Becoming Evangelical?

Well, I guess it was probably inevitable but I finally lost all of my “born again” marbles and joined the Lutherans. Short of swimming the Tiber this is probably the thing conservative Evangelicals suspicious of creeds, formal liturgy, and sacraments fear most when one of their own takes a look at Christianity before and beyond the scope of that which considers the individual heart decision to receive Jesus in one particular moment of life the central focus of Christian faith. To compare the issue to something that is easily accessible for American Protestants at the moment, if we think of this in terms of the “Why I hate religion but love Jesus” video that went viral across the Internet recently, I have likely chosen that which the hip young man in the video would claim Jesus came to abolish. If religion means that you believe the central encounter of the Christian faith is that which occurs when Christians gather together on a weekly basis to encounter the risen Christ in Word, Sacrament, and one another, then color me religious and allow me to mention that Jesus had no intention of abolishing such a thing.

I will agree with Jefferson Bethke, however, that Jesus came to abolish a false kind of religion where your faith, public or private, makes no practical difference in the way you treat people for whom you believe Jesus died or live your life before the God you claim to love. That’s the real dichotomy here. It’s not Jesus v. religion but false religion v. living faith that is the all important distinction we must maintain. Likewise, when it comes to my move to Lutheranism from mainstream Evangelicalism, the divide I am crossing is not between heart Christianity and formal Christianity but between what I see as a kind of Christian faith that has unintentionally separated public and private and heart and body with its exclusive focus on individual conversion and that which more successfully integrates our total experience and need as human beings before God.

Even here, however, I am perhaps raising a dichotomy just as unhelpful and insulting as the one Bethke raised in his immensely popular diatribe. As Christians and Protestants both, contemporary Evangelicals and Lutherans, when we look at one another, should see much of ourselves in the other. The reasons are both historical and confessional. The popular and amorphous form of Protestantism we know today as Evangelicalism applies to itself the name Lutherans have applied to themselves since the Reformation. Lutherans are the first group of Christians specifically known as “Evangelicals,” and the central emphasis on the biblical Gospel that Jesus alone saves us by His cross and resurrection through faith today’s Evangelicals inherited historically from these original Evangelicals. The Lutheran spiritual tradition exalts this Gospel in many powerful ways. Gene Veith, in his wonderful book, The Spirituality of the Cross: the Way of the First Evangelicals, lays this out in greater detail, but I will spell out a few of the high points.

Jesus Christ and His cross and resurrection take the central place in every Lutheran service of worship. At the confession and absolution of sin, we ask for forgiveness "for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ and His most holy, bitter, and innocent sufferings and death" for us and the Pastor grants the same to us through the Word of Jesus Christ. The Scripture readings in the service always focus on the person and work of Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament reading we are faced with the Law, which convicts us of sin and points us by types and shadows to Jesus Christ and His cross work. The practice is for two readings from the New Testament to be given, but one of the readings is always from the four Gospels and the sermon most often focuses on the Gospel text. The person, teaching, and saving action of Jesus always come to the fore in this way. Not just in the subject matter, however, but also in the manner of presentation and emphasis, the sermon also centers on Jesus, with its climax being the proclamation that Jesus has secured our salvation through His performance of the Law for us, His bearing the punishment for our sins on the cross, and His justifying us and empowering us for new life through the resurrection. Jesus and His cross and resurrection also come into sharp relief at the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, which is Christ’s giving to us of His true Body wounded for us and His true Blood shed for us for the forgiveness of sins. And of course, the service is not seen primarily as an obedience we perform for God (Law), but rather as His offering of forgiveness to us in Jesus Christ (Gospel), to which our hearts respond by worshiping and glorifying God in gratitude for what He has done for us.

Lutheranism and contemporary Evangelicalism also exalt the Gospel by our similar focus on the Holy Scriptures as the absolute foundation for what we believe, confess, and live as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. As I alluded to above, the reading and preaching of the Word of God is central to the Lutheran service as the means of grace by which Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit not only reveals Himself to us but makes Himself present to the gathered body and individual believers for saving, teaching, and guiding us. As is the case with contemporary Evangelicalism, Lutheranism is thus only as Christ-centered as it is Bible-centered.

