The 500 Video

We're working together with Transplant Ministries to organize The Five Hundred Outreach in Atlanta, GA on October 18th. We're helping with the mobilization aspects of the outreach. Please keep us in prayer this summer as we nail down details and plan this important outreach. 500 street evangelists in one city; Atlanta will never be the same.

Colorado Bill Potentially Bans the Circulation of the Bible

As reported by John Ingold of The Denver Post, Governor Bill Ritter of Colorado signed into law a bill which expands the "prohibition of sexual-orientation based discrimination". This bill (Senate Bill 200) was sponsored by Senator Jennifer Veiga. The supporters of the bill claim that its purposes are: 1) to insure that trans-gender people and homosexuals have equal access to housing, family planning services (???), and "20 other public spheres" and 2) in the words of Bruce DeBoskey, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League (by the way, what do the rights of the Jewish people have to do with transgender issues?), "...another important step in making Colorado safe and inclusive and welcoming to all those who live here."

This all sounds very inclusive and nice, but as always, there is a slightly hidden agenda here. Consider what the bill actually says, not just the spin that the pundits put on it:

"SECTION 8. 24-34-701. Publishing of discriminative matter forbidden.
No person, being the owner, lessee, proprietor, manager, superintendent, agent, or employee of any place of public accommodation... shall publish, issue, circulate, send, distribute, give away, or display in any way, manner, or shape or by any means or method, except as provided in this section, any communication, paper, poster, folder, manuscript, book, pamphlet, writing, print, letter, notice, or advertisement of any kind, nature, or description THAT is intended or calculated to discriminate or actually discriminates against... SEXUAL ORIENTATION, marital status... in the matter of furnishing or neglecting or refusing to furnish to them or any one of them any lodging, housing, schooling, or tuition or any accommodation, right [marriage], privilege [adoption], advantage, or convenience... on account of... SEXUAL ORIENTATION, marital status... [which] is unwelcome or objectionable or not acceptable, desired, or solicited."

In other words, if you own or work in a place of "public accommodation" in the State of Colorado (Kolorado?) and you either publish or distribute a copy of the Bible (which contains verses which call homosexuality a sin), you will be punishable by law. The same could be said for any book or tract which suggests that homosexuality is a sin. If the socialist State of Kolorado is going to be consistent, this means that the sale of Bibles in all book stores (Christian or secular) will be banned.

I guess no one who has supported this bill, including the Governor of the State, has enough sense to realize that this law is patently unconstitutional. Unless Kolorado secedes from the Union and becomes their own country, they have no right to make a law which infringes on the practice of religion. In one fell swoop the lawmakers in Kolorado have managed to do what no one has EVER done in the history of this nation: ban the Bible.

Now, as a bookseller, I know what I would do if I lived in Kolorado. I would get a small open shop and sell Bibles. I would find every book I could get on homosexuality, how it is NOT hereditary (which is [gasp] what science actually shows), how it is a sin, and I would print out Romans 1 on a poster (so I'm displaying the truth, in the words of the bill) and DARE the Kolorado KGB to come and do something about it. There is no way that this law can stand up under the scrutiny of serious legal challenges. It's so silly it's laughable.

Why? Consider what our nation's Constitution; the First Amendment, actually says:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Hmmm. Interesting. "Prohibiting the free exercise thereof." What is a law prohibiting the distribution and display of the Bible but a law which "prohibits the free exercise" of Christianity?

As an evangelist, I can't help but wonder what this sort of thing means for those of us who use our Freedom of Speech to spread the Gospel in this nation. I live in Texas; granted, it's the false convert capital of the world, but at least there's a pretension towards Christianity and it's not likely that our state will ever follow Kolorado's example. However, it's far more likely that our nation's lawmakers will ignore the Constitution and do whatever seems right in their own eyes and we'll have this kind of stuff imposed on us from the stuffed shirts in D.C.

I'll borrow a cliche from the printing world: the only ones who have the Freedom of Speech are those who use it. If you're not using it as a Christian, you may as well live in Communist China, Soviet Russia, or Saudi Arabia. You have imposed on yourself a law which we don't actually have (yet) by your silence. If we as believers do not use our Freedom of Speech, we will lose it. Wake up!

This is a call to professing believers who are content to let their "little light shine" by being nice to people to stop playing silly games and start sharing the Gospel while it is still legal. If you take the Gospel out of the public forum by your silence and your rationalizing that it's not "effective" or "relevant" or it's "offensive", then make no mistake, you are guilty by association when our freedoms are taken away to spread the Gospel in public forums. What will you do when they take that freedom away? Will magic "courage dust" fall out of the sky and give you what you need then to stand up for Christ? How can you expect it at that time when you don't do it now?

Listen, ministry in 90% of the world and in most of Church History is not nice and neat and does not fit into tidy little boxes that look pretty. It is not polite. It is gritty, dirty business. It is blood, sweat and tears. True Christianity knows no other kind of ministry. We claim spiritual lineage to the Apostles and Prophets but don't want to live their lives. We'll gladly believe their doctrine so long as we don't have to follow their examples. Where does this nonsense come from?

