Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved,
a worker who has no need to be ashamed,
rightly handling the word of truth.
2 Tim 2:15 ESV

Thinking about what you preach and teach, and believe, can you honestly say that you are doing "your best to present yourself to God as one approved… , rightly handling the word of truth?" Or, are you are "a worker who [is] ashamed?"

This verse is not just a suggestion! "Do your best" is in the imperative mood, hence a command. Therefore, you must do your utmost to "present yourself to God as one approved" by "rightly handling the word of truth?" Of course, the lazy at heart will not take this to heart since it is hard work to comply with the command contained in this verse.

To start your road to recovery, if you haven't treated this command with the respect it deserves, visit:

Hermeneutics I: Need, tools and principles
Hermeneutics II: Different Genres

Musings on the life and death of Oral Roberts

See what was written by Al Mohler and Fred Butler.

How can we eulogize heresy? How can we eulogize the one that preaches heresy?

Updates: (here are some more)
David A. Porter.
John MacArthur
Ted Olsen

Kigndom People Christmas Giveaway

Christmas is that time of the year when we are supposed to be more concerned with giving than receiving, that is why I would like to give you an opportunity to receive. Of course I said that in jest!

Trevin Wax from the Kingdom People blog has a Christmas giveaway running from today (15 Dec) until Christmas day 2009. You can win Trevin's 10 favourite books of 2009, and also an ESV Study Bible and a copy of Trevin's own upcoming book, Holy Subversion.

To win all of this, hurry over to Trevin's blog by clicking here!

Commentary on R. Scott Clark's Covenantalism

R. K. McGregor Wright, at Christ My Covenant, has been writing a series of blog posts as a commentary on the covenantalism of R. Scott Clark. He has written 26 posts in the series so far.

Note that these posts are in PDF format. Here are the links to each of those 26 posts:

Part 1	Part 2	Part 3	Part 4	Part 5
Part 6	Part 7	Part 8	Part 9	Part 10
Part 11	Part 12	Part 13	Part 14	Part 15
Part 16	Part 17	Part 18	Part 19	Part 20
Part 21	Part 22	Part 23	Part 24	Part 25
Part 26

Fraudulent gospel of the prosperity preachers – new series by John MacArthur

I have now for years decried the false gospel of the prosperity preachers. People like Kenneth & Gloria Copeland, Jerry Savelle, Paul & Jan Crouch, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Hagin, Joyce Meyer, Fred Price, Creflo Dollar and many more. To find out about the heresy taught by these people, read my blog series written in 2005, Heresies in the church.

John MacArthur has started a new series of blog posts, with the first post on 6 Dec 2009, highlighting the fraud of these heresy preachers. This series may just become a new call to Reformation in the church.

Read the first two blog posts:
A Colossal Fraud
Unholy Trinity

Churches, by being quiet about the wolves in sheep clothing in our midst, are doing a great disservice to the body of Christ.

Stand up and be part of the New Reformation!
Back to the true gospel!

Has Facebook lost meaning? Carl Trueman abusive?

Update:
It seems that tr.im has been flagged as abusive. I tried to submit another link that I made using tr.im, and got the same message. I have been using tr.im for some time now and never had problems with it!

I wanted to update my Facebook status this morning, and this is what Facebook told me:

As you can see, all the status is saying is: "Carl Trueman: Celebrating the Death of Meaning - http://tr.im/Hd6x - Very thought provoking!" Now follow the link in my proposed update and tell me if there is anything abusive in the article. Perhaps diehard fans of the paedophile Michael Jackson could find it abusive, which would really stretch the meaning of "abusive."

It seems to me that Facebook is losing its own sense of meaning too! An article like Carl Trueman's gets flagged as abusive, but Facebook groups such as "F*** Jesus Christ" gets to exist without even a slap on the wrist! I searched for the phrase "F*** Jesus Christ" on Facebook, and got 496 hits. There have been many requests to Facebook to close down these outright abusive Facebook groups, but all Facebook can say is that they have a right to their opinion. Don't tell me that groups with such names are only voicing their opinions, because if I say that to someone "F*** you!, it is not just an opinion, it is outright ABUSIVE! There is even a Facebook group with over 243,000 members which is called "DELETE THE GROUP ''F*** Jesus Christ'' IMMEDIATELY!!!!!"

Yet, Carl Trueman's article is abusive to NO ONE, and is flagged as abusive. My question is this: Is there anyone remotely qualified at Facebook to even quantify abusive usage on Facebook? Apparently not!

Of course, Facebook's message does not give me an opportunity to directly request a lift on the ban of this status update. All you see is a hopeless "OK!"

Maybe it is not Carl Trueman's article that is the problem, but the wording of my status update. Ha! Don't be fooled! I decided to remove the link in my status update and I submitted "Carl Trueman: Celebrating the Death of Meaning – test - Very thought provoking!" This time it was accepted, proving that the problem is Carl's article.

So, read Carl's article and tell me if it is abusive. If you do, you are probably a baby like the Facebook users that flagged the article as abusive!

Sorry for that, but flagging Carl Trueman's as abusive is like saying Barack Obama deserved his Nobel Peace Prize! Absolutely ridiculous!

It seems to me like Facebook is truly against free speech, especially from Christians! Isn't it amazing that an entity such as Facebook can infringe on one person's free speech rights while claiming free speech rights?

Does this scenario at Facebook prove its clear bias? You be the judge!

Greg Koukl says "Never Read a Bible Verse"

Greg Koukl from Stand to Reason is doing a video series called "Never Read a Bible Verse series" (which can be found under the STR video tag) in which he is looking at common verses that have been taken out of context and misinterpreted. So far he has done 8 videos in the series.

Part 1 (Jn 8:32)
Part 2 (Mt 7:1)
Part 3 (Col 2:8)
Part 4 (Rom 8:28)
Part 5 (Prov 23:7)
Part 6 (Ps 121:1)
Part 7 (Lk 2:14)
Part 8 (2 Chr 7:14)

To watch the videos, simply click on the different "Part" links above.