The emergent church can twist scripture all they want and rely on their “intellect” (if you can call it that), but I prefer to rely on God’s Word as revealed by the Holy Spirit of the Living God and lean not on my own understanding.

You know you don’t have to answer them a.k.a throw your pearls before “swine”. They are most likely not truly born-again (unfortunately) and are CLEARLY unable to comprehend spiritual things. Besides, it’s your blog. (oops was that statement not in “love”?)

Keep on keepin’ it real brother.
JB

I’m thinking of writing more–addressing this time about whether or not it’s wrong to desire interaction with people, to which I reply with a strong “NO!”–but if so it will probably be awhile before I have my thoughts garnered together and arranged in type. Yet I wanted to go ahead and mention the Genesis bit to give a bit of something to consider here.

Congratulations on your new website. I hope and pray many come to know Jesus as Savior and Lord through your new forum.
I appreciate you bearing with me as I’ve probably gone well outside the bounds of Analysis and Critique of NOOMA 019. You obviously have studied long and hard and show much knowledge. I can remember praying and asking the Holy Spirit to help me understand God’s word when I was ten. I like to study, reading isn’t enough for me. I’ve had to research and study just to get a base understanding of the things you write. Thirty-two years after my first study I find myself studying to defend what I believe. I think I have a glimpse of what Paul wrote to the Corinthians. I am determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The things I’ve written are not with persuasive words of human wisdom. In weakness,fear,and trembling I’ve written with no faith in the wisdom of men but with faith in the power of God.
So you and I disagree on Rob Bell,election,false teaching,and I’m sure various and asundry other things. None of that really matters to me. I haven’t even tried to contact Rob Bell. I have been corresponding with you. You have helped me see what really matters. My mission is to go into my part of the world and preach the gospel-good news, Jesus is alive, the tomb is empty, come to Him all you who labor and are heavy laden and He will give you rest. I rest my case in Him, for no words can describe Him. Hope to see you There!

Grace and Peace, Brian

2) I believe God sets before me life and death. I believe He commands me to choose life. Jesus is Life. If election were to me what it is to you He would have already chose for me and He would be breaking the commandment He Himself wrote, there would be no reason for me to choose, He would have already chosen making the commandment of no effect, His Word can not return void. He is sovereign and just and therefore there is no possibility that He can cause me to break His commandment. I believe that Jesus won the victory over sin and death, He holds the keys. If I were elected (saved or bound for salvation) prior to the foundations of the world being laid I would hold the keys from birth, He would have already given them to me. If He had already given me the keys then I would have no choice to make, but He commanded me to make a choice. So, as you say the battle is for the territory of men’s souls, me included. So my battle(only if the Holy Spirit draws me)is to choose between life and death. Men’s battle(only if drawn by the Holy Spirit) is to choose between life and death. One person sows the seed, which is the word of God(preaching), another person waters,with the word of God(teaching), and God brings the increase. But how will they know without a preacher(the Holy Spirit can’t draw them unless they’ve heard God’s word)? So without God(Father,Son,&Hloy Spirit) and His word we are helpless. God being sovereign is the only one who can win the war, it wouldn’t matter how many battles were won by men, man can’t win victory over sin or death. Without Jesus blood sacrifice winning the battle would be meaningless. If no battles were won by men, even if no man allowed himself to be drawn by the Holy Spirit, Jesus is still the victor over sin and death, the battle would be the war. I suggest that my belief in God’s sovereignty is no less than yours, that it is based on His Word just as yours is, where my belief considers the value of man to God(the very hairs of your head are numbered) and your belief considers men worthless(the fact that we deserve death doesn’t determine our worth). Only a more sovereign God could take that which deserves death and give it eternal value.

We love(agape) because He ordained and commanded it, I see the pattern.

3) You are correct, we are commanded to stay away from false teachers, and that’s all.
He said He’d take care of the rest.

2) Calling it the mind may bring some confusion, but what I am referring to is our innermost being, our conscious spirit, our soul. English is a poor conveyor of what I was getting at. “He that hath ears let him hear.” This phrase is Christ exhorting those that can understand (because they have these figurative “ears” with which to hear) to heed His words and take them to heart.

We wage war because that is what God has ordained and commanded. It is a pitched battle, but a battle nonetheless. You would no doubt agree that the battle is already won and that from the passage in Romans we know that we overwhelmingly conquer because of Christ, would you not? If then this is true, I could very well ask a similar question: why wage war if the war has already been won? Why do you accept in your mind God’s sovereignty in conquering sin and death through the cross and resurrection, but not in electing men unto salvation through those very things? Both concepts are taught by scripture, and I would argue plainly so.

I contend that we wage war because God has ordained and commanded it. Likewise, we pray because God has ordained and commanded it. We preach the Gospel because God has ordained and commanded it. Are you seeing a pattern here?

