Those Bible thumpers!

Somebody–I don’t think I should say who–said a joke about Bible thumpers during sharing at fellowship tonite…It might have been funny, but for those of us thumpers (aka conservative, fundamentalists, right-winged, reformed embracers of sola scriptura) it’s not funny:(  Most pastors, theologians, Christian writers and pastors I admire would willingly thump their Bible when it seems that listeners just don’t hear it–the life sanctifying truth of God, that is Thy Word!  People like Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, C.J. Mahaney, Albert Mohler, John Piper, John MacArthur and R.C. Sproul…

Argh!!

Here’s some quotes from the Together For The Gospel Conference, that just finished.  All the above Bible thumpers spoke at the conference and I’m sure, thumped their Bibles more than once during their sermon!

“The most insignificant sin that has ever been committed would ruin the entire cosmos, for it would mar the perfection that God created to reflect His glory. We steal God’s glory by every sin. We do not grasp the weight of our sin. Until we can bring home the ugliness of sin, Satan has another weapon in his locker. ” (Duncan)

“Pastors think there must be a light tone throughout the message which makes it impossible to discuss serious matters such as sin.” (Dever)

“If the average evangelical pastor would be held captive by terrorists and would need to give an adequate definition of justification to escape alive, well, we’d have a lot of dead pastors.” (Mohler)

“Sin and the wrath of God go together; you can’t have a Biblical doctrine of sin without the wrath of God.” (Mohler)

“One of the most effective evangelistic series our church has ever done was when I preached through everyone that God executed for sin.” (Mahaney)

“The single most important thing I do to awaken people to the gravity of sin is to increase their understanding of the character of God.” (Sproul)

“I preached a sermon on Romans 12:1-2 entitled “Don’t give your heart to Jesus; He wants more than that!” (Duncan)

“Who’s afraid of the wrath of God when we preach that God loves us unconditionally?” (Sproul)

“Most of the people who soft-pedal sin think the sin problem is a problem without, and not a problem within.” (Mohler)

“People have a stilted view of sin. We have a responsibility to show the ugliness of sin. Start with the misery that sin brings, then bring it back to the sin, and show how that sin looks to God. ” (Duncan)

“If you look back to the Puritans, they preached sin to believers, they preached mortification, and that is missing now.” (Mohler)

“We read one of the Commandments each Sunday at our church. The Law drives us to the Cross, and continues to reveal to us what is pleasing to God and shows us His character.” (Sproul)

“Hybels polled people and found that many had left church because they were bored; well, there is no record in the Bible of anyone personally encountering God and being bored. Our job is to present God in the fullness of His character.” (Sproul)

“Salvation gets reduced to an emotional experience which is mere affection for Jesus; there is nowhere in the Scripture that we are saved by mere affection for Jesus”. (Mohler) 

(HT: John Samson)