While scanning through Paul Marshall’s book Their Blood Cries Out, I came across this excellent quote. It shows the poisonous nature of the therapeutic gospel and prosperity gospel in times of suffering. Marshall here sounds very similar to David Wells, and helps explain why so many American Christians are apathetic to global persecution today.

Clearly, a positive outlook can have value in dealing with most of our ordinary day-to-day frustrations. But if God is always supposed to provide relief, then suffering Christians seem to make God appear untrustworthy and the product unreliable. Why hasn’t Christianity “worked” for the Sudanese the way it does in America? How can the prayers of suffering Christians in Vietnam remain unanswered?

Historically, the heart of the evangelical gospel has been “Christ died for your sins,” not the modern preoccupation “Christ died for your problems.” If religious teaching becomes a promise of psychological benefits, then a seemingly logical conclusion is that suffering stems from a lack of faith…

But what does this mean for those who struggle against adversity, persecution, and poverty? If obedience is the key to the future, then they must somehow have failed, somehow have fallen short of God’s best, somehow been disobedient. What does it say of the apostle Paul, writing letters from a prison cell, not to mention Jesus, who was markedly “unsuccessful.” He found himself betrayed, abandoned, and hung on a cross.

These are not the only tendencies in evangelicalism. But they are the dominant ones. They are the themes that dominate the best-seller lists, the magazines, the TV shows, and all-too-many of the churches. The result is a faith that has its eyes turned resolutely inward.

Self-absorption is clearly not the only reason western evangelicals remain unconcerned about their persecuted counterparts across the sea. But it certainly contributes to the apathy. (pp. 155-56)

Donna Ascol has finally written an update on her husband Tom, who was struck by lighting two weeks ago. You can read her message here. It sounds like Tom is making a slow and difficult – but steady – recovery. Please continue to keep him in your prayers.

I was convicted over my own lack of sensitivity toward the elderly and infirm as I read this paragraph:

We understand more about the mysteries of the human body and how many people suffer from real symptoms that cannot be viewed by casual observers. Even as Tom struggled through the airport, I wondered how many travelers were aware of his struggle. I doubt that those who were frustrated by his slow gait and halting steps stopped to consider what might be going on inside of him. I pray that God would help me to be more compassionate to those who struggle internally.

Erich Bridges of the International Mission Board has some good thoughts on Jesus, religion in America, and the implications for global missions. Here’s an excerpt:

“If the Good News (Gospel) of salvation in Christ alone is not true, what’s the point of spreading it? That would be hypocrisy, fraud, false advertising, bogus journalism. The Christian mission stands or falls on the exclusive truth of the Gospel — as does Christianity itself, which has always been a missionary faith.”

Read the whole thing here.

Below is a touching letter from Randy Alcorn to John Piper and C.J. Mahaney regarding the Monday night session of Resolved. I, too, was deeply moved to tears, especially during Mahaney’s unforgettable sermon and the worship that immediately followed it. You can download the audio to some or all of the sessions for free at the Resolved website.

CJ and John,

I wanted to send this to the two of you in gratitude (mostly to God, secondarily to you) in particular for the final night of Resolved. I have been moved to tears and deep worship many times, but not in recent memory to the extent that I was Monday night.

Mark 15 and CJ’s “scream of the damned…for us” touched me at a profound level. The Holy Spirit spoke. And though I prayed and knew that John’s message would beautifully end the conference, I was not prepared for the way it happened.

I have never seen, orchestrated or unorchestrated (in this case orchestrated by the Holy Spirit), one single seamless message spoken by two men with nearly an hour between the end of one and the beginning of the other. I stood that night on sacred ground, as did you.

Yesterday early afternoon, in the Palm Springs airport, I opened to Mark 15 and wept again. I then did something I have done only twice before, once on the day my 85-year-old father, in a hospital bed, repented of his sin and surrendered to Christ. The other time when my best friend from childhood died next to me as I was reading to him Revelation 21-22, leaving this world precisely when I was reading 22:17: “The Spirit and the bride say ‘Come!’ And let him who hears say ‘Come!’ Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes let him take the free gift of the water of life.”

What I did on those occasions was write a date in my Bible: Feb. 9, 1992 at my Father’s conversion, and October 8, 1992 at my friend Jerry’s home-going between “Come!” and “take the free gift of the water of life.” The date is still there beside the verse I was reading when he died.

Without thinking about this, yesterday at the airport I wrote next to Mark 15:34, “June 16, 2008.” Then something else happened. I wrote after the date, “The Scream of the…” And I suddenly stopped, overwhelmed, breathless, pen frozen in hand. Why? Because I suddenly realized I needed to capitalize the word “Damned.” It was physically hard for me to do it. It seemed almost blasphemous…and so it should.

The unrighteous damned have no right to ask God why He has forsaken them (the reasons are self-evident to all who understand His holiness and our sin), but God’s Son the Beloved One had the right to ask, even knowing the answer and having participated in eternity past in the damning decision. He is the Lamb damned before the foundation of the world. So while the (lower case) damned will scream forever, ultimately there is only one Scream of the (upper case) Damned. Unthinkable. Inconceivable. And yet it happened…for us.

A flood of tears came as God preached the message to me yet again. That Deity would be Damned. That the God who is called upon righteously by the saints and angels in heaven to damn people, and called upon habitually by unbelievers flippantly and unrighteously to damn people, would in fact damn his Son, would (from the Son’s willingness to drink the cup) damn himself…for us. That it could be said of the Beloved One, “God damned Him,” and that He screamed the scream of the Damned….it was too much for me. It is too much for me this moment. And in the ages to come it will continue to be too much for me.

The cup of His suffering has long seemed deep to me, but never deeper than Monday night and the two days since.

Thank you, brothers, for being cleansed vessels, usable for eternal purposes. It was not only 3300 students whose hearts were marked for eternity Monday night. It was mine. You are not celebrities to me, but you are my mentors, in more ways that I can express. Thank you.

And thank you, Lord, for these two men, who you used as one on Monday night—guard their hearts and empower them to finish well, bowing their knees to you moment by moment, day by day.

And thanks forever to the One who screamed the scream of the Damned…and whose praises we will sing for all eternity.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Grateful to be eternally undamned by the Damned,

Randy Alcorn

(HT: Justin Taylor)

Let me say up front that being a Christian is not the sole consideration when electing a person to public office. One could be a very strong Christian yet make a very bad president. On the other hand, one could feasibly be a non-Christian and still make a pretty good president. This post is not meant to be an endorsement for or against Barack Obama. It’s simply a reporting of the facts.

Right now in this country, we have one of the two major presidential candidates making huge efforts to paint himself as an evangelical Christian. But his understanding of the gospel would suggest the contrary. Obama says “I believe there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.” He has also allegedly said, “all people of faith — Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, everyone — know the same God” (Read the whole article here).

Obama is between a rock and a hard place. He’s trying hard to win over votes from the religious right, while remaining policitally expedient and creating an image of “tolerance” in an increasingly pluralistic society.

Please do not be confused about the gospel. If a person denies the unique person and work of Jesus Christ, he cannot be a Christian. Jesus demands our total, undivided trust and allegiance.

John 5:23 He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.

John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

Acts 4:12 “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”

1 John 2:23 Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also.