Category: Recommended

yep, I recommend this link, article or whatever it is

“Amazing Grace in the Life of William Wilberforce” by John Piper

~ Bob Hayton ~ 4 Comments

I have finished Piper’s little book Amazing Grace in the Life of William Wilberforce. It was excellent! You should look into getting some for evangelistic reasons, as people will be interested when you tell them that this is the 200th anniversary of the banning of the slave trade (by Britain).

The last two chapters were most captivating, as they looked into Wilberforce’s contagious Christian joy and his beliefs on the importance of doctrine. Again, the book is available to read for free online, and it would be well worth your time.

I would like to provide some excerpts here as I can’t help but spread some wisdom from Wilberforce.

My grand objection to the religious system still held by many who declare themselves orthodox Churchmen…is, that it tends to render Christianity so much a system of prohibitions rather than of privilege and hopes, and thus the injunction to rejoice, so strongly enforced in the New Testament, is practically neglected, and Religion is made to wear a forbidding and gloomy air and not one of peace and hope and joy. [Wilberforce in response to someone expressing their mistrust of joy. (pg. 62 in Amazing Grace in the Life of William Wilberforce, by Piper)]

A Prayer during a season of darkness, when he was fighting for joy:

Lord, thou knowest that no strength, wisdom or contrivance of human power can signify, or relieve me. It is thy power alone to deliver me. I fly to thee for succor and support, O Lord let it come speedily; give me full proof of thy Almighty power; I am in great troubles, insurmountable by me; but to thee slight and inconsiderable; look upon me O Lord with compassion and mercy, and restore me to rest, quietness, and comfort, in the world, or in another by removing me hence into a state of peace and happiness. Amen. [pg. 64]

Pleasure and Religion are contradictory terms with the bulk of nominal Christians. [pg. 64]

[It is a] “fatal habit to consider Christian morals as distinct from Christian doctrines.” [pg. 72]

From Piper’s conclusion to the book:

Is it not remarkable that one of the greatest politicians of Britain and one of the most persevering public warriors for social justice should elevate doctrine so highly? Perhaps this is why the impact of the church today is as weak as it is. Those who are most passionate about being practical for the public good are often the least doctrinally interested or informed. Wilberforce would say: You can’t endure in bearing fruit if you sever the root.

…Wilberforce lived off the “great doctrines of the gospel,”….This is where he fed his joy….The joy of the Lord became his strength (Neh. 8:10). And in this strength he pressed on in the cause of abolishing the slave trade until he had the victory.

Therefore, in all our zeal today for racial harmony, or the sanctity of human life, or the building of a moral culture, let us not forget these lessons: Never minimize the central place of God-centered, Christ-exalting doctrine; labor to be indomitably joyful in all that God is for us in Christ by trusting his great finished work; and never be idle in doing good—that men may see our good deeds and give glory to our Father who is in heaven (Matt. 5:16).

This book is available for purchase at the following sites: Amazon.com or direct from Crossway.

Amazing Grace and Martin Luther King Jr. Day

~ Bob Hayton

Many Christians, especially strongly conservative Christians, begrudge the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I know I did (at one time). I, along  with others, lamented that President’s Day or the birthdays of Lincoln and Washington were not given as much press and esteem as MLK Day. And I bought into  rumors concerning the underhanded tactics of King, as a way to discount any reflection on his life. And  I learned little of his life or his cause in the Christian education I received growing up.

My freshman year at college, however,  when we had two freshman black male students (which was much more than normal for our fundamentalist institution), the typical disdain for MLK Day did not go over very well. They were alarmed and incensed that us “white boys” could not or would not esteem MLK. Of course none of us white boys owned up to any degree of racist tendencies in ourselves either. We treated everyone the same, we thought, and since we were white, we never felt the truth to be otherwise.

Since leaving fundamentalist circles, I have come to appreciate the issue of racial harmony and racial justice much more. This is in large part to our church which takes a stand for racial harmony, and our pastor (John Piper) who preaches one or two messages on the topic each year around MLK day. You see, it is easy for me, a “white boy”, to go through many days without thinking of the issue at all. But for blacks, in countless  though often subtle ways, they are reminded of the issue day in and day out.

This post is not going to explore the issue any more than this. If you’d like to do so, check out the list of sermons and articles on the topic available at Desiring God. Instead this post wants to highlight a less well known hero in the matter of racial justice: William Wilberforce.

Amazing Grace in the Life of William Wilberforce by John Piper -- Click to orderWilliam Wilberforce was the man most responsible for stopping slavery in Great Britain. As a member of Parliament, he fought 20 years to end the slave trade, and then another 26 years to make slavery itself illegal. This year, we are coming up on the 200th anniversary of the ending of the slave trade in Britain. Feb. 24th 2007 it will be 200 years. In honor of this milestone, a movie will be released in February entitled “Amazing Grace: The William Wilberforce Story”. I have heard that it will be quite good and historically accurate. You can check out the movie’s website and trailer here.

