable priority of caring about the purity of the Gospel through which God brings eternal life become an either/or? Please show the math.


Response B: How is endangering people's souls through muddying Gospel clarity essential for saving babies' lives? Please show the math.

NEXT!

(Proverbs 21:22)

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Idealism vs. Normally-Wise Pragmatism

by Frank Turk

I'm almost hesitant to blog today because the last time I blogged here I posted a link to a somewhat-helpful article about Twilight and its apparent analogical apologetic for Mormonism, and it turned into, well, something else. I enjoy blogging, especially when I think I have something useful, helpful or otherwise edifying to share, and sometimes people just take the fun out of it.

{sigh}

Anyway, again leap-frogging from a post by a co-blogger at Evangel, the Manhattan Declaration rears its ugly head as some over there are again taking up its torch. James Grant has pointed to a blog post by Father Patrick Reardon. What we should think about today is the center of Fr. Reardon's assessment of the position of (for example) Dr. John MacArthur (and for those who missed it, RC Sproul):

The critics I have in mind, rather, are those Christians who confessed agreement with the substance of the Declaration while declining to associate with the other signers. Their objections, I believe, are significant in the sense of deserving comment. Considerations of available space impose brevity here.

We may take the example of the Evangelical spokesman, John MacArthur, Jr. His complaint was very simple: The Manhattan Declaration scans only the symptoms of these social evils but neglects to address their root cause. That is to say, this document fails to proclaim the Gospel of salvation, which is the sole remedy for every social ill.

Substantially identical was the objection of the Orthodox Christian priest, Father Jonathan Tobias, who faulted the Declaration for not preaching repentance. This writer went even further, nonetheless, lampooning at length the document's form and rhetorical style. (Ironically, the somewhat softened Father Tobias has of late chastised James Carroll, for a similar mockery of it.)

That underlined part (emphasis added) is the part that interests me -- because here's what Dr. MacArthur actually wrote:

In short, support for The Manhattan Declaration would not only contradict the stance I have taken since long before the original “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” document was issued; it would also tacitly relegate the very essence of gospel truth to the level of a secondary issue. That is the wrong way—perhaps the very worst way—for evangelicals to address the moral and political crises of our time. Anything that silences, sidelines, or relegates the gospel to secondary status is antithetical to the principles we affirm when we call ourselves evangelicals.

Now, you know what? I'll be glad to concede for the sake of this post and whatever argument you think you want to start at this point that it is possible for someone with a clean conscience to have signed this document. You know: Al Mohler deserves the benefit of the doubt. Ligon Duncan deserves the benefit of the doubt just in case he's reading here. I think it's possible that some people have made an error not because they have some aim to deceive even the elect (as if that was possible) but because they think public proclamations of morality are prophetic in nature.

To that I say: I respect your motives, but your are letting your idealism obscure your normally-wise pragmatism.

What I'm posting about here is about Fr. Reardon's approach to justifying the MD's signers. The idea that John MacArthur has merely decided that if we just preach the Gospel we don't need to do anything else is, frankly, unfounded for two reasons:

[1] Plainly, Dr. MacArthur's objection is grounded on the idea that the three major groups named in this declaration all define the Gospel of Jesus Christ differently! That is: all his other objections are in orbit around the point that you cannot possibly say that confessional Evangelicals and Roman Catholics can say, "preach the Gospel" and mean the same thing. This fact obscures the Gospel.

[2] Only someone who has never read Dr. MacArthur and his thorough stand on holiness and godly living could possibly say he advocates for just preaching the Gospel "as the sole remedy for every social ill". The Gospel has real-world, real-life consequences, and Dr. MacArthur is one of the loudest and clearest preachers to this point in the English-speaking church.

So in that, let's please not think that if one has repudiated the MD he has repudiated living among people, doing good works, actually protecting the down-trodden and the orphan the the widow, and suffering for the sake of others. What he has repudiated is doing that in the context of an undefined "gospel" for an inexplicable Jesus. Someone has already said this, but it bears repeating:

[the Manhattan Declaration] assumes a big tent for the definition of what it means to be a “believer”, assumes that law is greater than grace in reforming the hearts of men, and provides moral reasoning that those who are unbelievers have no reason to accept — because they are unbelievers. And in making these three items “especially troubling” in the “whole scope of Christian moral concern”, it overlooks that the key solution to these moral concerns is the renovation of the human heart by supernatural means established by the death and resurrection of Christ.

I also have a beef with the red herring of "declining to associate" which Fr. Reardon mentions. Many of the signers of this document are either hopeful or fearful (I just can't tell which) that the disagreement over this document is going to lead to some manner of quasi-fundamentalist "separation" over the matter.

