Bro, the truth shall set you free! Please read the NT starting from Acts to Jude over and over again. Ask God to let the Words spring forth revelations into your reading through the Holy Spirit. Use bible study aids to help you know the context and who, what, why, when the letters were written to.

I am sure after reading them in its whole you will grasp the heart and will of God in it’s whole! It will answer so many questions (yours or others) on:

- Salvation by faith and faith alone.
- Grace of God to help your Christian walk. Not on your own efforts (obedience/self effort)
- The promise of blessings of Abraham unto the Gentiles through Jesus Christ(Gal 3:14) received through faith.
- The clear passing away of the old Mosaic covenant to the now in effect new covenant through Jesus Christ. (Heb 8:7-13)

To many others reading this post. It would help to clear your mind of unbiasedness and read the NT with a clear mind while letting the Holy Spirit minister each Word and understanding to you. I did this and wow! did I find so much good news.

I came from a very traditional extreme protestant Church, with so much on good works and never knew the truths I listed above coz no one preached it!

Peace and Grace be unto you all!

Whether the preacher be Joseph Prince, Kong Hee, Lawrence Kong, Rick Seaward, Ronny Tan, Naomi Dowdy, whoever, whatever, if they do not preach the GOSPEL OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST in its entirety, they are preaching another gospel. The gospel cannot be taken our just for their nice parts and reject the other parts that require the believer to live a separate and holy perserving life in faith. The problem i have with these Health and Wealth preachers is that they are man centered and not Christ centred. They have relegated our Jesus to a genie in the sky, a santa claus at our beck and call. Jesus’s main gospel is the Salvation of Human for the GLORY OF GOD, and the blessings for beleivers are secondary. The gospel is a package deal, grace, salvation, holiness, you cannot just take up one portion and leave the rest on auto-pilot,because they are hard to listen to. The true gospel is INDEED OFFENSIVE to many. Praise Jesus our Lord

I like to comment on the part you said Pastor Prince should preach about Holiness and Obedience.

Personal experience, when I realised how good Daddy God is and don’t doubt Him anymore, HS starts talking to me.

As I keep on believing, I found myself obedience to Him without the law imposing on me to be obedience. It comes automatically.

When I realised how Good a Father, Daddy God is, I automatically live His way and follow His instruction within me.

This is what Pastor Prince believe in, the Lord in us will guide us. Not the works of man, but the leading of the spirit within.

Holiness is about being Separate apart by God. Yes, sis and I do feel at time, we are in a different atmosphere as compared to the rest of the people. We experienced it when waiting for my girl at a weekend class and there were many other parents around. It amazing!

Shalom!

I agree with you it’s important to put what authors say in historical context. However, on the other hand, not everyone is able to read everything the author has written and know so intimately the historical context of everything they wrote.

I think what I re-quoted of Spurgeon above is quite clear. The focus is on prayer for needs. No matter how much we claim to want to put his words into historical context and all, I don’t think that will work, because Spurgeon’s very own words speak for itself there and then. We can choose to agree to disagree here. To me that’s not a big point.

Regarding Thomas Boston, I still very much stand my ground and I believe Boston and many other Reformed authors would disagree with what you said – i.e. that “a sinner MUST yield to the Lordship of Christ, so as to be called a Christian.” Not all would disagree with your statement of course. I think the majority of Reformed beleivers would agree with that – but I think the majority are very wrong ;)

I’ve provided quotes from Boston to state my case. You have not provided counter-quotes, but only told me that I should take what both Spurgeon and Boston say into historical context, implying I haven’t done so but rather have misquoted them. I’m not sure how to respond to that because I’ve got nothing to respond to. I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree here :)

