Or “A bunch of links that came to me fairly recently that I find interesting.” I think the latter is more accurate. Anyway, here some random links that I’ve found interesting (duh):

When you discuss Christian eschatology you’ll eventually come down to Revelation 20. Guaranteed. One reason I’ve become convinced of the Historic Premillennial position is because I think it does the best job of letting Revelation 20 say what it says and still integrating it into the overall New Testament picture of Jesus’ return. I really like Meredith Klein but his explanation of Revelation 20 still feels like gymnastics to me. Basically he argues that “the first resurrection” there is actually referring to Christians’ death. Before you roll your eyes, read what he has to say, he makes a fair case for that. He also shows the weakness of understanding “resurrection” there as regeneration.  Just as a side note, John uses the word protos to mean “first in a sequence” a number of times in Revelation: first of seven trumpets, bowls and seals for example.

One thing that Klein fails to take into account in his exegesis of that section is how the early church understood it. Historical theology is an important part of Biblical exegesis. If the case were as clear as he makes it out to be the early church should have recognized it in same fashion. After all, they were a lot closer to the Greek that the New Testament is written in. And yet the early church was largely Premillennial. That the early church held a particular view doesn’t close the argument but it must be considered. So I came across these quotes from the early church on the millennium and some of found them interesting. The Didache is a very early Christian document (probably around 150 AD) and it has no problem seeing the bodily resurrections as multiple and sequential.

I have to admit that The White Horse Inn played an important role in my coming to Reformed theology.  But after a while I had to stop listening. I found myself adopting a very poor attitude toward folks who are not Reformed. I’ve since stayed away from the Inn and Modern Reformation because I’m too weak to retain the good and pass over the bad. For that reason, I am not interested in Michael Horton’s new book Christless Christianity. I’ve seen folks I respect review the book favorably but I’m not big enough to read it myself. Well, John Frame is a man I really respect and trust and he read and reviewed the book. It didn’t fare well. There are so many things I’d love to quote from it but I’ll have to just pick one. Commenting simply on the title and subtitle of the book, Frame says:

We should keep in mind that such language makes the most serious indictments. To be Christless is to be doomed to Hell (John 3:36). And if someone preaches an “alternative gospel,” contrary to the gospel preached by the apostle Paul, he is to be accursed (Gal. 1:8-9). People who preach “another gospel” are not Christian friends who happen to disagree with us on this or that matter. Rather, they have betrayed Christ himself. The whole church ought to rise up against such persons and declare that they are not part of the body of Christ and that they have no part in the blessings of salvation. Indeed, if they do not repent, they have no future except eternal punishment.

In my view, many Christians (especially those in the conservative Reformed tradition that Horton and I both inhabit) use this sort of language far too loosely, even flippantly. It is time we learned that when we criticize someone for preaching “another gospel” we are doing nothing less than cursing him, damning him to Hell.

Exactly. The review goes on from there and I recommend reading it.

After reading Frame, I found it fascinating to read someone reflecting on the question “Is it possible to be legalistic about gospel-centrality?” The question was prompted by a podcast doing essentially what Horton does and what Frame laments:

His question originated in listening to a Christian podcast essentially rip apart a sermon from a Nashville pastor line by line, condemning it for not being “gospel-centered” enough. Now, I’m not going to defend the sermon – even the pastor who preached it admitted it could have been more focused on what Jesus has done for us in the gospel.

Now, in my weaker, “More Reformed Than Thou” moments, I am tempted to “not get” these objections and questions. How can you be too centered on the gospel? Well, ten years ago the nagging problem was bibliotry where we were in danger of putting the Bible above God. Now we’re in danger of putting the gospel in front of Jesus. Man, we’re messed up.

The Bible is God’s written word and it is how we come to know him in his fullness. The gospel is the good news of what Jesus accomplished in the world and is the power of God to salvation. These things are not supposed to take God’s place but are intended to lead us to him. Just like the temple before Jesus came was supposed to lead believers to God, not to the temple. So when we begin judging each other based on whether we feel one is sufficiently “gospel centered” we’re in trouble. I’m not saying that it is okay to ignore, neglect or just “assume” the gospel but I am opposed to making decisions based on shaky evidence that someone is “not gospel-centered enough.” Have care brothers and sisters.

