- Written by: Rich Lusk
- Category: Culture
With mid-term elections right around the corner, here is my advice on how to cast your ballot: Vote for the candidates that hate you the least.
- Written by: Rich Lusk
- Category: Culture
This article from John Frame cuts through a lot of the common misunderstandings of the relationship and use of special revelation (Scripture) and natural revelation. Note that Frame (and Van Til) do not deny that we can learn truth from our reason and our senses interacting with the rest of God’s creation. There is no such thing as “pure biblicism.” But general revelation was never meant to stand alone, even before the fall. There is no “pure nature” or “pure natural revelation.” The two forms of revelation work together and belong together. Thus, we are also always obligated to use Scripture, and we must use Scripture to interpret general revelation properly.
- Written by: Rich Lusk
- Category: Bible
Egalitarianism ruins everything. And that includes how we read the Bible.
- Written by: Rich Lusk
- Category: Church
"Not feeling loved and not being loved are not the same. Jesus loved all people well. And many did not like the way he loved them. Was David’s zeal for the Lord imbalanced because his wife Michal despised him for it? Was Job’s devotion to the Lord inordinate because his wife urged him to curse God and die? Would Gomer be a reliable witness to Hosea’s devotion? . . . I have seen so much emotional blackmail in my ministry I am jealous to raise a warning against it. Emotional blackmail happens when a person equates his or her emotional pain with another person’s failure to love. They aren’t the same. A person may love well and the beloved still feel hurt, and use the hurt to blackmail the lover into admitting guilt he or she does not have. Emotional blackmail says, ‘If I feel hurt by you, you are guilty.’ There is no defense. The hurt person has become God. His emotion has become judge and jury. Truth does not matter. All that matters is the sovereign suffering of the aggrieved. It is above question. This emotional device is a great evil. I have seen it often in my three decades of ministry and I am eager to defend people who are being wrongly indicted by it.”
-- John Piper
- Written by: Rich Lusk
- Category: Church
None are more exposed to slanders and insults than godly teachers. This comes not only from the difficulty of their duties, which are so great that sometimes they sink under them, or stagger or halt or take a false step, so that wicked men find many occasions of finding fault with them; but added to that, even when they do all their duties correctly and commit not even the smallest error, they never avoid a thousand criticisms.
It is indeed a trick of Satan to estrange men from their ministers so as gradually to bring their teaching into contempt. In this way not only is wrong done to innocent people whose reputation is undeservedly injured, but the authority of God’s holy teaching is diminished….
The more sincerely any pastor strives to further Christ’s kingdom, the more he is loaded with spite, the more fierce do the attacks upon him become. And not only so, but as soon as any charge is made against ministers of the Word, it is believed as surely and firmly as if it had been already proved. This happens not only because a higher standard of integrity is required from them, but because Satan makes most people, in fact nearly everyone, over credulous so that without investigation, they eagerly condemn their pastors whose good name they ought to be defending.
--- John Calvin (Commentary 1 Tim 5:19)