Tuesday..... International.....Thoughts Of A Lesser Light

I'm going to diverge from the topic of International, to write about something that has been on my mind for a few days. It starts out with a little bit of theology. Christians should know that there are two primary systems of belief in which most of us share in one or the other. Like it or not, you are a theologian on issues like this! The two systems bear the names of the men that defended their beliefs at a critical period of church history. John Calvin and James Arminius are the two men and Calvinism and Arminianism are the descriptive terms we use. I am going to address just one aspect of these systems. Calvinism says that Scripture says that regeneration precedes faith. In other words, God regenerates the soul, and then faith comes. The Ariminian says that Scripture says that faith precedes regeneration, in other words a person believes and then is regenerated. The majority of the church believed that Scripture proclaimed the former for many centuries, from the Reformation but also exhibited strongly through Augustine in the 4th & 5th century. The majority today believes that Scripture proclaims, the latter, this building into a majority starting in the 18th century. That is all I have to say about it in this blog for you can research this and reach your own conclusion as to what Scripture says. The Arminian therefore can say, in defense of a certain evangelical method, if only one soul is saved, the method is legitimate. The Calvinist would say that perfect doctrine in everything in evangelizing was never required, and certainly did not demand perfect evangelists. How many people came to a knowledge of salvation through vastly imperfect Arminian evangelists? How many through dead Calvinist pulpits? There is truth in this matter. False methods may impede but will not prohibit God's work. Now to the point of this blog. Why do I write it? It is part catharsis, living in a nation that is collapsing and headed the way of Rome. It is part an absolute necessity to attempt, albeit in this minuscule way, to do my part to warn readers that the barbarians are not only at the gate but have found a key and are inside! But these reasons are not primary in what I feebly attempt to do here. The real reason is you. You are reading this. You either came across it while surfing the blogspot site, or you saw my bumper sticker that I have carried to the East Coast a couple of times along with other long and short trips, or maybe someone said to you you gotta see this. I am not an Arminian. I would never think that if only one person is directed through this blog, it would be worth it. Rather, if there are ten pieces of a puzzle that God will have you work through, and this blog is the least significant, then if is not me, it will be something or somebody else. I would simply be grateful to be a part of that puzzle, for that is but one of the joys that God has devised for us, that being, He drawing you, or me, and giving others a part to play in these acts of salvation. We do absolutely nothing for our own salvation, but have been granted the blessing of being messengers as God regenerates and then calls. To me, the most reassuring part of this being a semi-anonymous blog, although people at work, and a few others, probably know who writes this, is that I do not enter into this equation. You don't have to face someone while you consider these things which can be an abstraction, and I cannot fail you by condescending to you as if I were anything but the least worthy to give you this message. As for the politics of this blog, they are opinions, but this nation will make decisions through opinions, the strongest, not necessarily the truest, winning out. As for Christianity, don't take a single word that I say as true without verifying it. My advice when talking to young people is; Do not burn bridges behind you, don't fall for the first system that seems right, have the patience to work through these things and you will know when those bridges will never be crossed again. I hoped to break some myths in this blog. One being that the common man (me) can think for himself and need not be afraid to challenge the experts, that just as the common man is imperfect, the expert may know what they are talking about and they may not. The extraordinarily learned Puritan Divine John Owen desired to sit and listen to the tinker John Bunyan, preach Christ. The seminary trained of England watched as Charles Haddon Spurgeon's sermons were bought throughout the world. On the temporal side, it is ironic how Rush Limbaugh, with no college education, day after day stymies the Ivy League elites. God will use the brilliant mind of a Jonathon Edwards, Martin Luther and John Calvin. He will also use the lesser lights. We bring nothing but our desire and even that was a gift of God.