Lutheran spirituality and theology also, however, bring the same central Gospel into focus by emphases different from those highlighted by contemporary Evangelicalism. Both traditions will point to the same realities but focus on them in different ways and to different degrees. For instance, when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, we both affirm the Triune God as a priority in our worship and thinking, but it has been my experience that Lutherans and other classical Protestants as well as Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox place more explicit emphasis on the Triune God than most Evangelicals do. This is important because we obscure the Gospel inasmuch as we obscure the reality that God is Triune. The Trinity is the bull’s-eye center of the Christian faith because the doctrine of the Trinity is the expression of everything we know about God because of His revelation of Himself to us as Jesus Christ. The Trinity reveals the Gospel as the greatest demonstration of the love that characterizes the inner life of God, and it is the Gospel that most clearly reveals that God is Trinity, for our redemption is the work of the entire Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The explicit emphasis on the Triune God in the life and worship of Lutheranism also shows how the Gospel is co-extensive with the community and the way of life it produces. Because the Trinity reveals to us how God is, not just in His inner life but also as He is with His creatures, the Trinity also reveals to us how we are to be with one another in our life in God. If God Himself is a community of love, life in God is always life in community, and the life in the Christian community is to be characterized by love.

The emphasis on the Triune God in Lutheranism also keeps us aware of and in continuity with the ancient Christian Church, in which the articulation of the doctrine of the Trinity took place. Not only does the oneness of the Triune God keep us cognizant of our Savior’s prayer that we be one as He and the Father are one, but the Ecumenical Creeds that are our inheritance from the process of the articulation of the doctrine of the Trinity were delivered to today’s divided global Christian Church from the undivided ancient Church.

The invoking of the Trinity with the sign of the cross at the beginning of the service, the offering of the peace of the Lord to one another, the reciting of the Creeds, prayers offered “through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever,” and the conclusion of our services with the threefold Amen both actualize and keep us mindful of our sharing in the Triune life of God and all the implications of this reality.

Lutheranism and contemporary Evangelicalism, however, differ more in regard the diverging emphases we place on spirit and matter and the internal and the external in the way God communicates to us the salvation Christ accomplished for us. For instance, while we both understand and proclaim loudly that God has accomplished salvation for the world and humanity through His Incarnation as Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection in His physical body, Lutherans understand according to the Scriptures that God continues to use material realities to communicate to us the body-and-soul salvation Christ accomplished for us through His human nature. This starts with the way we understand the agency of the Word of God in salvation. Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit working, in, with, and through physical words on a page or spoken audibly by mouth, gives faith and salvation to believers. The efficacy of the sacraments as means of salvation comes through this same operation of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit in the promises of His Word. Baptism saves through the use of water to apply the promises of God's Word to us. Jesus Christ in His Body and Blood comes to be present in, with, and under the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper in a literal and supernatural manner by the power and promise of His Word.

While for contemporary Evangelicals such an earthly and physical understanding of salvation by sacraments would seem to imply salvation by works, Lutherans understand this precisely to be a corollary of salvation by Christ alone through faith alone. Powerless to grasp God's salvation from within ourselves, God, who is far from us because of our sin, comes to us from outside, putting his forgiveness, life, and grace into us through the Word we hear, the Triune Name he puts on us in baptism, and His Body and Blood we receive through eating and drinking the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper. It's by these physical means that we understand that we have not saved ourselves, not even by our emotional or spiritual appropriation of grace, but by God's objective salvation He renders to us as pure gift, which we receive as helpless and needy creatures from the merciful hand of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. In this, we also understand that the forgiveness and grace we have received through Christ and His cross and resurrection, grasp us and have implications for us body and soul, internally and externally, individually and corporately, both now and in eternity.

I will conclude by saying that I do not see my arrival in the Lutheran churches and tradition as a repudiation of my Evangelical heritage. Rather, the buds I still see growing richly in contemporary Evangelicalism have both their roots and fullest flowering blossoms in the faith and practice of the first Evangelicals.

