The Internet Monk Archives

Three Questions About a “Secret” Rapture

UPDATE: Jason Boyett’s “Pocket Guide to the Apocalypse” is a great book for anyone interested in the basics of evangelical apocalyptic eschatology.

Advocates of the rapture make much of the texts in Luke and Matthew that speak of “one taken, one left.”

Luke 17:34-35 34 I tell you, in that night there will be two in one bed. One will be taken and the other left. 35 There will be two women grinding together. One will be taken and the other left.”

When discussing texts that supposedly teach the secret rapture, it is important to have the advocate of this belief answer several questions.Continue reading “Three Questions About a “Secret” Rapture”

What’s Wrong With The Sermon? V: “More stories please!”

The series to this point:

Whatâ�?��?�s Wrong With The Sermon?: It’s Too Long.
Whatâ�?��?�s Wrong With The Sermon? II: It’s Boring.
Whatâ�?��?�s Wrong With The Sermon? III: “I don’t understand it.”
Whatâ�?��?�s Wrong With The Sermon? IV: “It isn’t practical.”

While an appreciation of stories is essential to understand and communicate the Bible, Biblical preaching should use stories to illustrate, not dominate, the sermon.

“We are constantly assured that churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine–‘dull dogma,’ as people call it. The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man–the dogma is the drama.” -Dorothy Sayer

Good preaching uses good stories. This is unarguable from several perspectives.Continue reading “What’s Wrong With The Sermon? V: “More stories please!””

Review: Jesus and The Victory of God by N.T. Wright

For the past year, I’ve been reading N.T. Wright more than any other author. His “big books” have been mountains that I was determined to climb carefully and thoroughly. Today I finished what easily goes to the top of my list of books that have impacted my life, my ministry, my faith and my understanding of the Bible: Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God, the second book in his Christian Origins and the Question of God series.Continue reading “Review: Jesus and The Victory of God by N.T. Wright”

What’s Wrong With The Sermon? IV: “It isn’t practical.”

The Gospel leads us to practical discipleship, but it doesn’t create a religion of simplistic success principles. Good preaching leads to practical application without obscuring the Gospel itself.

To gain some idea of the state of contemporary preaching, survey what is being preached at any ten successful megachurches in your state, or any ten churches who very much want to become megachurches in the future. Compare these sermons to the sermons of any group of “great preachers” of the past, or well-known expositional, exegetical preachers today.

In other words, compare Ed Young, Jr or Joel Osteen with Jonathan Edwards, Martyn Lloyd-Jones or John Piper. The differences are more than just pronounced; they are stunning. Aside from the fact that someone is talking, it can easily appear that these sermons have no similarity to one another at all.

There will be many differences. Length. Titles. Use of illustrations. Theological depth. Use of the Bible. The effect of technology. Foremost, however, among the observed differences will be the focus on “practical,” “How-to” messages in contemporary churches. Contemporary preaching, especially in the successful megachurches that are populating the western landscape, has become primarily focused on “practical,” “How to be” and “How to do” messages.Continue reading “What’s Wrong With The Sermon? IV: “It isn’t practical.””

Southern Baptists and Charismatics: What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

Are current fears of Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity among Southern Baptists reasonable or ridiculous?

I first bumped into the charismatic renewal movement in the early 1970’s. Episcopalian friends were going to a charismatic prayer meeting at a Catholic church. Curious, I began attending, observing, and eventually participating, right down to–briefly and insincerely–speaking in tongues.

Riding home after a meeting one evening, I told my friend that “charismatic Catholics are a lot like Baptists who just got excited during revival.” I was very serious. Big red Bibles. Shouting “Amen” and “Praise the Lord!” Animated testimonies of salvation, deliverance from sin and physical healing. A determination to “witness” about Jesus to other people. Confidence that God was at work, doing the same things he did in the book of Acts. Remove the tongues and the theology of the second baptism of the Holy Spirit and this exuberant, evangelical expression of faith felt almost just like what the revivalists and evangelists tried to stir up at our church twice a year.

