Why Disney's LGBTQIA+ Entertainment Agenda Is a Good Thing

A bad argument made in defense of your opponent's position is sometimes more devastating to his position than a good argument made against it. 

Disney, as it seems many other corporations like Amazon, Hulu, etc., has vowed to push the LGBTQIA+ agenda in every movie and tv show it possibly can. They actually have a category added to the Disney+ app that explicitly displays these movies and tv shows for your two or three year old to see and click on. All of this, of course, to convince kids that a man who acts and dresses like a woman or two men who want to marry one another and end their biological lines by their anticreational sexuality are just as natural and to be applauded as a man and a woman who can actually create human life when they come together. They plan to entertain your children into assimilation into the woke Borg. The problem? They seem to have forgotten the entertainment part.

Everyone is complaining yet again about the newest Disney sequel for being focused on their woke agenda rather than presenting good stories. We've seen the destruction of our childhood fantasies such as those found in Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar movies, and now Willow. Willow was always a fun movie. I loved it as a kid. It had everything a kid loved: knights, swords, magic, saving princesses, and an exciting adventure with a group of newfound friends through a mysterious make-believe fantasy world. I watched it over and over again and would watch it again today if I had time to do so. 

I couldn't get through five minutes of the new show without fast-forwarding and by about 12 minutes in, I had to shut it off. Why? Because I can't stand wokism? Nope. I don't like wokism but I simply ignored it when it came to Andor, the only Star Wars TV show after The Mandalorian I actually thought was good. I couldn't get through Willow because of one big word that describes it: BORING. It was awful. I mean it was so bad I literally found myself turning it off and immediately going to Youtube to hear what the critics say about it because I just knew that this would be plenty of fodder for incendiary commentary. 

And it is. People hate it. Why? Because people hate homosexual and transgender people? Nope. Because people hate being bored. You see, Disney makes these movies not for the older generation but for the TikTok generation they're grooming to replace the older generation. But therein lies the problem. Disney is spitting out boring movies and TV shows for a generation of people who are the most difficult to actually entertain, and therefore, impossible to convince through their current plan to go bankrupt by bombarding people with woke media after woke media. Someone needs to tell Disney that they might want to put some adventure in their, ya know, adventures.

Movies like the Disney's new Pixar scifi, Strange World, or the newer Marvel phase tv shows and movies, the latest Star Wars movies and shows, Willow, etc. are not interesting. You actually have to entertain this generation if you want to brainwash them properly and Disney has failed to do that. In fact, it's having the reverse effect. People now know that Disney, Amazon, the news media, etc. are trying to brainwash them. Good propaganda parades itself as entertainment in disguise but this is essentially like someone telling Superman that all he had to do was to put on some glasses and no one would recognize him. Newsflash to the Left: Your underoos are showing.

In other words, Disney and their woke ilk are doing nothing but exposing themselves as a cult and a really, really dumb one at that. You're the invisible man trying to sneak into a bank with paint all over him. It doesn't even take a conservative religious sense to notice it. Atheists can see it. That's how stupid this cult is. Its main members should be atheists since it shares the same malleable morality and it can't even fool them. In fact, it's ticking them off and making them less receptive and far more critical of the message passed down from his holiness Saint Karl.

So, I say, Thank you, Disney. Thank you, Amazon. Thank you, CNN. Thank you for being so stupid in shoveling out your evil plan like manure on a dinner plate. LGBTQIA+ people should actually be mad at you rather than celebrating you. They should actually see you as their greatest enemies. You are not rolling out their agenda. You are ensuring that people like me who want to instill a biblical creational ethic of sexuality in our children can roll out ours. So, thank you for working with us by destroying your platform because by doing so you are simultaneously building ours.

You want to drown out our voices with your make-believe worlds? I guess you should have tried harder at storytelling. Keep making bad arguments instead. They give opportunities that allow our good arguments to be heard.

New Book on Preterism

 This has been a few years in the making but I finally finished this. Thanks to my wife Allison, April Khaito, and everyone who helped me start and finish this project.

Problems with Preterism

Second Half of the Halloween Interview

Forgot to post this one. Here it is. Amber also has a good post on Andrew Tate and the rights and wrongs of the emerging masculinity groups on Youtube that would be good for you to read.

Biblical Authority and the Demonic Rebellion of Contrary Applications

The Lord Jesus once gave a parable about a father who asked each of his two sons to go out and work in the field. The one said that he would but did not go. The other said that he would not but then felt bad and went. He then asked which one did the will of his father and the answer of course was the latter. Merely giving the right answer on a bibical principle wasn't good enough. The son surely knew his father wanted to hear him say "Yes" and so he did so, but God is not appeased with mere affirmations of the right answer. Empty words and promises are for the devil's children. God condemns the first son (which are the Jewish religious leaders in the context). This is because God is not pleased by our confessions alone. We act as though He is appeased if we merely believe biblical principles and repeat them to one another and so we have no need of actually being concerned about showing our submission to Him in our applications of these principles.

The Bible is against racism. The Bible commands us to be sexually pure. The Bible tells us to worship God alone. The Bible tells us to follow Jesus. The Bible tells us to be just. The Bible tells us to be loving. Sin is wrong. 

These are all generic biblical principles upon which most professed Christians would agree. In fact, most would find comfort in calling themselves Christians because they view their belief in biblical principles is the fruit of their conversion. But it isn't. 

You see, we are quite tricksy little hobbitses. We like to have our cake and eat it too when it comes to living worldly but also seeing ourselves as righteous and obedient at the same time. We do this in many ways but the main way we do it is by seeing our righteousness and obedience in terms of the principles we believe as the fruit of our salvation. In other words, if we believe biblical principles it is because we are now God's good and holy people.

Of course, we have been brainwashed by ourselves and others to believe that the application of those principles is subjective and we are not therefore bound to apply them in any particular direction and in any specific way. There is only one interpretation, we say, but a thousand different applications. This is a true statement but it is meant to say that applications of the principle should reach into every part of life and are therefore multiplied in various ways. It is not meant to say that application is subjective or somehow governed by the individual's own experience and not governed by biblical authority.

We can all agree that the Christian should not be a racist and that racism is evil but if the application of that biblical principle is governed by external philosophies of the wicked world and its false understanding of love and justice then it does not matter that I have affirmed the principle if, in practice, I have rejected the biblical authority that should govern its applications by ignoring what the Bible means by justice and love. In other words, the Bible does not just have authority over the principles we believe. It has authority over the applications of those principles.

If I end up, therefore, being unjust by applying a biblical principle like "racism is evil" by utilizing a worldly philosophy like Critical Race Theory, then I have actually undertaken a demonic task and have lived out an evil that undermines a biblical principle and sometimes even the very principle I often seek to apply.

Likewise, if I strive to apply the principle of sexual purity but apply the principle in a way that is governed by the teleology of the sexual revolution, although I see myself as a righteous man for doing so, I will end up practicing a satanic form of sexuality that denies the authority of the Bible that is no better, and often times worse, than those who deny Christ explicitly and reject the principle. 

We can all agree that Christians should be loving but if love means acceptance of what the Bible says is sin then we have misapplied the principle because we have not subjected our applications to biblical authority. 

It is of no use to say we accept biblical authority in the principle only to deny it by treating our applications as free-for-alls governed by our traditions, experience, current cultural practices and trends, etc. This is what it means to praise God with our lips but to have our actual thinking far from Him. Our Christianity merely becomes theoretical in nature and in practice ends up functioning as a license to do what is right in our own eyes. 

