Author: Pastor DeBruyn

Contemplative, or Listening Prayer and Psalm 46:10.

“Be still, and know that I am God . . .” (Psalm 46:10). Those promoting contemplative or “listening” prayer refer to this Scripture as a biblical endorsement for pursuing this spiritual discipline. As a precondition for experiencing Soul-to-soul communication from God, contemplative Christians advocate cultivating quietude for the purpose of creating a spiritual tabula rasa (i.e., Latin for blank slate) in which personal communication from God can be received. Influential Christian leaders and spiritual directors encourage listening prayer (praying without words) as a means to experience “God’s guidance in everyday life.” At face value, Psalm 46 verse 10 appears to endorse this increasingly popular but ancient and mystical way to pray.

A major Christian magazine once devoted a full page advertisement promoting a DVD titled “Be Still.”[1] The DVD case bears the inscription of Psalm 46:10 and a promotion which reads, “In Today’s Fast-Paced, Hectic Life, Be Still Is an Important Tool that Keeps You in Touch with Yourself, Your Family and God.”[2] The magazine’s advertisement of the DVD stated:

BE STILL .

Spiritual Director: A New Gift from an Ancient Tree.

To the church, the victorious and ascended Lord Jesus Christ “gave . . . some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming . . .” Ephesians 4:11-14, NASB

Regardless of what you might think of the operation of spiritual gifts–whether all of them, some of them, or none of them are operative today–we should be aware of the new spiritual gift on the block; the gift of “spiritual director.” Click here to continue reading

On music’s native ability to engender “religious” experiences.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. Colossians 3:16, KJV

Music engenders mystical experiences. This can be discerned from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera containing the song The Music of the Night. The lyrics read:

Night time sharpens heightens each sensation / Darkness wakes and stirs imagination / Silently the senses abandon their defenses / Helpless to resist the notes I write / For I compose the music of the night / Softly, deftly music shall caress you / Hear it, feel it secretly possess you / Open up your mind let your fantasies unwind in this darkness which you know you cannot fight / the darkness of the music of the night. [1]

Subject to the individual impulses, tastes and delights of consumers and composers, there is much about music that is creative, experiential and ethereal. Click here to continue reading

As reenacted in nativity scenes and Christmas pageants down through the history of western civilization, this story, in various ways, whether in part or whole, is told:

God promised Israel a coming Messiah. God chose a teenage virgin to be the mother of Israel’s promised Messiah. The virgin was engaged to a young and moral carpenter. A crisis pregnancy occurred. An angel of the Lord alerted Joseph that Mary’s child was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Angels announced Messiah’s birth to shepherds on a night vigil near a little Judean town of Bethlehem. Magi from the East visited the infant. To preserve the rights of his royal family to reign, paranoid King Herod ordered the infanticide of all male children under two years of age.

On the very night of our Savior’s birth, Luke, a physician turned historian, records that, “there were some shepherds out in the fields keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8). Click here to continue reading

A Biblical & Theological Rejection of Wm. Paul Young’s
 book, “Lies We Believe About God” (Eighth in a series.)

“Therefore, beloved . . . regard the patience of our Lord as salvation . . . just as also our beloved brother Paul . . . wrote to you, as also in all his letters . . . which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.”
—The Apostle Peter (2 Peter 3:14-16, NASB)

A Review of the Book’s Chapters (continued)

A Catena (My Commentary on Young’s Catena: Part 3)

The “World” and “Everyone” Passages (23-28)

The “World” Passages

23. John 1:29 (NASB, emphasis Young’s): “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

John the Baptist’s recognition of Jesus occurs at the beginning of His public ministry.  “Behold the Lamb (amnos) of God who takes away the sin of the world,” John proclaims. Click here to continue reading

A Biblical & Theological Rejection of Wm. Paul Young’s
 book, “Lies We Believe About God” (Ninth in a series.)

“Therefore, beloved . . . regard the patience of our Lord as salvation . . . just as also our beloved brother Paul . . . wrote to you, as also in all his letters . . . which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.”
—The Apostle Peter (2 Peter 3:14-16, NASB)

A Review of the Book’s Chapters (continued)

A Catena (My Commentary on Young’s Catena: Part 4)

The “Whole, Every, Cosmos and Other” Passages (29-34)

The “Whole” Passage

29. 1 John 2:2 (Berean Study Bible, emphasis Young’s): “He Himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world.”

Prevalent in the ancient world was the belief that the gods were offended, and that the sacrificial rite would “atone” for the offense. Click here to continue reading

A Biblical & Theological Rejection of Wm. Paul Young’s
 book, “Lies We Believe About God” (Tenth in a series.)

“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”
—Jesus, Matthew 7:21, Emphasis added.

A Review of the Book’s Chapters (concluded)

“A Final Word from Dietrich Bonhoeffer” and “Acknowledgments”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Paul Young concludes his book by drawing upon the emotional memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) who has achieved iconic status among evangelicals. Bonhoeffer is to be admired for opposing the evil of the Reich and paying the ultimate sacrifice for his resistance. But as Young’s quotations from Bonhoeffer’s book Ethics indicate, he apparently believed in universal salvation. [105] (LWBAG, 249-250) As William Macleod assessed:

Bonhoeffer was a universalist, believing in the eventual salvation of all.

Is Jesus Jehovah, or Yahweh (YHWH), of the Old Testament?

“For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.” 2 John 7, NASB

Jehovah’s Witnesses exhibit commendable moral characteristics, especially when set against the backdrop of our culture’s moral meltdown. Members are generally “clean cut” and family oriented. In raising their children, they enforce outward standards of holiness and dress, standards which shame much of what is acceptable in today’s pan-evangelical churches. Unlike many professing Christians, they also possess a missionary zeal as evidenced by their neighborhood visitations. Few after all, have not been visited by them at their front door.

But despite credible characteristics, Jehovah’s Witnesses do not possess a right understanding of the doctrine of Christ. They refuse to accept the obvious New Testament assertions that Jesus is God (Colossians 2:8-9; Philippians 2:6; John 1:1; etc.). Click here to continue reading