It's time that men be men and leave the girly stuff to women. Rob Bell would have me be "relational" in my witnessing. Here's a newsflash Rob: I'm a guy. I'm not interested in exploring my feminine side. I know it's been fun for you, but that's your issue. Guys aren't "relational". They are men. We kill things and conquer. We're aggressive, not passive. If you want to be relational, put your skirt on and invite your neighbors over for tea and crumpets. While the churches have bought into that lie, men stay in the background (if they attend at all). I'm not interested in limp-wristed evangelism which makes me wear lipstick and high heels. The Apostles were men's men. They were dirty, sweaty, bloody, stinky men. They told the religious leaders where the bear did his business in the buckwheat and they faced threats boldly. They weren't a bunch of timid school-girls.

That is the kind of presence the church needs to have. We need to stand up and DARE them to silence us. If you've missed it, that's exactly what the pagans have been doing in this country for the last 40 years. In the meantime, the church has been taught by its "experts" that we need to be relational and we're within one generation of becoming post-Christian as a nation. The pagans smell blood. And we sleep while they come in through the window. God help us all.

False Conversion

I am posting here a real letter I sent out to a Christian who asked some questions regarding my own experience as a false convert. Details have been omitted to protect the identity of the original questioner. I hope that this might be helpful to anyone who might be struggling with this issue; it's one that I'm asked about frequently and trust that the Lord will use this to bless anyone who might be going through the painful yet necessary process of self-examination:

The original question was:

After reading your testimony on the Lost Cause Ministries website, I have had a question for you for quite some time. How or what made you decide that you weren’t really saved after all? Do you think it’s natural for Christians to question that about themselves? I find myself doing that from time to time.

The response I gave follows:

Yes, it is natural to question one’s own salvation. We all feel unworthy of the grace we’ve been given and if we understand (and are sensitive to) the true nature of sin and how prone we all are to it, even as spiritually growing believers, we sometimes wonder where we really are spiritually.

One difference between someone who is a soundly saved believer and one who is not is that the one who is not finds ways to justify his sin and is comfortable with it. The biggest difference is where you place your trust: your works or in Christ alone.

I was brought up in “easy-believism” churches. In other words, if you “pray the sinner’s prayer”, they taught that you are absolutely saved, no matter what, as long as you really meant it at that moment. Even if you prayed the prayer sincerely at the age of five and then went on to become a reprobate atheist for the rest of your life, then you were saved at five and just “backslid.” I do believe in backsliding, but this kind of thing I’m describing is nothing but presumption on the grace of God, making it something that it is not. Titus 2:12 teaches that someone who has experienced the true grace of God denies ungodliness (among other things).

In that religious system, I was never told about repentance (they viewed repentance as a “work”) and certainly never did repent. I got immersed into the Christian youth culture and started doing all of the things that evangelical teenagers do: go to Christian concerts, youth group, hang out with Christian friends. I became a leader in the youth group (mainly because of personality and things that I did) and the leaders all said that I should go to Bible college. So I went there, became a leader again and everyone there said that I should go into ministry. At the age of 20 I went into my first ministry, as an assistant pastor in a black church. And on and on it went, getting “promoted” to the position of pastor in a small church, doing well there and then being promoted to the position of pastor in a larger church.

During all of that time, I “struggled” with the same sins. At least I called it “struggled.” It really wasn’t a struggle. If I was tempted to sin, I did it. And when I did, my conscience would bother me, and I would take that as a sign I was saved. However sin bothers the conscience of the lost as well.

Then I would justify myself by saying that I must be right with God, look at all of the things I DO. I preached three times a week, visited the sick, prayed, studied the Bible many hours per week, “discipled” people, and on and on. Someone who is saved wouldn’t do those things, would they? But the truth is, yes, unsaved people study the Bible (liberal theologians), pray (every religion of the world prays), do charitable deeds (Catholics), preached (Muslim imams preach), and mentor people (Big Brothers, Big Sister programs do that too). In the end, I wasn’t trusting in Christ alone; I was trusting in my deeds. I had a cultural Christianity, but no reality with Christ. In the end, I had to do what Scripture says and repent not only of my sins (Acts 3:19) but also of my dead works (Heb. 6:1). I needed to be justified by faith in Christ alone and stop trying to justify myself.

All of this came to light over time, but culminated in a period of self-examination (2 Cor. 13:5) that was brought on when I heard a man named Keith Daniel preach on the topic of the “Complications of the Spiritual Birth.” This sermon caused me to ask myself about my own repentance; my total lack of it. That day I was forced to admit that I was never told I needed to repent, never did repent, and my reprobate, hypocritical life proved that I was not justified.