Finally, it is amazing how consistently Atheists are inconsistant. The first of a pair of articles I read to this effect was Doug Wilson’s side of the Wilson/Hitchens discussion at The Huffington Post. And then reading Hitchens’ pieces and browsing the comments just affirmed that. Wilson’s piece is titled “Atheists Suck at being Atheists” and he’s right! Here’s Wilson’s point, the one the Atheists don’t get:

If you were to shake up two bottles of pop and place them on a table to fizz over, you could not fill up an auditorium with people who came to watch them debate. This is because they are not debating; they are just fizzing. If you were to shake up one bottle of pop, and show it film footage of some genocidal atrocity, the reaction you would get is not moral outrage, but rather more fizzing. And if you were to shake it really hard by means of art school, and place it in front of Michelangelo’s David, or the Rose Window of Chartres Cathedral, the results would not really be aesthetic appreciation, but more fizzing still.

His point is that a consistent Atheistic worldview would deny that feelings, truth or beauty matter or are real. We’re just a bunch of chemicals fizzing away so what does it matter if some of those chemicals get killed for no “reason” and if some make others do their “will” and others “believe” that they were made by a Great Chemist in the Sky. If there is no God then that’s all there is and none of it matters. Period. Fortunately, most Atheists are grossly inconsistant on this.

And then I read a piece by John Piper in The World on Bertrand Russel and his weird worldview. Russel was an Atheistic philosopher who wrote Why I’m Not A Christian. Russel really argued the problem of evil (i.e. if God is all-powerful and good and there is evil in the world then either God isn’t all-powerful, isn’t good or doesn’t exist.) John Piper was introduced to Russel’s work when he was in college at a Christian school and was helped to see the absurdity of it all. Russel essentially argued that we’re bags of chemicals and none of it matters and yet he loved and cared for his children and his wives (he’d remarried). Piper points out how disjointed all of this is. It ruins Russel’s argument because he didn’t apply it consistently.

Bertrand Russel died in 1970. But it is reassuring to know that contemporary Atheists are every bit as inconsistant as Russel was. When they become consistent the world is not safe.

Preparing for a worship service at a retirement home tomorrow and the text is Mark 10. The first sentence of the paragraph caught my attention. Some folk think of Jesus as a political revolutionary. Some as a social reformer. So think of him as a good moral example. Often we use the term ‘Messiah’ but we’re not sure what that means anymore. Popular culture uses the term “messiah” to refer to a single individual who will come in and save the day.

But Mark explains what Jesus did first and foremost: And again, as was his custom, he taught them. (Mark 10:1) Any political revolution or social reform Jesus did, he did it in the context of teaching. Jesus was a teacher. His teachings may have had implications that confronted the standing political system or challenged social norms. If what he was preaching was the Kingdom of God or heaven, and if Jesus’ kingdom was not earthly, then it should be surprising that his teaching would not often agree with the systems of this fallen, rebellious world.

Don Carson has an interesting take on the situation in Galatia when Paul confronted Peter (Gal 2:11-14). His thought is that “men from James” and “the circumcision party” are two different groups. His theory is that Peter didn’t stop eating with Gentiles for fear of Judiazers from James. Rather, it was men from James who brought word to Galatia that Jews in Jerusalem were persecuting the believers there for doing such things. After all, it was Peter who’d received the vision from heaven articulating to him that all food is clean and that the gospel should go to the Gentiles. Peter knew this so surely he wouldn’t be swayed by legalism to stop eating with Gentiles, right? Carson admits that there is no historical evidence of persecution at that time but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened. Peter, out of compassion for Jewish believers in Jerusalem, draw back from things that incited persecution back home. This is how it could be that even Barnabas got carried away into it. (Gal 2:13) Neither Peter nor Barnabas had abandoned the gospel for their old Jewish ways, they were showing compassion on their friends and family back home. Paul’s beef is that in doing that even for good reasons, they were compromising the gospel.

What Carson’s approach does is to save Peter from looking like he’s clueless, spineless or compromised. Those are laudable things! I mean, if you take the conventional approach, that the “men from James” were the “party of the circumcision” and they intimidated Peter into withdrawing from Gentiles, then he does look pretty goofy.

However, there are some issues with Carson’s idea (and he freely admits it.) One is the verse I came across the other morning. Not a “theory slayer” but it does pose a difficulty. Titus 1:10 seems to indicate that the party of the circumcision wasn’t Jews outside the church but troublemakers inside. It seems to me that for Carson’s theory to work, Paul would have to speak of the party of the circumcision as unbelieving Jews who saw Jewish converts to Christianity as deserters from the faith. But Titus 1:10 speaks of them as if they’re troublemakers within the church. I think that tips the scales back toward the more conventional approach. “Men from James” were Judaizers who wanted Gentiles to essentially convert to Judaism before becoming Christians.

