Just came back from DA Carson's expository preaching on Revelations... about 1,000 folks turned up. Always a great place to catch up with ol' frens and meet new ones.
(I still think KVBC should consider inviting John Piper to preach on Romans 9 -11 in the future, haha!)
Carson leaves a deeper impression in me as a scholar than a preacher but two take-home thots:
1) I felt a kindred spirit when Carson shared how he got to writing "The Gagging of God". It was in the context of dialogue with varsity students, with painful questions abt "How do u know what u know is true is true?" His encouragement for us to think after God's thoughts and love Him with our minds reinforces the seedling 'movement' in CDPC.
2) Carson could have left his writing/research ministry if not for Carl Henry (that great patriach of the evangelical movement) insisted dogmatically that he'd be 'fighting God'! Reminds me of how Zwingli used similar threats to 'force' Calvin to stay in Geneva. What a loss it would have been!
Imagine Evangel bookstore without his classic commentaries and numerous journal articles where he weighed in on practically every theological issue of our day!
Not everyone is able to engage in those high-altitude aerial battles, that made it easier for footsoldiers like us in the trenches.
Machen is rite: We can preach with all the fervor of a Reformer but win only a straggler here and there if we allow the intellectual climate of our day to oppose the gospel by sheer, resistless logic.
Dr.Carson, dun be fighting God no more, OK?
(I still think KVBC should consider inviting John Piper to preach on Romans 9 -11 in the future, haha!)
Carson leaves a deeper impression in me as a scholar than a preacher but two take-home thots:
1) I felt a kindred spirit when Carson shared how he got to writing "The Gagging of God". It was in the context of dialogue with varsity students, with painful questions abt "How do u know what u know is true is true?" His encouragement for us to think after God's thoughts and love Him with our minds reinforces the seedling 'movement' in CDPC.
2) Carson could have left his writing/research ministry if not for Carl Henry (that great patriach of the evangelical movement) insisted dogmatically that he'd be 'fighting God'! Reminds me of how Zwingli used similar threats to 'force' Calvin to stay in Geneva. What a loss it would have been!
Imagine Evangel bookstore without his classic commentaries and numerous journal articles where he weighed in on practically every theological issue of our day!
Not everyone is able to engage in those high-altitude aerial battles, that made it easier for footsoldiers like us in the trenches.
Machen is rite: We can preach with all the fervor of a Reformer but win only a straggler here and there if we allow the intellectual climate of our day to oppose the gospel by sheer, resistless logic.
Dr.Carson, dun be fighting God no more, OK?
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