Fundamental Wesleyan Publishers

05/26/2025

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02/23/2025

Part 3 of 3: INERRANCY OUR NORTH STAR

Mark, Vic, and Thane conclude their discussion on inerrancy. The Psalmist rightly affirmed that, “If the foundation be destroyed, then what can the righteous do?” Biblical inerrancy is the foundation of all sound doctrine.

Dr. Richard Land, President of Southern Evangelical Seminary, captures it well: “The inerrant Scripture is our fixed, North Star by which we can be led by God to a saving knowledge of Him and His plan and purpose for our lives. Once you surrender the objective, infallible, inerrant nature of God’s revelation of Himself to us, all you are left with is each interpreter’s subjective, autobiographical, idiosyncratic God, who may bear little or no resemblance to the one, true, immutable God with whom we must all deal ultimately.”

Amen!

https://fwspodcast.libsyn.com/biblical-inerrancy-part-3

02/19/2025

Part 2 of 3: INERRANCY AND THE THE BASICS OF THIS FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINE

Here, Mark, Vic, and Thane continue discussing inerrancy. Can you think of a Church, seminary, theologian, denomination, Christian university or organization that has held strong to other doctrines, or kept a fire for evangelism, after jettisoning biblical inerrancy? Go ahead. We’ll wait.

https://fwspodcast.libsyn.com/biblical-inerrancy-part-2

11/28/2024

Part 1 of 3: INERRANCY AND THE THE BASICS OF THIS FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINE

Here, Mark, Vic, and Thane discuss inerrancy, including a bit of the history, definitions, theology behind the term, and some of the devastating implications when the Church strays from biblical inerrancy.

https://fwspodcast.libsyn.com/biblical-inerrancy-part-1

10/18/2024

ROPE HOLDING 101:
Huge Hemplications

In Joshua 2:15 we read of Israel’s spies being saved when Rahab lowered them from a window with a rope. I Sam 19 tells of Michal helping David elude Saul in like manner. Jeremiah 38:11-13 tells of ropes used to free him from the Malchijah’s mirey cistern. In Acts 9 we find Paul’s close call in Damascus, where friends helped him escape death by lowering him in a basket down the wall [NB—the text doesn’t specifically mention the use of ropes, but such seems a tad more likely than a Rapunzel scenario].

And of course, the most well-known rope holder story comes in Mark 2:1-5. There, a paralytic hears Jesus is teaching in a nearby home. His mobility issues, and the sardine-like condition in that house, meant he literally didn’t have a prayer. That is, until a few of his buddies said, “We got this!” . . . and his life was changed forever . . . not to mention the rope holders' lives.

Just imagine, for the rest of their lives they could say, “I held THAT rope!!!” But of course, real rope holders aren't fishing for accolades. Their joy comes in the thrill of facilitating face-to-face encounters with Jesus—or as in this case—being an earthly means of the Lord’s therapeutic and enabling grace.

So many tie-ins, so little time. Let’s go to the lowest shelf. While something “ropelike” was necessary to save all the individuals above, mere ropes weren’t sufficient. Complicit, committed, and brave friends were the necessary link. They were other-centered rope holders who had the strength, courage, and willingness to take risks on behalf of another.

With these hemportant thoughts in mind, rewind back to iconic missionary, William Carey. He also knew ‘mere rope’ alone wasn’t enough. Bound for India in 1793, he likened saving souls to rescuing people drowning in a deep well. His key point: missionaries can’t reach the lost without OTHERS to lower them into the well. Carey told friends he’d seek drowning sinners, but not alone. He pleaded, “I need rope holders. Will you be my rope holders?”

Carey’s metaphor re-emerged a century later on a nippy Canadian night in 1888. Elation was in the air at legendary Knox Church. A plucky newlywed couple was bidding farewell as they committed to a mission field that had earned the chilling title: “White man’s grave.” Missionaries of that era knew their life expectancy was just a few years. It was even quite common for such sojourners to transport their meager possessions in their own coffins, fully expecting to never return. They became known as “one-way Christians.” It’d be hard to find a more powerful reflection of Matt 10:38!?

