THE MONTANIST CONTROVERSY - Wind Ministries

Found here. A very interesting perspective regarding the early church.

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TESTING THE PROPHETIC SERIES

In the 2nd century, in an area known as Phygria (present-day Turkey), a man named Montanus had been recently converted to the Christian faith. Asterius Urbanas, who wrote about the Monastist movement, described Montanus as a man with “excessive lust of his soul after taking the lead”. Montanus wanted to be the leader. In meetings, Montanus would become overwhelmed by some spiritual influence and he would prophesy. Eventually, he drew a number of people away from the churches in Phygria and they began calling themselves The New Prophecy movement.

Montanus had identified two women, Maximilla and Prisca. He convinced these women to leave their husbands through a prophetic word. Both women became integral to the New Prophecy movement. For a time, Montanus attracted the support of Tertullian, a highly respected church father of the time. This lent an air of credibility to the New Prophecy movement. Initially, it was hard to deny the attractiveness of what was happening in Phygria. They were theologically orthodox, and many were become quite passionate about the Christian way. Montanus emphasized a strict ascetic discipline as the path to spiritual maturity.

The Montanist claimed direct descendance from the prophets of the New Testament. They saw themselves as carrying on the function of the prophetic office in line with Agabus, the daughters of Philip, and two early church prophetic figures; a woman known as Ammia of Philadelphia and a man respected as a prophet named Quadratus.

PS: A final note on tax day - by Robert Reich

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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Marxists need a bad guy, and that is always a person who has more money than them. Dr. Reich intends to create discord, greed and envy based on money. Thus his article is not to inform, but to agitate.  He's an agent of the political Left, with an agenda to promulgate The Narrative in order to foment revolution.

He'd prefer to have people vote themselves into socialism, but be assured that the typical Marxist has no moral problem with bloody revolution, as we saw in the 2020 summer riots. This is the continuing history of Marxism, where only the methods have changed, but not the goals.

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Deaconesses and Female Deacons -Michelle Lesley

Found here. My comments in bold.

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As is typical for Ms. Lesley (and many of those we call the Doctrinal Police), she hardly quotes Scripture. We are continually astonished at how these teachers can write thousands of words about the Bible but can barely bring themselves to quote it.

For today's post, we think Ms. Lesley's problem is not necessarily her bad doctrine, but rather, her trust in bad translation. It seems she thinks that we should be just as confident in the translators as Scripture itself. But translators are subject to bias, cultural and political understanding, and tradition.

We do not think translators are dishonest, they are simply products of their environment and training. Generally, they do a difficult job pretty well. But not perfectly. Especially when we consider their work on 1 Timothy 3; what they tell us the Greek means borders on malpractice.

Will will demonstrate below.

Also, we note in passing the redundancy contained in Ms. Lesley's title.

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Why we lift hands, and why we should.

Recently we've been reconsidering many of the things we thought we understood regarding doctrine and faith. We have begun to question certain beliefs, church structures, and practices of the western church. Too often we have discovered unbiblical doctrines and activities. This causes us concern. We have deemed this our “Rethink.”

Our questions include, how did we arrive at our doctrines? Does the Bible really teach what we think it teaches? Why do churches do what they do? What is the biblical basis of church leadership structure? Why do certain traditions get entrenched?

It's easy to be spoon fed the conventional wisdom, but it's an entirely separate thing to search these things out for one's self. In the past we have read the Bible with these unexamined understandings and interpreted what we read through those lenses. We were lazy about our Bible study, assuming that pastors and theologians were telling us the truth, but we rarely checked it out for ourselves.

Therefore, these Rethinks are our attempt to remedy the situation.

We should note that we are not Bible scholars, but we believe that one doesn't need to be in order to understand the Word of God.

Did Jesus drink the cup of the Father's wrath?

Excerpt found here. Our comments in bold.

