Praise the LORD for his work in the life of Jim Price! Praise the LORD that his Word is powerful to save sinners! Praise the LORD that he can even use Google in the process! How does this relate to the Bible Answers Project? God is at work. His Word is mighty to save sinners. And Google search can be part of the process.

You never know where a Google search will take you (Jim Price).
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven [says the LORD] and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it (Isaiah 55:10-11).
This summer, my 17-year-old son and I have been reading Douglas Bond’s excellent book Fathers and Sons: Stand Fast In the Way of Truth (P&R Publishing, 2008).
A couple of weeks ago, my son and I read chapter 23: “The Power of the Holy Book.”
This chapter tells the amazing true story of Jim Price.
It is a story of how God used the power of his written Word – and the Google search engine – to transform a man from an unchurched “worldly wise man” into a true believer who began attending a local church.
The story of Jim Price is a great example of why the Bible Answers Project is so important.
And it is a case study of how we pray the Bible Answers Project will be used in the lives of 100s and 1,000s of unchurched people in the months and years to come.
When Jim Price was a young boy, his parents took him to church regularly for a brief time, but this stopped after he was about 10 years old.
“In high school,” Jim writes, “I read Herman Hesse and the Bhagavad-Gita, wrote poetry, cut classes, took drugs, and listened to the Moody Blues. Inexplicably, I failed to become one with the universe.”
Disillusioned by his high school hippy phase, Jim instead poured himself into the pursuit of worldly success
After serving in the Air Force, he launched his career as an engineer, and co-founded a software company.
Then, one day, Jim “realized that the company was a success, and that [he] needed a change of pace.”
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If elders and ministers are to rule the church in the name and with the authority of Christ, treating their fellow sheep as divine image-bearers, then it should be perfectly clear that their primary job is to ensure that God’s word is properly preached, that God’s sacraments are properly administered, and that in everything they seek the blessing and power of God through prayer. When elders and ministers are focusing upon these things, disciples will be made, and God’s people will grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Mars Hill/Mark Driscoll debacle is well known. Many have listened to Christianity Today’s excellent podcast series, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. The fall of Mars Hill is but another incident in a long series of scandals plaguing American evangelicalism. Why do such things happen over and over again?
My response . . . A bad or non-existent ecclesiology. Throughout contemporary American Christianity there is little if any regard paid to the biblical model of church government (Presbyterian/Reformed), which is rule by a plurality of elders, approved by the congregation, whose role is, in part, to keep watch upon the life and doctrine of the pastor and their fellow elders.
I wonder if there was ever a moment in the early days of these entrepreneurial churches when the founding members asked themselves, “how did the church in the New Testament govern itself?” Probably not, or else the subject was quickly dismissed as an appeal to mere tradition, something too cumbersome or unnecessarily inefficient. Start-up church groups like this often view its charismatic leader as taking on (even if indirectly) the role of an apostle. He leads, they follow, so there’s no real discussion of church governance. No one sees the need.
The leader appears to have a direct link to God, which allows the group members (better—“followers”) to let the leader unquestionably assume the role of arbiter of the group’s doctrine, the gifted one who determines the group’s mission and “casts its vision,” as well as the primary decision maker should there be differences of opinion. Without a biblical ecclesiology in place, the visionary leader is able to get his way through manipulation and guilt, and if necessary, will remove any and all who oppose him. Yet nobody blinks. In the end, the once loyal followers are left embittered and wonder, “how did God let this happen?” Many leave the church. We have seen this story play out over and over again, often in the media.
As the Mars Hill series demonstrates, Mark Driscoll did indeed appoint “elders,” (who really didn’t function as biblical elders) but then fired them whenever it suited him. Many of these Driscoll appointed elders were sincere and godly men, committed to an exciting new vision for a church effectively reaching the largely un-churched Seattle area. They didn’t sign up for what they got in the end. The wide-eyed energy of youth often comes without the experience, wisdom, and battle-scars that older men and established churches possess. After what they went though at Mars Hill, they now have the wisdom and scars of grizzled veterans, and Lord willing, without the cynicism such an ordeal often produces.
