Repentance: the vital element

by Dan Phillips

Preface: I know, this is longer than my usual. But I think that I'd have a mass uprising on my hands if I extended it to a third. So make yourselves comfortable and, without further eloquence....

We began looking at the subject of repentance here on Tuesday. Then over at my place, on Wednesday, we took a little side-trip into the topic of apologies. Now we return to identify what I think is a vital, often missing element in how many Christians think of and deal with their sin(s).

First, though, let me just briefly (and probably unnecessarily) note that both of those posts, as well as this one, could easily be multiplied by a dozen or two. I almost have to force myself to write this, because I am so conscious of the many implications and related issues that beg for development here. Alas, those pleas must go denied.

Let's suppose that at least some Biblical reality has come to bear. Perhaps we fled for a time, jumping at shadows,  knowing no real peace of mind (Proverbs 28:1a). Perhaps we tried blame-shifting (1 Kings 18:17), or lashing out (1 Samuel 20:30) or vain, nauseating shows of religion (Proverbs 28:9; Isaiah 1:12-20). But now the Holy Spirit has arrested us. The Holy Spirit has brought days and nights of misery (Psalm 32:3-4). He has used the word, spoken His "Thou art the man" (2 Samuel 12:7), and His word struck home to our heart.

But what now? We begin to see the sin as God sees it. We admit to God that it is sin, agreeing with Him.

And?

The element I have in mind is mortification. It is dealing absolute, final, howling death to that specific sin, from its root to its branches. It is seeing it dead, dealing death to it, killing it, depriving it of all means of life and burying it.

Here I think of Luther and Paul.

It was Luther who said, in Thesis #1 (timely, eh? I'm here all week! Try the veal!), "When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said 'Repent,' He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance." And it was Paul who wrote,

So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.  For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.  For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. (Romans 8:12-14)

Get that: if (A) by the Spirit, (B) you (C) put to death the deeds of the body, (D) you will live. There's a whole theology of Christian living in that verse, but let's keep it simple. Paul is saying:

1. That our objective must not be to wound sin, nor to weaken sin, nor to hamper nor cripple sin — but to kill it, to put it to death.
2. It is we who are commanded to do it, and so we who must do it. To give it no thought, or to shrug it off on God, is to thumb our nose in God's face. Yet...
3. We cannot do it unaided, but can only do it by the Holy Spirit's aid.

This is the Christian life.  It is characteristic of being a Christian. The many, many folks who isolate verse 14 and try to fabricate some mythology of living by semi-revelation does great violence to the context. Let me set it out like this:

1. To be a son of God is, definitionally, to be led by the Spirit. Being Spirit-led is not a subset among Christians. The two sets (sons-of-God and Spirit-led) are co-extensive.
2. To be led by the Spirit is to put to death the deeds of the body.
3. To put to death the deeds of the body is to live according to the Spirit, rather than the flesh.

At least a few of you are shouting "Owen! Owen!" at your monitors. So here indeed is the great man, on this passage, in words of gold that might well be written on the front-page of anyone's Bible:

Do you mortify;
do you make it your daily work;
be always at it while you live;
cease not a day from this work;
be killing sin or it will be killing you (p. 47, Overcoming Sin and Temptation; Crossway Books: 2006, Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor [emphases added])

But so often we do everything but kill our sin. We grant it was sin, perhaps, yes; we feel bad about it, we do a bit of this and that about it, plucking at its edges... yet we keep sneaking it crumbs and morsels, a bit of water here and a bit of wine there. We seem bound and determined to keep it alive — maybe just a little, maybe on the sly; but alive nonetheless.

How so? Well, positively, we find some way to cushion our darling sin, to protect it, to provision it. We focus on others' contributions ("If my wife hadn't...."; "If my pastor would only...."), or others' behavior ("What _____ did is a lot worse"). Or we find some obscure author or big-name apostate who says our sin isn't really sin — and maybe we don't go that far, but we use that to attach an IV to keep our sin hydrated enough to stay alive.

Work at it hard enough, and we can see ourselves as noble heroes or tragic martyrs. I fear I've seen that in folks struggling with temptations to sexual sin, for instance — in theory, they grant the sinfulness of the sin... yet they expend an awful lot of effort to protecting its tragic dignity.

Or, negatively, we refuse to deal death to it. We refuse to tear down our connections to that sin, the monuments we've raised to it, the apparatuses for indulging in it. We hide the magazines, rather than burn them. We don't go into that place... though we drive by it. We maintain those corrupting friendships, relationships, subscriptions, memberships, associations. We are private and soft-spoken in our expressions of repentance. Our disownings are carefully-worded and pride-sparing.

What we need to do, of course, is see the sin the way God sees it. God doesn't understand it. God doesn't think it's technically wrong, but kinda wistfully cute in a way. No, God hates it (Hebrews 1:9), He loathes it, He abominates it.

How much does God hate my sin, your sin? With such a molten hatred that nothing but the death of His dear Son could make it possible for Him to look on us with other than a white-hot fury (cf. Matthew 26:36-46). See Him hanging yonder, on the Cross. Why? For that sin, because nothing but the Lord Christ's death and His blood could atone for that sin, and bring you and me to God as other than damned, doomed, hopeless criminals.

So dash all rationalizations and equivocations and evasions and minimalizations. Burn all bridges. Disown! Flee! Kill! Ask God to help you to hate that sin as He hates sin. Would you be content to share your bed with just a few potato-bugs, or have just a little dog-dung on your ice cream? Ask God to help you see what you did to your spouse, your friend, your parents, your children, your neighbor — ask Him to help you see it as He sees it. Find the root of it in your heart. Pour spiritual Round-up on it, kill it dead, all of it, roots to branches. Don't rest, don't think it's done, until it's gone, and all traces renounced, disowned, dead by your own hand.

This is part of what it means to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires" (Romans 13:14).