This the antinomianism that Jude warns us against. The antinomians were not denying that Christ was Lord with their confessions. They were denying His lordship over their lives in their applications. It was through what they ended up doing, not what they ended up believing that caused Jude to say that they were not saved and instead reserved for eternal darkness (Jude 4). As Paul said, these antinomians profess to know God but by their deeds they deny Him (Titus 1:16).

This is the greatest danger for all of us who have come to know the truth and profess it. We tend to think that we are done at this point. We tend to fall back on this as though it is all the fruit we need to show that we follow the Lord. It becomes a sort of ID card that we flash to ourselves and others to verify our faithfulness. Yet, the judgment scenes given to us in Scripture seem to focus on our applications of what is commanded rather than what we believe about what is commanded. 

Surely, submission to the principle is needed first. One must submit himself to the authority of the Scripture in all of its principles before he is able to apply anything. But the concern is that our relativistic tendencies within evangelicalism cause us to default to an unbiblical freedom of application that allows us to reject logical applications of the principles of Scripture that are governed, not by our personal desires, but by the whole counsel of God. 

It is our submission to biblical authority in our applications of biblical principles that displays the lordship of God in our lives and guards us from the false righteousness of the Pharisees. All else is made up of empty words and promises.

Halloween Interview at Bone of Bones

 The gals over at Bone of Bones posted a Q&A I gave on occultic phenomenon. You can read Part 1 of it here.

The Real Issue

The Biggest Issue Facing the Church 

Where Women Are Kings

 I don't know about you but when I was a boy, I would go up to the top of my patio roof and jump off, believing I would maybe get the powers of Superman and fly. Surprisingly, I never broke a bone. Not so surprisingly, I never flew either. That's because when you are a child, you have a hard time distinguishing reality from imagination. It's largely because your view of reality is not matured in a comprehensive manner. You actually think it might be possible to step off the roof and fly. You actually think it might be possible to call an object with the force like Luke calls for his lightsaber in Star Wars. That's because you're a child and have not learned enough yet to know that these things are a fiction created for the purpose of entertainment and escape from reality, but they are not reality themselves.

You see, in our stories, people can actually fly, they can lift buses with one hand, they can be shot with five arrows through their chests and continue on like nothing happened, and women can beat up men. That's because you make up anything for a story. You can even twist details so that incredibly evil people are heroes, but why would you?

In the new movie The Woman King, we are told that the Dahomey tribe had a female warrior unit called the Agojie. They were brave, valiant, noble people who would fight the white man who was trying to enslave black people. It's so inspiring and makes you want to hate those evil white people even more than you already do. The problem, as many of you know already, is that this is a complete fiction. In fact, not only is it a lie, it is the opposite of the truth. 

You see, the Dahomey tribe was one of the most violent and disgusting tribes on the planet. They went into other African tribes, brutally murdered or sacrificed (yes, the practiced human sacrifice) anyone they couldn't sell as a slave, and then sold everyone else into slavery. In other words, they were the bad guys. The white people that they fought were the French who had gone into Africa to end the slave trade. Yes, the bad white people were sacrificing, not other black people like the Dahomey, but themselves in order to end the evil slave-trade that the Dahomey were trying to perpetuate. 

So why was this history taken and twisted to tell us, and especially everyone who isn't going to bother to pick up a history book, that "white men bad, intersectional people good/"? Well, I think you already know that answer to that, as it's pretty much in the question. 

You see, reality doesn't support the fictional narrative that has been constructed by modern Neo-Marxists (e.g.., people who see through the lens of oppressed and oppressor) because all sorts of people are evil and all sorts of people are moved to do good. That means that all sorts of white people are evil and moved to do good and all sorts of black people are evil and moved to do good. No one is bad because they are a particular color and no one is moved to good because they are a particular color. That's obvious to those of us who have acquired a mature and comprehensive view of reality but the children apparently are still jumping off of the building even when told that flying humans are not a thing. Nor are women who should be warriors. The French wiped them out in a couple hours of fighting where most warfare takes days, months and years to come to a resolution.

Imagine what good it would have done to show the actual history here. It would have demonstrated the point to a young generation that has been brainwashed to believe that they should hate people because of the color of their skin that people cannot be put into categories of good and evil based upon external features. It's hard to hate people that gave their lives to save you and love people who brutally murdered, raped, sacrificed, and enslaved you but in the movies all things are possible. And all things are, but why do it?

The simple answer should bring a chill down our spines. Because this movie is all the evidence we need to make the case that there are a large amount of influential people in our culture who are actively working toward genocide. When you cannot even acknowledge that the people who did evil to you are evil but must present them as heroes and you cannot even see the people who did good to you as worthy of your honorable remembrance, you have set your mind to destroy them. 

I wish the fiction here was merely telling us of superhumans and 120 pound women who can beat up 300 pound men but it isn't. This is genocidal propaganda. To be sure, like all genocidal propaganda, it does not always have an immediate effect. Instead, it works off of already existing fears and animosity that exists in the culture. It functions off of the idea that there are oppressors and there is no redeemable characteristic in them. They are just people who need to be resisted and destroyed. The oppressed, of course, are always in the right. They are always the good guys even when they are the bad guys because the oppressors are always the bad guys even when they are the good guys.

That doesn't mean that there weren't white bad guys and black good guys within the battles over the Transatlantic slave trade. There were and that is the point. It had nothing to do with the color of one's skin. There are bad guys and good guys on both sides because that is the way reality works. Only the stories of children make a fiction of that reality.

Incomplete Revelation Study

I seem to be missing some of these. I'm not sure if we simply forgot to hit record but I plan on redoing this series for Youtube. If you can find the missing links I'd appreciate sending them my way.

Introduction to Revelation

Revelation 1:1-11 

Revelation 1:11-20

Revelation 3

Revelation 6

Revelation 8-9

Revelation 9-11

Revelation 11-12

Revelation 13-14

Revelation 17-18

Revelation 20

What Is the Purpose of Parenting?

Law and Gospel Parenting 

The above blogpost identifies a type of parenting that is biblical. The problem is that most people no longer know what the purpose of parenting actually is, so when they read something like this, they think it is merely one option among many. So let's talk about the purpose of parenting.

Most people, whether theoretically or subconsciously, think that the purpose of parenting is to make successful children. They should be successful socially or financially or spiritually. Ideally, all of the above. The problem with this idea is that it sets an anthropocentric standard for parenting that looks for outcomes that only God ultimately has control over. 

Certainly, one should strive to form their kids this way, but these results cannot determine the standard of successful parenting because an atheist can accomplish the first two without teaching anything about God, giving absolutely no glory to God whatsoever, and the final result can only be accomplished by God and can be done so with or without the parent's help.

In other words, the first two can be godless and the last one is only up to God. If one accomplishes the first two goals with his children but the last is not accomplished then he might say that he has failed at parenting. Likewise, if the last one is accomplished but not the first two, he might still think he has failed as a parent.

The problem with all of this is that it simply isn't biblical. If any or all of them were the result of successful parenting and the lack of any or all of them were the result of bad parenting, we would have to conclude that God is a bad parent because many if not most of the children of His creation fail to accomplish one or all of these three. Are we really prepared to say that God is not a good parent?

Instead, biblical parenting is about representing God in one's parenting regardless of outcomes. In other words, you may get better results if you parent in a way that does not represent God. Certainly, if you always affirm your children in whatever they do, you'll have a better social relationship with your kids. If you tell them that they can do anything they set their minds to do, and teach them something very "new agey" about themselves, that confidence may give them greater success in the workplace and in their relationships. But, biblically speaking, you have failed to parent biblically and to give God glory in your parenting.