We'll have to take that up another time. It's enough to say for now that this document doesn't hardly cause a person to be a rank heretic or disqualify himself from ministry. It's just a mistake which, one hopes, many of the signers will reconsider and therefore remove their names from the list.

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Manhattan Declaration again: R. C. Sproul puts another one in the ten-ring

by Dan Phillips

Worthy men such as Alistair Begg and John MacArthur explained why they were unable to sign the Manhattan Declaration.

Shortly after, in Nineteen Questions for Signers of the Manhattan Declaration, I tossed in my widow's mite. The post demonstrated that the document (A) was necessarily theological, (B) unfortunately communicated some significantly bad theology, from the perspective of Biblically-faithful Christianity, and that (C) it was not a document that someone concerned with the clear delineation, definition, and declaration of the Gospel should want his name associated with.

Then in NEXT! #19, we skewered the dodge that refusal to sign the document had anything to do with unwillingness to "work with" anti-Christian faiths in opposition to abortion.

After that, Michael Horton also published a demurral.

Now R. C. Sproul has contributed a forceful, gracious, and yet trumpet-like blast to the discussion. In The Manhattan Declaration: Why didn’t you sign it, R.C.?, Sproul gives eloquent voice to the same basic objections that others of us also sounded. Here are just a couple of particularly choice extracts.

While I would march with the bishop of Rome and an Orthodox prelate to resist the slaughter of innocents in the womb, I could never ground that cobelligerency on the assumption that we share a common faith and a unified understanding of the gospel.

The framers of the Manhattan Declaration seem to have calculated this objection into the language of the document itself. Likewise, some signers have stated that this is not a theological document. However, to make that statement accurate requires a redefinition of “theology” and serious equivocation on the biblical meaning of “the gospel” (2 Cor. 11:4).

...how could I sign something that confuses the gospel and obscures the very definition of who is and who is not a Christian? I have made this point again and again since the days of ECT. Though the framers of the Manhattan Declaration declaim any connection to ECT, it appears to me that the Manhattan Declaration is inescapably linked to that initiative, which I have strenuously resisted.  More than that, this new document practically assumes the victory of ECT in using the term “the gospel” in reference to that which Roman Catholics are said to “proclaim” (Phil. 1:27).

I am sorely tempted to quote a great deal more; instead, I'll just urge you to get over there and read the entire post. It is masterful.

I'll just close with one portion that resonates with me:

The Manhattan Declaration puts evangelical Christians in a tight spot. I have dear friends in the ministry who have signed this document, and my soul plummeted when I saw their names. I think my friends were misled and that they made a mistake, and I want to carefully assert that I have spoken with some of them personally about their error and have expressed my hope that they will remove their signatures from this document. Nevertheless, I remain in fellowship with them at this time and believe they are men of integrity who affirm the biblical gospel and the biblical doctrines articulated in the Protestant Reformation.

...It is only in our united proclamation of the one, true gospel of Jesus Christ that any heart, any mind, or any nation will truly change, by God’s sovereign grace and for His glory alone.

 Amen.

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Studies in repentance, and not (1): "my sentence inconveniences me!"

by Dan Phillips

[Parental warning: it delights me that some kids read my blogs. In this case, however, you should read beforehand, and decide how to proceed.]

I've seen enough stories similar to the following one, that it finally occurs to me that a series might be in order. I begin, though, by noting that this (like any such post) is written under the provisional assumption that the news article is accurate.

The Bible says a lot about repentance. The common Hebrew verbs used are one that means to regret, feel sorrow; and another that means to turn around, to do an about-face. The most common Greek verb means to have a paradigm-shift, a change of mind that issues in changed behavior.

For our PoMo culture — where if you simply say you're a butterfly, then by jingo you are a butterfly — it is important to remember John the Baptist's words: "Bear fruit in keeping with repentance" (Matthew 3:8). Nor can any take shelter in the fiction that repentance is an exclusively Old Covenant notion, for Paul sums up his New Covenant ministry as declaring "first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout all the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance" (Acts 26:20).

There is forgiveness in God, but the forgiveness is conditioned on repentance.  God has nothing happy, sweet nor head-patting to say to the man or woman who refuses to repent. "Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper," God warns, adding "but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy" (Proverbs 28:13). But God makes it crystal-clear that "He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck, will suddenly be broken beyond healing" (Proverbs 29:1).

So what is our story, today?

Michael Yavorski pleaded guilty to molesting a child. The middle-aged man reportedly "twice fondled [a twelve-year-old] girl and gave her beer." His victim has repeatedly been to the hospital since, and allegedly cuts herself to relieve the tension. The judge sentenced Yavorski to "three months to two years behind bars, plus a year of probation." The "misdemeanors of indecent assault and furnishing alcohol to a minor" do not require that Yavorski register as a sex-offender.