I'll close with words far better than mine; I recommend that you read them aloud:

The Christian is to proclaim and prosecute an irreconcilable war against his bosom sins; those sins which have lain nearest his heart, must now be trampled under his feet. ...Soul, take thy lust, thy only lust, which is the child of thy dearest love, thy Isaac, the sin which has caused most joy and laughter, from which thou has promised thyself the greatest return of pleasure or profit; as ever thou lookest to see my face with comfort, lay hands on it and offer it up: pour out the blood of it before me; run the sacrificing knife of mortification into the very heart of it; and this freely, joyfully, for it is no pleasing sacrifice that is offered with a countenance cast down — and all this now, before thou hast one embrace more from it.

...Who is able to express the conflicts, the wrestlings, the convulsions of spirit the Christian feels, before he can bring his heart to this work? Or who can fully set forth the art, the rhetorical insinuations, with which such a lust will plead for itself? One while Satan will extenuate and mince the matter: It is but a little one, O spare it, and thy soul shall live for all that. Another while he flatters the soul with the secrecy of it: Thou mayest keep me and thy credit also; I will not be seen abroad in thy company to shame thee among thy neighbors; shut me up in the most retired room thou hast in thy heart, from the hearing of others, if thou wilt only let me now and then have the wanton embraces of thy thoughts and affections in secret. ...Now what resolution doth it require to break through such violence and importunity, and notwithstanding all this to do present execution? Here the valiant swordsmen of the world have showed themselves mere cowards who have come out of the field with victorious banners, and then lived, yea, died slaves to a base lust at home. As one could say of a great Roman captain who, as he rode in his triumphant chariot through Rome, had his eye never off a courtezan that walked along the street: Behold, how this goodly captain, that had conquered such potent armies, is himself conquered by one silly woman. (The Christian in Complete Armour, William Gurnall (Banner of Truth: 1995 [reprint of 17th century work]), p. 13)

"Be killing sin, or it will be killing you." Amen.

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Should every Church have a Bookstore?

by Frank Turk

A gem from 2005 since I am someplace over the Atlantic Ocean as you read this. Enjoy.



Should every church have a bookstore? Should every church be supporting a bookstore run by its members?

Before I answer that, I am about to use a lot of retail words -- like "overhead" and "transactions" and "wholesale buys". I use those words rather than fluffy spiritual words because we are talking about practical matters and not matters of doctrine. So forgive me for being a crass retail wonk.

Having said that, you ask an interesting question. I think the simple answer is "no", but is that answer really very simple? For example, how can a small church of 50 people support an actual "bookstore"? Frankly, it can't. It can't generate enough transactions to make wholesale buys. You need a base of about 2500 bodies to generate enough transactions to cover your costs -- even if your costs are part of the church's overhead. But what about a church of 3000 – should it open up a bookstore? Would it be “books” or “books and CDs” or “l’il Barnes & Noble complete with café pomo outreach”? The simple “no” covers a lot of cases that really have different reasons behind “no”.

But the problem -- which I see as a very real need and a very real problem for the contemporary church -- is that most little churches deperately need a local bookstore to assist in discipleship. A bi-vocational pastor desperately needs a place where he can have a partner in ministry which is bigger than his flock of 10 who are meeting in his dining room in order to give people what they need to grow up as ministers of the Gospel.

In that, we have the problem I mentioned in my intro to this little jam session: the CBA/ECPA channel takes itself too seriously and also to lightly. It is too serious when it tries to make every activity a spiritually-enriching activity. For example, loss prevention and inventory accounting are, in the best case, good for one's retail practice. However, anyone who can do either one of those without feeling the need to employ vicious idioms of frustration and rage is qualified for canonization. Everything one does is not necessarily a step toward sanctification®, or an act of worship™. But at the same time, one of the things that ECPA/CBA refuses to do (and therefore takes itself too lightly) is establish a working confession of faith which defines what the "C" is in their funky names. You know: we shouldn't accept false prophets, deniers of the Trinity, or blasphemers as viable authors in "Christian" bookstores. But there are whole publishing houses (and TV channels) devoted to this sort of thing, and their goods are right on the shelf today at Family, and LifeWay (sorry SBC), and Berean, and Mardels. And, to be totally transparent, my store, too. We bat about 95%, but I admit we aren’t perfect.

So CBA/ECPA ought to be more concerned with what it is doing to and for the local church. Instead, it is worried that it isn't pan-denominationally friendly and it isn't selling enough neo-Marcionist literature to baptists and presbyterians.

If the world was a perfect place, my opinion is that Christian bookstores would be run by people who are under the accountability of their own elders with a somewhat-ecumenical ideal in mind. That word “ecumenical” is going to come up a few more times in this exchange, so I’m going to flesh it out here.

“Ecumenical”, as I am using it, does not mean “blindly taking everyone’s word for it that they are Christians”. For example, wherever you come down on the AA/FV issue, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the baptism of the author of a given book. Since she comes up later in this list of questions, for example, Joyce Meyer may actually be a Christian. I say good on her for following Jesus. That doesn’t mean that all her books – or any of her books – are worth reading from the perspective of spreading faith in Jesus Christ or maturing one’s faith in Jesus Christ. She’s a Christian? Fine. Is she growing up disciples in Christ? The answer to that question is what’s at stake in the CBA/ECPA industry.

“Ecumenical”, then, actually does mean “unity in TRUTH”. That means first we seek TRUTH, and in our admiration of the Gospel and its truth we find unity in those things indicative of that truth. Like grace -- when was the last time you read a book or heard a sermon about grace in which you found out that it is through grace one becomes a fantastic husband? That is, not only by giving grace, but by experiencing the grace of God and living inside the gratitude of a sinner who not only got off light, but got love in place of justice? Do you have to be a Methodist to read that – or a Lutheran? How about a Baptist – can a Baptist read that and not call out the hounds? Could it be that we have this truth in common with Presbyterians as well?

