Conrad Johnson's Blog, page 10

Dutch Liberals Fight Back Against Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

 January 2019 Dear Friend,This month, the CBMW office was surprised by the news that over 200 pastors and leaders in the Netherlands had translated and signed the Nashville Statement. Although the Dutch translation and signatories were released at the end of last year to very little fanfare, that all changed when media outlets in the Netherlands caught wind of the statement and signatories earlier this month. Significant national and even some global backlash quickly followed. Dozens of news reports appeared about the Dutch translation of the statement, including an opinion piece in The Economist.
In a tellingly symbolic move replicated in cities across the Netherlands, the City of Hague, which is the seat of international justice, raised a rainbow flag in protest of the Nashville Statement.
The 60 minutes equivalent of Dutch TV, Nieuwsuur, ran specials on the statement two nights in a row. The second show included an interview with CBMW president Denny Burk. Denny was grateful to be given the opportunity to explain the original intent behind the Nashville Statement, which is more than can be said for American media when the statement was released in the fall of 2017. Although the original statement was covered by secular outlets as diverse as the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times, and even some Christian outlets such as Christianity Today, the only media outlet to contact CBMW for comment was WORLD magazine?for which we were grateful.
One alarming aspect in all of this was the report by several news outlets that the Dutch government was considering opening a criminal investigation into the pastors who signed the Nashville Statement. These reports cited as possible grounds for the investigation Article 1 of the Dutch Constitution, which prohibits discrimination ?on the grounds of religion, belief, political opinion, race or sex or on any other grounds whatsoever.?
The irony of Dutch media citing Article 1 in the Dutch Constitution should not be lost on us. Article 1 obviously prohibits discrimination on the basis of ?sex??of course an originalist interpretation of this would almost certainly not implicate the Nashville Statement?but one has to completely ignore the first part of the Article in order for this constitutional appeal to make any sense.Article 1 first prohibits discrimination on the basis of ?religion? and ?belief? logically prior to ?political opinion,? which is itself listed prior to ?race or sex or on any other grounds whatsoever.? Why this order? There are philosophical and historical arguments behind this order, arguments that stand similarly behind the US Constitution.
Most elementary US History courses recount the story of the English Separatists who fled persecution by the Church of England to Holland (present day Netherlands), which provided them religious asylum and a place to practice their religion according to their consciences. These same refugees, which we know today as the Pilgrims, eventually left Holland aboard the Mayflower for the New World and formed not a small percentage of the original settlers of America when they founded a settlement in Plymouth, Virginia in 1620.
America?s founding fathers knew their cultural heritage and history when they set about drafting a new constitution for a new nation, and it wasn?t until the First Amendment was added, alongside the other amendments in the Bill of Rights, that the US Constitution was ratified by all of the original states. The first lines of the First Amendment guarantee that ?Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.?
This priority of religious liberty is no accident, and the philosophical and historical reasons are important to recall: (1) Religion involves the deepest aspects of what it means to be human, to be an individual, and to be an individual in community; (2) All of life is downstream from religion; if one cannot speak, associate, vote, and generally live according to one?s religiously formed conscience?with all the necessary natural law limitations?one is not truly free; (3) A government that bears the sword in order to force strict adherence to a certain religion will make a nation of heretics or hypocrites; and (4) History is replete with examples of governments that ignore these realities at great cost to its subjects.
But ever since the departure of feminism and the accelleration supplied by the sexual revolution, religious liberty has been on a collision course with sexual liberty. This inevitable collison points to a greater conflict between what philosopher Roger Scruton terms human rights vs. natural rights. America?s founding fathers understood, at least in writing, that individuals are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights?what we could call natural rights. The connection between natural rights and the natural law written by the finger of God into His creation is most important. These natural rights are fixed, in that they do not change, grow, or diminish with the passage of time, because the Creator is eternal. And they are rooted in creation, meaning they cannot contradict the natural order.
But progressive liberals, of the kind that were outraged in the latest dust up around the Nashville Statement in the Netherlands, trade in a completely different understanding of rights & liberty. Namely, that human rights are endowed not by our Creator but by our fellow man. But man is fickle and finite, and human rights that are rooted in man's permission will likewise be so.Nowhere is the progressive liberal understanding of human rights and liberty perhaps more manifest than in this quote from Anthony Kennedy, which comes from his Lawrence v. Texas opinion: ?At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.?