Seminary Shenanigans 1

The semester is over, so my really busy days are over for a while. I now have no excuses for not blogging more frequently, so stay tuned for my snarky, irrelevant, and irreverent thoughts throughout the summer. I'll take the opportunity in my next several posts to share my big projects from my seminary courses at Covenant this past semester. I would like your input and constructive criticism on my labors.

I most enjoyed and benefited from my Christian Worship class with the fantastic Dr. Mark Dalbney. I love the guy. He's full of great stories, is youthful and funny, knows more about Reformed worship than all but a half-dozen people on the planet, and has worshiped and led worship in the most widely divergent worship circles you could imagine. He grew up and began ministering in a tradition that only sings the Psalms, and that without musical accompaniment, and has evolved from that point to a contemporary worship guy who also exhibits a deep love for traditional hymnody. You can hear his lectures and access course materials here.

Here's the hymn I wrote for this class. You know that old Gospel song, "There is a Fountain Filled with Blood?" Well, I wrote a Communion hymn called "In Breath and Flesh and Power" to the tune of that old song. I might have biffed the assignment a bit by using an unoriginal tune, especially an old one, but I like the lyrics. I took a few risks with them, but feel I have faithfully articulated a well-rounded, Reformed view of the sacred Supper, though it rather provocatively trends Lutheran in verse two. Ecumenist and sacramentalist that I am, that doesn't bother me, so get over it. What I do worry about theologically, however, is whether in the first few lines of the first verse I diminish the glory of the Word of God spoken and written in extolling the value of the Sacrament? Keep in mind, in the full-bodied Reformed sacramental understanding, the Sacraments are nothing more or less than the Holy Spirit's application of the Word of God (in the Jesus sense too) and His promises to us in a bodily, material, communal manner; therefore, the Sacraments’ glory and that of the written Word is one. That being said, I do not wish to undermine that proposition by affirming the value of the Sacraments at the expense of the Bible. You be the judge of whether or not I have done this. Here's my song.

"In Breath and Flesh and Power"

Verse 1
Christ, meet us not in speech alone, but in Breath and flesh and power.
We have heard Your voice in holy Word and sang with You this hour.
By the Spirit's power, lift now our hearts in holy conqu'ring love.
For we long to share the blessed feast—Your once-offered flesh and blood.
Refrain 1
Your once-offered flesh and blood, your once-offered flesh and blood.
For we long to share the blessed feast—Your once-offered flesh and blood.

Verse 2
Jesus, what a joy to feast with You in Your resurrection power.
You have raised us to Your heav'nly throne for this blest, appointed hour.
For here we know You face-to-face as will be when Kingdom comes.
This table then will be faith's stay till the Consummation's done.
Refrain 2
Till the Consummation's done, till the Consummation's done.
This table then will be faith's stay till the Consummation's done.

Verse 3
Christ, as we share love's meat and drink with brother, sister dear,
Make one our hearts in charity, casting out unholy fear.
Unite us as one temple built on You, our cornerstone.
One holy loaf permeated through with You and You alone.
Refrain 3
With You and You alone, with You and You alone.
One holy loaf permeated through with You and You alone.

Verse 4
We have been with You this Easter Day in the new Jerusalem.
You have fed us with the bread of life and filled our hearts with hymns.
Strengthened by Your death and victory, conform our lives to You,
And send us as Your co-laborers in making all things new.
Refrain 4
In making all things new, in making all things new.
And send us as Your co-laborers in making all things new.

Thoughts on the Bible 3

The Word of God under Four Heads

This spring, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland voted to uphold Aberdeen Presbytery's decision to ordain Scott Rennie, an openly gay man, to the pastorate of Queen’s Cross Church in Aberdeen. When the initial decision was made by Aberdeen Presbytery to ordain Rennie, Presbytery members who had voted against the ordination wrote to the body at large, objecting to its decision based on the Word of God's condemnation of homosexuality. Defending itself on this point, the Presbytery flippantly responded that "the Bible cannot be identified with the Word of God."

