Saved and Unsaved

 John MacArthur has a talk titled "What's Wrong With Everybody?" about the current miserable state of affairs we're all living through so very unhappily..  He makes the distinc ction between saved and unsaved, the redeemed and the fallen nature into which we are all born and remain until we are saved if that is to be our destiny.  It's a dramatic difference he describes, not the usual rather vague distinction that leaves us scrambling to figure out of if we're saved or not. 

AIt's hard to recognize the difference because even when we are saved we still have the "old man" or fallen nature in us and are still capable of falling into our old sins.  Neverteless we do have the new life in us, which is what salvation is, which is what redemption is, a real transformation, a new birth out of a state of what is called death into the life of god.  Because of our believing the gospel we have this new life planted in us, god Himself has come to live in us.  I think of a couple of book titles:  Man the Dwelling Place of God, and The Life of God in the Soul of Man.  That's what salvartion is.  

I'd been thinking about the Burning Man event and how it is such a concentrated distilled essence of fallennness, the fallennness into which we are all born but without most of the usual restrains socieity puts on us.  At least in some departments of sin, mostly the sexual.   One way I am persuaded of my own salvation is through the recognition that I used to share in those \\\\the mentality that seeks those experiences.  Even if I can still fall into them from time to time, and I don't know if that's even true any more, but even so it's clear to me that that is no longer my mindset.  

When I became a believer, God became the most intensely attractive center of all delights and desires.  For long periods He eclipsed every other interest.  But the world and the flesh can still take over and when my focus changed to wore wordldly concerns such as politics and even the debates about creation versus evolution, my mind got drawn back into those old sources of pleasure.  Still, when I picked up the Bible, or heard it preached or heard a powerful devotional message, something in me would just melt, I'd "pant after God" and experience that other level of my being at least for that moment.  

It is a dramatic transformation, a massive transformation as MacArthur puts it.  It's not always at the forefront of our experinece but it is of such a diffdrent nature it has to be described as radically other than the experiences of this world and the flesh we start out so accustomed to.  A radical difference, a radical transfomrmation.    And the things of this world can be distressing in ways beyond even the distress everybody else is feeling these days.   

the world is not always a perfect reflection of fallenness.  There are restraints in place through laws, police agencies and the like, and people do seem to have a moral code, at least in some places at some times.  Certainly in America in the early years, as the Founders often affirmed was the reason we could be trusted with the fragile rule of the sort of republic they crafted for us.  eric Metaxas describes this early mentality, how for instance Alexis deToqueville saw us as a very religious nation, which was our strength.  

Well, fallenness has since then certainly reasserted its own nature over us and we are now headed into a police state, which is the only possible outcome when the people have lost the moral foundation that controls us individually.    that kind of moral self control is possible with an education toward that end, which was powerful in the days following the Great Awakening under Georlge Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards and lasted maybe a century and a half until the Sixcties, oh yes the Sixties, brought it all crashing down.  We are no longer America.  Without that moral foundation we can't be.  Metaxas makes that point clearly.  Deuoquevill e saw it.  Can we get it back?

Itg's probably tgoo late, but on the other hand, there is nothing else worth doing,.

Staggering Statistics on Women in the Clergy

 John MacArthur lays them out in what I suppose is a recent sermon although of course I can't see anything that would tell me when it was given so I don't know how recent.  Anyway he says some fifty percent of Masters of Divilinty students or graduates in the seminaries these days are women.  That's pretty staggering.  I don't remember the other numbers but in the twenties I think for women actually pastoring churches and so on and so forth.  Of course this is a heresy.  He says that many evangelicals, eighty something percent I think, are OK with a woman pastor.  What sort of evangelicals are these?  Do they not know what scripture has to say about it, or do they and deny it?

As always I come back to my theme of the woman's head covering.  I really don't know if it can be said to be the starting place of this fall into feminimism, I don't, but I think it must be somewhere back there at the beginning of it.  I suppose the Marxist influence might be the general starting place.  But abandoning the practice of covering the head in church continues to strike me as a pretty big deal.  It was practiced for almost the entire tewo millennia since Christ and abandoned only in the mid twetnties century.  