And what is it to parent according to God's glory? Glorifying God means that you lift God up over yourself and your child in order to communicate who God is in relationship to your child through representing God in the way you parent. In other words, you as a parent represent God and in doing so you communicate law and gospel to your child the way that God communicates law and gospel to His people in the Bible. You communicate God's authority (i.e., the fear of God and His judgments) and His character (i.e., the law) and the love and mercy of God through the gospel.

Your child may not believe in God in the end. That wasn't God's goal with your parenting. Obviously, we all want our children to be saved and it is a part of our goal and hope, but in the end that is God's eternal decision and not a result of the works that you do. All you can do is seek to represent God accurately through your parenting, and that means you must represent the Bible's communication of God accurately in everything you do with your child.

If your child turns away from God when they are grown, it should not be because you did not communicate God accurately but rather because you did and God chose not to regenerate your child. 

What this means is that any alternative type of parenting that does not seek to communicate God according to the Bible, but according to what is right in your own eyes with your own goals in mind, is wicked regardless of the results. 

One might say that it is not about the destination but the journey. It is not about the ends but the means. We might also say that the ends is the means. The job of the parent is not the result but to communicate God correctly in the process. That is the way that God parents His people with varying results as He has decreed it.

Now, we hope and pray that the results will be that they are saved in the end. We desire that they would be successful in their social and financial endeavors, and we incorporate things into parenting that look forward to that success, but we are unfaithful to the goal of parenting if we adopt any systems and theories of parenting that do not represent God the way that the Bible does. For this reason, the greatest parenting book is the Bible (Law and Gospel). 

Note: Law, of course, is not just the literal laws in the Torah or Epistles but also the wisdom in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, etc.).

The home is the smallest unit in the government of the church and the state. The purpose of both of these is to represent God accurately, not to have perfect results in everyone's behavior and relationship with God. We would desire it but that is clearly not God's purpose. We have people who become criminals regardless of whether a government represents the fear of God accurately and we have people rebel against the church and reject Christianity regardless of whether the church represents God accurately through the Scripture. If it is not about the results but whether we are faithful in representing God correctly in the larger family of church and state, why would we ever think that the purpose of the home would be something different?

Are Men and Women Equally Bound by the One Flesh Union?

The restrictions on divorce and remarriage are the same for either a man or woman without distinction. Let me explain why.

But let me describe why this assertion comes about first. It's held by an early church "father" by the name of Ambrosiaster. Ambrosiaster is a pseudonym given to an anonymous author who had a commentary on Paul. Most scholars note that he tends toward Pelagianism and other views that run contrary to the Fathers in general. The name given to him actually means "would-be Ambrose" because his writings were first thought to be from Ambrose. He is an outlier and does not hold to the general teaching of the other Fathers, regardless of the attempts to harmonize some of them with him. 

In his commentary on 1 Corinthians 7, he argues that a man who is divorced by a wife as an innocent party is free to remarry even though, if the situation was reversed, the wife is not. He bases his argument on the idea that male headship sees the man as the owner of the wife but not the wife as the owner of the man. Hence, if the wife throws off his headship, he is no longer obligated to her. Since he is no longer obligated once she has done so through divorce and maybe even adultery, he is free to remarry. He argues the following.

A woman may not marry if she has left her husband because of his fornication or apostasy, or because, impelled by lust, he wishes to have sexual relations with her in an illicit way. This is because the inferior party does not have the same rights under the law as the stronger one has . . .The reason why Paul does not add, as he does in the case of the woman, “But if she departs, he should remain as he is” is because a man is allowed to remarry if he has divorced a sinful wife. The husband is not restricted by the law as a woman is, for the head of a woman is her husband.

Now, here is the problem. The reasoning is not based upon Jesus' prohibition of divorcing and remarrying. It is based upon issues of ownership that ignore the one flesh union as the Jewish interpretation of the Old Testament understanding had. In other words, it sees divorce and remarriage as legitimate because it only uses the Jewish understanding of possession that existed in the Old Testament. Yet, it is precisely this interpretation that Jesus says was not the case from the beginning. God, instead, had joined the two in becoming one flesh and no man was to separate it. Hence, any remarriage is an adultery being committed. 

The husband owns the wife because the wife is his own body and he owns his own body. If she is joined to someone else, therefore, she is committing adultery regardless of the situation. So far we are all in agreement with Ambrosiaster. However, in 1 Corinthians 7:2-4 Paul states:

διὰ δὲ ⸂τὰς πορνείας⸃ ἕκαστος τὴν ἑαυτοῦ γυναῖκα ἐχέτω ⸋καὶ ἑκάστη τὸν ἴδιον ἄνδρα ἐχέτω⸌. τῇ γυναικὶ ὁ ἀνὴρ τὴν ⸀ὀφειλὴν ἀποδιδότω, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ ἡ γυνὴ τῷ ἀνδρί. ἡ γυνὴ τοῦ ἰδίου σώματος οὐκ ἐξουσιάζει ἀλλʼ ὁ ἀνήρ, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ ὁ ἀνὴρ τοῦ ἰδίου σώματος οὐκ ἐξουσιάζει ἀλλʼ ἡ γυνή.

But because of sexually immoral acts, each man is to possess his own woman/wife and each woman is to possess her own man/husband. The man/husband is contractually obligated to the woman/wife, and likewise, the woman/wife is contractually obligated to the man/husband. The woman/wife does not have rights over her own body but the man/husband does. And likewise, the man/husband does not have rights over his own body but the woman/wife does.

The argument Paul makes assumes the Lord's argument about the two becoming one flesh. Because they are one flesh the one owns the other. Possession is not based upon the federal headship laws of the Old Testament but upon the one flesh union built into creation, a union that makes the woman as equally in possession of the man's body as the woman's body is in the possession of the man. The marital contract that is solidified by the one flesh union of the sexual act, therefore, makes it impossible to break because it is impossible for a person to break from himself. This is Jesus' argument to the Pharisees. They are no longer two but one and subsequently cannot be broken into two again by any man. Paul adopts this reasoning in 1 Corinthians 7 as well (7:10, 39). This can be seen again in his analogy found in Romans 7:2-3.

In other words, possession is based upon the one flesh union that solidifies the marital contract whether one is male or female. If the husband cannot be separated from the wife and she owns the husband's body because it is her own, then he cannot be joined to another without committing adultery regardless of the situation. 

The old federal headship idea that Ambrosiaster appeals to is no more. Polygamy is now forbidden because the original reasoning for adultery in creation is restored by the Lord Jesus. Hence, as Paul says, a man now must have his own wife, i.e., she is not the woman/wife of another; and the woman must now have her own man/husband, i.e., he is not the husband of another. He is ἴδιον “belonging to herself" or "her's alone" and is parallel to the fact that the man must have ἑαυτοῦ “his own" woman/wife "belonging to himself." 

Because of the one flesh union and the single ownership of a man by a woman, it is impossible for him to be joined to another now without committing adultery and this cannot be changed due to any circumstance other than death, i.e., the demise of one part of the flesh union, whether it be male or female. 

Heroes Kill Villains

God is merciful and compassionate, but not always. Sometimes it's evil to be merciful and wrath is called for instead. We tend to not think about this too much as we see God as the merciful One, but we need to also acknowledge that the devil inspires mercy and compassion in humans as much as God does. He just does it toward the wicked. He uses it as way to preserve his murderous agents. He's the villain telling the hero that the hero shouldn't stoop to his level and kill him or his minions. Afterall, heroes are merciful, right?