3) Indeed I agree. If my assessment is correct and Rob Bell is indeed a false teacher, he will bring swift destruction on himself, as will everyone else who preaches falsely. That is why I do not intend to destroy him, nor do I focus my efforts to that end. Rather I warn the flock of God to stay far, far away from him and have nothing to do with him or his teachings. That is what we are commanded to do with false teachers: stay away from them. To that end, I contrast what he says with the truth, so that no one will be misled. If I just said “well he’s a crafty serpent” and then gave no evidence of it, you would be right to question me. But I do not want you to be uninformed. That is why I try always to reference scripture directly when making assertions of falsity with regard to his or anyone else’s teaching I believe to be false.

I read your final response to Chad. Now I’m confused. I’ve been studying God’s sovereignty and reform views of election. I believe I understand where your coming from in your stand on those issues. Here are the issues of my confusion:

1) Considering a passage where Jesus talks about divorce and adultery. When Jesus said, “if your right eye offends you pluck it out”. I could see me or possibly someone else saying did Jesus really mean that? My right eye and my left have offended me yet I still have both eyes. I don’t see a bunch of guys with their eyes missing, at least not nearly enough to believe that many God fearing people are taking what Jesus said literally. If it’s blasphemy to ask that kind of question then there are a bunch of men who will have to pay for their lies.

2) God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. We wrestle against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. The war thats raging is in heavenly places not our minds, my mind isn’t a heavenly place. It is here, it is now, it is real but we can’t see or hear it with our natural eyes or ears. “He that hath ears let him hear”-nearly everyone has ears. Those words are speaking to our heart(spirit). We may see physical earthly outcomes from the invisible battle that’s taking place but that’s the point of the passage in Ephesians-quit looking at the physical-you can’t win a spiritual battle using physical means. God is a Spirit therfore his whole armor is spiritual. Why would we be waging war for the territory of men’s souls if God has already elected his chosen people?

3) If Rob Bell is a false teacher, then according to 2Peter chapter 2, he will bring destruction on himself swiftly. Then Peter encourages us that God knows how to deal with these types of people. God can take care of this without our influence or help, agree or disagree?

Brian

The problem with that is that we can not rightly know how to love the Lord our God with all of our being if we do not know what He has commanded. It is by His Word that we know His character and what He demands of us. God has exalted His Word and His name. If we love His Word, we love Him. Loving His Word and loving Him are one in the same. They are reciprocal and one does not precede the other. For without the knowledge that the love of the Word gives, we could not love Him, and without love of Him, we could not love the Word.

Christ said that if we loved Him, that we would obey His commands. Want to demonstrate your love for God? Then by submission to the Spirit, be obedient to all that He has commanded.

I posit to you that I do love and have compassion for men and women, that is why I cry to them: “Repent! Believe! Be baptized into the Body!” The most loving thing you can do for someone is not coddle them with lies, but tell them the truth, even if it stings. If you were dying of a terrible disease and I hesitated to tell you that there was a cure because I knew that cure came with a great deal of short-term pain, I would not be a good physician. No, you would rightly call me a monstrous demon and a horrible physician if I did not use every faculty without my being to convince you of the necessity and efficacy of this cure. Neither would I be completely loving you if I told you of the cure, but did not tell you of the immense pain it would cause you. I would not be being honest. I might save your body, but you would have no reason to trust that this cure was absolute and lasting, for I was not even honest about the short-term pain it would bring.

So it is with the Gospel. The Gospel grates against the hearts and minds of sinful men, who hate God with every fiber of their being, whether outwardly like the militant atheist or inwardly like the subtle, truth-denying post-modernist. But here’s the miracle: God uses His Word, preached in truth, to divide and conquer the souls of men by the power of the Holy Spirit. He rebirths, He convicts, He gives confession, repentance, and faith. And those who are called will come. None who are not called will come. None who are called will not come.

Affirming with Paul that it is better to marry than to burn with passion is a far cry from what Bell does with the Gospel. He twists it and makes it all about us and our work rather than all about God and His work. Romans 8 & 9: it is God who justifies; it is for God’s glory that both mercy and wrath are poured out; and it is prerogative of God and God alone upon whom mercy is poured and upon whom wrath is poured. We understand that God is not unjust to punish men (whom He made) who rebel and reject God.

God’s mercy is not merely in delivering us from the temporal; that is, addictions and other trying circumstances. These are but shadows in comparison to the ultimate purpose of the Cross. His ultimate mercy and grace are found in saving our souls from eternal judgment and wrath in the lake of fire.

Our worth is inextricably tied to who God is. We are worth more than many sparrows because God loves us. God does not love us because we are worth something. The order is important, because it determines who is the priority and who receives glory.

We are elected before time began, either to life or to death and according to the good pleasure of God. To accuse God of being arbitrary in doing so is false and blasphemous. Nothing that God does is arbitrary. Everything that God does is good. It is precisely because salvation is wholly God’s work and nothing of man’s work in willing to believe that we are secure in our salvation. If it depended on you and your faithfulness, then you could lose your salvation and you are never truly secure. Our hearts are fickle and unfaithful. However, because it depends on God and His will and not man and his will, the eternity of those who truly believe is secure. Read with me in Romans 8:

28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

And again in Romans 9:

14 What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! 15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. 17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” 18 So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

19 You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” 20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? 22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— 24 even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

peace.
Chad

Grace and peace to you, brother.
Chad

peace,
Chad