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Scroll to the bottom of the Library page and you’ll see that I have added both classic and modern systematic theologies.

Christ Fellowship Baptist Church has just posted the audio and video files from the 2009 Expositors’ Conference with Steve Lawson and Joel Beeke.

“Okay, kids, here’s mom’s cell phone. Call us if you need anything, but let’s plan on meeting outside the front door in three hours. See you then!”

I am sure you have heard of this scenario before. The family goes to the shopping mall together, and when they get there, the parents and kids split up and do their own thing. Later, they meet up and go home.

Sadly, however, this scenario is a reality in most churches today in the U.S., even Reformed churches (which betrays everything “covenantal” in one’s theology). When the family attends church, it is more like an outing at the local shopping mall than it is worshipping the Triune God as a family. The family shows up at the church, and drops their kids off at the various age segregated destinations, picking them up hours later. Some churches have children and teens miss the entire corporate worship service, or if the children are a part of the corporate worship service, in many cases, they are dismissed before the sermon begins to attend a children’s service.

Why is this? Here are a few thoughts.

  1. Children are seen as a nuisance and annoyance in the service. This is more in line with what our society says about children than what the Bible says.
  2. Parents do not discipline their children, teaching them to sit still and listen during the service. Further, nursery and children’s church allow the parents to drop their kids off, avoiding discipline and instruction during the service.
  3. It is argued that children cannot understand what is being said or preached. This argument limits what the Spirit can and cannot do in the hearts of the hearers. Further, it is the preacher’s responsibility to speak plainly, so even the most simple can understand. Further, it is the father’s responsibility ultimately to take the sermon content after the sermon and instruct his children.
  4. Children are being brought up as “entertainment junkies.” If it it’s not fun and entertaining, it’s boring.

I’m sure my words cut across the grain of the standard today, but can anyone provide me a Scriptural example where children are not a part of the corporate service? Because in both the OT and the NT, I see children always present in worship and the reading and preaching of the Scriptures.

I fear that our churches today are more concerned about being pragmatic (let’s do what works) than being Biblical.

Thoughts? Objections?

Violent Devotion

Deuteronomy 6:4-5
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

As I was reading the first two verses of the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-5) in Hebrew yesterday morning, I was struck by the last word used in verse 5. The following is the Hebrew with my literal translation underneath:

וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔ אֵ֖ת יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ֥ וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁךָ֖ וּבְכָל־מְאֹדֶֽךָ

“You shall love YHWH your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your very/exceedingly.”

What struck me about this word, מְאֹדֶֽךָ (me’od) is that it is almost always used as an adverb to qualify an adjective. For example, in Genesis 1:31, Moses writes, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very (me’od) good.” Yet, here we see this word being used as a noun: …with all your very/exceedingly.

BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs’ A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the OT) offers some definitions for this idiomatic use: muchness, force, abundance, exceedingly, might. TWOT (Theological Workbook of the OT) likewise comments: “They [heart, soul, and 'might'] were chosen to reinforce the absolute singularity of personal devotion to God…me’od accents the superlative degree of total commitment to Yahweh. The NT struggles to express the depth of the word me’od at this spot. In the quotation in Mk 12:30 it is rendered “mind and strength,” in Lk 10:27 it is “strength and mind,” in Mt 22:37 simply “mind.”

Are we not reminded of this kind of violent devotion and pursuit of the Lord from the Gospels and Paul?

Matthew 11:12
From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.

Luke 13:24
Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.

Luke 16:16
The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it.

Philippians 3:12-14
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Do you think of your pursuit of God with these kinds of words: taking the kingdom by force, forcing your way in, striving to enter, pressing on, and straining forward? Is your Christian life characterized by these words?

You see, we must be violent in our devotion to Christ. We must be violent against sin and anything that seeks to steal and supplant our affections for Christ. We must be violent in confessing and repenting of our sin and constantly putting our faith in Christ. With all vigilance we must strive to enter by the narrow gate, because Jesus tells us in the passage above that some will try to enter and will not be able to. We must pursue total commitment to Yahweh by loving Him with all strength and might and we do this by following, obeying, and delighting in His law and commandments (cf. Psalm 119). With vigor and force, we must renounce all ungodliness in our lives, and violently pursue holiness, for the author of Hebrews tells us in Hebrews 12:14: “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”

This is beginning to get at what it means to love Yahweh “with all your exceedingly.”

