Providence Downtown – Roots by the River

Title – Simply Good News:  Why the Gospel is News and What Makes it Good

Author – N. T. Wright

Publisher – New York:  HarperCollins, 2015

I read this book before Easter.  Wright always has a way of heightening my faith and wonder over the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  This is not simply a spiritual metaphor but a living, physical reality.  And in so thoroughly establishing Christ’s resurrection, Wright does the best job in communicating to me the vibrant link of heaven and earth.

“The resurrection of Jesus is the launching of God’s new world” (99).

“The resurrection declared that Jesus was not the ordinary sort of political king, a rebel leader that some had supposed.  He was the leader of a far larger, more radical revolution than anyone had ever supposed.  He was inaugurating a whole new world, a new creation, a new way of being human.  He was forging a way into a new cosmos, a new era, a form of existence hinted all along but never before unveiled.  Here it is, he was saying.  This is the new creation you’ve been waiting for.  It is open for business.  Come and join in.” (100-101).

The author gives to you the good news.  He emphasizes that it is not moral advice.

In characteristic form, N.T. Wright reveals that he is not (1) an inerrantist concerning scripture, (2) disapproves of six day literal creationism, (3) declares the dispensational fundamentalist’s belief in the rapture as harmful, and (4) considers “the satan” as synonymous with “the dark quasi-personal”.

He clarifies his view on the penal substitutionary atonement.  “We note, by the way, that though Paul very clearly sees Jesus’ death here as both penal (this was a judicial sentence) and substitutionary (Jesus dies, therefore we do not die), he does not say that God punished Jesus.  That would be an oversimplification, and it lends itself to distortion.  Stick with the big picture.  On the cross, God passed the sentence of death on evil itself” (45-46).

In past days, some rather hefty critiques have been written in rebuking Wright over his position on the penal substitutionary atonement made by Jesus Christ.  Wright would claim this fact — Jesus did die in our place.  But Wright will persistently argue that the idea of the Father exerting wrath upon the Son is rooted in paganism.  Outside of a trinitarian monotheism, it could appear so.

But I simply disagree.  The concepts of justice against sin and love for the sinner interlock with each other through the greatest news to ever shake humanity.

What Jesus did on our behalf — it is indeed the sun bursting through the shudders and curtains of our candlelit rooms.  The good news changes everything.

Title – Reading the Bible and Praying in Public

Author – Stuart Olyott

Publisher – Carlisle:  The Banner of Truth Trust, 2010 (reprint)

We incorporate Scripture reading in our worship service.  A friend handed me this booklet to read.

Public Scripture Reading:  “So they read distinctly from the book, in the Law of God; and they gave the sense, and helped them [the hearers] to understand the reading.” – Nehemiah 8:8

Pastor Olyott highlighted six characteristics about the Word:  1. Spirit-inspired, 2. infallible and inerrant – the very Word of God, 3. perspicuous, 4. for all, 5. supremely for the church, and 6. sufficient.

The last entry (#6) chided me a bit because I have a tendency to interject my own personal ditties to the Scripture.  But why should I?  The Scripture is sufficient.

Public Prayer:  “And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all.” – Acts 20:36

The author emphasized how the prayer is  1. public,  2. didactic, 3. pastoral, and 4. fresh.

Title – A Debate:  Resolved, that the Creative Days in Genesis were Aeons, not Solar Days

Authors – Dr. W. B. Riley, for the Affirmative; Harry Rimmer, for the Negative

Publisher – Northwestern Bible Conference, August, 1929

These men are both: (1) ardent friends, (2) proud to be known as Fundamentalists, (3) subscribing to the same confession of faith, and (4) believe in the inspired, infallible, and inerrant Word of God.

They call this a “friendly skirmish”.  They call each other – “beloved opponent” and “friendly enemy”.