Ok, so what if they are? Well on this side of the scales, James looks like the doofus too. If he’s leading the party of the circumcision, then what was up with his speech at the Jerusalem council in Acts 15? It couldn’t be that Galatians happened some time before Jerusalem, Paul mentions the council in the letter. So from this side of the scale, James contradicts what he said at the council and Peter contradicts his vision. On the other side, Carson’s side, James and Peter are off the hook but now we wind up with the circumcision party joining the church at Crete where Titus was pastor. So the Jerusalem council didn’t settle that issue and chase those folks off and Paul doesn’t tell Titus to put them out, only that they “must be silenced.” Then following on from there in verse 11, it seems that these Judaizers are actually Cretans!

There is on really clear, simple explanation of what lead to Paul rebuking Peter in Galatia. Aren’t you glad I pointed all this out? I’d hate to have us sit comfortably on incorrect answers. I’m here for you. :)

In my previous post about health care reform, I suggested we follow the money to figure out why health care in America is so expensive and I pointed the knarled, bony finger of fault at trail lawyers and claimed that medical malpractice laws need to be reformed. I admitted that I could be wrong and I’ve personally wondered why there are no news outlets barking up this same tree.

Ha! I am vindicated! The Wall Street Journal has broached the subject with a slightly different approach. Medical malpractice law suits not only cost a lot of money, but to avoid them doctors may be using extra, unnecessary test and medications. Consider this:

But this is the one reform Washington will not seriously consider. That’s because the trial lawyers, among the largest contributors to the Democratic Party, thrive on the unreliable justice system we have now.

Almost all the other groups with a stake in health reform—including patient safety experts, physicians, the AARP, the Chamber of Commerce, schools of public health—support pilot projects such as special health courts that would move beyond today’s hyper-adversarial malpractice lawsuit system to a court that would quickly and reliably distinguish between good and bad care. The support for some kind of reform reflects a growing awareness among these groups that managing health care sensibly, including containing costs, is almost impossible when doctors go through the day thinking about how to protect themselves from lawsuits.

That’s what I’ve said. And my original premise of following the money? How about this: “But under the current system, 54 cents of the malpractice dollar goes to lawyers and administrative costs, according to a 2006 study in the New England Journal of Medicine.”

And why does Congress have such a hard time doing anything about this mess?

 Former Sen. John Edwards, for example, made a fortune bringing 16 cases against hospitals for babies born with cerebral palsy. Each of those tragic cases was worth millions in settlement. But according to a 2006 study at the National Institutes of Health, in nine out of 10 cases of cerebral palsy nothing done by a doctor could have caused the condition.

Many of them are part of the problem. Or at least got to where they are now by benefiting from the problem.

I need to add that I’m not quite as willing to lay the blame solidly at the feet of trial lawyers as the author is. I think there is another side to this problem and it is in how major pharmaceutical companies conduct their business. So far, what we’re hearing from Washington seems to be mostly how to inject more money into this busted systems so those who are getting rich on this stuff can continue to do so.

In an odd defense of President Obama, that ain’t socialism folks. That’s unbridled capitalism in its worst form. While it might make for a good sound bite, calling Obama and socialized medicine “socialist” is really missing the point. The “socialized” medicine being kicked around the nation’s capital is going to benefit a few common people here and there but continue to line the pockets of the rich.

ABC is hoping to replace Lost which has been a very successful series and will soon come to an end. It looks like they’re hoping FlashFoward will fill the gap. I have to admit, I haven’t seen Lost but I did watch the pilot episode of FlashForward and I liked it.The premise is that at a specific time, everyone in the world goes unconscious for a little over 2 minutes and during that time they all get a glimpse of what they’ll be doing six months in the future. There is a lot of confusion and chaos that results from the blackout but the FBI starts piecing the events together. One of the lead characters played by Joseph Fiennes saw himself at his office and got a good look at the bulletin board where he is piecing the puzzle together. After his boss is convinced that something is indeed going on, he and his partner start making notes. At one point, Fiennes tells his partner what he saw on the board and his partner writes it down on a 5×7 card and pins it to the board. Finnes tells him, “No, not there. In the middle.” After the card is moved, the two look at each other for just a beat and then continue.

This seems to me to be an excellent story telling method. That one beat between these two spoke without words. That’s something unusual for TV networks to do. They usually assume their audience are idiots and will need to be spoon-fed. But not this time. The silence between the two kind of sucked the question they didn’t ask each other but made us ask it: Did that card wind up there because of what was just said or would it have been there anyway? FlashForward is playing with the rich theological and philosophical questions of free will and predestination. And it isn’t doing it in a stupid, heavy handed manner either. I like that.