You see, one can recite Deuteronomy 6:4 and have a very Biblical and orthodox belief concerning God (just like the demons, cf. James 2:19), but at the end of the day, if Deuteronomy 6:5 is not a reality, if holiness is seen as optional, if pursuing Christ with every fiber of your being is extra or additional, if renouncing wickedness and ungodliness is not a priority, then perhaps while everyone is forcing their way into the kingdom, you are simply sitting back and relaxing, thinking, “Oh, there will always be room for one more later. I’ll try later when it’s not so busy.” Yet, it will always be crowded and busy, and the time will come when there is no longer time to force your way in.

Then what will you do?

I have already written on Poythress’ previous book, Redeeming Science, and it is exciting to see that his latest book, In the Beginning Was the Word: Language, A God-centered Approach, has just been released! This book looks excellent as Poythress approaches the complex topic of language from a Biblical and Trinitarian perspective. Click on the book cover above to view some sample pages over at WTSBooks!

An Eastern Orthodox prayer:

Set our hearts on fire with love to Thee, O Christ our God, that in its flame we may love Thee with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul, and with all our strength, and our neighbors as ourselves, so that keeping Thy commandments we may glorify Thee, the giver of all good gifts.

The Epic of Eden

While Dispensationalism is all but dead in the academic world, as most academicians affirm that there is one people and one story unfolding throughout the Old and New Testaments, its presence is still very prevalent in many churches among the laity, including reformed churches. In addition to a Dispensational understanding among the laity, there seems to be an attitude, whether Covenantal or Dispensational, that the OT is either irrelevant or simply full of a bunch of random, disconnected stories containing good moral lessons.

Therefore, it is always in my interest to read and find books that I can recommend to others who want help putting the whole story together.

Enter: The Epic of Eden.

With very broad brush strokes, Richter paints for the reader a high-level view of the whole Biblical story, beginning in Eden and ending in the second Eden, the (re)newed heavens and earth, focusing on the triplet: God’s people, in God’s place, enjoying God’s presence.

She relates her messy and unorganized closet in her home to how most of us approach the OT: random facts and stories that are all unrelated to one another–messy and unorganized. So, with a broad overview, she seeks to “straighten up” everyone’s “closet” by highlighting the five major characters of the OT: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David and the respective covenants that God makes with each of them.

This is a good book that serves as an introduction to understanding the ebb and flow of redemptive history. One minor caution: Richter is an Arminian in her theology, so there are a few times where her Arminian theology comes out (e.g. – a reference to prevenient grace but without mentioning the term itself).

If you want to move on to a more in depth study of the covenants and grand redemptive story, while still being highly readable and user-friendly, I would recommend Michael Williams’ Far as the Curse is Found.

I also just noticed that T. Desmond Alexander has a new book out, From Eden to the New Jerusalem, that touches on the same theme as Richter and Williams:

Excellent thoughts from Pastor Strain. Here’s a little sample:

4. A pastor who does not visit the flock will have a hard time convincing them that he cares about them, and his preaching will struggle to connect with the real lives of his hearers.

Read the whole article here.

A sermon that I preached a few weeks back on Matthew 4:1-11.

Please turn with me to the Gospel of Matthew 4:1-11.

Primarily with a Jewish audience in mind, Matthew writes His Gospel to testify concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who is Israel’s long awaited Messiah. He is the one that the prophets of old spoke and wrote about. He is the fulfillment and the finisher of the unfinished Old Testament story. However, this afternoon, we find ourselves not at the conclusion but at the cusp of Jesus commencing His public ministry. And though Matthew writes first and foremost with a Jewish audience in mind, we will see in Matthew 4 that whether Jew or Gentile, male or female, young or old, we all share something in common: we can each personally identify with the present and persistent reality of temptation and our failure to overcome it.

