The Craw

Happy New Year!

It just keeps getting better in the Kingdom of God.

House-Churching II

The trajectory of the Kingdom of God is one of ever-increasing visibility (light, salt, city on a hill). Why should the church as a structure and institution do the opposite? We have gone from cathredrals built to last 1000 years, to mega-churches built to last a generation, to living rooms set up to last for 2 hours on Sunday. I think its an individualistic escape from the reality of real conflict that the church WILL overcome as the Body of Christ...with or without home-churchers.

House-Churching

The church took some four centuries to move from persecuted back rooms and catacombs to build a magnificent Christendom (contrary to most ignorant moderns, it wasn’t all bad) that lasted 1500 years in the West. This included a glorious structure that contained a level of institution and encompassed the arts and architecture. Now at the beginning of the 20th Century in the West, people are returning to house churches. Most of these have little structure and possess none of the horrid “institutionalism” the Bible itself sets forth: officers, sacraments, and connectionalism.

So, if the church spent its first four centuries, under intense persecution, moving from back rooms to front rooms, from basilicas to cathedrals, why is moving back to square one, under intense prosperity and individualism, considered a good thing?

Top Ten Things Done When You're Losing a Theological Debate

10. You start quoting Lutheran theologians…to support your “Reformed” theological views.

9. You make the bald-faced assertion that John Murray was actually insane.

8. “Look out! Aliens!”

7. You say, “John Calvin was taking steroids when he said that.”

6. “Hittites man, its all about Hittites!”

5. “Those guys may look like Puritans, talk like Puritans, were divines at Westminster in mid-1640’s, but they really weren’t Puritans.”

4. “You seem theologically confused…Look out! Aliens!”

3. You start quoting stanzas from old hymns.

2. You post long cut and paste sections of Reformed confessions without any comments.

And number one...drum roll please:

1. You turn the comments off on your blog.

Heat or Light?

If you want to know who is Reformed and who is not. What the FV and NPP is and what it is not then I suggest you read this instead of Scott Clark's blog that has comments turned off. Its all about light and not heat. Hear the FV in their own words...its devastating.

More Housing News...

...and it aint good. Prices down, foreclosures up. When you hear these rubish "experts" tell you that prices should bottom and turn around in 2008 or early 2009, remember these are the same guys who were saying there was no housing bubble just a year ago.

Christmas Eve in LA

Its Christmas Eve here in Los Angeles. Clear blue skies, 72 degrees, magnificent. We're going on a hike in the local mountains before family dinner and our Christmas Eve Service at Christ Church.

Back in the Day

It was a time of decay and bloodshed, of strife and disorder. Of the times Livy stated:

“Of late years wealth has made us greedy, and self-indulgence has brought us, through every kind of sensual excess, to be, if I may so put it, in love with death both individual and collective.”

Anthony Everitt, Augustus, pg. 236

The old morals were lost in a morass of sin:

Among respectable opinion, there was a consensus about the failings of Rome’s ruling class: divorce was easy; young people were reluctant to marry; the birthrate appeared to be falling; sexual license was widespread; some rich men avoided a public career.

Anthony Everitt, Augustus, pg. 238

The solution? The coming of a longed-for deliverer. This inscription from the time sums it up: “Divine Augustus Caesar, Son of God, Savior of all the World.”

Indeed, a deliver was coming. Was coming in the very days of the rule of the reformer Caesar Augustus, but a deliver who would bring down the mountains and raise up the low places. A true savior of all mankind…Christ the King came on that first Advent.

Luke 2:1 In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.

On Education II

Well, this is a good reason to keep your kids out of public schools. Yep, I keep my kids sheltered (we don't watch TV and only use Netflix) so I don't "have to confront the issue of sex" until, I the parent, am good and ready to. This complete Disney fiasco was not a topic at all at my kids Christian Classical school.

Good Stuff

Here is a new ministry of Christ Church, Moscow Idaho. It looks like a wonderful place to send some of the financial abundance we have in our land.