I think there is a lesson here in storytelling that Christians should listen to. Nope, nothing to do with predestination, this has more to do with the art of storytelling. And when we tell the gospel, we do tell a story. A true story, the greatest story in the history of the world and really, the story of the history of the world. But it is a story.

A long time ago, I shared the gospel with a very intelligent co-worker. Instead of hitting him with “you’re a sinner and you’re going to hell” I thought it would be better to lead him to that. So we started talking about God’s holiness and our sin. Eventually, the conversation lead to the point where he said “Well, then everyone goes to hell!” I agreed and the explained what Jesus did to solve that problem.
I left a gap that he was force to fill in. I let him reason from the statements I was making and left him to ask the question. That’s just what FlashForward did for us. It can be an engaging way to communicate when handled with care. You don’t want to leave too much out so the person might wind up asking the wrong question. And you don’t want to include too much so they don’t ask. If you’re careful you can tell the truth in a way that they’re not rejecting a statement as much as a conclusion. For most thinking folks, it isn’t sufficient to leave a conclusion rejected without a reason. They’ll have to review the case you’ve made that lead to that conclusion and figure out where they disagree.

This is not meant to be a guarantee of success. Nor do I intend to say that this is the only way to share the gospel. That kind of talk is utter foolishness. All I’m saying is that this can be a useful approach. Though my coworker didn’t come to faith, I did see my pastor do a similar thing with a highly educated man in Asia. A few well placed questions and philosophical observations and we watched the man talk himself into faith. It was pretty amazing.

I listened to President Obama’s health care speech to Congress with interest and a little hope. There were some things I was hoping he’d say. He talked a lot about insurance and costs. Requiring coverage for preexisting conditions, something about employers having to provide health care, etc. Where I perked up was when he tipped his hat to the Republican side of the room and said that considering malpractice reform wasn’t the cure-all but should be investigated.

In other words, I didn’t hear what I wanted to hear. In the days after the speech I’ve been stewing on not so much how Obama and the Congress are wrong but what they should be doing right. The approach that keeps coming to mind is “follow the money.” If health care is expensive that means that money is moving somewhere. Someone (or someones) is getting rich on this. So if you want to fix health care, find out where the money is going and start there.

I could be wrong, but as I understand it health insurers aren’t going out of business but they’re not making record profits either. Employers certainly aren’t making money off employee benefits so lets not start with these two. Sure, they may need to be fixed but that isn’t where the money is. Doctors make a lot of money, but not all of them. They are highly educated and skilled and so I think they deserve to be better paid. There is some money there but I don’t think doctors are the end of the trail. A friend of our family is a doctor and he told me that he knows a neruo-surgeon who pays $200,000 a year in medical malpractice insurance. So if this guy has to factor that much overhead into his rates, maybe we’re getting close to what needs to be fixed!

From what I can see, the ones who are making big bucks in the health care arena are big drug companies and lawyers. Again, I’m not an expert but merely an observer. I could be way off base but what bugs me is that I don’t hear anyone investigating where all this money goes. If the government really feels like they need to fix the health care system in America, it seems to me they should start with these two big money makers.  That means that President Obama’s halfhearted, lukewarm “maybe we’ll eventually begin to take a look” at legal reform needs to get firmed up. That’s a tall order. It doesn’t fit in a nice little box that can be dealt with relatively quickly. It touches on a wide range of legal issues and it faces some very stiff resistance. Many of our lawmakers are lawyers and many lawyers are lobbyists and as I’ve noted, there is a lot of money with the lawyers.

And who is ready to tangle with big pharma? Look at all the good their drugs have done and aren’t they allowed to make some money off the investments they’ve made bringing this life-saving medicines to people? See how that can be framed? Tangling with the big pharmaceutical companies could turn into a political “third rail” pretty quickly.

So I don’t think out politicians have the courage to actually deal with what may well be the problem with health care. Instead we’re going to focus on the insurance companies and employers who pay the health insurance companies. And the insurance companies pay the doctors and hospitals who pay the pharmaceutical companies and they all pay the lawyers.

I have a question for you. Can you read the above quote and not think “compromise”? It is an important question and it has nothing to do with Mark Driscoll or Matt Chandler, it has more to do with the success of the gospel. Are you optimistic about the progress of the gospel or are you skeptical? Here in America we’ve become so used to faith in general and Christianity in particular being ridiculed and dismissed and so many big haired, fake TV preachers making Christ look bad that it kind of shades our view of events like this. We almost expect the gospel to fail. Kyrie eleison.