On eaxtremely flimsty grounds.  Yet men like MacArthur accept those grounds.  Why?  Because of the credentials of the man who wrote the essay that has become the foundation for all of this?  The idea that Paul wasn't really dtalking aboutg aliteral head covering that all women should adopt, but about cultrual practices that distingtuish women from men, the head covering being one of those in his time.  Thomsas Shriner made this his artubument against the head cove3ring in his very influential essay and ever since then that's been the abiding perspective and women gave up covering their heads in church.  Except for a very few churches that insist that no, Payl really was talking about a literal head covering.  Rare churches indeepd.  Marginalized you could say.

I spent quite a bit of time studying the question and came to the conclusion that Paul meant a literal head covering.  And myu pastor told me that binds me own consience to wear a head covering, which is fine, but of course I think if it's true then I'm certainly not the only one who should be wearing a head covering in church.  

And I think it's pimportant.  Maybe very very important.  Look, the passage, First Corinthians Eleven, two to sixteen, is about the literal human head, the head that sits on stop of the shoulders.  It is treated in that passage as a symbol of authoirty, the person's authority.  God is Authority over Christ, Christi is authority over men, Men are authority over womehn.  That's the worder of what is known as "headship."  There's the literal word "head."  This is not about femininity syjmbols, this is about the head and about the hierarchy of headship or suthority granted by God.  It is called a Creation Ordinance, like Marriage, something given by God at the very beginning of the creation.  We reject Gay Marriage because of the creation ordinance that defines marriage as between a man and a woman, but e ignore the ordinance that gives man the headship position over the womahn.  

I always come back to a particular simple point:  we require men to remove their headgear when they come into church, on the basis of this very passage of scripture which says mmen's heads should be uncovered, but we no longer require the other part of that passage, that women's heads are to be covered.  

I wish men like MacArthur would rethink it instad of falling bak on Shrinkers analysis, which has all sorts of flaws in it part from the central mistake of renying the importnt of the head as such, and I've written about those flaws in my blog on the subject, Hidden Glory.  

It is not treated as importnat by some I've talked to, as a trivial thing even if I'm right, but it can't be trivila if it's a creation ordinanyc of God, and isn't it glaringly obvious that it has implications galore for the position of women in the clergy that MacArthur is lamenting?  Isn't that just downstream of the abandonment of the head covering?  

There are a million things that the church needs to straighten out these days so why focus on this one?  The Lord is probably coming back before we could get to any of them with any effet anyway.  True, unfortunatley.   But shouldn't we be about the business of getting it right no matter what?  

So Many Signs in Place Already but So Many Still unsaved

 There are people, many people I'm afriad, tht I'm still hoping will be saved before the Lord returns, but since I see no movement in that direction and I'm feeling pretty exhausted I sometimes just wish He would come immediately and put an end it it all.  Then I feel guilty, as if I'm abandoning all those people I want to be saved.  Yes it is up to Him, He knows those He will save and when and I shouldn't give myself any credit for any of i, maybe blame but not creit.  

Anyway I'm hoping again for a soon rapture.  I may not understand all the parts of the arguemtnt from the pre trib side, I still have questions about how it all fits together, but since no other system answers those questions either and the pre trib scenario has a lot going for  it, I simply want it to be true and i want the Lord to come back as soon as possible.  I can't persuade anyone of anything, it's up to Him.  I have to let go of it all.  

Jan Markell's latest Understanding the Times radio show is full of good pointers to the signs of the times, some interesting stuff about what really happened on Maui iss one, and she gets back to the UFO deception as explanation for the rapture when it comes.  A rehearsal of some of the most depresing trends in our time as well, yes really depressing stuff.  Come soon, very soon, Lord Jesus.