See: the upside of “church” bookstores is that they almost certainly (and there are exceptions) are being timoneered by pastors and elders. But the downside is that these bookstores tend to be denominationally narrow – about 5 microns more narrow than the most conservative overseer of the assembly. So in that, questions like, “why do Presbyterians baptize babies” or “why do Baptists use grape juice” or “what should I think of the Koran” or “I’ve always been taught that I got saved when I made a decision and walked down the aisle, but I accidentally read Romans 9 and it says that God wants to save, and in fact decides to save, without any regard for who I am or what I have done; what’s up with that”, or “I’m 13 and I really like my youth pastor; should I dedicate my life to ‘the ministry’ before I even know anything about girls” never get asked or never get answered in most church bookstores.

Being under submission but being free to demonstrate the discussion about very hard subjects like these is one of the benefits of being a bookstore outside of the 4 walls or polity of a church. Think about it: what if, rather than mutter in darkness about “those crazy Baptists” or “those liberal Methodists” or “those muttering continualists” there was a place where these questions of denominational abstraction could be learned about with a stern eye focused on the Gospel. Personally, I think it would lead more people to being Baptist, but of course I am well known for having a disastrous hermeneutic. My point is that while a church bookstore can serve a particular purpose well, it is not (in my view) the best possible purpose for Christian retail and publishing.

You know, I have tossed around a good bit of tough talk about this industry as I have blogged lo these 6 years, and through these questions at my blog, but let me say something: I see Christian retail as a very God-honoring thing and a very spiritually-beautiful thing – when it has all its ducks in a row. But that is so rare, so obscure today that it’s like finding a Hershey’s Kiss made of gold in a urinal in Grand Central Station in NYC. At a glance, you’re sure it’s prank meant to get you to put your hand into something vile; if you stare at it long enough and you realize that it’s real, you can’t figure out how to touch it without looking giddy or disturbed; and if you don’t grab it, somebody else with less sanctification than you is bound to grab it and waste it on sterno and summer sausage. This thing we are talking about is one of the great lay ministerial opportunities in the history of the church, but so many people have no idea how to get the kiss without touching the porceline that we just wind up with a lot of people trying to wash their hands quickly and forget that they ever saw the confounded thing to begin with.

So, no, I don’t think that every church should have a bookstore in a one-to-one kind of correspondence, but yes: I think every church should “have” a bookstore that they can rely on and do turn to in order to be more than a bunker full of people who never experience or fellowship with the rest of God’s people, intellectually or spiritually.

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Repentance: fake and real

by Dan Phillips

False repentance is worse than no repentance.

Scenario: a professed believer sins. (It happens, sadly.) Or he finds himself beset with strong temptation to sin (which also happens). Now what?

Problems. The course forward is dangerous, and riddled with booby-traps.

The big problem, of course, is the human heart. It's a slimy, "tricksy" con-artist (Jeremiah 17:9). It will fool us, in whichever of a dozen ways proves effective. There are enough traps and snares in our own hearts that we hardly need a crafty devil on the outside to be in peril — yet there is one, and he has designs on us.

What happens. Often the devil and our heart collude to convince us that, ahem, our sewage doesn't smell. That is, sin isn't so "sinny" when it's sinned by us. Sin out-there is a nasty, vicious, repugnant thing. Nobody should indulge in it. But sin in-here is noble, romantic, tragic, perhaps even heroic. (See this post, especially numbers 4-6, 12-14.)

It is okay with the world, the flesh, and the devil if you do anything about sin — except one thing.

What we will see, accordingly, is people who grant they "did wrong," in general and non-specific terms. They made a mistake. They erred. They did bad things... of some sort.

Or they will focus on the periphera of their sin, the leaves instead of the root.

Or they will make little of their responsibility, and much of others' contribution.

I saw this sort of thing once, many years ago. A married Christian friend committed adultery. His wife put him out, and he spent the night at my house.

He seemed chastened... but then he talked. How was he processing what he'd done, in his heart?

Wellsir, he told me that he thought maybe this whole thing was the Lord's will, because the other woman's marriage wasn't good, and his marriage wasn't great, and....

Just pause right there for a moment. This was a Baptist, evangelical Christian, going to a good, Bible-teaching church. He had committed adultery, a pretty unambiguous act, pretty unambiguously sinful. Yet he not only had a rationalization for it, but he ended up making it something that was pleasing to God, something that was of the Lord! Not only did the sewage not stink... it actually had a rather pleasant fragrance.

How could that happen?

But this poor soul is hardly singular. I have heard all sorts of folks talk about all sorts of plain, straightforward, primary-colored sins in wistful, longing tones, or in terms that end up making their bad not so bad after all. Some sins are bad, yes; but surely this sin is different. Surely my sin is different. It is a noble, brave, manly/assertive act. It is necessary, wise, even pleasing to God.

And even if we abstain from the act, we still cherish and protect the temptation. I've seen that as well. A man or woman is not (pursuing sexual immorality or perversion, sinning against their parents or spouse, etc.), true; but hear how (s)he talks about it. You get the impression that it isn't really that vile, after all. Let someone rip the mask off of marital treachery or sexual immorality or perversion, and watch how the "but-but-but" beast shows its head, how crucial it becomes to hear "the other side." We mustn't make (homosexuality, adultery, false doctrine, abusing one's spouse) look that bad.

What must happen: repentance. I said that sin's allies are fine with our doing anything about sin except one thing. What is that one thing?

Well, of course, in general terms, it's repentance.

Now that's a good Bible word. Most OT occurrence translate a term that actually means to turn around, to turn back. It depicts turning away from evil (cf. Ezekiel 14:6; 18:30), and turning back, returning to Yahweh (Zechariah 1:3).

Usually the NT word is a form of metanoeō. Though the definition has been abused, it does mean fundamentally to change one's mind. Our problem with that gloss, I think, is that we confuse changing one's mind with merely changing one's opinion about something, as if one were going to order a burger and instead goes for a club sandwich. We hear it as a light, shallow pivot — which repentance certainly is not.

Perhaps it would be better to explain metanoein as to transform one's mind. It envisions a root-to-branches paradigm-shift which always and necessarily issues in a change of behavior (Acts 26:20). If there is fruit that is appropriate to repentance (Matthew 3:8), then equally there must be fruit that is inappropriate to genuine repentance — such fruit as I briefly alluded to, above.

