The Study Corner    

This is a post from theresurgence.com by John Frame. You can view original here.

Quite a few people have suggested recently that “inerrant” is not a good word to use in describing Scripture. I shall seek to respond to them in this article. Before we take up the specific term “inerrant,” however, it will be well for us to remind ourselves, in more general terms, of what the Reformed faith, and the Bible itself, teach us about Scripture.

First, Scripture is the covenant constitution of the people of God. The first written Word of God, the first Bible, was the ten commandments, written by the very finger of God on tables of stone (Ex. 24:12, 31:18, 32:15f, 34:1). In it, God speaks as the author of the document: “I am the Lord your God.” That written Word was put in the holiest place in Israel, beside the ark of the covenant, where it was to stand as God’s witness against Israel (Deut. 31:26). As such, the written Word was to govern every aspect of the lives of God’s people (Deut. 4:1-14, 5:32-6:25). Nearly every chapter in Deuteronomy urges the people to obey all the laws, testimonies, statutes, commandments, words… (such eloquent redundancy!) of God’s written word. Nearly every verse of Psalm 119 calls God’s people back to these statutes; revival in Israel is always a revival of obedience to (sometimes rediscovery of) the law. (Read on …)

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule and the law of the vital few) states that in many things, 80% of the consequences come from 20% of the causes.

Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist is credited with this rule. He observed that 80 percent of the land in England (and every country he subsequently studied) was owned by 20 percent of the population.

Read the rest of this over at Notes to Self

This is a piece from Mark Driscoll’s post over at the Resurgence entitled “Now the Mainline Churches Make Sense“. I like the nice summation, but make sure you go read the whole piece to fully understand where this is coming from.

In summary, here are ten easy steps to destroying a denomination:

1. Have a low view of Scripture and, consequently, the deity of Jesus.
2. Deny that we were made male and female by God, equal but with distinct roles in the home and church.
3. Ordain liberal women in the name of tolerance and diversity.
4. Have those liberal women help to ordain gay men in the name of greater tolerance and diversity.
5. Accept the worship of other religions and their gods in the name of still greater tolerance and diversity.
6. Become so tolerant that you, in effect, become intolerant of people who love Jesus and read their Bible without scoffing and snickering.
7. End up with only a handful of people who are all the same kind of intolerant liberals in the name of tolerance and diversity.
8. Watch the Holy Spirit depart from your churches and take people who love Jesus with Him.
9. Fail to repent but become more committed than ever to your sinful agenda.
10. See Jesus pull rank, judge you, and send some of your pastors to hell to be tormented by Him forever because He will no longer tolerate your diversity.

Tony’s latest article, “Sharing the Teaching Load,” in Outreach Magazine is now available. Among other things, he shares the following strategies: