Paul's Passing Thoughts

I have been very busy of late doing my version of church: everyday living that’s not tagged with a particular time and place. Those of us who believe in justification by new birth emphasize the fact that worship is all of life. When you are truly born again, you don’t go anywhere, in particular, at a commanded time, to get more Jesus or to “worship.” Everything you think, say, and do is your worship. lately, my worship has been more hours at work as a Medication Technician leaving me with few opportunities to blog. This new addition to my worship (career) requires a lot of focus and leaves me without an inspiration for something to write even when I get time. That is, until today when my inspiration was lit up when a ministry associate sent me the following link, Lynda Randle: How God’s People Must Respond to Racial Division in Our Nation.

It is my assertion that the evangelical church is completely antithetical to the heart of God, and this article is just more evidence. A MAJOR theme in the Bible is unity and a call to God’s children to be peacemakers. Per the usual, what flows from the church is both illogical and divisive, and the aforementioned article written by “Christian” musician Lynda Randle is no exception. No surprise, then, that the article was published by Answers in Genesis who built a giant boat museum and call it a box (ark). The whole premise of the museum is to prove that Noah built a sea worthy ship, when in reality, the ark (Hebrew for, “box”) was nothing more than a huge floating box. And so it is with the mindless church. Calling a boat a box is indicative of church logic across the board. Answers in Genesis, and their museum which in no way, shape, or form resembles a clear description of the ark in the Bible, is just more shameless church commercialism while scolding those who believe in the American Dream and its supposed “consumerism.”

The problem with writing any article like this is a temptation to get side tracked with other elements of the church’s massive hypocrisy and contradictions. This article is about its race-baiting as a way to cause division in the face of the Bible’s warning against participating in factionist activities like gossip. With that said, let us examine the article, which is framed by 3 major points that she makes.

First point, “Understand that racism isn’t dead.” That, of course, is a lie. In a country the size of America, the existence of something doesn’t make it a systemic problem. Leprosy exists in America; that doesn’t make it a pandemic. It’s not just a lie because racism was brought back by the Obama era, racism was so dead that it was not even successfully brought back to life. Systemic racism is clearly a false narrative being pushed on our society to cause division because a unified culture is hard to control, and the church, per the usual, is all in when it comes to tyranny.

Secondly, hold my beer, America was supposedly founded on Judeo-Christian principles, but 245 years later racism is alive and well? Huh? This can be added to a list of, “What the hell has the church been doing in America for 245 years?” Recently, the president of the flagship seminary of the SBC bemoaned biblical illiteracy in the church. Say what? People have been going to church three times a week or seven if there’s a tent revival and they are yet biblically illiterate? The church itself admits that it is a failure. Much like the Democrat Party, it creates the problem and then claims to be the solution. For certain, it calls its own members totally depraved sinners saved by grace and then claims to be the solution for “present sin.” What a wonderful business to be in when you can create your own supply and demand. Racism is just another sin for the church to add to its inventory.

Furthermore, on this point, like ALL race-baiters, Randle suggests that prejudice is unique to the black community. No, the Bible makes it clear that condemnation overall is systemic in the world as a whole. To suggest that racism, a word that, in and of itself, implies prejudice against anyone who is different in any way, is an organizing principle in America unique to the black community, is just an ignorant point of view meant to deliberately stir up strife.

On the second point of the article, Randle suggests we “Expand our Circle of Friends.” She was born in 1962, which only makes her 8 years younger than me. Hence, she is a liar who knows that in the 80’s no one cared about race or even gave it a second thought. Again, racism failed to even make a comeback; it’s a false narrative propagated by tyrants, because supposedly, government control is the only hope for controlling racism. People are totally depraved and must be compelled to do good by ruling authorities, which somehow are moral by default. This is why church craves a return to the church-state that formed its founding principles.