The story in 1 Samuel 15 is instructive here. Saul spares Agag the king, and a whole host of livestock and humans he desires to own, despite the fact that God told him to kill all of them. Now, one might say that his motives are not mercy but pride in that he desires to parade his captives as a way of flaunting his victory. However, built into the commands God gives for the death penalty is the command to not be merciful toward those who are wicked and under God's judgment. Regardless of the motives, to spare the wicked when they should be destroyed is mercy.

In Deuteronomy 7:2, God says, "and when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them."

It is clear that to show mercy upon the wicked is wicked. But why? Because to show mercy upon the wicked by sparing their lives is to treat their evil as benign and to unjustly oppress the innocent. It is to lift up the wicked as deserving of honor and the innocent as less than worthy to receive honor. It is to favor the wicked over the righteous. Furthermore, to spare the wicked is to join with them in their shedding of innocent blood and oppressing those upon whom they prey. God, being just, desires to show wrath to the wicked, not mercy, and for anyone claiming to represent God to show the opposite of what God desires to show is himself a false prophet, a murderer, and deserves death himself, which is what the passage goes on to say. 

By sparing Agag, Saul was not only communicating the opposite of God's desires toward the wicked, he was joining with them and their future generations in killing and oppressing the innocent.

Mercy is for the repentant, those who throw off their roles as destroyers and seek to be givers of life through the Lord Jesus Christ. Wrath is for the wicked who have solidified themselves in the role of the destroyer. Hence, to show mercy to the wicked is a satanic, not a Christ-like characteristic of our modern society.

When leniency is given to violent criminals, it is a great injustice and the display of a worthless leadership. The more the implementation of our laws reflect a mercy upon criminals, the more they inflict crimes upon the innocent and show themselves to be satanic in nature. Hence, God's wrath is toward, not only the doers of wicked deeds, but upon those who would give no justice to the innocent victims and enable the wicked to victimize more of the innocent in the future. 

All of them should be rounded up, and once it is determined through a court of law that they are guilty, executed swiftly. But that seems cold and harsh to our culture. In the modern mind, it's much more peaceful and merciful to let them run rampant to kill, beat, rob, and rape the innocent. Hence, the wrath of God will fall, as it did upon the Canaanites, upon the whole of the current leadership and every so-called Christian calling for leniency upon the wicked. 

The good and righteous God is the Destroyer of destroyers because He is the Giver of Life. Those who would follow Him will do the same. Those who enable the destroyers are simply making the devil's argument but all who know the truth know this truth: heroes kill villains. 

Biblical Hermeneutics and Exegesis Series

 Introduction

Hermeneutics and Sola Scriptura

Why Bible Translations Cannot Replace Knowing the Biblical Languages

How to Do and Not to Do a Word Study

The Use and Abuse of Background Studies

Identifying Biblical Genres

Literary Analysis

Canonical Context

How to Discuss Biblical Interpretation Righteously under the Guidance of Logic

How to Deny the Gospel While Affirming It

Superfluous. I think I had to spell that word in elementary school in the early eighties. I had never used it before nor heard anyone else use it. It's much more commonly used today. Of course most know it means "unneeded, unnecessary, extra, useless as to adding anything of need."

Man will always drift toward a satanic religion because it gives him immediate results. What is satanic religion? It is any religion that attributes creation to anything else other than the Creator's activity. It views transformation, therefore, as a result of the work of other causes. It glorifies other gods, demons, nature, society, or humanity but it does not glorify God as the Savior.

God has saved humanity through the gospel and through the gospel alone. Sin has caught up all men everywhere so that they are bound to be damned by anything and everything they have done or thought. Their only hope is Christ and His work in the gospel. There is no other hope for them than this.

This means that the gospel is the transforming means through which God, the Creator, gets the glory for transformation. You must be born again. All must be born again through the gospel and cannot be through any other means.

But men who do not see the effects of this rebirth immediately feel that they need other means. Some pursue the excitement of stimulating emotions through entertainment, some through ecstatic experiences of what is supposedly the work of the Spirit, some through meditation, some through religious rituals that give the person a further experience that feels more wholistic. 

Others pursue philosophical routes in order to stimulate the mind, looking to understand deeper and hidden things in an almost occultic manner through speculation that views the Word of God as rudimentary knowledge to be transcended through divine experiences and philosophical knowledge.

Some combine these two for a better experiential result, but no matter the path, although saying they believe the gospel, they are denying its sufficiency to transform by itself, and thus, are denying God the glory of the entire creation of whatever is transformed. 

One might sum up all of the above as a Gnostic spirituality. Access to secret knowledge through philosophy and heightened emotional and mental experiences has always been mistaken for the biblical spirituality of every day mundane life. Speaking the gospel and living as a picture of it seems too simple. It doesn't stimulate the mind and body in the same way as the immediate dopamine rush and goosebumps created by the false spiritualities that would replace it. 

Hence, people gravitate toward icons and incense, robes and rituals, signs and shaking, Aristotle and Aesop, plays and prose, but the simple gospel seems too common a garment without the bedazzled adornment of these other experiences.

No doubt, all who have been deceived by this spirituality will argue that the gospel is either at the foundation or interwoven within all of these other things. One might have made the same argument that the calves of Dan and Bethel were not stealing the glory from the temple but extending it. Within these were the religion of YHWH that gave glory to Him by virtue of the decree that these idols represented God's greatness. Nonetheless, God was not glorified by them because He had declared that His sole means of representation was through His Word in the ark that was sitting in the temple in Jerusalem. It was sufficient. There was no need to expand it and the very expansion itself was a rejection of its sufficiency, and therefore, the power of its God to transform through it.

The seeker churches have adopted the model that the gospel needs a makeover. It can still be that nerdy girl with a ponytail and glasses underneath but now she'll have far more makeup, cool accessories, contacts, and a minidress. All the Reformed jeer in disgust but let us wait to express our lack of delight in the neo-evangelical additions to the power of the gospel and realize that we have seen the same among ourselves. The gospel is an ugly girl to many of us without Aristotle or Freud. It is a boring nerd without the pazazz of enthusiastic experiences. The Word seems empty and less effective without the pretty colors of stained-glass windows and iconography. Maybe just a touch of visual symbolism here and a dash of incense there would make the gospel a prettier and more exciting girl to be with.

If the above were understood, it would bring an end to the pop-psychology market among Christians. What else do you need to save your marriage, bring up your children, deal with childhood trauma? Is the gospel not the answer to all things? Or is it impotent to transform all areas of your life, family, and society?

Biblical religion sees spirituality as a slow process of becoming like Christ through the gospel, not an immediate feeling of closeness to God through existential experience and philosophical knowledge. These means are not only fool's gold they take away one's trust in the gold market itself. They are empty replacements that only seem like they are doing something to the individual because of the bodily, fleshly chemicals they produce when one practices them. 

The preaching of the Word of God creates a culture from the ground-up by transforming individuals slowly and, dare I say it, as invisibly as the God who creates. I do not mean that there will not be true physical effects of the preaching of the Word but rather that the process is so slow and far less dramatic than speaking in tongues and falling over before a crowd of ten thousand people that the transformation and knowledge thereof is almost invisible. 

And that is the problem. We want to SEE change. We are idolaters by nature. We demand a spirituality that we can evaluate through intellectual or emotional stimulation because we demand a religion of sight rather than faith in the invisible workings of God. We are the gods of this religion, as the devil desires it. We are the ones who determine the efficacy of the simple gospel by how our spirituality makes us feel about our own progress and the progress of others around us. We are all liars and self-deceived though. Our spiritual progress is determined by the gospel at every stage, whether we have not only believed it and its sufficiency in the beginning but whether we are picturing it in our actions to follow. This means that biblical spirituality is about the gospel from beginning to end and it is sufficient from beginning to end. In other words, it never leaves the gospel. The gospel creates the gospel and never anything else. All that is of Christ is the pure gospel and all of the devil is anything that is not the pure gospel.