Later, I saw that I never really placed faith in Christ alone. My faith was creedal; very theological (I was Reformed) but characterized by what the easy believism folks call “an intellectual assent to the facts of the Gospel” (their definition of saving faith). I was raised in a fundamentalism that taught if you can say “uh huh” to several basic facts, then praise God, you’re saved. Most of their evangelism was taking people through several facts and getting them to say they believed them. This kind of faith is demonic (Jas. 2:19). True faith is absolute trust, complete abandonment, to someone who is trustworthy. Combined with repentance and justification by faith in Christ alone, this is a magnificent Gospel. The other is nothing more than a half-breed Gospel which cannot save.

Sadly, most of this errant theology on salvation came from seminaries which strongly influenced the Baptist churches in the northeast: Dallas Theological Seminary and Philadelphia College of the Bible. These schools provided professors for smaller Bible colleges in the region and this heresy spread throughout the area. When Dr. MacArthur wrote his book “The Gospel According to Jesus” it was controversial in the Bible colleges of the northeast for about five years. Every evangelistic preacher and most pastors I heard in my life were strongly influenced by easy believism.

Richard Baxter wrote in his book “The Reformed Pastor” that it was possible to save others as a preacher and yet be lost yourself in the end. George Whitefield taught that the bane of the Christian ministry in his day was an unconverted ministry. I was one of those men; it is a fact which still causes grief when I think seriously about it. I preached a false gospel and baptized many people who responded to that gospel. I don’t ever want to lose sight of that fact, just as John Newton never lost sight of his own past as a slave trader. He didn’t let his past lead to self condemnation; he let it remind him daily of God’s amazing grace. I don’t think there is anything worse than a false convert preacher who spreads a false Gospel; a slave trader seems gentle in comparison. The fact that the Lord Jesus Christ saved me demonstrates that He is willing to save the worst of hypocrites. His grace truly is amazing. His love is astounding. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Here are some important messages on false conversion. These are all on our website: http://www.lostcauseministries.com/audios.html.

1. Paul Washer’s message, “Examine Yourself”.

2. Keith Daniel’s “The Spiritual Birth”

3. Ray Comfort’s “True & False Conversions”

4. John MacArthur’s “Hard to Believe.”

Soli Deo Gloria,

Jon

Ravi Zacharias on the Emergent Church\Post-Modernism

One of the best minds in contemporary Christianity discusses post-modernism with Kirk Cameron.

Who You Are vs. What You Do

This is a great reminder from Brother Paul Washer that who we ARE is far more important than what we DO. Oh, how often I get caught up in what I'm doing and get busy doing and neglect my time with the Lord. I think this is far more common in what I've been calling the "Biblical Evangelism Community" than any of us would like to admit. May the Lord give us the grace to repent and walk with Christ.

Paul's Love of Books by Wilbur Smith

Appeared originally in Smith’s Chats From A Minister’s Library Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, n.d. (1951). Pp. 169-186

There is a verse tucked away, we might say, on the last page that Paul probably ever wrote, dictated in a dingy and damp prison at Rome, shortly before the Apostle’s death, which, more than any other one sentence in all his writings, indicates his passionate love for books and especially for The Book. I refer to the words he wrote to Timothy (II Tim. 4:13)—“The cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring, and the books, especially the parchments.”

Only rarely does the Apostle, in all of his voluminous writings, speak of his university education, or of his intellectual pursuits. Standing before the multitude in Jerusalem he could declare that he was a man who, though born in Tarsus, was brought up in the city of Jerusalem “at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the strict manner of the law of the fathers.” (Acts 22:3.) In the Second Epistle to the church at Corinth (11:6) he says that though he might be rude in speech, yet he was not “in knowledge.” Later to the Galatians, in briefly summarizing his earlier life, he said he had “profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.” (Gal. 1:14.)

Speaking to the Athenians he was able quickly to quote relevant lines from their own poets.

From these words, certainly, we at least gather that Paul was a diligent student, nor do we believe that he ever stopped being a hard student all the days of his mature life, in spite of his traveling, in spite of his imprisonment, in spite of all the churches he founded, and all the correspondence he had to carry on.

In the first letter to Timothy, he admonished his son in the faith to (literally) “keep your mind on the reading” (4:13). And now he himself tells Timothy that his mind needs to peruse again the books and parchments which, for some reason, he had left at Troas.

I should like us to look at this verse in three different ways. First, let us ask ourselves exactly what these books and parchments may have been. Then, we might consider, for a moment, some of the more pertinent remarks of our great commentators on the verse itself, and then read together some wonderful lines from two of the greatest preachers of the English world in the nineteenth century on these words,--Charles Spurgeon and Alexander Whyte.

The word here translated books is a common one in the New Testament. It is the word biblion from which comes our word bibliography, meaning, the science of books, and, our much greater word, Bible, which means The Book. The word bibliarion, meaning a little book, is found four times in the tenth chapter of Revelation, and only there in the New Testament. The word biblos, meaning a written book, a scroll, is found thirteen times in the New Testament, five of these times in the Book of Revelation. It is the word used in the very first verse of our New Testament. “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.” It is the word used by the beloved physician, when speaking of the preaching of John the Baptist, which he tells us was predicted “in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet.” (Luke 3:4.)

