I used to put up with Mysticism

How can Christians clasp hands with slithering, slimy, pantheistic nightmare angels garbed in light(dead giveaway, read Galatians 1)? I used to put up with mysticism. But now Im gonna have to dust off my flamethrower, again. Weeds growing in the garden, again. Yes, I use a flamethrower for weeding. So did Luther, his flamethrower was his anger, nothing better he said to get the job done and get over depression at the same time.

Time out, let me clarify by what I mean by mysticism. It is anything driven by feelings, emotion, or experience as the primary source. Anytime you hear, "I think the bible says this ________ (no scripture to support, therefore false assumption based only on feelings)". Notice the primary caregive of that sentence. Not I AM but i(lower case for a reason). Going around the text with your own mind and thinking. It is making the 'experience' of God the ultimate reality as opposed to the word driven us to the sacraments(yes I said it). The source by which you understand reality then is only based on your digestion of it, making the pill popper, you, the arbiter of truth. I mean who needs as sieve when you have your life to live? So much to experience. Were talking everything from Mars Volta and Oiuji boards to Evangelical 5 points to get out of debt. Puke on this contextualization. Thats right vomit all over this wretchedness.

Hear me and hear me good. I am NOT SAYING that all experience is bad, but as Christians we must learn to discern(need I say circumcise? Read Lev 19:25-27 first moron) what is right and wrong in this world. The Bible which bears the final authority on how to interpret all data that we are sandblasted with in this information age. Let our experience be modified, need I say governed by, the Word of God and ONLY that. I am NOT SAYING that we dont engage culture or some missional crap. Im saying exalt Christ above all in your daily life and ambitions.

So, I used to put up with mysticism, but after this last insult of one of my favorite bands supporting total anathema literature and exalting love and not the God who is love to the supreme place. Here again we see ana-baptist free will-ism droop into universalism. Whose side are you on? Or is there a side. Is evil a projection or a reality? You might as well shake hands with Depak and call it good.

Machen said it right when, "...for if one thing is clear in the record of Jesus life it is clear that Jesus recognized the justice, as distinguished from the love of God. God is love, according to Jesus, but he is not only love,.."(Christianity and Liberalism, p.131).

And you heard it here first, Dr. Clark predicted this one. Read up on it here.

Once again, read your history, and your Machen.

Give me confessionalism, a Jesuit with a sniper rifle, or a noose. I'd kick the chair holding this neck from bruising but Pete would be mad at my loss of hope.

Whats the church for?

You do not have to be a Christian very long to ask yourself, ‘What is the church for?’ Some would say that it is the backbone of the morality of this country. Others would say that the church is here to restore culture. Others think that it is ‘the’ culture, as the swarms of homeschoolers hover around Moscow Idahoe. However Machen says a little different:

“The responsibility of the church in the new age is the same as its responsibility in every age. It is to testify that this world is lost in sin; that the span of human life—nay, all the length of human history—is an infinitesimal island in the awful depths of eternity; that there is a mysterious holy living God, Creator of all, Upholder of all, infinitely beyond all; that he has revealed himself in his Word and offered us communion with himself through Jesus Christ the Lord; that there is no other salvation, for individuals or for nations, save this, but that this salvation is full and free, and that whosoever possesses it has for himself and for all others to whom he may be the instrument of bringing it a treasure compared with which all the kingdoms of the earth—nay, all the wonders of the starry heavens—are as the dust of the street.”(J. Gresham Machen, "The Responsibility of the Church in Our New Age," The Presbyterian Guardian 36:1 (January 1967), 13.)

The mission of the church here is much different, much more consistent. Instead of nipping always at the heals of amorphous culture, the pillar must bear the bloody witness of the ever luminous glory of the risen Christ through its marks. These being more worthy than any other treasure.

Let us be reminded of this, strengthened, renewed, and reminded of what we have been given as the church of Christ. This infinite privilege is here to escort us unto bliss.

Death of the Church

Machen again brings us up front in Christianity and Culture:

"Instead of making our theological seminaries merely centres of religious emotion, we shall make them battle-grounds of the faith, where, helped a little by the experience of Christian teachers, men are taught to fight their own battle, where they come to appreciate the real strength of the adversary and in the hard school of intellectual struggle learn to substitute for the unthinking faith of childhood the profound convictions of full-grown men. Let us not fear in this a loss of spiritual power. The Church is perishing today through the lack of thinking, not through an excess of it. She is winning victories in this sphere of material betterment. Such victories are glorious. God save us from the heartless crime of disparaging them. They are relieving the misery of men. But if they stand alone, I fear they are but temporary. The things which are seen are temporal; the things which are not seen are eternal. What will become of philanthropy if God be lost? Beneath the surface of life lies a world of spirit. Philosophers have attempted to explore it. Christianity has revealed its wonders to the simple soul. There lie the springs of the Church's power. But that spiritual realm cannot be entered without controversy. And now the Church is shrinking from the conflict. Driven from the spiritual realm by the current of modern thought, she is consoling herself with things about which there is no dispute."