Burning Man Visited by God

 Late getting to this but since Ben Shapiro echoes my own thoughts about it I want to gert that much recorded.  Nobody else said anything along the same lines but Shapiro opened his show a couple nights ago with a remark about biblical proportions or some such terminology and I perked up my ears.  The first thought I had when I heard about the rain and mud out at the B urning Man festival was, Oh God is putting them through His judgment.  And I watched a lot of videos after that to get a sense of what was going on and how everyone was taking it.

A muddy mess, the desert playa or alkali flats as my father used to refer to them, turning into a squishy mess with the sonsitency of peanut butter.  Pelple tying plastic bags around their showes to get through the sticky stuff that seems to have an appetite for shoes, sucking them off and swallowing them up if you aren't careful.  Cars would get stuck in the stuff so nobody could leave until it dried out enough for that.  Most attendees made the most of it, some even trying to celevrate it as a part of the event itself, continuing the tone of revelry, but there were a few who worried about being stuck there for a long time.  Although some who wanted to leave early had a problem getting out, those who were going to sty until the end anyway had dry enough conditions for the usual exodus when the time came.  

Not God's judgment on a scale of biblical proportions but yes I'd call it God's judgment.  A rare event to be rained out on the normally hot dry playa, and rained out in a way that made leaving impossible for a while, but more to the point, made it necessary for most of the entertainment to shut down.  You don't want to leave electrical cors out in the wet so music had to stop and many other things just got to o soggy to continue.  That's probably the manin judgment part of this.  I'm sure some were able to continue happy enough but a lot of it just wasn't there any more.  The event is of course known for its sex and drugs and that didn't have to stop witht he rain and mud.  But I c would think the shutting down of the ;entertainment and probably the destruction of some of the art had to take a toll on the fun.  

Of course nobody repented at the judgment of God, and such interference with the sinful revelries of fallen humanity cetainly suggetss that judgment to my mind, a pretty tame judgment of course, nothing life threatening, just a dampening of the festifvities and an alarming retstriction on movement for those for whom it mattered.  I imagined many ossible worse scenarios, the stranging continuing a long time mostly.  They'd run out of food, the toilet problem would get worse, some camps would be completely inoperable so people would be doubling up in uncomfortable ways.  There could be mdical emergies and so on.  But this is the modern age and we have helicopeters that could deliver food and even airlift people out if necessary.  And so on.  But still, it's God's judgment, that's what it is.  He's saying to these people who deny Him in this loud obnoxious way every year, I'm here and I'm the one in charge, heads up.  

So I was happy when Ben Shapiro made the same connection although his emphases were a bit different.  Nobody else saw God as the bringer of rain and discomfort to the event.  I suppose nobody there noticed, but maybe someonedid.  Maybe we'll hear about it late

Later:  I've always wondered what exactly the burning of an efigy of a man is supposed to mean.  Wha'ts the symbolism.  I suppose I'm naive, maybe it's obvious but I just don't get it.  And why is everybody so happy when he goes up in flames?  I mean the first symbolic meaning that occurs is that humanity itself isbeing trashed.  And that's more or less how Ben Shapiro read it.  But it doesn't seem likely that the "burdners" see it that way.  but how do they see it? Mayb nobody really knows? r.

Later:  DForgot to mention that people could walk out.  It wasn't an easy slog through the gooey mess but the distance to the nearest town is only a few miles so it's quite doable and some did it.  So even in the worst cast scenario most could get out that way, unfortunately having to leave vehicles and anything else too large to carry behind, but I suppose they could come back for those things later.  Anyway, the situation was never really impossible, just difficult.d  Also, almmost forgot this too, some behicles are able to traverse the muck, emergency vehicles of various sorts and so on, not able to carry many out but could bring in supplies and carry a few out.  ots of them could carry more out.  There really were a number of options possible, not comfortable options but options.