This Canadian couple knew the adversary had reigned for centuries where they were headed. And that he'd likely use the most brutal tactics to keep a death grip on his spiritual prey. But most importantly, they knew the folly of going it alone in spiritual warfare. The husband even publicly confessed his dreadful angst, saying: “We feel much as if we were going down into a pit. We are willing to take the risk and go if you, our home circle, will promise to hold the ropes.” In the thrill of the moment, the packed sanctuary boldly vowed to storm heaven on their behalf! Intentions that night were no doubt earnest. But would one-off sincerity be enough to assist those on the frontlines at “White man’s grave?”

Apparently not, for within 2 years this man had buried his wife and firstborn in Sierra Leone, and was losing his own battle to the same fatal disease. Knox Church was unaware of any of its missionary’s heartache, as he agonizingly eked his way home on his own.

Ironically, he arrived back home during the church’s mid-week prayer service. Poor lighting at the back allowed this now gaunt, depleted shell of a man to slip unnoticed into a rear pew. Few can imagine the complex of emotions he had recently endured, but his ire was raised upon hearing his rope holders’ prayers.

At service end, he emerged from the shadows. “I am your missionary,” he told the stunned group. “My wife and child are buried in Africa, and I've come home to die. This evening I listened anxiously, as you prayed, for some mention of your missionary to see if you were keeping your promise, but in vain! You prayed for everything connected with yourselves and your home church, but you forgot your missionary. I see now why I am a failure as a missionary. It's because you've failed to hold the ropes!”

We live in an era of self-adulating gadflies whose raison d’être is to split theological hairs. They’ll endlessly muse over what degree the church was culpable in this tragedy by failing to faithfully hold the ropes. It’s a valid and crucial question. But let’s agree to dogpaddle up that choppy tributary some other time. 

Our thesis here is much more modest: namely, whenever the saving message of Jesus is being taken into enemy terrain, “holding the ropes” is gravely serious responsibility. What about you? Have you learned the ropes? Do you have the calluses to show for it? There’s nothing quite like the spiritual rush of facilitating face-to-face encounters between the seeking, pallet-laden sinner and the Seeking, pallet-pulverizing Savior!

The hemplications are huge…
Such a hempetus hempells us…
We can all hemprove here…
So, let’s be more hempulsive…
[Sorry! Hoping that’ll help it stick better]
Think of your hempact as a ropeholder!

You in?

THU/2023

10/14/2024

OUR HILL TO DIE ON

Some hills are worth dying on. Others? Not so much. Perhaps the simplest way to describe the mature Christian is, “Someone who knows the right hill to die on.” Which means that “almost Christians”—if they are willing to die at all— are those who are habitually dying on all the wrong hills. THU

https://fwspodcast.libsyn.com/our-hill-to-die-on-part-1

09/29/2024

“There are many scriptures the true sense whereof neither you nor I shall know till death is swallowed up in victory. But this I know, better it were to say it had no sense, than to say it had such a sense as [our twisted claims]. It cannot mean, whatever it mean besides, that the God of truth is a liar. Let it mean what it will. It cannot mean that the Judge of all the world is unjust. No scripture can mean that God is not love, or that his mercy is not over all his works...”

—John Wesley on difficulties in Scripture

09/25/2024

09/19/2024

THERE’S JUST SOMETHING ABOUT BEING A
TRAVELER THAT PURIFIES YOUR THEOLOGY.

John Wesley and J.I. Packer are unlikely allies, having such strongly disparate soteriologies, and separated in time by well over two centuries. But tthey do intersect at some points, and especially in the conviction that there are some believers who appear to only be part-time Christians, and they unfortunately seem to be taking way too much vacation time.

The title of one of Wesley’s most well-known sermons says it all, “The Almost Christian.” Here Wesley talks of the nominal (“almost”) Christian, as one who no matter how well intentioned, only practices a mere form of godliness. He contrasts this with the real (“altogether”) Christian, who consciously lives a life of costly grace and is in passionate the pursuit of the Holy One. The first takes lots of vacation time, the second sees following Christ as more exciting than any vacation, and desiring to purge away any last vestige of the almost Christian within. Wesley pleas, “Let no man persuade thee, by vain words, to rest short of this prize of thy high calling.”