One would hope we would be in fundamental agreement thus far.

But there is a crucial element to repentance that I find missing in the thinking of many. And that element is...

...the topic of Thursday's post, Lord willing.

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Another Word About Doubt

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 "The Three Witnesses," a sermon originally preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle on Sunday morning, 9 August 1874.

   feel sick to death of the common talk about the healthiness of doubting and the beauty of "modern thought." This talk is only the self-praise of a set of concealed infidels treacherously lurking in God’s church.

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BibleWorks followup: resources

by Dan Phillips

I mentioned in my love note for BibleWorks 8 Tuesday that

[n]obody should think, "Yeah, sure, but you have to be a total brainiac to use it." Not at all. I'm pretty much a BW8 idiot, compared to the guys who post at the forum. I would really profit from a seminar; I'm only using [BibleWorks] for maybe 5-10% of what it can do — but that 5-10% is what I care most about right now.

Wellsir, Jim Barr of BibleWorks kindly emailed me, pointing out that a seminar he just recently gave at Luther Seminary is available online.

The seminar is about two hours long, and starts from the very basic basics, and goes on to demonstrate more advanced uses and complex searches, and the use of various tools, such as maps. If you're already a BW8 user, Jim's seminar will be helpful. But if you're considering buying and would like to see a demo — there y'go!

You can also find some user-created files and resources at the BibleWorks Blog, "run by Michael Hanel, a Ph.D. student in the Classics Department at the University of Cincinnati, and Jim Darlack, a librarian at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary." (Those guys are the brainiacs.)

Here I'll just pause and marvel at three things:

1. If you have any sense of history, isn't it simply amazing how many really powerful resources we have readily available to us today?
2. With that same sense, look back and marvel at the achievements of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Owen, Edwards, Spurgeon — who had few or none of those resources.
3. Finally and shamefacedly, I think how relatively little we (by which I mean I) have to show for the possession of all these fine, gleaming tools.

Want an interesting imagination-exercise? What would a Spurgeon or an Alford or an Edwards or a Westcott or a Calvin have done with the resources we have?

It is true that "If the axe is dull and he does not sharpen its edge, then he must exert more strength" (Ecclesiastes 10:10a). However, it's a poor craftsman who blames his tool... perhaps even a poorer one who expects the tool to do the work and show the skill and heart for him. The giants of yesterday, looming over our paltry accomplishments, bear eloquent witness: a heart that is ablaze with passionate, all-encompassing love for God will scoff at the paucity of tools, and forge ahead regardless.

Single-minded love and consecrated devotion matter far more than the fineness of one's tools.

But why pose an either/or? Why not put first things first, then bring in the second things in their service? Why not both?

God grant that it be so with us.

(By which I mean me.)

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Another Bible-shilling post

by Frank Turk

Since Phil and Dan spent the first couple of days this week making you drool over software you can't possibly afford, I thought I'd show you what a luddite I am when it comes to Bible Study, and some on-the-cheap tricks for the rest of us who don't get free software because we're famous bloggers, and also don't have the budget of a small lawn-scaping business to fund our theology jones.



So first off: get over yourself when it comes to the physical bound book which we call the Bible. It's nearly impossible today to buy a Bible with a decent cover and real quality binding for less than $150.00 -- and when I say that, I know someone is going to come across with their anecdote about the $7 gift-and-award Bible Pastor Hallibut gave him at High School Graduation and how that cardboard-covered newsprint Bible has served him well lo these 40-aught years. I'm very proud of you. The rest of us will be using our Bibles daily and will destroy those leather-like Bibles which are everywhere in three years, and all the notes we have taken from the edifying sermons we have listened to will be lost forever when the folio from Micah 2 to Luke 18 falls out because the cheap glue holding the book together has finally dried up and turned to dust.

So get over the fact that the Bible has to be "bound", and get involved in the best invention since before Kindle: the loose-leaf Bible -- specifically, the ESV Loose-Leaf Bible. You can buy it in its own binder, but let me suggest to you that this completely fails to develop the genius of this product, and costs almost double what the plain pages will cost by themselves.

See: taking a loose-leaf Bible and putting it in one binder is simply thinking of the Bible as one discrete unit, and it's nothing of the sort. It's the ultimate study Bible just waiting to be born, and you just don't know it yet.

Imagine, if you will, the ability to actual capture all the notes you will ever take on every passage of Scripture in your Bible, and never losing those notes. I'm going to show you how to do that in just a second. But first you have to find this stuff:

Some Report Binders with the big sliding clips

Pre-drilled blank copy paper (at least 2 reams, but you may choose more if you're a real note-taker)

Sticky Tabs

I can smell the logs suddenly burning in your brain as I type -- some of you have already lost it because this is such a great idea. So OK: you went to the local Office Supply Outpost (that was easy!) and you got this stuff, and your ESV loose-leaf arrived in its box still wrapped in its plastic. You almost hate to unwrap the sheets because your child with the busy fingers will undoubtedly make a very complicated game of 52-card pick-up of this 1100+ pages if you leave it unattended for 4 minutes, but you must unwrap the Bible pages.

After the wrapper is gone, take the Bible and divide it up into sections. The real hard-core disciples here will make 66 books of the pile of paper -- maybe more if they go really hard-core into dividing up the book of Psalms. But divide the Bible up into the right number of sections to (A) match the number of report covers you bought, and (B) the right number of logical portable units for you. Mine is divided into 6 sections, but you might decide to give yourself more bound units so you can add more blank paper.

Here's where the busy-fingered child comes in: before you bind up the pages, you have to interleave blank pages for each printed page. Maybe you want two blank pages for each printed page -- which I think makes serious sense. One blank page per printed page means you only have one blank side for each printed side, and that's not even hardly enough for most of the NT, let alone Ezekiel or Daniel. But this prep work makes the final product entirely brilliant. You're going to interleave the blank pages to the printed pages, and make sure you keep the edges with the holes aligned.

