Something to Cover me for the Week

Sadly, I have very little amazingly profound to blog about at the moment. At least, nothing amazingly profound that we shouldn't be aware of every day. For instance, today I had the privilege of listening to a couple Way of the Master podcasts while working on a small, mindless, job for a friend at church (gotta love the power of multitasking). They played a clip of R.C. Sproul essentially summarizing the main story of Scripture: God creating the world, notably mankind in His image; man rebelling against God; God having the amazing grace and love to send His only begotten Son to the cross to make a way of salvation for rebellious man. I'm sure you've heard it countless times, but there was something in the way Dr. Sproul (he is a Dr., right?) spoke and emphasized certain aspects of God's truly incredible love and mercy that just brought me to my knees. To think that God owes us absolutely NOTHING. To think that He would have been perfectly right and just to annihilate the human race the moment Adam fell. To think that He not only turned His back on but hated His own Son, another member of the Godhead, so that I could one day be reconciled to Him! I literally stopped what I was doing to wonder at and rejoice in the fact that God saved a wretch like me. I mean, WOW, I've heard the Gospel many times (and hopefully will hear it countless more times) yet it is still the most beautiful, precious, thing I have ever attempted to wrap my mind around, and it is infinitely better than anything else that's ever happened to me. Praise God!

*on a somewhat different topic* I also managed to spend my time reading two big long blog discussions on Calvinism vs. Arminianism (i.e. predestination vs. free will). That's right, two of them...in one day (just linking to one of them though). Talk about a nice mental exercise. Needless to say, though, I came away from both with renewed convictions that the doctrines of Grace are indeed taught in God's Word. One commenter (from a discussion on the topic that I was reading several months ago) best summed in up in saying that you can search the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation, but you will never find the concept of free will (at least, not in the Arminian/semi-Pelagian sense). Ironically, just about every verse I've seen used to support Arminian dogma is also completely consistent with the Calvinist position. In fact, one guy even went so far as to say that Calvinism does seem more heavily grounded in Scripture, but it still didn't sit well with his previous personal convictions. That, I think, seems to be the crux of the issue. Despite the repeatedly clear teachings of Scripture, some people just can't bring themselves to worship a God that would create people only to send them to hell. I would go on, but an excellent summary of this can be found in the James White vid I posted several weeks ago. Definitely one of the most powerful and truthful ten minutes of teaching I've ever heard.\


Edit: I'd also check out this recent article by Al Mohler on homosexual marriage in California. Short, sweet, and brilliant. He brings up and exposes some of the faulty reasoning behind this tragedy that I'd never really thought about before.