Gospel

Help me to be LESS PLEASED with my spiritual experiences

January 31, 2020 By Robert Truelove 2 Comments

“Help me to be LESS PLEASED with my spiritual experiences, and when I feel at ease after sweet communings, teach me it is far too little I know and do.”

—Valley of Vision, Longings After God (pp. 230-231)

I came across this reading in the Valley of Vision tonight. How contrary to my thinking but how right and true this is.

I often think I should be more contented with my spiritual experiences but the old Puritan says nay. He is right, for when I am contented with my spiritual experiences, I am not longing for more. When have I ever had “enough” of the sweet Spirit of Christ? NEVER!

What is it then? I shall be content with my desiring. More LORD, give me ever more of the experiential presence of Christ. I will only be content with more of Him.

H. P. Lovecraft and Atheism

July 5, 2019 By Robert Truelove 2 Comments

In H.P. Lovecraft’s famous short work, “The Call of Cthulhu”, the opening paragraph reads…

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

In the fiction of Lovecraft we read the horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. The “Great Old Ones”. Ancient beings from other worlds who have been on Earth for countless eons who now sleep or even being dead still exert their influence over the world. The day is coming when they shall awake and return from the depths of the Earth.

To learn of them and their preternatural power is to invite madness for the human mind is too limited and frail to fit them into our conception of reality.

So you may be wondering, why is a Reformed minister bringing this up on his blog? Besides being a lover of books and especially those that are a feast in prose, there is something I find very interesting in Lovecraft’s stories as they relate to reality. If we assumed there was no God (a silly assumption!), then we are left with a reality that is not really quite different from the tales of Lovecraft.

Upon the assumption of Atheism, we are mere accidents of natural forces adrift on a ball of rock in the midst of a universe that is so vast, suns so many—no entire galaxies—as to make each one of us of little more significance than the most benign microbe. On top of this, the very nature of reality is weird and the more we seem to discover, the weirder it gets.

The fact we put fancy scientific sounding terms on things provides an illusion that we actually understand what these things are. For example, the universe is said to be 85% composed of “dark matter”, but what is “dark matter”? It’s theorized to be composed of undiscovered subatomic particles. That’s 85% of reality that we have absolutely no idea what it is and it’s not just out there in space. It’s also all around us and even passing through us at this very moment!

“Dark matter” is just one of the very weird things about reality. There are many other examples but I trust you get the point.

It seems to me that an honest, intelligent, atheistic thinker would be driven insane upon contemplating his place in the universe. However, rather than squaring with it, he diverts his mind to distractions lest he loose his marbles. It is better to be ignorant than stare the universe in the face and go mad (then again, does even that really matter?).

As I think about the characters in Lovercraft’s works who lose their sanity upon learning things that cannot be processed by the fragile, limited, human mind and the logical parallel in someone who honestly squares with Atheism, I am struck by the semblance between fiction and the reality of our present culture.

In an atheistic worldview, the human condition is far more terrifying than the mighty Cthulhu awakening from his long slumber in R’lyeh. Even if there were a Cthulhu and even if he awakened and slaughtered most of us and enslaved the rest, in the end even that would not matter. You are a cosmic shuffle. You are no different and no more significance than an asteroid that just happens to be tumbling through the Kuiper belt. Not even a joke, for that would assume the universe notices you enough to laugh. When we are all gone nothing any of us has done will have any meaning for there is nothing to even remember us.

The abandonment of God has delivered our culture over to the despair of insignificance and despair. It is a foretaste of Hell and people are literally loosing their minds. The persistent engagement with various distractions has fixed nothing. The atheistic worldview renders each and every one of us absolutely insignificant and beliefs work their way out no matter how hard we try to suppress them.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction” —Proverbs 1:7

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” —2 Timothy 1:7

Are you ready for the day?

March 6, 2019 By Robert Truelove Leave a Comment

Alas for the day! for the day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.

—Joel 1:15

The light is far spent. An evil moon is rising. Our freedoms are under open assault. Millennials and iGenners have little problem with the Caitlyn Jenners nor with the use of totalitarian force against those who stand for Biblical truth. The war against the Kingdom of Heaven is now a public spectacle. If God does not grant repentance, we are upon the precipice of a very dark future.

When God turns a people over to reprobation, everyone suffers. Those leaders claiming to be our saviors will bathe their swords in our blood.

As the light dims, are you preparing? I don’t refer to the hoarding of food and guns. I mean are you preparing spiritually for what is to come? Do you know Jesus Christ as your lord and savior? Have you repented of your sins and found your peace in Him?

Will you be faithful to Jesus when it costs you your means of making a living? Will you trade freedom in Christ for a compromised peace with the godless? Will you have heaven or will you have hell?

How do we prepare?

We prepare by giving diligent observance to the ordinary means of grace instituted by God in His word and empowered by His Holy Spirit. Are you following Christ? Do you “watch and pray” or will the day find you unprepared? Will you stand or will you be scattered?

Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

—Matthew 26:41

Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves in church. A faithful church is a mighty means of grace.

…not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

—Hebrews 10:25

Are you learning to make the word of God your chiefest treasure?

O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.

