God’s Grace Draws us to Christ
All of us are in great need of seeing our salvation from God’s perspective. The current trend in the 21st Century in some parts of the visible Church is for the focus to be on being a Christian for temporal gain. However, those who see the truth of their sin and totally lost condition until God saved them will not consider this life to be the focal point of it.
41 Therefore the Jews were grumbling about Him, because He said, “I am the bread that came down out of heaven.” 42 They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, ‘I have come down out of heaven’?” 43 Jesus answered and said to them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. 44 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. John 6:41-44 (NASB)
One of the aspects of our Christian faith that we lose sight of sometimes, and it gets us in trouble when we do, is how vital it is that we remain totally amazed that we ever got saved at all. We make a huge error when we forget this because that path leads to self-righteousness, self-absorption, and an ungrateful heart towards God. Even though we may not be fully aware that we are in that place of self-focus, we cannot be Spirit-led when we are full of self.
God works in people’s hearts by sovereign grace, taking away their imperviousness to his word, taking away their inability to respond to that word, and changing the disposition of their hearts so that instead of saying “Nonsense” when they hear the word of Christ, they say, “That’s just what I need,” And they come.
Are you a Christian? A believer? Then you came to Christ because you found yourself willing, longing, desirous, wanting to, as well as, perhaps, not wanting to but knowing you must. How was that? It was because God worked in your heart to give you this desire. He changed you. It was his irresistible grace that drew you to the Savior’s feet. Praise him for it! It was one expression of his love to you. – From: To All Who Will Come pp 184-185 by J.I. Packer
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Top 50 Stories on The Aquila Report for 2021: 11-20
In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year that were read on The Aquila Report site based on the number of hits. We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run on five lists on consecutive days. Here are numbers 11-20.
In 2021 The Aquila Report (TAR) posted over 3,000 stories. At the end of each year we feature the top 50 stories that were read.
TAR posts 8 new stories each day, on a variety of subjects – all of which we trust are of interest to our readers. As a web magazine TAR is an aggregator of news and information that we believe will provide articles that will inform the church of current trends and movements within the church and culture.
In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year that were read on The Aquila Report site based on the number of hits. We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run on five lists on consecutive days. Here are numbers 11-20:Why I Oppose Mask Mandates
Churches should respect individual liberty by not regulating or restricting worship. Churches should neither forbid nor require masks. They should not forbid elderly people from attending service. They should not be paternalistic. They should treat people like responsible adults and trust them to make wise decisions. And through their preaching they should encourage members to do the same: to respect the decisions of others, whether to wear a mask or not, so that we might worship together in love and unity.
A New Organization: Alliance of Reformed Churches (ARC)
We are 3 months into this 18 month launch period (May 2021-December 2022) and some leaders have been asking for a brief blog that shares the scale of the Alliance of Reformed Churches activity in the first three months after staffing for growth.
A Single Woman’s Response to Greg Johnson
Christians ever identified themselves by inner desires? Don’t we all experience a multitude of desires we deal with besides sexual ones? As a single female Christian, it never occurred to me to identify myself related to any sexual desires. I am not alone. Among Christians, there are life-long single men and women, widowed men and women, divorced men and women, who have obeyed God’s commandments while remaining celibate during periods of their lives. Furthermore, they never identified themselves by any desires they experienced during those same periods of their lives.
Dissenting Opinion On the SJC Decision In the Missouri Presbytery-Greg Johnson Case
In his arguments TE Johnson rests on appeals to his own authority, first as a same-sex attracted man, then as an academic, then as a theologian, and then as a minister. He communicates authoritatively and effectively, and he has clearly convinced many that his understanding of how God interacts with same-sex attracted people is the right one: God’s ability to change people affected by this particular sin is only a remote possibility and should not be held out as a realistic hope for Christians; it would be extremely rare that they might change. There cannot be a more succinct denial of God’s power to sanctify.
A PCA Worth Having is a PCA Worth Fighting For
They would say it is because Scripture and the Westminster Standards support the idea that SSA is not a disqualification for a minister because SSA is not necessarily sinful, or at least that it is no more heinous than other sins. This is a theological difference. Unless the supporters of Revoice theology prove to have discovered a truth that has eluded the Reformed churches for the last 500 years, many reasonably suspect that the mission (reaching or transforming the culture) is shaping the message and doctrine.
