Reformed Christian Studies

 By Pastor Dewey Roberts - Posted at Vanguard Presbyterian Church: Georg William Frederick Hegel (1770-1831) was a German philosopher whose dialectical method has become the dominant thought pattern for most people in the world today—including so-called evangelical pastors and theologians in the United States. His methodology is non-evangelical to the core and it is a dangerous inconsistency for any Christian to hold to it. It amounts to the denial of absolute truth. Most Christians and most pastors/theologians would deny Hegel’s dialectical method. Sadly, they still think according to Hegelian dialecticism nonetheless. So, what is Hegel’s dialectical method? The old methodology was to think in terms of truth and error; right and wrong; pros and cons. Hegel changed that way of thinking by offering a third way—the synthesis of the thesis and antithesis. Hegel’s synthesis becomes a higher truth and a new truth which replaces the old stalemate of thesis and antithesis. For many years, th

  By Pastor Dewey Roberts - Posted at Vanguard Presbyterian Church: On August 20, 1944, four American B-29’s built by Boeing were forced to make an emergency landing in far eastern Russia. One plane crash landed at Khabarovsk and the other three safely landed near Vladivostok. The crews of the three intact fighter planes thought that they would be allowed to refuel and fly out of Soviet territory, but they were wrong. Stalin had been asking Roosevelt to give the Soviets some B-29’s under the Lend-Lease program, but FDR refused ‘Uncle Joe’s’ request. The US was supplying its cunning and unreliable ally with almost everything in World War II from boots to bullets to lesser planes—but no B-29’s. The B-29 was a super fortress heavy bomber, one of the most aesthetically beautiful airplanes ever designed and built. It incorporated every state-of-the-art technology known to the aeronautical industry at the time, including cabin pressure and an analog computer-controlled fire alarm system. It

 By Pastor Dewey Roberts - Posted at Vanguard Presbyterian Church: In his excellent commentary, The Confession of Faith , Archibald Alexander Hodge wrote the following concerning Chapter XXXI, Of Synods and Councils: As we have seen in the last chapter, all Church power is vested by Christ in the Church as a whole—not as a mob, but as an organized body. As organized, the Church consists of presbyters or bishops and the people, and the people are represented by lay or ruling elders. This necessarily gives origin to the session or parochial presbytery, consisting of bishop or pastor, and the ruling elders or representatives of the people. In this body the entire ecclesiastical power of the whole congregation is vested. It admits candidates to the sealing ordinances, exercises pastoral care and discipline over the members, and regulates public worship. (A. A. Hodge, The Confession of Faith , London: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1961, p. 373). The power of the church is vested in the whole

 By Pastor Dewey Roberts - Posted at Vanguard Presbyterian Church: The longer I live, the more I find myself agreeing with Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on so many things. I do not have an exact passage from which to quote, but I remember in his writings that he often said that you are in the wrong position when you have an enemy on only one side. The true Christian position is that we must be in the middle between two enemies, one on the right and the other on the left. This is especially true when we consider the matter of salvation. The correct doctrine will have two great enemies—legalism and antinomianism. Antinomianism is a word that throws many people. It comes from the Greek word for law, ‘nomos’. Thus, our enemies are legalism or anti-legalism, nomism or antinomianism. Legalism is a denial of the gospel. Antinomianism is a denial of the law. They would seem to be polar opposites and in many ways they are. In other ways, legalism and antinomianism are friendly cousins. In the end,

 By Dewey Roberts - Posted at Vanguard Presbyterian Church: How large were the churches in the New Testament? What was the membership of the church at Corinth? Or at Ephesus? Or at Rome? Or even at Antioch or Jerusalem? Do we know? Do we have any way to know? The Scripture never really gives us that information. We know that there were 3,000 people converted to Christ at the Feast of Pentecost, but they represented many different regions and countries—from Parthia, Media, Elam, Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya, Cyrene, and Rome. That is a very large geographical area represented by the converts. We know that there were about 120 believers who gathered in the Upper Room after Jesus’ resurrection. There were over 500 people who saw Jesus ascend into heaven 40 days after His resurrection. There were about 5,000 men who believed as a result of Peter’s second sermon in Jerusalem. Many of those were probably Jews who lived in Jerusalem or Israel