Judge Every Preacher

May I beg you carefully to judge every preacher, not by his gifts, not by his elocutionary powers, not by his status in society, not by the respectability of his congregation, not by the prettiness of his church, but this — DOES HE PREACH THE WORD OF TRUTH, THE GOSPEL OF YOUR SALVATION? If he does, your sitting under his ministry may prove to you the means of begetting faith in you. But if he does not, you cannot expect God's blessings.

By Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892)

Emotional Entertainment

What are some of the lasting effects from the seeker movement on the church when the focus is on contemporary worship, and modernizing every thing in the church? Well it seems that it creates a contempt for church history to the point that it separates the modern church from her past with no connection to history of the Faith, and most today seem to wear it as a badge of honor. Christians today just don't have any connection or respect to the great hymns, their writers, theology, great preachers, and sound doctrine. So there is this dumbing down of the importance of church, a diminishing of the importance of worship, and the diminishing of the importance of the exalted charter of it. Now this appears to be a concentrated effort to systematically cut all ties with the whole history of the church, and in the process we have trained a generation of church goers to have contempt for historical Christianity, and the theology that is at the heart of historical Christianity, and all that is left is a man-centered theology and an emotional entertainment.

Excerpt compiled after listening to GTY90 from Grace To You. An interview with John MacArthur and Phil Johnson titled "Straight Talk About the Seeker Church Movement"

Lost Hymns: Am I a Soldier of the Cross

Am I a soldier of the cross, A follower of the Lamb
And shall I fear to own His cause Or blush to speak His name?

Must I be carried to the skies On flow'ry beds of ease,
While others fought to win the prize And sailed thro' bloody seas?

Are there no foes for me to face? Must I not stem the flood?
Is this vile world a friend to grace, To help me to God?

Sure I must fight if I would reign; Increase my courage, Lord
I'll bear the toil, endure the pain, Supported by The Word. Amen

Ecstatic Baptist? Part 4

Dear Mr. McKissic
It has become apparent that you must have never heard the Biblical truth on the subject of the gift of tongues, because if you had I am sure the Holy Spirit would have confirmed it's truth with the Holy scriptures. So with your recent statements about the Southern Baptist stance being "out of touch with the text and the times", is proof enough that you are the one who is out of touch, and now I believe it's time for you to hear the other side of your argument. Denis Lyle is in touch with the Holy text as he preaches his sermon titled "Is the Gift of Tongues for Today?" Please take the time to download it for free, it will only cost you 48 minutes of your time but it's truth will impact your life for all of eternity. If for some reason you still want to argue with the scriptures, let me refer you to a quote by A. W. Tozer

"The scholar has a vitally important task to perform within a carefully prescribed precinct. His task is to guarantee the purity of the text, to get as close as possible to the Word as originally given. He may compare Scripture with Scripture until he has discovered the true meaning of the text. But right there his authority ends. He must never sit in judgment upon what is written. He dare not bring the meaning of the Word before the bar of his reason or his experience. He dare not commend or condemn the Word as reasonable or unreasonable, scientific or unscientific. After the meaning is discovered, that meaning judges him; never does he judge it."

Excerpt taken from "The Knowledge of The Holy" by A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), Emphasis added.

How To Treat Your Pastor!

If you feel that your pastor isn't living up to his calling here is a suggestion on how to treat him.

Fling him into his office and tear the Pastors Office sign off the door and nail a sign to it that says STUDY. Take him off the mailing list. Lock him up with his books, his computer, and his Bible and slam him down on his knees before text and broken hearts and the flick of lives of a superficial flock and a Holy God. Force him to be the one man in your community who knows about God. Throw him into the ring to box with God until he learns how short his arms are. Engage him to wrestle with God all the night through, and then let him come out only when he is bruised and beaten into being a blessing. Shut his mouth forever spouting remarks and stop his tongue forever tripping lightly over every non-essential. Require him to have something to say before he dares break the silence. Burn his eyes with weary study. Wreck his emotional poise with worry for God. Make him exchange his stance for a humble walk with God. Make him spend and be spent for the glory of God. Rip out his telephone. Burn up his ecclesiastical records. Put water in his gas tank; then give him his Bible, and tie him to the pulpit and make him preach the Word of the living God. Test him! Quiz him! Examine him! Humiliate him for his ignorance of things divine. Shame him for his good comprehension of finances, game scores and politics. Laugh at his frustrated efforts to play Psychiatrist. Form a choir and raise an anthem and haunt him with it night and day. When at last he dares approach the pulpit, ask him if he has a Word from God, If he doesn't dismiss him. Then command him not to come back until he's read and re-read, and written and re-written, and until he can stand up and say thus saith the Lord. Break him across the board of his ill gotten popularity. Smack him hard with his own prestige. Corner him with questions about God. Cover him with demands of celestial wisdom. Give him no escape until his back is against the wall of the Word. Then sit down before him and listen to the only word he has left, God's Word. Give him a chapter and order him to walk around in it, camp on it, sup with it, and come at last to speak it backward and forward until all he says about it rings with the truth of eternity.