Find myself musing further on this, remembering that a beautiful double rainbow showed up at the scene at one pint, a remeinder of the rainborw God sent after thew Flood as a promise that He would never bring a flood on the earth again, a token of His love to humanity, even tghe fallen humanity of this fallen world, of which the Burners are a rather pointed symbol.  Yes God loves all us burners and sent salvation to us, His Son who came to die in our place.  He brings judgment on sinful nations too, but it's mostly meant to be a reminder that He's there and we can still turn to Him.  Unfortunately most of us miss the message.  Once we're saved, or for those who have an appreciation of the bible, we can see His hnand in such things as the mud at Burning Man, but most of them would be blind to it, as even us saved ones once were.

Friday:  Jan Marell's radio show today is about the end itmes as it often is, which led me to reconsider the effigy of the burning man as a symbol of that last days finale when the earth will be consumed in fire.  The Flood was the first great worldwide judgment of God, but the final judgment will be by fire.  I'm sure the festival attendees have no such idea about their burning mascot but it certainly does suggest that  freom a perspective above theirs.  Every yhear they come together in a celebration of fallenness, though that too wouldn't be their conception of it, fallenness to an intensity we don't normally experience in one place at one time, sin to the max.  Well not all sins fortunately, but a celebration of sin nevertheless.  Kind of the Sixties in microcosm, which I've often thought of as the Great SinLiberation Movement, all of those liberations rolled together.  And the timing is 

woops, lot the thread, drat.  timing.  Intense week of godless humanity celebrating themselves capped by an image of humanity being burned to a crisp.  Hm.

 

What a True Christian Retreat Should be

 I'm sure I ust have written about this before but I don't remember when and I'm thinking about it again anyway so her's another musing on it.  All it takes is to listen to a bit of a book by A W Tozer, it may not matter much which book it is because the man was so consistently at a depth so much greater than all the rest of us he could write anything trivial if he tried.  Anywayhit's enough to wake me up for at least a brief moment to how far I am from where he would have us alll be, so full of the Spirit of God we can worship Him in reality and not in the superficial terms so common these days.    

So Again I was thinking how we need something to help us overcome this superficiality and draw us into that depth we are missing.  George Whitefiled did that for the entire nation just before the revolutionary war, but individually I think it could be done if we had retreats for seekers of such depth designed for the purpose.  And that means retreats that eliminate the usual distractions and superficial expressions and drive us to a sort of confinement in which all that's available is deeper expressions of Godf.  

Church retreats are far from such a conception.  They have their moments of deeper communion vut they dissipate it with the usual distractions, recreations, social encounters, meals that invite overindulgence and that sort of thing.  So what I'm thinking is that we need retreats that focus us with some intensityh on God alone.  It doesn't have to be isolation as long as the time together is focused in that way as well, times of humn singing and brief exhortations, a careful avoidance of anything trivial or aimed at humor or that sort of thing.  Quiet and intense.  Then the time alone perhaps in the monastic cell sort of room with vry basic furniture and books that are about nothing but the deepest experieces of God, with no reference whatever to our emotional or earthly concenrs.  Is that too much to ask?  Audio versions of such teachings perhaps.  I don't know what all might be the best methods but the content has to be God focused to an intense d intense degree.    Even just a few days fo such a retreat ought to strip away a lot of the worldly barnacles that cling to us.  Don't know where that image came from but oh well.  Strip away the world the flesh and the temptations of the devil --   well, the temptations are always going to be there in some form or other and that too has to be taken into account.

No pint in trying to get too specific here, I just want to make the point that a retreat should be an intense experience focused completely on God Himself, His character, His promises, His holiness, His majesty.   Minimize all worldly distractions.  Food shouldn't be a snare, but although fasting could be a good thing in this context I think simple pleasant but unexciting meals should be the standard.

We need to get deeper into God.  That's the point.

