Yearly Archives: 2018

A Sermon on Christian Unity: The Proto-Kinism of PCA Founder John E. Richards

Christian Unity

(The founding of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) was the work of many men, but in any list of those most essential to its founding, along with names like Kenneth Keyes, Paul Settle, Morton Smith, and Jack Williamson, the name of Dr. John Edwards Richards would most certainly be found in a prominent position.  Richards helped organize and lead Presbyterian Churchmen United, one of the four bodies that brought the PCA into being.  In 1969, Richards and an associate led this group in publishing a Declaration of Commitment to the Word of God in 30 major newspapers, which was signed by over 500 ministers.  In 1972, he retired from the pastorate to serve as the administrator for the Steering Committee for a Continuing Presbyterian Church, and spent much of his time traveling to churches to present the issues and debate liberal opponents.  He was elected to prepare the docket for the first ever General Assembly, and literally wrote the book on the founding of the PCA, The Historical Birth of the Presbyterian Church in America, from which the following is extracted.  At the main campus of Reformed Theological Seminary, the professorial chair for systematic and historical theology is named in his honor (ironically, a position held today by social justice warrior Ligon Duncan).  It is difficult to overstate Richards’ contribution to the founding of the PCA. read more

A Dozen Quick Arguments Against Interracial Marriage

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Race is a blood relationship that can be succinctly and Biblically defined as a group of people sharing common descent from a particular man. As such, it is a pattern that repeats at any scale. In the broadest sense, there is one race, the race of Adam. In the narrowest sense, my son is of the race of me. In truth, the Bible doesn’t deal too much with races, but predominantly uses the broader concept of nations. A nation is a group of people sharing a common race, religion, location, and history. Simply put, the people of a nation share a common identity that forms the basis of a shared understanding. read more

Guest Post from Joel McSherman: Satan, Flawed Social Justice Warrior

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The following is a guest post by Dr. Joel McSherman, president of American Blindness, Secret Fellow with George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and author of Grievance Mongering and Virtue Signaling: How To Build a Name for Yourself in the Age of Postmodern Millennials.

From a theological perspective, I could find a dozen ways to criticize Satan (and have done so). Today, I set those aside in order to praise him for two major examples of courage in the face of dangerous anti-egalitarian hatred. read more

God’s Law is the Rule of Life in All Spheres of Authority

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The following was prompted by a discussion with a friend regarding the Westminster Confession of Faith’s treatment of the judicial/civil division of the Law, as well as the 1788 American revisions to WCF 23:3. Despite the digression at the end to focus on these specific issues, I hope it might serve as a general introduction to the continuing and general applicability of God’s Law in the modern world. ~ Mickey Henry

In order for a worldview to be a worldview, it must possess some conception of metaphysics (nature of reality: origins, mind/matter, time, causation, etc.), teleology (purpose/ultimate ends), and epistemology (how we know what we know), as well as a system of ethics; that is, a code of right behavior. The source of a worldview’s code of right behavior, its ethics/morals/law, is the ultimate authority of that worldview (i.e., its “god”). For example, if man or one of man’s institutions determines right behavior, then man is the ultimate authority of that worldview. Within any worldview, there are multiple spheres of authority: individual, family, church, civil government, association, business, etc. The nature of sphere authority, its source, order of precedence, degree of autonomy, and so forth, may be different from one worldview to the next, but these basic categories are inescapable for man (attempts by communists and other egalitarian revolutionaries to annihilate any one of these spheres has always ultimately resulted in failure). In a non-syncretic worldview, that is, one that is self-consistent, homogeneous, and stable, all authority spheres operate within the same ethical framework. While there is variability between authority spheres in emphasis as well as permissible penal sanctions, in a self-consistent worldview there is one law system for all. Since all ethical/legal systems, by nature, distinguish between should and should not, neutrality is a metaphysical impossibility. read more