Then when he is burned out by the flaming Word, when he is consumed at last by the fiery grace blazing through him, when he is privileged to translate the truth of God to men, and finally transferred from earth to heaven; then bear him away gently, and blow a muted trumpet and lay him down softly. Place a two edged sword on his coffin, raise the tomb triumphant for he was a brave solider of the Word and ere he did die for he had become a man of God.

Transcribed from a message by John MacArthur entitled "The Man of God" which was delivered at The Masters Seminary 08/31/2004

Bonar on Opinions

In all unbelief there are these two things: a good opinion of one's self and a bad opinion of God. Man's good opinion of himself makes him think it quite possible to win God's favor by his own religious performances; and his bad opinion of God makes him unwilling and afraid to put his case wholly into God's hands. The object of the Holy Spirit's work (in convincing of sin) is to alter the sinner's opinion of himself and so to reduce his estimate of his own character that he shall think of himself as God does, and so cease to suppose it possible that he can be justified by any excellency of His own. The Spirit then alters his evil opinion of God, so as to make him see that the God with whom he really has to do is the God of all grace!

Horatius Bonar (1808-1889)

Ecstatic Baptist? Part 3

Well it looks like the Babbling Baptist is crying foul again, you may remember when Arlington, Texas, pastor Dwight McKissic spoke out last August about his private prayer language or his so called ability to speaking in tongues, and the Southern Baptist community fired back with a Biblical response. Well he’s still talking. He said quote “They’re out of touch with the text and the times,” he said of denomination leaders who have taken an “anti-tongues” line. McKissic also complained of censorship, which just brings more attention to the subject as he tries to smear the denomination in the mainstream media for it's true Biblical view on speaking in tongues. As recently as Oct. 25, McKissic offered to resign, but in a recent interview he said that he changed his mind about resigning, based on encouragement. McKissic has made headlines in the past by leaving the Baptist General Convention of Texas before becoming a Southern Baptists. If Mr. McKissic wants to babble in an unknown tongue that by passes his mind, and puffs him up, please by all means go for it, but first please be sure to leave more headlines in the media about leaving another Baptists organization for a Church that is more in touch with the times. Read full article

The Devil's Sermon

When I read sermons like the one below from the past, I can not help but to think of today's Evangelical condition and how closely the sermons of today's church growth movement and the on-going word-faith movement, and the new emerging church movement line up with the devil's sermon.

"I wish you to consider the devil in his own pulpit, delivering his own message. I wish you to think of him at his very best, when he brings into play all of his marvelous ability. I wish you to see him as the greatest strategist of the world, as the most consummate villain that imagination or experience has ever created. How wonderfully versatile is this devil! How marvelously subtle! So far as pulpits go, the devil has no need to trouble himself as to hospitality. Every vantage ground is his pulpit. One of the noticeable things in connection with his ministry is the fact that he always seizes upon influential and important agencies. He does not cast his power in weak places. He watches for the strategic opportunity, and always uses the important institution or the great personality.

Now when the devil mounts his pulpit what is his text? His text is this: Give the people what they want. It seems plausible. It seems reasonable. One hesitates before denying the truthfulness or of the message. Give the people what they want. Now, the devil's message is summed up in one word - "selfishness." Now, friends, there is not a more subtle or more refined message than this which the devil brings to the world today. It is the secular message of today, what is secular? It is whatever is done for yourself to the exclusion of other people, or at the expense of other people. It matters not whether it be good or bad. If your business is being conducted for your own good and at the expense of society, it is a devil's business no matter what that business may be. Whatever is unselfish is divine; whatever is not sacrificial is satanic. Whatever is satanic is secular. Now here is the devil's message: "All that man hath will he give for his life." Therefore, use all of your gifts, all of your talents, all of your accomplishments to minister to physical existence.