As interpreted by those who wish to reject explicit biblical teachings, a neo-orthodox doctrine of the Word of God seems to be a useful tool for justifying such a rejection. Indeed, history and current practice has proven this to be the case, especially if a neo-orthodox understanding of Scripture has been coupled with a rejection of biblical inerrancy. While many neo-orthodox Bible interpreters do explicitly reject biblical inerrancy, it need not always be the case that a neo-orthodox understanding of the Bible necessitates a rejection of the highest possible view of biblical authority.

That being said, I will keep my opinion regarding the ideal of biblical inerrancy in suspense for the moment, but I will presently put forward a "high" Bible, Christocentric, neo-orthodox-style understanding of the Word of God. I will do this under four heads.

1. Jesus Christ as the Word of God

I will not explicate further on this, for it needs no explanation as the Bible thoroughly and explicitly describes Jesus using this term, (see John 1) and I have already treated rather extensively Jesus Christ as God's self-revelatory Speech.

2. Holy Scripture as the Word of God

Holy Scripture is the written Word of God. The term, Word of God, cannot be used exclusively in reference to Scripture according to the Bible's own usage, though it most often does indeed refer to the Bible. In matters of authority, we must subordinate the Bible's authority to Christ's own authority, as the Bible has no authority independent from the One who breathed it into being through His patriarchs, prophets, and apostles and who continues to speak actively and powerfully through its witness. In this light, then, we must also note that the target of the written Word of God is always only the incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ.

In speaking of the Bible as the written Word of God, we are also speaking of God's agency in the inspiration and writing of the original biblical documents. Though we must not overlook the human authorship of the biblical documents, God is the efficient cause of these documents, moving the human authors to testify by writing that which He willed them to by Divine inspiration.

That being said, the Word of God comes, as it were, through the earthen vessels of human authors and their thoughts and words. God speaks reliably and unfailingly through this process, even though the cultural situations and contexts of the human authors, with all of the limits these impose on the authors, condition and color the biblical documents produced by their hands. Instead of having this derogate the authority of the Bible, however, we can exuberantly declare that it is not in spite of the biblical authors and their human limitations but rather through them that God faithfully expresses and delivers His Word to His people. At any rate, through this miraculous synergy of Divine and human work, we can say that while what is written is 100% the words of human beings, it is also 100% the Word of God.

To deal with the particular question, then, that my beloved Church history professor, Dr. Calhoun, hit on in his staunch inerrantist critique of Barth and that Aberdeen Presbytery so obtusely, irreverently, and, dare I say, blasphemously answered in the negative in its correspondence with its dissenting members, the Bible, the word on the page, is the Word of God, carried though it is in the earthen vessel of human language. Perhaps a good way of describing this is to say that the Bible is an earthen vessel that carries the living water, but, in order for us to draw out that water, we need the Spirit to enlighten us.

I must also note in passing that to fail to identify the Bible directly with the Word of God smacks of a Gnostic species of doubt that God in His transcendence can accommodate His revelation to our creatureliness. If the Incarnation teaches us anything, it is that God is willing and able to make Himself small in order to reach us according to our human weakness. I must also note that to move the content of the Word of God too far from the text itself would be to place the Word of God in an undesirable sphere of subjectivity and to put the reliability of the Bible's objective content in general in doubt.

Most often, we must note that the written Word of God is secondary revelation mediated through human authors. The direct revelation in these cases is the work of God in history placed openly before God's covenant people to see, which they testify to under the unique inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the production of Scripture. Yet, we must also note that some of the biblical revelation seems to come as direct propositional revelation from the mouth of God, particularly large segments of the Torah and the words of the Savior recorded in the Gospels, though these too undoubtedly came down to biblical authors either through their own memories under the Holy Spirit's guidance and/or to human processes of preservation.

I think it would be safe to say that the written Word of God is in a category that neither of the other two senses of the Word of God I have yet to treat can be placed in. The written Word of God is normative and binding for all Christian people at all times, as it represents God-breathed revelation from the hands of the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, upon whom rests the foundation of the Church. As such, the written Word of God can neither be added to nor subtracted from.

3. Preaching as the Word of God

I include this under the Word of God because preaching is a given means for the Church by which to receive God's exhortation from His written Word. The center and goal of the proclamation of the written Word of God is the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. In the work of the Holy Spirit through the preacher, Christ Himself delivers a Word and applies Himself in an enlivening way to the hearts of the faithful to rouse them for His service or to awaken those dead in their sins to spiritual life through regeneration.