Remember that in his vision of the end, John saw:

[A] great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” – Revelation 7:9-10

Salvation is not for just a few scattered here and there. Jesus died to redeem his people and there will be many of them! While it is true that “the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:14) that is in comparison to those who are called to salvation by the preaching of the gospel. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there will only be a few saved. God’s grace is generous and overflowing. In the end many will be saved.

And now a word of caution. Just because Chandler added 2,000 by adding a video campus doesn’t mean that they were successful. One of my concerns with Driscoll, Chandler, Piper and other “celebrity” pastors is that, through no fault or action of theirs, these things can turn into fan clubs. Instead of 2,000 conversions were these 2,000 Christians changing churches? I’m sure that not all of them were. There were probably folks who’d stopped attending church who are starting again and some recently converted believers in that 2,000. But how many? That’s where a church can add 2,000 in a day and be successful. Or add 2 in a day and be successful.

Haven’t done one of these in a while so here goes.

According to Barna Research, the percent of female pastors in Protestant churches has doubled in the past ten years. This isn’t surprising but I think it does need a bit of unpacking. First, it is an increase in percentage, not necessarily raw numbers. That doesn’t say anything about why the percent has increased. Theoretically, the number of female pastors could remain the same over that ten year period and the number of male pastors could decrease. I don’t think that’s what’s going on but it is a possibility. Second thing to consider is that it is amongst “Protestant” churches. That could be anything that isn’t Anglican, Roman Catholic or Orthodox. Anything from the farthest left liberal church to the most strict fundamentalist. Barna has a problem with defining these groups some times. John Piper kind of takes them to task for this.

The second item, unrelated to the previous paragraph, is pretty self-explanatory.  Perhaps quoting the opening paragraph of the article will suffice. I don’t really have much more to say about it:

Government scientists figure that one out of five male black bass in American river basins have egg cells growing inside their sexual organs, a sign of how widespread fish feminizing has become.

Probably best to read it for yourself.

I heard a story on BBC World on the way to work this morning that has kind of stuck in my head. Partly because it takes place in the part of England in which Lisa and I met and in the town Ben was born in. But there is more to it also.

Church bells are ringing again in St. Lawrence church in Ipswich. This is notable because they are the oldest bells in the world, dating back to the early 1500s. They were recently removed and restored though they are completely original bells, including the clappers. So as they rang out across Ipswich, they sound just as they would have 500 years ago. The bells had to be moved when they were put back. They’d been moved into part of the bell tower that was which was taller but not as sturdy. The man they interviewed said that the tower would sway when the bells were rung. Putting them back down in the portion of the tower built in the 1500s meant they were more stable.

It all sounds lovely doesn’t it? An ancient English countryside church being restored, church bells once again pealing across the city. Lovey. They even had tea and sticky buns in the church. As the interviewer said as he wrapped up the story “Tea, sticky buns and church bells. If there is anything more British I can’t think of what it is.”

Yes, sadly the story is very British. Modern England kind of British. Church bells were once used to call the people to worship. They sounded before the church service and let everyone know what was taking place. The bells weren’t supposed to be a nice aural decoration, they were part of the worship service. The church these particular bells are housed had its congregation dwindle and the building fell into disuse and then into disrepair. It is now a community centre (using the proper British spelling there) and no longer a church. The bells are a cultural artifact.

Something I found interesting and rather symbolic was that the bells had been in the part of the tower that was added in 1883 but it wasn’t sturdy enough to hold them, they had to be returned to the older portion of the bell tower in order to be safely rung again. Isn’t that something? In 1883 modernism was taking over Western culture. “Reason” was changing how people thought about the world. Darwinism was emerging on the Continent and gaining a strong foothold. In a few years the Fundamentalist/Liberal debate in America would begin splitting denominations.

It is almost as if those bells and that church represent the gospel in the West. At one time, the bells were firmly mounted in a prominent manner so that they could call people to worship Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Modernism weakened that call though it attempted to hold the bells up even higher. Eventually, the church that housed them lost members and became abandoned. Today the whole thing is restored not as a place of worship but as a reminder of what once was, minus the religion. Church is a community centre and the bells are a quaint reminder of a simpler time. And Jesus is nowhere in sight of any of it.

For the bells to safely be used again, they had to be returned to the original, more sound structure they once in inhabited. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a church began meeting in that “community centre” beneath those sainted bells and one day that building could once again be used for the worship of the True and Living God? Where are our bells in America? Is ours the ancient tower that can safely hold the bells so that they can ring out loudly? Are our churches turned into community centers?