Now, the second part of the devil's sermon is very close akin to the first: "Use your spiritual gifts, your peculiar endowments, your faculties and powers, whatever they may be, for vulgar and spectacular ends. The people want to be surprised; they want to be startled and amazed, and then they will rally to your standard. Here is the second part of the devil's message; Hugeness is greatness. That which is startling and surprising and amazing is the glorious thing. When we come to learn that nothing is worth while, nothing is great that is not based upon an ethical foundation. I think of Calvary, with the cross of Jesus Christ on its summit, as the mightiest eminence upon which this world has ever looked. What makes it great? That which makes Calvary great is the sublime self-sacrifice expressed on that cross. This same devil said to Jesus, "Come down from the cross and we will believe you to be the Son of God." It was a temptation in another form, and yet the same temptation suggested by him in the wilderness, namely, cast yourself from the pinnacle of the temple. If Jesus had come down from the cross he would have exploited the spectacular, He would have degraded the cross into a miserable theater of the picturesque. There is nothing great except that which is moral. All else is simple vulgarity. All else is nature standing aloof from the moral interpretation placed upon nature by man.

The third division of the devil's message, and is the peroration as well, consists of the emphasis placed by him upon things divorced from all ethical significance. Seeking kingdoms, thrones, positions, promotions. These in themselves has no inherent value in it. The only meaning of any office is the opportunity which it gives you to serve your fellow man. Why seek one for itself? The difference between ambition and aspiration is this; Ambition is seeking things under the mistaken notion that they have some value in themselves. Aspiration is that fine quality of the soul, that divine insight, which enables us to see the realities behind the things. Do not let the devil's preaching allow yourself to be prostituted and dishonored but stand on the proclamation of the Gospel as the direct antithesis to all that is materialistic, to all that is spectacular, to all things without moral relationships and without ethical ignificance."

Excerpt taken mostly from a sermon called "The Devil In The Pulpit" by E. L. Powell ( 1860-1933) found it the book titled "Great Southern Preaching" edited by Charles M. Crowe, The Macmillan Company 1926

Maverick Preachers

Download this sermon by John MacArthur titled "Twelve Consequences of Failing to Preach the Word" where he addresses The Master's Seminary back in 2003 and weighs in on the unattended consequences of not preaching the Word of God.

"One of the consequences of failing to preach the Word of God demonstrates pride and a lack of submission; it's a maverick mentality. I know that the Bible is there but the Bible is old and it's outdated and people don't like long sermon's and they don't want to hear what the Bible has to say, we hear so much of that going on today, so literally this is a lack of submission to the Word of God, so you fail to submit to the Farther, the Son, the Spirit and the Word. You do not train your people to submit to Biblical truth if you don't. If you literally are not conscience bound, duty bound, relentlessly bound to the teaching of the Word of God, then your conveying to your people your own lack of submission and like people, like priest. And if people won't submit to the Word of God then what in the world will they submit to."

Religious Unconsciousness

"There is a condition which has existed in the Church for some years and is steadily growing worse. I refer to the loss of the concept of majesty from the popular religious mind. The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men. This she has done not deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic.

The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking.

With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence. Modern Christianity is simply not producing the kind of Christian who can appreciate or experience the life in the Spirit. The words, "Be still, and know that I am God," mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshiper.

The loss of the concept of majesty has come just when the forces of religion are making dramatic gains and the churches are more prosperous than at any time within the past several hundred years. But the alarming thing is that our gains are mostly external and our losses wholly internal; and since it is the quality of our religion that is affected by internal conditions, it may be that our supposed gains are but losses spread over a wider field." —A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)

Excerpt taken from "The Knowledge Of The Holy" by A. W. Tozer (1897-1963) Copyright 1961 HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

Merry Christmas

So many people in this world today really don't understand the meaning of Christmas and why this time of year we celebrate the birth of a child. Why was that child's birth so amazing that over 2000 years later we still stop the world in order to recognize him. What was it about this child's birth that caused time to be divided. We will just let the Bible answer that for us.

John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

John 1:14 "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth."

2 Corinthians 5:15-19 "and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf. Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation."

I love 2 Corinthians 5:19 God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, that's the reason for the season! Merry Christmas and God Bless you and yours!