15. A Clear Message from the 48th General Assembly of the PCA
Many men rightly pointed out that we’ve had people who mortify the lust of SSA for many years within the PCA. What doesn’t occur to them is that this is the first time this has come up as a controversy. Why? Because nobody, prior to a few years ago was saying and platforming that SSA is like the man born blind. No Presbytery was judging, until a few years ago, that an illicit desire is not sin itself until one actually lusts for it. Nobody, until years ago was not only adopting Roman Catholic views on sin but promoting conferences within our Churches that outsourced sanctification about a particular lust to a conference of notionally Reformed and other semi-Pelagian (including Roman Catholic) views on sanctification.
Did the Little Guy Really Win? – The 48th PCA General Assembly
There are enough loopholes in the proposed changes to continue to allow Side B Homosexuals to continue as officers in the PCA (or be admitted to the PCA). All a man needs to do is to say that his identity in Christ is greater than his identity as a homosexual. All he has to say is that he struggles with this sin, that he knows that some have been delivered from it, and that he wishes to make progress over this sin – but he has not.
Tears for the National Partnership™
There is a profound and disturbing conundrum humming in the background of these eight years and many emails: the secrecy of the majority. By repeated assertion and articulated reasoning, these emails show a small group of officers claiming to stand for the majority in our communion. Their discussion manifests a concern to ensure that the majority view in the denomination is not slighted by the vigorous efforts of minority positions– views purportedly unrepresentative of the majority among us.
First Presbyterian Church Session, Ft. Oglethorpe, GA, Report on the National Partnership
In response to questions regarding the pastor’s role in disseminating files associated with the National Partnership that had previously been made public, Session was forced to consider the nature of those files before making any other determination. The report of that study is below.
The Definitive Meaning of Overture 23 Approved by the PCA GA
“Officers in the Presbyterian Church in America must be above reproach in their walk and Christlike in their character. Those who profess an identity (such as, but not limited to, “gay Christian,” “same sex attracted Christian,” “homosexual Christian,” or like terms) that undermines or contradicts their identity as new creations in Christ, either by denying the sinfulness of fallen desires (such as, but not limited to, same sex attraction), or by denying the reality and hope of progressive sanctification, or by failing to pursue Spirit-empowered victory over their sinful temptations, inclinations, and actions are not qualified for ordained office.”
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Why Target Can’t See Straight
God is supernaturally sending a strong delusion to they will whole-heartedly believe what is clearly false, untrue, not real. This explains the travesty of women’s sports being overrun by lying or delusional men. It explains how supreme court nominees and esteemed professors can’t answer Matt Walsh’s simple question, “What is a woman?” It explains why parents who love their children would subject them to experimental hormone treatment and surgery, and why their doctors don’t advise against it. And it explains why Target can so completely miss the mark. They just can’t see straight.
I am usually not surprised when sinners sin. Nor am I caught off guard when mud is muddy or when dogs bark. When you have not been “delivered from the domain of darkness and been transferred to the kingdom of his beloved son” (Col 1:13) then you will continue to “walk according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (Eph 2:2). I mean, why wouldn’t you? The Bible says that you will choose according to your nature until you are given a new nature.
So, when US retail giant, Target, ramped up its support of the LGBTQ+ community by adding to its longstanding Gay Pride clothing line “tuck friendly” children’s bathing suits for boys who want help hiding their boy parts to become trans girls, and books marked as appropriate for children ages 2-8 titled “Bye Bye Binary” and “I’m not a Girl,” as well as nearly 2,000 other homosexual-themed products, including “Gender Fluid” mugs and “Queer All Year calendars, I shouldn’t have been shocked at all.
But I was.
I was astonished at how un-capitalist the chain had become. I expect the world to act like the world, but I assumed that the god of greed would keep them in check. I just figured that the love of money, harvested from the pockets of mostly straight, suburban, soccer moms with young kids, would override the impulse to pander to a minority preference rather than alienate the bulk of their customer base. If Target’s marketing department had done even the most basic demographic survey of its customer base (or had visited one of their own stores on any given weekday) they could have predicted the consequence of liberally lacing their product line with toxic grooming propaganda.