When you're done about three days later, get out your report binders and -- get this now -- insert the printed-and-plain interleaved pages into the covers and clip the binding shut. If you have put multiple books of the Bible together, use the sticky tabs to mark the book separations so you have quick access, and that's really about it.

Now what you have is the ultimate note-taker's Bible in portable volumes. I will admit that it is cumbersome, but it is also indispensable for keeping your notes from Sunday School or "big church" all in one place for future reference. And if you're clever, it all comes together for less than $100.

Now, here's the test of fire: I am sure that Dan and Phil will both tell you that this solution is not as sweet as their solution for iBible library software for a multitude of reasons. I have one reason only for suggesting this solution: you can take my solution with you to the Pulpit.

See: neither Dan nor Phil would ever preach from the pulpit using a digital library on their laptop -- because let's face it: it would look like they are phoning it in. It would look unseemly to have your laptop open at the pulpit and to preach from something other than pages -- either printed or hand-written.

But if you stride up to the pulpit with your hand-written notes in your simply-bound report binder Bible, you have instant credibility. And you can keep all your notes right there in that Bible forever -- you can even add new pages after a couple of decades.

No controversy there, right? How will your Wednesday ever be the same? Enjoy & discuss!

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Why I love BibleWorks 8

by Dan Phillips

M'man Phil Johnson's paean of praise to Logos 4 yesterday has moved me... to write about BibleWorks 8.

To clarify what is probably already clear, I'm neither arguing with nor disputing Phil. Particularly on the subject of e-Sword, which is an absolutely amazing program, considering that it's freeware. For many believers, that program is all they'll ever need.

My backstory is not as technical as Phil's. It's about how I've used hard-copy Bibles. Since I was a new believer, I always wanted Bibles with margins roomy enough to allow my notes. The first was a wide-margin KJV from Oxford. Later, I got a  wide-margin Greek New Testament which I had re-bound in leather.

However, the two I used most extensively were that Greek NT, and my NAS Ryrie Study Bible. I made marginal notes of varying kinds, but perhaps most were entering in some or all of the Hebrew or Greek text into the margin.

Or course, the troubles were several:

1. There was only so much room
2. I could only write (and read) so small; and
3. Every time I got a new Bible, I had to start over

At the same time, I used various Bible programs. I tried GRAMCORD in DOS, decades ago. Then I went to  the GUI program Bible Windows (now called Bibloi; haven't used it for years).

I started BibleWorks something like version 4, and have stayed with it. Let me tell you why I love BibleWorks today:

1. Economical. The amount of material you get for the one price is simple amazing. Check it out. Plus, there have been additional free updates. All of this is for the basic full-version price of $349. For most, that package would be sufficient, but there are a score of additional modules available.
2. Fast. What BW does, it does well-nigh instantaneously. I just upgraded my pc significantly. Additional RAM, CPU power, and a dedicated video card all have made my Logos a good bit spiffier. But BibleWorks? It was already really fast. It starts up faster... and that's about it. To be much faster, it would have to do the searches before I knew I wanted them. My point is that BW8 runs great on top-line pc's, but also runs great on aged pc's. You don't need to get the latest and greatest hardware to make BW8 hop and pop. It pretty much floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee. Seriously: enter a word, and bang! there's every occurrence. Click on one. Push a button. Bang! You see that verse in every version you want. Go to the Hebrew. Mouse-over a word, bam! Up pops a window with full parsing and basic definition. Right click a word. Select search on lemma. Bang! there's every use of that word in the Hebrew text. I could go on and on, but it's amazingly powerful and fast.
3. Notes. This is probably the single aspect that most has my heart. You know how you'll hear something great in a sermon, or read it in a book (or on a blog), or hear it in a conversation — something that sheds significant light on a verse or passage? Then two days later, it's gone? Doesn't have to be. BibleWorks makes it possible to make extended notes, in any font, with any hyperlinking, on any verse. With graphics. Move to another verse, and your notes are instantly saved. Go back to that verse — even just point your mouse at it — and your notes instantly display. I now have countless, countless notes on hundreds of verses, from my own observations, sermons, books, hymns, web sites, conversations, studies — all permanently stored in conjunction with my BW8. Get a laptop? New pc? No problem: just copy your Notes folder to a flash drive, then copy from there to your new device, and you can take up where you left off.

4. No, really, notes! I love that feature so much, it deserves a second entry. My notes contain excerpts from Bible journals, anecdotes, textbooks, grammars, pictures, maps, and personal reflections that would otherwise have been lost. Now they're just there, in a flash. I use this in conjunction with Logos, copying what I find (with a great expenditure of time) there into the BW8 notes, for lightning-fast access when I need it. This feature alone sells me.
5. Editor. In addition to the verse-by-verse notes, there's a fully-functional editor. So if you're doing a word-study, or a book-study, you can drag the Hebrew or Greek (or English or Spanish or whatever) into the Editor to build your document.
6. Dedicated, responsive support. The BibleWorks forum is constantly monitored by the geniuses who create and maintain BW. When a problem crops up, they're on it like an Emergent on a frappé, and the next day's update will fix it. Bug fixes don't wait for months, they're sent out as they occur. Plus, email tech support is also always thoroughly and courteously responsive.
7. This! Seriously! How could I not?

Nobody should think, "Yeah, sure, but you have to be a total brainiac to use it." Not at all. I'm pretty much a BW8 idiot, compared to the guys who post at the forum. I would really profit from a seminar; I'm only using it for maybe 5-10% of what it can do — but that 5-10% is what I care most about right now.

(click to embiggen)

Unlike Phil, I don't have an iPad. I do have an iPhone, and on it, I never use Logos. It's simply too slow and unwieldy. Instead, I use Olive Tree's iPhone software. It's fast, powerful, intuitive, very nicely done.

So what about Logos? Simply and briefly, I love BibleWorks, but I deeply respect and use Logos. Any time you discuss it, the elephant in the room is always how expensive their material is (as I experienced here, for instance). But they are always having sales, plus there is community pricing and pre-publication pricing.

