Well, I’ve decided pneumonia is not my cup of tea, 🙂 and writing demands more concentration than I feel like giving. But it’s mid-December, and two years ago I posted a few articles on Joseph that were well-received, so I thought I’d take the easy route and re-post them, for those who missed them. This post (originally here) looked at Joseph’s thoughts about a “private” divorce.
So, I’m in Dallas, Texas. I am not supposed to be in Dallas, Texas, I am supposed to be in Scotland. That’s the way I scheduled it, and the world is supposed to run to my schedule, isn’t it?
It’s SHOPPING SEASON! (Ugh!)
Today, just a quick thought for husbands who get frustrated when their wives take a long time shopping, stopping to look at things that weren’t on the shopping list at all, at things that you didn’t even think were on the agenda when you went into the shop.
I said on Sunday that Psalm 61 is an “every-trouble” Psalm. The Psalm’s title has nothing to tell us of the circumstances that triggered it. And David says in the second verse that he can cry to God “from the ends of the earth” — wherever he may be, whatever the situation. In addition, he says he can cry to the Lord when his heart is “overwhelmed.”
David was not an overwhelmed-heart kind of guy. As a shepherd, he faced down a lion, and a bear. As a youth, he faced Goliath. He faced Saul’s treachery with courage, dealt with the opposition of the Philistines, and even in old age he kept going out to battle until his men wouldn’t let him go any longer. So when someone like that is talking about problems that overwhelm the heart, you know he’s talking about great trouble. As we look at Psalm 61, therefore, we can assume that it has answers for just about every trouble we might face — an “every-trouble” Psalm.
Enmities which are unspoken and hidden are more to be feared than those which are outspoken and open.
– Cicero
It’s not just the fact that evangelicals are being more curious about Mormons and being more willing to listen to them and learn from them, but it’s also a matter of the Mormon leadership itself wanting to be part of the American Christian mainstream.
– Steven Webb, author of Mormon Christianity:Â What Other Christians Can Learn From the Latter-Day Saints.
Winston Churchill used the first quote to head a chapter called “Milestones to Armageddon” in Volume One of The Great Crisis (his history of the First World War).
The second comes from Evangelical Visits to BYU Signal a New Evangelical-Mormon Detente.
Mormons are enemies of the Gospel. They teach a false Gospel, a false Christ, a false baptism, a false view of man, a false view of marriage and family, and a false Scripture — and they want to join the “Christian mainstream,” hiding their enmity. The more these evangelical “leaders” help Mormons move to the “Christian mainstream,” the more they help those enemies to be the kind against whom Cicero, and Churchill, warned — the hidden enemies.
It is hard to find a stronger indictment of the state of the mainstream of evangelicalism than this: “evangelicals” are so weak and/or silent on doctrine and discernment, so busy finding “common ground” in their search for either political gain or for bigger “ministries,” that Mormons think they can join the mainstream. This is one of the reasons our church does not use the label “evangelical” — it encompasses a multitude of sins.
The evangelical “mainstream” — so tolerant of doctrinal and behavioural aberration that even Mormons think they can fit in.
As we look at the account of the fig tree which Christ cursed on the Monday before His crucifixion, I’ve taken two articles to cover the Old Testament Symbolism behind the event and a related parable of Christ from a year earlier. With those things in mind (and if you haven’t read them, please do), today I’d like to close off our study of this event.
Yesterday, in a continuation / extension of my series on “Passion Tuesday” (the events of the Tuesday before Christ’s crucifixion), I began looking at an event of the prior day — the cursing of the fig tree. Continue reading
Mind Renewers 