Bully’s Blog

or Timeless Truth is a Tree

“Let his days be few, and let another take his office.” Psalm 109:8

The imprecatory Psalms seem to contradict the instruction of Christ to love our enemies. Ben Myers recently noted a campaign to pray for President Obama, to pray Psalm 109:8, that is:

Apparently some Southern Baptist pastors have been using Psalm 109:8 as a prayer for Obama’s death: “May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership. May his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.” This even inspired a line of creepy bumper stickers and T-shirts that read “Pray for Obama.”

 One of these pastors says: “You’re going to tell me that I’m supposed to pray for the socialist devil, murderer, infanticide, who wants to see young children, and he wants to see babies killed through abortion and partial-birth abortion and all these different things. Nope. I’m not gonna pray for his good. I’m going to pray that he dies and goes to hell.”

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ChristKirk in Moscow, Idaho is plowing ahead with the hard work of congregational psalm singing. If this keeps catching on, walls will come tumbling down.
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or Why Four Horsemen but Seven Seals?

“…the Egyptians are men, and not God; And their horses are flesh, and not spirit.”  Isaiah 31:3

One of the three laws for Israelite kings was a command against multiplying horses and chariots—especially Egyptian ones. Solomon’s horse trading was, for a nation with a miraculous escape ON FOOT, in the eyes of the Lord, just like the faithless behaviour of the Hebrews in the wilderness. It’s always better to dwell in a tent with God than in a palace with the devil. Solomon’s kingdom of chariots and oppression became a new Egypt. By the end of the era, the pigs ruled the farm.

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from Manifesto on Psalms and Hymns

by Douglas Wilson (Introduction to the Cantus Christi Hymnal)

 

A common practice in our day is for Christians to speak of the “culture wars.” By this they usually mean the political and cultural skirmishes between leftist secular thinking and the more moderate and traditional thinking of believers. But the problem is that the phrase “culture wars” is a particularly inept way to refer to this problem. Continue reading

or Cutting Off the Generations of the Wicked

O daughter of Babylon, who are to be destroyed, Happy the one who repays you as you have served us! Happy the one who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock!
(Psalm 137:8-9)

A further comment on Psalm 137 (following Church and State and Liturgy as Prophecy):

The church has the power to excommunicate, but the state alone has the power to execute. In Joshua’s and David’s time, church and state were one, thus Israel’s army slaughtered God’s enemies judicially. In Mordecai’s time, the slaughter of Haman’s followers by the Jews occurred only after church and state became one under Mordecai’s new executive power.

As an advisor to the state, the church gives the word, and offers the sacraments, but it is always the state that carries out the judgment — government. The state is the “outer court” into which the living sword-water flows. Some taste life and others taste death. [1]

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or Suffering as the Most Holy Place

I remember an atheist quoting one of David’s Psalms to prove that God doesn’t answer prayer. It was a song of despair. Despite such selective quoting, how do we deal with Bible passages that end without hope? Continue reading

Violence is not wrong

In recaptulating Israel’s history, the seven letters in Revelation 2-3 confirm that the true Israel was transformed by the death and resurrection of Christ, progressing from Firstfruits through Pentecost to Trumpets. James Jordan writes:

“[Bible chronology] is a history of how the Divine Parent educated the core and centre of the human race, and then of how He called all nations to be grafted into that Olive Tree history so as to receive the benefit of it… The human race had matured to the point where it was fitting for Messiah to come, and come not only to save the race, but to bring the race to maturity… And then we can notice that the seven churches in Revelation 2-3 are each associated with a particular time in Old Covenant history. We can begin to apply the societal wisdom we have begun to learn from Israel’s history to address the particular problems and issues in our own churches. Is your church most like Pergamum? Well, that’s the wilderness church. Perhaps your church is made up of people who need to be addressed in a Law-oriented fashion. If your church is like Thyatira, maybe a strong dose of Psalms. If like Sardis, you need Jeremiah. And so forth.”

http://www.biblicalhorizons.com/biblical-horizons/no-195-how-to-do-reformed-theology-nowadays-part-4/