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Be careful

October 14, 2011 in Ministry Tools, Quotes, Reading Notes with 0 Comments

Some of us have thought it our miserable duty to read certain books that have been brought out against the truth, that we might be able to answer them; but it is a perilous calling. The Lord have mercy upon us when we have to go down into these sewers; for the process is not healthy!

Spurgeon, C. H. (2005). Exploring the Mind and Heart of the Prince of Preachers: Five-Thousand Illustrations Selected from the Works of Charles Haddon Spurgeon (12–13). Oswego, IL: Fox River Press.

We should spend the majority of our time studying truth, teaching and preaching it! Amazingly many of us prefer to get into the defense mode. We want to defend the Bible and spiritual truths. We fail to realize that the Bible, God, salvation, etc do not need to be defended just preached.

The greatest defense is an offense. We seem to be too worried about what will happen with the church in the future. That is not ours to worry about. It is ours to live every day to His honor and glory. It is ours to preach with all our hearts the truths that we know. As we teach and preach God will move and He will prove that His Word is true.

If you lower yourself to argue with those that attack the truth you lose. You allow the devil to get you off track. While you could have been preaching you are now defending. While you could have been lifting Jesus high you spend your time arguing.

No one really wins an argument. Arguments tend to only make people mad and even more entrenched in their position.

Often when we drink so much poison as we try to fight against it we do more harm to ourselves than good for others.

What a privilege to tell others the truths that have taken such a hold on us! Don’t cast your pearls before swine. Teach them about Jesus and His truth!

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Mission boards fighting with Missionaries!

October 13, 2011 in Ministry Philosophy, Reading Notes with 0 Comments

Over the years that I have been in the ministry I have seen problems between missionaries and pastors back in the USA. I have seen the problem between the mission agency and the missionaries. I thought that it was interesting that this problem is not new nor are the causese. Read the following article and see what it says. Think on it either as a missionary or a pastor!

One regrettable incident marred BMS history early in the nineteenth century. The “Serampore Controversy,” named for the major mission station in India, alienated veteran missionaries and for a number of years caused schism in the mission work.

Several factors led to that unhappy conflict.

Upon Fuller’s death, leadership passed to younger hands, and BMS headquarters were moved to London in an effort to enlist nationwide support. The new leaders did not personally know Carey, Ward, and Marshman.

They also held quite different views of mission administration.

Whereas Fuller had treated the missionaries as trusted friends and colleagues, leaving all important policy decisions to be made on the field, the new leaders took a more directive approach.

In 1818 John Dyer of Reading was employed as corresponding secretary and, thus, became one of the first Baptist ministers to hold a full-time paid denominational post. Dyer wrote rather curt and commanding letters to the missionaries, who were not accustomed to be so addressed.

Carey later complained that Dyer’s letters “resembled those of a Secretary of State.” Clearly the trend was toward greater control and policy making at the home base rather than on the field.

One point in dispute was control of mission property. Carey and the other pioneers had to shape their mission methods and policy de novo, by trial and error. They had no backlog of missionary history or precendent to draw on, no earlier colleagues on the field to guide them. Unlike most modern foreign missionaries, they made learning trades a priority so they could earn a livelihood and become financially independent of the sponsoring society as soon as possible. All of the Serampore triumvirate earned far more than a living, and they plowed the excess back into printing presses and other mission property. While all property was used for mission work, the missionaries insisted upon retaining title and control over properties purchased from their own earnings. To what extent society funds may have gone into properties held by the missionaries was sharply disputed.

The new leaders made rather sweeping accusations; in retrospect, their charges seem unnecessarily harsh. Carey, Ward, and Marshman were accused of having “amassed extensive property, and thereby enriched themselves and their families, while they had been unmindful of the great cause to which they originally devoted themselves.” Marshman and Ward returned to England to meet with the officials, but their efforts at peace proved fruitless.

Carey wrote, “We are your brothers, not your hired servants. We have always accounted it our glory to be related to the Society … and we shall rejoice therein so long as you permit us, but we will come under the power of none.” In 1827 the BMS and the Serampore Mission parted ways.

Never again was Carey in fellowship with the society he had helped to form.

McBeth, H. L. (1987). The Baptist heritage (297–298). Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

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John Newton REFORMED SLAVE TRADER

October 12, 2011 in Biographies, Reading Notes with 0 Comments

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”

It is probably the most famous hymn in history:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.

Though some today wonder if the word wretch is hyperbole or a bit of dramatic license, John Newton, the song’s author, clearly did not.