Almost always, outside of the Book of Revelation, it is a word used in reference to the Old Testament. The exact word Paul used in writing to Timothy—biblion—meaning, a small book, or scroll, is used thirty-one times in the New Testament, and frequently means simply a written document, like a bill of divorcement. Paul uses here then a word that is quite common in the New Testament, though one rarely used among New Testament writers, to refer simply to books as such.

The word translated parchments, however, occurs nowhere else in all the New Testament Scriptures. It is the word membranas, from which we derive our word membrane. These parchments were first made of dressed skins, at the city of Pergamum (and hence were called parchments, from the name of the city). Books generally were made of papyrus. Parchments being made of skin, were much more durable, and, for a while much more expensive, though later, papyrus came to be so extensively used, that it was difficult to secure, especially if the harvest of papyrus was short, and so the time ultimately came when parchment was even cheaper than papyrus.

Professor A.T. Robertson tells us that “at first both the papyrus and the parchment book would be made into a roll. Sometimes the parchment leaves would not be pasted together in a roll, but left in loose form. This may have been the case with the parchments that Paul had left with Carpus. The papyrus were rolls of pieces of papyrus glued together of any convenient length. The columns of writing would be unrolled as one read, while the part just read would be rolled up again. Sometimes the roll would be fastened to a stick at each end. There would often be a case for the roll. The book wrap would hold a number of these rolls, whether of papyrus or parchment. The leaves of parchment, if not bound together in a codex, would lie open in the book wrap.” (A.T. Robertson’s Studies In The Text Of The New Testament, pp. 108-109.)

The question now arises as to exactly what these books were, which (probably) no man will be able to definitely determine, while we are here on this earth, with our limited knowledge. Paul gives really no hint of what they were, but, inasmuch as he distinguishes between the two, it has generally been thought that whatever the books were, the parchments were probably rolls of the Old Testament Scriptures, as Kenyon of the British Museum suggests, and many agree. (Our Bible And The Ancient Manuscripts, p.94)

The late Walter Locke, in his Commentary On The Pastoral Epistles (p. 118) says they might have been “possibly official copies of the Lord’s words or early narratives.” They could have been, and how wonderful it would be if we could be sure of this! Dr. A.T. Robertson, along this line (and he was a careful scholar), goes so far as to suggest that “it is possible that both of Luke’s books—the Gospel, and the Acts—were in that book wrap. Paul’s copies of Luke’s books, presentation copies we might say, may have been in the bunch of books in Troas. It is more likely that he had also left there Greek and Latin manuscripts of favorite authors, poets, historians, and orators.” (p. 111)

Canon Farrar, in his brilliantly written Life And Work Of St. Paul (Volume II, pp. 571-572), helps us to reconstruct in our own minds something of the environment in which Paul wrote these words.

“Perhaps he had bought these books when he was a student in the school of Gamaliel at Jerusalem; or, they may have been given him by his wealthier converts. Among the parchments were possibly the precious rolls of Isaiah and the Psalms and the lesser Pophets, which father or mother had given him as a life-long treasure in the far-off happy days when, little dreaming of all that would befall him, he played, a happy boy, in the dear old Tarsian home. Dreary and long are the days—the evenings longer and drearier still—in that Roman dungeon; and it will be a deep joy to read once more how David and Isaiah in their deep troubles learnt as he had learnt to suffer and be strong…Perhaps he thinks he would like to give them as his parting bequest to Timothy himself, or to the modest and faithful Luke, that their true hearts may remember him when the sea of life flows smooth once more over the nameless grave. Poor inventory of a saint’s possessions! Not worth one-hundredth part of what a buffoon would get for one jest in Caesar’s palace, or an acrobat for a feat in the amphitheatre, but would he have exchanged them for the jewels of the adventurer Agrippa, or the purple of the unspeakable Nero?

“No, he is much more than content. His soul is joyful in God. If he has the cloke to keep him warm, and the books and parchments to teach and encourage, and Mark to help him in various ways, and if, above all, Timothy will come himself, then life will have shed on him its last rays of sunshine; and in lesser things, as well as in all greater, he will wait with thankfulness, even with exultation, the pouring out in libation of those last few drops of his heart’s blood of which the rich, full stream has for these long years been flowing forth upon God’s altar in willing sacrifice.”

For some strange reason, the Church Fathers made very little use of this verse, and when they did quote it, they paid almost no attention to the clause speaking of books and parchments, but made all their comments upon the cloke.

When we come, however, to that peer of commentators of the sixteenth century—John Calvin—we have something entirely different, definite and practical. These are Calvin’s words, with his usual common sense.