You are free to love philosophy, traditional ceremony or modern entertainment but none of it contributes to the gospel a single particle of transforming power and can only remain as an empty husk that can be discarded at any time. We do not change people by having the right tune in our songs, the right style of our clothes, the right philosophers in our libraries, the right food in our stomachs, or the right drink in our mouths. None of this is the true culture of God because God's culture isn't about songs or clothes or human wisdom or food or drink but about the glory of God who will not share that glory with anyone or anything else. He is the Savior of the world and what He has done does not need additional adornment for it to be fully sufficient and effective to change the world that He began to create millennia before Aristotle or Freud were a twinkle in their parents' eyes. 

God's culture, therefore, does not need to mimic the atmosphere of medieval Byzantine folk religion or a smoke-filled pub in the late Rennaissance period. It can exist in those atmospheres but it neither needs nor is enhanced in any way by them. It alone transforms. It alone creates. It alone accomplishes the will of the Spirit who uses it to change all things to testify of the Son who gives glory to the Father. It alone must be our mission focus. Anything else is superfluous. 

The Difference between Christian and Secular Patriarchy

I love superhero movies. Yes, even when we are inundated with them, and even when they are horribly  woke. I still have a place in my heart for them. Ultimately, I think it's because they stir something up that looks much like the gospel, especially the ones where the superhero dies to save humanity. It's the ultimate sacrifice that reminds us of Christ's ultimate sacrifice. The superhero is a protector to the very end. He is the ultimate man because he represents the ultimate Man.

There are two types of men. Some men are predators. Some men are protectors. Some men will use their strength and power to fulfill their desires and others will use that strength and power to protect the prey of these men from these men. In other words, there is a patriarchy that exists to feed the self-exaltation, the self-deification of fallen man, and there is a patriarchy that exists to protect the would-be victims of this sinful type of patriarchy. Every man, of course, has a capacity for both. There is in every man the desire to be a predator and a protector. The issue is what exists in the man's life to sway him into one role or the other at any given time. 

For some, the desire to be protector actually stems from a selfishness to be exalted as a hero. This plays on his flesh and desire to be praised as a deity. He wants to be a superhero, not because he loves those he wishes to protect but rather because he desires to be loved by them. This man, unfortunately, is only a protector for the crowd. In secret, he will end up having little to no desire to be anything other than a predator. We'll call this the "Bill Cosby" type of protector. 

Many people were shocked to learn that Bill Cosby had preyed upon women the way that he did, especially since he presented himself to be such a protector in the public eye. Anyone who grew up in the late 80s viewed Cosby as America's Dad. The problem is that the desire to exalt the self is not enough to make a man from the inside-out into a protector. He is a protector only due to temporary environmental factors.

This is why many men will decry prostitution and porn for their victimization of women in public but in private support the industry by participating in it. 

I am not saying, of course, that Christians do no such things due to the conflict within them, but rather that Christians identify this hypocrisy as sin and seek to rid themselves of such contradictions in an effort to become only protectors and no longer predators at all. So I am not arguing that Christians do not sin but rather that they identify their hypocrisy as sin and are swayed to live in the role of protector both in public and in secret.

The reason why they do this is because biblical patriarchy, despite the overly simplistic condemnation of all types of patriarchy by a pseudo-feminist culture that is actually male chauvinism at its core, is all about protecting those who are weaker, whether they be women, children, or the poor and sick. 

Biblical patriarchy exists as God's instruments, His images, through which He protects those who are weaker in the world. Hence, the law is primarily about protecting victims. There are no laws that exist in the Bible that favor the strong and their abuse of the weak. Those who use their power to prey upon the weak will answer to God for it.

Having said all of this, therefore, two things are imperative if we are thrive as a community. The first is that getting rid of the patriarchy has been disastrous for our secular culture. The predators convinced women in our culture that freedom from a man's authority is a necessity in becoming truly human. Instead, the argument of these serpents simply turned women into the slaves they desired to use as whores to fulfill their desires, votes for political power, and life-time workers for the industrial complex. Rather than becoming truly human, women were made into dogs.

Biblical patriarchy looks like oppression to the modern mind who has been brainwashed by predators because it protects women so that they might become truly human, and protection is limitation. It guards them from predators by limiting their relationships with other men both before and after marriage. It protects them by limiting their power in demanding that they defer to their federal heads. It protects them by limiting their voices in teaching and exercising authority in the community in order to keep them from both losing their motherhood in favor of fatherhood and from the judgment of God who desires the roles remain distinct. 

But it does not use this authority that is given to the man, an authority given to limit the woman in order to protect her humanity, as a way to limit her humanity itself, and that is the difference between the secular and biblical models of patriarchy. 

A woman should be encouraged to thrive within the role she is given and become her true humanity as a mother, and mothers are honored in Scripture, not dishonored. We do not treat them as slaves by making them whores, instruments of political power, or workers that do the jobs we don't want to do. In other words, they do not exist to fulfill our sexual desires at the cost of their dignity and honor as a daughter of God and a mother; they do not exist to be our politician in spreading gossip and slander against our opponents within a community, and they do not exist to be our personal slaves at home, even if we have the authority in the patriarchy to abuse in such ways and to make them so.

Does this mean that women do not have an obligation to honor the authority and fatherhood of the man by feeding into his manhood by fulfilling her role in marriage as one who is sexually available to her husband, honoring him where she can in her speech to others, and serving the household through work? Of course she still must do this if she is to become the female version of the Christ-like humanity that she is meant to become. The issue is whether the man, as her leader and teacher, accomplishes this in his wife in a biblical or unbiblical way.

The biblical way to make a woman who she needs to be is to become the protector the man is meant to be. This means showing that he cares for his wife and children by using his authority and power in service to them. It means being secure in his manhood so that he need not constantly reestablish it by asserting a selfish authority that is unwavering and irrational. In essence, his submission to God's mission and to God in self-sacrifice is the primary means by which he teaches his wife and children to do the same in their submission both God and to him; and in doing this, they take upon the image of God, the true humanity, into which God has called them.

There is a way to make your wife lesser, to make her a dog, all the while citing the biblical mandate for the man to take headship. Ephesians 5:25-6:4 is instructive here to counter this tendency.

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she recognizes her husband's authority . . . 4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. 

Here we have the man's marching orders from God. He must enter the patriarchy if he is to become true humanity. He must become a husband and a father. He must become a federal head. But he is not to become the secular picture of patriarchy but a biblical picture of patriarchy that presents the character and ministry of Christ to the church. 

If anyone could demand that He be treated as God, it would be Christ. Yet, this passage tells us that he loved the church, not by demanding he get his way in all things, but rather by serving and giving Himself up in order that His Bride might attain to her full humanity. His children are not humans to rule over in order for him to feel superior and in control as the right of deity he wishes to assert, but rather as one who uses his position for the good of the others, and that good is to bring them up into godly human beings who are also self-sacrificing, loving, and in joyful submission to Christ's authority.

Biblical patriarchy is not primarily about control, therefore, but about how to use one's power to benefit the healthy and godly humanity of one's family, church, or nation. It is not about getting one's way. That would be secular patriarchy that desires to fulfill the serpent's plan for humanity in self-deification. Instead, biblical patriarchy stands as the means through which men become true men, women become true women, and children grow up to be one or the other without spot or blemish. It defends the weak and gives justice to those that a more predatory patriarchy has victimized. In short, it's becoming the superhero who saves humanity by dying because that is what our Superhero did for us.