Read with me please from Matthew 4:1-11…

(Prayer) Lord, your words a pure and true. They are pure words like silver refined in a furnace, purified seven times. O, Lord, your words are not only true; they are transforming. Your words are not only pure; they are purifying. Lord, we come to your Word this afternoon as broken and needy sinners, longing for cleansing from the daily defilement of our sins and transgressions. We pray that by the Holy Spirit, you would wash us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness by the water of your Word. We ask these things boldly in the name of Jesus, our high priest and mediator, Amen.

“The most poisonous serpents are found where the sweetest flowers grow.” Do not these words, penned by Charles Spurgeon, aptly describe temptation? One commentator described temptation in a similar way, writing, “Temptation begins with something that is good and then perverts it.” Do we not see this happening today? For instance, God gave the good gift of sex to be enjoyed within the bounds of marriage, yet it has been twisted, perverted, and exploited by the porn industry, an industry that grosses $4 billion annually in sales and is enslaving millions, destroying marriages, families, careers, and even ministries. Or take another example, like language. God gave the good gift of language to communicate with Him and others, yet we use this gift to gossip, curse, and slander Him and others. These two temptations take something good in itself, like sex and language, and use them in a warped and improper way. If temptation involves something that is good in itself, what is it that tempts you? What has been warped by your touch, enjoyed wrongfully, and used improperly? We cannot plead innocence to these questions. Every good gift from God has been smeared and tainted; marked with the fingerprints of our disobedience and unrighteousness. We are constantly tempted; sometimes we succeed; more often than not, we fail. We fail to remember Christ during temptation and after we have succumbed to temptation. That is why we see in Matthew 4 that…

We must remember Christ when tempted.

Why must we remember Christ?

I. Christ obeyed in perfect righteousness

How did he obey in perfect righteousness?

a) By remembering God’s provision

Look with me at v. 3: “And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

In obedience to God’s will, Jesus fasts and is hungry after 40 days. And Satan proceeds to tempt him by saying, “If you are the Son of God…” Is it not striking that in the previous chapter Jesus had just been declared at His baptism by the Father as His “beloved Son” and the first thing to come out of Satan’s mouth in this temptation narrative is to use that prior declaration of Jesus’ divine Sonship for disobedience? He is tempting Jesus to use His divine power to avoid pain instead of suffering in trust and obedience to His Father’s will. We have seen examples of disobedience before, haven’t we? God provided Adam and Eve with all the food that they needed in Eden, yet they doubted God’s provision and goodness. Israel constantly complained against God in the wilderness, and even complained about the blandness of the manna even after God miraculously provided it. Yet here we see Jesus respond in verse 4 to Satan’s temptation by quoting Deut. 8:3, which in its surrounding context reads:

And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

Here Jesus responds to Satan that living in humble obedience to God is more vital and important than physical sustenance. So Jesus refuses to disobey His Father by obeying Satan.

Not only did Jesus obey by remembering God’s provision, He also obeyed…

b) By remembering God’s presence

Look again at verses 5-6: “Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”

Did you just see what happened? In the first temptation, Jesus responded, “It is written” and now in the second temptation, Satan says to Jesus, “It is written.” Without looking at any cross-references in your Bible, do you know where that passage is found? What does that tell you about Satan’s knowledge of Scripture and his skillful ways of tempting us? Calvin called Satan an “acute theologian.” Jonathan Edwards once said that the “devil was educated in the best divinity school in the universe, viz., the heaven of heavens.” Satan quotes Psalm 91:11-12 verbatim, yet, takes it out of context to make it sound like it is saying something else. But isn’t this the nature of Satan, the father of all lies? Remember in the garden when God tells Adam that he may eat from every tree except one? And what does Satan say to Eve in Genesis 3:1? “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” With skill and subtlety, he changes the words “from any” to “not any.” And he likewise twists Psalm 91 to make it sound like we should purposefully put ourselves in harms way, because after all, doesn’t God promise that He will rescue us? You see the essence of this temptation by Satan involves obtaining improper knowledge. Haven’t we seen examples of this in Scripture before? Didn’t Satan tell Adam and Eve in the garden that if they ate the fruit, they would have the same knowledge as God? Jesus responds in verse 7 by quoting Scripture again, this time from Deut. 6:16 which reads, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.” Remember how Israel grumbled against Moses and God at Massah because they had no water? Remember how God says they tested Him by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” Jesus knew better than to gain improper knowledge this way. Throwing himself down to know that God was present was not a valid example of applicational specificity from Psalm 91. To do so was to test God sinfully. Jesus remembers that His Father cares for Him, that His Father is present. He doesn’t need to test the Father to prove that He is truly present.