“It is evident from this that the Apostle had not given over reading, though he was well preparing for death. Where are those who think that they have made so great progress that they do not need any more exercise? Which of them will dare to compare himself with Paul? Still more does this expression refute the madness of those men who, despising books and condemning all reading, boast of nothing but their own divine inspirations. But let us know that this Apostle gives to all believers a recommendation of constant reading that they may profit by it.”

Speaking of commentators, one of our own generation, without illuminating the text as much as we wish he had done, for he was easily able to do this,--the late Dr. Lenski—frankly faces the often-asked question whether a sentence mentioning such trivial things as a cloak and books is inspired. “Offence has been taken at the fact that Paul should mention such articles, especially the cloke. Some also ask whether inspiration is needed for a verse like this. The answer to the latter is that if inspiration is able to watch over what we admit as the great utterances of Scripture, why should it not guide also what some of us may admit the most minor ones? Certainly the Holy Spirit does not need the advice of men to tell Him what to inspire, and what not…Let the Holy Spirit judge regarding the importance…Your comfortable circumstances and mine have not been those of all other believers.” (R.C.H. Lenski: The Interpretation Of Paul’s Epistles To The Colossians, Timothy, etc. Columbus, Ohio, 1937, pp. 882-883)

The reading of Calvin’s words, written in 1556, leads us to another great scholar of the Church of the very same generation, William Tindale, who twenty years before this was executed—October 6, 1536. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the only known letter we have of William Tindale was discovered in the Archives of the Council of Brabant, a letter written when the great martyr and scholar was in prison at Vilvorde in Belgium, addressed to the Marquis of Bergen, Governor of the Council. Certainly Tindale knew, when he wrote this tender note of request, that another martyr fifteen centuries before had the very longings when he was in prison that he was experiencing, also a prisoner of Jesus Christ. These are Tindale’s words, and I give them as a precious parallel of the last words of the dying Paul.

“I believe, right worshipful, that you are not ignorant of what has been determined concerning me (by the Council of Brabant); therefore I entreat your lordship and that by the Lord Jesus, that if I am to remain here (in Vilvorde) during the winter, you will request the Procureur to be kind enough to send me from my goods which he has in his possession, a warmer cap, for I suffer extremely from cold in the head, being afflicted with a perpetual catarrh, which is considerably increased in this cell. A warmer coat also, for that which I have is very thin: also a piece of cloth to patch my leggings: my overcoat is worn out; my shirts are also worn out. He has a woolen shirt of mine, if he will be kind enough to send it. I have also with him leggings of thicker cloth for putting on above; he also has warmer caps for wearing at night. I wish also his permission to have a lamp in the evening, for it is wearisome to sit alone in the dark. But above all, I entreat and beseech your clemency to be urgent with the Procureur that he may kindly permit me to have my Hebrew Bible, Hebrew Grammar, and Hebrew Dictionary, that I may spend my time with that study. And in return, may you obtain your dearest wish, provided always it be consistent with the salvation of your soul. But if, before the end of the winter, a different decision be reached concerning me, I shall be patient, abiding the will of God to the glory of the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ, whose Spirit, I pray, may ever direct your heart.” (William Tindale: A Biography, pp. 537-538)

Now, if I may, let me come for a moment to some modern sermons on this text. Strange to say, there are not many, and most of them, as with the Church Fathers, deal not with the books, but with the cloke. Some of them become quite fanciful, and give those using the text a handle for preaching on such subjects as “On Leaving Things Behind” or “Luggage Left Behind.” The only two sermons of the last century that I have discovered dealing directly with Paul’s request for these books and parchments are in the writings of two men, both preaching in London; one in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the other in the first quarter of the twentieth century—Charles Spurgeon and Dinsdale T. Young. To speak of the last first, Dinsdale T. Young preached to 3,000 people every Sunday in Westminster Hall, London, and was one of the great adornments of British Methodism for half a century. I will never forget the night I heard him in his own pulpit in London, then an old man, who had to hold his notes very close to his eyes when it was necessary to read a sentence or two. But the difference between Young’s preaching and Spurgeon’s preaching—and Young was a great preacher, and his volumes of sermons are worth reading—is clearly discerned even in their respective treatments of such a text as this. Young begins his sermon on our text with a brilliant brief paragraph, and then that is about all one needs to remember from his sermon. These are his words: “One of the great presuppositions of the Bible is that God’s people will read. The existence of Scripture is in itself an argument for the necessity of reading. That God inspired a book indicates His desire that His servants should be readers.” (Messages For Home And Life, London, 1907, p. 61)

Mr. Spurgeon preached on this text at the Metropolitan Tabernacle on Sunday morning, November 29, 1863. The first two-thirds of the sermon have to do with Paul’s request for a cloke, and I think that his seven pages on this single clause are the finest pages in the English language on this particular portion of Paul’s writings. It would be a grand thing sometime if one with much leisure and a love for books and a discerning spirit, would give us a great series of volumes in which the very finest things said on each particular phrase in the New Testament were brought together. These are Spurgeon’s words:

