spiphywarfare

Author: Derek

  • Drowning in Sin – We Should not Forget

    The wife and I were sitting on the patio yesterday. She let out a slight exclamatory sound and then informed me there was a bird in our pool. I went over an look at this poor guy flapping like crazy to keep his head above water. 

    I got the net and scooped him out. I didn’t know if he was going to make it. He looked like a baby bird. Most of his skin was showing. He was weakened, visibly shivering, and mostly limp once he was out of the pool. In short, he looked pathetic.

    I just laid the net on some ground cover and left him there. As my wife and I continued our discussion, I would look over occasionally and comment about how he was still shivering and hadn’t moved.

    I went and picked him up again. I moved him to on top of a cloth shade we have hanging near the patio to keep out the summer sun. He was directly exposed to the sun and a little breeze. He shivered a while longer. He finally stopped shivering and I gave him a caterpillar to keep him company. 

    Shortly after I noticed the caterpillar was gone and he had moved a bit. Next thing I know he’s sitting on the roof tweeting away and looking fluffy, dry, and healthy. A moment later he flew away.

    I sat and wondered how often we do that spiritually. We get caught in sin and we’re literally on our way to dying in it. No amount of our own effort can free us. Struggling only makes us more tired and pathetic. God, with no obligation to, comes, frees us, puts us where we can be safe, and gives us what we need to be healthy again.

    How often does that happen? We feel like we finally got our life back in order and we fly off, never again to think of the great danger we were in. Forgetting, until next time, the God who rescued us.

  • Smoke time

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    Smoke time
    Love playing matchmaker Just introduced these guys to a pork butt I know

  • “Big Bang” Racism. Wut?

    I spend between seven and eight hours commuting each week. Over the past few years I’ve subscribed to twelve podcasts and several YouTube channels to make this time useful (I only listen to the YouTube videos). Several of these podcasts/channels I only open once in a while and scroll through to see if they have any interesting content headlines. Others get listened to when they put out a new one. Only twice have I found content so good that I go back and start listening to older content.

    That’s how I cam to be listening to an episode of the Just Thinking Podcast titled “Big Bang” Racism from December 2017 on the drive to work this morning. Once again, Darrell and Virgil drop truth bombs with pinpoint accuracy. As usual, those bombs are dropped from Scripture.

    If you haven’t listened to them before, do it. What you will find is a couple of believers who, once they start getting into the subject, start driving points home like an M240 driving lead downrange and, also like it, they are smoking hot before they’re finished.

    Two of those points in this podcast hit me. One was regarding social justice and the gospel. As I said, they always turn to scripture. Now, too many times I hear “woke” preachers talking about “Jesus saves and all that BUT… if you want the full gospel you have to ________ (insert current favored social justice issue).” I’ve read Romans 1:16 many times but never has it been pointed out so clearly that God’s Word tells us exactly what the gospel is for: “…it is the power of God for salvation.” There are no bullet points or list of other things it is for. It is for salvation.

    This episode also drives home some truth about how we need to see the church. This was done in taking something I’ve been looking at all my life and making me realize I’ve not really been truly seeing it. Or maybe just reminding me of something I’ve grown so used to that I’ve forgotten.

    I told you there were two things in this podcast that really struck me. I told you about one. The other one is about an event recorded in the Bible that many of us have read, but maybe, like above, we’ve not really seen all of it. You’ll have to listen to find out though.

  • T. Dalrymple

  • This Year

    Ephesian 5:15 & 16 “Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk – not as unwise people but as wise – making the most of the time, because the days are evil.” (HCSB)

    That reference to making the most is literally “buying back the time” but I like the translation of “redeeming the time.” Sadly, I confess right here, I have done a poor job of redeeming the time. To be honest I’d say I’ve wasted too much of it. Left me do that no more. My primary, though not exclusive, focus for the near future on this blog, and elsewhere, will be on The Church. More on why and what that means in this video:

  • Dear Fellow SBC-Affiliated Church Member: What are you Funding?

