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Posts Tagged ‘Inquisition’

The Year in Review, 2015

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 3, 2016| 5 Comments »

2015 year in reviewAnother year of blogging has come and gone. And since New Year’s Day represents a convenient opportunity to reflect on the year past as well as look forward to the one ahead, it seemed good to me to summarize 2015’s postings as well as consider where this blog may be headed in 2016.

But before I get to that, thanks are in order. In the first place, I would like to thank the Lord my God. I have written Lux Lucet since 2009, but it has only been since November 2014 that I committed to a regular weekly writing schedule. Writing takes work. And in truth, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to maintain the frequency and quality of writing that I had in mind. But God has been gracious. He has provided me an abundance of interesting and relevant topics to discuss, the necessary time to research and write, and the stamina to make it happen. If there be anything about this blog at all praiseworthy, truly I must say with the reformers, Soli Deo Gloria.

Second, I would like to that the late Dr. John W. Robbins of the Trinity Foundation. It was eight years ago this month that John proposed to me a writing project that would eventually turn into a book titled Imagining A Vain Thing: The Decline and Fall of Knox Seminary. Up until that time, the biggest writing projects I had undertaken were high school and college term papers. But thanks to John’s help as well as the help of current Trinity Foundation president Tom Juodaitis, I was able to see the project through to its completion. This blog is an outgrowth of my experience working with John. You might even say it’s an extended thank you to him, the man whose work has done so much to inspire me.

Third, I would be remiss if I did not extend a sincere thank you to my readers for their support. Were you to ask me why I blog, habitual joker that I am, I’d probably tell you I’m in it for the money. It has always been my prayer that this blog would be used by God to edify his church. But the nature of blogging is such that it can be quite lonely. You sit at your computer and write and publish, but the question remains, What good is any of this doing? In light of that, it is tremendously encouraging to see that my posts are read. Please know that your clicks, comments and likes are greatly appreciated.

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Evangelical Insiders, Outside the Will of God (Part 1)

Posted in Politics, Roman Catholicism, tagged , , on October 5, 2015| 2 Comments »

Marco Rubio, neo-evangelical favorite.

Marco Rubio, neo-evangelical favorite.

Have you ever noticed this strange phenomenon, that those at the forefront of a movement or discipline generally are the ones doing the most to undermine it? Take, for example, the legal profession. Among lawyers, there is no more prestigious assignment than to be named to the US Supreme Court. And yet these high-powered legal minds – supposedly the best and brightest the profession has to offer – routinely made a hash of the Constitution, the very document on which they claim expertise. Economists are in the same boat, the majority of whom are intellectual thralls to the economy destroying nonsense taught by John Maynard Keynes. Business leaders are anti-business, favoring programs of crony capitalist government bail-outs over the free market that allowed them to prosper in the first place.

To this list you can add another category of prominent individuals doing their best to undermine the very cause for which they claim to stand: evangelical insiders. According to a poll released by World Magazine, the favorite 2016 presidential candidates of these anointed insiders – World does not tell us what criteria it uses to select these insiders, describing them only as “well-connected evangelicals” – are, drum roll please…Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina. Somehow, I’m not surprised by this. In fact, given the long-standing Romeward and feminist drift of the neo-evangelical movement. it was almost inevitable that the poll would turn out as it did.

But are these evangelical insiders thinking Biblically? Even posing this question may come as a surprise to some. What may be even more surprising to them is to hear that there are sound arguments against Christians supporting either one for president.

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Antichrist in America: A Few Closing Thoughts on the Visit of Pope Francis

Posted in Economics, Politics, Roman Catholicism, tagged , , , , , on September 28, 2015| 2 Comments »

Pope Francis_Unholy MixThe past five days have seen the citizens of the United States subjected to a most extraordinary propaganda campaign. As the result of pope Francis’ visit to Washington D.C., New York and Philadelphia, the airwaves and newspapers of our nation have been filled with countless images of and reports on the pope’s activities, nearly all of which serve to cast Francis and his church in the most positive light possible. If it wasn’t clear before, it should now be abundantly evident to anyone, Catholic or not, that the mainstream media in this country is more than willing to prostitute itself as a megaphone for the Man of Sin. This shouldn’t be surprising. The Roman Catholic religion is designed and built to appeal to the flesh, and papal pomp certainly makes for good television.

But for all its gaudy appeal, Rome lacks that most important mark of a true church of God: the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Justification by Faith Alone. All Rome’s smells, bells, mitres, and masses put together cannot save a single soul. They cannot do so much as remit the guilt of a single sin. It is the righteousness of Christ alone imputed to believers by faith alone that saves sinners from death eternal. But this Rome flatly denies. And not only that, but it actually curses and damns all who believe this simple truth. The Roman Catholic Church-State is a false spiritual harlot of a church, teaching a false faith plus works non-gospel, presided over by the Son of Perdition himself. And yet this Babylonian Harlot-drunk-with-the-blood-of-the-saints institution is lifted up by the American press as representative of the best of Christianity. Watching this spectacle is enough to prompt any thinking Christian to repeat the words of the apostle John, who, when confronted with the vision of the Whore of Babylon, was astonished, declared, “And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement.”

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Must Christians Defend the Inquisition?

Posted in Politics, Roman Catholicism, tagged , , , on February 16, 2015| 12 Comments »

InquisitionIn last week’s post Must Christians Defend the Crusades?, I pointed out a common apologetical error of contemporary Evangelicals.  When the discussion turns to the obvious, gross sins committed by the Roman Catholic Church-State during the course of the Crusades and the Inquisition, rather than taking the opportunity to denounce these activities for what they are the evil fruit of the papal Antichrist, too often Christians implicitly or even explicitly defend them.  Take for example the following video of Southern Baptist minister Dr. Robert Jeffress on the O’Reilly factor from 2/6/15 program.  At about the 2:12 mark Jeffress begins his  comments on the Inquisition.

Jeffress’ words were, “The Inquisition lasted 450 years; there were 2,200 people who died.  That’s about 5 a year.  More people died on 911 in one day at the hands of Muslim terrorists than in all of the Inquisition.” In fairness to Jeffress, he is not attempting to argue that the Inquisition was a good thing.  But in his discussion with O’Reilly, Jeffress made at least two critical mistakes.  First, failed to draw any distinction between Roman Catholicism and Christianity, and thus left Evangelicals on the hook for the sins of Inquisition.  Second, he attempted to minimize the evil of the Inquisition, what was one of the most heinous crimes ever carried out by any organization in history.

And this was not some momentary slip by Jeffress.  In his 2/10/15 interview on Fox News with Gretchen Carlson, Jeffress was even more explicit in identifying Christianity with Romanism.  At about the 1:30 mark, he made the following comment, “Christians have done some terrible things in the past, but nothing compared to radical Islam.  For example, the President brings up the Inquisition [Jeffress is here referring to Obama’s comments at the National Prayer Breakfast, the same ones he discussed with Bill O’Reilly].  Did you know that in the 450 years of the Inquisition there were about 2,200 people killed.  That’s about five a year.”  By his claim that, “Christians have some terrible things,” once Jeffress identified the Inquisition with Christianity, thus putting himself and other Evangelicals in the awkward and unnecessary position of having to answer for the sins of Rome.

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