Jesus obeyed by remembering God’s provision and presence. Thirdly, He also obeyed…

c) By remembering God’s praise

Look with me at verses 8-9: “Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”

It is here that we approach the climax of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness. The story has moved us upward spatially from the wilderness, to the top of the temple, to a very high mountain. It is here that we sense the drama and tension of the story rising and approaching its climax. It is here that the devil appeals to the raw power of reining as king, but by means of a shortcut through a bloodless path to glory. It is here that he offers Jesus all things in exchange for worshipping the devil; to bow the knee to Satan than to the Father. Haven’t we seen examples of this before? Adam and Eve were given the decision to obey God or obey Satan. And obeying Satan was in essence to worship Him. Likewise, Israel forgot God’s praise and went after other gods and made for themselves idols. Yet here we see Jesus respond in verse 10, telling Satan to depart, as He quotes once more from Deuteronomy, 8:13, which the surrounding context reads:

…take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you— for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God.

Jesus has resisted the attacks of the devil. He has resisted the attacks to divert His mission and to destroy His Messiahship. And so Satan flees. And the story ends in verse 11 with angels coming and ministering to Jesus and His physical and spiritual needs.

So we have seen in these three temptations that Jesus obeyed by remembering God’s provision, God’s presence, and God’s praise.

Yet, we so often fail to remember these things. We forget so easily. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote, “In the moment of temptation God loses all reality, the only reality is the devil. Satan does not fill us with hatred of God, but with forgetfulness of God.” And when we forget God, we openly expose ourselves to the onslaughts of Satan. A cartoon in the New Yorker magazine showed some pigs feeding at a trough. As the farmer filled the trough with food, one hog asked the others, “Have you ever wondered why he’s so good to us?” When Satan tempts people, he’s like the farmer fattening up the pigs for the slaughter.  Temptation looks appealing at first, but it always drags its victims into misery, bondage, and destruction” (Kent Crockett). That is why the Puritan Thomas Brooks once wrote, “Satan promises the best, but pays with the worst; he promises honor and pays with disgrace; he promises pleasure and pays with pain; he promises profit and pays with loss; he promises life and pays with death.”

What can we learn from this temptation of Christ? Satan began by attacking the question of God’s provision, both physically and spiritually. And isn’t that the essence of temptation? Doesn’t the power of temptation and sin come by trying to persuade us to believe that we will be more happy, fulfilled, and satisfied if we give in to that particular temptation? What’s the remedy, then? How do we battle the temptation, for example, of lust? Well we saw from the first temptation that our relationship with the Father is more vital and satisfying than any other craving. Therefore, if we are to battle against the temptation of something like lust, we need a stronger lust, namely, a deeper satisfaction in Christ than anything else. How do we go about that? God has blessed us with the ordinary means of grace of prayer, the sacraments, and His Word to nurture and nourish our faith in Christ as we worship and enjoy Him. Friends, are you taking advantage of these gifts and graces? Wang Zai, known as the “D.L. Moody of China,” once said, “No Bible, no breakfast. For, I can live on my fat till noon, but will grow faint without the Bible.” We saw in the second temptation that Satan brought into doubt God’s presence. When tempted, Satan wants us to forget God’s holy presence. He wants us to forget that God sees what we do. He wants us to forget that we have been purchased at the greatest cost—the precious blood of Christ. Therefore, when you encounter temptation, when you are tempted on the Internet, tempted when alone with your boyfriend or girlfriend, tempted to cheat on a test or your taxes, tempted to gossip about others, imagine that Christ is sitting in the room with you. Would he approve of what you are thinking about doing? We saw in the third temptation that Satan attacked God’s praise. Satan wants us to forget about God’s glory and praise. He wants us to take all the good things in life, whether people or things, and turn these into our personal gods. Like Israel, he wants us to forget what God has done for us, that we would go after other idols and gods, giving them our time, energy, money, and praise. A good question to ask when tempted or questioning whether something is sinful is this: if I do this, how will it bring greater honor and glory to God? In all three of these temptations we saw Jesus’ humble and obedient reliance on His heavenly Father. Each time He was attacked, He countered the temptation with the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. And just as a soldier was well trained with his sword for battle, so too must we be well-trained soldiers with God’s Word so we can battle victoriously and effectively. And we must heed the example of Christ to resist the devil, because he will flee from us. Therefore, when you are tempted, remember Christ and His perfect, loving obedience to the Father, and go and do likewise as did Christ.