On her third point, she states, “Welcome diversity at Christian events and in leadership.” To suggest black pastors are not visible leaders in the evangelical church is absurd. And like many pastors, they create unflattering headlines way too often. She also puts the responsibility on white churches to be diverse, which is totally disingenuous. Even a child knows that black churches are just as segregated as white churches. In addition, there are Latino churches, Korean churches, Chinese churches, and the list goes on and on. Yet, the article states, “There have been many times when Randle was the only person of color to speak or perform at a Christian event.” So, what of it? From time to time Susan and I visit the church of the black pastor who married us and we are the only white people there. So what? It doesn’t mean he’s racist.

Race-baiting isn’t a problem IN the church, it’s a problem WITH the church along with many other problems inherent with the unregenerate. Race-baiting is just another sin in the church inventory of “present sin” to be saved from. The inventory must be large in order to “make the cross bigger and not smaller.”

As time moves forward, the church will identify sin more and more in the same way that the secular world identifies sin. That’s because, like the world, the church is in the condemnation business which creates a supply and demand for authority to compel people to be good.

That is, however they define the good according to a reality they also create.

paul

thechurchlie.net

With Martin Luther, and Protestant orthodoxy, sanctification is the progression of salvation through the “ordinary means of grace” obtained only through church membership.

According to John Calvin, and his three classifications of elect, the “called” are church members, and those who persevere to “final justification” remain faithful to church until the end. The fact that Protestantism is salvation by church membership and thus adds multitudes of mediators other than Christ is not arguable.

Moreover, Protestant scholars are fond of saying the “ground of justification” is Christ’s perfect law-keeping. How is that a justification apart from the law? Hence, Protestantism is a blatant false gospel that denies justification by new birth and Christians who are righteous as a state of being rather than a mere legal declaration.

Protestantism was created in a church-state and for the express purpose of church-state. The Pilgrims came to America for the freedom to do church-state better than the Church of England. The Pilgrims were Puritans who were Calvinists. Their tyranny was a primary catalyst for the American Revolution.

It is once again time to remind everyone that America was NOT founded on Judeo-Christian principles. It was founded on Individualism and the individual’s ability to self-govern and the state’s responsibility to protect that right.

I have written many times about the man who led me to a relationship with God. His name was Mark Cline, and you can read about him here. No matter who you are and what your relationship is with God, He intervenes in your life. That is how I define God’s sovereignty. Life is largely determined by our own self-will, but influenced and dictated at times by God’s sovereign interventions. Be sure of this: though we rarely know what God is up to; He is always up to something. Sometimes, it may be 40 years later before we understand what His purpose was in some event; that’s what this post is about.

“Grace” is one of those words that Protestants throw around without really understanding what it means. Again, there is a huge disconnect between what Protestants believe intellectually and how they function. Americanism totally confused the church for the better after the American Revolution. Intellectually, it led to a closer understanding of the new birth, which Protestant orthodoxy rejects according to its Augustinian Neo-Platonist roots. However, the order of traditional church worship, which speaks to the “ordinary means of grace,” remained intact and has paved the way for a return to authentic Protestantism via the New Calvinism movement. Here, please note the functioning definition of “grace” according to Protestant orthodoxy: it always means “salvation.”

Hence, clearly, church order of worship is a continuing means of salvation because ones salvation is a process, according to church orthodoxy, and not a one-time finished work in the individual. The latter is very bad for recurring monthly revenue. Church, whether Catholic or Protestant, claims that Christ’s passive and active obedience to God was a one-time finished work, but that one-time finished work must be continually applied to the “believer’s” life in order to maintain salvation. Accordingly, does this not mean the focus is a maintaining of salvation rather than an outward focus on loving God and others? Of course it does. Watch the church testimony in general; any questions?

Though I would not have applied the following truth to the situation I am getting ready to share, it is apropos to the writing at hand. But first, what is the biblical definition of the word, “grace”? Simply stated, it is love in action. In every Bible verse where the word “grace” is used, you can replace it with “love” and it will work in the sentence. And of course, salvation was the ultimate act of love by God. Love, salvation, and grace are synonymous words with the intended use determined by context.

