Acquit

They walk around in haze.
They think they have it made.
It’s all but wasted days,
Trespasses yet unpaid.

They say that they believe.
They say their soul’s alright.
Yet, you they won’t receive
Their pride has blocked your light.

Lord show your verity.
Please let your light abound.
Be their priority.
So with grace they can be crowned

-Doug Eaton-

A Few Thoughts on Thanksgiving

From my garage to yours... Happy Thanksgiving. :-)

Doug

The Subtle Destruction of Rights - Hadley Arkes

"People of ordinary sensibility will feel sheepish before claiming a right to take the life of an innocent human being for their own self-interest. It is far easier to talk oneself into the notion that the small being in the womb is not really, or not yet, human, not human as you and I are. After all, it doesn’t yet look like a child, or have what looks like human form: it may be genetically homo sapiens, but is it fully human? It requires no elaborate theory to bring off that maneuver in rationalizing. People with college degrees, and pricey educations, have been doing it with ease now for over 25 years. But what is harder to recognize is that, as people talk themselves into that rationale, they are subtly, but decisively altering what James Wilson and the founders understood as the very ground of their natural rights – and the ground of our entire law. If we can arbitrarily alter the definition of a “man” as it suits our convenience, if nature provides no definition of a human being that we are obliged to respect, then – as we shall see – we remove the distinct ground of our claim to “natural rights.” But if we do that, if we remove “natural rights,” we would convert all rights into “positive law.” With that subtle shift, we would have removed, in effect, the very logic and substance of rights. For what we call “rights” then are simply the things declared to be right by the opinion that is dominant in any place. In that event, the “rights” enacted into law are merely the rights that a majority is willing to confer. But what the majority may confer, the majority may also remove when it no longer strikes the majority as right or convenient."

Hadley Arkes – Natural Rights and the Right to choose (p.31)

An Issue of Blood

What picture is painted by Jesus healing the woman with and issue of blood?

Pray for Those Involved in the California Fires

Humanism, Freedom, and Chaos - Francis Schaeffer

The humanists push for “freedom,” but having no Christian consensus to contain it, that “freedom” leads to chaos or to slavery under the state (or under an elite). Humanism, with its lack of any final base for values or law, always leads to chaos. It then naturally leads to some form of authoritarianism to control the chaos. Having produced the sickness, humanism gives more of the same kind of medicine for a cure. With its mistaken concept of final reality, it has no intrinsic reason for being interested in the individual, the human being. Its natural interest is the two collectives: the state and the society.

Francis Schaeffer – A Christian Manifesto (1981)

The Necessity of Christ's Death

Couldn't Jesus have just forgiven us without punishing Jesus? Can we as humans do something that God Cannot when we forgive someone without payment?

-Doug Eaton-

Persecution: Your Suffering Will Not Be Noble - Paul Washer

When Pain and Faith Collide

When pain and faith collide
The one absorbs the other.
But not without an impact
That shakes us to the core.

We walk as if omnipotent
Forgetting that we’re frail.
Until that faithful moment
We’re broken, hurt, and sore.

It can come in many ways,
But never goes unnoticed.
As with perfect strategy
It weakens where we’re strong.

Our thoughts become unclear
When hit while unaware.
And brings to mind our sins,
As we barely scrape along.

Then in our shaken voice
Our faith lets out a groan.
And thunders cross the heavens,
As by Him it’s supplied.

For faith is the power
That overcomes the world.
And the one absorbs the other
When pain and faith collide.

-Doug Eaton-

Affliction and the Restraint of Arrogance - John Calvin

Our Lord had no need to undertake the bearing of the cross except to attest and prove his obedience to the Father. But as for us, there are many reasons why we must pass our lives under a continual cross… We readily esteem our virtue above its due measure. And we do not doubt, whatever happens, that against all difficulties it will remain unbroken and unconquered. Hence we are lifted up to stupid and empty confidence in the flesh; and relying on it, we are then insolently proud against God himself, as if our own powers were sufficient without his grace.

He can best restrain this arrogance when he proves to us by experience not only that great incapacity but also the frailty under which we labor. Therefore, he afflicts us either with disgrace or poverty, or bereavement, or disease, or other calamities. Utterly unequal to bearing these, in so far as they touch us, we soon succumb to them. Thus humbled, we learn to call upon His power, which alone makes us stand fast under the weight of afflictions.

-John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion-

The Kingdom of the Golden Triangles: A Modern Day Parable

What would you think if someone called you a bigot because you refused to recognize their four-sided shape as a triangle?

I Asked the Lord that I Might Grow - John Newton

I asked the Lord, that I might grow
In faith, and love, and every grace;
Might more of His salvation know,
And seek more earnestly His face.

I hoped that in some favoured hour
At once He'd answer my request,
And by His love's constraining power
Subdue my sins, and give me rest.

Instead of this, he made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart;
And let the angry powers of hell
Assault my soul in every part.

Yea more, with his own hand He seemed
Intent to aggravate my woe;
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.

'Lord, why is this?' I trembling cried,
'Wilt thou pursue Thy worm to death?'
'Tis in this way,' the Lord replied,
'I answer prayer for grace and faith.

'These inward trials I employ
'From self and pride to set thee free;
'And break thy schemes of earthly joy,
'That thou may'st seek thy all in me.'

-John Newton-

The Reformation: A Theological Look - MP3

I recently had the privilege of being a guest on the Apologetics.com radio show.

Below is a synopsis and links were you can find the show. It can also be dowloaded from itunes under the Apologetics.com podcast.

The Glorious Reformation: The Apologetics.com Radio show for Reformation Day 2008.

The Glorious Reformation: Apologetics.com’s annual Reformation Day show answers the question, does the Reformation really matter after 500 years? A global shift in Christian thought began in 1517. What had at one time been a Christian worldview applied to all of life and thought had become a shifting web of marginally Christian ideas used to support pagan ideology and vacant humanism devoid of eternal significance. Martin Luther sounded an alarm loud and long with reverberations that are still felt today from the worship in our churches to the halls of justice. Is a theocentric theology still permissible in an anthropocentric world? Why the constant urge to replace the Holy Scriptures as the sole infallible rule in matters of faith and practice with the judgements of the religious community or individuals that claim prophetic authority? Is God’s intent to save those that are good enough to save themselves or those that have nothing of themselves which makes them in any sense worthy? Is the grace of God merely hypothetically salvific or actually effectual to save those that are lost? Is Justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone a message that has seen its day? Or one that with the Reformers we should say “semper reformanda”, always reforming? Staff members Christopher Neiswonger and Lindsay Brooks are joined by special guests Pastor Kent Moorloch of Communion Prebyterian Church of Irvine www.communionpres.org, Doug Eaton College Pastor of the 1st Southern Baptist Church of Downey and www.christiantheology.wordpress.com, and Lane Chaplin power blogger of www.lanechaplin.com.

The Glorious Reformation: The Apologetics.com Radio show for Reformation Day 2008.

Sarah Palin Exonerated in Troopergate Probe

Just in case anyone missed it.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jOTk11gvqDAgD0cY3i4WjI_2YOxwD947R8P80

Doug

A Brief Reminder as You Go to Vote

"Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people." Prov. 14:34