Quote of the Day

Nothing is well done by him, that beginneth not at home.  [Richard Baxter]

Calvin DID uphold the Regulative Principle of Worship!

Many times over the years, I have read some Reformed believers deny that John Calvin upheld and practiced the Regulative Principle of Worship. Much like many other things are subscribed to Calvin by people in gneral that are not true. However, I have read over time, many, many similar excerpts by Calvin as the below, clearly showing that he did uphold the Regulative Principle of Worship, re: That anything outside of Scripture was not permitted in Worship.

It might be objected that the altar at Jerusalem was also built by men, and therefore they ought to forsake it in order to approach to God. (Ex 27:1). I reply, that altar was widely different from others, for although it consisted of stone and mortar, silver and gold, and was made like others by the agency of men, yet we ought not to look at the materials or the workmanship, but at God himself who was the maker, for by his command it was built. We ought therefore to consider the essential form, so to speak, which it received from the word of God; other matters ought not to be taken into view, since God alone is the architect. (Ex 20:24-25; De 27:5-6). Other altars, though they bore some resemblance to it, should be abhorred, because they had not the authority of the word. Such is the estimate which we ought to form of every kind of false worship, whatever appearance of sanctity it may assume; for God cannot approve of anything that is not supported by his word. [Calvin's commentary on Isa 17:8]

The fair land of liberty that Scotland once was

The first thing the Reformation did for us was to emancipate our conscience. This was the point where our liberties began. The Church of Rome, putting away the Bible and presenting in its room a pretended infallible order of men, bound on the conscience whatever she was pleased to decree as truth. This was slavery. The Reformation reversed this process. Putting aside this order of pretended infallibilities, it restored the nation to the Word of God, telling every man that he was free to read it and free to interpret it. This was emancipation. Conscience awoke. Scotland was now free in soul.

We repeat it: Our liberties began with the emancipation of our conscience; and conscience next to God is the greatest moral power in the universe. Feudalism still reigned in Scotland. The nation as regarded its political and social rights was still held in thraldom; but here, in the innermost and deepest recesses of the nation, in it’s soul was a realized freedom. That freedom, like a corn of wheat fallen into the earth, could not remain alone. It was a little leaven that must necessarily leaven the whole mass.

Well, conscience was free; but a free conscience demanded an organization through which to act. As faith without works is dead, so conscience without the power of embodying itself in acts of spiritual freedom, is dead also. Shut up within itself, it is doomed to be smothered amid the ashes of its extinguished aspirations and claims. The organization which conscience, now free in Scotland, found was a Presbyterian Kirk. The men whose conscience the Word of God had liberated came together. We are an emancipated, a spiritual society, said they. We are Christ’s congregation, God’s church. Outside and all around slavery still weighed upon the people, but here, at the heart of the nation was a little kingdom of liberty, and from that centre liberty worked outwards over the entire domain of national life. The Kirk was the inner citadel of the nations liberties. It’s rise was the sure token and sign that the days of absolute monarchs and of infallible hierarchs were numbered and finished in Scotland. [J.A. Wylie]

And as the Covenanter martry said as he ascended the scaffold, “Ah the covenants, the covenants, they shall yet be Scotland’s reviving.” Tis ll we get those back in our churches, in our nations, in our lives, that remains true. As Scotland is no longer the sweet land of liberty of those days. The days were hard, they dangerous even, yet liberty flowed much freer amongst the kirk of Scotland than in our our safe and peacful by comparison days. Liberty in the soul is the only true liberty. Scotland no longer has that, nor anywhere else.

The nature of ‘feelgood’ or will-worship

When it is seen. The word נראה, (nirah,) seen, is emphatic. It means that idolaters are not guided by reason, but rather by the impressions made on their senses, like brute beasts: for as the beasts judge by feeling, smelling, and seeing, so idolaters have no other guide than the judgment of the flesh. Accordingly, if any one shall show that they are doing wrong, he will gain nothing by it. Though they have often known by experience that they gain nothing by so many laborious exertions, they will not desist from them, but will contrive new methods and introduce new modes of worship, hoping that God will approve of them. If they succeed according to their wish, they ascribe everything to their superstitions, and become more obstinate. If they perceive that they have derived no advantage, they reject their contrivances, condemn the superstitious worship, and curse their gods. In short, they rely altogether on the events, and do not judge of anything either by reason or by the word of God. The consequence is, that, as they are guided by what befalls them, they are continually changing their plans. But the Prophet appears to mean somewhat more, namely, that when their folly, in having hitherto labored to no purpose, shall have been openly manifested and exposed, the Moabites will come into the temple of Chemosh, rather through shame than in the exercise of judgment. [John Calvin's commentary on Isa 16:12]