Yavorski's attorney argued that the sentence should be reduced because it could have a negative impact on Yavorski's business as an ice-cream stand owner.

I'll shift gears a bit, and speak as if I were speaking to Yavorski as a Christian, though I have no idea of the spiritual condition of any of the participants. On the face of it — which is all we have — this doesn't sound as if Yavorski has accepted full responsibility for his crime.

Here's what repentance does. Repentance says I and I alone am responsible for what I did. Repentance says what I did was wrong in God's eyes, and merits Hell. Repentance utterly damns the deed, it puts it to death and buries it with no gravestone and no flowers, and repentance turns one from the deed and from everything that gave birth to the deed.

But wait. There's more.

Part of damning and killing and burying the deed involves restitution to anyone affected by the deed. That is the Bible's orientation from start to finish (cf. Matthew 5:23-26). Did you steal something? Give it back (duh) — with interest. "Justice" according to the Bible is precisely the same. Perpetrators are not rewarded with "three hots and a cot" at victims' expense; they are required to repay. There is virtually no jail system in Biblical law.

How would that apply in this case? I don't know that there is anything Yavorski can do directly to or for his victim, except stay far away from her forever. Obviously, if he lied about her or otherwise slandered her to cover up his crime, he would need to undo that emphatically. But I would think that he would, at the least, accept his sentence and not complain of the inconvenience it cost him.

The perspective would be: I never ever should have done this, and so I will accept what justice requires, and then do more.

For our purposes, I don't want to get into a debate as to whether the sentence is justice in the absolute sense.

The point is, this is justice according to our system, and like Cain, Yavorski is saying — not "My guilt is greater than I can bear," but — "My punishment is greater than I can bear" (Genesis 4:13).

Which isn't, as far as I can see, repentance.

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An Excellent Jeremiad from Mr. Spurgeon

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson



The following excerpts are from an editorial Charles Spurgeon published in The Sword and the Trowel in 1871, more than a decade before the famous Downgrade Controversy.

Spurgeon makes no effort to disguise his passion for the truth, hide his contempt for the skepticism of the day, or otherwise tone down his rhetoric in order to mollify people who were demanding that he be more "charitable" in his treatment of unorthodox opinions.

He also had nothing but disdain for the notion that uncertainty is a mark of holy humility or a sign of intellectual sophistication that ought to be cultivated.

The arguments Spurgeon employs make it clear that the movement he opposed (nineteenth-century modernism) had a lot in common with the postmodern cynicism that infects the wider evangelical movement today. He leaves little doubt about how he would respond to the writings of Brian McLaren, Steve Chalke, Tony Campolo, the Open Theists, and their fellow post-evangelicals.

Here are some especially poignant excerpts:

That these gentlemen . . . are not liberal, but intolerant to the last degree, is evident, from their superciliousness towards those poor simpletons who abide by the old faith.

Why, it's almost as if he had been reading the latest issue of Christianity Today or surfing through some of the blogs I monitor.

Let half a word of protest be uttered by a man who believes firmly in something, and holds by a defined doctrine, and the thunders of liberality bellow forth against the bigot. Steeped up to their very throats in that bigotry for liberality, which, of all others, is the most ferocious form of intolerance, they sneer with the contempt of affected learning at the idiots who contend for "a narrow Puritanism," and express a patronizing hope that the benighted adherents of "a half-enlightened creed" may learn more of "that charity which thinketh no evil."

Sounds suspiciously like some fellows I know who regularly use "TR" or "RB" (acronyms for "truly Reformed" and "Reformed Baptist") against their adversaries as if those were the grossest of obscenities.

To contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints is to them an offense against the enlightenment of the nineteenth century; but, to vamp old, worn-out heresies, and pass them off for deep thinking, is to secure a high position among minds "emancipated from the fetters of traditional beliefs."

Spurgeon was quoting the precise expressions broad churchmen had published. He was clearly the unnamed target of their disdain. The hypocrisy of their subsequent pleas for "charity" was obvious.

Great is their indignation at the creeds which render their position morally dubious. Churches have no right to believe anything; comprehensiveness is the only virtue of a denomination; precise definitions are a sin, and fundamental doctrines are a myth: this is the notion of "our foremost men." For earnest people to band themselves together to propagate what they hold to be the very truth of God, is in their eyes the miserable endeavor of bigots to stem the torrent of modern thought. . . .

The proper course, according to their "broad views," would be to leave doctrines for the dunces who care for them. Truths there are none, but only opinions; and, therefore, cultivated ministers should be left free to trample on the most cherished beliefs, to insult convictions, no matter how long experience may have matured them, and to teach anything, everything, or nothing, as their own culture, or the current of enlightened thought may direct them. . . .