The aim of the two programs is different. BibleWorks is all about the text of Scripture, while Logos is a broader research tool. BibleWorks is like having a roomy desk with Biblical texts and exegetical tools right at hand. Logos is like having a fully-stocked library. Ideally, one should have both.

I do use Logos continually, and will enjoy it all the more now with the faster computer. But BibleWorks will remain my mainstay.

I think every pastor should have BibleWorks. If yours doesn't, it would make a terrific Christmas gift. I used part of a bonus once to give BW to a pastor I thought very well of, who was struggling by with GRAMCORD. He was bowled over. Is $349 too much for your wallet? Talk to the deacons or someone, and start a whisper-campaign to get the dough together, and do your whole church a favor by giving the pastor BibleWorks.

In sum: I respect, recommend, am grateful for and use Logos, and don't have a word of argument with anyone who loves and praises it.

But I love BibleWorks.

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Bible Study in the Cloud

The (very long) account of how I came to love Logos 4
by Phil Johnson



've been using Logos Bible Software for years—since the Windows 3.1 version in about 1993 or '94. It wasn't always my favorite Bible-study software (and even now I sometimes use as many as six Bible programs simultaneously when studying) but I never abandoned Logos because of the rich store of resources that were exclusive to Logos. (That includes, of course, the MacArthur Study Bible notes).

People sometimes ask how I do systematic study. I generally use Logos first, throughout the week, mainly for reading and research. At the end of the week, when I'm in the hands-on process of writing notes for a sermon, I use e-Sword. E-Sword is perfect if I just need to cut and paste Bible verses, check the Greek word for "lasciviousness," or look up something in a Bible dictionary quickly. It's free, easy to use, and much speedier than Logos or any of the other workhorse Bible programs.

But I consider Logos a must-have because of the wealth of excellent resources that have been formatted for Logos. For large-scale searches across a massive database of Bible-study material, Logos simply cannot be beat.

In 2001, when Logos released their third major upgrade—the one with the Libronix engine—I was deliriously happy with it. Its user interface was way cooler than any of its predecessors; it was more flexible and almost intuitive. That's when Logos became the software I preferred for reading, searching for obscure material, collecting hard-to obtain and out-of-print resources. I found loads of valuable Libronix-compatible books online, including a ton of Arthur Pink resources, Edwards' Works, and the complete works of John Bunyan. Great stuff.

Naturally, last November, when Logos announced the release of Logos 4, I was eager to see it.



It came at a very busy time, though, so I didn't try to install the new Logos right away. I read several reviews, all of which commented on the very long installation process. I decided not to upgrade until I could devote a full day to it. I also decided after reading the reviews that I was going to leave the older Libronix version on my computer until I was certain the advantages of Logos 4 warranted a full move away from software I liked so much.

That was a difficult decision, because all those resources take up lots of disk space. I had already heard Logos 4 couldn't use the Libronix format; it was going to reinstall all my books for me in a different format. I figured that would more than double the amount of disk space I had allocated to Logos. On my laptop that's no small matter.

For that reason, I decided when I did install Logos 4, I would install it on an external drive.

It turned out to be a good thing I waited, because when I finally did attempt to install Logos 4, the program kept crashing. It simply wouldn't install on my Windows XP virtual machines. Dan Pritchett, one of Logos's top executives, graciously offered help from the Logos technical staff when I was trying to track down the problem, but my schedule was jammed and I thought it likely that the problem was related to a configuration issue in my virtual machine. I didn't want to waste the Logos staff's time with that. Besides, I was still deliriously happy with Libronix, so there simply was no urgency to upgrade.



Then on August 4 (just a few weeks ago), Dan Pritchett e-mailed me to say he was making it possible for me to download the beta version of Logos 4 for my Mac. I jumped on the opportunity and downloaded it immediately. It installed flawlessly (though just like all the reviews had said, the process of downloading resources took several hours). It had a beautiful and informative home page that filled the screen on my 27-inch iMac. And (best of all) it gave me access to a fresh, new, more-complete-than-ever set of Spurgeon's works.

So my overall impression from the beginning was very positive. My only complaints were fairly minor: 1) it seemed just a bit sluggish; 2) it resided on the Mac side of my computer, and I do all my sermon prep in the Windows virtual machine, so switching back and forth was clunky; and 3) I couldn't find the location on my hard disk where Logos 4 put all those resources. (I don't think I ever did locate them, but after the first 10 minutes of searching, my attempts to find them were admittedly only half-hearted.)

Anyway, I liked Logos 4 enough that I thought I'd upgrade my Windows VM to Windows 7 and then try the Logos 4/Windows installation again. The switch to Windows 7 turned into a 4-week ordeal (but of course, that's not really germane to Logos, so I'll forego the details). When I finally got Windows 7 running well, one of the first things I did was try to install Logos 4 once more.

It crashed again. At exactly the same point in the installation process.

This time, however, I quickly figured out the problem. I was, of course, trying to install the Logos resources to an external drive. Even though the Logos install process offers a "custom" option where you can choose your preferred location for the program and resources, Logos 4 will not install happily anywhere except on the main hard drive. As soon as I allowed it to default to my C: drive, Logos 4 installed flawlessly.

Now I was in business, but not particularly happy about using so much of my disk space for that massive collection of Logos resources (especially since most of the same resources already existed on an external drive for the Libronix installation, and I also already had a copy of them somewhere on the Mac portion of my hard drive from the installation of Logos's Mac edition. In other words, I now had two copies of my all Logos data files on my main hard drive, and another set of the same data on an external drive. (Fortunately, I have a 2TB hard drive in my 27-inch iMac.)

I figured I would eventually default to either the Mac Version or the Windows version of Logos 4 (or else I could always revert completely to Libronix) and then I would uninstall whichever sets of data I wasn't going to use. I still liked the look of Logos 4, but one other thing puzzled me: That home page adds new information constantly. It draws all its data from an online source. You have to be connected to the Internet to use it. Logos 4 is also designed to keep all my settings, notes, and whatnot online—in "the cloud" rather than on my local drive.