While listening to the series, a comparison to life in Stalin’s politburo came to mind—the continual purges of anyone who crossed or disappointed him, or who no longer had value in achieving Driscoll’s vision. No, Driscoll did not send people to their death or the Gulag. Rather, I’m referring to what political philosopher Hannah Arendt described as the fate of many opponents of a totalitarian regime, they become “non-people.” Not only is their dignity stolen (in the prison or the Gulag), but what happens to them (their loss of humanity and purpose) serves as a frightening example to others of what happens if you do not wholly embrace the leader’s agenda. The cruelty recounted by Mars Hill survivors of continual removal, shaming, and bullying of worship leaders, fellow pastors now seen as rivals, and the removal of hand picked-elders who decided they could no longer tow Driscoll’s line or further his own personal aims, reflects a level of authoritarian abuse much like the politburo. His narcissism should have kept Driscoll out of the pastoral office from the get-go. But narcissists are quick to size people up. They are skilled manipulators. Not long after one of these followers first entertains the thought of being unwilling to go along with his agenda, Driscoll was on to them, and callously pushed them off his stage as a “non-person.” And the purges kept coming. No one would stand in his way.
For some time it looked as though Driscoll humbly sought the wise council of noted church leaders. But those highly respected evangelical and Reformed leaders whom Mark Driscoll brought to Mars Hill, ended up being unwittingly used by Driscoll to give him respectability, along with an open door to the Reformed-evangelical publishing and conference circuit. It looked as though the young buck was genuine in his willingness to follow the better path of church government explained to him. But only as long as it suited him. His subsequent actions demonstrate he never learned (if he even listened). Public perception of credibility through rubbing elbows with respected evangelicals is what mattered.
In rejecting a biblical ecclesiology, Driscoll was free to “make it up as he went along”—until his sheep and co-laborers had nothing left to offer him. Then he went too far, abused too many, and he was out, for a time. Several years of self-imposed exile later, he was able to swing a move to Scottsdale, Arizona, and start all over again, this time with a revised vision (Calvinism was now out) and he found a new group of followers who were all-too willing to ignore his well-known track record. Caveat emptor.
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All of our suffering ceases to be meaningless. All of our suffering has divine purpose wrapped up into it so that we know, we can be assured, that what we are going through is meant to bring about our future glory. It must be so! In Christ we have become inheritors of God, redeemed sinners who will know God and be with God forevermore as his children, enjoying him as our Father. Therefore, every little bit of suffering we go through is just another step closer to glory. 

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. – Romans 8:16-17
Paul has been moving us from one degree of glory to another as his argument in Romans 8 progresses. Beginning in verse 1 with some of the most comforting words in all of Scripture, that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”, he has brought us to what is some of the most encouraging words in Scripture, that “all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God… [For] the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:14, 16).
His whole purpose here is to encourage Christians that they are indeed recipients of grace. Consider how Paul, inspired by the Spirit Himself, is actually writing into our hearts an assurance of faith. These verses are real promises given to us, which means, these words should be read and reread by us continually; we ought to be meditating on these verses precisely because through them we’re strengthened in our faith. Paul will later tell us that “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17) and Romans 8 contains some of the most beautiful, faith-producing words of Christ! Read and hear and be filled, friends – what we’re reading here is some of our Lord’s richest food and finest wine all meant to nourish our souls.
Now, in verse 17, Paul elaborates upon the truth that we are children of God by reminding us that we are also heirs of God and, indeed, fellow heirs with Christ! The early church father and preacher John Chrysostom wonderfully points out how Paul is “enhancing the Gifts of God little by little, for since it is possible to be children, and yet not become heirs (for not all children are heirs), he adds this – that we are heirs!”[1] Paul is adding grace to grace as he shows us not just our adoption by God in Christ but that we’re also heirs of God in Christ. To be an heir is to be a recipient of all that a father has. It’s a curious statement though since an heir receives his inheritance only upon the death of the parent. But here it is absurd to conceive of the death of God the Father. Instead, we’ve become heirs of God the Father through the death of the Son! And so now, insofar as God is eternal and we, by the Spirit, are bound up in the resurrection of Christ, we become eternal heirs of God, inheritors of life eternal in God.
I think John Stott is right to ask the question, “is it possible… that the inheritance Paul has in mind is not something God intends to bestow on us but God himself?”[2]  This certainly is in keeping with Paul’s major emphasis in Romans 8 on our union in and with Christ. Receiving the blessings of salvation (our justification, our sanctification, our adoption, and glorification) means becoming one with the Son of God in whom all those blessings are found. And insofar as we become one with the Son, we also become one with God the Father. This was Jesus’ prayer in John 17, when he asked the Father that all “those who will believe in me… that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us… I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one” (John 17:20-23).
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