When I was a young pastor, I was called on by a mentor to accompany him to visit a young couple who had just lost their three-year-old son in a tragic accident. He was accidently struck by a vehicle driven by the father’s best friend. My mentor, in an attempt to comfort the couple, stated that God might have used the tragedy to save the child from a worse fate that God knew was going to happen. Of course, yes, I agree with you, the assertion in that particular case was a colossal fail. My mentor at the time was speaking of tragic grace, or God using a tragic situation as an act of love. The notion of tragic grace has merit; let me share such a case.

Mark Cline was a devoted member of the world renowned Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas, TX during the 80’s. He was 20-something, single, and the epitome of what every father would want for a son-in-law. Like many at Prestonwood, he adored the celebrity pastor, Bill Weber. As an alcoholic womanizer, I was also drawn to the charismatic preacher and would rarely miss one of his Sunday morning sermons regardless of suffering from severe hangovers. Mark had brought me to a point of believing in God, but I was unwilling to relinquish the life I was living to follow God. You see, the knowledge that salvation is synonymous with a new life initiated by God is intuitive within every living being with a conscience. A mandate to make changes in your life in order to be saved is an idea that misses the point entirely; people know that if you want to become a child of God, and ask him accordingly, he will remove the desire and enslavement to your present life. People don’t want to change the desires. They don’t want to change masters. I was told by the Prestonwood deacons that I didn’t have to make any changes in my life to say the sinner’s prayer and be saved qualifying me to become a member at Prestonwood. A commitment to changes, they said, as a prerequisite to salvation, was salvation by works. Even as an unregenerate narcissist, I knew more about the gospel than they did. I knew that if I wanted to become God’s child, he would change my heart miraculously, and subsequently, desires. I didn’t want to lose those desires that drove the things in my life that I loved. I didn’t want to love other things, and I knew that change was an initiation by God, not me. That doesn’t mean we are not participants, it means we participate as new creatures recreated by God.

Fact: church orthodoxy denies recreation of the individual. That would diminish sin, and as a business that survives on the principle of supply and demand, sin is the supply side of the economic package. The logical conclusion of church orthodoxy follows: degree of sin is directly related to degree of growth. Therefore, church orthodoxy redefines the new birth as mere joy experiences in the salvation process and not a change in one’s state of being. A “sinner saved by grace” is yet a “sinner,” which is biblically defined as unregenerate.

Nevertheless, I saw Prestonwood as a sanctuary city when I was ready for a new life in Christ. I had it all planned out: I would wait till I was too old to party and then give my life to Christ. I would give Christ the leftovers of my life, and I thought that was even a good deal for God.

I was definitely a project in Mark’s life. For every ten times he would invite me to do something, I would accept the invitation. Yet, he never relented in pursuing a friendship with me. He called to inform me that he had obtained tickets to the Cowboys/Redskins game of that year. He may or may not have been a football fan but knew I was a football fanatic. He mentioned that he was having minor surgery, but would be fully recovered for our trip to Arlington Stadium for the game. He would never recover from the surgery; the surgeon, who had worked 18 hours before Mark’s surgery without a break, made a critical error that killed Mark on the operating table. Mark was put to sleep for the surgery, and awoke in glory right on time, but far too soon for the world’s sake.

Mark was one of those people who is an exemplary picture of health. So, it kind of blew my game plan out of the water regarding salvation on my time schedule. If Mark’s exemplary life was unpredictable, how much more was mine? His death served that purpose in my life, but was a small residual outcome of the massive impact Mark’s life had on others. Many lives he had impacted showed up for his funeral resulting in a traffic quagmire for several city blocks around the funeral home. Bill “Billy” Weber delivered the eulogy.

