The Kingdom Alternative

“The Kingdom of God is God’s dynamic rule, breaking into human history through Jesus, confronting, combating and overcoming evil, spreading the wholeness of personal and communal wellbeing, taking possession of his people in total blessing and total demand. The church is meant to be the Kingdom community, a model of what human community looks like when it comes under the rule of God, and a challenging alternative to secular society.”

- John Stott, New Issues Facing Christians Today (London, UK; Marshall Pickering, 1999), 28.

Satan’s Determination to Undermine Revelation

“There is nothing truer to the portrayal of Satan than a determination to undermine the word of God, to get people to live on any other basis than revelation.”

- J. A. Motyer Look to the Rock

Christian Perspective on Work

“To consider work as a channel of divine creation, by which the creature serves God and humanity, carries certain consequences for one’s attitude toward labor. The Christian becomes morally obligated to withhold producing, and even purchasing (since money is simply the conversion of his work into tender) culturally worthless, let alone harmful items.”

~ Carl F. H. Henry, Aspects of Christian Social Ethics

The Temptation to Practical Atheism

” . . . one of the most consequential ideas embedded in modern institutions and traditions and habits of thought is theological. Stated bluntly, it is the assumption that even if God exists he is largely irrelevant to the real business of life. To put this somewhat more tactfully, contemporary society and culture so emphasize human potential and human agency and the immediate practical exigencies of the here and now, that we are for the most part tempted to go about our daily business in this world without giving God much thought. Indeed, we are tempted to live as though God did not exist, or at least as if his existence did not practically matter. In short, one of the most insidious temptations fostered within contemporary secular society and culture, a temptation rendered uniquely plausible by the idea and assumptions embedded within modern institutional life, is the temptation to practical atheism.”

~ Craig Gay, The Way of the (Modern) World (Grand Rapids, Mi.; Eerdmans, 1998), 2.

On the Knowledge and Love of God

“A virtuous man may be ignorant, but ignorance is not a virtue. It would be a strange God Who could be loved better by being known less. Love of God is not the same as knowledge of God; love of God is immeasurably more important than knowledge of God; but if a man loves God knowing a little about Him, he should love God more from knowing more about Him: for every new thing know about God is a new reason for loving Him.”

~ F. J. Sheed, Theology and Sanity (New York, NY; Sheed & Ward, 1946), 9-10.

At the Root of Every Temptation

“At the root of every temptation lies the glimpse of the possibility of reaching divinity by a shorter road than that of reality; by a road that one should self-invent, in spite of the prohibitions imposed by the laws of Creation, the divine order and the nature of man.”

~ Denis De Rougemont, The Devil’s Share (New York, NY: Meridian Books, 1956), 32.

The Role of Worldview in Defending the Faith

“Every line of reasoning that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and every kind of objection or challenge to the faith that is raised by unbelievers, arises from an attitude of the heart and within the intellectual context of a world-and-life view. Everybody thinks and reasons in terms of a broad and fundamental understanding of the reality of nature, of how we know what we know, and of how we should live our lives. This philosophy or outlook is ‘presupposed’ by everything the unbeliever (or believer) says; it is the implicit background that gives meaning to the claims and inferences drawn by people. For this reason, every apologetical encounter is ultimately a conflict of worldviews or fundamental perspectives (whether this is explicitly mentioned or not).”

~ Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ; P & R Publishing, 1998), 30.

The World Speaks!

Consider the paragraph below by Steve Talbot alongside: John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. and Psalm 19:1-3: The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.

The intimate relation between the meaning of our words and the meaning we find in the world may be so obvious as to seem almost trivial, yet its implications are so profound as to have mostly escaped the notice of working scientists. If we took the fact of the world’s speech seriously — the world speaks! — there would be none of the usual talk about a mechanistic and deterministic science, about a cold, soulless universe, or about an unavoidable conflict between science and the spirit. Confronting the many voices of nature, we would inquire about their individual qualities and character, we would look for the direction of their expressive striving, and we would struggle to grasp the aesthetic unity of their various utterances — all of which is to say: we would listen for their meanings. The necessity for such inquiry is implicit in a world that speaks and also in the scientist’s employment of speech to translate the world-text. This turning a deaf ear to a resonant world and even to our own speech accounts for many of the limitations and contradictions of the science we have today.

~ Steve Talbot, “The Language of Nature” in The New Atlantis (Winter 2007), 42.

Bertrand Russell on The Purposelessness of Life in an Impersonal, Random-Chance Universe

Atheistic philosophers like Bertrand Russell are sometimes completely honest about the necessary implications of their basic assumptions. It is sheer folly to suggest that one can discover meaning out of  ultimate meaninglessness. Ponder the sad and terrifying implications of Russell’s atheistic materialist worldview:

That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of all the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins — all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.

~ Bertrand Russell, quoted by Carl Becker The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers (New Haven, CT; Yale University Press, 1932), 13-14

A Brief Overview of Redemptive History

“The idea of a holy, spiritual, self-revealing God, the free Creator of the world, and its continual Preserver. As correlative to this, and springing out of it, is the idea of man being made in God’s image, and capable of moral relations and spiritual fellowship with his Maker; but who, through sin, has turned aside from the end of his creation, and stands in need of Redemption. In the heart of the history, we have the idea of a Divine purpose, working itself out through the calling of a special nation, for the ultimate benefit and blessing of mankind. God’s providential rule extends over all creatures and events, and embraces all peoples of the earth, near and remote. In view of the sin and corruption that have overspread the world, His government is one of combined mercy and judgment; and His dealings with Israel in particular are preparative to the introduction of a better economy, in which the grace already partially exhibited will be fully revealed. The end is the establishment of a kingdom of God under the rue of the Messiah, in which all national limitations will be removed, the Spirit be poured forth, and Jehovah will become the God of the whole earth. God will make a new covenant with His people, and will write His laws by His Spirit in their hearts. Under this happy reign the final triumph of righteousness over sin will be accomplished, and death and all other evils will be abolished.”

~ James Orr, The Christian View of God and the World (Vancouver, Regent College Publishing, 2002, reprint of the 1893 edition), 14