Against such folly, it is paramount we as Christians acknowledge that we cannot ?define? ourselves to be something we are not, something we were not created to be. This is exactly the premise currently being rejected by the global progressive consensus, especially with regard to sexuality. They are not interested in inalienable, natural rights endowed by the Creator. Instead, at least according to Kennedy's definition of liberty, the rights they claim for every man are as boundless as his own imagination and as secure as his own mortality. What is more, they are not at all based on our common humanity, but on our fractured individuality.
The Nashville Statement bears witness to a different reality, and these Dutch pastors should be commended for wanting to bear witness to this reality. The preamble of the Nashville Statement confesses, in the words of Psalm 100:3, ?Know that the LORD Himself is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves.?
We should continue to try and persuade those in our pews and a wayward world to recognize the futility of attempting to revolutionize the natural order in the pursuit after arbitrary human rights. This is exactly what these pastors did in the Netherlands, once a faith haven for the religiously persecuted, now prosecuting the religious for their faith. But God is seated on his throne in the heavens. It is He who made us, and it is from Him that all human dignity flows.
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This month we opened up registration for our upcoming lunch event at The Gospel Coalition national conference in Indianapolis on April 2. If you are going to the conference, or you are just in the area, we would love to see you there! Kevin DeYoung will be speaking on the theme, ?The Beauty of Biblically Broad Complementarianism.? The $15.00 covers admittance and lunch, as well as some free books! Space is limited?sign up today!
In the upcoming months we will be announcing several events planned across the nation. You can visit CBMW.org/events to stay up-to-date on our event schedule and find out when we will be in your area. If you would like for one of our staff to come speak at your church, or if your church is interested in hosting a CBMW regional conference, you may fill out our speaker request form or email our offices at cbmwoffice@cbmw.org.Below you will find links to a number of articles, including Denny's reflections on the national controversy over late term abortion and the newly released APA guidelines on masculinity, as well as an article I recently wrote about how the UMC's "One Church Plan" displays a connection between egalitarianism and approval of LGBT ideology.My prayer in 2019 for CBMW and for our ministry partners is 2 Corinthians 13:14, "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." Amen.In Christ,Colin J. SmothersCBMW Executive DirectorMake a donation to CBMW » The Inevitable Capitulation in the UMC's One Church Plan by Colin Smothers"Next month, the United Methodist Church will meet in St. Louis to vote on what is being billed as the One Church Plan, a comprehensive measure recommended by the Council of Bishops that would revise their Book of Discipline. The revision would include instructions for celebrating same-sex marriages and ordaining openly LGBT clergy. The revision would also include conscience protections for conferences (outside the US), clergy, and laypersons who object to such practices. One church, two views of marriage. Only time will tell how long this unity on the basis of theological diversity will hold."Read the rest here. How seared is our nation?s conscience that she tolerates this cruelty?  by Denny Burk"Two items have appeared in the news this week out of Virginia that ought to shock every decent person who sees them. Both of them involve elected officials in Virginia arguing for infanticide. And, no, I?m not being hyperbolic. I want you to see this for yourself to establish exactly what happened."Read the rest (and watch the video above) here. WORLD Interviews Denny Burk on the APA?s Controversial  New Guidelines on Masculinity "Is masculinity harmful to men and boys? Should masculinity be pathologized? According to new guidelines released this month by the American Psychological Association (APA), the answer seems to be yes."In a recent report on the APA?s new guidelines on masculinity, WORLD correspondent Sarah Schweinsberg interviewed CBMW president Dr. Denny Burk about manhood and the APA?s pathologization of masculinity."You can listen to the WORLD report and read Denny?s comments here. News: Over 250 Dutch Pastors and Leaders Sign  Nashville Statement, Drawing National Attention by Matt Damico"R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Seminary and an original signer of the Nashville Statement, spoke in agreement with the Dutch pastors and with Burk: 'The Nashville Statement is simply an affirmation of what Christians have for centuries believed and taught. These truths would have been affirmed without question by all Christian churches and denominations until some of those churches have more recently decided to abandon the Scriptures and join the sexual revolution. These pastors in the Netherlands have affirmed traditional Christianity. The pushback to these pastors reveals opposition to historic Christianity. Sadly, I fear that this is a sign of things to come.'"You can read the rest of the news report here.Gender and Sexuality News RoundupOne mission we have at CBMW is to help Christians think through secular and ecclessial trends with respect to gender and sexuality. Through this work, we pore over a lot of different news and articles as we try to wade through the contstant flow of trending stories. In our weekly Gender and Sexuality News Roundups, we aim to distill some of the more pertinent information for you. These articles are from a wide variety of sectors and publications, organized generally into three categories. They are presented in aggregate, and not necessarily endorsed.If you see an article that you think should be featured in future CBMW news roundups, you can send it to: cbmwoffice@cbmw.org with the subject ?News Roundup.?Gender and Sexuality News Roundup (1/29/19)Gender and Sexuality News Roundup (1/15/19)Gender and Sexuality News Roundup (1/8/19)Click here to make tax-deductible donation to CBMW  The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood2825 Lexington Rd.Louisville, KY 40280cbmw.orgcbmw.org | Give Online | Contact Us