Communion with and Conformity to the Lord

It is a transforming fellowship, and assimilates the person privileged with admission to it to Him who is conversed with, and with whom fellowship is attained unto. There is no real communion with Him but the result of it is some lineament of further likeness to Him. “We all,” said the apostle in 2 Corinthians 3:18, “beholding the glory of the Lord as in a glass, are changed (or transformed) into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.” Communion with and conformity to God have mutual influence and reciprocal force each upon other. The more communion with Him, the more likeness and conformity to Him; the more likeness to Him, the more communion with Him. Little communion with Him makes little conformity to Him, and little conformity to Him cannot but be attended with little communion with Him.  [John Carstares from the Epistle Dedicatory in James Durham's--Unsearchable Riches of Christ--sermons on the Lord's Supper]

Peace–A Blessing from God

Unless the Christian has peace, he will never have contentment, happiness, joy or any of the other similarly descriptive words, that describe our well being, or state of mind and heart, and countenance. I believe as Christians one of the best ways to build our own walls around ourselves as our defences is to keep our consciences clean. However, as I have alluded to before in previous months, the puritan way of self-examination is fast becoming a thing of the past and it’s the rarity to find it in today’s’ church by enlarge, rather than the norm. So that allows for consciences to go to sleep and never be really aware of where we are heading. Whether we are hitting the mark or falling far short of the prize and are not in fact running the race we just think we are and have deceived ourselves into believing we are, and our sleepy consciences keep us in that comfort zone.

If you look at Psalm 29, we read in verse 11, The Lord will bless his people with peace. William Gurnall had this to say on that verse from Psalm 29.

The Lord will bless his people with peace. Though some precious souls that have closed with Christ, and embraced the gospel, be not at present brought to rest in their own consciences, but continue for awhile under some dissatisfaction and trouble in their own spirits, yet even then they have peace of conscience in a threefold respect; in pretio, in promisso, in semine. First, every true believer hath peace of conscience in pretio; the gospel puts that price into his hand, which will assuredly purchase it, and that is the blood of Christ. We say that is gold which is worth gold, which we may anywhere exchange for gold; such is the blood of Christ; it is peace of conscience, because the soul that hath this may exchange it for this. God himself cannot deny the poor creature that prays on these terms: Lord, give me peace of conscience; here is Christ’s blood, the price of it. That which could pay the debt, surely can procure the receipt. Peace of conscience is but a discharge under God’s hand, that the debt due to divine justice is fully paid. The blood of Christ hath done that the greater for the believer, it shall therefore do this the less. If there were such a rare potion that did infallibly procure health to every one that takes it, we might safely say, as soon as the sick man hath drunk it down, that he hath drunk his health, it is in him, though at present he doth not feel himself to have it: in time it will appear. Secondly, In promisso. Every true believer hath peace of conscience in the promise, and that we count as good as ready money in the purse, which we have sure bond for. The Lord will bless his people with peace. He is resolved on it, and then who shall hinder it? It is worth your reading the whole Psalm, to see what weight the Lord gives to this sweet promise, for the encouragement of our faith in expecting the performance thereof. Nothing more hard to enter into the heart of a poor creature (when all is in an uproar in his bosom, and his conscience threatening nothing but fire and sword, wrath, vengeance, from God for his sins), than thoughts or hopes of peace and comfort. Now the psalm is spent in showing what great things God can do, and that with no more trouble to himself than a word speaking, “The voice of the Lord is full of majesty” Ps 29:4, “It breaks the cedars, it divides the flames, it shakes the wilderness, it makes the hinds to calve.” This God that does all this, promises to bless his people with peace, outward and inward; for without this inward peace, though he might give them peace, yet could he never bless them with peace as he there undertakes. A sad peace, were it not, to have quiet streets, but cutting of throats in our houses? yet infinitely more sad to have peace both in our streets and houses, but war and blood in our guilty consciences. What peace can a poor creature taste or relish while the sword of God’s wrath lies at the throat of conscience? not peace with God himself. Therefore Christ purchased peace of pardon, to obtain peace of conscience for his pardoned ones, and accordingly hath bequeathed it in the promise to them, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” Joh 14:27. Where you see he is both the testator to leave, and the executor of his own will, to give out with his own hands what his love hath left believers; so that there is no fear but his will shall be performed to the full, seeing himself lives to see it done. Thirdly, In semine. Every believer hath this untoward peace in the seed. “Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart.” Ps 97:11. Where sown, but in the believer’s own bosom, when principles of grace and holiness were cast into it by the Spirit of God? Hence it is called “the peaceable fruit of righteousness.” Heb 12:11. It shoots as naturally from holiness, as any fruit in its kind doth from the seed proper to it. It is, indeed, most true, that the seed runs and ripens into this fruit sooner in some than it doth in others. This spiritual harvest comes not alike soon to all, no more than the other that is outward doth; but here is the comfort — whoever hath a seed time of grace pass over his soul, shall have his harvest time also of joy. [William Gurnall on Psalm 29:11]