Elsewhere Wesley describes the “altogether Christian” by writing, “It is not enough to shun evil and do good at all opportunities, nor to seriously use all the means of grace with a sincere design and desire to please God. The great question remains for each of us: Is the love of God poured out in my heart? Does my heart cry that He is my all? Am I happy in God? Is He my delight? And is it written in my heart that those who love God love their neighbor also? Go further: Do I believe that Christ loved me and gave Himself for me? Do I have faith in His blood? Do I believe that the Lamb of God has taken away my sins and cast them as a stone into the depth of the sea, giving me redemption through His blood, even the remission of my sins? Does His Spirit testify with my spirit that I am a child of God? Let no one persuade you to rest short of this prize of your high calling. Cry day and night unto Him who, “while we were without strength, died for the ungodly”; until you know Him in whom you have believed and know that you are indeed altogether a Christian. Then, being justified freely by His grace by the redemption that is in Jesus, you will experience that blessed peace with God through Jesus Christ and know the love of God poured into your heart by the Holy Spirit given unto you!” Imagine the world if all who identify as Christians were altogether like that.

Dr. Kevin Watson is helpful with this nifty one-line distillation: “While an almost Christian lives an outwardly Christian life in every way, an altogether Christian adds to this love for God and neighbor, and genuine faith (trust and confidence) in God’s love for them through the merits of Jesus Christ.” There’s more, of course, but that catches the gist. You can read the entire sermon here (if you dare!): https://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-2-the-almost-christian/

Packer also had his own binary, in a way fashioning “almost Christians” as mere balconeers and “altogether Christians” as travelers. It’s a close enough parallel to make the point. Drawing on Mackay’s illustration we are asked to imagine “persons sitting on the high front balcony of a Spanish house watching travelers go by on the road below. These ‘balconeers’ can overhear the travelers’ talk below, and even chat with them. The balconeers may comment critically on the way that the travelers walk, and may even have penetrating questions about the road, how it can exist at all, was it intelligently designed, where does it lead, what might be seen from different points along it way, and so forth.

But they are ivory tower onlookers, mere kibitzers, and their problems and questions traffic only in the theoretical. But the travelers, by brutal contrast, actually face and handle real problems. They’ve stridden the streets for years and have cultivated street smarts. They figure out which way to go, they plan, they stock up, they take risks, they help others, they know safe spots, etc. They don’t have the luxury of the “almost travelers” above who may see things from their comfy protected perch. No, “altogether travelers” are involved in constant decisions, action, and adjustments.

Packer says that “balconeers and travelers may think over the same area, yet their problems differ. Thus (for instance) in relation to evil, the balconeer’s problem is to find a theoretical explanation of how evil can exist with God’s sovereignty and goodness, but the traveler’s problem is how to master evil and bring good out of it. Or again, in relation to sin, the balconeer asks whether racial sinfulness and personal perversity are really credible, while the traveler, knows sin from within, asks what hope there is of deliverance. Or take the problem of the Godhead; while the balconeer is asking how one God can conceivably be three, what sort of unity three could have, and how three who make one can be persons, the traveler wants to know how to show proper honor, love and trust toward the three Persons who are together at work to bring him out of sin to glory.”

There’s a world of difference between almost and altogether; between a mere kibitzers in the balcony who never progress beyond being mere onlookers. The traveler, though, is willing to take all the risks in the world to actually get in the game, make progress, see reality, and utilize the full path that the Designer has laid out. What do you say, Pilgrim, you up for a stroll? I like what one person said: There’s something about being a traveler that purifies your theology.

THU/2024

09/18/2024

The Egg Man

There was a point in the middle of the 18th century where John Wesley was the most persecuted man in Britain. And some of his detractors stooped very low. In 1769, Wesley preached near Bedford. The audience was tolerably quiet till he had nearly finished his discourse. Then some bawled at the top of their voices, and it was a perfect Babel. One man, a little more vile than the rest, full of malicious mischief, had filled his pockets with rotten eggs to throw at the preacher.

A young man, though, saw what mischief he intended. Unperceived, he went up behind him, clapped his hands on each side of his pockets, and smashed the eggs all at once. Wesley wrote: “In an instant he was perfume all over, though it was not so sweet as balsam.” How frequently those who dig a pit for others fall into it themselves!