Don't Waste Your Life

Notes

  1. Schaeffer's prophetic work remains incredibly relevant to our age. I'd encourage every one of my readers to read at least one work by Schaeffer. A good place to begin with the "best of the best" is The Francis A. Schaeffer Trilogy: The God Who Is There, Escape from Reason, and He Is There and He Is Not Silent (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1990).
  2. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1952).
  3. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1955), 199.
  4. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 91.

Notes

  1. E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1967), ix. This quote does not reflect what Hirsch believes but what he is arguing against.
  2. The quote is from aphorism 125 titled "The Madman," in The Joyful Science, cited in Damon Linker, "Nietzsche's Truth," First Things 125 (August/September, 2002): 54; available online at http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0208/articles/linker.html.
  3. Daniel Fuller, The Unity of the Bible: Unfolding God's Plan for Humanity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1992).
  4. Ibid., 453-454.
  5. Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1976), xx-xxi.
  6. Jonathan Edwards, "Nothing Upon Earth Can Represent the Glories of Heaven," in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 14, ed. Kenneth P. Minkema (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997), 144.

Notes

  1. See http://www.268generation.com/268generation/268declaration.htm [accessed 3-15-03].
  2. C. S. Lewis, "Meditation in a Toolshed," in C. S. Lewis: Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces (London: Harper Collins, 2000), 607.

Notes

  1. In the time of Christ this was the name for the prince of demons-that is, Satan or the devil.
  2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 99.
  3. Ibid., 55.
  4. John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (Hertfordshire, England: Evangelical Press, 1978), 123.
  5. John Bunyan, Seasonable Counsels, or Advice to Sufferers, in The Works of John Bunyan, Vol. 2, ed. George Offor (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1991, orig., 1854), 726.

Notes

  1. This view is clearly and consciously opposed to the view called open theism which believes that God takes real risks in the sense that he does not know the outcome of many events that he sets in motion. This view is represented, for example, by John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998) and Gregory A. Boyd, Satan and the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2001) and is criticized effectively, I believe, by R. K. McGregor Wright, No Place for Sovereignty: What's Wrong with Freewill Theism? (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1996); Bruce A. Ware, God's Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2000); John M. Frame, No Other God: A Response to Open Theism (Phillipsburg, N. J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2001); and John Piper, Justin Taylor, Paul Kjoss Helseth, eds., Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2003).
  2. See more on why God cannot be a risk-taker in John Piper, The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God's Delight in Being God, 2nd edition (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 2000), 54-62.
  3. Stephen Neill, A History of Christian Missions (Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1964), 42-43.
  4. Ibid., 42.
  5. This is the way I would understand the many general promises in the Old Testament to the effect that the needs of the righteous will always be met. For example, Proverbs 10:3, "The LORD does not let the righteous go hungry, but he thwarts the craving of the wicked." I think this is 1) generally true in the way God runs the world-upright, hardworking people prosper and have enough; and 2) always and absolutely true in the sense that the righteous will never hunger beyond what they are able to endure for the sake of Christ. See John Piper, "‘No Evil Will Befall You.' Really?" in A Godward Life, Savoring the Supremacy of God in All of Life, Book Two (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 1999), 53-55.

Notes

  1. Robert Murray M'Cheyne, Sermons of M'Cheyne (Edinburgh: n. p., 1848), 482. Italics added. Quoted in Timothy J. Keller, Ministries of Mercy: The Call of the Jericho Road (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1997), 40.
  2. I say "ever-increasing" not because we move from sadness to gladness over time in heaven, but because we go on from one fullness to another. I say this because a finite mind-and we will always be finite-cannot receive the whole of God. He is infinite. Therefore he communicates his infinite fullness to us in degrees forever. There will always be more for a finite mind to see of an infinite God. As we see this, we will be more and more happy. You can see more thoughts on this by Jonathan Edwards in John Piper, God's Passion for his Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1998), 37.
  3. For a more extended treatment of the unity of these two motives in the Christian life, see the chapter, "A Passion for God's Supremacy and Compassion for Man's Soul: Jonathan Edwards on the Unity of Motives for World Missions," in John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad: The Supremacy of God in Missions, 2nd edition (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2003), 203-214.

Notes

  1. Randy Alcorn, The Treasure Principle (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 2001), 8.
  2. Ralph Winter, "Reconsecration to a Wartime, not a Peacetime, Lifestyle," in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader, 2nd edition, eds. Ralph D. Winter and Steven C. Hawthorne (Pasadena, Ca.: William Carey Library, 1999), 705.
  3. Matthew 24:42; 25:13; 26:41; Acts 20:31; 1 Corinthians 16:13; Ephesians 6:18; Colossians 4:2; 1 Thessalonians 5:6; 1 Peter 5:8.
  4. Ralph Winter, "Reconsecration to a Wartime, not a Peacetime, Lifestyle," 706.
  5. Cited from http://www.verbo.org/site/winter.htm [accessed 4-2-03]. To clarify the relation between Satan's freedom and God's sovereignty, I would stress that Satan is real and that God gives him permission (lengthening his leash, as it were) to exploit the divine curse on creation because of sin (Romans 8:20-23), but that God remains in control of the world in all of its parts. There is no contradiction between saying that God ultimately controls all things and saying that we should labor to triumph over disease, resist injustice, and win people to Christ. Our labor is part of his way of accomplishing his sovereign plan. See John Piper, "God's Pleasure in All That He Does" (Chapter Two), in The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God's Delight in Being God (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 2000), 47-76.
  6. James Bradley, Flags of Our Fathers (New York: Bantam, 2000), 62.
  7. Neil Postman, "Amusing Ourselves to Death," Et Cetera (Spring 1985): 15, 18. See his book by the same title, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Viking, 1985).
  8. David Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994), 88, 90.
  9. Douglas R. Groothuis, "How the Bombarding Images of TV Culture Undermine the Power of Words," Modern Reformation, 10 (January/February 2001): 35-36. Available online at http://www.modernreformation.org/mr01/janfeb/mr0101bombardingtv.html.
  10. Bradley, Flags of Our Fathers, 246-247. This book is the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima woven together with the lives of the six flag raisers in the famous Iwo Jima Memorial, told by the son of John Bradley, one of the soldiers in the Memorial.
  11. Ibid., 188.
  12. Megan Heggemeir, "For Teenagers, Fashion Is Key to Fitting in," Minneapolis Star Tribune (November 16, 2002): A23.
  13. Bradley, Flags of Our Fathers, 174-175.
  14. Ibid., 161-162.

