Paul Washer and HeartCry Missionary Society

HeartCry Missionary Society held a conference on prayer in 2006 with a number of preachers.  Paul Washer took two messages to talk about missions work, which provide a significant challenge not only in regards to prayer, but in a believers entire dependancy of life on God.

In Session 3 Washer describes his conversion and his early years as a missionary in Peru.  God’s work through this humble servant is fascinating, and at the same time, utterly convicting.

In Session 5 Paul talks more about the work HeartCry is involved in across the world, and the particular principles and convictions that they operate by.  Paul explains why they are focused on supporting indiginous missionaries rather than sending missionaries.  He talks about why they send Bibles to believers and not to unbelievers.  He also cuts through the modern day missions clutter to explain how missions minded people must be primarily interested in Biblical truth.  “We send truth, not missionaries.”

I have to say this is a very impactful duo of messages.

Paul Washer’s Ministry in Peru mp3 >>>

Paul Washer on HeartCry’s Ministry mp3 >>>

Jonathan Park Creationist Radio Dramas

Have you heard of Jonathan Park?  If you haven’t you’re missing one of the best resources available for teaching kids science, apologetics, and the flaws of evolution.

I purchased the entire 6 volume set for my kids this Christmas.  We’ve loaned these out to friends and family, and in every case not only do the kids love them, both parents love them.  They are fast paced radio dramas about an evolutionist turned creationist whose entire family becomes involved in building a creation museum and interacts with the scientific communty.  It’s sort of a Nancy Drew meets Ken Hamm.

There is a Jonathan Park website that gives more information and has short excerpts of the radio dramas.  Check out this behind the scenes video.

I can’t give this a stronger recommendation.  The real beauty is that there are many difficult scientific concepts that are masterfully explained in a way that even your kids will understand. You will learn more about Creationism and defending it than you would in most conferences and seminars.  Sound far fetched?  Get the free download and listen to an entire story.  This is a fantastic tool that will equip you as well as entertain.  My kids are already on their second go around through Jonathan Park.

Jonathan Park online Store >>>

Jonathan Park at Amazon >>>

Raising the Bar: Biblical Manhood Summit

First Baptist Church in Killen, Alabama hosted Paul Washer for a summit to speak to the men.  Washer challenges men not with the challenges the world or the common challenges that most men’s conferences do.  Washer challenges men to do what the plain reading of Scripture says.

Men need to get their jobs and ministries in sync with a true belief in God’s sovereignty.  This means we don’t sacrifice our wives or children on the altar of career or ministry.  To do so is a denial of God’s sovereignty over your life.

Men are called to serve and sacrifice.  Do you care for your wife?  Do you sacrifice for her good?  Do you truly love her without condition?  Are you washing her with the Word.  Washer says, “If you’ve been married for 10 years and your wife is not any more presentable to you than she was in the first year of your marriage, you are to blame.”  Husbands must be ministering the Word of God to their wives and children, not using Scripture to prop you up as a privileged officer.

Washer also suggests that Christian dating organizations are not God’s will, because God’s will is not that you find someone who is compatible.  Very often the wife God has for you is far from compatible.  Because God’s goal for your life is Christ-likeness, not compatibility in marriage.

Paul also looks at men as fathers, and considers how our society is loosing our children because we are more concerned about socializing them with other children their age while we completely neglect having them around us while we are with other adults.  Children need to be around adults.

This is a very challenging and much needed series of 3 addresses to men.  I highly recommend them.

Paul Washer is the founder of Heart Cry Missionary Society.

Raising the Bar Session 1 mp3>>>

Raising the Bar Session 2 mp3 >>>

Raising the Bar Session 3 mp3>>>

Vern Poythress: Redeeming Science

Dr. Vern Poythress, professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, was invited to dialog with the Christ the Center team at the Reformed Forum about his book Redeeming Science.

This was a very interesting discussion about science and the place it holds for a Christian.  Poythress provided a lot of good insight and helpful approaches to dealing with skeptics.

When he began talking about the 6 days of creation I soon got lost.  Admittedly, I’m not up on all the different ways that Christians explain the 6 days of creation.  Poythress holds to an analogous perspective of the creation account — meaning that the 6 days of creation were not necessarily a 24 hour cycle, but were an much longer period — though not millions of years either.  This perspective views the 7 “days” as being an analogus pattern set by God for man to follow, even though not 24 hour days. I disagree with Poythress on this issue.