That was before I’d ever heard of Pat Robertson, a Southern Baptist turned charismatic, or John Osteen, a Southern Baptist who began charismatic Lakewood Church. In 1973, James Robison turned our little town upside down with a city wide crusade. I had never heard such emotionally impacting preaching or seen such demonstrations of the power of the Holy Spirit.Continue reading “Southern Baptists and Charismatics: What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been”

Review: Promises Kept by Mark Dever

Mark Dever is pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., a member of the Founder’s Ministries inner circle, an accomplished Puritan scholar, director and resident scholar at 9 Marks Ministries, seminary professor, author and one of my very favorite preachers to listen to anytime. Dever’s new book The Message of the New Testament: Promises Kept, is a must acquire for many IM readers.

Dever has written a unique “preacher’s introduction to the New Testament.” This isn’t scholarly, critical material; it is 27 extended and expanded “overview” sermons. Each sermon introduces a single New Testament book. (I know Dever’s material well enough to know that many of these chapters were two or three sermons, but the sermon-style is intact.) The goal is to give the interested layperson a solid, theologically driven, textually serious, thematically expounded introduction to the New Testament books. He succeeds marvelously.Continue reading “Review: Promises Kept by Mark Dever”

Brilliant!

The Southern Baptist International Mission Board’s new guidelines for missionary appointment set the standard for meddling innovation.

Best way to get up to speed on this story is to read this piece from the Oklahoma Baptist Paper: We’re At The Crossroads.

(This post is going to discuss the current controversy regarding the IMB’s new guidelines for missionary appointment. I am, at heart, a convinced credobaptist, and I’m going to discuss baptism as a credobaptist who comes to baptism with a covenant theology framework. Fred Malone has explained that position in detail, so I would ask paedobaptist and sacramentalist commenters to please pass on commenting on the baptism portion of this post. I would prefer to engage Baptists regarding these issues. Thanks.)

The Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission board has new guidelines for missionary appointment. You can read the old guidelines, and compare them to the new guidelines, at Wade Burleson’s blog.Continue reading “Brilliant!”

What’s Wrong With The Sermon? III: “I don’t understand it.”

The third in a series of posts examining the basics of good contemporary preaching.

This post is not about people whose communication skills are too poor to get the job done. If you are ignorant, or mumble or can’t get a talk organized in any sort of comprehensible way, the road for you is clear and striaght ahead: Get to work improving your skills. Take a class in communication or speech. Get mentored. These obvious problems can be addressed relatively simply if you have the humility to admit you need work.

We’re going to go a different direction.Continue reading “What’s Wrong With The Sermon? III: “I don’t understand it.””

More Thoughts On The Emerging Church

When did “emerging” get to mean something that was so clearly, definitely bad? When did we all agree that “emerging” means wrong about everything?

I thought “emerging” was an approach, a “style,” not a theological confession. According to recent posts at various self-proclaimed theological watchblogs, “emerging” equals heresy, open theology, charismatic error, liberalism, denial of the authority of scripture and registered Democratic.

I thought “emerging” was an intentional effort to do church in a way that employs a non-traditional missional approach to reaching younger people in postmodern, western culture. Now it appears to mean “everything bad you can find in a Brian Mclaren book is embraced enthusiastically by everyone with a goatee.”Continue reading “More Thoughts On The Emerging Church”

What’s Wrong With The Sermon? II: It’s Boring

In an entertainment addicted, spiritually depraved culture, the Christian message will never escape the charge of being boring, so preachers should tell God’s story clearly, creatively and persuasively, but without trading the Gospel for the applause of an audience.

Today’s criticism:2. The sermon is boring.

What did we do before the word boring was invented? It must have been tough.

One of the ironies of the study of preaching is that I’m pretty sure most of the great preachers of history would have been boring to the vast majority of people who ever happened to hear them.Continue reading “What’s Wrong With The Sermon? II: It’s Boring”