During that very time, behind the scenes, and only known to a few people who kept silent, Bill Weber was living a secret decadent life. The stunning hypocrisy of it was masterfully documented in a “D Magazine” article published in 1989. Even more telling was the familiar story of how fallen pastors expose the church for being a mere salvation-selling marketing machine that only serves the religious elitist crowd on the backs of the working laity class. True to the Protestant Platonist tradition, pastors are the philosopher kings, elders and deacons are the warrior class, and the laity are the producers. The church is the antithesis of the one body in Christ biblical picture. Instead, it is a picture of Plato’s Republic.

One cannot venture to even imagine how badly this would have devastated Mark. The scandal was revealed shortly after Mark’s death. I thank God he didn’t live to see it. I thank God that his testimony wasn’t relegated to someone who was foolishly deceived by a snake oil salesman. Mark’s death is the perfect picture of a tragedy that is also grace, and…

…salvation from church.

paul

Tomorrow is so-called, “Easter Sunday.” Many people who do not normally “do church” will put on their Sunday best and make an appearance. It is ok that they do not really know why they do it because the ones who normally attend church don’t know either. This is not to say church-goers don’t think they know, but they don’t. In addition, this is not to say they wouldn’t have some canned answer to the question, but it wouldn’t lineup with their functioning religiosity.

Passover is about the end of sin; Easter Sunday is about atonement, or a mere covering for sin. Here is the problem with understanding the Bible: it is not too deep and mysterious, it’s too simple. Let’s start with the term, “family of God.” If you simply understand that “family” really means “family,” You know more than most Bible scholars already.

To be saved is to be a child of God. You know, like a child that is a member of a family. And, that child is born into that family. The concept of family is indicative of the true gospel and how Christians should function as Christians. Biblically, and historically, Passover is a family affair; the church had to make it an institutional affair. This is the difference between being free from the condemnation of sin because you are born of God, and a weekly atonement (covering for sin) via temple worship. If people understand they are free from sin, they don’t need to purchase weekly salvation. This is why church is big business regardless of its dreadful testimony. The grocery store in town may be owned by the mafia, but if it’s the only store in town, you are still going to buy your groceries there. After all, no one wants to starve to death. As the saying goes, “sex sells,” but nothing sells like no fault eternal salvation.

Imagine if Easter Sunday was something people celebrated at home in recognition of how God made the new birth possible. The institutional church couldn’t have that as it obviously wouldn’t be good for the salvation market. And, the idea that someone is permanently indwelled by the Holy Spirit suggests they are capable, which speaks to individualism as apposed to collectivism, and that is a disaster for the salvation industry. In essence, it completely destroys supply and demand. The more sin, the more demand for necessary salvation. Without sin, the church is out of business. Think about it; church has a vested interest in sin, and the headlines show that clearly.

As a young zealot, and among other young zealots, the question was always: “How can we return to the power of the first century church?” Problem was, we were looking for the answers within the context of institution. Christianity is a family and functions as a family. Functioning as a literal family is not a preferred mode, it is a living statement concerning the true gospel. Christians functioning as family speaks to the ending of sin and justification by new birth, church speaks of atonement and a need for progressive salvation. To attend church is to identify with a false gospel. It is a covering of sin; not an ending of sin. It is not an exodus from slavery. You can only belong to one master or another; Christ or Egypt. These are the only two state of beings in reality.

Therefore, indeed, the family of God should recognize the Passover, and the fact that we are partakers of the exodus from slavery, and what made that exodus possible. We know the early assembly of Christ recognized the Passover for at least 200 years or longer until the church intervened.

Again, it is too simple. The apostle Paul spent his whole ministry fighting against “justification by the law.” The new birth changes our relationship to the law. The new birth is a “righteousness manifested apart from the law.” Sin is defined as a violation of the law. This is also part and parcel with condemnation; to be “under sin” is to also be “under condemnation.” “Under law,” “under sin,” “enslaved to sin,” and “under condemnation” are interchangeable terms for the exact same thing. “Under grace” is NOT remaining under law with grace being a covering for sin. That’s church, and that’s a false gospel. “Grace” is God’s love in action; you are under the jurisdiction of God’s love in action, not the law. The same law now informs our love for God and others without any condemnation.

