I know I blog about Grace Alone a lot. But it seems to be the forgotten doctrine in our age. So here it goes … So many fellow brothers and sisters in Christ will gladly confess the doctrines spoken in the Five Solas of the Reformation, possibly without understanding the implications of some of them, namely Grace Alone (Sola Gratia), of which Martin Luther said was of the most importance in denying the Roman Catholic Church doctrine of salvation = Christ + works (which amounts to you save yourself, as opposed to the Gospel which says God Saves Sinners). These great Reformation doctrines have a logical flow to them that is important to understanding what is at stake in the whole of the message, namely the last point, the glory of God alone (Soli Deo Gloria). It goes like this: salvation is by Grace Alone (Sola Gratia) through Faith Alone (Sola Fide) in Christ Alone (Solus Christus) revealed by the Scriptures Alone (Sola Scriptura) all to the Glory of God Alone (Soli Deo Gloria).
Month: September 2007 Page 1 of 2
http://www.westerfunk.net/publicsermons … 0Grace.mp3
This isn’t a really long thought, just a short point Piper made in the sermon above that I was listening to today when running, concerning those who don’t know whether or not they are elect and are fearful God may have passed over them. Many will reason that because God chooses by sheer grace alone as clearly shown in the Scriptures (John 6:44, Romans 9, Romans 8:28-30, Romans 11:1-6, Ephesians 1:4, etc), and that His choosing of who to save is in no way based in the wrath-deserving sinner (by works or foreseen faith as many presuppose), they have not been chosen because of circumstances in their life (their sin, trials, etc). Piper states in this sermon that the person has no reason to think they have not been chosen either because, again, the point has to be reiterated: God doesn’t choose who to save because of anything we do at all, but His choice is based in His unfettered, sovereign purpose from all eternity. Our only hope of seeing the risen Christ as who He truly is (the Son of God in glory) so that we may believe in Him and His work and be saved, is for God to open our hearts, eyes, ears, and minds to be able to respond to the spoken message of the Gospel in faith. As the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals state, “Faith is not produced by our unregenerated human nature.” No rather, God does a decisive work which infallibly brings about faith in the sinner to be saved. So the point still stands to all, have you abandoned all hope of saving yourself and trusted in the risen Christ? Are you pursuing Him without any excuse to give for your negligence to this end? You cannot use the misinterpretation of election (hard determinism – that God will do what He wants to do anyway, so why try?) as an excuse to not pursue salvation and sanctification in the risen Christ. God is sovereign, man is responsible. Those are the truths we have in Scripture and must leave it there. We cannot understand how the two reconcile, because God is bigger than our limited understanding, so don’t you think he has a few things orchestrated that are beyond comprehension?
That aside, I just love this quote:
“How may I know I have understood the gospel and that I am elect? ‘First, by the Word of God having come in divine power to the soul so that my self-complacency is shattered and my self-righteousness is renounced. Second, by the Holy Spirit convicting me of my woeful, guilty, and lost condition. Third, by having had revealed to me the suitability and sufficiency of Christ to meet my desperate case and by a divinely given faith causing me to lay hold of and rest upon Him as my only hope. Fourth, by the marks of the new nature within me – a love for God; an appetite for spiritual things; a longing for holiness; a seeking after conformity to Christ. Fifth, by the resistance which the new nature makes to the old, causing me to hate sin and loathe myself for it. Sixth, by avoiding everything which is condemned by God’s Word and by sincerely repenting of and humbly confessing every transgression. Failure at this point will surely bring a dark cloud over our assurance causing the Spirit to withhold His witness. Seventh, by giving all diligence to cultivate the Christian graces and using all diligence to this end. Thus the knowledge of election is cumulative.”
– A .W. Pink
Well, in this third installment of “Useful Protocol-Intelligent Javascript Code,” (not intending it to become a series, ha) I was sent a link by Matt Hinze where someone has already written some code that will do this exact thing, particularly for Google analytics js code. Take a look:
<script type=”text/javascript”>
document.write( ‘<scr’+’ipt type=”text/javascript” src=”‘ );
if( document.location.toString().indexOf( ‘https://’ ) != -1 ) {
document.write( ‘https://ssl’ ); } else { document.write( ‘http://www’ ); }
document.write( ‘.google-analytics.com/urchin.js”></scr’+’ipt>’ );
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
_uacct = “UA-XXXXXXX-X”;
urchinTracker();
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
document.write( ‘<scr’+’ipt type=”text/javascript”>’ );
if( document.referrer.toString().indexOf( ‘www.westerfunk.net’ ) ==-1 ) {
document.write( ‘urchinTracker(document.referrer);’ ); }
document.write( ‘</scr’+’ipt>’ );
</script>
I have set this up on Westerfunk.net and will see what the results look like tomorrow, to see if the code is actually rendering properly. So far it appears it is actually making the calls out to google on every page hit, but only G-analytics results will shed light on this theory.
Blog entry where the code came from:
(Original): http://www.reubenyau.com/google-analyti … rrer-only/
(Archived): http://www.westerfunk.net/archives/tech … er%20Only/
Update:
————————————————————-
This appears to be working very well and all my stats look back to normal on google-analytics. So this code is good …
Great quote by Tim Keller:
“At the heart of Redeemer’s ministry and its philosophy of preaching to post-modern audiences is the conviction that ‘the gospel’ is not just a way to be saved from the penalty of sin, but is the fundamental dynamic for living the whole Christian life–individually and corporately, privately and publicly. In other words, the gospel is not just for non-Christians, but also for Christians. This means the gospel is not just the A-B-C’s but the A to Z of the Christian life. It is not accurate to think ‘the gospel’ is what saves non-Christians, and then, what matures Christians is trying hard to live according to Biblical principles. It is more accurate to say that we are saved by believing the gospel, and then we are transformed in every part of our mind, heart, and life by believing the gospel more and more deeply as our life goes on.”
Well after coming across some issues with the last version of code (i.e. when visiting the website, it wasn’t always rendering the google analytics javascript like it should have been, as reflected in the reports on google’s site). For the past two days, it only showed two hits. So I have now reverted back to my original if/else js code. I guess maybe it was getting cached or not finishing on some browsers or something. Strange …
Thanks to the help of a friend named Matt Hinze, this javascript code can be simplified. Here’s the code:
<script language=”JavaScript” type=”text/javascript”>
var url = window.location.protocol == ‘https:’ ? ‘https://ssl.google-analytics.com/urchin.js’ : ‘http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js’;
document.write(‘<scr’+’ipt src=”‘ + url + ‘” type=”text/javascript”>’);
document.write(‘<scr’+’ipt src=”/google.js” type=”text/javascript”>’);
</script>
Excellent Exegesis:
(Original): http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibr … dict_Paul/
(Archived): http://www.westerfunk.net/archives/theo … n%20Piper/
Do you think this guy did anything wrong? People in the audience don’t seem to think so as you can hear in the video … granted he did kind of lose it there, but what did he initially do? Just asked a question? And was the tazing really necessary by the police? In the second video they said he was inciting a riot? Please …