One of the primary supports for this is the perspective that God rested on the 7th day, and that day of rest is eternal because his work of creation was finished.  So, because the 7th day is eternal, therefore, strict 6-day creationists have a problem.

I didn’t understand his argument well enough to be sold on it.  Certainly, I could be missing something, but I don’t see  why Poythress places so much weight on this 7th day of rest as being eternal.  I read the Genesis creation account as being a literary unit of thought.  Certainly God has not been at rest these past 5000 years or so, and neither has been his image bearer,  man.  But the 7 day week pattern has continued.  So this view falls apart in my understanding because it’s main supporting reason seems to be flawed. 

Another reason in support of 6 24-hour days of creation is that each day creates something that cannot survive long without what will be created the following day.  God is creating an eco-system.  How do flowers and other plants survive without the insects to pollenate them, for example?  But then, some smart people look at the 6 day creation account and say that it’s not a chronological 6 days.  If that’s true, then all I have to say is “Thank you God for being misleading”.  Because then every generation of mankind for thousands of years has been mislead by God who took him to mean 6 chronological days of creation.  And so again, man elevates science over Scripture and places God in subservience to scientific perspectives. 

Despite whether you agree or disagree with Poythress, this is a very valuable discussion that will sharpen you and will help you see science as reflecting the glory of God in his created world.  The 6 day creation account is only one of the subjects discussed.

Vern Poythress: Redeeming Science >>>

Ten Indictments Against the Modern Church

What can I say about Paul Washer?  Lest I tread too closely to making too much of a man, I can’t help but be excited by a preacher who speaks for God, whose words convict and inspire awe before God and his work of the Gospel.   Here is a man who has a prophetic voice in the manner of a Tozer or Lloyd-Jones.  And in this message, Washer clearly and effectively levels ten indictments against the modern church that we must take heed of.  Here are just a few of Paul’s major points, though not necessarily his exact 10 indictments:

The modern church practically denies Scripture by embracing the sociological, the psychological and the anthropological as having authority over God’s Word.  The modern church does not know God.  The modern church has exchanged the Gospel and the power of God for tricks, techniques, and pagan-like methodologies.The modern church has robbed people of the power of the Gospel by embracing the heresy of decisionism.   The modern church is focused on prosperity and not on sin, thus defusing the one thing necessary for the Holy Spirit to deal with to restore a sinners true relationship with God.  The modern church is filled with and caters to the goats while the sheep starve under the hand of capitulating leaders.  The modern church has remained silent on the reality that God`s people are called out to be separate.  The modern church has torn Matthew 18 from Scripture, and along with it loving, compassionate church discipline.

Paul asks the loaded question of leaders, “Are you smarter than God?  Then stop acting like it!”  There is a sharp bite to Washer’s indictment, yet the cutting comes from spiritual wisdom, and one who loves Christ’s bride, the Church.

Washer spent 10 years ministering in Peru, where he started a missions organization called HeartCry Missionary Society, and has since returned to the US to oversee this organization.  He makes Grace Life Church of the Shoals his church home.

Many thanks to Chad of Christ Fellowship in Hannibal, Missouri for connecting me with Paul Washer.  You will be hearing much more about this man as my iPod is filled with Paul Washer mp3’s.

Ten Indictments Against the Modern Church >>>

A Day with Dr. Don

Don Carson recently spent a  weekend at Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill Church in Seattle, giving 5 messages.  For those of you who are Carson aficionados, a couple of these messages are repeats ones he gave last year, yet worth listening to again.

Don’s message on Revelation 12 was one I had not heard before, and deals with the Gospel in a fresh light.  He spends some time discussing how we modern Christians are largely unaware of Satan’s attack on believers, particularly in the role of accuser. Carson also unpacks a lot of the difficult terminology we find in Revelation, providing a very understandable way of looking at apocalyptic literature.  Don relates a very convincing perspective of identifying the pregnant woman in Revelation 12 as the Messianic community and the infant boy she gives birth to as the Gentile church.