“We will LOOK AT HIS BOOKS. We do not know what the books were about, and we can only form some guess as to what the parchments were. Paul had a few books which were left, perhaps wrapped up in the cloak, and Timothy was to be careful to bring them. Even an apostle must read. Some of our very ultra-Calvinistic brethren think that a minister who reads books and studies his sermon must be a very deplorable specimen of a preacher. A man who comes up into the pulpit, professes to take his text on the spot, and talks any quantity of nonsense, is the idol of many. If he will speak without premeditation, or pretend to do so, and never produce what they call a dish of dead men’s brains—oh! that is the preacher. How rebuked are they by the apostle! He is inspired and yet he wants books! He has been preaching at least for thirty years, and yet he wants books! He has seen the Lord, and yet he wants books! He had had a wider experience than most men, and yet he wants books! He had been caught up into the third heaven, and had heard things which it was unlawful for man to utter, yet he wants books! He had written a major part of the New Testament, and yet he wants books! The apostle says to Timothy and so he says to every preacher, ‘Give thyself unto reading.’ The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves that he has no brains of his own. Brethren, what is true of ministers is true of all our people. You need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works, especially the Puritanic writers, and expositions of the Bible. We are quite persuaded that the very best way for you to be spending your leisure, is to be either reading or praying. You may get much instruction from books which afterwards you may use as a true weapon in your Lord and Master’s service. Paul cried, ‘Bring the books’—join in the cry.

“Our second remark is, that the apostle is not ashamed to confess that he does read. He is writing to his young son Timothy. Now, some old preachers never like to say a thing which will let the young ones into their secrets. They suppose they must put on a dignified air, and make a mystery of their sermonizing; but all this is alien from the spirit of truthfulness. Paul wants books, and is not ashamed to tell Timothy that he does; and Timothy may go and tell Tychicus and Titus if he likes—Paul does not care.

“Paul herein is a picture of industry. He is in prison; he cannot preach: what will he do? As he cannot preach, he will read. As we read of the fishermen of old and their boats. The fishermen were gone out of them. What were they doing? Mending their nets. So if providence has laid you upon a sick bed, and you cannot teach your class—if you cannot be working for God in public, mend your nets by reading. If one occupation is taken from you, take another, and let the books of the apostle read you a lesson of industry.

“He says, ‘especially the parchments.’ I think the books were Latin and Greek works, but that the parchments were Oriental; and possibly they were the parchments of Holy Scripture; or as likely, they were his own parchments, on which were written the originals of his letters which stand in our Bible as the Epistles to the Ephesians, the Philippians, the Colossians, and so on. Now, it must be ‘especially the parchments’ with all our reading; let it be especially the Bible. Do you attach no weight to this advice? This advice is more needed in England now than almost at any other time, for the number of persons who read the Bible, I believe, is becoming smaller every day. Persons read the views of their denominations as set forth in the periodicals; they read the views of their leader as set forth in his sermons or his works, but the Book, the good old Book, the divine fountain-head from which all revelation wells up—this is too often left. You may go to human puddles, until you forsake the clear crystal stream which flows from the throne of God. Read the books, by all manner of means, but especially the parchments. Search human literature, if you will, but especially stand fast by that Book which is infallible, the revelation of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, 1863, pp. 668, 669)

Now let me come to what, if I may so say, is the best of all, the greatest thing ever done in our language, and probably that ever will be done in reference to Paul as a student, and the bearing of this fact on our being students of the best books, and most of all THE Book. I take these words from Alexander Whyte’s marvelous, moving volume, The Apostle Paul.

I really wish I could prevail with you who are no longer young to put aside, as Butler beseeches you, your books and papers of mere amusement, and to read Cicero’s Cato, and some of the other old age classics, if only to make those fine books to serve for so many foils in a fresh perusal of the Epistles of the Imprisonment. It is our bounden duty to read a Greek or a Roman masterpiece now and then, such as the Phaedo or the Cato, if only to awaken ourselves again to the immensity of the change that came into this world with the Incarnation and the Resurrection of our Lord. What a contrast between philosophy at its very best in Socrates and Cicero, and the Gospel of our salvation unto everlasting life in Paul’s old age Epistles! The whole truth and beauty and nobility of such books as the best of Plato and Cicero is all needed the better to bring out the inconceivable contrast between this world at its very best before Christ, and the new heavens and new earth that our Lord brought to this world with Him and left in this world behind Him. How such glorious passages as these shine out afresh upon us after we have just laid down the Cato and even the Phaedo.

