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New Covenant Theology: A Critical Evaluation
Several friends have written to me during the last few years to tell me that their views of the Old Testament, of Law and Gospel, of the Covenant of Grace, of the Church and of the Person of Christ have been radically altered by the teaching of Fred Zaspel and John Reisinger. A few have turned judgemental and in their new enthusiasm for this new teaching, they have scolded me for keeping to old Reformed patterns of doctrine, exegesis and hermeneutics and have discontinued fellowship. Such disciples are far stricter than their mentors as both Reisinger and Zaspel invite constructive criticism and have altered, if not corrected, their views openly since the late nineteen-nineties. Indeed, they call their own views ‘elastic’. New Covenant Theology (NCT)…
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Counterfeit Gospels: God’s Multiple Wills
Many free-willers and duty-faith people who call themselves ‘Calvinists’ speak of two different wills in God which they call His secret and revealed wills. These two sides of God, they believe, run parallel to each other and never the twain shall meet in this life. They tell us that this paradox or seemingly self-contradiction in God will be explained in glory. In other words, they refuse to preach the full will of God as revealed in His full gospel and ban it to that area of thought symbolised by the adage ‘Pie in the sky when you die’! Theirs is a half-gospel which is thus no gospel. Maximising and minimising God’s will Such would-be Calvinists tell us that those who reject duty obedience leading to…
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Counterfeit Gospels: Temporary Salvation
Of all the Baptist denominations, I always stood very near the Particular Baptists. It was only recently that it was pointed out to me by my friend Richard Schade of Grand Rapids that, at times, movements had arisen amongst their ranks who believed, like many non-Baptists, that salvation was as short-lived as the will of the ‘saved’ would have it. He called this ‘time salvation’, which was quite a new term to me. I had always believed since my own conversion that salvation must be ‘for keeps’ otherwise it is not salvation. I immediately began to look into this mystery, starting on a helpful book on the subject by an Elder Boaz which I found on the Internet Archive. Boaz wrote at the turn of…
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Redemption Secured And Applied: As Seen By John Gill
Nowadays many Christians speak of a redemption which Christ accomplished theoretically for all but which worked out practically only for a few. This would seem like a great waste of divine energy – if it were true. Fancy preaching on a redemption accomplished but not applied. What a false gospel that would be! We rarely meet up with Absolute Universalism amongst Evangelicals; that is the idea that Christ has died for all and thus all will be ultimately saved. We do, however, meet up with the teaching that Christ has died for all men everywhere, should they wish to accept it. This belief, once found only amongst Pelagians and Arminians, is an even more questionable dogma than Universalism. The latter still looks to God to…
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Responsibilities And Duties: Radical Views Expressed By Sam Waldron And Curt Daniel
Our duty-faith friends tell us that their idea of responsibility is synonymous with their idea of duty. For Curt Daniel for instance, recently interviewed by Sam Waldron, the synonyms of responsibility have remained constant since before the Fall. These are: accountability, obedience, duty, liability, obligation, morality and what he calls ‘oughtness’. These terms according to Daniel depict the natural obligations or responsibilities of man towards God which man has always had. In these matters man as a natural agent has always had the freedom to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to God. This is because, Daniel says, no man is neutral in his response to God. If man were neutral in his relationship to God, he would have ceased to be man. Thus, even though he…
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Mottos On The Walls
My mother Gladys Ella, née Hume, started going to Sunday and elementary school a year before the outbreak of the First World War in England. When I left home to do my apprenticeship in Sweden in the mid 1950s, Mum sent me a chain of letters, mostly from Memory Lane. Here is a letter she sent me on her earliest childhood entitled ‘Mottos on the Wall.’ Mum was brought up in a poverty-stricken home bereft of a father but could write the account given below in joyous remembrance. How different it was then to the grumpy groaning of modern society who have no Scriptural ‘Mottos on the Walls’: How well I remember the Mottos once hanging on our bedroom walls. They were coloured and framed,…
