Pete's Blog

"If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion." –George Bernard Shaw

American President Harry Truman said that he wanted to find a one-armed economist. Economics is fundamentally the study of tradeoffs. Do you spend your whole paycheque, or only part of it and invest the rest for your future? Do you make enough guns to win the war against the neighbouring country, or do you make plows so you can feed your people?

Economists see the advantages and disadvantages to decisions being made, so they (supposedly) talk endlessly about alternatives.

"On the one hand, Mr. Oppressive-Totalitarian-Dictator, if you don't make enough guns, you'll be conquered by your enemy. But on the other hand, if you don't make the plows, you won't be able to harvest enough grain in the coming years, your people will starve, and you'll have no people to oppress."

Acts 21: 10-11:

[A] prophet named Agabus came down from Judea [to Ptolemais]. And coming to us, he took Paul's belt and bound his own feet and hands and said, "Thus says the Holy Spirit, 'This is how the Jews at Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.'"

vv. 17, 27-33:

[W]e had come to Jerusalem. . . . When the seven days were almost completed, the Jews from Asia, seeing him in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd and laid hands on him, crying out, "Men of Israel, help! This is the man who is teaching everyone everywhere against the people and the law and this place. Moreover, he even brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place." For they had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian with him in the city, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple. Then all the city was stirred up, and the people ran together. They seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple, and at once the gates were shut. And as they were seeking to kill him, word came to the tribune of the cohort that all Jerusalem was in confusion. He at once took soldiers and centurions and ran down to them. And when they saw the tribune and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. Then the tribune came up and arrested him and ordered him to be bound with two chains. He inquired who he was and what he had done.

Read the whole chapter to see the context in which this takes place.

Who does Agabus say with bind Paul? What does he say the Jews will do with Paul? He says that the Jews will bind Paul, and deliver him to the Gentiles. What does Luke say happened? The Jews were beating Paul to death, and the Romans came, took him (as opposed to received him) and bound him.

But Agabus is a Scripture affirmed prophet. The Deuteronomy 18 code for dealing with prophets who prophesy things that do not come to pass goes as follows:

"But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die." And if you say in your heart, "How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?"—when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him. (vv. 20-22)

Surely if Luke thought that Agabus should be treated as Deuteronomy says to deal with a false prophet, Luke would not have called him a prophet.

I should point out that there are some who think that exactly what Agabus said came to pass. For example, John MacArthur said,

I can imagine Paul just saying, "Yes, what Agabus told me in Caesarea has come to pass." Go back. Chapter 21, verse 11, Agabus the prophet said - he came to town, he said, "By a picture that you're going to get down." What did he do? He took Paul's belt, bound his hands and feet. Said, "Thou said the Holy Spirit says. 'The Jews of Jerusalem are going to bind the man that owns the belt and deliver him to the hands of the Gentiles.'"

The prophecy comes to pass. The Jews have captured him. They've got him held, and they deliver him to the Gentiles, who chain him. The prophecy came true.

I think he's being creative in the way that he reads Agabus' prediction and Luke's record of the event in trying to harmonize them. I think it's wrong, but I should point out that there are those out there who, for whatever reason, don't read the passage the way that I think Luke meant it.

Now for implications: I don't know exactly what to infer from it. God is an infallible communicator, but He didn't promise that prophecy in the New Covenant age would be infallible. How to reconcile this:

God sends an infallible message to a prophet. That prophet must 1. see the vision, 2. interpret the vision, and 3. proclaim the interpretation. In any of those steps the prophecy could be misunderstood and have error added to that which was infallible. Take Agabus' example. Since it's in Scripture, Luke recorded it in a way that sufficiently represented Agabus' intentions of the prophecy since Scripture is always true. So maybe Agabus mistook Romans for Jews (i.e., he made a mistake at step 1), and thus thought that it would be the Jews who bind Paul instead of the Romans. It's a possibility. I don't know what really happened.

The major implication is that we need to use discernment when dealing with any revelation of God outside of His infallible, inerrant Word. For example, if we feel that God is leading us, we shouldn't be closed handed about it. We're fallible. We make mistakes. My fear in this is that we'll say that we feel called to do something, when it really isn't from God. We end up doing something stupid, the unbelieving world sees it, and then ends up using it as proof that our perfect God does not exist, when all it shows is that we're able to be stupid.

"A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity." (Proverbs 17: 17)

"A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother." (Proverbs 18: 24)

On the 9 Marks blog, Church Matters (a good double entendre):

A good quote from missiologist George W. Peters:

An unfortunate and abnormal historic development has produced autonomous, missionless churches on the one hand and autonomous churchless missionary societies on the other hand.

No further comment needed.