Glenn Loury with Csrol Seain, listen to them, she's great

 I couldn't finish that previous post for mere tiredness and never got back to it, very disappointing because I did have lots of ideas about how I wanted to pursue the subject and now it's just gone.  For now anyway.   Then recently I thought I was oingf ro have to do a post against a couple of conservative talkers who went over a line, but now I'm glad I've gone past that one too.  I'll just mention that this was Rich Valdes, a radio talk show guy I don't herar very often so I really don't know jhow solid his conservativism really is, and Glenn loury who has become a sort of hero for me and now may be losing that status,.  Valdes actually said that yes we do seem to be a two or three tier justice system these days but he considers that to be something we can't overcome because it's just so understandable that if a cop stops a guy for a traffic violation and finds out he's from a welthy prominent family it's only natural that he'd want to show respect and give the guy a break.  I was flabvergasted.  Isn't that the whole basis of our notion of blind lady justice?  we don't see the differences in wealth and status of anyhone but only jutde the crime itself apart from all that?  Valdes was instantly emotied to I don't know what.  GFo learn something about justice and about American history, man.  And then Loury and his frequent talking partner McWhorter indulged in some locker room talk that rather shocked me, but I was more shocked at my being shocked than just sohocked itself.  It too mek me a few days to get through a lot of confusion about why I should have been so sohocked, don't guys just indulge in locker frroom terminology from time to time and how could that affect me so much?  What's wrong with me anyway?  And all that.  And I went through layers of questions aboug the fact that they are balack guys and I've occasionally heard them complain rather mildly but still complain that it bothers them that they have a lot of conservative white fans.  So I'm a conservative white fan and I could almost say I took that locker room blurt personally as a somplaint against my being a fan.  Weird I know and that was just one of my mamny confused thgouths.  I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me.  Why had this mattered so much to me?  Why was I so offended when I shouldn't be and all that.  then a few days later I woke up just knowing that what they waid WAS offensive.  Nob ody should talk like that in public.  Yeah the media went ouf ot ehri way to make public Trumjp's locker room talk incident that was in private.  That's different.  this was out there for eeyrone to hear.  No, not good.  Bad taste, Morally offensive.  Apologize, repemnjt, that's what they shoujld do.

So now I've wasted all that time when I started this with a completley different topic in mind.  Loury is talking with a black lady I've never been aware of before and I love her to piecesw.  Carol Sewain .  She's  ....  now I'm getting tired again.  Drat.  She's going to vote for Trump again she says and she has all ghe right reasons for that.  She sees his flaws b ut she sees also that he's the best for the cxountry and that includes black peop[le.    that's all I'm up to saying.  Sorry.

Recovering America Means Recovering Virture

 Eric Metaxas' most recent book is A Letter to the American Church" but I haven't read it and it isn't out in audio form through Srvices for the blind yet so all I know about it is what I'vw heard in various interviews.  But I did discover that he has noather book from about a decade ago that is out in audio form and I've listened to it once and am going through it a second time, "If You Can Keep It' which isof course about the American founding, which you may recobgnize from the title as Benjamin Frankloin's answer to the query what sort of government the Constitutional convention had given us.  A republic, he said, if you can keep it.

Since Metaxas' latest book is about how can san save america, specifically what the churchews can and should be soing to save America, I would guess that it covers some of the same metrial that's in this earlier book.   That is, I would expect it to focus to a large extent on the natur=e of America, how we are different from other nations and why it is important, and what it would take to recover this different sorft of nation based on the nature of those difer3ences.

I knew that John Adams had said that our consisution is meant for a moral and religious people, that it is wholly i8nadequate for the governmnent of anyh other, and that thourhg has urbled up in my mind from time to time, laregely without a solid understanding of what he had in mind although I've always found it to be a very intriguing thought.  Well, Metasas makes much of the idea of that moral requriement for our different sort of goverment and points out that Adams was far from the only one to say so.  Washington was another but there were others behisdies him who also said it.  I don't remember if Franklin said the same thing but his remark about whether we can keep it or not suggests something similar.  

Since heraing this earlier bgook about the founding I've had a much stronger sense of the importance of this idea.

Oh good grief.  I have a pretty lengthy essay in mind for this topic but now I'm so tired I can't follow through.  Happens so much lately.  Drat.  I hope I'll be up to coming back to tis soon.--___