Type and shadow of the coming AntiChrist?

PRAYAGRAJ, India (Reuters) - In a desert tent guarded by armed police and a thick-set bouncer, Laxmi Narayan Tripathi is blessing a constant stream of pilgrims, who garland her with marigolds and kneel to touch her feet. Continue to Reuters News article.

The Invasion of our Southern Border as described by locals

LORDSBURG, N.M. — Ranchers and farmers near the U.S.-Mexico border have been finding prayer rugs on their properties in recent months, according to one rancher who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation by cartels. The mats are pieces of carpet that those of the Muslim faith kneel on as they worship. "There’s a lot of people coming in not just from Mexico," the rancher said. "People, the general public, just don’t get the terrorist threats of that. That’s what’s really scary. You don’t know what’s coming across. We’ve found prayer rugs out here. It’s unreal. It’s not just Mexican nationals that are coming across." Continue to the Washington Examiner.

The Reliability of the Bible Briefly Explained

Who Wrote the Bible? The Documentary Hypothesis

EXCERPTThe time has long passed for scholars of every theological persuasion to recognize that the Graf-Wellhausen theory, as a starting point for continued research, is dead. The Documentary Hypothesis and the arguments that support it have been effectively demolished by scholars from many different theological perspectives and areas of expertise. Even so, the ghost of Wellhausen hovers over Old Testament studies and symposiums like a thick fog, adding nothing of substance but effectively obscuring vision. Although actually incompatible with form-critical and archaeology-based studies, the Documentary Hypothesis has managed to remain the mainstay of critical orthodoxy. One wonders if we will ever return to the day when discussions of Genesis will not be stilted by interminable references to P and J. There are indications that such a day is coming. Many scholars are exploring the inadequacies of the Documentary Hypothesis and looking toward new models for explaining the Pentateuch. Continue reading

John Hopkins Psychiatrist Debunks the Myth of Transgenderism

By Michael W. Chapman | May 5, 2016 | 11:46 AM EDT Dr. Paul R. McHugh(Johns Hopkins Medicine)Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and former psychiatrist–in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital, who has studied transgendered people for 40 years, said it is a scientific fact that “transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men.”Continue to archived article HERE

Classic Book Reviews: Comparative Studies in the Holy Spirit

For me, as I suspect for many disciples of Christ, there is no doctrine so confusing and unclear as the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Or as the late and venerable Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones rightly explains that, when the subject is approached, our imperfect and sinful nature views often vary between two extremes--utterly fantastic, experientially phenomena claims or stoic denial of any contemporary evidence of His manifestations beyond the New Testament apostolic age. Hopefully, my interpretations of the Puritan John Owen's classic work on this blessed person of the Trinity coupled with my review of Readings in St. John's Gospel by the former bishop of York and Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, will help the reader to come to his or her own conclusions regarding this vital subject.