Why Source Theories of Biblical Books Do Not Belong in the Academy

 In the latter half of the twentieth century, James Barr, influenced by various linguistic observations made earlier, heavily critiqued the diachronic methodologies employed by everyone from scholars to laity in the area of lexicography. 

One of the major arguments put forth is described as the etymological fallacy. I want to point out two aspects of this fallacy when it came to lexicography that is relevant for what I am going to say about source theories (whether we are talking about the original source theories of the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries or the various expressions of higher criticism that evolved into the twentieth centuries such as form criticism) that have now been assumed as a given within the academy.

The first etymological fallacy in lexicography has to do with the fact that what a word means in either an earlier period cannot be assumed to be the meaning, or have any relevance whatsoever in determining the meaning, in the current context one is analyzing. 

Likewise, in extension of this fallacy, which is mainly an illegitimate referential transference, one cannot assume the meaning, i.e., referents, in even a contemporary context without identical referents.

These observations are in accordance with the logic of language that create rules of  communication that, if violated, create the inability for language to function coherently. These rules are assumed by speakers and authors and the defense of them is simply in attempting to have a conversation using the reverse logic and to note the inability of such a practice to function as a successful form of communication.

The second observation is that a word, although possibly made up of two constituent parts (e.g., butterfly, understand, confidence, etc.) does not necessarily retain any meaning from either word. Although there are many words that may retain some meaning in terms of their individual referents (e.g., handwörterbuch, toothbrush, etc.), this can only be established by the referents given in the particular contexts in which the words are used.

Thus, the contextual referents decide the meaning in each of these cases of the etymological fallacy, and therefore, are not determined by either the history of usage, past or present, or the particular words used to make up the new word even when other words are used.

Here now is my claim. Source theories are nothing more than etymological fallacies applied to larger units of language than an individual word. They simply attempt to find meaning for the particular text under study by analyzing either the history of meaning of a source, the nature of the source in some other context, or the different sources that may be used to make up a new text.

Like the individual words used in new context, the new context must determine meaning and is not determined by the previous or foreign referent found in another text or cultural context. Ergo, all forms of higher criticism that assume these fallacies are illegitimate methodologies of inquiry that do not belong in academic study.

Now, this would be true even if the sources were actually in our material possession. In some cases, they are when we are referring to various ancient Near Eastern texts that are parallel to various Old Testament texts or various Second Temple texts that are parallel to New Testament texts. However, even in these cases, they can only function in comparison and contrast with what the authors of the new text might be doing with them. They can in no way be legitimately used as determinative when assessing the meaning/referents of the new text.

However, in the vast majority of cases where source theories are applied, whether JEDP and its variations and evolutions or Q theories in its various forms, or the theorized redactors in both the study of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, are not material sources that we possess. They are conjectured and expanded through speculation. In other words, they are simply guesses based upon the fact that sources may be used in various texts.

Whatever the case, whether legitimate sources were ever used or not is completely irrelevant. The point is that one cannot make even sources we have as determinative in meaning, and thus, speculative sources that are simply assumed, along with their cultural referents that again are assumed from anthropological commonalities in cultures should not be a part of academic study of a text, much less referred to as being exegetical in nature.

Instead, the speculative sources are often flights of fancy and are even more worthless to even aiding in understanding a text exegetically simply because they provide no ability to even contrast or compare definitive referents, as they are simply made up and cannot function in that capacity.

The textual sources we do have can aid in study because they provide at least a comparison and contrast of definitive referents that everyone can see even without an imaginative scholar manufacturing them for his audience in much the same way a cult leader provides his members with the real context of the text that only he and those convinced by him can see with his Holy Spirit glasses.

The modern liberal scholar believes he is on greater ground than this cult leader because he is using natural sources to get his glasses (e.g., anthropology, archaeology, and psychology), but as argued here, he is simply in no better place to determine the meaning and referents of any given text than every other person who can analyze the text exegetically.

And that is what I wish to end with, Source theories are eisegetical not exegetical. They attempt to insert referents of meaning into the text rather than extrapolate meaning from the contextual referents provided by the texts as they exist. This is simply arguing that butterflies really are flies made of butter and that the boy down the street who has a boyfriend and says he’s gay really just means he’s cheerful. In the end, such assertions when corrected are dogma, not scholarship, and hence, have no place in the academy anymore (and should delegitimize any commentary that relies on them in order to determine referential meanings), and those who continue to use them in the above ways will prove themselves as religiously committed to a need to reinterpret the Bible for various reasons rather than those are who legitimately studying it.

Giving Aid to the Wicked and the Wrath of God

 Jeff, one of my fellow elders, pointed out a really significant verse to me today that I had just read over and never noticed before. 2 Chronicles 19:2 states:

Jehoshaphat the king of Judah returned in safety to his house in Jerusalem. But Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him and said to King Jehoshaphat, “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the LORD? Because of this, wrath has gone out against you from the LORD. Nevertheless, some good is found in you, for you destroyed the Asheroth out of the land, and have set your heart to seek God.” (2 Chron 19:1-3)

The context of this passage is that Jehoshaphat had made an alliance with Ahab through marriage and by giving both financial and physical aid to Ahab to defend his kingdom in battle. Jehu, a prophet, goes out the text says and opposes him (lit. against/to his face). Now, Hebrew is a very verbal language. The verbs are usually fronted. In this sentence, however, the verb appears last in an effort to highlight the words "should, to the wicked to give aid and to those who hate YHWH, you love? In other words, the highlight is on the fact that the recipient of Jehoshaphat's help and love is the wicked and those who reject YHWH. The text states that the object of the righteous king's aid and love should not be anyone who is wicked or rejects YHWH.

This passage is interesting as it not only asks the rhetorical question whether someone who is righteous should help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord, but it also conveys that such is not a practice that is benign but rather brings about the wrath of God. What saves Jehoshaphat from God's wrath in the battle in which Ahab is killed is the fact that he destroyed the cult images in Jerusalem. 

However, Jehoshaphat actually does this again with Ahaziah who takes the throne after Ahab is killed.

 After this Jehoshaphat king of Judah joined with Ahaziah king of Israel, who acted wickedly. He joined him in building ships to go to Tarshish, and they built the ships in Ezion-geber. Then Eliezer the son of Dodavahu of Mareshah prophesied against Jehoshaphat, saying, “Because you have joined with Ahaziah, the LORD will destroy what you have made.” And the ships were wrecked and were not able to go to Tarshish. (2 Chron 20:35–37)

The Chronicler then records the death of Jehoshaphat as a righteous king but then continues to talk about what happens to his sons. They are all killed by Jehoram his eldest who not only takes the throne but then installs all of the wicked practices in Jerusalem that Ahab had advocated in northern Israel. 

Authors of narrative often select their information and place things together because they want the reader to connect what came before as logically producing the events that come after. In this case, I don't think it is a stretch to suggest that the Chronicler wants the reader to understand that the wrath of God is evident in that He gives Jehoshaphat's family over to the consequences of giving aid to the wicked and loving those who hate the Lord (2 Chron 21).

So even though Jehoshaphat was a righteous king in some respects, the wickedness of giving help and love to the wicked not only caused him to lose the battle he fought with Ahab but destroyed both his family after him (saving only one son because God did not want to wipe out David's line) and the spiritual faithfulness of Judah to God.

The implications of this passage are quite profound and warrant the question, "Should Christians give aid to the wicked and love those who hate the Lord? 

Now, one could argue that Ahab is an apostate and should represent the so-called brethren in the church who should be excommunicated, given no aid or physical care. However, the statement made by the prophet seems to be generic. Is it right to help a wicked person when he is under the judgment of God and working against God in his ideas and practices? Is it right to love those who hate God?

