🧵🧵🧵 Many Christians know the doctrines of the faith but not always the theological terms that help define, clarify, and defend them. The historic creeds, catechisms, and confessions, while succinctly and richly setting forth the substance of Christian doctrine, often contain profound truths that are not immediately apparent to the casual reader. This thread is an ongoing catechism of theological concepts, brief definitions of important terms that help us think more clearly about God, Scripture, salvation, and the Christian life. Following the traditional catechetical question-and-answer format, it seeks to highlight and explain theological distinctions and concepts that are often assumed, but not typically defined or expounded, in the Reformed catechisms. “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.” 2 Timothy 1:13-14 #FormOfSoundWords

“Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it.” The employment of natural, though fallen gifts toward prideful self-exaltation leading to diversity, separation: “Come, let us make a name for ourselves” Genesis 11:4 A supernatural reunification by those same natural gifts, but sanctifying communication across those distinctions: “How is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language?” Acts 2:8 The Gospel does not abolish the distinctions of language, culture, or peoplehood, but it does tear down the enmity that sin has introduced into them and recorrects their course to the glory of God. To maintain the enmity Christ has destroyed is to return to the pride from which that enmity first arose.

Everything you know about Genghis Khan comes from his enemies. The Chinese wrote the history books. The death tolls are exaggerated. Historians disagree anyway. You can’t judge the 13th century by modern standards. Every empire conquered and killed. Why is it taboo to ask questions? Have you actually read the primary sources? What about the trade routes, religious tolerance, and meritocracy? Why does nobody talk about the stability he brought to Eurasia? The real story has been buried under centuries of propaganda because the victors write history. People don’t hate Genghis Khan because of what he did, they hate him because they’ve been conditioned to repeat the official narrative without questioning who benefits from it. You. Have. Been. Brainwashed.

“Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.” Hebrews 13:7 Some churches look entirely like the world because their pastor’s faith is set upon this world.

I am pro-white. That is, I believe it is good to be white. I believe America was founded to be a predominantly white nation and, in many ways, still is. There is nothing wrong with that. I think it is shameful that civil magistrates have worked to overload our nation with people from all over the world without any concern for assimilation. But I also think it is wicked that, for many years, woke ideology has shamed white people and that this even infiltrated the church. I have no problem with people engaging in political work to put an end to illegal immigration and to expose the errors of woke ideology. I support that all the way. That said, I do not believe the church is to be divided by race. And that is in part because the church is not built on or united by our ethnicity or race. Our union is in Christ Jesus, and that unity is higher than any other identity we possess. But there are people trying to worm their way in whose highest priority, and what they see as the ultimate basis of unity, is not Christ but race. That is the main problem I have with Antelope Hill, their books, their publishing of Nazi material, and their flyers promoting other white-owned companies, whether those companies are pagan, sexually immoral, involved in tarot cards, or something else entirely. What unifies them is pro-whiteness rather than Christ. And because pro-whiteness is what unifies them, other things can be excused. Wicked and immoral behavior can be excused, including the unjust and ungodly treatment of people from other ethnicities. We can excuse things like hatred, oppression, and even the murder of Jews. Not only do we begin excusing things that should never be excused, but things of far greater importance begin to matter less. Other things become less important. In fact, what always becomes less important is Jesus. Jesus Himself is crowded out of His own church. Christ must be preeminent. Not race. Not ethnicity. Not nation. Christ.

*Thrives on online BS, hangs with those who only have a platform because of online BS…online BS starts catching up to them 👀…*

“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” 2 Timothy 2:15 Christian X is not ashamed. It has need to be ashamed.

Ayyyyy! There’s the guy right on time to ruin all his friends’ reputations.

“He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord.” Proverbs 17:15 “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,” 1 Peter 3:18 “And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness,” Romans 4:5

Is this still just "joking around"??

Pastor—If you are concerned about errors from certain online Christian teachers gaining influence among vulnerable members in your church, commit yourself to three things: Out-teach them. Out-love them. Out-last them.

USA. A breakfast counter. The waitress recommended the biscuits and gravy, and when the plate arrived, I thought something had gone wrong in the kitchen. I say this with shame. The dish looked like a construction site after rain. Pale mounds. Gray ladle-fall. Speckles I could not identify. In my land, the eye eats first. A meal is arranged like a garden. This meal was arranged like weather. "Is it… finished?" I asked, carefully. "Honey, that's what it looks like." The man beside me was already eating his. He did not look up. "Just try it." I am a man who has charged hillsides at dawn. I raised the fork. I tried it. I must now formally apologize to the biscuits, the gravy, the waitress, the kitchen, and the entire breakfast tradition of the American South. It was magnificent. Warm. Peppered. The biscuit drank the gravy the way a field drinks rain — THAT is why it is shaped like that, you fool — and every mound I had insulted was a soft fold of comfort that my homeland, in eight hundred years, never once thought to invent. "Well?" the waitress asked. "I judged it," I confessed. "By its appearance. I am ashamed." "Everybody does, hon." Everybody does. A national dish that forgives you for doubting it. It expects the doubt. It waits for you on the other side of it. Do not judge the gravy by its face. Judge yourself, for hesitating. I order it every Saturday now. I no longer see the construction site. I see only the garden. It was a garden the whole time. The eye must be trained.

I’m not misrepresenting the fullness of Scripture, I’m just pointing a major point Scripture is making that you’re seeming to ignore. I didn’t tack on love, you’re missed the greatest manifestation of His love, which is why I began my quotation beginning with v.8: “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Every bit of the context leading up to the culmination in that verse has to do with that we are deserving of God’s wrath, and that’s the very reason Christ had to die for us. This is reitterated again and again throughout the NT and its interpretation of the OT. You’re scoffing at the idea “everyone is evil” when that’s exactly why Romans is laying out, the Jew or Gentile are all condemned before God. From Genesis 3:15 onward through the entire history of redemption is God working to fulfill His promise, and the only way the head of the serpent will be crushed is by God putting away sin by Christ’s once for all sacrifice. To deny the necessity of Christ’s active and passive obedience renders the incarnation as foolishness. If Jesus need not be perfectly obedient in our stead then he simply could have been killed by Herod at His birth and then be resurrected. That is why He is the 2nd and last Adam, He fulfilled all of th covenantal obligations of humanity for us and has imputed his work to us, all of it: His perfect life, condemning sin in the flesh in His death, and raised for our justification, and giving the Spirit as a guarantee of our own resurrection to glory as He is. What about that is obscuring the gospel?

“But all things should be done decently and in order.” 1 Corinthians 14:40

One of my favorite sentences in the 1689 is ch. 2 par. 2: God does not derive any glory from creatures, but only manifests his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them. On our best days the most we can ever be is a jar of clay. The glory always belongs to God. Did. Does. Always.

“Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” And this word is the good news that was preached to you.” 1 Peter 1:22-25

If you tarry till you’re better you will never come at all

The One by whom all things are made and all things are upheld entered into His own world as a lowly man to be crucified at the hands of lawless men in order to save lawless men.