Quote 3282
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God is not at a distance from history, uninvolved and on the periphery, an interested spectator or distant 'first cause;' rather he is governing all things by his providence and wisdom.
In reality, it is not the Puritan mind that is suffering from an over-realized eschatology, it is surely the two kingdoms theorists who suffer from an under-realized soteriology! Salvation is limited to personal salvation and does not have the kingdom of God in view for history.Mission of God, 385
We do not owe the truth to those who want to use it for evil.
A Christian is only dead to the law as a legal sentence of death against them, Christ having died for them; but they are made alive to the law as the righteousness of God. Since Jesus himself is the true mediator between God and man, he rejected the law as mediatorial, in order to re-establish the law in its God-appointed role as law -the path of holiness.The Mission of God, 97
we must recognize that God's basic institution throughout Scripture, starting from the Garden of Eden, is the covenant family. From a biblical point of view, all modern forms of government are variations on monarchism, of rule from the top down, whereas in Scripture, the family is the central social government.Mission of God, 67
Theonomy simply means God's law and implies the abiding validity of the moral law in every sphere of life, including the civil, so that the general equity of those laws with civil or judicial implications should be candidly applied in society.Mission of God, 62
It's hard to convince people that the loving God they can't see sacrificed His Son for sinners & calls them too repentance to escape the wrath to come, when a church they can see celebrates & indulges the very sins that sent His Son to the cross.
Either God exists or he does not. There is no middle ground. Both cannot be true. No amount of philosophical trickery can hide from the greatest antithesis of them all ... We cannot leave this question for the intellectuals, scientists, philosophers and theologians alone ... We must answer it for ourselves.
The laws of the Bible, outside the Ten Commandments, are case laws, and I have been arguing that largely, the Reformed faith has viewed it as the duty of the Christian ruler to extend the equity of these cases to cover whatever details they find in their own society.Mission of God, 343
In the providence of God we are placed in a community (neighbourhood/church/family) to show compassion by taking responsibility for the needs around us. The Puritans did not contract this task out to the state and its welfare programs.
We can no longer afford to be pious functional deists as Christians who regard God as no longer active in history to judge & bless nations in terms of obedience to the gospel & who, whilst speaking of biblical inspiration deny its material authority & application in the world.
Since Christ's purpose is the reconciling of all things to himself (Col. 1:20), the transformation of culture by faithfulness to the gospel and the total word of God applied to all of life is central to the Christian's calling.Mission of God, 366
In the Bible, the original meaning of the word justice is coextensive with righteousness, so they are interchangeable or related themes that often come together in the same verse (Ps. 33:5; Job 37:23). They are related terms because justice is an aspect of God's righteous character, as are mercy and compassion.Mission of God, 6.3
As soon as the state steps outside the sphere this sphere it plays God and offers every form of counterfeiting of the Word of God. In such a case it will invariably persecute the family and church, destroying localism and people's freedom to obey God's law. Such a state will be judged by God and once a sate commands what God forbids, if Christ is truly Lord, then the Christian has the religious duty to resist.Mission of God, 4.3
Where man's law commands what God forbids, civil disobedience becomes a Christian duty. Christ alone, in his word and by his Spirit, speaks the word of life and salvation, not the state.Mission of God, 4.2
The key problem that we face as Christians today with modern concepts of freedom is that they are political and not theological. However, when liberty is defined politically and not theologically, freedom is destroyed because non-Christian thought is dialectical -always trying to unite the opposing ideas of nature and freedom -and does not have the resources to keep a social order from collapsing into tyranny or anarchy.Mission of God, 4.2
pagan philosophy was essentially statist; substituting God, it saw the state as the incarnation or locus of the divine in history. This had been the view of all the great ancient realms, including the Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman empires, where the rulers were viewed and worshipped as godsMission of God, 4.1
Our abandonment of the living God and his law for the god of pluralism, has given us a new law-order that is having revolutionary consequences today, seen in the increasing lawlessness, tyranny, and depravity of Western culture.Mission of God, 3.7
Adult-sized petulant children are a menace to society and indicative of its collapse. History should matter to us because history matures us.Mission of God, 111
as the Greek lexicons show, fulfilment certainly denotes that Christ is the object (end) of the law and the prophets; he is also the perfect manifestation of its requirements, and as the Lord and giver of the law, he has also come to implement and put into force his law.The Mission of God, 96
for much of Canada, hopes of a great Christian dominion developing across the North through the spread of the gospel were nurtured, as revealed by the founding text of the Canadian Dominion (Psalm 72:8). On Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the Parliament Buildings remain testament to this Christian vision, most notably, the Peace Tower and the Memorial Chamber, where Scripture is engraved everywhere, inside and out.Mission of God, 87
In mid-nineteenth century Protestant Ontario, millenarianism raised its head again in the form of the exported Irvingite movement (named after the English millenial preacher Edward Irving) and in the even more disruptive Millerites -followers of the converted American deist William Miller (by this point a Baptist), whose detailed calculations from biblical prophecy had him predicting the end of the world in the years 1843 or 1844, followed by a literal millennial (that is, thousand-year) reign. This eventually led to the founding of the Seventh Day Adventist church. This was quickly followed in the 1860s by the dispensationalist millennial crusade of J.N. Darby and C.I. Schofield, a movement emerging from the Plymouth Brethren in EnglandMission of God, 85
in the economy of human life, the family lays the foundation for human society for the believer and the non-believer alike and is the nursery of knowledge, worship, government, and all social order. Thus, when the family collapses, all society breaks down.Mission of God, 67
The plain reality is that the biblical faith and sense of cultural mission that gave us so much in both the British Commonwealth and the United States, with the rule of law, a free market, representative government, freedom of conscience and religion, and the freedom of self-government of the Christian church and family, was given to us in large measure by the influence of our Puritan forebears.Mission of God, 24
A new generation now drifts without purpose and vision, with little confidence that they have a future, leaving us vulnerable to a growing religious vision of state power and authority that sees its total regulation and control as the only solution to the collapsing social order.Mission of God, 25
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