Notice that the modernists of Spurgeon's era apparently had the same distaste for strong convictions that infects their twenty-first-century postmodern cousins:

It appears to be, now-a-days, a doubtful question whether Christian men have a right to be quite sure of anything. . . . He who teaches an extravagant error is a fine, generous spirit: and, therefore, to condemn his teaching is perilous, and will certainly produce an outcry against your bigotry. Where the atonement is virtually denied, it is said that a preacher is a very clever man, and exceedingly good; and, therefore, even to whisper that he is unsound is libelous: we are assured that it would be far better to honor him for his courage in scorning to be hampered by conventional expressions. Besides, it is only his way of putting it, and the radical idea is discoverable by cultured minds. As to other doctrines, they are regarded as too trivial to be worthy of controversy. . . .

The right to doubt is claimed clamorously, but the right to believe is not conceded. The modern gospel runs thus: "He that believes nothing and doubts everything shall be saved." Room must be provided for every form of skepticism; but, for old-fashioned faith, a manger in a stable is too commodious. Magnified greatly is the so-called "honest doubter," but the man who holds tenaciously by ancient forms of faith is among "men of culture" voted by acclamation a fool.

Hence, it becomes a sacred duty of the advanced thinker to sneer at the man of the creed, a duty which is in most cases fully discharged; and, moreover, it is equally imperative upon him to enter the synagogue of bigots, as though he were of their way of thinking, and in their very midst inveigh against their superstition, their ignorant contentedness with worm-eaten dogmas, and generally to disturb and overturn their order of things. What if they have confessions of faith? They have no right to accept them, and, therefore, let them be held up to ridicule.

Men, now-a-days, occupy pulpits with the tacit understanding that they will uphold certain doctrines, and from those very pulpits they assail the faith they are pledged to defend. The plan is not to secede, but to operate from within, to worry, to insinuate, to infect. Within the walls of Troy, one Greek is worth half Agamemnon's host; let, then, the wooden horse of liberality be introduced by force or art, as best may serve the occasion. Talking evermore right boastfully of their candor and hatred of the hollowness of creeds, etc., they will remain members of churches long after they have renounced the basis of union upon which these churches are constituted. Yes, and worse; the moment they are reminded of their inconsistency they whine about being persecuted, and imagine themselves to be martyrs.

Spurgeon was well aware of how his criticism would be viewed by the tolerance-police of his day:

This is most illiberal talk in the judgment of our liberal friends, and they will rail at it in their usual liberal manner; it is, however, plain common sense, as all can see but those who are willfully blind.

His reply was a reminder about the source and the nature of the truth he was defending:

While we are upon the point, it may be well to inquire into the character of the liberality which is, now-a-days, so much vaunted. What is it that these men would have us handle so liberally? Is it something which is our own, and left at our disposal? If so, let generosity be the rule. But no, it is God's truth which we are thus to deal with, the gospel which he has put us in trust with, and for which we shall have to render account. . .

If truth were ours, absolutely; if we created it, and had no responsibilities in reference to it, we might consider broad-church proposals; but, the gospel is the Lord's own, and we are only stewards of the manifold grace of God, and of stewards it is not so much required that they be liberal, but that they be found faithful.

He took a low view of that fashionable brand of "charity" which demanded approval for various new-fangled expressions of infidelity:

Moreover, this form of charity is both useless and dangerous. Useless, evidently, because all the agreements and unions and compromises beneath the moon can never make an error a truth, nor shift the boundary-line of God's gospel a single inch. If we basely merge one part of Scriptural teaching for the sake of charity, it is not, therefore, really merged, it will bide its time, and demand its due with terrible reprisals for our injustice towards it; for half the sorrows of the church arise from smothered truths.

False doctrine is not rendered innocuous by its being winked at. God hates it whatever glosses we may put upon it; no lie is of the truth, and no charity can make it so. Either a dogma is right or wrong, it cannot be indifferent. . . .

The rule of Christians is not the flickering glimmer of opinion, but the fixed law of the statute book; it is rebellion, black as the sin of witchcraft, for a man to know the law, and talk of conceding the point. In the name of the Eternal King, who is this liberal conceder, or, rather, this profane defrauder of the Lord, that he should even imagine such a thing in his heart?

Nor is it less important to remember that trifling with truth is to the last degree dangerous. No error can be imbibed without injury, nor propagated without sin. The utmost charity cannot convert another gospel into the gospel of Jesus Christ, nor deprive it of its deluding and destroying influence. There is no ground for imagining that an untruth, honestly believed, is in the least changed in its character by the sincerity of the receiver; nor may we dream that the highest culture renders a departure from revealed truth less evil in the sight of God.

