Tuesday, February 12, 2008

2/12/08, A Reply to A Question About Ron Paul’s ‘08 Presidential Campaign

[revised 12/18/09]

While there is much to agree with in Chuck Baldwin’s column of Jan. 28, ‘08 on Ron Paul and his supporters, “Why Are Ron Paul's Supporters So Angry?”, let’s not put the “high horse” of politics before the gospel or Christianity. Contra the conservative Baptist pastor’s closing comments, if American Christians would just support “the principles of liberty, the U.S. Constitution, and limited government” is not enough in itself to provoke “a spiritual revival as well”, however much that is needed. Rather the problems of modern American Christians are far worse than just their “elitism, and partisan phoniness,” though their “ignorance” does have a lot to do with it.

Neither was it because “America's Colonial preachers and Christian people fought for liberty and independence, [that] God gave us two Great Awakenings.” Rather the First Great Awakening preceded the struggle for independence and arguably the Second Awakening in the 1830's deteriorated into the revivalism and pelagian perfectionism of Finney that plagues the American church to this day. Finney’s abolitionism also arguably deteriorated into the radical atheistic abolitionism that plunged this country into a bloody civil war, while at the same time every other major Western power abolished slavery without bloodshed. 

Sunday, February 03, 2008

2/3/08, The Reformed Argument Against Musical Instruments in Public Worship

2/21/08, Updated Addendum to the Federal Vision's Fraudulent Revision of Reformed Worship.

John L. Girardeau's exposition of the historic reformed argument against musical instruments in public worship is little known and somewhat beside the point of the previous comments on Federal Vision's mischaracterization of the Regulative Principle of Worship. Nevertheless it is still worth mentioning, not only in order to persuade people to further examine the question, but also purely for the love of the truth alone (2 Thess. 2:10), without which nothing good or great can be accomplished. Yet not only has Girardeau's Instrumental Music in the Public Worship of the Church (1888) been reprinted along with Robert Lewis Dabney's review of it a year later, G.I. Williamson, who is well known in American presbyterianism for his popular study guides on the Westminster Confession and Shorter Catechism, also wrote a not so well known tract on Instrumental Music in Worship.