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There seems to be a lot of confusion and bad teaching regarding Jesus' sacrificial death. We have frequently commented on some of these errors. Therefore, we have made it a priority in our blog to examine the errant teaching regarding this.

In this excerpt, Ms. Lesley makes a couple of assertions:

Christ carried our sin. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree… (1 Peter 2:24). There’s no way we could begin to fathom what it was like for Christ to carry every single sin of billions of people in His body. But He didn’t just have the weight of that sin on His shoulders, He also propitiated God’s wrath toward every single one of those sins. God poured out the cup of His wrath for our sin and Jesus drank every last drop of it. 

So in Ms. Lesley's view, 

1) Christ bore our sin, and, 

2) Jesus drank the cup of God's wrath. 

Will all Israel be saved?

Recently we've been reconsidering many of the things we thought we understood regarding doctrine and faith. We have begun to question certain beliefs, church structures, and practices of the western church. Too often we have discovered unbiblical doctrines and activities. This causes us concern. We have deemed this our “Rethink.”

Our questions include, how did we arrive at our doctrines? Does the Bible really teach what we think it teaches? Why do churches do what they do? What is the biblical basis of church leadership structure? Why do certain traditions get entrenched?

It's easy to be spoon fed the conventional wisdom, but it's an entirely separate thing to search these things out for one's self. In the past we have read the Bible with these unexamined understandings and interpreted what we read through those lenses. We were lazy about our Bible study, assuming that pastors and theologians were telling us the truth, but we rarely checked it out for ourselves.

Therefore, these Rethinks are our attempt to remedy the situation.

We should note that we are not Bible scholars, but we believe that one doesn't need to be in order to understand the Word of God.

God Desires That ABSOLUTELY NONE Should Perish? - EDITED BY: RM Kane

Excerpted from here. Our comments in bold.
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This author has a particular point of view as a Calvinist, which we understand, but simply pronounces his belief as self-evidently true. His interpretation of the subject verse is pulled out of thin air, without regard for the words used or the thought being communicated.

Through this passage Peter is talking about scoffers [2Pe. 3:3]. They were mocking the idea of Jesus coming again [2Pe. 3:4]. He then notes the eternal nature of God's existence [2Pe. 3:8], which means God is not slow in keeping His promise [2Pe. 3:9].

It is important to note that God is waiting for something, which brings us to the subject verse.

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Trying to Excuse the Idolization of Nationalism - By Anthony Wade

Excerpted from here. Our comments in bold.
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We can only take so much of Rev. Wade's flame-throwing, so today we are just going to deal with two excerpts. 

Rev. Wade is obsessed with the NAR. He cruises Charisma News just looking for targets, then blasts away at them for offenses, imaginary, supposed, misread and inferred. Today he levels his sights on Joseph Mattera.

We should note that we do not intend to defend Mattera or the NAR.

Strangely, this "Reverend" rarely quotes Scripture. He has a lot to say about what proper beliefs should be, and any violation, perceived or real, unleashes his wrath. But he never documents his claims. He spouts rhetoric in a stream-of-consciousness mode, repeatedly making various claims as if they were unassailable truth. 

Lastly, we should remind the reader once again that Rev. Wade is a political leftist, which is the principal reason he objects to the idea of "Christian Nationalism." 

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God’s Sovereignty and Glory - by Derek Thomas

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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We have been on the lookout lately for someone who can coherently explain God's sovereignty as it relates to election. A previous post examined a failed attempt to explain. Here's another. 

The author we are examining today basically assembles a word salad. He blows the opportunity to explain anything. Truly, there is no elucidation here, just a series of assertions with a random tangent or two thrown in. He completely sidesteps the issue.

The thing that Calvinists and reformists seem to have difficulty with is the division point between what is pre-ordained and what isn't. By that we mean, a Calvinist will always assert that God did not create or cause sin, that the unsaved are choosing to sin by their own free will, and that the devil chose to rebel, etc; but on the other hand will deny the other side of the coin, that people have free will in the salvation process.  