If you give the sick man a deadly poison instead of a healing medicine, neither your broad views of chemistry, nor his enlightened judgment upon anatomy, will prevent the drug from acting after its own nature.

Spurgeon reminded his detractors of how the apostles responded to false teaching, and of the dangers of flirting with unbelief:

Paul pronounced a curse upon any man or angel who should preach another gospel, and he would not have done so, if other gospels were harmless. It is not so long ago that men need forget it, that the blight of Unitarian and other lax opinions withered the very soul of the Dissenting Churches; and that spirit has only to be again rampant, to repeat its mischief. Instances, grievous to our inmost heart, rise up before our memory at the moment of men seduced from their first love, and drawn aside from their fathers' gospel, who only meant to gather one tempting flower upon the brink of the precipice of error, but fell, never to be restored.

No fiction do we write, as we bear record of those we have known, who first forsook the good old paths of doctrine, then the ways of evangelic usefulness, and then the enclosures of morality. In all cases, the poison has not so openly developed itself, but we fear the inner ruin has been quite as complete. In the case of public teachers, cases are not hard to find where little by little men have advanced beyond their "honest doubt," into utter blasphemy.

Spurgeon's closing words are a fitting reply to the purveyors of doubt in our era:

We are not believers in stereotyped phraseology, nor do we desire to see the reign of a stagnant uniformity; but, at this present, the perils of the church lie in another direction. The stringency of little Bethel, whatever may have been its faults, has no power to work the mischief which is now engendered by the confusion of the latitudinarian Babel. To us, at any rate, the signs of the times portend no danger greater than that which can arise from landmarks removed, ramparts thrown down, foundations shaken, and doctrinal chaos paramount.

We have written this much, because silence is reckoned as consent, and pride unrebuked lifts up its horn on high, and becomes more insolent still. Let our opponents cease, if they can, to sneer at Puritans whose learning and piety were incomparably superior to their own; and, let them remember that the names, which have adorned the school of orthodoxy, are illustrious enough to render scorn of their opinions, rather a mark of imbecility than of intellect.

To differ is one thing, but to despise is another. If they will not be right, at least, let them be civil, if they prefer to be neither, let them not imagine that the whole world is gone after them. Their forces are not so potent as they dream, the old faith is rooted deep in the minds of tens of thousands, and it will renew its youth, when the present phase of error shall be only a memory, and barely that.

Twenty-first century postmodern "emerging" types in the church love to try to paint themselves as the polar opposite of modernists. The fact that Spurgeon's criticism of early modernism so perfectly refutes the rhetoric of the postmodern innovators shows why that claim is bogus. Far from being the antithesis of modernism, "evangelical postmodernism" is really nothing more than Modernism 2.0.

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Do I still work here?

by Frank Turk

OK -- not for nothin', but I am still the least-read and least-posting Pyro, and the odds of me reversing that any time soon are slim and none. I love my job, my family, and the real people we have met here in central Arkansas, and while I cannot conceive of even "not blogging", the best case for me is that I'll be blogging less frequently but still often enough for the right people to be variously edified and outraged.

Many of you will note that one of the reasons my blogging seems to be impacted is that I have become the house malcontent at First Things Evangel, a blog conceived of by Joe Carter and populated by what can best be described as an "assortment" of people from the broad Evangelical spectrum.

The only reason I bring it up is that fellow blogger James Grant posted a link to this article in Touchstone magazine which lines out an interesting perspective on the Twilight series of books: that they are a literary apologetic for Mormonism.

You know: wow. It sounds preposterous except that it also sounds entirely plausible when you read the article.

Stay tuned for the dose of Spurgeon. I'll be back on Wednesday.

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An Extremely Busy Week

by Phil Johnson

    don't do radio interviews very often, but for a mix of different reasons this week I was asked to do five. Two of them were about the Manhattan Declaration; the others dealt with the sovereignty of God, gambling, and the issue of biblical justice.

It's really not a good week to be logging so much radio time. I have two important (overdue) writing deadlines, and I'm leaving for London Sunday night. Plus, I still haven't written the blogpost I originally planned to post last Monday. So I'm going to try to make the most of my time this evening by blending a couple of items into one post.

First some excerpts from Thursday's interviews:

The Paul Edwards Program

Paul (one of the best commentators and interviewers in Christian radio) engaged me in conversation about the Manhattan Declaration on Facebook Wednesday night and invited me to continue that dialogue on his Detroit-based broadcast yesterday. Here's an archive copy of the entire broadcast. The segment where I participated starts about an hour and five minutes into the broadcast, and goes on for about half an hour.