Riley presents five absurdities:

1. Calling a cosmic light a solar day as in Genesis 1:5
2. Calling the evening and the morning of the second day a solar day and the evening and the morning of the third day a solar day as in Genesis 1:8 and 1:13, when as yet the rays of the sun had never reached the earth.
3. Emphasizing the fact that it didn’t rain on the earth until two whole days had passed, as if that were an extensive drought.
4. That God worked six solar days and then being weary rested one day, but so far as we know, has never worked since, while asking men to work six solar days, rest one, and then start straight in again.
5. Taking six days to complete the earth as in Genesis 1: and requiring only one day to finish the heavens and the earth and all the host of them as in Genesis 2:24

And then Riley fortifies his argument with the expertise opinions of Dana, Dawson, Max Mueller, Hugh Miller, Sir William Thompson, Frederick Hedge, Dr. Taylor I. Lewis, and N.B. Scott.  Riley states that his position is “the uniform position of the Christian geologists of the world!”  “To recapitulate:  What the Bible teaches, what progressive nature suggests; what cosmology affirms; what the scholars accept, this is my faith, the world was not made in a solar day, nor yet in 164 hours!”

Rimmer presents twelve lines of evidence:

But first he says,

Mr. Moderator, Honored Opponent, Ladies and Gentlemen: perhaps in all the annals and records of the many debates held in the history of disputations, there has never been a more unique debate than this one.

Here is a synopsis:

1. In every instance where “yom” is to be rendered as an indefinite period the context clearly shows this to be the case!
2. The vast majority of cases where the word yom appears in the Hebrew text demand translation into the equivalent word, Day.
3. Wherever the word yom is preceded by a numeral article we are forced to accept it as a literal day.
4. The quibble of my respected opponent: that the rays of the sun had not reached the earth until the fourth day . . . what has it to do with the matter of time element in the first chapter of Genesis?  . . . A day is the diurnal revolution of the earth on its axis.
5. And God said, “Light, exist; and light existed!”  The entire phrase is one of instant, absolute obedience to a pressing command, and implies an act consummated in the instant of its inception.
6. Could God have accomplished the events of any of the six days in a period of twenty-four hours?  . . . For God, twenty-four hours was enough!
7. Refutation of the great stronghold of the “era-ists.”  We do not say that in twenty-four hours God covered the entire earth with pine forests in their present profusion, with wild ducks by the millions, with humans by the myriads; but only that on each day in which a certain work is done the origin or beginning of that kind is recorded.
8. We accept the solar duration of the days of Genesis is the apparent fact that Moses’ clear intention was to convey the twenty-four hour idea.
9. We are in favor of the solar day idea because any other theory is merely a concession to the time element demanded by the evolutionary school of geology.
10. The days of Genesis are solar days, as they follow the general Hebrew custom of dividing the day into evening, the beginning, and morning, the start of the daylight period. . . . Now we gleefully challenge our erudite and esteemed temporary opponent to give us a verse in the Hebrew text where a geological age is thus described, “And there was evening, and there was morning, one geological age.”
11. The fact that Moses, the same man who penned the account of creation, is the same writer who makes a comment on this creative week, inspired so to do by God Himself, in the twentieth chapter of Exodus. . . . Are the Jews to work six geological ages and rest the seventh geological age?
12. The Third Day of creation . . . The ocean is formed: the dry land appears: and botany is born!  . . . These plants lived some five hundred thousand years without any direct rays of the sun to nurture them [?]

Title – On what day did our Lord rise from the dead?

Author – I. M. Haldeman, D.D.

Publisher – First Baptist Church, Broadway and 79th Street, New York, N.Y.

Many, many years ago, Pastor Haldeman of today’s historic First Baptist Church in New York City spent a great deal of time countering those who desired to put Christianity back under Mosaic Law.  And in this particular book, he opposed those who stated that the Christ rose from the grave on the seventh day.

There are those who teach our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified on Wednesday, remained in the tomb Wednesday night, Thursday night and Friday night, three nights; that He rose late on Saturday afternoon, the afternoon of the Jewish Sabbath, the seventh day, and not the first day of the week at all.

Continue reading →

Title – The Sabbath

Author – I.M. Haldeman, D.D.

Publisher – First Baptist Church, Broadway and 79^th ST. New York, N.Y.

Here is the gist of Pastor Haldeman’s take on the Sabbath. Continue reading →