Mr. Bean and the Library

The last several weeks I have visited more libraries both physically and online than I have in the last decade.  I think I am beginning to have nightmares about the Dewey decimal system.  At any rate, here is a hilarious clip from English comedy.

To the Garden we Go...

Okay.  I have had a lousy garden this year; pure and simple.  Overall in terms of harvest, this has been the worst gardening experience of my life.
I planted eight tomato plants, two cherry and the rest regular size.  I may have picked six tomatoes from them all.  Squirrels got to some of them, but in talking to others, very few people have had a good tomato year.  Oddly enough though, I had one volunteer tomato plant come up from a strawberry that I planted.  It is a yellow cherry tomato plant pictured above.  We are now picking some every day.
In other pathetic garden news, I picked two cucumbers from two plants before they shriveled up and died.  I do have two ‘Black Diamond’ watermelons on the vine that are a good size and should be ready to pick any day.  I had the best looking pole beans (Kentucky Wonder) I have ever grown, but not one bean on them.  Of the dozen or so okra plants, I have harvested two okra (compared with two years ago, when we were harvesting about twenty ever day).  I harvest one gourd before the vines died.
My peppers are the one faithful vegetable, as I have six varieties, mainly for winter soups that I harvest about every three days.  I have harvested two baggies full.  I guess this year teaches the truth that we can plant, and we can water, but God makes it grow, or in my case, doesn’t.

Report on School

Most of you know that I am currently a PhD student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.  Southern is the oldest and largest of our six Southern Baptist seminaries.  It is terrific place to receive a solid theological education.  I am part of Southern’s pioneer PhD program known as the modular format.  In a nutshell, being in this program allows me to remain in KC living and being a pastor while doing most of my research.  I physically go to Louisville a couple of times a year for a few weeks.
I wanted to use this blog to serve as a sort of update on my research thus far.
One course that I had to take this past summer was a Cooperative Program course.  If you grew up Southern Baptist, you probably know much about this wonderful and voluminous ministry.  The Cooperative Program is a collective effort (around 40,000 churches) that uses a portion of their tithes and offerings to support over 6,000 missionaries across the world.
Basically, the course dealt with issues involving the local church, some data on Baptist history, but a particular focus on Southern Baptist polity.  The course was a good refresher of the tradition I grew up in.  The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the world.  That is not always a good thing, but in the cause of global missions most other denominations envy this organization that has placed and supported so many on the field.  We are also the only Protestant denomination that has went the path of liberal theology and made a successful return to a biblical orthodoxy.  I am thankful of the Southern Baptist heritage I grew up with.  Though we are not perfect, God has used our convention for the sake of His gospel and His word.

How Did You Spend Your Summer?

So meteorologists mark September 1st as the first weather day of fall, don’t ask me why.  But with September does signal the approach of school days (in my day); although now kids have been in school for three weeks which seems a bit much.  Nevertheless here is a brief synopsis of how I spent my summer.
Our family made five different trips to the ER this summer (my son three times, my daughter once, and myself once).  I actually thought I was having a heart attack, but only palpitations.  Hello blood pressure medicine.
Then we found out we had a carpenter ant infestation in one of our walls.  It turns out the critters were coming from our neighbor’s tree.
After that our basement flooded as hard rains backed up our sump pump pit and I went downstairs to ankle deep water.  My son’s pirate ship was literally floating on the high seas.
Then one of our church members borrowed my truck which is a stick shift.  She parked on an incline at the farm she went to collect a chair she bought.  Failing to engage it in gear, the truck proceeded to coast down the hill at a rapid pace without a pilot and crashed into the owner’s steel barn which crashed onto my truck collapsing some of the roof and tailgate as well as destroying the paint job on the passenger’s side.
All in all these things remind me that this world isn’t our home, and all of our stuff is relative.  Time marches on like an ever rolling stream, and our stuff winds up in the junkyard and we wind up in the graveyard.  So once again the Heavenly Father has reminded that this world is passing away (quite literally) in my case, so we should set our affections on things above.

Coffee with John Gill

B.A.-“How did you meet your wife?”

J.G.-“I met Elizabeth while I itinerated in some churches.  We were married in 1718.  We would be married for 46 years until her death.”

B.A.-“Any kids?”

J.G.-“Yes. Though regrettably only three of our many children survived beyond infancy, and even one of those three died when she was 13.  I preached her funeral.”

B.A.-“You have influenced many other great saints.  You had a large impression on George Whitefield and John Wesley.  Spurgeon referred to you as ‘the mantle and chair of the Metropolitan Tabernacle’.  Is it true that you were also given the nickname ‘Dr. Volumnious’?”

J.G.-“Unfortunately”.

B.A.-“Would you say that your blockbluster work was The Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity?”

J.G.-“I think that is safe to say it has been an indelible mark on many.”

 
B.A.-“I know you were involved in several controversies, and became a lightning rod for many of those.  Do you care to specify what some you were involved in?”
J.G.-“ I attempted to champion the cause against a moral revelation as a means of salvation.  I defended the doctrines of grace against those who were weak in them.  I sought to refute a deists claims that there was no Messianic prophecies about Jesus in the Old Testament.  I also challenged John Wesley on the issue of perseverance of the saints.  Those among other things kept me occupied.”

B.A.-“What were some of your convictions about the church?”

J.G.-“ I believed that a church must have and should use a confession of faith for its own purity and safety.  I was an unwavering Baptist defending the believer’s baptism position even to the point of associating the paedo-baptist position as akin to Catholicism.  I also defended the Baptist belief that a church should have a regenerate church membership.”

B.A.-“What were some of your beliefs related to the gospel?”

J.G.-“ Central to my preaching was the total sinfulness and therefore helplessness of man, and the total power of God to save. I also strongly believed in using the law and the gospel in his salvation messages, making his presentation similar to that of Whitefield.”

Richard Baxter

“The devil’s word is, ‘You may be saved without being born again and converted; you may do well enough without being holy, God doth but frighten you;  he is more merciful than to do as he saith, he will be better to you than his word.’  And alas, the greatest part of the world believes this word of the devil before the word of God; just as our sin and misery came into the world.  God said to our first parents, ‘If you eat you will die’; and the devil contradicted him, and said, ‘You will not die’: and the woman believed the devil before God.  So now the Lord saith, Turn or die; and the devil saith, You will not die, if you do but cry for God’s mercy at the last, and give over the acts of sin when you can practice it no longer.  And this is the word that the world believes.”  (Call to the Unconverted, Evangelical Press 1976 reprint, pp. 42-43)

Spurgeon on the Cross

“Shall we never be able to drive into men’s minds the truth that predestination and free agency are both facts?  Men sin as freely as birds fly in the air, and they are altogether responsible for their sin; and yet everything is ordained and foreseen of God.  The fore-ordination of God in no degree interferes with the responsibility of man.  I have often been asked by persons to reconcile the two truths.  My only reply is-they need no reconciliation, for they never fell out.  Why should I try to reconcile two friends?  Prove to me that the two truths do not agree.  In that request I have set you a task as difficult as that which you propose to me.  These two facts are parallel lines; I cannot make them unite, but you cannot make them cross each other.  Permit me also to add that I have long ago given up the idea of making all beliefs into a system.  I believe, but I cannot explain.  I fall before the majesty of revelation and adore the infinite Lord.” (Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Volume 33, Banner of Truth Trust, 1969 reprint, pp. 198-199).