Tag Archives: theology
The Elementary Teachings about Christ (A Brief Look at Hebrews 6)
Here is a fascinating passage from Hebrews 6. If you were asked, “What are the primary elementary teachings about Christ?, what would you say? Notice the list that the author of Hebrews gives —
Notice that he refers to this list as “the foundation” (v. 1). Just a few questions occur to me —
1. How can some Christians say that repentance is not required for salvation? Without repentance, our “acts” lead to spiritual death!
2. Without faith it is impossible to please God, we are told in Hebrews 11:6 (“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”). One of the foundation truths about Christ is that we have faith in God. Not in ourselves or our works or our religiosity. But in God.
3. I’m a bit puzzled by the third elementary truth: “instruction about cleansing rites.” I’m not Jewish and Hebrews was written with a Jewish audience’s needs prominent. Some were apparently tempted to go back to Judaism and its efforts at a works-salvation process. Perhaps that’s what’s on the author’s mind.
4. This fourth elemental truth — “the laying on of hands” — obviously has to do with leadership. God is not a God of chaos, but of order. And order in the local church involves godly, qualified pastor-shepherds who use their gifts to build up the Body of Christ.
5. Another elemental truth is “the resurrection of the dead.” How are we to “move beyond” a truth like that?! Moving beyond doesn’t mean abandoning these fundamental truths, but building on them. In our this-life-only culture, we need to remind people that there is a life beyond this life. And every person will be raised from the dead — some to eternal life and others to eternal punishment (Mt. 25:46).
6. A final “elemental truth” is “eternal judgment.” If the Bible teaches that there are two and only two eternal destinies for man (either the New Heavens and the New Earth for believers or the Lake of Fire for unbelievers), then we must resist efforts to minimize the awful truth of eternal separation from God and His Kingdom. You might find my 1st book, The Other Side of the Good News, helpful here.
Conclusion: These six truths are fundamentals for the believer. And we should thank God for this foundation of truth. And we should “move beyond” them (build on them) in the sense of growing in our walk with Christ!
How’s About a (Mostly) Free Course on Doctrine??? (3rd and Final Notice)
Friends: We still need a few more in order to conduct the course described below! Please consider signing up!
I’ve written four books over the last few years that I believe are worthy of an online course. Here are those four books:
If a total of ten to twelve sign up for this online course, we will study the first book, DocTALK, together for ten Sunday nights. We will meet every other Sunday night for one hour on Zoom beginning on September 12.

Although most of us appreciate what we’ve paid something for, there is no charge for this course. If you wish to make a donation, that money will be sent to Christian workers in Ethiopia or Myanmar.
You may purchase a copy of DocTALK directly from me for $10 or on Amazon. If you and a friend together sign up for this course, I will send each of you a copy of DocTALK free.
If this first course is “successful,” I would consider moving on to the next book (DocWALK) for the next online course.
Interested? I need ten to twelve signed up and committed to do this online course by August 15th. To sign up or to ask questions, email me at theoprof@bellsouth.net. Or call me: 803-201-9745.
How’s About a (Mostly) Free Course on Doctrine??? (2nd Notice)
Friends: I’ve written four books over the last few years that I believe are worthy of an online course. Here are those four books:
If a total of ten to twelve sign up for this online course, we will study the first book, DocTALK, together for ten Sunday nights. We will meet every other Sunday night for one hour on Zoom beginning on September 5.

Although most of us appreciate what we’ve paid something for, there is no charge for this course. If you wish to make a donation, that money will be sent to Christian workers in Ethiopia or Myanmar.
You may purchase a copy of DocTALK directly from me for $10 or on Amazon. If you and a friend together sign up for this course, I will send each of you a copy of DocTALK free.
If this first course is “successful,” I would consider moving on to the next book (DocWALK) for the next online course.
Interested? I need ten to twelve signed up and committed to do this online course by August 15th. To sign up or to ask questions, email me at theoprof@bellsouth.net. Or call me: 803-201-9745.
How’s About a (Mostly) Free Course on Doctrine???
Friends: I’ve written four books over the last few years that I believe are worthy of an online course. Here are those four books:
If a total of ten to twelve sign up for this online course, we will study the first book, DocTALK, together for ten Sunday nights. We will meet every other Sunday night for one hour on Zoom beginning on September 5.

Although most of us appreciate what we’ve paid something for, there is no charge for this course. If you wish to make a donation, that money will be sent to Christian workers in Ethiopia or Myanmar.
You may purchase a copy of DocTALK directly from me for $10 or on Amazon. If you and a friend together sign up for this course, I will send each of you a copy of DocTALK free.
If this first course is “successful,” I would consider moving on to the next book (DocWALK) for the next online course.
Interested? I need ten to twelve signed up and committed to do this online course by August 15th. To sign up or to ask questions, email me at theoprof@bellsouth.net. Or call me: 803-201-9745.
Darby and the Holy Spirit – Part 1
Friends: I’m looking forward to Emmaus Bible College’s “Iron Sharpens Iron” conference May 27-29. I have been assigned two workshops. One will be my plea for us to become friends of lost people like Jesus was.
The other workshop will be on the scintillating topic of John Nelson Darby’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Darby was a 19th-century leader of the Plymouth Brethren movement and wrote over 50 volumes of biblical studies and theology.
In full disclosure, these posts — and my presentation at ISI — are based on one of the greatest works of North American non-fiction, my doctoral dissertation of 1985 (“The Pneumatology of John Nelson Darby [1800-1882]”)! Only a few scholars have read it. And my mother-in-law. A saint. Really.
In this first part I want to orient you a bit to Darby and his importance to fundamental Christianity. Darby, a bachelor for life, was an Anglo-Irish Bible teacher, one of the influential figures among the original Plymouth Brethren and the founder of the Exclusive Brethren. He is considered to be the father of modern Dispensationalism.
Darby preached in three languages, delivered thousands of sermons, translated the Bible into several languages, and wrote theological essays enough to fill fifty-two 400-page volumes. Darby is generally considered the formative and normative theological spokesman of the Plymouth Brethren.
Even though he was a clergyman for a while, he left the pastorate in search of a “simple worship based on Scriptural principles.”
Reading Darby is no small task. Darby freely acknowledged the lack of clarity in his writings, once admitting in a letter to a friend, “I am using your mind as a piece of blank paper, on which I jot down my thoughts, and it is quite possible there are better ones [sic], but you see what a letter for a man who has no time.”
He wrote to his friend William Kelly, the editor of his Collected Writings: “You write to be understood, I only think on paper.” His apparent impulsiveness in writing is partially explained by his comment that “as sometimes anything resting on the mind corrodes there, I write at once as to what seems to me the truth.”
His Disdain for Theology . . . and Theologians
He challenges his readers to search the Word of God and insists that such a search will reveal that “theology and theologians are worth nothing at all.” His perspective is that men and women need “to cultivate a healthy spirit, which does not search after questions, but piety. . . . Thorns never nourish us.”
One scholar has well said, “In spite of the fact that Darby never failed to speak disparagingly of theology as a science and would doubtless have issued a vehement demurrer if any one had ever called him a theologian, he was, nevertheless, a theologian in the best sense of the term.”
We will be looking at a number of key issues in Darby’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit in subsequent posts. But I believe it is worthwhile, in our next post, to provide the full transcript of one of Darby’s most hard-hitting tracts, “The Notion of a Clergyman: Dispensationally the Sin Against the Holy Ghost.”