Though these are all good things to do, is this all that we are supposed to learn from this event? Was Matthew simply highlighting a random temptation from Christ’s life? Are we to simply look in this story for principles on how to combat temptation in our lives? Was Christ simply exemplifying how we ought to be more obedient in our lives? No. Such approaches fail to grasp the significance of this event. This story is not a call to arms. It was written to address and provide a remedy for our failure. And so not only did Christ obey in perfect righteousness, but by His obedience…

II. Christ obtained the perfect righteousness we need

We have heard the faint echoes of past acts of disobedience committed in the Old Testament by God’s “sons,” Adam and Israel, and at the beginning of Verses 1 we find the key to unlocking the meaning of this passage. Look at how verse 1 begins: “Then.” This word connects the temptation narrative with the preceding story chronologically. All of the synoptic Gospels not only include this temptation narrative, but if you were to put the three Gospels side-by-side, you will notice that the temptation event immediately follows Christ’s baptism by John the Baptist. It is at Jesus’ baptism that God the Father identifies Jesus as His Messianic Son and that Jesus identifies with sinners in His baptism. But what is the significance of His baptism in relation to His temptation? Matthew has already linked Israel to Christ in Matthew 2:15 where he says that Christ fulfilled the words originally spoken of the nation Israel in Hosea 11:1, “Out of Egypt I called my son.” But Matthew continues to apply this Israel-Christ typology in verses 1 and 2: “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.” Israel, God’s son, was led out of Egypt, baptized into Moses in the Red Sea, as Paul tells us in 1 Cor. 10, and then tested in the wilderness for 40 years, and here, Christ, God’s son, comes out of Egypt, is baptized by John in the Jordan, and is then led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested for 40 days. But that is not all. Turn with me to Luke 3. Notice that after Luke records Jesus’ baptism in v. 22-23, suddenly Luke inserts the genealogy of Christ. The placement of this genealogy was not random as it may seem at first. As Luke begins with Jesus and works his way backward through the genealogy, skip down to verse 38 and look what we read: “the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” And what is the next thing recorded in Luke? 4:1: “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil.” The temptation by Satan and disobedience of God’s son Adam in the garden is juxtaposed with the temptation by Satan and obedience of God’s son Jesus, the second Adam. And so, Christ comes as the true and faithful Israelite and the faithful, second Adam! Therefore, this event is not only a resisting the temptation by Satan; it is a passing the testing and probation by God. Geerhardus Vos could not have stated it better when he wrote; “The higher concern was not avoidance of loss, but the procuring of positive gain.” Christ has come as the faithful Israelite, the second Adam! Where they and we have sinned and failed, He succeeded. Israel was blemished by sin; Christ was blameless from sin. Israel played the whore; Christ purchased a whore. Israel opposed God’s laws; Christ obeyed God’s laws. Israel rebelled against God; Christ reconciled us to God; the first Adam disobeyed at a tree; the second Adam obeyed on a tree. Christ has come to undo what God’s sons, Adam and Israel, have done. He has come to gain what we have lost, to fulfill the righteousness that we have forfeited.