Sounds hopeless huh? Keep reading:

"The great questions may easily be avoided. Many preachers are avoiding them. And many preachers are preaching to the air. The Church is waiting for men of another type. Men to fight her battles and solve her problems. The hope of finding them is the one great inspiration of a Seminary's life. They need not all be men of conspicuous attainments. But they must all be men of thought. They must fight hard against spiritual and intellectual indolence. Their thinking may be confined to narrow limits. But it must be their own. To them theology must be something more than a task. It must be a matter of inquiry. It must lead not to successful memorizing, but to genuine convictions."

The Church needs men. "Be strong, act like men" the apsotle Paul to the Corinthian Church.

More from Machen on Culture

Here a hope for the church found only in the miraculous power of God to raise her from the dead, just like he did His faithful Son,

"The great current of modern culture will sooner or later engulf her puny eddy. God will save her somehow--out of the depths. But the labour of centuries will have been swept away. God grant that the Church may not resign herself to that. God grant she may face her problem squarely and bravely. That problem is not easy. It involves the very basis of her faith. Christianity is the proclamation of an historical fact--that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Modern thought has no place for that proclamation. It prevents men even from listening to the message. Yet the culture of today cannot simply be rejected as a whole. It is not like the pagan culture of the first century. It is not wholly non-Christian. Much of it has been derived directly from the Bible. There are significant movements in it, going to waste, which might well be used for the defence of the gospel. The situation is complex. Easy wholesale measures are not in place. Discrimination, investigation is necessary. Some of modern thought must be refuted. The rest must be made subservient. But nothing in it can be ignored. He that is not with us is against us. Modern culture is a mighty force. It is either subservient to the gospel or else it is the deadliest enemy of the gospel. For making it subservient, religious emotion is not enough, intellectual labour is also necessary. And that labour is being neglected. The Church has turned to easier tasks. And now she is reaping the fruits of her indolence. Now she must battle for her life."

Rise up church and fight, for your redemption draws near.

Taken from Christianity and Culture

Culture vs Christianity

A few quotes from J. Gresham Machen on Culture and Christianity. My only question is if a Presbyterian wrote this, and if its really about subverting and using the diversity of culture to the glory of God, why then do they all look the same? Oh well, its all grace, even them. Otherwise grace would not be grace.

"There are no labour-saving devices in evangelism. It is all hand-work."

This is why people complain about it, and say its hard, or make stupid excuses not to go out and talk to people. If you dont, it just means your weak. Deal with it people. Do hard work. Its called being a Christian. Like Dr. Clark says, "Plan for disaster, be a Calvinist."

"False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervour of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion"

Here is why the modern world rejects Christianity,

"On the contrary, rejection of Christianity is due in the vast majority of cases simply to indifference. Only a few men have given the subject real attention. The vast majority of those who reject the gospel do so simply because they know nothing about it. But whence comes this indifference? It is due to the intellectual atmosphere in which men are living. The modern world is dominated by ideas which ignore the gospel. Modern culture is not altogether opposed to the gospel. But it is out of all connection with it. It not only prevents the acceptance of Christianity. It prevents Christianity even from getting a hearing"

Speak church, fight, stand, or die.

Go to Church...

Dan Phillips over at the Pyromaniacs blog just beat the crap out of all you granola type, organic, hyppie, anti-authoritarian, re-hash the 60s to destroy all organized institution, dont go to church because 'you are the church', Frank Viola self contradicting house church movement people. Try to respond to it. Seriously. You know, I just thank the Lord for people who call it how it is, and talk well deserved and needed crap about bad doctrine. Dont take that the wrong way, and if you do dont forget what 1st Cor 13 is in the middle of, oh Chapters 12 and 14. If your confused 1)Try to actually pay attention to church history, 2) Read this J. Gresham Machen quote:

"Men tell us that our preaching should be positive and not negative, that we can preach the truth without attacking error. But if we follow that advice we shall have to close our Bible and desert its teachings. The New Testament is a polemic book almost from beginning to end.

Some years ago I was in a company of teachers of the Bible in the colleges and other educational institutions of America. One of the most eminent theological professors in the country made an address. In it he admitted that there are unfortunate controversies about doctrine in the Epistles of Paul; but, said he in effect, the real essence of Paul's teaching is found in the hymn to Christian love in the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians; and we can avoid controversy today, if we will only devote the chief attention to that inspiring hymn.
In reply, I am bound to say that the example was singularly ill-chosen. That hymn to Christian love is in the midst of a great polemic passage; it would never have been written if Paul had been opposed to controversy with error in the Church. It was because his soul was stirred within him by a wrong use of the spiritual gifts that he was able to write that glorious hymn. So it is always in the Church. Every really great Christian utterance, it may almost be said, is born in controversy. It is when men have felt compelled to take a stand against error that they have risen to the really great heights in the celebration of truth." -J. Gresham Machen