Another verse Jeff mentioned was 139:21-22, "Do I not hate those who hate You, O YHWH; and do I not loathe those who rise up against You? With absolute hatred I hate them. I count them as my enemies."

Does not the New Testament also state that being a friend to the world is to make an enemy of God? James 4:4 implies that finding one's identity with the world, seeking to be accepted by them in one's status, as no doubt was the goal of Jehoshaphat with Ahab and Ahaziah, is to betray God. It is to join in their hateful activity against God. 

Instead, Jehoshaphat's place was to call the kings of the north out of their idolatry and to repent of their rebellion against God but he was the weaker king so he joined with them, and even though he was generally a righteous king for the time, the wrath of God went out against him as an enemy, caused him to lose a battle, led to the murder of his sons, and ultimately destroyed all of the good work he had done in his lifetime of ministry to God's people in removing these major idols from among them.

Ahab and Ahaziah, although they were Jehoshaphat's physical neighbors, they were not a neighbor in the sense of covenant members any longer. Hence, they should not have been supported by Jehoshaphat in any way, shape, or form. Those who have set their lives against the Lord must be, in love for God and His people, called to repentance, not given comfort and support in their rebellion.

Let us not support the ministries of the devil by giving aid to the wicked but rather call them out of their hatred toward God; and whatever we do, let us not share in their judgment by giving ourselves a share in the wrath reserved for their rebellion by contributing in some way, financially or otherwise, to it.

A History of Universalism

 https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/universalism-a-historical-survey/

This Is a Good Summary of Enlightenment Religion

https://youtu.be/nYuWlxnqa4o 

Good and Quick Breakdown of the Enlightenment Cult

 https://youtu.be/3wy0MY_EmDE

Fake Complementarianism

 https://youtu.be/STt4H6Gsnno

Transgenderism as the Fruit of the Sexual Revolution

 https://youtu.be/G3jMxxjQP4w

This is a great discussion minus the Catholic overtones. 

He Must Be "Able to Teach": Evangelicalism's Failure in the Pulpit

 One of the qualifications of an elder, perhaps the only distinguishing qualification from a deacon, is that the elder must be "able to teach." This is a translation of a single word διδακτικόν. The word is often translated in Lexicons as "able to teach," "skilled at teaching," "have the teaching ability of a schoolmaster," etc. EDNT translates it as "qualified to teach." These are all satisfactory English translations. The problem is that one needs to know what Paul is attempting to communicate or these English translations are distorted by modern conceptions of what constitutes "teaching."

The bad news is that there is not much immediate context to the single word διδακτικόν, and so many English readers merely end up assuming their own ideas and eisegeting them into the text. The good news is that even though there is not much immediate context, there is plenty of context in the letter itself, in the Pastoral Epistles in general, and in a parallel list of qualifications in Titus 1.

First, in the letter itself, teaching has always to do with passing on the revelation of God either given in the Old Testament or by the apostles. One who is able to teach knows both the OT Scripture and the apostolic teaching. The elders are those who are worthy of double honor because they labor in word (i.e., knowing and understanding the OT and apostolic teaching) and teaching it (1 Tim 5:17). Paul exhorts Timothy to teach the very things he has communicated as an apostle in the letter (6:2).

Second, in the Pastorals in general, teaching has to do with knowing the Scriptures, studying them diligently, and again, passing on the apostolic teaching to the church. The elder, again, is presented in 2 Timothy 2:24 as one who needs to be διδακτικόν when referencing refuting those who contradict apostolic instruction. In contrast to these people, Timothy is told to hold to the teaching he has received from the apostles.

3:14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it 15 and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. 4:1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

Sound teaching is a reference to apostolic teaching in the Pastorals, and here it seems to be mixed with the OT Scriptures in such a way so as to refer to the apostolic/orthodox interpretation of the Scripture. Paul is arguing that there will be people in the church in the future who will no longer endure the apostolic teaching/interpretation of the Scripture but rather have their own interpretations of Scripture that will be of their own imaginations and religious cultures. 

Hence, διδακτικόν seems to refer to knowing the Scripture and the apostolic interpretation thereof really well. This is confirmed by the final context we have, which is the parallel in Titus 1:9.

He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. 

Instead of using the word διδακτικόν, Paul just describes it. So Paul himself gives us the definition of διδακτικόν. There is no need to speculate or put our own spin on it. Paul means by the word to communicate the idea that in order to be qualified as an elder one must hold firm to the apostolic teaching and interpretation of Scripture, which assumes he must know it really well, and be able to teach the sound teaching of the apostles from it, i.e., his theology and ethics is derived from it, not from his own speculation and interpretations, and he must be able to refute those who contradict it with their own interpretations and theology/ethics. 

In other words, the ability to teach has nothing to do with whether he is a good speaker or entertaining or dynamic or charismatic, etc. In fact, these are often the characteristics of false teachers. What one would have to say is that if the "ability to teach" referred to the nature of his oratory skills then in that regard the false teachers actually meet this aspect of the qualification. Instead, rather than disqualifying someone like Moses, who doesn't have good speaking skills (and perhaps Paul himself who doesn't seem to be a dynamic speaker--2 Cor 10:10 ), and qualifying the "smooth talkers" in the Prophets, one must come to grips with the fact that if he thinks part of the qualification is being a good communicator then he is adding to Scripture via eisegesis. Where in the context does this ever refer to one's oratory ability? One would be hard pressed to find such a justification. But those committed to the presuppositions supplied to them by their "soundslikegesis" will continue to interpret this qualification based on their own experience and familiarity with what they consider "teaching," and of course, in accordance with their own desires to be entertained and emotionally moved.

Such misinterpretations of the phrase have caused evangelicalism to be filled with unqualified men who are dynamic speakers, motivational life coaches, crowd-pleasers, ear-ticklers rather than Moseses and Pauls who are slow of speech but speak the apostolically-revealed Word of God nonetheless. 

The devil entertains with emotional stirrings either because the teaching and preaching is void of much content and the amount of ignorance must be hidden by sound and fury, or because the content is deceptive. Either way, a deception is taking place, since the people are under the illusion that they have had an experience with God because they were emotionally moved. Yet, their lives are no closer to being conformed to the truth, and indeed, perhaps, even further away from it. 

This is not just a problem for the megachurches who usually pick the most dynamic speaker they can find and believe that he is therefore "called" to ministry because of his great speaking gift even though he is no more knowledgeable of Scripture and proper exegesis as anyone else in his congregation; but it also plagues many of the smaller churches in evangelicalism who are just looking for someone to agree with them on a few doctrines they think are important and to not bore them on Sunday. It is no wonder that people sitting in these churches for thirty years are no more mature than when they first started to attend. They have been stimulated while being unchallenged for thirty years while their addictions grow worse, their marriages fall apart, their relationships become more superficial, etc. but they can't seem to pinpoint why.

This doesn't mean that everyone who is a good speaker is unqualified. It just means that each person and each teaching must be evaluated on the basis of the true qualification laid out by Paul above. Paul knew that what transforms is the truth of God's Word with or without the bells and whistles. He also knew the heretics' skill at blowing bells and whistles to distract their followers from the lack of content or misguided content they're often teaching. Hence, he concentrated on the content and not the means of communicating the content as the true qualification for anyone who should be a faithful pastor.