    I fear too many members of SBC churches are giving money, intending to further the Gospel of Christ, and unknowingly funding the teaching of a false Gospel in our seminaries. This is happening through professors and leaders who embrace false teachings and knowingly hide what they are doing.

    Walter Strickland is one such professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Like other SBC affiliated seminaries, some of their funding comes through the SBC Cooperative Program which gives about 22 percent of its funds to the seminaries. And?

    Strickland’s “favorite theological book of all time” is “Liberation and Reconciliation: A Black Theology,” in his own words​1​ (Jude Three Project, 2016). In this book, author J. Deotis Roberts writes that Black Theology needs “to be informed not only by the Christian faith but by the explorations into the unconscious by Freud and his associates, as well as the analysis of social, economic, and political ills by Marx and other social philosophers” (Roberts, 2005, p. 54) ​2​. He also claims that “Whites desire to be ‘as gods’ to blacks” and claims they become angry if blacks respond with Matthew 23:9 (Roberts, 2005, p. 57). He also claims that whites are collectively guilty of racism and should be haunted by the sins of the fathers and mothers (Roberts, 2005, p. 57). Whites appear to be reduced to viewing blacks in one of two ways: they can be overt racist that hate blacks, in which case they can change and be reconciled in love to blacks; or they can be “not aware of any race problem” and therefore be guilty of “preconscious racism” (Roberts, 2005, p 53).

    Our Lord and Savior taught in Matthew 12:31 that “every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” There is one. One. Unforgivable. Sin. What does Strickland’s all-time favorite theological book teach? Roberts writes on page 59 that “Preconsious racism is a type of [emphasis added] ‘unpardonable sin’” (2005) that cannot be forgiven of since it can’t be recognized and repented of. By classifying it as a “type of” unpardonable sin Roberts contradicts a direct teaching of Christ. If whites won’t admit they are racist, they can’t be forgiven of sin.

    Strickland also embraces the teachings of James Cone. The New York Times reports that “Reading the black liberation theologian James Cone helped Mr. Strickland, the theology professor, see how white theologians often ignore the structural sources of earthly suffering” ​3​ (Worthen, 2019). Strickland states in this article that Cone’s ideas “are in play” but he won’t actually use his name when he’s speaking to white congregations. Wonder why?

    Perhaps here would be an appropriate place to draw on the efforts of Neil Shenvi, a Christian apologist who has done excellent work in the area of Critical Race Theory. His page of quotes from Cone’s “A Black Theology of Liberation” could shed light on why Mr. Strickland feels the need to sneaks Cones theology “in the back door by walking around the linguistic land mines” when it comes to orthodox Christianity (Worthen, 2019). Go to Shenvi’s page above and you can find quotes about “taking honkies out,” about the Bible not being infallible, how “God was not the author of the Bible,” and discover that, the teaching Strickland brings into churches and the seminary has this as its goal: “The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods” (Shenvi, unk)​4​.

    Finally, while I’m not sure what I feel about the site this is hosted on, this video sounds as if he believes THE purpose of the church is to social ills. Otherwise, the gospel is just a white man’s religion (Maples, 2020)​5​.

    Walter Strickland brings perspective that is racist, violates/dismisses God’s Word, and he passes it on to our future pastors and missionaries. He is partly enabled in doing this through the giving of many unsuspecting (I hope) faithful members at SBC churches across the country.