This means that Calvinists accede to free will, at least on the sin side, because they simply can't let God be the author of evil. But they are unable to cite the verses that speak of this delineation.

The Calvinist wants to interpret the nature of God through his own definitions and finds tension with the violations of his definitions. So the Calvinist needs workarounds and complicated explanations. He creates a system of rules, precepts, and terminology that sound high minded and sophisticated:

• evil as a privation of the good, 
• Evil is a matter of ontology (being).
• contingency of second causes 
• God is the “first cause” of all things, but evil is a product of “second causes.” 
• the proximate cause is one thing, and the remote cause another.

This is the process of systematic theology, which at times is barely distinguishable from nonsense. 

Our position is that God is completely sovereign, and knows every detail of everything that has happened and will happen, everywhere. But sovereignty is not control. He is God, therefore He decides His sovereignty on His terms. Sovereignty does not come to bear on free choice, simply because it is God who decides what His sovereignty is and how it operates. 

God certainly can know everything and there still be free choice in man. He has this ability. These are not the binary equations Calvinists suppose they are.

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Essential Doctrines - Gabriel Hughes - WWUTT.com

This meme purports to tell us essential doctrines needed for salvation. None of this is referenced with the Bible, however.

Logical Fallacies - Churchwatch Central

 Found here. A helpful list, though a bit ironic. The website where this is found engages in some of the fallacies quite often. We shall make a post about that here. 

Seven Common Misconceptions about the King James Bible - by Timothy Berg

Found here. An interesting article.

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The most widely read English Bible translation has sprouted a series of fictions about it. It’s time to prune them.

Finding praise for the 1611 King James Bible (KJB) is not hard. It is “the single most influential book in the English language and arguably the greatest work ever completed by a committee” according to Hannibal Hamlin and Norman Jones in their edited book marking the 400th anniversary of the KJB. Showing just how influential it has been on our language, renowned linguist David Crystal traces hundreds of expressions it cemented into the English mind while Angelica Duran, English professor at Purdue, has edited a book arguing that the KJB transcends English, rising to the level of a key text in world literature and achieving a global impact.

All this praise is warranted. But when a book blossoms into such a literary lotus, myths also begin to sprout. Grains of truth rendering them plausible grow into weeds of fiction. Blocking the light of contrary facts and pilfering life-giving nuance, truth eventually withers. The following are seven myths about the KJB that now need pruning.

Myth 1: The KJB isn’t copyrighted

Did Jesus satisfy our legal obligation? Did He pay our debt?

Recently we've been reconsidering many of the things we thought we understood regarding doctrine and faith. We have begun to question certain beliefs, church structures, and practices of the western church. Too often we have discovered unbiblical doctrines and activities. This causes us concern. We have deemed this our “Rethink.”

Our questions include, how did we arrive at our doctrines? Does the Bible really teach what we think it teaches? Why do churches do what they do? What is the biblical basis of church leadership structure? Why do certain traditions get entrenched?

It's easy to be spoon fed the conventional wisdom, but it's an entirely separate thing to search these things out for one's self. In the past we have read the Bible with these unexamined understandings and interpreted what we read through those lenses. We were lazy about our Bible study, assuming that pastors and theologians were telling us the truth, but we rarely checked it out for ourselves.

Therefore, these Rethinks are our attempt to remedy the situation.

We should note that we are not Bible scholars, but we believe that one doesn't need to be in order to understand the Word of God.

40 Years of the Reagan Revolution's Libertarian Experiment Have Brought Us Crisis & Chaos - By Thom Hartmann

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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As the reader will discover, Mr. Hartmann has no idea what libertarians believe. He doesn't understand the Reagan phenomena. He doesn't know anything about what motivates his ideological opponents.

Libertarianism as a group has little influence on government. They're numerically small. And, libertarianism is not a governmental system, it is a philosophy regarding the exercise of power as it relates to personal liberty. 