First of all, you might be thinking: Why should I even bother to be concerned what Scripture teaches about the Holy Spirit? I'm a practical person and I haven't the time to worry about such things. Just give me Jesus and I'm good to go.

If this is your attitude, then all I can do is reply in chorus along with, arguably one of the best soul winners for Christ that ever lived, Charles Spurgeon, that the distance between a person who is 'merely saved' and one who is searching for and filled with the great, eternal and inexplicable blessings of God is as great as a person who is condemned and hell bound and one who has found salvation through Christ. Or as the psalmist wrote: It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings (Proverbs 25:2) And are we all not in Christ, a " a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession"? (1 Peter 2:9) I would even go further say that it is our duty to study and to search out such doctrine no matter who we are according to the graces and illuminations for each individual that God provides for in many places the Scriptures says, either directly or indirectly, to be holy even as God is holy and to walk before Him in holiness. I know of no other way to become holy but to be purified daily through the Word (John 15:3, 1 John 3:3). How much time do you spend a day watching television--images of the best that the world has to offer? Now compare that to how much time you spend in the Word.

It might be fair to say that, for many, the gospel of John is at the same time both practically appealing yet somehow mystically and incomprehensibly reverent. Less direct than the Book of Acts regarding the works of the Holy Spirit, this gospel nevertheless is bathed in Trinitarian teaching and Bishop Temple does a good job of fleshing out the realities, or as the author writes in  his introduction:

The Gospel is that 'the Word was made flesh', and being incarnate so spoke, so acted, so died and so rose from death. It is not the mere occurrence of its several episodes that constitutes the Gospel; it is their spiritual and eternal significance; but part of their spiritual and eternal significance is their physical and temporal occurrence. For it is the whole world, inclusive of matter--of flesh and blood--which God so loved that he gave his only begotten Son. If the synoptic Gospels gives us a picture of Christ, then the Gospel of John gives us an interpretive portrait by one who was His closest disciple.

And of course, the Gospel of John is where we get perhaps the most famous and inclusive declaration  that even many non believers are familiar with--John 3:16. This is to say that the more one studies the writings of John the less esoteric they become. Indeed, as Temple is so bold as to proclaim at one point: This Gospel is perhaps the most practical of them all or as John simply states "that these things were written that you may believe" (John 20:31). Now it may well be that the Epistles were clearly written to believers and saints (to use New Testament terminology and not Roman Catholic), so you may ask yourself who was the Gospel of John written for then? Because it is one of the pillars of authorship to have an audience in mind when expounding upon a subject and, Christ, who is the Author of our salvation by way of the Holy Spirit, is the Wordsmith sublime. Let's go on then to briefly view Temple's,  Readings in St. John's Gospel, before considering Owen's more detailed and specific analysis of the Holy Spirit, His characteristics, manifestations and workings throughout Scripture as it applies to us today.



Readings in St John's Gospel: First and Second Series (Christian Classics Book 8)
The Baptism of Christ by the Holy Spirit
It's not too difficult to see with spiritual eyes that the Gospel of John is as much an attempt to witness the power of the Holy Spirit as much as the Book of Acts is if we read the narrative in the context of Colossians 2:9--"For in Christ all the Deity lives in bodily form" And although it would be incorrect, even heretical, to say that Jesus was not fully God from His conception to His baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan in John 1:32, the fact that the "Holy Spirit descended like a dove from heaven and remained upon Him" deserves some examination from the Trinitarian, and specifically Third Person, point of view. If we know anything from Scripture, we know that God is not a Las Vegas magician and does not manifest Himself to anyone simply to showboat His holy powers. So why this demonstration of the Spirit here? We must turn to Christ's own words for the answer when He commands John to proceed with the water baptism against the evangelist's protests so that "all Scripture might be fulfilled" as in Isaiah 42:1:
Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.
There is no need to delve into Old Testament theology regarding Holy Spirit revelation up to this point in God's timeline of salvation and it's far beyond my capabilities to do so anyhow, but let's proceed from here towards the goal of trying to learn the current application of Spirit doctrine for our generation and for our lives as we live them out for God's purpose and glory. It's called author's purpose and it's a crucial part of understanding Aristotle's rhetorical 'triangle' which writing teachers use to identify the main components of any written work--subject, audience and purpose. A visual illustration comparing this to the fire 'triangle' might not be too much of a stretch (Christ's baptism by fire, Luke 3:16)