Romans chapters 6, 7, and 8 explain this in detail. Being under grace doesn’t mean we are under no law, it’s just a law without condemnation; it is not a “ministry of death.” God uses it to sanctify us, not to convict us of “sin and the judgement to come.” It is best stated that Christians do not sin, but rather fail to love. We fail to love because we are weak, not because we are still enslaved to sin. We are rather “enslaved to righteousness.”

We partook in the exodus out of Egypt. And indeed, we should recognize that yearly. But not in church.

paul

The Apostle Paul spent his whole ministry fighting a doctrine of salvation exactly like Protestantism. Paul was primarily an opponent of justification by law. Clearly, Protestantism defines righteousness as perfect law-keeping. That’s not a righteousness apart from the law (Romans 3:21). Protestantism gets cute with its justification by law, deceptively calling it, “justification by faith,” by claiming that Jesus kept the law perfectly and through faith alone his perfect law-keeping is imputed to our Christian life in order to keep us saved. This is the doctrine of “Double Imputation.” But you see, who keeps the law is not the point; the point is the law period. In Protestantism, perfect law-keeping defines righteousness, and again, that’s not a righteousness apart from the law.

Also note that in Protestantism’s primary doctrine of salvation, double imputation, Jesus’ perfect law-keeping must be imputed to sanctification in order to complete salvation. Therefore, to deny that the logical conclusion of double imputation is a progression of salvation is nonsensical. Furthermore, if salvation is not finished during the life of a “believer,” the so-called believer must do something or NOT do something with intentionality in order to stay saved. Abstaining from something, like an attempt at good works, is doing something. This is where the traditions of men come up with formulas to impute Jesus’ perfect law-keeping to the Christian life. This is exactly what the Pharisees were guilty of, and Protestantism is just another version of the same thing. The whole idea that men want to try to justify themselves through perfect law-keeping is not something the Bible even addresses, it’s a pink elephant. Justification by the law is really defined by the replacement of God’s law with the traditions of men.

God’s law has two definitions in the Bible and two definitions ONLY: One; a law that can only condemn, or a “ministry of death,” and two; the use of the law to inform love towards God and others. The whole concept of men trying to earn salvation through perfect law-keeping with antinomianism being the so-called antitheses is a false and deceptive idea. In reality, and according to the Bible, justification by the law is defined as antinomianism in totality. Why? Because the law of God is replaced with the traditions of men. The key to understanding this is the Holy Spirit’s two uses of the law: to condemn, and to sanctify (Romans 8:2, John 16:8, and John 17:17). Why would Jesus come to keep the law perfectly for purposes of imputation when all it can do is condemn? Also, Paul said there is no law that can give life. In the Bible, law-keeping is defined as love. Protestantism deceptively delineates between “good works” and love. While its doctrine of double imputation denies that men can do good works of any kind, on the other hand, it tells people they should go to church where people “love you.” Nay, if all of their works are as “filthy rags,” so is their love. You cannot separate love from good works. If you can’t do a good work, neither can you love. But, the following can also be noted: they do couch the language in things like, “Come to church where you will find the love of God.” Note that it is God’s love, and not necessarily the love of the parishioners. Get it? Yes, when you get into how Protestantism applies double imputation to real life, you must consider realm manifestation; the idea that God’s love is only experienced by people, but not performed by them. Some Protestant scholars are fond of saying that “sanctification is done TO you, not BY you.” Get it? This is a concept that Americans have a hard time getting their minds around because we are not taught world philosophy growing up in school. Protestantism uses this ignorance to deliberately deceive parishioners by allowing them to assume what things mean while manipulating them into functioning according to salvation through church membership.