In A Miracle of Surprises, Don walks us through the story of Jesus’ raising Lazarus from the dead.  He shows how Jesus purposefully delayed his visit so that Lazarus would die, so that he could provide the world a picture of himself as the being resurrection and the life.  Don explains how God’s providence is above our perceptions, and that even in what we see as intentional delays, he uses those to teach us things we would not otherwise be able to learn.  Carson spends a significant amount of time overturning many of the silly cliches that have attached themselves to this story.

This is a treasure of solid Biblical instruction that you will not want to miss.

Session 1: The Center of the Whole Bible (Romans 3:21-26)
Session 2: The Strange Triumph of a Slaughtered Lamb (Revelation 12)
Session 3: A Miracle of Surprises (John 11)
Session 4: Why Doubt the Resurrection of Jesus (John 20:24-31)
Session 5: The Ironies of the Cross (Matthew 27:27-51)

A Day with Dr. Don >>>

Calvin and the Development of Covenant Theology

The CTC team invited Peter Lillback, president of Westminster Theological Seminary, to discuss his book, “The Binding of God; Calvin’s Role in the Development of Covenant Theology”

Though I’m not of the Covenant Theology camp, this discussion at Christ the Center was helpful for me to to understand more about Covenant Theology by seeing how Calvin agreed, differed, and expressed his understanding of covenant.  Lilliback says when he began to research this subject for his dissertation, he did not bring any preconcieved paradigm to  Calvin.  Rather he just began to read the source material to see how Calvin interacted with the issue surrounding Covenant theology.

Calvin is better defined as a ‘testimentarian’, a term I am not familiar with, and Peter explains in some detail how Calvin differed from Luther and many other theologians.  A great deal of time is spent discussing where works fit into Covenant theology, and the danger of Covenant theology in bringing works to bear as a basis for God’s covenant with man, which destroys justification by faith alone.  Lilliback also turns his attention to the contemporary camp of the Federal Vision and explains what he sees are dangers with that.

This is not a discussion for everyone.  There are some very weighty theological nuances addressed, and the discussion assumes the listener has some grasp of the historical positions regarding soteriology and Covenant theology.  You could certainly learn some things here, but just be forewarned, you might do a lot of head scratching.  It certainly pushed me into new territory — all in all not a bad thing.

Calvin and the Development of Covenant Theology page >>>

An Afternoon with Milton

The Andrew Fuller Center celebrated the quartercentenary of the birth of John Milton, the author of Paradise Lost, with a number of lectures and readings from Milton.  All the short sessions are contain on a single mp3 file.

Milton was a colorful figure.  He was sometimes scandalous, sometimes politically revolutionary, very often theologically confusing, but a master of the English language.  Paradise Lost was his crowning achievement, a masterful epic poem, and an affirmation of the Christian faith.

You will enjoy these lectures if you have a love for English literature and poetry, or an interest in John Milton.  If not, these will be a struggle to get through.  The readings, unfortunately, are not particularly inspiring — a difficulty not only of the delivery, but of the poetic language.

Why listen to this?  There’s some interesting history on the life of Milton, certainly an imperfect Christian figure, but Milton stepped out and took stands on issues rather than standing on sidelines, and he is an example of a creative Christian using his skills of the English language and storytelling to create timeless works.

An Afternoon with Milton mp3 >>>

The Definitive D. A. Carson Sermon Resource

The Gospel Coalition is now the home of 443 sermons by Don Carson, all available for download free of charge.  The search tools at the Coalition site are better than most.  Carson + searchable database = theological candyland.

We have to thank Andy Naselli, Ben Peays and Ryan James for collecting, tagging and uploading all this Carson goodness.  Andy has posted some information about these uploads on his blog.  And, if you speak French or live in Quebec as I do, there’s a few Carson sermons en francais. Qu’est-ce que plus vous veulent?

Carson Archive at TGC >>>

Daryl Hart and Deconstructing Evangelicalism

Should Evangelicals abandon the label ‘Evangelical’?  Does it carry any real meaning anymore?  How did the ‘Evangelical’ movement begin, and why? Who were the key players who fueled this movement? How did Evangelicalism become so fragmented into the condition that we see today? These are just some of the questions that Daryl and the lads at CTC ask as they discuss Hart’s book Deconstructing Evangelicalism.  This is a fascinating interview.

Daryl Hart is also the author of the biography of J. Greshem Machen, Defending the Faith.

Deconstructing Evangelicalism >>>