John Newton, as you know, wrote that most famous of songs: “Amazing Grace”. But you may not know that at one time he was himself a captain of a slave trading ship. In fact he ended up becoming a white slave himself for a time. Newton was a friend of Wilberforce, and truly the outlawing of slavery is an act of amazing grace: hence the title for the movie.

With the day off today, I have been reading through a new book by John Piper on this very subject. It is entitled Amazing Grace in the Life of William Wilberforce. It  was timed to be available in conjunction with the movie’s release, and you can order a copy (or copies) here. You can even read it online here.

The book highlights the amazing life of Wilberforce. William was a truly evangelical Christian and he endured despite tremendous opposition for decades in his fight to end slavery precisely because he was Christian. In today’s world where Christianity is so despised, it is good to remember that the end of slavery is one of Christianity’s gifts to the world! Piper highlights what made Wilberforce tick, and the answer will surprise you. Wilberforce thought the “peculiar doctrines” of Christianity were essential for proper morals and public morality. He despised the divorcing of doctrine from Christian ethics which in his day was already becoming popular. And Wilberforce, as Piper would term it, was a Christian Hedonist. He prized the importance of a deep joy in God.

So on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, stop and ponder the issues of racial harmony in your own life. And pause and reflect on God’s wonderful grace in Wilberforce’s life. Again, the book is available online for free (as a pdf file). So when you have some time this week give it a read (it is short, only about 75 pages).

Bobspotted Blogroll: January 13, 2007

~ fundyreformed ~ 11 Comments

Well, I have been exceptionally busy this week and have not kept up on the blogosphere (or contributed to it) as much as I’d like. So I thought I’d put together a good blogroll for you all. And in truth, there really were a lot of good posts out there to highlight. Some of these, particularly the last two, I could devote whole posts to, but won’t due to time constratints.

Expositional Preaching

  • Joe at the Big Orange Truck recounts the benefits of his first full year of expositional preaching.

    • …I have learned more Bible in one year of expositional sermon preparation than I did in 4 years of Bible college….

The Bus Ministry

  • Mike Hess of Extreme Fundamental Makeover wrote an interesting piece entitled “Bowing at the Altar of our Methodologies“.

    • …we have become dependent and downright addicted to particular methodologies in fundamentalism. If you don’t believe me, then I challenge you to go into your average IFBx church and propose to them that it may NOT be a good idea for them to have a bus ministry…. To say that every church should have a bus ministry is like saying every church should have a gymnasium or Christian school. It simply does not fit into the framework of every church.

Fundamentalism Happenings

  • Dan Burrell gave a list of the Top 10 Fundamentalist Stories of 2006 over at Sharper Iron. It is a good read for sure, and you might want to check out his picks for the top 10 stories in Evangelicalism too. From his list of Fundamentalist stories, two in particular grabbed my attention:
    • The first is of more examples of strange doctrine coming from First Baptist of Hammond, IN. In fact, it seems more like blasphemy than just “strange”, as Jack Schaap in a book on marriage claims that the believer has “spiritual sex” with Christ through communion. Just to be clear, Dan provides solid documentation for these claims.
    • Then, Dan highlights the move among fundamentalists to work closely with the Southern Baptist Convention. His own church hosted the first meeting of the International Baptist Network, last year, which saw representatives from independent groups as well as the SBC meeting together. He also mentions a couple churches which have officially joined their local Southern Baptist organizations, while keeping ties with independents as well. One of those churches happens to be one I have visited before: Decatur Baptist Church in Decatur, AL. I, for one, think such moves toward fellowship between independents and the SBC is a great thing. Imagine many of the different varieties of Baptist working together to advance the cause of Christ! Hey, this might be more than just a dream.

Calvinist-Arminian Debates in Perspective

  • Apparently, the Pyromaniacs has been involved in a disagreement involving Calvinism, lately. It involves an evangelistic video and some Calvinist criticisms of it. Of course I’m sure the whole Calvinist-Arminian debate has entered into the fray, too. To be honest, I haven’t read the debate enough to take sides, but I wanted to point out a great post that Dan Phillips gave in the midst of the debate. He quotes an exchange between the Calvinist Charles Simeon and the Arminian John Wesley. That exchange is well worth a brief read, as it puts the whole Calvinist-Arminian debate in its proper perspective.

Movies and More

  • If you have been following Sharper Iron’s posts on whether movies are an acceptable medium for Christians or not, you’ll already have seen this. But the rest of you may be interested. Kevin Bauder, whose opinion is always worth reading, is giving a series of posts on the nature of theater or film and its use among Christians. The latest post again stresses that for 1900 years the church largely rejected the medium, and so we would do well to learn why. I don’t disagree that it would be important to know why, and so I am looking forward to future installments of the series. But I tend to agree more with Chuck Hervas, whose recent reply to Bauder’s third article was posted on Sharper Iron’s front page.
  • My friend John Chitty, is also a movie enthusiast, and he directs our attention to the upcoming movie on William Wilberforce’s life. He also points out where to get a free pdf file of John Newton’s Olney Hymns.