4. God's revelation in history as the Word of God

I include this under the Word of God because God's work in history is the primary revelation to which the written Word of God testifies. Christ the incarnate Word of God as mediator of God's historic covenants with Israel and the Church publishes and executes the will of God the Father through His action in the world, revealing God's loving intentions and judgment against sin for all of humankind.

Jesus Christ, as God's eternal image and self-revelation, verifies that it is God's message that is being given. If Christ declares it, we know that it is the will of the Father.

Thoughts on the Bible 2

Karl Barth, Neo-Orthodoxy, and the Bible

Karl Barth was easily the greatest Protestant theologian of the 20th century (arguably the greatest in all of Christendom during this time). When considering the doctrine of Scripture, I think Christians in our day and age need to spend a little time with Mr. Barth, especially since he essentially reclaimed the centrality of the Bible in Christian theology in an age when mainstream Protestant theologians had appeared to have all but forgotten the Scriptures and his most recognizable contribution to the contemporary theological landscape is his theology of the Word of God. The official statements of the mainline Protestant denominations on the Scriptures are all pretty much straight Barthian Neo-Orthodoxy.

My own denomination, the Presbyterian Church USA, expresses its view in its Book of Order in this characteristically neo-orthodox way: "The church confesses the Scriptures to be the Word of God written, witnessing to God's self-revelation. Where that Word is read and proclaimed, Jesus Christ the Living Word is present by the inward witness of the Holy Spirit.” Elsewhere it is stated that "... the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments...[are]...., by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal, and God's Word to [them]."

You will notice in the PC(USA) statements on Scripture that: 1) the word "inerrant" is conspicuously absent, and, 2) there is a certain reluctance to identify the Word of God directly with the text itself. It is precisely for these reasons that many evangelicals are quite wary of Neo-Orthodoxy when it comes to the Bible. Barth rejected the infallibility of the Scriptures and, as my church history professor Dr. Calhoun was quick to point out, directed Christians not to listen to the word on the page as the Word of God but to listen for the Word of God (for you) when the Scriptures are read.

Before we dismiss Karl Barth as a dangerous liberal and begin the preparations for burning the heretics (both of us), I wish to defend him by looking at the basis for his neo-orthodox theology and what is in view in a neo-orthodox articulation of the doctrine of Scripture.

As described by church historian, Justo Gonzalez, Neo-Orthodoxy, also called "dialectical theology" or "crisis theology," is "a theology of a God who is never ours, but always stands over against us; whose word is at the same time both ‘yes’ and ‘no’; whose presence brings, not ease and inspiration in our efforts, but crisis." In other words, God is transcendent. The whole point of Barth's theology is to "Let God be God." This was a needed corrective to the Protestant theology of the early 20th century that often confused God with the very best in human nature and the Kingdom of God with purely human efforts.

With the transcendence of God in view, human beings can do nothing to bridge the gap that exists between the finite creature and the infinite Creator. For Barth, then, the sole basis for human knowledge about God is God's self-revelation in the incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ. The Bible is the Word of God because it testifies to that Living Word, and, not only that, the Bible is the Word of God because Christ is present by the Holy Spirit with the words of the Bible, coming to us again and again each time it is read.

One way we can speak of Barth's theology of the Word of God is in the way he privileges one of the great Protestant Solas over another. Barth was unquestionably a sola Scriptura Protestant (His theology, and even the questions his theology sought to answer, were all based in his encounter with the Scriptures. In fact, in writing his magnum opus, the 13 volume, 7000+ page Church Dogmatics, Barth self-consciously strove to have the Bible itself as the framework for examining the Bible.), but, as it should be, he privileges solus Christus over sola Scriptura. In other words, Barth's understanding of Scripture is Christocentric rather than bibliocentric. Thus, we find Barth resting the authority of the Word of God, not in an objective factual immaculacy it possesses independent from the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit, but in its testifying to Jesus Christ, the "Word made flesh," and in Christ's coming to us again and again each time it is read.