Taken from Mark Dever's Nine Marks of a Healthy Church (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2000):

Yes, in 1 Corinthians Paul uses the expression "carnal Christian." He writes, "Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly ["carnal," KJV]—mere infants in Christ" (1 Cor. 3:1). But who are these people? Are these carnal Christians a "middle category" of people who have Jesus in their life but not on the throne? It sounds like a strange idea, doesn't it? On the one hand, you've got Christians who have Christ as Lord, with Him on the throne. Then, on the other side, you have non-Christians. But, it is argued, you also have this interesting middle category where Christ really is in the person's life but He's not on the throne. These are the "carnal" Christians. Well, that's one way you could read this verse.

I think a more natural way to read the verse is that Paul is shaming his readers by speaking of these self-confessed Christians as worldly. In calling them "worldly" or "carnal," Paul is intentionally using an oxymoron. An oxymoron is the joining of two words not meant to go together. In that sense, a carnal Christian would be like hot ice. It's just not supposed to make any sense. By writing in these terms, Paul is basically telling his readers, "Get off the fence! You are living differently than you are professing. You cannot do that. Those horses go in opposite directions—so jump on one or the other!" That's what Paul is saying. (p. 217)

That having been said, the best treatment of the filling of the Spirit that I know of is found in Dr. Andreas Kostenberger's article entitled, What Does It Mean To Be Filled With The Spirit?: A Biblical Investigation. Given that the Holy Spirit is God, and His filling is the ministry He does in our lives, Christians should not be ignorant on this subject. I recommend this article for all Christians.

I know that at least one of my readers is so anti-gun that if I talk about guns long enough around him, he will become violent, throwing whatever is within reach at me. Perhaps this is why he is anti-gun: not so much for the sake of others not having guns, but so that he'll never be allowed a gun. Anyway, despite knowing my audience, when I saw this picture on Dan Phillips' blog, I couldn't resist reposting it here.

To add some seriousness to the mix, listen to this well thought out Sunday school class on why guns are good.

This is an interesting perspective from John MacArthur:

[M]any contemporary Christians are engrossed in a mad quest for instant gratification, obsessed with earthly comfort, and shackled to this present world. I remember a time when the focus was on future hope and people wanted to hear a message about heaven, prophecy, or eschatology. These are not popular topics today because our minds are so set on the present, not the future. Unlike the Thessalonian believers who longed for Christ's return and the glories of heaven (1 Thess. 1:9-10), many of us have settled into this life quite comfortably. (p. 158, Our Sufficiency in Christ: Three Deadly Influences That Undermine Your Spiritual Life. Word Publishing, Dallas, 1991.)

Hopefully it's obvious that the Bible should be read in context. I was listening to a talk yesterday, and the speaker said that he once had a Bible Promise Calendar (I'm guessing one of those calendars where you tear the page for each day, and have a promise each day). One of the promises was Luke 4: 7: "If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours." It was a bad choice. I'll let the reader figure out the problem.

I'm not trying to say that women can't do it, while men can. No, God created us in His image to be respected, not objectified through lust. But as far back as I can remember, TV's always promoted men lusting, but now it's swinging 'round to women too. C'est dommage. Tsk, tsk, Bell.

Though I think the cessation of tongues speaking cannot be defended biblically, I am very wary of it in public worship. Here's a good paragraph from Mark Dever's book Nine Marks of a Healthy Church that gives a good glimpse at what Paul was thinking in 1 Corinthians:

The most obvious teaching on the purpose of spiritual gifts is found in 1 Corinthians 14. Look particularly at 14:4, which is very often misunderstood: "He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church." Some take this as a neutral statement, as if Paul is merely commenting that there are two different kinds of good edification—if you want self-edification, you should seek to speak in tongues or pray in tongues; if you want church edification, then you should seek to prophesy. But I don't think that's what Paul means here. Look at 14:1. He encourages these Christians to desire especially the gift of prophesy. Then down in verse 12, he says, "Since you are eager to have spiritual gifts, try to excel in gifts that build up the church." Then down in verse 19 he says, "But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue." Paul is saying that you have to be able to understand something in order to be edified by it. Intelligibility is necessary for edifying the church! And that, he says, is the goal of spiritual gifts. (p. 234)

A beautiful excerpt from Why We Love the Church (by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck, published by Moody Publishers, Chicago, 2009):

I am sick of books about community, so I'm hesitant to write about it in this space. I've learned that community rarely feels like that mountaintop experience in college, in the dorms, at midnight, when you and your buddies are confessing your sins, talking about girls, and perhaps talking about God and solving the church's problems over cold pizza. That situation is tailor-made for community because you're all the same, and you're all stuck there with nothing else to do. It's easy to love your friends in college because they're all basically like you. Community becomes much harder when there's something on the line—like my time, my money, my ideals, my precious opinions, my ego, and my privacy.