—Psalm 119:97

Are you killing sin, or is sin killing you? Are you mortifying sinful passions or are you driven by them into the arms of unbelief? Are you setting your affections on things above and not on things on the earth?

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: for which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: in the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them.

—Colossians 3:1-7

If you look by sight you could easily think that Satan is winning. Make no mistake about it, God reigns. The evil that is upon us is not due to the lack of power on God’s part. Satan’s temporal victories are nothing more than the sounds of his death rattle for the war has already been fought and the old serpent lost. Christ won when he was declared to be the son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:4).

When the last day arrives, it will be His enemies who cower in the cracks of the earth, for eternal doom will be upon them.

And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:for the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

—Revelation 6:15-17

Where will you be when the Day of the Lord is upon you? Make no mistake about it; if you will not stand now, you will not stand then.

The future may very well be dark, but eternity without Christ will be Hell.

A Pastor’s Plea to Young Men!

November 26, 2018 By Robert Truelove Leave a Comment

Young men it is time to wake up! You have been nurtured in the comforts of sleep and taught to act in the realm of dreams. The minds of young men have been captured by this present age and so shaped as to be deceived. AWAKE!

Where is the wise? Do they not now, for the most part, speak from their graves? Where are the faithful? Are they not few and neglected? Or is it you alone young men who are the discoverers of secret knowledge unknown by our fathers?

And yet you sleep. It is cold outside and faithful, Biblical study is wearisome. The mortification of self in service to others lacks comfort but in dreams one feels to serve and to grow while the only true trouble is that of rolling over.

In dreams one sits under the preaching of the word of God, but the pew is empty. In daylight reveries one finds his solace even while his soul languishes in antipathy for the things of God.

“But we love the things of God!”, cry young men. You love the God of your dreams. You have not yet awoken to behold and love the God that is. “But we follow the God of the Bible!” What do you know of that God? You have neglected the study of His book!

From the comfort of your bed you have heaped unto yourselves teachers who sing you lullabies. “Sleep, sleep, sleep on”, they sing, “We are the people and wisdom shall die with us.”

Young men awake! If you will not arise now, you will be roused in that day when Christ comes to judge the living and the dead. You will either awake now and flee to Christ, the Biblical Christ!, or you will awake to the eternal fires of Hell!

Yet you sleep, desiring comforts at the peril of eternal torments. Will you not awake to Christ and be men! Awake to eternal vigilance! Awake to Christ! AWAKE!

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”

—1 John 2:15-17

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Hey Matt Chandler, Let’s Have a Conversation

June 27, 2018 By Robert Truelove 2 Comments

Matt,

(The following citations I am speaking to in this post were made by Matt Chandler at the MLK50: Gospel Reflections From the Mountaintop event and summarized in the relevantmagazine.com post found here…)

If I preach the sermon out of the book of Isaiah on justice, my inbox would fill with their glee that I would broach the subject. But if I applied it to the subject of race, then all of a sudden I was a Marxist or I’ve been watching too much of the liberal media.

Yes, because you are picking up the talking points of the Social Marxists of our day and promoting race baiting and critical race theory. There are some serious deficiencies with the “conversation” that is going on in regards to race and, unfortunately, there are very few real conversations going on. We rather have totalitarian bullies calling their “shut up and listen” diatribes a “conversation”. For the record, that’s called a “monologue”.

If I spoke on abortion, I was applauded as courageous, as a ferocious man of God, and yet when I would tackle race I was being too political…”

The issue isn’t whether you have been “too political”, its that you are simply on the wrong side of the Scriptures when it comes to your “conversation” on race. The only ill-wrought solution that will result from your sort of “conversation” will be political (legislative).

If I quoted the great reformer Martin Luther … never did I get an email about his blatant anti-Semitism. But let me quote the great reformer Martin Luther King Jr., and watch my inbox fill with people asking me if I’m aware of his moral brokenness.”

That you call the Martin Luther of The Reformation and Martin Luther King Jr. “reformers” without any qualification is wrong headed. The Martin Luther of The Reformation was a reformer in the sense of Biblical authority and justification by faith alone. The Martin Luther King Jr. of the civil rights movement was a reformer of social ills. One preached the gospel of Jesus Christ, the other preached a social gospel.

While I agree with King Jr. in regards to racism and the call to end segregation, he was not a Christian whereas the Martin Luther of The Reformation was (in spite of his anti-Semitism). When Martin Luther King Jr. is presented as a Christian reformer, the gospel itself is being denied.

He said that Christians who are uncomfortable confronting racism are part of a “cascading effect, and it starts with ignorance. … They don’t know what they don’t know and they are part of a system that encourages their not knowing.”

Ultimately, he said that the solution moving forward is for churches to talk about race and racism—despite potential blowback: “There is no way forward if white pulpits won’t talk.”

The truth of the matter is, you don’t really want a “conversation” in the church. You want people to shut up and listen while totalitarians bully them into accepting what they are saying without any critical discussion.

Here is my offer to you. Let’s have a real conversation. I’d very much like to have a public, orderly conversation with you, face to face. Let’s put our ideas and Biblical exegesis as pertains to these matters on the table and allow for some cross examination. Show me you really want to have a “conversation”.