"What people SAY with their mouths SHOWS what's in the hearts & THOSE are the things that make people unclean"'Jesus Mt5:18 about 5 hours ago via web Retweeted by 72 people
RickWarren
Rick Warren
Rick Warren
I believe in God. I also believe God. “Discernment is not simply a matter of telling the difference between what is right and wrong; rather it is the difference between right and almost right.” -Charles Spurgeon. Scripture is my authority for all things regarding to life and godliness. 2 Cor.10:5 We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ
1. Can you give us your initial reflections on the message we just heard from Rick Warren?
Burk Parsons: I saw a man with character and with simple, childlike dependence on Christ.John Piper: "An unbelievable communicator with incredible application. Be encouraged and relax with who you are, and give it all to Jesus while learning all you can from Rick."
8. What would you say to our "non-thinkers" who are here tonight? Surely the
conference isn’t made up completely of those who consider themselves "thinkers,"
right?
Piper: There are people in here who love to think and there are others who don’t like to think. This conference is a pain in the rear end to them. They’re just here to see Warren and Piper fight. Here’s how I would say the question: What do you have to say to people who don’t want to think?
What's Warren and Piper got to do with it?
And why is Piper, who is overwhelmingly generous toward Warren since at least, his announcement of Warren speaking at the conference, yet Piper attacks and presumes upon the motives of certain people?
Where's his generosity toward them? And why does he then bring in "people who don't want to think"?
Ironically, those who have publicly rebuked Piper are the ones with the "mind of Christ", thinking biblically, and its Piper who isn't at all. He's thinking according to the flesh, and still is focused on himself and his new comrade. How is his response, which ends in a question (more POMO chaotic thinking), even beneficial to the audience?
Last question in the notes:
9. Would you connect this conference theme of the life of the mind with the person of Jesus?
Very quick answers, which given the PERSON OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST and the HOLY SPIRIT, should have been the bulk of the discussion in relation to how that affects one's mind.
Its truly sad.
Puddle deep thinking after being fed pelagian poison.We must have childlike faith, not skeptic's unbelief. Logic cannot explain any miracle, much less the Death of the Sinless Lord and His resurrection! Man's mind is as fallen and deceitful as his wicked heart.
Excerpts from John MacArthur on why we believe the Bible--and he touches on various reasons, but this struck a chord with me:
Why We Believe The Bible :
That's why when you're trying to deal with a non-believer you can stack up and stack up and stack up all kinds of evidences, all kinds of reasonable arguments. And believe me, the truth is rational. And the truth is reasonable. But that doesn't take people there. If you want to present the case for biblical authenticity and I want to do that every single time I step in this pulpit, I do not get up here and tell you what are the reasonable evidences that the Bible is true, I just open it up for it is sharper, more powerful than any other weapon. It carries its own power with it.
You either believe that a human being has a rational power on his own to ascend to the truth of God's Word or you believe he doesn't. If you believe he does, you have an unbiblical view of man. If you believe he doesn't, then you know that the power is not in evidences to the rational mind, but the power is in the proclamation of the Word of God. And what you have in ministry today that is nothing but trying to convince people with cleverness and reasonableness and whatever other manipulating forces that somehow within the heart of man is the capability for him to rise out of his spiritual death, rise out of his spiritual blindness, rise out of divine judicial blindness and on his own believe because you've made it so easy for him. Ludicrous...but it's what drives so much of so-called evangelism. The sinner's opposition to the Word of God, the sinner's opposition to divine holy truth, the sinner's opposition to the gospel does not arise from legitimate intellectual issues regarding the truth or the veracity of Scripture. It rises from the rebellion of a sinful soul and because he is natural and even at his best rational level, he cannot attain to this spiritual knowledge. Man is not the final court of appeal. You cannot let the sinner think that his reason is the deciding factor in his salvation. According to God, God is the final court of appeal. His revelation decides what's true, not man's reason. Sinners have for centuries applied their reason to the Bible and come up with all kinds of damning heresies. "And all men...writes Van Til...do their thinking on the basis of a position accepted by faith and your faith is either in God...he says...or in yourself and your reason. I will not put my faith in human reason, so I do not preach things that manipulate human reason. I preach the Word of God because my faith is in His power and His Word. Thus to know divine truth and to understand the Bible, the sinner must call on God. The sinner must be overwhelmed with the truth of the Word of God. Preach anything other than the Scripture and you are wasting your time. The sinner must understand the truth. He must have that information. He must have that interpretation. We are begotten again by the Word of Truth, but he must cry out for God to save him, to give him life, to take off the blinders, to overpower the enemy who has blinded him, to remove the things that God Himself has hidden from him and bring them into the light. The sinner has to throw himself before the throne of God and cry out with the depths of his fearful soul, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Give me an understanding of the truth." It's all the work of God.
End quote.
And this is what I've been trying to say for so long. As a pastor friend said a few years ago, most professing Christians don't think the MIND FELL along with everything else at The Fall of Adam. That's why they appeal to the the intellect, which is a grave error, since the mind is just as consumed with sin as the heart and soul.
"The Bible Is God's Word" by MacArthur:
The New Testament agrees with the Old, calling God a God of truth. John 3:33 says, "God is truthful." John 17:3, Jesus said, "That they may know You, the only true God." 1 John 5:20, "He is the true God." Three times the Scripture says God cannot lie...Numbers 23:19; Titus 1:2; and Hebrews 6:18. God cannot lie. It is impossible. The Bible is therefore infallible and inerrant because it is written by God who is truth, speaks only truth, cannot speak anything but truth.
We believe in the Word of God. We believe that it is inspired. We believe that it is without error in the original autographs and God has protected and preserved it to this day so that it substantially remains faithful to its original revelation. We believe that when the Word speaks, we are commanded to listen. That's why the Bible is the theme of everything we do. We define life and ministry in biblical terms. It is what we believe, it is how we behave and it is the message we proclaim. And the Bible claims to be the very Word of God and it does so in an unaffected and unambiguous way. Old Testament writers, for example, refer to what they wrote as the very words of God over 3800 times. New Testament writers quote the Old Testament as the Word of God 320 times and refer to it at least a thousand times. And New Testament writers repeatedly claim divine inspiration as did the Old. Jesus Himself claims that both the Old Testament and the New Testament are inspired by God.