Reformed Blogging

It's very easy for me to complain about life isn't it? It's natural for my flesh to want a smooth and easy path when that's not what the Christian life is about. One huge problem is that I'm in greater danger when my life is smooth sailing than when I'm in turbulent storms. The reason is because there's the saying, "Bad times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men and weak men create bad times." It's very easy for me to complain about a sudden rock in my path after I've had it easy for some time. What I may be ignoring is this truth: 1 Peter 1:7   That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: These times of ease would be like times of prosperity, when there's much money and times of ease than in times of hardship. The hard times come and i

I remembered the time I was newly saved and I wanted to start dissociating myself with almost everything that had pagan origins. Aside from the Lunar New Year, I wanted to stop celebrating Christmas and Easter because of the supposed pagan origins. I thought that celebrating the Lunar New Year should just be outright condemned because it was the time to see the Feng Shui master, it was time to engage in astrology, worship of pagan gods and goddesses were associated with the holiday, the use of the Chinese version of the Babylonian zodiac and these are all pagan superstition. The pagan religion of Babylon ended up getting into a mess as one country after the other. Just check different mythologies and you'll find out how contradictory one myth is against the other.  It's a pretty tricky question to ask, "Should Chinese Christians be allowed to celebrate the Lunar New Year or not?" It does sound tricky but lately, Chinese New Year is just a cultural observa

The truth of the Christian life is that narrow is the way to life and broad is the way to destruction (Matthew 7:13-14). There's really no such thing as an easy Christian life. While salvation is a free gift but it may cost anyone their life. Nobody ever gets saved by trying their best to be good but nobody can be saved without resulting to a life of good works. When a Christian is called out of the world then they're not of the world (John 15:18-19). I remembered reading John F. MacArthur's book "Hard to Believe". The contents were really mind-blowing especially with how Easy "Christianity" is plaguing churches with false converts. How often do we have a cheap and easy message that doesn't warn about the possible persecution that could happen. While not everyone who got saved had counted the cost of being saved but nobody can be truly saved if it doesn't result in counting the cost. If you're truly saved then paying for the cost of being

Whenever I do my daily Bible reading and reread about how heathen nations have been sacrificing their own children, how the Pharaoh at the beginning of the 400 years of affliction ordered the Hebrew baby boys to be thrown into the river, how Athaliah could murder her own family just to keep herself in power or how Herod the Great massacred male children two years and below - I feel disgusted about it. What should be hypocritical today is that we've got atheist unions who use pagan religion's human sacrifice system as barbaric and inhumane (So much for teaching survival of the fittest then!) while many of them endorse abortion as perfectly normal and okay. The idea that abortion isn't murder defeats common sense and scientific knowledge. If the fetus is just a blob and not a living being when why does the mother feel the child kick inside the womb or why does the "blob" grow or why is there a heartbeat? Scientifically speaking the fetus is alive and ki

Joseph the Dreamer's true story is as an example of God's providence. The story of Joseph can be read in Genesis 37-50. It talks about God's sovereignty which is summarized in this verse: Genesis 50:20 - But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good , to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. Does this mean Joseph is excusing sin? Not at all. He still mentions how sin is sin but forgives them nonetheless leaving judgment at God's hands. Forgiveness doesn't mean condoning sin or letting sin go unpunished. He's seen how much his half-brothers have repented of their sin of selling him. He saw them repent of what they did to him. One can see how Judah (where the Messiah would come from) intercedes for Benjamin. Now let's move from the very start to understand the sovereignty of God in Joseph the Dreamer's life. Joseph was the child of Jacob's old age and the awaited son. Jacob was paying the price fo

The heresy of fruitless Christianity teaches that one can get saved and never change. The idea of having salvation without resulting to sanctification is nowhere found in Scripture. I can't be certain when the idea originated but it's clear that while works salvationists aren't saved then so are Antinomians.  Jude 1:4 - For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ. Let's focus on fruit inspection shall we? Did you know Jesus actually commanded Christians to do fruit inspection? Here's what Jesus said and it's an obvious command to be a fruit inspector: Matthew 7:16-20 - Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot brin