That said, community is people arranging to pay each others' bills when times get tough. It means arranging to grocery shop for someone when that someone suddenly has to be the primary caregiver to their sick spouse all day. It means spending time with your disabled family member or friend who is rapidly declining in health, when that time isn't fun, rewarding, or especially productive. And it's about those friends staying friends with us through our cynicism and sometimes bitterness. (pp. 193-194)

It's a good read. The tone of the book is polemical, so some of the readers of my blog won't like it, but it seeks to set straight those who would dare slander my Saviour's dear bride.

Don't jump to conclusions. I'm not going to be polemical.

Deuteronomy 25:11 is a funny verse when you read it in different translations. The ESV translates it, "When men fight with one another and the wife of the one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of him who is beating him and puts out her hand and seizes him by the private parts." I italicized "private parts" because when you look at how different modern translations give us this verse, they all sound pretty much the same until it gets to talking about a guy's junk.

It's "private parts" in the ESV, the NIV, the Amplified Bible, and the CEV. It's "genitals" in the NASB, the HCSB, the NKJV, and the Message. The NLT translates it "testicles" and my favourite English translation (i.e., the one that most obscures the meaning of the word, thus being the funniest) is from our not-so-modern translation the KJV, which renders the word, "the secrets."

To add to the interesting translations, in French, the verse is translated « Lorsque des hommes se querelleront ensemble, l'un avec l'autre, si la femme de l'un s'approche pour délivrer son mari de la main de celui qui le frappe, si elle avance la main et saisit ce dernier par les parties honteuses » (Louis Segond). Take my word for it, it means the same thing as the English versions. Except this version's translation of a guy's junk is different; « honteuse » is the French adjective for shameful, or disgraced, or ashamed.

At first it appeared this was a huge sociological suggestion at how the French viewed sex (i.e., as it being shameful), but it turns out the word actually literally means "that excites shame" in the Hebrew. This made me wish that I knew something about Hebrew, but I don't, so I can't go any further in inferring what this implies about Jewish thought concerning sex and its goodness.

It's still funny, though, that the KJV translates a man's genitals as "the secrets."

A few days back, the Quote of the Day was, "Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music" (Marcus Brigstocke). Pretty interesting considering that's how a few decades in the 1900s looked.

Anyway, a friend commented,

Well everyone knows that with the advent of Tetris, children's rooms were notably more organized and tidy. Also, a similar effect can be seen with Pokémon. PETA had to introduce an entire new propaganda unit to stop people from shoving squirrels into tennis balls.

Actually that last one doesn't sound like that bad of an idea. "I choose you SQUIRRFUR!" "SQUIRRFUR uses RABIES." "RABIES is super effective." "LITTLE JOHNNY is dead."

If you have Pokémon experience, I'm sure you enjoyed this little section.

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For more laughter, today's daily Dilbert comic was awesome. Check it out.

Taken from Christopher Adsit's Personal Disciplemaking: A Step-By-Step Guide for Leading a Christian From New Birth to Maturity (Orlando, Florida: Campus Crusade for Christ, 1996):

From time to time while I was in college, a bunch of us would fan out and knock on doors in our building, just to see if we could find anyone interested in talking about the gospel. In my early days as a witnessing Christian, I was a wee bit off in both my motivation and approach. I was definitely interested in seeing people come to know Christ, but I was equally interested in the chase, the debate, the intellectual give-and-take; seeing the foe weakened as he had to relinquish a point; myself emerging the victor after a titanic battle, the walls around us bloody with rhetoric, philosophies, quotes and logic.

The zenith of my misplaced zeal was my (now embarrassing) practice of making up Scripture. If a fellow's argument backed me into a corner, I'd simply invent a "biblical" statement (complete with chapter and verse) that facilitated my escape. It's too bad no one ever asked me to show it to them in the Bible - it would have ended that folly in a hurry! (p. 39)

What a fun story! He goes on to make the point that it's God's job to convert people, it was only his job to tell them the Truth.

I have some somewhat original material coming up for the blog in the next few weeks, but for now you'll have to be satisfied with me completely ripping off Dr. John Currid's blog:

One of the requirements to attend Spurgeon's college was a recommendation from the applicant's pastor. Spurgeon tells one story of a pastoral recommendation:

"I had a curious experience with one applicant. His pastor had given him an open letter, warmly commending him to me as a man called to the ministry; but, in another communication, sent to me by post, the minister wrote that the young man was not at all likely ever to become a preacher, and that he had only written the recommendation because the candidate's father was his chief deacon, and he feared to offend him by telling him the truth. I felt that it was quite unjust to put upon me the onus of refusing the young man; so, when he arrived, I gave him the epistle I had received, and left him and his father to settle the matter with their pastor in the best way they could"

This is hilarious!

Seriously, read his blog every time it comes out. What a gold mine!