Here are some sound bites:

1. Let me be clear about my position.
   
2. ECT2?
   
3. "Did I make a mistake?" "I think you did."
   
4. "I live in a community of gospel deniers and belong to the homeowners' association."
   
5. "I totally concur with that."
   
6. Long term implications? I hope it will drive us back to preaching the gospel together.
   

Wretched Radio In the wake of the Huckabee controversy, Todd Friel interviewed me yesterday morning for Wretched Radio on the question of pardons, clemency, and commuted sentences for violent criminals. Specifically, is it always a corruption of justice to pardon a violent criminal who exhibits good behavior in prison, or can showing mercy to a felon sometimes be a good thing? Don't people deserve mercy if they turn their lives around?

Here are my thoughts on that question.

And finally,

Speaking of Justice . . .

The American Bible Society has published The Poverty & Justice Bible—on recycled paper (because, you know, that makes a statement against Global Warming, perhaps the greatest human "injustice" some of our liberal friends are capable of imagining). They've sent me four copies to give away to our blog readers, and they hoped I would review the publication at TeamPyro. Here's the most succinct review I can give you tonight:

The "Bible" aspect of this work is of course its best feature, though I'm not at all a fan of the watered-down, dumbed-down, gender-neutraled, politically-correct "Contemporary English Version" they have used. I can't see any scenario in which such a poor translation would be truly useful, and with the plethora of translations available today, this one certainly would not be my choice. Perhaps one example of this translation's deep-down badness will suffice for this short review. Here's the CEV rendering of Acts 9:22: "Saul preached with such power that he completely confused the Jewish people in Damascus, as he tried to show them that Jesus is the Messiah." (ESV: "But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.")

The worst feature of the book, however, is the way it treats "poverty & justice." The editors' and (most of the endorsers') notion of "justice" is clearly straight from the canons of political correctness. Not that they really have much of any substance to say about either poverty or justice. There's a thin section of United-Methodist-style devotional essays stitched into the center of the book and unwisely titled "The Core." Aside from that, the main clues about the editors' perspective on "poverty & justice" come from the verses they have selected to highlight (or not). The highlights are in burnt orange (another unfortunate choice). Ostensibly these are all the key Bible verses about poverty and justice.

So with that in mind, I thumbed through to check a few verses that I knew would pose a challenge to the currently-popular politically-correct perspectives on "poverty & justice." It was frankly not surprising to see that 2 Thessalonians 3:10 ("If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat") didn't merit the editors' orange smear of approval. Neither did Deuteronomy 7:1-5, which spells out God's prescription for justice to the Canaanites, Perizzites, Amorites, and so on. Galatians 6:7 ("whatever one sows, that will he also reap") was ignored by the highlighter pen. Predictably, so was the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19 and God's judicial abandonment of sinners to their sin in Romans 1.

In other words, the view of "justice" this Bible tries to promote is the same humanistic perspective we have heard nonstop from Tony Campolo, Ron Sider, Shane Claiborne, most of the Emergent/ing districts of the blogosphere, and Acorn.

Anyway, I have four copies of this book to give away, and here's the deal: I'll give them to the four commenters who post the best 1-paragraph critique of the postmodern/liberal concept of "justice." No need to be wordy; a pithy one-sentence comment could well be better than a 600-word "paragraph."

Let's make Monday noon the deadline for entries. I'll be in England next week. Frank and Dan can choose the four winners and collect mailing addresses. I'll mail out the books when I get home.

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The abortion-trumps-the-Gospel dodge (NEXT! #19)

by Dan Phillips

Challenge: It is cold comfort to a dead baby that we allowed him to die to avoid working with Catholics.

Response: Who opposes "working with Catholics" — or Buddhists, Shintoists, Mormons, animists, atheists, or SpongeBobists? That has never been the issue.

NEXT!

(Proverbs 21:22)

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Ring a Bell

by Frank Turk

This is the first Christmas in 7 years that I don't have a retail business to run, and I'm a little grateful for it. But I was thinking today about my bookstore on Christmas Eve day a couple of years ago, and we were rockin'. I mean, best day before Christmas ever from a purely angels-get-their-wings standpoint, if you follow the cultural idiom. And I'm busy personally – helping people, encouraging them, being nice to them.

And as people are throwing money at me and I'm throwing merchandise at them – in a nice way, very jolly – these two women walk into the bookstore with a little girl. My helper greets them, and I notice them because they don’t act like middle-class people. They burp when they talk, they talk too loud, that kind of stuff.