I have no doubt that the Bible is really true so I'm not surprised it's hard to find a good preacher. We've got lazy pastors who even say that expository preaching is a "lazy" and "cheating" method to do preaching. That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. Do these pastors who say that expository preaching is "lazy" and "cheating" realize that preparing an expository sermon is not an easy job. If anybody's lazy it's those pastors who love to do out of context preaching. I get angry whenever they attack sound preaching but also insist in the path of easy "Christianity".  What's worse is that some of these lazy pastors and other opponents of expository preaching are already committing strawman attacks and character assassinations towards expository preaching. One of the worst attacks I've heard from some "Baptist" heretic I had a terrible argument with that the old time pr

I've heard atheists say, "You Christians are the most unscientific people ever!" They have their mentality to use Ad Hominem and strawmen arguments. This is about attacking the person instead of the argument and misrepresenting the opponent. Worse, they think they've won the argument whent he opponent is too frustrated with their foolishness. I don't like listening to their nonsense arguments not because they're so smart and I'm so stupid (I'm being sarcastic) but because they utter more nonsense than sense in almost every argument. This is all about the quest for dominance of mankind and the dethroning of God. They can go ahead and laugh at me but Judgment Day won't be funny at all.  Whether those atheists like it or not, science teaches us that there's an Intelligent Design involved. Even the teaching of Darwinian evolution (which isn't a scientific process) still requires an Intelligent Designer. What surprised me to learn was tha

I started reading John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible around November 2016. I started reading from Genesis and now I'm in the sixteenth chapter of Job. Reading through the massive exposition of the late Gill himself gives a lot of real insights. I may not agree with everything a commentator says but reading through the commentary is a lot of hard work. It's much bigger than my first read through Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary.  Reading through an exposition gives me an idea how hard it is to take Scriptures in context, to understand Scriptures in context and to prepare expository sermons. That's why I really get mad at pastors who trash expository preaching to be "lazy" and "cheating", let me tell them that they're the ones who are cheating and lazy. It's easy to take Scriptures out of context but it's difficult to take it in context. Just reading through John Gill's verse by verse exposition gives me pleasure

I'm getting sick and tired of how Christians are unfairly labeled as haters by the homosexual crowd for refusing to design a homosexual pride t-shirt or bake a cake for a homosexual wedding. Worse comes to worst, whenever a Christian warns homosexuals about their sin they're immediately called haters. They even say that people who tell them that homosexuality is a sin should be charged with a hate crime. The media wants to compare Christians to Muslim extremists. They refuse to tell the difference between the Christian who lovingly warns homosexuals and the Muslim terrorist who wants to carry out Muhammad's will against homosexuals. Christianity's response against homosexuality is different than Islam's. Christians are told to love their enemies and pray for their persecutors. Muslims are given the command to seek out the enemies of Islam relentlessly. Christians are told to lovingly warn homosexuals. Muslims are told to massacre homosexuals wherever they go.

There's the old statement that some people just never learn. The same is going on for this idolatrous feast called the "Feast of the Black Nazarene". Even after so many incidents and I remembered one of them involved an image of it breaking to pieces yet people couldn't see how powerless their god is. No, the Black Nazarene isn't Jesus and Jesus in His humanity was not born black. Jesus was born into a Jewish household in His humanity.  The idea of the Black Nazarene is a perversion of the identity of Jesus but why do so many Filipino Roman Catholics still insist in celebrating it? One of the worst things that some of its devotees adhere to the fallacy of appealing to tradition. They think that because it's been practiced then they must do it. It's just like saying that native tribes in certain regions of the world should be allowed to practice cannibalism and human sacrifice no matter how wrong it is because it's their tradition passed down f

It's very common to have different forms of divination isn't it? I remembered how the ancient form of Chinese witchcraft known as Feng Shui is gaining popularity. Unsaved people tell me that if I don't believe in Feng Shui then I'm left behind. I'm sorry to say but popularity will never make a wrong right. If two wrongs don't make a right then neither does popularity. If you want to go with the flow then think of all the unsaved people that literally went with the flow when Noah and his family entered the ark. Today, many people who go with the flow will end up going with the flow of God's fiery wrath on Judgment Day.  So why do so many people get involved into the sin of divination? Here's a key verse that would help us understand: 1 John 2:16 - For all that is in the world, t he lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life , is not of the Father, but is of the world. I remembered the time I wanted to get into witchcraft