We see Psalm 2911 that that particular peace was promised, AFTER the storm and tempest had passed. Just like in the deliverance of his people as he brought them out of Egypt, by drying up the sea by the violence of the winds he created. It seems a very good analogy in how we go through storms and tempests in our lives, sometimes they are long, arduous, at times torturous struggles. Yet if we belong to the Lord, if we come out the other side of them and have at least gained something spiritually from the trial, that we then have that peace upon us, the Lord has blessed us with it, by the refining fire and us still standing and coming out purer than we went in. Peace in Scripture is often synonymous with prosperity, yet the best prosperity any of us can have is of a Spiritual nature. The peace in our conscience, that we are justified before God, and that we have kept short accounts as far as confessing and repenting of all known sins, then arms us and makes us stronger for the next time we are tossed by a tempest, to stand firmer and stronger. That peace is what enables us as believers to not just withstand, but overcome the daily attacks of our enemies and the devil, because the nature of it is a peace which cannot be taken away unless we choose to relinquish it. As if we are justified before God today, we shall still be justified before God tomorrow, or next week, or next year or in twenty years time. It’s something the moths and rust cannot touch, no matter what is going on around us, in our homes or how we are being attacked and persecuted. It’s an everlasting peace, given to us from our being reconciled with the Prince of Peace, and His giving us HIs peace as a blessing and fruit of that.

John Calvin on his commentary on Isa 9:6 wrote this:

The Prince of Peace. This is the last title, and the Prophet declares by it that the coming of Christ will be the cause of full and perfect happiness, or, at least, of calm and blessed safety. In the Hebrew language peace often signifies prosperity, for of all blessings not one is better or more desirable than peace. The general meaning is, that all who submit to the dominion of Christ will lead a quiet and blessed life in obedience to him. Hence it follows that life, without this King, is restless and miserable.
But we must also take into consideration the nature of this peace. It is the same with that of the kingdom, for it resides chiefly in the consciences; otherwise we must be engaged in incessant conflicts and liable to daily attacks. Not only, therefore, does he promise outward peace, but that peace by which we return to a state of favour with God, who were formerly at enmity with him. Justified by faith, says Paul, we have peace with God. (Ro 5:1.) Now, when Christ shall have brought composure to our minds, the same spiritual peace will hold the highest place in our hearts, (Php 4:7; Col 3:15,) so that we will patiently endure every kind of adversity, and from the same fountain will likewise flow outward prosperity, which is nothing else than the effect of the blessing of God.

Do not despise the Day of Small Things

And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much.
Mr 12:42 And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing.
Mr 12:43 And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury:
Mr 12:44 For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living. [Mark 12:41-41]

This is an intriguing interlude about which one seldom hears or reads comments. Especially rare are the ideas about Jesus sitting down to watch people putting their offerings in the temple treasury. Do you think the Lord Jesus still observes us when we are giving to his work? He saw the wealthy donating their large amounts: he would not despise them for that.

But then a poor widow arrives and gives all she has, and it is to this that Jesus reacts.

The Lord, possibly remembering the rich young ruler he had recently encountered (who could easily have been one of those Jesus was now watching!), assesses the relative value of the gifts, in his Father’s eyes.

They out of their ample wealth gave a portion of their substance but she out of her poverty gave it all. There was absolutely no comparison. It leaves us speechless.