“Well, after repeated readings lately of the Cato and the Epistles of the Imprisonment, and the Art of Dying Well, and Jeremy Taylor, and suchlike author’s for old age, I will now tell you some of the reflections, impressions, and resolutions, that have been left on my own mind. And take first Paul’s so touching message to Timothy about his cloke, and his books, and his parchments. For all that comes in most harmoniously after we have just been reading Cato about our keeping on reading and writing our best to the end…

“And if I might be bold enough to add one word after Calvin. I am not now, alas! a neophyte in these matters, and I will therefore take boldness to say this to you. Read the very best books, and only the very best, and ever better and better the older you grow. Be more and more select, and fastidious, and refined, in your books and in your companions, as old age draws on, and death with old age. I wonder just what books they were that Paul missed so much in his imprisoned and apostolic old age at Rome? It might have been the Apology. It might have been the Cato Major. It could not possibly have been Moses, or David, or Isaiah, or Micah. You may depend upon it, Paul did not forget his Bible when he was packing his trunk at Troas. You are far better off in the matter of books for your old age than Paul was with his Bible and all. Never, then, be out of your Old, and especially, never be out of your New Testament. As Paul says about prayer, read in your New Testament without ceasing. Never lay it down, unless it is to take up another letter of Samuel Rutherford, or another pilgrim’s crossing of the river; or, if you have head enough left for it, another great chapter of the Saint’s Rest. Nothing else. At least, nothing else less pertinent and appropriate to your years and to your immediate prospects. Nothing less noble. Nothing less worthy of yourself. Nothing at all but just those true classics of the eternal world over and over again, till your whole soul is in a flame with them, and till your rapture into heaven seizes upon you with one of them in your hand.”

Saul of Tarsus, like Timothy of Lystra, from a child knew the Holy Scriptures. And thus, no doubt, there was found among his old parchments after his death a Table of Rules and Regulations for his college conduct in Jerusalem, as good as William Law’s Rules for his college conduct in Cambridge; better Rules they could not be. But there is one possibility in Saul’s student days in Jerusalem that makes our hearts beat fast in our bosoms to think of it. ‘And the Child grew,’ we read in a contemporary biography, ‘and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him. Now His parents went up to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. And it came to pass after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions.’ Now Gamaliel would be almost sure to be one of the astonished doctors; and what more likely than that he had taken his best scholar up to the temple to explain the Passover to him that day? And did not the young carpenter from Nazareth, and the young weaver from Tarsus, exchange glances of sympathy and shake hands of love that day at the gate of the temple? Are there sports of providence like that in the Divine Mind? asked one of his likeminded students of Rabbi Duncan one day. Yes, and No, was the wise old doctor’s answer.

“Now the first instruction, as I think, intended to us out of Saul’s student days is this—that the finest minds in every generation should study for the Christian ministry. Perhaps the very finest mind that had been born among men since the beginning of the world entered on the study of Old Testament theology when Saul of Tarsus sat down at Gamaliel’s feet. And all Saul’s fine and fast maturing mind will soon be needed now. For a work lay before that weaver boy of Tarsus second only to the work that lay before that carpenter boy of Nazareth, though second to that by an infinite interval. At the same time, there has been no other work predestinated to mere mortal man to do for God and man to be spoken of in the same day with this weaver’s boy’s foreordained work. For even after the Lamb of God had said of His work,--it is finished! how unfinished and incomplete our New Testament would have been without the life and the work of the Apostle Paul. There was a deep harmony pre-established from all eternity between the work of Jesus Christ and the mind and the heart of Paul His apostle. No other subject in all the world but the Divine Person and the redeeming work of Jesus Christ could have afforded an outlet and an opportunity and an adequate scope for Paul’s magnificent mind. While, on the other hand, the law of God and the cross of Christ would have remained to this day but half-revealed mysteries, had it not been for God’s revelation of His Son in Paul; and had it not been for Paul’s intellectual and spiritual capacity to receive that revelation, and to expound it and preach it. Every man who has read Paul’s epistles with the eyes of his understanding in light, and with his heart on fire, must have continually exclaimed, What a gift to man is a fine mind, and that mind wholly given up to Jesus Christ! Let our finest minds, then, devote themselves to the study of Christology. Other subjects may, or may not, be exhausted; other callings may, or may not, be overcrowded; but there is plenty of room in the topmost calling of all, and there is an ever-opening and ever-deepening interest there. No wonder, then, that it has been a University tradition in Scotland that our finest minds have all along entered the Divinity Hall. The other walks and callings of human life both need, and will reward, the best minds that can be spared to them, but let the service of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ first be filled. To annotate the Iliad or the Symposium, or the Commedia; to build up and administer an empire; to command in a battle for freedom by sea or by land; to create and bequeath a great and enriching business; to conduct an influential newspaper; to be the rector of a great school; and so on, --these are all great services done to our generation when we have the talent, and the character, and the opportunity, to do them. But to master Paul, as Paul mastered Moses and Christ; to annotate, and illustrate, and bring freshly home to ten thousand readers, the Galatians, or the Romans, or the Colossians; to have eyes to see what Israel ought to do, and to have the patience, and the courage, to lead a great church to do it; to feed, and to feed better and better for a lifetime, the mind and the heart of a congregation of God’s people, and then to depart and be with Christ,-- let the finest minds and the deepest and richest hearts in every new generation fall down while they are yet young and say, Lord Jesus, what wilt Thou have me to do with my life, and with whatsoever talents Thou hast intrusted to me?

