“My Week at the Full Armor Lectures” by Jeremy Marshall Day 3 (pt. 1)

“My Week at the Full Armor Lectures” by Jeremy Marshall
Day 3 (pt. 1)

from Day 3.1:
Brother Jones waved a dismissive hand. “My views on Hell were well known amongst those people years ago, Calvin,” he said. “Up until a few months back, they just thought of it as one of those pet anomalies every preacher is allowed to have. Let me give you a few examples: Alasdair Cornwall, one of the eighteenth-century visionaries whose ‘back to the Bible,’ non-denominational preaching spawned our little movement, was an Arian, and I’m not even sure if he knew who Arius was. The pioneer revivalist ‘Onion’ Jim Throckmorton taught that it was a sin to get sick. O. D. Gypsum, the much-venerated Greek professor at Steed-Ramrick University from 1923 until 1965, was a staunch pacifist. Yet all these men are quoted freely from Brotherhood pulpits. Then, there’s a slew of outright bigots, such as Lloyd Q. Sargent, Jephthah Wigglesworth, and Zebulon Butcher, who put down their black brethren in their journals and belittled any white congregation that allowed a black evangelist to come preach there. But they are still seen as heroes for their strident defenses of orthodoxy, despite such blatant manifestations of a sinful attitude. It wasn’t an odd perspective on Hell that caused them to put the ban on me, Calvin. I’m in trouble for a much graver display of heterodoxy than annihilationism. And now that I’ve offended them in a great matter, they are calling me to task for every small matter, as well.”

“My Week at the Full Armor Lectures” by Jeremy Marshall Day 2 (pt. 5)

“My Week at the Full Armor Lectures” by Jeremy Marshall
Day 2 (pt. 5)

from Day 3.5:

“Excuse me,” I said. More applause, more whistling, more stomping feet. So I spat the words out like a school teacher who has returned from a restroom visit to find her classroom baptized in chaos: “EXCUSE ME!” The applause abruptly choked, except for Skeeter McDoogan, whose clapping sort of sputtered out like a dieseling engine. Then I calmly added, “Excuse me, but I do have some questions.”

“Well let’s hear them, then,” replied Brother Snipes, smugly.

“First, I keep hearing Mack Baldato and Strudel Harrison being chastised for wearing sweaters. What’s wrong with wearing sweaters? Maybe they just like wearing them. I don’t see how that’s a sign of apostasy.”
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“My week at the Full Armor Lectures” by Jeremy Marshall

Over the next week (or two) I will be reblogging a series of installments by my friend and fellow blogger, Jeremy Marshall.  As he himself will tell you, these installments are completely fictional.  I mean, no church would ever dare to limit God’s grace to the event on the cross, let alone mark hymns as “dangerous” that focused on God’s grace.

My week at the Full Armor Lectures: “Day One”.  by Jeremy Marshall
an excerpt:
Brother Olley continued this way: “See, God’s only just so gracious. You know John 3:16, that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have 
e-ternal life!” Brother Olley’s delivery of that verse was rapid-fire; he can quote Scripture with the speed and force of a machine gun. “Now that’s all the grace a man or woman could ever need, folks!” He concluded, “And there’ll be no repeat performance of that, Hebrews 9:25-28. Essentially, the message of the Gospel is that we’ve gotten all the grace we’re going to get, so stop messing up! Or what? Should we continue in sin, so that grace may abound, Romans 6:1? Certainly not, because there’s no more grace to be gotten!”

Jesus is…

Sunday night during a Bible study with some saints in Blacksburg, we discussed the nature of the kingdoms of the world and the kingdom of God in accordance with a theme one of our ministry leaders, Frank Sullivan, has been carrying us forward on: The Real Jesus.  On this night he brought up four things about Jesus we teach in particular that we must confront both the world and ourselves with:

  1. Jesus is God
  2. Jesus allowed people to choose to follow him by responding to testimony.
  3. Jesus is a man (not that he is still walking the earth, but that he came in the flesh and that experience is in his “memory” today and he lives in his saints, who themselves live in fleshly bodies, today)
  4. Jesus came to show us God.
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Electing Faithfulness: Part 1: Considering Third Roads

Considering Third Roads
or
What’s Wrong with These Guys?
or
Egyptians or Amorites?  Who’s it Gonna Be?

You heard a debate the other day.  It was between two guys likely to take the role of single individual holding the most official power in America.  Seems like a big deal.  It is, in a way, but when you look at the big picture, it ends up not being much of one at all.  Still, a pretty big deal.

So many of you will likely think of picking choice A or B.  I see why.  I mean, this is how the game seems to work, right?  People give you two choices and you pick one of them.  And to be fair, in all likelihood, it will be one of these two fellas.  That’s how the system tends to work.  I will tell you now that I don’t intend on voting for either of these guys.

One way in which it has been explained is this:

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_Not Worth Fighting For_ Review: Part 3

Chapter 2 discussed the hope of the resurrection and the life of Jesus as the core of Christian nonviolence.  We dealt with the question of helping a neighbor who is being attacked and how a Christian committed to nonviolence may handle such a situation and why.

Chapter 3 leaps right into a very very difficult question: “What would you do if someone were attacking a loved one?

I have a wife and a child.  I love them and want to protect them from evil.  Because of this, many things in this world are unsettling to me even more than they would be were I single and childless.  Whatever I believe and do, I must live like Christ.
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The 10 Suggestions: A Public School Solution

It’s been a whole summer since the decision in Giles Co. VA to remove the ten commandments from a public display and replace them with an alternative.  This week many students will be going back to school, and some might even notice this new display when they pass by it.  Maybe.

I didn’t go up on a mountain, didn’t have a personal conversation with God, and my face is not glowing.  But I have read his book, his good book, and I can’t give you any new commandments.  Not that I need to.
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