I wasn't sure there was any great benefit to be derived from Logos's continuous connection to the cloud. I do a lot of study in out-of-the-way places, and I've always liked having my Bible-study software self-contained on my laptop so I can take it anywhere. I wasn't sure how much Logos relied on cloud computing, but it seemed like a lot, and I didn't see any serious advantage in that. I wondered what disadvantages I would notice when I needed to disconnect from the Internet and use Logos offline.

Then during last month's Ocean City Bible Conference, Logos expert Kendell Stellfox gave a presentation and demo on how to use Logos. He mentioned that there's an iPad/iPhone app that uses the cloud-based features of Logos 4 to maximum advantage. I don't know why I hadn't heard about the app before that; it wasn't exactly a secret; and it's even a free app! But that was literally the first I remember hearing about it.

So, sitting there during one of the sessions of the Bible conference, I downloaded the app to my iPad over the 3G network. It worked beautifully, immediately. All of my Spurgeon resources were right there, easily searchable, and (I suppose because the Logos files are well indexed) the search speed was about a thousand times faster than searching my local drive's .pdf versions of Spurgeon's works.

That opens up whole new vistas of advantages for me with Logos 4. Since I use it mainly for reading (as opposed to cutting and pasting texts), using the iPad as a reader offers some serious advantages. It's easily portable; it's a better interface for reading than a desktop or laptop screen; and all I have to do when I do need to cut and paste is use e-mail to send snippets to my desktop machine.

In short, the iPad/iPhone app alone makes Logos 4 worth the upgrade from Libronix. Meanwhile I'm learning the new desktop interface, and I'm almost as comfortable using it as I was with Libronix. If I can just learn how to move the data files for all those books to an external drive; consolidate the data files so that my Mac software and Windows software can use one set of data; and install my old Libronix .pbb files to Logos 4—then I'll be a really happy camper.

In the meantime, if you're still wondering whether the upgrade to Logos 4 is worth it, I strongly recommend it—especially if you can use the iPad/iPhone app.

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Let the Dogs Bark

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 "Jesus, the King of Truth" a sermon preached on Thursday evening, 19 December 1872.

the age extols no virtue so much as “liberality,” and condemns no vice so fiercely as bigotry, alias honesty. If you believe anything and hold it firmly, all the dogs will bark at you. Let them bark: they will have done when they are tired! You are responsible to God, and not to mortal men. Christ came into the world to bear witness to the truth, and he has sent you to do the same; take care that you do it, offend or please; for it is only by this process that the kingdom of Christ is to be set up in the world.

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Sigh of Despair, Song of Triumph

by Phil Johnson

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and answer me, O LORD my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy say, "I have prevailed over him," lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.

salm 13 is a fascinating look into a side of David's prayer life we can all easily relate to. This man after God's own heart pours his soul out in frustration, fear, and ultimately faith as he struggles through the ordeal of tribulation.

The psalm is first of all a great prayer. There's nothing typical about it; in fact, it shatters our presuppositions about what really "spiritual" praying is like. But a close look shows it is in perfect harmony with how Jesus taught us to pray. Brevity and honesty—two qualities sadly missing from most of our prayers—stand out as its hallmarks.

More than a lesson about prayer, however, this psalm is a model response for those of us going through deep trials. David wrote it in anguish over the apparent success of an unrelenting enemy. We don't know which enemy—it might have been Saul, the renegade king, who chased David like an outlaw; or it could have been the Philistines, who as a nation epitomized all that God hates.

Imagine David's frustration, seeing enemies like that prosper while it seemed God was hiding His face from him! If we're honest, we have to admit that we understand David's inner turmoil in the opening cry of this psalm all too well.



But that initial, desperate groan is only the beginning of the story. In the six brief verses of Psalm 13, David moves from doubt to deliverance, teaching us the sublime and emancipating principle that victory depends chiefly on how we look at our trials.

The Inward Look
At first David looks inside himself, and sees only his own sorrow (vv. 1-2a). See how many times in these early verses he uses the first-person pronouns: "I," "me," "my," "my soul," "my enemy," "my heart." He's questioning God, wallowing in his own defeat, wondering why God seems to be hiding His face.

Was God hiding His face? Of course not! David was merely looking in the wrong place.

There's a serious danger in the wrong kind of inward look. Healthy introspection, the kind that leads to confession of sin and the humble brokenness of which Jesus spoke in Matthew 5:3-5, is critical to our spiritual survival. But looming in the face of those who look within themselves is a monstrous peril: a morbid preoccupation with our own inadequacies that breeds depression and debilitates us spiritually.

The difference between the two kinds of self-reflection is not so subtle. A wholesome look inside becomes hurtful when we begin looking within ourselves for a solution to the problems we find there. The solution doesn't reside in us; we must look elsewhere.

The Outward Look
David turns his focus from within and begins to look around (vv. 2b-4). Now all he sees are his surroundings. What a different David this is from the young shepherd who strode confidently into the presence of the mighty Goliath with no armor and only a few pebbles for weapons! Pay careful heed to the lesson: one great victory does not ensure future triumph.

This time David is fearful. We can sense his trembling, as he grapples with a paralyzing dread that this trial might ultimately kill him (v. 3).

I've felt that way, too, and in trials of much less consequence than David's. Such fear is the inevitable result of looking at circumstances and hoping some kind of help will come through them.

But deliverance doesn't come through circumstances, either.

The Upward Look
Finally, in verses 5 and 6, David looks to the Lord, and there he sees his salvation. Compare this passage to verses 1 and 2. "Me . . .I . . .mine" has given way to "thy mercy . . . thy salvation . . . the Lord."

Thus what in the beginning sounded like a dismal wail of unbelief becomes an exhilarating hymn of faith. What's the difference? The trial has not changed—but David's point of view has. Now his eyes are clearly directed upward.

Salvation belongs to the Lord (Psalm 3:8)—that goes for deliverance from trials as well as salvation from sin. No other truth emerges from everywhere in Scripture so definitively. If we look around or within—or anywhere but to God—for a way of escape, we are condemned to disappointment and ultimate failure.

