Truth is ancient; it's grey hairs may make it venerable;
it comes from Him who is the ancient of days. --Thomas Watson

 

29 May, 2006   comments: (0) Audio Clips   They Fought a War Over Doctrine, Would You? You might be surprised by the conclusions that church Historian John Gerstner came to, in this short audio clip about the 17th century protestant versus Catholic conflict called The 30 Years War. You might predict he's going to say, what a senseless war this was, but instead he concludes that if there ever were a 'good' reason for battle, this was it. That's because the message of salvation was at the heart of this war. But today, if the Godblogosphere is any indicator, I would have to conclude that Christians have gone soft, and have lost their stomach for a good fight. I'm not advocating actual bloodshed, nor am I suggesting that we ought to be at each other's throats over things like eschatology, church governance, and headcoverings, but how about the Gospel, how about grace, are those things worth some debate, cross-examination, and self-examination? The attitude in postmodern times is instead: "we are supposed to be building each other up and not tearing each other down". Here's a couple of examples: Emerging Church leader Dan Kimball admits to formerly having a list of around 28 doctrines that he once felt certain about, but he has now reduced these down to the short Nicene Creed. Recently he said: "it makes me sad seeing Christian leaders and people in churches beating each other up ... Does knowing doctrine make us more like Jesus and loving?". It should Mr. Kimball! Dan Edelan uses his blog to speak-out about those (he feels) waste too much time on doctrinal distinctions. A major theme on his blog might best be summarized in this sentence of his: "It breaks my heart that we are too often concerned with being correct than being loving" [more]. Today's Christianity seems to have lost sight of the fact that doctrine and biblical love go hand-in-hand. Passion for truth has departed, tolerance and unity are the new priorities, and the battle cry (whimper) is "can we all just get along?". Even the things that our martyrs died for, are not worth debating by many Christians today. We need this reminder of The 30 Years War. This 8 minute audio clip comes from the late Professor John Gerstner's Handout Church History series, which is available from www.ligonier.org I highly recommend this entire audio series on the history of Christianity. CLICK HERE TO PLAY NOW . . . or to download this MP3 file for later: right click the link and then "save target as"   More Old Truth Audio Files: 04/25/08 - The False Peace of Truth-Compromised 03/20/08 - The Arrogance of Abandoning Church History 02/25/08 - Judging Fruit By Biblical Standards 01/30/08 - The History of Praise Songs: Simple from Semple 11/06/07 - Audio Archive: How God Converts The Human Soul 07/19/07 - Theology Q&A's: Does Prayer Change God's Mind? 06/03/07 - Addressing Our Culture w/Reformed Christianity 05/28/07 - Don't Make The Church Mars Hill, Go There Instead 05/07/07 - Old Truths versus The Quest For 'Something New' 04/27/07 - Lost and Found: The Fear of The Lord Detailed Listing of All Audio Files   Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.291   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  Videos   |  Calvinism