You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who are worthy and will teach others also. (2 Tim 2:1-2)

Christ Died to Begin a Life of Sacrifice, Not End It

 "Sacrifice describes the essence of the Church’s mission in the world:

“You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy

priesthood, to offer up Spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus

Christ.” (1 Pet. 2:5). Notice how similar this is to Paul’s description of the

activity and life of the church in Philippi. He calls their work “the sacrifice

and priestly service that arises from your faith” (Phil. 2:17). The language

of sacrifice is used as a description of the Christian life (Rom. 12:1). The

fact that Paul speaks of “living sacrifices” should alert us to the fact that

there is a positive dimension to the sacrificial ritual in addition to the idea of

penal, substitutionary execution. The self-denying, generous lives of

Christians are sacrifices. The author of Hebrews admonishes the church,

“But do not forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices God is

well pleased” (Heb. 13:16). This life of love is a sacrificial life that we live

in union with Christ’s sacrificial offering, according to Ephesians 5:2: “And

walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an

offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.” Augustine’s

way of linking Christ’s actions and ours is to remind us that the totus

Christus (the “total” or “whole Christ”) includes Head and Body or

Husband and Bride, if you will (Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 12:12, 27: Eph. 5:23).13

We can therefore say that both Christ and those united to Him as His Body

offer sacrifice. We are priests “in Christ” (Rev. 1:6; 5:10; 20:6). We

sacrifice “in Christ” (Rom. 12:1; Heb. 13:5)." (Jeffrey Meyers, The Lord's Service).

Reformed Preaching

 I would start this at the 18 minute mark. Reformed Biblical Hermeneutics

Christ the Image of God

Christ the Image of God 

The Nature of Arrogance

 Rob Bell and the Nature of Arrogance

Do Elders Need to Have Believing Children in Order to Be Qualified for Ministry?

I was recently in a FB Reformed group, a dangerous pastime indeed, and heard yet again the interpretation of Titus 1:6 that takes the phrase τέκνα ἔχων πιστά as “having believing children.” Now, I have heard this interpretation for the past thirty years from my undergrad on, and I cannot tell you how eisegetical this interpretation is. This would mean that anyone who did not have a believing child would be disqualified from ministry. Some of the people in the group were disqualifying from ministry all sorts of elders/pastors they knew had unbelieving children. 

One of the weird things about this is that it’s often held by various credobaptists like John Macarthur who would have to admit that when their children were young, they were not believers. Indeed, any man with an infant in Baptist theology would immediately be disqualified.

Of course, they would never condemn themselves in such ways, so they want to say that these are adult children. Yet, it is clear that these are children in the household, as the parallel passage in 1 Timothy 3:4: “He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive.”

Of course, there is no need for these eisegetical gymnastics because the phrase doesn’t mean “believing children” here. If you’re paying attention, the verse I just quoted, which is the parallel verse to Titus 1:6, tells us what Paul means. He means “faithful children,” as in “loyal and submissive children.” It has to do with whether they are in submission to the father in the household, whether they are Christians or not.

I also would concur that this is likely adult children (only because not a lot of 4 year olds are given over to wild living), but adult children in the household, as the text makes clear. Anyone with a rebellious child in the household, and lets that child remain, is not raising his household well and is therefore disqualified. A rebellious child needs to be put out of the household in the same way that a rebellious person in the church should be put out. That’s the point. If a man will not do that in his own household, he is not going to do it in the church either. Relational connections are too important to him for him to obey Christ, and he is therefore not a mature believer.

Now, of course, with modern laws as they are, one might have to send the child to boarding school or find other measures, but the point would be that he disciplines his children in a godly way.

Of course, all of this is made clear in Titus 1:6 itself, so it amazes me how the context is never considered. The text states, “having faithful children, not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination.”

Did you catch the end that explains what Paul means by “having loyal children”? Not open to the charge of out-of-control living and insubordination.” In other words, they are obedient children, faithful to their parents, whether Christians or not.

This also means that anyone with believing children who are not in submission to their parents is not qualified for ministry. How much easier would it be to get your kids to say a prayer so that this hoop can be cleared than to actually train your children to submit to your authority, and if they do not, to remove them from the household.

But let’s take this alternate interpretation for a moment and see the absurdity of it. Jesus had 12 disciples. They were like the children of his household. He had one that was an unbeliever. Is He disqualified? God had three children in the garden. All three rebelled as unbelievers. Is He disqualified? In fact, aren’t all unbelievers God’s creation and in some way His children who have become traitors and joined the devil’s family instead? Only people more godly than God and Jesus can be elders? How absurd it would be if anyone was judged based upon whether their children were believers or rebelled. We could mention numerous people who were godly men with wicked children (e.g., Samuel, David, Hezekiah, etc.) But if we understand that these texts are referring to children who are in rebellion and participate in wild living while the father lets them live in the household and does nothing about it (e.g., Eli and his sons), then we don’t have to be quite so much qualified more than God and Jesus. If you haven’t gotten the hint yet, I believe this interpretation leads to blasphemy apart from the fact that its exegetically unfeasible.

Now, the eisegesis comes in because translators see the word pista and think, "Oh, I'm used to that word group having to do with belief." So they simply assume that it means "believer" here. 

The problem, as pointed out before, is that words don't work in isolation from one another and the context makes it clear that the word refers to loyalty and allegiance, not having faith in Christ. Likewise, this is not the normal way Paul uses this word in the Pastorals, although he does use it this way a few times.

In 1 Tim 1:12, Christ has judged Paul pistos faithful/loyal. In verse 15, the statement Paul has made is pistos "trustworthy/faithful," as are also the statements in 3:1; 4:9; 2 Tim 2:11; Titus 1:9 and 3:8. Timothy is to entrust the apostolic teaching to "faithful men" in 2 Tim 2:2. In 2:13, Paul cites a hymn that talks about Christ remaining faithful/loyal if we become unfaithful.

1 Timothy 4:12 is a bit ambiguous but likely has to do with Paul encouraging Timothy to be an example of those who are loyal to the apostolic ministry in their teaching. 

The definition of "believer" is given four times in the Pastorals in 1 Tim 4:3, 10; 5:16; and 6:2, so this is still a possible definition, but once it is defined by the context that has to do with not being insubordinate in both Titus 1:6 and in the parallel passage in 1 Timothy 3:4 that option is excluded. 

Do You Really Have a Biblical Worldview?

 Apparently, only 17% of people who claim to be Christians have a biblical worldview. That's out of 65% of Americans who claim to be Christian. That means that out of the 212,000,000 people who claim to be Christians in America, only 36,000,000 of them have an actual biblical worldview. Think of all of the people (176,000,000 of them) talking about Christianity, writing Christian books, singing Christian songs, teaching Sunday School and small groups, etc. When it comes to GenZ, that percentage goes down to 2% (30% of GenZ who identify as Christians also identify as LGBTQ). 

It seems the more laymen "study the Bible for themselves," the less they know it. Indeed, how would you know if you had a less than biblical worldview? How does someone who doesn't know rocket science discern between conflicting plans which is the best way to build a rocket other than just guessing? Wouldn't someone who knows need to guide you? Wouldn't someone who could evaluate the Christian books and commentaries you're reading or Christian music you're listening to, need to teach you? Isn't this an argument for the necessity of the church having qualified scholars/theologians who are able to train God's people in the Bible. Keep in mind. many of these people read and study their Bible translations. They just haven't ended up with an actual biblical worldview from it.

Subtle Ways to Deny Scripture’s Authority

 Here’s the original sermon https://youtu.be/YdfZV0iNHGw and here’s the update https://youtu.be/wUeS01VdEeU

These are very important observations of Evangelicalism’s denial of Scripture’s authority.

D.A. Carson, “That’s Just Your Interpretation”

 https://youtu.be/9OIxOq3aOIo