Friends, we will still fall and stumble as we battle the temptations and besetting sins in our lives. With great vigor we will strive to put sin to death by the grace of God, yet we will always fail to do it every time. Satan will come and will rub our failures in our face. He will tell us that we have fallen from grace, that we are cut off from Christ. That God can no longer put up with us. He will use our failures and defeats to tell us to give in because it is easier and because we have lost the fight. He will condemn, accuse, and slander us. Daily, he will bring charges against us to the Lord. Yet, we must remember the words of the Apostle Paul in Romans 8:33: “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.” We must remember Christ, because He has obtained the righteousness that we so desperately need!

Do you remember Zechariah’s vision of the high priest Joshua in Zechariah 3? There in the heavenly courtroom, Zechariah the defendant stands in filthy garments, stained with the excrement of his sins. You can imagine the putrid smell that his clothing gave off in the courtroom. And there was Satan, the prosecutor, accusing, charging, and condemning Joshua before the Lord. Yet, the Lord replies, “The Lord rebuke you, O Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” And you will remember that with God’s pronouncement, Joshua was stripped and cleansed from all of his filthy garments, and was clothed with pure, white vestments that were not of his own. They were pure garments provided by the Lord Himself.

Friends, what we must remember is that Christ obeyed in perfect righteousness not simply as a demonstration of His sinlessness, not simply as an example for us to follow. Christ faithfully endured temptation for us. He obeyed in perfect righteousness for us. By His obedience He has fulfilled all righteousness for us. It is by His obedience that He has obtained and provides the righteousness that we so desperately need. Perhaps you sit here today rotting in the filthiness of your sins. Perhaps, your soul is stained with the excrement of your transgressions. O, friend, here is Christ, given for you. He will wash and cleanse you from your sin in the fountain of His blood, and He will cover and clothe you with His pure and perfect garments of righteousness perfectly fitted for you, that you might be taken and presented before the Lord as one who is pure, spotless, and righteous in Christ.

A true scholar is one who believes the Bible (KJV) whether he understands it or not (under “Our Scriptural Bases [sic] for Burning”).

It’s never good when you come across a church who identifies themself as an “Independent Fundamental King James Version Baptist Church” (that’s a mouthful!).

You might have heard about a small Baptist church in North Carolina, Amazing Grace Baptist Church, that is making national headlines because of a book burning event that they are holding tonight.

Here’s the list of tinder:

We are burning Satan’s bibles like the NIV, RSV, NKJV, TLB, NASB, ESV, NEV, NRSV, ASV, NWT, Good News for Modern Man, The Evidence Bible, The Message Bible, The Green Bible, ect. These are perversions of God’s Word the King James Bible.

We will also be burning Satan’s music such as country , rap , rock , pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, southern gospel , contemporary Christian , jazz, soul, oldies but goldies, etc.

We will also be burning Satan’s popular books written by heretics like Westcott & Hort , Bruce Metzger, Billy Graham , Rick Warren , Bill Hybels , John McArthur, James Dobson , Charles Swindoll , John Piper , Chuck Colson , Tony Evans, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swagart , Mark Driskol, Franklin Graham , Bill Bright, Tim Lahaye, Paula White , T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn , Joyce Myers , Brian McLaren , James White, Robert Schuller, Mother Teresa , The Pope , Rob Bell, Erwin McManus , Donald Miller, Shane Claiborne, Brennan Manning, William Young, Will Graham , and many more.

No, this is not a joke, although I would “Amen” much of the Christian bestsellers they are burning!

While they argue that the KJV was inspired and preserved by God, using such passages as Psalm 12:6-7 and 2 Timothy 3:16-17, I can argue for the superiority of the KJV over any other translation by using one proof text from each of the testaments:

Isaiah 50:2
Wherefore, when I came, was there no man? when I called, was there none to answer? Is my hand shortened at all, that it cannot redeem? or have I no power to deliver? behold, at my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness: their fish stinketh, because there is no water, and dieth for thirst.

John 11:39
Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.

QED.

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