D. James Kennedy (1930–2007)

Just shortly after the announcement that D. James Kennedy (Wikipedia) had officially retired from his position as senior pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida—a position that he held for more than 48 years—comes the announcement that he has gone home to be with the Lord at the age of 76.

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9Marks Tackles the Race Issue

The September/October 9Marks eJournal (PDF) tackles the issue of racism and does so very helpfully.

Here are the articles, interviews, reviews, and discussions that it contains:

• Thabiti Anyabwile and Jonathan Leeman: “Starting the Conversation with Earth, Wind, and Fire”

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Sovereign Grace MP3 Sermon Downloads Now Free!

Carolyn McCulley notes that the Sovereign Grace Ministries Store has now made all of their MP3 sermon downloads free. They previously sold most of these messages for a couple bucks each. It seems like this is a permanent switch and not a special limited-time offer.

This audio comes from over 70 speakers covering 30 different topics and including audio from several different conferences like Together for the Gospel, New Attitude, and Worship God.

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Baptism Yet Again

What started out as an interchange between Wayne Grudem and John Piper developed into a discussion involving 9Marks’s Mark Dever and Aaron Menikoff. The dialog—no longer really a back-and-forth debate—continues.

Abraham Piper raises the question of whether Baptists should consider paedobaptists as unrepentant sinners, which seems to be the necessary conclusion if, from the Baptist’s perspective, non-first-generation paedobaptists are failing to obey the Scriptural teaching to be baptized after conversion. It would seem logically that, if they are sinning unrepentantly, they are destined for hell.

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More Baptism Discussion

Last week we highlighted the back and forth between Wayne Grudem and John Piper on the subject of baptism—particularly if Baptists should allow paedobaptists into membership.

The discussion was spurred by Grudem’s rewriting his section “Do Churches Need to Be Divided Over Baptism?” in his Systematic Theology. Piper didn’t like the changes that Grudem made. Grudem responded to Piper, holding his ground (even though his very own wife was on Piper’s side!).

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The Resurgence of Calvinism

It’s hard not to miss it. There’s been a significant resurgence in Calvinism in both evangelicalism and fundamentalism. Blogs, websites, books, conferences—Calvinists are popping up everywhere.

At Bob Jones University where I received undergraduate and seminary degrees, dozens of men were going in with Arminian or middle-of-the-road leanings and coming out four- or five-point Calvinists. The trend was unmistakable, especially among the seminary guys and often after taking Systematic Theology. You might be suspecting that this was the result of the persuasive arguments of an unflinching five-point Calvinist faculty, but for most part the faculty members warned against the dangers of Calvinism—at least the five-point kind.

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Free MP3 Sermons and Lectures

Paul Schafer at Reforming My Mind does a great job of collecting links to lots of (mostly) free audio sermons and lectures. If you’re looking for some good content for your MP3 player for when you’re traveling, mowing the lawn, or working out, this is a good place to start. Most recently he has featured J. I. Packer (Wikipedia). Here are some of the other individuals he has featured:

• Voddie Baucham
• Alistair Begg
• Jerry Bridges
• Mark Dever
• Sinclair Ferguson
• Wayne Grudem
• C. J. Mahaney
• David Powlison
• Ed Stetzer
• Sam Storms
• Paul Tripp
• Bruce Ware
• David Wells

You may also want to check out the great collection of D. A. Carson audio links compiled by Andy Naselli.

To save you time in downloading all this great stuff, I’d highly recommend downloading and installing the FireFox extension DownThemAll!. After you’ve installed it and restarted FireFox, go to the page that has the links, right click anywhere on the screen (but not on a link), and click the “DownThemAll!…” option. You can specify what file extensions to include (e.g., MP3, WMA, etc.), where to download the files, and lots of other options. Just get it started and let it do its thing. Depending on the speed of your connection and the number of MBs you’re downloading, you may want to do it before bed.

This won’t get all of the audio, just the audio where the file itself is the link on the page (e.g., http://www.website.com/sermon.mp3, but not http://www.website.com/sermons.php), but it will save you a lot of time.

Enjoy!