Fire Triangle




(If you dare to be bold, you can play with this analogy and apply it towards trying symbolize the three Blessed Persons of the Holy Trinity but I'm going to keep my shoes off on Holy Ground for the time being)

So assuming we can agree on the fact the Holy Spirit is the Executive Agent in the Holy Trinity (because there is a heirarchy of function but not value, so to speak), then maybe we can use this 'lens of action' towards a greater understanding of God's ultimate purpose regarding the salvation of humanity--to create holiness in a chosen people for His purpose and glory (Ephesians 1:4-6). Hopefully, in doing so we can realize the full blessings and gifts of the Spirit in our lives as promised through Scripture (See 1 Corinthians 12,13 and 14).

Care must be taken here, as Temple writes "not to commit the absurdity of attributing to John the Baptist a Trinitarian theology". There is no definite article with the use of holy spirit in this chapter one of the Gospel and, indeed, whenever it does appear without one in Scripture it denotes a human experience, not a divine Person, though that human experience is the work of the Third Person in the Godhead in man's soul according to Bishop Temple.

I realize this is a theological 'fork in the road' for many Pentacostals and Cessationists (those who believe that the Holy Spirit today does not act in the same way it did amongst the Apostles and the early church converts to Christianity. Here, I must defer to Martyn Lloyd-Jones when he says that if you believe this is true, i.e., that the Spirit only functions internally these days without visible manifestations, and that all signs, wonders and miracles ended with the Apostles, then you must necessarily and logically conclude that the rest of the New Testament, including all the Epistles, were only for that first generation of born again believers also. But let's not get into speaking in tongues or other phenomena at this point. It's a particular that greatly distracts from the general argument and purpose of this article and far too easily sidetracks when holiness and godliness are Scripture given purposes of God's plan for His people.

But back to Bishop Temple and Readings in St. John's Gospel and the searching for indirect manifestations and applications of the Holy Spirit in John.

To be continued...

Female Genital Mutilation Officially Legal in USA

Congress passed a law, but a court says it's unconstitutional. What is the remedy? December 5, 2018 
Phyllis Chesler

Uganda has more concern than USA about this issue
On November 20, 2018, the United States District Court in Michigan ruled that the federal law which criminalized Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) more than twenty years ago is “unconstitutional”, and cannot be used to prosecute the doctors and mothers of the very young girls who were brought to be genitally mutilated in Livonia, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. (See United States of America v. Jumana Nagarwala, et al, 2018 WL 6064968.)
Go to full article here

Lutheran "Pastor" Builds Golden Vagina Statue

Nadia Bolz-WeberThere was a time when the pro-abortion movement was merely pro-choice. They preached tolerance and diversity in an attempt to welcome other opinions.Those days are over.Today’s pro-abortion movement is all about hating on pro-life Christians or anyone who dares defy their abortion at all cost mindset. Instead of embracing other viewpoints and encouraging society to do the same, today’s pro-abortion movement is all about making fun of and ridiculing the views of those who take a different perspective. Read more.

What is the correct view of the Second Coming of Christ?

Pastor Sam E. Waldron

There are many beliefs today regarding the Second Coming of Christ. Listen to this brief, concise and powerful explanation of the three dominant views today --premillennialism, amillennialism and preterism--and why Pastor Waldron is firmly convinced along with many others that amillennialism is the only correct biblical interpretation of important eschatology or 'end times' teaching.