Notes

  1. Martin Luther, "An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility," in Three Treatises (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1960), 14-17. See Gene Edward Veith, Jr., God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2002) for an exposition for laypeople of Luther's doctrine of vocation. See also Os Guinness, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (Nashville: Word, 1998), and Paul Helm, Callings: The Gospel in the World (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1998).
  2. Cecil F. Alexander, "All Things Bright and Beautiful" (1848).
  3. Jonathan Edwards, "Thoughts Concerning the Revival," in The Great Awakening, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 4 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1972), 340.
  4. C. S. Lewis, "Christianity and Literature," in Christian Reflections (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1967), 10.
  5. C. S. Lewis, "Rejoinder to Dr. Pittenger," in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1970), 183.

Notes

  1. Courtney Anderson, To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1956), 14.
  2. Deism was "the belief, based solely on reason, in a God who created the universe and then abandoned it, assuming no control over life, exerting no influence on natural phenomena, and giving no supernatural revelation," The American Heritage Dictionary (http://www.bartleby.com/61/44/D0104400.html, accessed 4-3-03).
  3. Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 41.
  4. Ibid., 42.
  5. Ibid., 44. The source of this story is oral reports from family members recorded in Francis Wayland, A Memoir of the Life and Labors of the Rev. Adoniram Judson, D. D., Vol. 1 (Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Co., 1854), 24-25.
  6. Anderson, To the Golden Shore, 45.
  7. Ibid., 83.
  8. The Bethlehem Institute Affirmation of Faith can be read in its entirety at http://desiringgod.org/library/what_we_believe/tbi_affirmation.html.
  9. B. B. Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1950), 574. I found this quoted in Timothy J. Keller's book, Ministries of Mercy: The Call of the Jericho Road (Phillipsburg, N. J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1997), 65. I wish every one of my readers would read this book.
  10. Kenneth Scott Latourette, These Sought a Country (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950), 46.
  11. John R. Mott, Five Decades and a Forward View (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1939), 8.
  12. David Howard, "Student Power in Missions," in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader, 2nd edition, eds. Ralph D. Winter and Steven C. Hawthorne (Pasadena, Ca.: William Carey Library, 1999), 283. Most of the facts I have recorded here about the SVM come from this article.
  13. Ruth Rouse and Stephen C. Neill, A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1517-1948 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1967), 328.
  14. J. Campbell White, "The Layman's Missionary Movement," in Ralph D. Winter and Steven C. Hawthorne, eds., Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader, 1st edition (Pasadena, Ca.: William Carey Library, 1981), 222.
  15. Ibid., 223.
  16. Ibid., 224.
  17. Ibid., 225.
  18. Ibid., 224.
  19. Ibid., 225.
  20. http://www.emptytomb.org/research.html [accessed 3-28-03].
  21. http://www.emptytomb.org/Chapter6hlites.html [accessed 3-28-03].
  22. http://www.missionfrontiers.org/newslinks/statewe.htm [accessed 3-28-03].
  23. Patrick Johnstone, The Church Is Bigger Than You Think (Ross-shire, England: Christian Focus, 1998), 229.
  24. See, for example, http://www.ad2000.org/peoples/jpllist.pdf; http://www.joshuaproject.net/; http://www.calebproject.org/maps.htm
  25. Johnstone, The Church Is Bigger Than You Think, 225-230.
  26. Ibid., 215. Johnstone is more optimistic than Barrett in his numbers: About 20% of the world's population are unevangelized; 47% are non-Christians living where they are likely to be evangelized; and 33% are professing Christians.
  27. David B. Barrett and Todd M. Johnson, "Annual Statistical Table on Global Mission 2002," International Bulletin of Missionary Research 26 (January 2002): 22-23.
  28. Johnstone, The Church Is Bigger Than You Think, 115-116.
  29. This growth in the twentieth century is documented by Philip Jenkins, The New Christendom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 'Over the past century . . . the center of gravity in the Christian world has shifted inexorably southward to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Already today the largest Christian communities on the planet are to be found in Africa and Latin America. If we want to visualize a ‘typical' contemporary Christian, we should think of a woman living in a village in Nigeria or in a Brazilian favela. As Kenyan scholar John Mbiti has observed, "the centers of the church's universality [are] no longer in Geneva, Rome, Athens, Paris, London, New York, but in Kinshasa, Buenos Aires, Addis Ababa and Manila. Whatever Europeans or North Americans may believe, Christianity is doing very well indeed in the global South-not just surviving, but expanding." (p. 2)
  30. Johnstone, The Church Is Bigger Than You Think, 273.
  31. Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandryk, Operation World: When We Pray God Works (Waynesboro, Ga.: Paternoster USA, 2001). See the online version at http://www.operationworld.org.
  32. Ibid., 222.
  33. Ibid., 223.
  34. Abraham Kuyper, "Sphere Sovereignty," in Abraham Kuyper, A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998), 488.