Anyone Seen the Big Cheese?

  • Tom Pryde of NeoFundamentalist has a great post entitled “Fire the Big Cheese“. That post details how some leaders, fundamentalist or otherwise, abuse their leadership and are like a big stinking hunk of limberger cheese. (Okay the nasal slam was my innovation.) He offers some good advice in both spotting and dealing with such individuals.

Destructive Theology

  • William Dudding of The Reforming Baptist has a stinging post entitled deductive theology. He does an excellent job of showing how one’s theology influences their philosophy which then affects their methodology and ultimately the end result. He is right on in describing this connection. Unfortunatley, however, he is just as right in describing a typical scenario in many IFB or IFBx churches. And it all starts with man-centered theology. You have to read his post, but let me quote a few sentences to convince you to go over and read it.

    • The philosophy behind the music is that they don’t want to be like the world, so they adopt a style of music that isn’t popular anymore, they are against immorality, so they put lot’s of restrictions on people to keep them from getting close to being immoral…however, the weak ones can’t follow the rules and they fall and ruin their lives; people drop off the bandwagon, so they preach faithfulness and put guilt on people for missing a service. New people seem to come and go like a revolving door because they push a hard soul winning and bus ministry agenda that keeps the numbers up, yet the majority of them don’t stick around for any substantial length of time. Why does this church think this way and do these things?

Answering KJV Only Accusations

  • I hope to post more on the KJV issue in months to come, and I hope to do more work on my KJV Only Debate Resource Center. But I recently read three great articles on the topic from Fred Butler at Hip and Thigh. Fred has an 11 part series dealing with the primary arguments for KJV Onlyism, as well as several other good articles on the subject. You can read all his stuff on the KJV issue here. The articles I want to point you to, however, are from his answering a list of 33 questions from a KJV Onlyist: questions that modern Bible version (MBV) people are supposedly afraid to answer. In all reality the questions are more like baseless accusations than honest questions, yet Fred does a great job treating each one. He does so in three articles under the heading “Answers that KJV onlyists are afraid you will provide” [part 1, 2, and 3]. A sentence (from part 2) that highlights a point I have tried to make before myself, follows:

    • The Received Text was used, not because it was considered orthodox and the pure Word of God over other rival texts, but because it was the only one really accessible to the general public for use in translating.

There's Still Time. Use the Bethlehem Bible Reading Plan.

~ fundyreformed

There is still time to use the Bethlehem Baptist Bible Reading Plan this year. My church (Bethlehem) has been using the Discipleship Journal plan for fifteen or more years now. And  we have come up with some great bookmarks with the plan on them. The bookmarks are free (see side one here and side two here) and would be a great help in reading through the Bible this year.

The plan is unique in that it has you reading in 4 places each day, and also gives you only 25 assigned readings per month. This helps if you miss one or two  days, because you don’t have to feel like you’ll never be able to catch up. If you do the plan faithfully, you’ll have five or six days at the end of each month to do some personal study of your own.

If you have already begun another plan, it would be simple to switch to this one. The bookmarks are easy to print off and use. Also, let me encourage you to plan on memorizing verses this year. Bethlehem has a fighter memory verse plan which you could adapt as well.

May we all grow closer to God this year through diligent study of His Word!

Satan's Two Lies

~ fundyreformed ~ 2 Comments

This week I am  quite busy with training for a new position at my job. But let me do a brief post and encourage you all to read, listen to, or watch my pastor’s (John Piper) latest sermon. It is on the importance of having God’s Word abide in us. In the sermon, Piper gave a very helpful summation of Satan’s tempting work. I reproduce the section it is from below. May God use this simple word to encourage and help us in our fight against sin.

And temptation is of every sort imaginable. Don’t just think of immoral behaviors. Think of cancer and his temptation to destroy your faith that way. Think of unbearable pain.

Think of the loss of loved ones, and the sickness of your children, and financial hardship, and marriage tensions, and political strife, and natural disasters, and threatening crime, and mob violence. The word for temptation in Greek (peirasmos) is the same for both testing and tempting. The reason is that all temptation tests your faith, and all testing of your faith is a temptation to forsake the faith.

So when 1 John 2:14b says, “You are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one,” it includes: You have overcome the temptation to live in sin, and you have passed the test that might have destroyed your faith.

How does the word of God help us do that? I will put it in a very few sentences. Satan tempts and tests in only one way: He lies. And in all his lying, it boils down to two lies. In every test, his lie is: God is bad. And in every temptation his lie is: Sin is better. God is bad and sin is better. He has one tune to play, and he plays it in a thousand ways.

[read it all]