    1. 1.
      Jude 3 Project. 6 The Balanced Scholar: The Life and Work of J. Deotis Roberts | Walter Strickland. YouTube. Published October 2016. Accessed January 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxqW-HQ8Fuc
    2. 2.
      Roberts JD. Liberation and Reconciliation: A Black Theology. 2nd ed. Westminster John Knox Press; 2005.
    3. 3.
      Worthen M. Can Black Evangelicals Save the Whole Movement? New York Times.
    4. 4.
      Shenvi N. Quotes from Cone’s Black Theology of Liberation. Shenvi Apologetics. Accessed January 1, 2021. Quotes from Cone’s Black Theology of Liberation
    5. 5.
      Maples J. SBC Seminary Professor Says He Had to Embrace Another Gospel to “Keep His Faith.” Reformation Charlotte. Published November 2, 2021. Accessed January 1, 2021. https://reformationcharlotte.org/2020/11/02/sbc-seminary-professor-says-he-had-to-embrace-another-gospel-to-keep-his-faith/

  • Who’s Going to Build This Temple Anyway

    Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

    1 Corinthians 3:16 & 17

    It is a good reminder of the seriousness of caring for the Bride of Christ; as well as where our true identity lies. I love verse 16. So much so, that it is the only verse on a wall in my house. I have other ones hanging in frames, but this verse in on the wall itself. As such, it isn’t surprising that it came to mind when I was reading this today.

    Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ houses and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here.” But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers’ houses in Israel said to them, “You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God; but we alone will build to the Lord, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.” Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia. And in the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem.

    Ezra 4:1-6

    Because it has been on my mind so much lately (I think), the whole Critical Race Theory (CRT) debate came to mind on this. It has been particularly alarming to me as a long-time member of a Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) affiliated church. As I’ve read more and more on the topic, it seems the pattern for the SBC has been, “We don’t know what CRT is” → “We don’t have any CRT in the SBC or it’s seminaries” → “Well, it can be a useful analytical tool” → “CRT is incompatible with the Baptist Faith and Message” → “Fine, we’re leaving the SBC if they don’t support CRT.” Obviously that’s over simplified, but once Resolution 9 was adopted, CRT and it’s impact on the church moved front and center.

    SBC leadership has been twisting and turning, avoiding, dodging, and trying to have the church and culture too. Now, feet are being held to the fire, and folks are being made to admit that CRT is opposed to Scripture. Certain elements in the SBC now are leaving since the SBC seminaries refused to accept an opposing worldview.

    One pastor says “We out” regarding the SBC after the “final straw” which was:

    On Dec. 1, all six of the SBC seminary presidents — without one Black president or counter opinion among them — told the world that a high view of Scripture necessarily required a corresponding and total rejection of critical race theory and intersectionality.

    Religion News

    Another says:

    “I can’t sit by and continue to support or even loosely affiliate with an entity that is pitching its tent with white supremacy,”

    Washington Post

    Imagine that. These two, and others, are not leaving because of the SBC rejecting scripture, but because the SBC seminaries are rejecting a racist ideology born of a godless, truth-rejecting worldview. Marxism.

    When I read Ezra this morning, I couldn’t help but think that it provided an example of enemies of God’s people who easily lied and claimed they wanted to help build the temple. This, at a time when Israel was struggling to maintain their unique identity as God’s people.

    Today the church struggle to maintain an identity separate from the world. It’s high time we tell the divisive, lying, saboteurs that they have nothing to do with building God’s temple today. Kick them out and drive them away. Do so knowing full well they will work to discourage, frustrate, and make fearful, those who are carrying out God’s Will in building the true church.

  • Difficult Teaching from Luke 14:26

    If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

  • Campfires, Christians, and Coca-Cola?

    I have never done a reaction video but the Just Thinking Podcast, Episode 106 made me think it was time to do one. But, I don’t have time to learn new Adobe After Effects Explosion FX. Why would I need to? Myself exploding at the knowledge being dropped in this Biblical Exposition of Unity would be the only appropriate video!

    This video is 2.5 hours long. There’s a reason for that. My mind was blown by this deep-dive into what Biblical Unity really is. Darrell Harrison and Virgil Walker bring it and this was eye opening.

    Yes, the title of this blog is relevant to the podcast and YES! You will not regret taking the time to listen to this. I’m on my second listen right now.

  • December 2020 Wellness Box

    Always Love Getting our Wellness Boxes!