Eventually, the wave of business subsides, and I catch a breather, and I take a walk around the store to check on the people who are still browsing – because people usually appreciate that. As I chat with the handful of people still in the store, I notice the two women and the little girl still browsing, and I ask them if they need any help. They don't, but as I trade service talk with them, I notice that they need a bath more than they need a book. They also prolly need to give up the half-pack of cigareetes they smoked driving over here, but I ignore that and move on. I've come out in public when I've been no prize, either.

So I go about my business, and one of the women comes to the desk to ask for some help, the little girl in tow. We chat some more, and the more I talk to her, the less I am impressed with her social skills, and I start to get a little antsy about her parenting skills. She's not smacking the kid around or anything, but I'm pretty sure I have never talked to my kids that way unless they were on the verge of being crucified – which is an interesting word to use there given the season, but it's the one that came to mind as I was sort of forced to eavesdrop on this slice of life. Not unless I was on the verge of crucifying them.

And I start to think to myself, "How can she not know better?" So she puts this book about Christmas on the counter along with a Bible and some other plastic junk, and I look at the Christmas book, thinking about the Sunday School lessons I had been teaching the last 3 weeks.

Because the Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We saw his glory – the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, who came from the Father. We have all received from his fullness one gracious gift after another. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came about through Jesus Christ.

No one has ever seen God. The only one, himself God, who is in closest fellowship with the Father, has made God known.

That is, God has made himself known to those of us who probably need more than a bath and to give up a half-pack of cigarettes, and know better than to talk to our children as if we were about to crucify them. The One who did crucify His one and only son has made Himself known.

I'm the one who ought to know better. Especially at Christmas.

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One Bad Apple

Some good news this morning (2 December): Apple just called and my computer is being shipped as we speak. There's no guarantee I'll get it before leaving for England Sunday night, but the Apple representative (who was very sympathetic, BTW) assures me that everything is being done to speed it up. She says Apple still hasn't figured out why so many iMacs were arriving at customers' homes with pristine packing and shattered screens, but she isn't aware of any recent cases of the problem. Anyway, after so many frustrating weeks, it's nice (finally) to be put on the fast-track for a replacement. I'll keep you updated.

y confidence in Apple has taken a nose dive this month. They dropped the ball again today, delaying the delivery of my replacement computer two more weeks, without bothering to tell me. It'll be at least two months after I originally placed my order before I get a working computer. Apple has my money. All I have from them so far is the AppleCare protection plan disk and a string of broken promises.

I wrote a post two weeks ago today describing how the new iMac I ordered arrived after a month's wait with a cracked screen. I ordered in October, on the day the new iMacs were announced. After waiting a full month already, getting a computer so badly damaged from the factory was a major disappointment.

When I called Apple to report the damage, I was transferred around between about seven phone-support people in a 90-minute phone call, trying to arrange an expedited replacement. Apple's corps of telephone people are extremely polite (if a little robotic), and every one of them acted as if they had never heard of an out-of-the-box computer with a cracked screen before. They listened with a tone of disbelief as I described how the box the computer came in was totally undamaged. All the packing was intact. Even the protective plastic sheet covering the screen was completely unflawed—but the glass screen itself was shattered.

I suggested that since the packaging was all in pristine shape, the computer appeared to have been broken in the packing process at the factory, not in transit. All of the Apple support staff assured me that this sort of thing simply never happens. By the fourth time I heard that, I began to wonder if underneath the polite veneer Apple's support staff were insinuating that I had somehow caused the damage myself. I offered to send photographs, but they said don't bother.

It turned out they weren't being entirely truthful with me.

In pleading with Apple to put my replacement computer on the fast track, I naturally expressed some frustration that it had already been nearly a month since I ordered the computer. The thought of waiting another month for a replacement was distasteful, and I wondered if I should just cancel the whole thing and order again at a more convenient time (rather than tie my money up for two months with no computer to show for it, and then be forced to take delivery on a new computer at the peak of the holiday rush). But two or three of the people I talked to sounded very empathetic and assured me that replacement computers are treated very differently; I would be "put at the head of the line," and the computer would be shipped priority delivery immediately by Fedex. I should have it in a week, two at the very outside.

That delighted me. What terrific customer service, I thought. "A week" would have been two days before Thanksgiving—a perfect time to set up a new computer, while watching football. But frankly I thought "a week" sounded too good to be true, so I really wasn't surprised when I looked at the online Apple Store the following morning to check the status of my order and discovered that my order wouldn't ship until December 1. I didn't call Apple to complain about the delay, but it was hard not to be slightly irritated. The new ship date set my delivery date back by ten days. I would have to wait more than twice as long as two customer-service reps had told me to expect.

December 1 in Shanghai is November 30 in Los Angeles, so I checked my order status when I got up yesterday. "IMAC 27"/4850-512MB Not Yet Shipped," it said, but underneath it still read, "Ships: Dec 1." No problem, I thought. That means it'll ship this afternoon.

