Diggin' in the Dirt

I decided that I had better do another post, though most likely a short(er) one than normal, if there is such a thing as normal in my writing!

Well, life goes on around here. This past week the Reformed Baptist church had a Grace Conference, or revival, as usually it is called, though not a revival in the old-fashioned, Jonathan Edwards sense, more of a spurring on to good works, to encourage people in their faith and to strengthen their walk and foundation. They had two preachers come in, both of whom were elderly gentlemen who had been preaching for over 50 years. The pastor here said that we had over 100 years of experience there!

It was encouraging. The first Sunday, after the singing of a hymn (that is one thing I think I'm honestly never going to look at the same again) one of the men got up to preach and said he was going to preach on something else, but after singing about grace, he felt led to do a sermon upon that. It was a very good impromptu sermon, from Acts 15:11, full of the sovereign grace of God in election and he made quite a few good points. The second man got up to preach and said he should have known better than to have come with a prepared sermon with Jimmy preaching before him, so he delivered a sermon on some of the more practical purposes of grace in a Christian's daily walk and living in Christ, about sanctification. He had a shoulder in a sling (since he had had surgery upon it recently) and he was in bad shape after that so he preached no more during the next three days. There was one part in his sermon that I found a bit unfounded and that was when (while talking of sanctification) he went on a little side trail, pointing his finger and glaring at everyone while saying "you smokers, you beer drinkers, you dippers, you need to stop and live in Christ!" Which yes, addiction is a sin, and drunkenness is as well (perhaps that was his point) and I don't mind if people choose not to drink alcohol (I don't myself), I still don't agree with those who say that any kind of alcohol is a sin, it simply isn't biblical. Anyway, rabbit trail.

There were four days total like this where we gathered in the evenings and for the most part it was encouraging and I was glad to see solid teaching. There was one time however where Pastor Jimmy said something about how he felt that in Revelation that the bride was composed of those who were members of churches and he said "I'm glad that I'm a member of one of Christ's churches." That just sounded funny to me so the following evening I asked him about it and he did tell me that he thought that only people who were members of one of the churches would be part of the bride, the rest of God's elect and the "believers" of the Old Testament would just be guests. He said he used to believe that only members would be in heaven at all but that this would make baptism necessary to salvation and he didn't agree with that. When it came to a question of terminology I asked if he thought the bride would be what some would call the invisible church. He told me that he didn't like that term at all, that in the New Testament, church always meant the local body of believers, those members. He thought that the bride was composed of those saved members and that the rest of the elect in the world would be part of the guests at the marriage supper.

I completely disagree with his statements on the subject though. I do believe that the Old Testament believers were saved even as we are, by grace through faith and that they would be only guests and not part of Christ's redeemed seems to me to be quite fallacious. Then as to terminology, and the church well......

Peter was told by Christ that "on this rock I will build my church." I suppose it could be taken to mean the church of Jerusalem but that seems to be stretching the text.
Ephesians 1:22-23 says
"And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all."
And if that wasn't clear enough, there is the long passage in Ephesians 5:23-32

"For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church."

Which very, very clearly equates Christ's body with both His bride and His Church. Now it is true that the Bible does make many, many references to local churches, that is why to clarify, our Christian vocabulary has taken the terms "Invisible Church" and "Visible Church" to distinguish the two. And are we not all members of one body? So to say that there are the elect that are part of the bride, and some of the elect that are not seems to be completely unscriptural and I was surprised that he should think that way, he is quite an educated man, much more familiar with the Bible than I could hope to be, and has held positions in seminaries and even as head of a Bible College I believe. I was very thankful for the knowledge that he shared over those days yet this is one issue where I can't see why he would choose that ground.

Although it could largely be the Southern Baptist influence. We were told by one man who used to be a Baptist Minister - though he told me that he never studied Greek or Hebrew and took about 30 hours total and most of those were just general education classes and then he was offered a position and he took it. He has grown much since then and I don't think he enjoys the memory at all. - Anyway, he said that the Southern Baptists (at least where he was at) believed that you had to be baptized and a member of a Souther Baptist church or you were not saved. I don't think that all Southern Baptist churches are that way, nor this reformed one here, though I still see a large influence in the area of that. They always say "We Baptists believe in God's grace" etc. There is a very strong affinity to their denomination, to the point of danger sometimes. One man was talking about the church in Jerusalem two Wednesday nights ago and accidentally said "the First Baptist Church in Jerusalem, oops, I mean the first evangelical church." But I thought it aptly summed up what the feeling seems to be sometimes. I just think it's amusing because they seem to think that the Baptist denomination has been the only true one all these years, their confession of faith is drawn word for word (with a couple of changes in several sections) from the Westminster Confession, they speak of the grand old hymns they sing (most written between 1850 and 1950), in comparison with what I've been reading lately, that just seems like it was yesterday! :) I'm not trying to put them down, it just seems funny to me sometimes. I'm more sure than ever that I want to be familiar with church history and the preceeding fathers, to learn from their mistakes and triumphs and to know more about my own heritage, of which I am woefully ignorant myself, though learning.

I enjoyed a discussion with the Pastor, though e-mail on Psalmody however and he has borrowed my Psalter and tape and boy am I missing it! It's been a week and a half now and though I'm sure he'll return it soon, I may have to ask for it back anyway because there have been several times when I have very much wanted to use it. That's definitely one thing I'm looking forward to when I get back (D.V.) to Stillwater, because for the most part, I don't have many people to share them with. The pastor is really into a group called iGraceMusic.com and they rewrite old hymns to new music. I don't know much about it but it is much richer in theology than the songs of today.

Aside from those things, I've been keeping busy reading, memorizing, helping my siblings to memorize, reading to them, and working of course! Today we were digging a trench on our property to put a water line up to the corrals, about half a mile up the road. It was rather hot but since we weren't doing much digging (the tractor with the trencher was doing the brunt of the work) it wasn't too bad. But when I had to reach down into the trench to work with the pipe or clean out some part, the sweat on my arms combined with the dirt to make a nice layer of mud all over my arms, which is kind of gross. So.... that's it for tonight. I'm going to get some other things done!