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2016 All Over Again
As with Trump’s rise in 2015-16, evangelical elites and their aspirants—a group Stephen Wolfe has aptly called the “evangelical arm of the ruling class”—have evidently still learned nothing. And this year will be no different. Evangelicals will vote in overwhelming numbers for Trump in the general election after his inevitable victory in the Republican primaries. And evangelical elites will continue to reserve their harshest judgment for their own tribe, a relationship that looks more and more tenuous by the day.
Don’t make Donald Trump your idol.” “It’s not about Left vs. Right but about the Messiah who already came.” “Saving souls is more important than saving your country.” “Jesus isn’t running in 2024.”
Ever since the former president soundly defeated his opponents in the Iowa caucus last week (as polls had been predicting for quite some time, to the consternation of the political class), and then immediately repeating the victory in New Hampshire, the crush of evangelical elite rhetoric targeting Trump’s evangelical voters has been deafening.
Passive aggressive tweets from pastors and online theologians and op-eds from individuals in the midst of some form of deconstruction have flooded the zone. Accusations abound, and sweeping, ideological generalizations are rampant. Even the very salvation of Christian Trump supporters has been called into question yet again.
Ben Ziesloft has pointed out that the veritable cottage industry of anti-Trump books written by the self-proclaimed guardians of “our democracy” is only equaled by the pile penned by evangelical thought leaders who castigate the evangelical hoi polloi who don red MAGA hats. (Whether or not the term “evangelical” is simply a sociological label or captures orthodox, low-church Protestants who attend church weekly is a different question entirely.) As Miles Smith has trenchantly observed on X, “Is their [sic] any more boring type of self-loathing American than an ‘Evangelical intellectual’ who is still writing about Trump?”
Aaron Renn has already begun reviewing one of the latest entries in this genre, Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. Among other things, Alberta profiles the “well-organized, well-funded” network called “The After Party” that anti-Trump evangelicals Russell Moore, David French, and Curtis Chang, a liberal Silicon Valley consultant, created in the wake of the 2016 election. This group has been working hard ever since “to reduce Republican voting by evangelicals by providing doing so with a theological rationale.” Unsurprisingly, in original reporting at First Things, Megan Basham has shown that they’re bankrolled by a number of left-wing foundations.
In other words, Moore and French are doing the very same thing that Vote Common Good, a progressive Christian nonprofit, is doing: making sure that a Democrat stays in the White House for the foreseeable future. As Vote Common Good’s website notes, they too are looking to persuade “an additional 5-10% [of evangelicals] who are looking for an ‘exit ramp’ from supporting the Republicans who sacrifice the common good.”
In an election year, the spigot will undoubtedly be opened even more. Scott M. Coley’s forthcoming Ministers of Propaganda: Truth, Power, Ideology and the Religious Right (published by the increasingly heterodox Eerdmans Publishing Company in June), is a prime example. A talk he gave in August 2022, where he described the “ideology of the religious right” as including “creation science, illegitimate appeals to biblical authority or sufficiency, [and] Christian colorblindness,” is likely a preview of some of the arguments Coley will draw on in Ministers of Propaganda. Upholding orthodoxy, it seems, is not part of his project.
Books like Alberta’s and Coley’s, however, aren’t meant to be read. Rather, they are for signaling one’s own inclusivity, rejection of power, and care for the migrant—all elements that are consistent with regime-approved morality.
As with Trump’s rise in 2015-16, evangelical elites and their aspirants—a group Stephen Wolfe has aptly called the “evangelical arm of the ruling class”—have evidently still learned nothing. And this year will be no different. Evangelicals will vote in overwhelming numbers for Trump in the general election after his inevitable victory in the Republican primaries. And evangelical elites will continue to reserve their harshest judgment for their own tribe, a relationship that looks more and more tenuous by the day.
On the surface, this is akin to political consultants who consistently run losing campaigns featuring outdated and ineffective messaging but nevertheless remain extremely confident that next time, Americans will finally pick someone who can defeat the Soviets and balance the budget. But if it didn’t work last time, why would deploying the same strategies work this time? Instead, why not reach out to dissident figures on the Right? Or men who lift weights or work with their hands for a living?
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