What inspired this woman not only to give all she had, but to give it to a corrupt church? It could only  have been a love of the God in whom she believed and a hope that he still dwelt in the temple.

Perhaps too, it was on the authority of Jesus’ words spoken a day or two before when he cleansed the temple, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations,” that she was willing to give her all! Whatever the divine motivation, this woman gave everything, and that is the fact that startles and challenges us.  [William Still]

A Reproach unto the Church

Since the days this was written and the events in Scotland that made for it, so we have carried on from that time and still continue today. Till the divisions and rifts are healed, till we follows the old paths once again, the chruch will never gain her glory back!

There are I suppose, few or none among us, or about us, so great strangers to the observation of providential occurrences in Scotland. as to be altogether without the knowledge of what has come to pass in these days: How the holy, just and sovereign Lord, who sometimes lifted us up, has now cast us down; who crowned us with glory and honour, has stript us of our glory and made the crown to fall from our head, (though we have not said, ‘woe unto us, for we have sinned); who sometimes made us a praise in the earth, has now made us a hissing, a by-word and a reproach to all that are round about us; How He who once by our unity and one shoulder service did make us beautiful as Tirza, comely as Jerusalem, and terrible as an Army with Banners, has now alas! (which is one of the most embittering ingredients in our cup) instead of giving us one heart and one way, in his anger, divided, and sub-divided, weakened, disjointed and broken us. So that Judah vexes Ephraim, Ephraim envies Judah, and every man’s hand almost is against his brother, and through our lamentable and most unseasonable intestine jars and divisions we bite and devour one another, and are likely to be consumed one of another. [John Carstares]

More on the Islamic Terrorist attacks

This post below this post, is a post I made a few years ago, and currently resides on different blog space. But continuing the theme of Islam and we should expect to be under attack a few
thoughts:

Isa 13:3 says: I have commanded my sanctified ones, I have also called my mighty ones for mine anger, even them that rejoice in my highness.

The sanctified one’s in this case, is not in the way of righteousness, but those whom God has prepared to bring Judgment upon a people. The Islamic terrorists are not God’s sanctified ones in the way we normally use that term, but they are an excellent example of how God uses men’s evil acts as instruments for his holy purposes, without him being a perpetrator of evil. Isa was talking of the Persians and Medes, which are not too different to what we understand today as Islam.

The US and the UK in many respects depict Babylon in the ways we are far away from the God of the Bible today.

A few verses along we have:

And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames. [Isa 13:6]

Don’t our nations groan under the sins of them? Isn’t the earth literally groaning for the evil of mankind and his perpetration of sin which seems to be rifer than any age in the present day? In days of old which were plenty bad enough in and of themselves they had sins, yet we have their sins and also a whole new host of our age, that were not so rife in times previously. The modern or technological and advancement we have made as a species, brings with it good things for all of us, but we as fallen creatures abuse those things, and so they become evil tools to us, very often.

Isa 13:7 Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man’s heart shall melt:

America particularly is seen as a superpower. and our allegiance with America lends us some of that power. A Little previously in the book of Issaih’s prophecy we read how this power was indeed what made them feel safe. But our powers and wealth that creates that power could not stop the terrorists attacking us. Yet before 9-11 and subsequent smaller attacks didn’t we feel fairly secure in our wealth and power to be immune to such atrocities? I think the answer is a resounding yes. The enemy caught us sleeping, in part because we thought it couldn’t or wouldn’t happen. We depended on our wealth and power to defend and protect and armour us, instead of the Lord of Hosts, and instead of calling on Him to protect us. Which can only amount to pride.

Calvin says this:

And will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease. We must keep in mind what I have already noticed, that the Prophet yields no small consolation to the godly by assuring them that God, though he spares the inhabitants of Babylon for a time, will at length punish them for their injustice and cruelty. He expresses this still more clearly by taking notice of a particular vice, namely, pride, in consequence of which they loosed the reins, and gave unbounded freedom to their lawless desires to oppress the wretched. For this reason also he reproves their tyranny. But we ought also to draw from it a profitable doctrine, that it is impossible for us to escape punishment from the Lord, if we are puffed up with vain confidence and flatter ourselves. The Prophet here includes every kind of pride; whether men think that they are something, or admire their riches, and despise others in comparison of themselves. God cannot endure any arrogancy, or suffer it to pass unpunished. Seeing therefore, that among a great variety of other crimes with which Babylon abounded, this was the greatest and most remarkable, it was chiefly by their pride that the wrath of God was kindled.