Increasing Apostasy

I picked up a little gem today in a tiny antique store in historic downtown Bell Buckle, Tennessee it is titled "Expository Notes on the Epistles of James and Peter" by H. A. Ironside. As I turned to page 86 I read the following that really brought to mind men like Brian McClarin, Rob Bell and Jay Bakker who are heading up the Emergent Church Movement and spreading another gospel. Mr. Ironside quotes the following as he exegete's from 2 Peter 2: 11-17.

"While these ungodly men vaunt themselves against all authority, and as these teachers of error mingle among the people of God they are spots and blemishes, marring and disturbing the fellowship of the saints, giving themselves over to self-indulgence as they feast with Christians as though they belonged to the family of God. Because there is no power in error to subdue nature's sinful lusts they are described as having eyes full of adultery; they cannot cease from sin. It is only the might of the Holy Spirit which can subdue and hold in check the lusts of the flesh. False doctrines never do this. While beguiling or leading astray unstable souls that is, those who are not well-grounded in the truth of God, they prove themselves to be an accursed generation whose hearts are exercised not unto godliness but with covetous practices.

While the propagators of unholy and unscriptural theories profess to have just the message that men need, they actually have nothing that can give victory over sin or relief to a troubled conscience. They are like wells without water which only disappoint the thirsty who go to them, or like clouds that look as though they might soon pour down refreshing showers but are carried away by gales of wind, and so the land is left as dry and arid as ever. The doom of these misleading teachers is sure. The mist of darkness is to be their portion forever. The sad thing is that even among professing Christians so many are ready to listen to these pretentious vendors of false systems only to be destroyed at last when they find that they are left without anything upon which the heart and conscience can rest for eternity."

Excerpt taken from "Expository Notes on the Epistles of James & Peter" by H.A. Ironside, Publisher: Loizeax Brothers (1947)

Holy Advertisement?

I usually don't report one of Slice of Laodicea's articles but this one was just to bad to pass up. It seems that advertising has begun to seep into churches, and this new phenomenon shows no signs of slowing down. Marketing experts are now attempting to target evangelicals while they sit in the pews. Among the wave of early adopters is the Republican Party, which has successfully sold its platform to church-goers in the 2000 and 2004 elections; and Hollywood has also envaded with, Mel Gibson's church-marketed film "The Passion of the Christ" which became a blockbuster; and publishing giants have cashed in, with Rick Warren's best-selling book The Purpose-Driven Life. It seems that the heavenly market is now up for sale, and you can't help but wonder how long it will be before you see Mastercard and VISA, decals on your church windows, or bathroom stalls decorated with Diet Coke ads, and the church nursery with diaper ads on the walls, nope it won't be long now before the First FORD Baptist Church comes to your local community. Read the full article from Out of Ur.

Quote of the Day

“Man has always treated sin as a misfortune, not a crime; as disease, not as guilt; as a case for the physician, not for the judge. Herein lies the essential faultiness of all mere human religions or theologies. They fail to acknowledge the judicial aspect of the question, as that on which the real answer must hinge.” -Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness (Banner of Truth: Edinburgh)

Thanks Tony Reinke

Fast Fish!

Today as I was coming home from work I payed close attention to a fish emblem on the back of a car and while looking at it I asked myself why am I not moved by it? What's the purpose of having one of these little emblems? I guess the person in the other car is trying to say to me and the rest of the world hey I am a Christian and I know it because I am not afraid to show it on the back of my car, well that's all good. But I see so many of these emblems every day blowing by me at 85 mph, or drafting behind me like it's the Daytona 500, flashing their headlights, and blowing the horn as if they were late for choir practice or something. (Oh don't let get me started on folks being late for church!) It's becoming increasingly more difficult for me, and I am sure others to give any credulity to these little fish decals because they really don't say anything; it's just a symbol that presupposes a message, unlike some Christian decals from days gone by that just simply said "Jesus is Lord". I found a quote where one woman describes why she puts one on her car. “I put the fish and the other 27 stickers on my car to show how faithful I am to the Lord,” she went on to say. “You know, for everyone who doesn't know that I head the church booster club, volunteer at the Sunday school, and baptize the mentally handicapped. Because everyone needs to know how secure my faith is.” She added, “I assure you, completely secure.” Wow, do I really need everyone to know how secure my faith is? I don't really know what I am trying to say in this piece, I guess if putting a little fish sticker on your car makes you feel better about your faith; hey go for it, but just remember it doesn't convince me when you cut me off at 85 mph.