Also, almost none of the people he mentions are libertarian. We haven't had a libertarian government for 150 years. Nowhere in the world are there enough libertarians in elected office to affect the possesses of any government. So to blame our present problems on a philosophy that does not wield the reigns of power in this country is puerile.

It's people like him who hold the power in our government. The Bidens, Pelosis, Schumers, and AOCs of government are the ones who are responsible for our current state. They are in the majority, and with brief exceptions, have been in the majority for the last hundred years.

They are to blame, not libertarians. They have made the decisions, cast the votes, and spent the money. They are the ones who emptied the nation's coffers, created unrest, fomented discontent, and pushed people into groups that are then pitted against one another.

Not libertarians.

But the real problem here is that Mr. Hartmann is a doctrinaire leftist, using all the agitprop techniques he has at his disposal. His article is not written to inform, but rather to further the leftist agenda. That is his only goal, to manipulate opinion, to sway the minds of the uninformed, and to repeat the same bumper sticker slogans day after day.

Once we understand this, it all begins to make sense. With the blizzard of assertions and factoids, the average person simply cannot keep up with and refute each one. And tomorrow will be a new day, with the exact same blizzard of falsities and invented history repeated as if they're documented fact. 

So refuting people like him is a waste of time, because he'll wake up tomorrow morning, sit down at his computer, open up his copy of Leftist Talking Points and dutifully type them into his word processor, just like he did today and yesterday and the day before.

So, we will rebut Mr. Hartmann for as long as we are able to hold up against the rhetorical onslaught.

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Regeneration: A glorious rear-view-mirror doctrine - teddmathisdotcom

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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We find it strange how the reformationists use terminology. Apparently phraseology like "born again" or "new life in Christ" are, what, too ordinary? So they glom onto the term "regeneration" as if it's more biblical. But we think the term is not only cumbersome, but also less useful. 

What does regeneration mean to the average person? Well, nothing. It obscures the meaning of Christ's sacrificial death and resurrection behind a two dollar word. 

The Greek word paliggenesia is found only twice in the NT, Mt. 19:28 and Tit. 3:5. 

paliggenesia ("renewal, rebirth") is used twice in the NT referring to: a) the re-birth of physical creation at Christ's return (Advent), which inaugurates His millennial kingdom (Mt 19:28; cf. Ro 8:18-25); and b) the re-birth all believers experience at conversion (Tit 3:5). https://biblehub.com/greek/3824.htm

The first occurrence:

Mt. 19:28 Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

The other text:

Tit. 3:5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit... (ESV)

So it turns out this one verse is where reformationists get their terminology. They will use other, more plainly stated verses at times, but nevertheless insist in describing the new creation as regeneration. Some of these other verses not mentioned by Mr. Mathis: 

Ac. 5:20 “Go, stand in the temple courts,” he said, “and tell the people the full message of this new life.”

Ro. 6:4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

2Co. 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

Ga. 6:15 Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation. 

Ep. 4:22-24 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Col. 3:9-10 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.

With all this in mind, let's consider the author's presentation.

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Garbage Music by Passion City Church, Stop Pretending This Glorifies God - By REFORMATION CHARLOTTE

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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Today Reformation Charlotte hyperventilates over the lyrics to a worship song. While it is certainly true that the song is not particularly deep, it also is not heretical. 

The unnamed author asks some truly ignorant questions, which we shall answer with Scripture.

Lastly, the author manages to quote most of the song, but conspicuously leaves out the chorus. We wonder why that might be? Perhaps because it impedes his narrative? Here is the chorus:

There’s nothing that our God can’t do
There’s not a mountain that He can’t move
Oh praise the name
That makes a way
There’s nothing that our God can’t do

The chorus clarifies the statements of the verses. Again, we are not claiming this song adequately expresses these concepts. We simply desire to note that it is not in any way false or heretical.