But when I got home yesterday afternoon and checked my order status again, the ship-date had quietly been changed to "December 14." I had received no e-mail notification, and no explanation was given for the delay.

Naturally, I called Apple support to see what had happened. The first person I talked to tried to tell me the ship date had always been December 14. Even when I told her the whole story in detail, she didn't seem to digest any of the salient points. When I finished, she said, "Sir, I'm looking at your order on screen now, and it still says it's shipping on the 14th. It hasn't been delayed." I'd been on the phone with her more than 20 minutes already, and she clearly hadn't grasped why I was calling. I was scheduled to do a radio interview in 10 minutes, so I politely excused myself and said I would call back again later.

After the radio interview, I called Apple support again. On my second call, I spoke with a different agent. He understood my complaint after only two explanations, but he said he had no information about why my order was delayed. There was nothing he could do to speed it up. He could credit me for the discount Apple offered on Black-Friday sales of these computers. Or if I preferred, I could cancel the order and he would give me a full refund.

"No," I answered. "First I'd like to talk to a supervisor or someone else who can get an answer to my actual questions about the reasons for the long delay. I don't mind being put on hold. I'll be patient."

Thus this second call lasted more than two hours. I was on hold for at least two-thirds of that time, and the customer-service rep dutifully picked up the phone every three minutes, each time intoning robotically, "Mr. Johnson, I do apologize for the delay, but my supervisor is still working on another case, and it will be a few more minutes. Are you sure you want to keep holding?"

I was determined to outlast the annoyingly hip background music on Apple's phone system, but I ultimately failed to keep that resolution. The customer-service rep kept trying everything he could think of to get me off the phone—offering to have the supervisor call me when she finished the other case; assuring me repeatedly that there was really nothing he or anyone else could do to speed up my order; and one or two times practically begging me to cancel my order and accept a full refund.

I told him I might very well cancel the order, but first I wanted to talk to someone who could answer my questions about the reasons for the delays. I also wanted a straight answer to the question of whether I can reasonably expect that a working computer will be shipped to me sometime before Christmas. After all, I ordered this thing October 20. I ought to be at the head of the line already. And no one had offered me a single word of explanation yet. Expecting me to be happy with robotic apologies and a new delivery date (which—if met—will get the computer to me less than a week before Christmas) didn't seem like very good customer service to me. It still doesn't.

He told me there are in fact "many other people" awaiting replacements in front of me, and that's why he simply cannot expedite my order in front of theirs.

"But I ordered on the first day the new iMacs became available," I protested. "How can there be so many replacements scheduled ahead of mine? Are you honestly saying there is a full month's worth of defective computers that need to be replaced?"

"I didn't say that," he protested.

"You did say there's a long line of people waiting in front of me, and the ship-date for my replacement is now a full month after I sent the damaged computer back," I reminded him. "What else could that mean? If the problems with the new iMacs are really that severe and widespread—and if the production delays in Apple's Shanghai plant are as bad as it seems—I want to know, so that I can write about it.

"Also," I said, "I was promised an expedited replacement and told I might receive the replacement in a week. So why wasn't I even e-mailed when the shipment was delayed—twice? Is it standard procedure for Apple to change the ship-date like that on a priority order and not notify the customer?"

"We don't send out e-mail notifications for that," he said. "All our ship-dates are estimated times, not guarantees. They are subject to change."

"So you're saying it's Apple's policy not to notify customers when shipments that are supposed to be expedited get delayed—even when the delay is more than two weeks, and comes at the very last minute?"

"I didn't say that," he objected again.

"Then what did you mean when you said you don't notify priority customers when there are two-week shipping delays?" I asked.

That's when he said he had already given me all the information he could, and that no one, including the supervisors, had any more answers for my questions. He was polite. So was I. But it was clear that this was going to be the end of the discussion. This time I didn't ask him to keep me holding for the supervisor. After two hours, it was crystal-clear that no supervisor at Apple had any intention of talking to me yesterday.

The customer-service guy did say he would credit me for the Black-Friday discount plus a little extra, and he told me the supervisor is going to see if there's anything she might do to insure the fastest possible delivery for me.

I'm certainly not holding my breath, and the entire experience leaves me with a very bitter taste in my mouth. When customer service is that bad, mechanical apologies don't cut it, even when—especially when—you get thirty of them during a single phone call. I hope this is not a harbinger of things to come at Apple. The decline of Dell began with customer-service issues exactly like this.

If there's a serious problem getting the new iMacs to people in good shape and on time, Apple ought to come out and say so. I could respect that. But I'm not going to be a happy customer if they keep stalling and stonewalling me.

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