See also our previous posts:

• Free Classes from RTS
• Free Audiobooks

Mark Dever on Choosing a Seminary

Mark Dever gives five factors (conveniently alliterated) to consider in choosing a seminary.

1. Confession of Faith. The first and most important factor for you to consider when choosing a seminary is what doctrine is taught there. . . .
2. Quality of Education. Another consideration in choosing a seminary is the quality of the education offered. While there is no precise way to measure such quality, factors which indicate it are the school’s faculty, the required curriculum and the library facilities. . . .
3. Cost. Let’s say you’ve found a seminary that you agree with theologically, and that seems to offer a good quality of education. Then, a third matter you should consider is cost. How expensive is the education there? What are the living costs like in that community? Are there good scholarships or jobs to be had? It would be unwise for you to commit yourself to considerable indebtedness. . . .
4. Church. Having lined up a seminary that you agree with theologically, that you think provides a good quality of education and that is affordable, you must also consider if there is a good church nearby that could be a place of ministry and spiritual encouragement and direction while you are in the seminary. . . .
5. Connections for Life. Finally, it is a legitimate question to consider what connections for the rest of life you might make by attending this seminary or that theological college. Most ministers who go to seminary for training meet there professors and fellow students who continue to be an informal network long after your formal educational work is done. Such questions of network and denomination are questions worth weighing carefully. . . .

Read the whole post at the T4G Blog.

Related Post:

• Seminary Comparison Tool
• Free Classes from RTS
• The Value of Distance Seminary Education

Free eBooks!

Mark Dever’s Polity: Biblical Arguments on How to Conduct Church Life (also online) is available as a free download from Doxa Digital Press for the WORDSearch/Bible Explorer/Bible Navigator engine. Also newly available is the 2005 Founders Journal (4 issues), which is edited by Thomas Ascol. If you don’t already have WORDSearch, Bible Explorer, or Bible Navigator, you’ll need to download Bible Explorer 4 (free) in order to use these resources.

A while back I posted on my personal blog about scores of other free ebooks (complete list) available for WORDSearch/Bible Explorer/Bible Navigator. For a while e-Sword has been the largest source of free ebooks, but Bible Explorer is on track to take the lead.

There are also hundreds of free resources (complete list) available for the Libronix engine (free). The one catch is that you have to own one of Logos’s boxed sets, which contains a reading key, in order to use them.

Lessons Learned from a Pastor’s Fall

Mark Dever shares two important lessons that he learned from the fall of a dear friend in ministry.

The first lesson was provoked when one dear brother reproached himself for not reaching out more to this mutual friend, not asking more questions about how our mutual friend was doing. I told him that I had met with this friend weekly and often asked him many questions. I didn’t think he (my self-reproachful friend) was so much in the wrong as our mutual friend was wrong for not being honest. Lesson number one: no accountability relationships will work if there is not a commitment to honesty on the part of the person in question. The problem wasn’t a lack of initiative toward him; the problem was his hiding the truth from us. If I am committed to my sin above a humble, self-revealing honesty, then I can’t rely on any accountability structure or loving friendships to expose my sin and protect my soul. I must remember that if I am to war against sin, I must labor to be embarrassingly transparent.

The second lesson was more particularly for those engaged in public ministry. Many Christians will make pious statements about God refusing to bless a ministry because of sin in the minister’s life, or holiness being the essential ingredient in a pastor’s ministry. Many other statements like that are in the literature. And certainly holiness is a necessarily present mark of any true ministry—or true Christian life, for that matter. BUT, and here’s lesson number two: the public success of your ministry is no indication of the true state of your relationship with God. Yes, preachers should meet the qualifications Paul lays out in I Tim. 3 & Titus 1, but God is not limited to using people who do. In Scripture we see God using beasts (Balaam’s donkey), inanimate objects (the burning bush) even Satan himself to do His bidding. We shouldn’t be surprised that God can sovereignly have His truth preached through the mouths of hypocrites. My brother minister, are you in a time of public blessing? Don’t assume that necessarily has anything to do with how your own relationship with the Lord is.

The whole post is worth reading.