“And then, the best of all callings being chosen, the better his mind and the better his heart are, the more profit, to employ Paul’s own word about himself, will be made by the true student. For one thing, the better his mind, the more industrious, as a rule the student of divinity will be. And the absolutely utmost industry in this supreme department of study is imperative and indispensable. An unindustrious divinity student should be drummed out of the Hall as soon as he is discovered intruding himself into it. With what a hunger for his books, and with what heavenward vows and oaths of work young Saul would set out from Tarsus to Jerusalem! Our own best students come up to our divinity seats with thrilling and thanksgiving hearts, and it is only they who have such hearts who can at all enter into Saul’s mind and heart and imagination as he descended Olivet and entered Jerusalem and saw his name set down at last on Gamaliel’s roll of the sons of the prophets. Gamaliel would have no trouble with Saul, unless it was to supply him with books, and to answer his questions. ‘In all my experience I never had a student like Saul of Tarsus,’ Gamaliel would often afterwards say. And Saul’s class-fellows would tell all their days what a help and what a protection it was to be beside Saul. ‘We entered the regents class that year,’ writes James Melville in his delightful Diary, ‘and he took up Aristotle’s Logic with us. He had a little boy that served him in his chambers, called David Elistone, who, among thirty-six scholars, so many were we in the class, was by far the best. This boy he caused to wait on me and confer with me, and well it was for me, for his genius and his judgment passed mine as far as the eagle the owlet. In the multiplication of propositions, in the conversion of syllogisms, in the pons asinorum, etc., he was as well read as I was in counting my fingers. This, I mark as a special cause of thankfulness.’ And young Saul of Tarsus would be just another David Elistone in Gamaliel’s school. And you Edinburgh students of divinity must be as industrious and successful as Saul was in Jerusalem, or little Elistone in St. Andrews. And you have far more reason. For you have far better teachers, and a far better subject, and a far better prospect, than ever Saul had. You are not eternally fore-ordained, indeed, to write the Epistle to the Romans, or the Epistle to the Ephesians. But you are chosen, and called, and matriculated, to do the next best thing to that. You are called to master those masterpieces of Paul, so as to live experimentally upon them all your student life, and then you are to teach and preach them to your people better and better all your pulpit and pastoral life. You are to work with your hands, if need be; you are to sell your bed, if need be, as Coleridge commands you, in order to buy Calvin on the Romans, and Luther on the Galatians, and Goodwin on the Ephesians, and Davenant on the Colossians, and Hooker on Justification, and ‘that last word on the subject,’ Marshall’s Gospel Mystery Of Sanctification; and you are to husband-up your priceless and irrecoverable hours to such studies, as you shall give account at the day of a divinity school student’s judgment. You are to feed your people, when you have got them committed of Christ to your charge, with the finest of wheat, and with honey out of the rock. And that, better and better all your life, till your proud people of Anwoth made their boast about that great genius, and great scholar, and great theologian, and great preacher and great pastor, Master Samuel Rutherford.

“’Give attendance to reading,’ was Paul’s old-age reminiscence of his student days, in the form of a counsel to young Timothy. ‘Paul has not lost his delight in books, even when he is near his death,’ says Calvin. And I myself owe so much to good books that I cannot stop myself on this subject as long as I see a single student sitting before me. I have a thousand times had Thomas Boston’s experience of good books. ‘I plied my books. After earnestly plying my books, I felt my heart begin to grow better. I always find that my health and my heart are the better according as I ply my books.’ But you will correct me that Paul could not ply the great books that Thomas Boston plied to his own salvation, and to the salvation of his people in Simprin and Ettrick. Well, then, all the more, ply your pure Bible as Paul and Timothy did, and your profiting, like Paul’s profiting and Timothy’s, will soon appear unto all. Plying your English Bible even, your profiting will soon appear in your English style, both spoken and written. It will appear in the scriptural stateliness and the holy order of your pulpit prayers also. Your profiting will appear also in the strength, and the depth, and the spirituality, and the experimentalness, and the perennial freshness, of your teaching and your preaching.

“Up, and abolish death. Up, out of your bondage all your days through fear of death. Up, and practice dying in the Lord, till you take the prize. Up, and read Paul without ceasing, and pray without ceasing, till you also shall stand on tiptoe with expectation and with full assurance of faith. Yes; up, till you also shall salute His sudden coming, and shall exclaim, Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!” (The Apostle Paul, by Alexander Whyte, pp. 174-175; 176-177; pp. 14-21; p. 181)

Piper on Personal Evangelism

Here's a great little clip of John Piper talking about evangelism. It comes from Allen Peek.

Enjoy.