In a nutshell, double imputation teaches that Christ died to pay the penalty of our past imperfect law-keeping, and presently imputes his perfect law-keeping to our lives in order to keep us saved IF we partake in the “ordinary means of grace [ordinary means of salvation]” found only at church. What are those ordinary means of grace? Stuff you do at church; ie., the traditions of men. This is Paul’s definition of justification by the law; loving God and others by obeying scripture is replaced with the traditions of men. Perfect obedience is not the standard; a desire to obey the whole law is a love that fulfills the law while falling short results in a loss of reward, not condemnation. Clearly, the doctrine of double imputation keeps Protestants under the law and thereby under condemnation as well.

So, if the law is not the basis of righteousness (justification), what is? Answer: the new birth (Romans chapter 6 and 1John chapter 3). The seed of God being inside of us through the new birth is what makes us righteous and nothing else. This eternal seed of God results in us loving the word of God with our human mortality being a hindrance. We are not sinners under condemnation; we have this treasure in earthen vessels and fail to love because of weakness. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. And yes indeed, Protestantism has railed against the new birth and spoken against it since its conception and declared it a false gospel. The clarion call of Protestantism decries “infused grace.” Viz, infused righteousness; viz, infused salvation. Get it? So, how does Protestantism get around the obvious scriptural claim that God’s seed is permanently within us forever? That would be the doctrine of the “Vital Union” also known as “participation in Christ.” The vital union only takes place during the vivification part of the Protestant doctrine of “Mortification and Vivification.” Now, if you are inclined to believe that few confessing Protestants even know what these doctrines are, you would be absolutely correct.

Protestantism replaces the biblical new birth with the doctrine of mortification and vivification. What is it? It is a PROCESS of perpetual re-justification and re-salvation. “Present sin,” according to John Calvin and Martin Luther, continually “removes us from grace [read, ‘salvation’].” Hence, we must “revisit our original salvation.” Going to church is really about doing the doctrine of mortification and vivification every Sunday. Few Protestants understand what church is really about, which is not commendable. What did you do to become saved? You repented. That’s the mortification part of mortification and vivification. It’s what Protestant hacks like Paul David Tripp call a “lifestyle of repentance” because you are still under condemnation and present sin removes you from grace or the loving actions of God. Grace is love in action by God or a person. Of course, the ultimate act of grace was the death of Christ on the cross.

According to this doctrine, once we repent and confess our sins to God, we EXPERIENCE another new birth which is a temporary union with Christ that is a re-visitation of the joy experienced in our original salvation. This is the vivification part of mortification and vivification and is stoked by church music. Biblically, the new birth is a onetime and for all-time transformation into new creaturehood that cancels the condemnation of the law. The goal of the real Christian is to gain and not lose eternal rewards; the goal of a Protestant is to worship at the alter of traditions and beg to keep their salvation. Of course, Catholicism is little different as well but more honest about the fact.

This is why Protestantism calls justification a mere “legal declaration.” Pray tell; how is a legal declaration a righteousness apart from the law? According to the Bible, saved people are righteous as a state of being because they have the life of God infused into them. Protestantism claims that this is the same as “having as righteousness of our own.” But if salvation is a free gift from God, does the receiver not take ownership of the gift? If righteousness is a gift, but we don’t possess it, how was it ever a gift?

The apostle Paul railed against those who promoted sin so “grace may abound.” But this is exactly what the doctrine of mortification and vivification does. Sin is the supply side of Protestantism’s salvific supply and demand. Without ample sin, the cross is made smaller. The more sin, the more salvation. The more repentance, the more joy that is experienced in the re-visitation of salvation.

Paul also said that love does not rejoice in evil, but this is exactly what Protestantism proffers: mortification results in the joy of vivification. Martin Luther argued that a focus on repentance and the sin under the sin would not lead to depression but the joy of vivification.

Paul said that we were saved so that we could put sin to death in the body. That would put Protestantism out of business. The goal of Protestantism is to make salvation bigger by finding more and more sin.

Protestantism is a mockery of Pauline theology while claiming Paul as its primary doctor of soteriology. Likewise, demons present themselves as angels of light and Protestants, like the Pharisees, will travel land and sea to make people twice the children of hell that they are. That’s what justification by the law does.

paul