Regarding the previous blog I mentioned, I think the author would definitely be much more knowledgeable than me regarding Boston and the “Marrow Men” controversy. He definitely writes much more about these authors and issues than me. I believe they’ll come to the same view as me regarding Thomas Boston above. And I’m also glad that they mentioned about the Lordship Salvation issue here in their recommendation of Michael Horton’s “Christ the Lord: The Reformation and Lordship Salvation.” By the way, this book was one of the books that aided me greatly in coming to my views on Lordship Salvation and what an unbeliever needs to do to become a Christian. I’m quite sure that Michael Horton and his Reformed/Lutheran gang (Rick Ritchie, Kim Riddlebarger, Rod Rosenbladt, etc.) would not agree that “a sinner MUST yield to the Lordship of Christ, so as to be called a Christian.” I communicated with some of them quite a bit through email 10 years ago when this was something I was interested in.

So I don’t think I’m taking Boston out of context to support what I believe. But even if I’m taking Boston and Spurgeon out of context, then that is still alright in the sense that this whole article isn’t about them at all. I am no expert in their work. But neither do I think I quoted them out of context. I quoted them to challenge the typical Reformed believer of their views of the Lordship Salvation issue and their view of the role of faith in answers to prayer – by showing them that some within the Reformed tradition (Spurgeon, Steve Brown, Boston, etc.) do not hold to the typical Reformed view of these issues.

But ultimately, even if I’m quoting Spurgeon, Brown or Boston out of context (and I don’t think I am), I still think through Scriptures that the view presented here on grace and faith is more biblical than the other views I’ve written against.

Jenson, may I suggest that if you want to continue this conversation, we do so through email as I don’t want the comments here to be totally filled with comments just on one small aspect of this post. Most of the people who actually read this article and are interested in New Creation Church wouldn’t have a clue what the Reformed faith is – nor would they care about Thomas Boston! Cheers!

Thanks for the reference. I had corresponded with Daniel Chew before and remarked that although the Web is a great place for information like this, it is NOT reliable.

Boston said a lot of things (His works is in 12 vols) and to quote him without consideration of historical context or his larger work would not do your readers any good.

Like I said earlier, another person, CH Spurgeon has got to be the most misquoted/misunderstood/mis-everything person in the evangelical world. That is because most people would quote him based on a few heavily edited books, without thinking about the larger issue.

I would do my “homework” based on the unedited material, or at least based on reliable secondary sources. Hope that helps.

The first quote is taken from here – I searched the Internet. The second, I can’t find on the Internet. I got these quotes 10 years ago and so I’m sorry I don’t have references!

Hope this helps!

Would you mind providing me with the references, relating to the quotes from Thomas Boston?

If you liked, you could email me. My email address is there, in this message.

Thank you.

Thanks for that reference. I do not have that book by Spurgeon, so I will leave it as such.

To explain it another way, there is little parallel between the Marrow Men controversy and the Lordship Salvation controversy, for this reason – the Lordship Salvation stemmed out of a Dispensational, not Reformed, camp.

Perhaps the quotes from Boston would be helpful?

The quotes from Spurgeon are from the book “According To Promise” published by Whitaker House. My point in using the Spurgeon quotes is not to defend the teachings of the Word of Faith movement in general, nor its view of faith. I’ve no doubt Spurgeon would find a lot wrong with the movement and I don’t agree with everything in the movement myself. But I believe any honest reading of Scriptures would bring us to the view of the important role of faith in receiving from God. And I think Spurgeon understood that. As I’ve always maintained, just because the Word of Faith movement are pretty extreme in some areas doesn’t mean we throw out everything from them. I quoted Steve Brown above and I think he’s spot on. He’s one of the few Reformed guys I still appreciate and like.

Whether the Marrow Men Controversy was about the Lordship of Christ is not the point here. I mentioned them as some people in the Reformed ranks who would definitely not agree with many pro-Lordship Reformed folks nowadays (nor would they agree with the anti-Lordship side wholeheartedly either). I also quoted Boston to demonstrate that they would NOT agree that, as you said, “a sinner MUST yield to the Lordship of Christ, so as to be called a Christian.”

Cheers!