A Blog Fast

Fasting is good and biblical. And it does not always have to be from food, though that is a good practice for those of us who are almost always stuffed. Other kinds of fasting are good, too, if purposive and the time spent away is redeemed in holy activity. So, as I've already sort of been doing a fast, I'm now going to make it official: I'm taking a blog fast. I don't intend to blog until May some time. If the Lord wills, and I'm still alive, and you happen to drop in, see you then.

The LXX and the Protestant Doctrine of Scripture

It is no news that the NT widely uses the Septuagint (LXX) and that this was the OT of the Church until the Reformation when the Hebrew (Masoretic Text, MT) became the Church's OT. But this continues to blow me away. And perhaps it ought to blow away some of our assumptions about the Hebrew Bible.

Now, briefly (there is so much to think about and say, so perhaps more later), what does this awesome fact have to say about our doctrine of Scripture? What are the implications?

Children's Church?

Perhaps you also have puzzled with me over the common practice (and therefore unquestioned practice) of so many (probably easily the majority) evangelical churches of sending the children out (even as old as 10 years in my experience!) of the corporate gathering (usually during the sermon). I've often wondered how this can be such a fixed practice when there does not seem to be a shred of biblical precedent for such a practice. There certainly is no injunction for this sort of thing. On the contrary, it seems that without questioning the children are always present in the assemblies' gatherings (see, for example, Deut. 31:12-13 and Josh. 8:35).

So how did we get here? To my knowledge this is an aberration without support in the Christian Church until very recently in the individualistic West. But if you question the practice, you get looked at like you are striking at some fundamental of the faith. I dare say that we often do this to cater to our modern, consumeristic churchgoer. Were we to sideline "children's church," we'd lose half our members to other churches who don't. And we can't have that!

Calvin on the Authoritative Prophetic Word

Calvin on the prophets speaks powerfully and stirringly. Here's a comment on Hos. 1:2, where it says, "The beginning of the word of YHWH in Hosea."

God then spoke in Hosea, or by Hosea, for he brought forth nothing from his own brains, but God spoke by him; this is a form of speaking with which we shall often meet. On this, indeed, depends the whole authority of God's servants, that they give not themselves loose reins, but faithfully deliver, as it were, from hand to hand, what the Lord has commanded them, without adding any thing whatever of their own.

So let no man so boldly dare to speak a word in the name of the Lord from his own brains. And may God be pleased to raise up more and more who faithfully propound nothing but the word of the Lord. The Lord has spoken, who can but prophesy?