It is in Christ alone, through the work of the Holy Spirit, that the Bible can be and is our final and unfailing authority in all matters of faith, practice, and morals. I therefore testify together with Paul that: "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

Thoughts on the Bible 1

I've been meaning to put together some thoughts on this for a little while, but I've been mired in a bit of a summertime slump of laziness, apathy, and boredom. I've been needing just a bit of a kick in the seat of my pants to get me to write on this subject, and that came in Sunday School yesterday. In celebration of Calvin’s 500th birthday, we've been taking some time to get acquainted with the life and contributions of this father of the Reformed tradition.

Yesterday we talked about his legacy and, inevitably, our pastor, Rev Nancy, directed us to ponder the remarks made in the video about Calvin's view of Scripture. The scholars in the video gave Calvin's doctrine of Scripture a bit of a neo-orthodox coloring. They first described the sense in which Calvin bids us to look beyond the words of the Scriptures themselves to what the Spirit is saying through those words.

They also described the sense in which Calvin bids us to understand that the Bible has an ultimate target that it’s trying to hit—that it’s the Word of God in that it points always only in the direction of the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ.

Well, right enough. The Bible is no dead letter; it’s a living document. The Scriptures are not something that is simply acted upon by our reason or our ability to comprehend what is written or spoken; no, rather, the Word of God acts upon us. In other words, the Scriptures have a property of vivifying and transforming power about them because of the Spirit's activity moving over the face of the words printed on the page or those uttered by the mouth. Furthermore, we recognize that the Bible is the Word of God because it testifies to the ultimate revelation of God, His eternal Word, God the Son, Jesus Christ.

These are indeed affirmations that I am willing to wager that we all would accept about the Scriptures, but, does it seem to you that the scholars’ words about the Bible and Calvin's view of it and my own affirmation of those comments are less powerful and forceful than coming right out and saying that "the Bible is the only and authoritative Word of God, without error in the original manuscripts" or some other similarly worded inerrantist formulation? Maybe . . .

At any rate, though the scholars on the video are undoubtedly correct that Calvin lodges the efficacy of the Word exclusively in the work of the Holy Spirit and views Christ as its only target, it's quite plain to me that Calvin would also insist that the Bible not only contains the Word of God but is itself the Word of God and is free from all error. I'll let the Calvin scholars figure out exactly what Calvin believed in regard to the Scriptures, but this puts us in a place where I can venture forth a few thoughts.

"Bibliolatry?"

I learned a new word from Rev Nancy earlier this summer that I had not heard before. She also brought it up in the Calvin class yesterday. That word is "bibliolatry," or, "Bible idolatry." What?! Bible worship?! What kind of nonsense am I talking?!

Yes, indeed, Bible worship does exist, and I don't think that this is just a way theologically left-leaning Protestants dismiss people who actually believe what the Bible says. Bible worship is what happens when we attempt to read the Bible as if we don't need the Spirit's guidance. This is what’s going on when we domesticate the Bible, tear it apart, and put it back together in a neat, compact, easy-to-understand system of essential doctrines and call that system the Word of God and depend on it as if it were God Himself. God and His Word, of course, are bigger than our individual interpretations or those of our particular Christian traditions, so we need to be on guard against this tendency to paint our own culturally-conditioned readings of the Bible on the sky. Otherwise, we will find that we have made an idol too of that which truly and uniquely reveals God to us.

Sometimes we forget that what is more important about the Bible is not the information it provides but the One whom it reveals. The Bible is not an end in itself. Though its message is certainly important, the message is intended more than anything to draw us to the One who breathed it forth through the writers He inspired. We must also remember that for us today it is only as the Holy Spirit hovers over the face of the words written on the page or spoken by the mouth that God and His will are truly and effectively revealed in the Scriptures.

This is enough to chew on for a bit. Stay tuned, I've got more thoughts on this coming tomorrow.

Calvin's Legacy

Kevin DeYoung nailing it on Calvin's legacy. Let us stand as firmly on the Word of God as Calvin. "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever."

http//www.revkevindeyoung.com/2009/07/withering-and-word-john-calvin-at-500.html