Yet what has been the result of the terrorists attacks on our countries? A turning to and relying on God as our defence more and more? No, I would say the exact opposite is true. and I think some of the things I reference to in my original post below from a few years ago, still shows what pride and arrogance exists in even Christendom. As we point the fingers at everyone else, and in doing so, we fail to see God speaking. Fail to heed his warnings and threatenings, and I can only imagine that there may well be worse to come, unless we turn from our wicked ways.

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.[2 Chron 7:14]

The post formerly titled “Tender Moments”

Does anyone remember Sept 11 for anything BUT The World Trade Centre collapsing in 2001? I
saw a documentary not long ago on British Independent TV, and how a priest from that time,
who was a Fire service chaplain, people were advocating him for sainthood, and that if any
phoenix could rise from the ashes it ought to be Father Michael Judge, the homosexual
priest. People need their heroes. The above kind of person fits and fulfils many peoples
needs in this kind of thing. I recall after the WTC of 2001 Falliwell and Robinson I think?
stood on the steps of somewhere and said, oh This is God’s judgement against our country for
the spread of homosexuality and abortion. And in part they may be right. But it’s easy for us
to point at a sin which is and has never been our particular sin, as being the sole cause
for anything, and to not look at ourselves and those around us within our circles and see
that each of us has enough sin to drown the world in a plague if God so wished to judge. Its
not just homosexuality or the murder of innocent babies, (though I condone neither) it’s my sin
and your sin, and every single person who ever drew breath apart from Our Lord. Did you
notice Isaiah when giving His prophecy put the judgement for the people square at his own
front door as well as everyone else. His lips were just as unclean as any of the peoples
Isaiah 6:5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live
among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” (Whole
Chapter: Isaiah 6 In context: Isaiah 6:4-6)

Some people tend to ask where you were and what you were doing when you heard of the WCT. I
was listening to online radio, and as always when here my mail is open. And I saw those I
knew expressing their shock and horror and amazement. Datarat puffed his chest up proudly
and uttered much the same as Falliwell and Robbins. My friend Jerry, aka raging Calvinist,
who seemed often to be a lone sane voice in those days, amongst much madness, the height of
which had culminated in one final act of madness and the destruction of the WCT, well, he
said he was going to wrestle with his kids, and just be silly people. it may not have been
as prophetic as DataRat and some other people I knew who were speaking online at that time,
but it was human, well focused and straight to the heart.. As often, we can make great
statements and be blowing in the wind, and not take note or cherish the tender moments of
those we love and who care for us. And time goes by, and the chance is gone. Another
September 11 happens and destroys our dreams we can never get back. The tender moments, are
what keeps sanity in an ever changing, ever hardening, ever uncaring largely unloving
largely God-hating world.

Lamentation of a sinner

The Lamentation of a sinner M.

O Lord turn not away thy face,
from him that lieth prostrate,
Lamenting fore his sinful life,
before thy mercy gate,
which gate thou openest wide to those,
that do lament their sin,
Shut not that gate against me Lord,
but let me enter in.
And call me not to mine accounts,
How I have lived here:
For then I know right well, O Lord,
How wise I shall appear:
I need not to confess my life,
I am sure thou canst tell:
What I have been, and what I am,
I know thou knowest it well,
O Lord thou knowest what things be past,
And eke the things that be.
Thou knowest also what is to come,
Nothing is hid form thee:
Before the heavens and the earth were made
Thou knewest what things were then:
As all things else that hath been since,
Among the Sons of men.

And can the things that I have done,
Be hidden form thee then?
Nay nay thou knowest them all, O Lord,
Where they were done and when.
Wherefore with tears I come to thee,
To beg and to entreat:
Even as the Child that hath done evil,
And feareth to be beat.
So come I to thy mercy gate
Where mercy doth abound,
Requiring mercy for my sin,
To heal my deadly wound.
O Lord, I need not to repeat,
What I do beg or crave:
Thou know’st , O Lord, before I ask,
The thing that I would have.
Mercy good Lord, mercy I ask,
This is the total sum:
For mercy Lord is all my suite,
Lord let thy mercy come. [From the Genevan Psalter]