It makes me angry whenever people tell me that it's right because it's legal. Some people tell me that I should accept homosexuality as morally right because the Supreme Court of the United States already made it legal. I don't care about what's legal if it's not right. Here's the statement that Peter gave: Acts 5:29 - "Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men ." While Christians are indeed obliged to obey those in charge of them (Romans 13:1-3) but they're also required to politely disobey when they're told to do something against the Word of God. Authorities were set by God to be terrors to evil but when they refuse to do their job then they should be disobeyed but with due politeness.  This reminds me of how Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were already given pagan names from Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. They were in Babylon and King Nebuchadnezzar told them to bow before the god of

Imagine the only "crime" he did was to translate the Bible so everyone can read it for themselves! I remembered reading the life of William Tyndale from the "Foxe's Book of Martyrs". Just reading that book made me cringe thinking about the bloody persecution of the martyrs and the horrors of the Inquisition. I decided to read Tyndale's biography which revealed the reason why he was burned in the stake was for translating the Bible into the English language. If the Roman Catholic institution compiled and gave us the Bible then why in the world did they forbid the public from reading it?  Some (not all) Roman Catholic apologists would give the answer that it's because the Bible can't be read by just anyone. Some even dare to say that Tyndale was a false prophet and a heretic so he must be burned all the while while they condemn John Calvin for supposedly taking part in Michael Servetus' burning alive. Speaking of the Calvin/Servetus affai

From Veterans to Christ, here's a picture that I'd love to show to atheists who say that I'm being rude to tell them about Jesus and that God is real. They say that I'm trying to "shove the Bible down their throats" and that I'm supposedly "forcing them to believe" even when I'm just stating the facts. It's like accusing the doctor of forcing you to receive treatment even when the doctor is simply warning you about your condition and won't force you to get treatment unless you're willing to cooperate.  I'd like to tell the atheists so if it's rude for me to tell them about Jesus then why is it okay for them to exercise their abusive behavior? Why is it okay for them not to listen to my side of the story for evidence of creation granting more chances for supposed "proof" of evolution? This shows that these militant atheism's double standard. While they wanted to lie that the whole Scopes Monkey Trial wa

I'm a Baptist and I'm happy to be one. I have a part of the Baptist legacy with great preachers such as the great Charles H. Spurgeon, John Gill (who were Reformed Baptists) and Jonathan Edwards. Today, aside from the problem of churches who call themselves "Baptist" but aren't Baptists there's also the Baptist Bride heresy. I'm also very disappointed at how some Independent Fundamental Baptists may reject Antinomianism and easy believism but they have become Briders. What's worse is that some King James onlyists have bought the Baptist Bride heresy. I may be a KJV only advocate but I don't accept the Baptist Bride heresy to be biblical doctrine.  What's the Baptist Bride heresy? According to Bible Believers in the article " The Plain Truth about the Baptist Bride Heresy ", here's what it says: A "Baptist Brider" is an extreme Baptist who believes that "The Baptist Church" is the Bride of Christ. All oth

As 2017 starts, I want to ask myself this question, "Am I stuck with the mentality that I must please eveyrone?" It's a struggle within myself every now and then. I get too easily angry whenever somebody makes fun of my Christian faith, when I'm accused of sins I didn't commit or when somebody misrepresents me. I seldom feel like I want to get even and beat the person up or get revenge instead of asking God to forgive them for they don't know what they're doing. When I feel like I have the desire to get even with people who are unkind to me or make fun of my Christian beliefs then I may be guilty of my desire to please everybody. As long as I'm rooted in my pride then I'm going to be plagued with the desire to please everyone and not to forgive the offender. There's one sad truth in life that nobody can please everybody. If the unsaved people can't please everyone then the saved child of God can't expect to please everybody either.