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Resisting the Sovereign God

Recently we've been reconsidering many of the things we thought we understood regarding doctrine and faith. We have begun to question certain beliefs, church structures, and practices of the western church. Too often we have discovered unbiblical doctrines and activities. This causes us concern. We have deemed this our “Rethink.”

Our questions include, how did we arrive at our doctrines? Does the Bible really teach what we think it teaches? Why do churches do what they do? What is the biblical basis of church leadership structure? Why do certain traditions get entrenched?

It's easy to be spoon fed the conventional wisdom, but it's an entirely separate thing to search these things out for one's self. In the past we have read the Bible with these unexamined understandings and interpreted what we read through those lenses. We were lazy about our Bible study, assuming that pastors and theologians were telling us the truth, but we rarely checked it out for ourselves.

Therefore, these Rethinks are our attempt to remedy the situation.

We should note that we are not Bible scholars, but we believe that one doesn't need to be in order to understand the Word of God.

Anti-Chinese propaganda, Christian nationalism, & the foundations for a right-wing terror campaign - By Rainer Shea

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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Marxist rhetoric rolls of the author's word processor so easily. This ease betrays the author, as he pieces agitprop slogans together as if the resultant sentences contain meaning. But there is no meaning. The actual intent, however, is to flick emotional triggers to the "on" position. 

"Agitprop" is an old term, a combination of the words "agitate" and "propaganda." It is a technique long used by Marxists to stir up resentment and discontent. Those are required for Marxism to succeed, for if the average person is content, fulfilled, happy, and making a good life for him and his family, the Marxist is defeated.

So the author spews his emotionally-triggering words in pursuit of the Marxist agenda, to stir up the proletariat against the bourgeois. However, in this case it comes across as meaningless nonsense.

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Go Ahead and Hate Your Neighbor! - Annual NAR Dominionist Leadership Roundtable - By Anthony Wade, leftist

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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Rev. Wade doesn't even pretend anymore. He's a leftist agitator, a spreader of leftist propaganda, a religious pretender who represents himself as a truth-teller. 

There is nothing in the long screed that even comes close to being a Bible teaching. It is instead an anti-capitalist, anti-Republican, anti-trucker-protest, anti-God polemic. 

Rev. Wade has reduced himself down to a purveyor of agitprop. And, he doesn't even lie very well.

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Steven Furtick Says God Blesses Your Sins and No Man Can Curse It - By REFORMATION CHARLOTTE

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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Reformation Charlotte combines with Protestia once again as the Undynamic Duo to hyperventilate over Steve Furtick. Now, we're no fan of Furtick. He probably has said some controversial things in the past. So we do not intend to defend him. Our purpose is to discuss the Undynamic Duo to ascertain if their complaint is legitimate.

More often than not we find that their complaints are either not legitimate, or they are the product of misunderstanding, selective quoting, or they come from the inability to understand a different way of communicating a concept.

This last one is the case today. Furtick says, So it seems to me if we believe Genesis 1:26 that I was made from a mess in the image of my maker, that there is no mess in my life right now that I cannot bring to my maker and expect him to say “I’ll bless it anyway.” So the Undynamic Duo make two presumptions about this:

1. Furtick is talking about sin
2. Furtick is saying God will bless your sin

Neither claim is warranted by the excerpt. First, a mess is not sin. The Undynamic Duo jumps to that conclusion without evidence or justification. However, it seems clear Furtick is referring to the troubles of life, when things aren't going well. This is not sin. We can still come to God with expectation in those circumstances.

Second, the Undynamic Duo presumes Furtick was referring to the mess, when it is more likely he was talking about "my life." But in either case, since the mess is not sin, there is no error in claiming God can bless your life despite its messes; or, God can bless the mess.

Lastly, we note that the Undynamic Duo cannot bring themselves to quote the verse. We shall do so:

Ge. 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

We can now begin to understand Furtick's thrust. Our take on the matter is this: If we are made in God's image, God's grace still abounds to us no matter our life circumstances. 

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