Slave trader
Newton was nurtured by a Christian mother who taught him the Bible at an early age, but he was raised in his father’s image after she died of tuberculosis when Newton was 7.

Espousing freethinking principles, he remained arrogant and insubordinate, and he lived with moral abandon: “I sinned with a high hand,” he later wrote, “and I made it my study to tempt and seduce others.”

The sluggish sailor was transferred to the service of the captain of the Greyhound, a Liverpool ship, in 1747, and on its homeward journey, the ship was overtaken by an enormous storm. Newton had been reading Thomas a Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ, and was struck by a line about the “uncertain continuance of life.” He also recalled the passage in Proverbs, “Because I have called and ye have refused, … I also will laugh at your calamity.” He converted during the storm, though he admitted later, “I cannot consider myself to have been a believer, in the full sense of the word.”

Amazing hymnal

In 1769, Newton began a Thursday evening prayer service. For almost every week’s service, he wrote a hymn to be sung to a familiar tune. Newton challenged Cowper also to write hymns for these meetings, which he did until falling seriously ill in 1773. Newton later combined 280 of his own hymns with 68 of Cowper’s in what was to become the popular Olney Hymns. Among the well-known hymns in it are “Amazing Grace,” “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken,” “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds,” “O for a Closer Walk with God,” and “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood.”

In 1787 Newton wrote Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade to help William Wilberforce’s campaign to end the practice—“a business at which my heart now shudders,” he wrote. Recollection of that chapter in his life never left him, and in his old age, when it was suggested that the increasingly feeble Newton retire, he replied, “I cannot stop. What? Shall the old African blasphemer stop while he can speak?”

Galli, M., & Olsen, T. (2000). 131 Christians everyone should know (88–90). Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

The Gloomy Voice of Unbelief

October 11, 2011 in Ministry Philosophy, Reading Notes with 0 Comments

It is not hard to believe that God can or even that He does. It is hard to believe that He will do it with me, right here, and right now!

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
—Hebrews 11:1

The voice of unbelief says, “Yes, I’m a believer. I believe the Bible. I don’t like those modernists, liberals and modern scientists who deny the Bible. I would not do that for the world. I believe in God, and I believe that God will bless.” That is, He will bless at some other time, in some other place and some other people. Those are three sleepers that bring the work of God to a halt. We are believers and we can quote the creed with approval. We believe it, but we believe that God will bless some other people, some other place, some other time—but not now, not here and not us.…

If we allow the gloomy voice of unbelief to whisper to us that God will bless some other time but not now, some other place but not here, some other people but not us, we might as well turn off the lights because nobody will get anywhere.…

The average evangelical church lies under a shadow of quiet doubting. The doubt is not the unbelief that argues against Scripture, but worse than that. It is the chronic unbelief that does not know what faith means.

Lord, today I claim three words to take with me through the day—now, here, us. Thank You that I can claim these and they can change my life. Amen.

Tozer, A. W. (2001). Tozer on Christian leadership : A 366-day devotional. Camp Hill, PA.: WingSpread.

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ANNIHILATIONISM

October 10, 2011 in Reading Notes with 0 Comments

I have heard a great deal about Annihilationism here lately. That is the thought that there is no hell and that we will just die like an animal with no after life. I believe it to be a lie of the devil trying to deceive you.

There is life after death. You will live forever either in Heaven or Hell. You must be saved today! Jesus has paid all the price. All that you need to do is believe.

Below are some quotes by Charles Spurgeon. Maybe these could help you think about what you are proposing!

Let us think what that death is! It is not non-existence; I do not know that I would lift a finger to save my fellow-creature from mere non-existence. I see no great hurt in annihilation; certainly nothing that would alarm me as a punishment for sin. WCo133

While you shall not see life, you shall exist in eternal death, for the wrath of God cannot abide on a non-existent creature. 1012.538

If I believed that sinners could be annihilated I should have no particular reason for preaching to them; in fact, I should have a very urgent reason for never doing anything of the kind. 1130.501

There is further cause for comfort in the fact that, through death, Christ destroyed the devil. Those persons who always interpret the word “destroy” as meaning “annihilate” would do me a very great favour if they could really prove to me that Jesus Christ annihilated the devil. 3286.41

Spurgeon, C. H. (2005). Exploring the Mind and Heart of the Prince of Preachers: Five-Thousand Illustrations Selected from the Works of Charles Haddon Spurgeon (10). Oswego, IL: Fox River Press.

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