It is God who provides the way of escape—not out of our trials, but rather through them. He enables us to bear testing, not avoid it (1 Cor. 10:13). And He uses our tribulations to accomplish His wonderful purpose in us (Rom. 5:3-5, James 1:3-4).

Thus God works all things—including our hardest testings—together for our good. That's the ultimate victory, and it's how even in our darkest hour of trials, we can fix our eyes on Him and say confidently with David, "He hath dealt bountifully with me" (v. 6).

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Christianity Today: Biblical, Reformed confidence = baaad, ignorant Pentecostal hubris = A-OK

by Dan Phillips

My reader David Elliott pointed me to this Christianity Today interview from April. The author of An Eyewitness Remembers the Century of the Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker [?!], 2010), Regent University professor Vinson Synan, is asked a series of questions centered loosely around his book.

Sidenote: "THE Century of the Holy Spirit." Don't miss that. It begins with the Azusa Street "revival." Before that — Holy Spirit? Not so much. Nineteen centuries, not much Holy Spirit... until the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. Ahh, now, all sorts of Holy Spirit!

Read the interview, it's fairly brief. But do it in private. That article will have most of you talking aloud to yourselves. Particularly, you should read that interview in light of CT's snarky profile of Al Mohler, which has been much discussed of late. The contrasts are... interesting and informative.

As has been pointed out even by those lofty souls who find it distasteful to give Christianity Today the general drubbing that it (to my mind) so richly deserves, the Mohler piece was disdainful and slanted. Readers were encouraged to view Mohler askance and critically. It couldn't be (to the writer) that Mohler was a sharp man living from Biblical convictions; everything was seen to be crafted, disingenuous, a bit sinister.

Contrast that with the softball questions lobbed at Vinson Synan in the interview above — and, particularly, at the astonishing assertions and responses allowed to go unchallenged.

Question: What to you has been one of the most unexpected changes of the past century?

Answer: The biggest surprise was the Catholic-charismatic renewal that started in 1967. That came as an utter shock to me, to most of my friends, and probably to the Catholic Church. It gave legitimacy to the movement, that the largest and one of the oldest churches in the world was seeing a Pentecostal movement.

I noted this at the time of which Synan speaks. It wasn't important to the Charismatic movement that the Roman Catholic church preaches a false, damning non-gospel, that it encourages idolatry, that it adds to Scripture and a host of other ills. They speak in tongues! They're big! They like us! We're validated! Ergo, the Holy Spirit is sweeping through them... er, evidently not in any way affecting their hatred for Christ's Gospel, but, well, they like us! They really like us! Yayyy!

There's more, much more.

Synan says the high point was some big meeting, the low point was — what? What do you think? Word-faith heresy? Barking like dogs, mooing like cows, gold dust, whiter teeth, behaving appallingly and blaming it on the Spirit? False prophecies? Perverting the Gospel? Abuse of thousands of adherents? Shelving the Bible?

Nah; a couple of televangelists' moral scandals. (And, btw, they're back, accepted by the same movement — a fact Synan doesn't mention.)

But no fear, those same morally-corrupt televangelists "still helped spread the movement worldwide" — that would be the "movement" of the non-Gospel-centered, non-sanctifying, non-Christ-exalting "Spirit" (i.e. fake tongues, fake prophecies, etc.). What matters more than anything is the legitimization and spread of "the movement."

And, Synan is asked, what do non-Charismatics most need to understand about Pentecostals?

The answer is simply amazing. We nons most need to understand that "Pentecostals are the most successful at converting people in competition with Islam."

I. Am. Not. Kidding.

And who are Synan's prize examples of these more effective evangelists?

Benny Hinn.

Reinhard Bonnke.

Brothers, sisters, it just goes on and on. Like:

• Africans and Indians are more receptive to Pentecostalism because the don't really "have to change [their] culture or paradigm" to be Pentecostals.
• A big leader to keep one's eye on is T. D. Jakes (who is, at best, wobbly on the Trinity — one Person of whom is, as I recall, that selfsame Holy Spirit whose century this has been).
• Oral Roberts is the previous "transformational" paradigm. Baptists and Presbyterians can't equal him. ("Thank God!" is heard 'round the land.)

The CT interview is all like that, just a series of friendly softballs. Not one of these ridiculous responses receives a challenging followup.

Worst of all, to bring this post full-circle, the title goes without the least challenge. This has been "the century of the Holy Spirit"? Meaning what, exactly? On whose authority? By what evidence?

In a dozen different ways, Phil and I in particular keep asking: what does the Pentismatic movement have to show from its distinguishing doctrines from the last century? Our author suggests a remarkable list:

1. Oral Roberts
2. Benny Hinn
3. T. D. Jakes
4. Jimmy Swaggart
5. Jim Bakker
6. Reinhard Bonnke
7. Televangelists
8. Sidelining the Gospel (i.e. treating the Roman Catholic church as a big Christian denomination — if they are friendly to Pentismatics)

These are the grand trophies of Pentismaticism.

And before that? Before the Holy Spirit really-really got going with spiritual giants like Bakker and Hinn and Bonnke and Swaggart and Jakes?

Well, I guess it was a pretty pathetic offering. All we had to show for the non-Holy-Spirit era is Augustine, Athanasius, Anselm, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, John Owen. You know. Pikers. Those guys, their work, their sermons, and those books they wrote which are still opening treasure-caskets centuries later.

But CT, as I say, has no challenge for Synan.

But Mohler? Oh,  yeah. After all, remember: CT kissed-and-made-up with the world decades ago on the issues of female "pastors" and ditching Biblical cosmogony — and Mohler is on the (to them) wrong side of both of those issues. So Mohler gets elitist mocking and disdain, while folks like Synan get a pass.

Bonus thought 1: note that there is no reformation going on in the Pentismatic movement, if Synan is any representative. Everything that fueled the last century of Pentismatic-inflicted miseries and errors is still embraced and enabled.

Bonus thought 2: also remember, Reformed Charismatics, by their distinguishing doctrines, necessarily own these folks as well.

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