06.14.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:17 pm by ebenezer
The History of Father’s Day
The first known celebration of Father’s Day was on July 5, 1908 in Fairmont, West Virginia, where it was commemorated at William Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South – now known as Central United Methodist Church. Grace Golden Clayton is believed to have suggested it to her pastor after a deadly explosion in nearby Monongah in December, killing 361 men.
It was also during a sermon in 1909 that Sonora Smart Dodd became inspired by Mother’s Day. After the death of her mother, Sonora and her siblings were raised by their father William Jackson Smart, a Civil War veteran. Sonora wanted to show how thankful she was to her father and, because William was born in June, she worked to have the first Father’s Day celebrated on June 19, 1910.
In 1924, President Coolidge recommended that Father’s Day become a national holiday. President Johnson designated the third Sunday of June to be Father’s Day in 1966. It was not until 1972 that President Nixon instituted Father’s Day as a national observance.
www.history.com/miniseries/fathersday
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04.25.08
Posted in Bruce at 10:40 am by ebenezer
A little girl asked her mother, ‘How did the human race appear?’
The mother answered, ‘God made Adam and Eve and they had children and so was all mankind made.’
Two days later the girl asked her father the same question.
The father answered, ‘Many years ago there were monkeys from which the human race evolved.’
The confused girl returned to her mother and said, ‘Mom, how is it possible that you told me the human race was created by God, and Dad said they developed from monkeys?’
The mother answered, ‘Well, dear, it is very simple. I told you about my side of the family and your father told you about his.’
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04.14.08
Posted in Bruce at 10:40 pm by ebenezer
Monday, April 14, 2008
Addendum -
This young woman finally made it home, though for just a short time, before she went into eternity. I never got to speak to her again. How I hope she realized her sinfulness and looked to Christ as her savior before she passed on from this life.
ba
I visited today [09-04-07] a young lady (young compared to me) in the hospital. She is suffering from a very aggressive cancer. Her outlook is not that great. I spoke to her concerning spiritual matters. The usual comment from her, “I believe in God.” I then spoke to her about her need (as well as all of us) of Christ. I spoke to her about her possible pending death and that she would either face eternity in Christ or on her own. I encouraged her to think about these things, prayed and then soon left.
Believeing in a soverign God sometimes makes it hard not to just grab someone and shake them and say to them, “Don’t you understand!” “You may soon be gone from this world - do not leave it outside of Christ!” Sometimes they do not understand. Yet we are still to warn and leave the understanding in God’s hands. This is when we need to trust the Lord emphatically. The young lady is hoping to go to her house soon (she has been in the hospital for 2 months now). I am hoping that the young lady will soon see her need of Christ as her Savior. May the Lord be pleased to bless in that manner.
ba
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04.10.08
Posted in Bruce at 2:09 pm by ebenezer
Dear …,
Regional Association Minister
I received an email today from Judson Press promoting Jeremiah Wright’s sermons. I am not sure what this extension - “the publishing arm of the National Ministries, American Baptist Churches USA” and its publisher, Laura Alden, hopes to accomplish by promoting any published works from this gentleman’s pen! It may be that only “sermon bites” are being used in the media, but that does not negate the fact that it was Jeremiah Wright who was making those offensive and very divisive remarks concerning this country and her citizens in the name of religion while in the church’s pulpit.
As a Christian, I was highly offended by Jeremiah Wright’s irreverent remarks when taking God’s name in vain! As an American, I was highly offended by Jeremiah Wright’s unpatriotic remarks when he blamed our government for the destruction brought about on 9-11! As a stepfather, who’s stepson is serving in the US Air Force, I can assure you that Jeremiah Wright’s right to his freedom of speech is being protected by young men and women like him who serve despite those individuals like Jeremiah Wright who disrepect the uniform that my stepson wears! As a man of a different race than Jeremiah Wright, I am highly offended that he has the audacity to accuse me, someone he does not know, as being a racist bigot who owes him because he is of a different race than I. Truly, somewhere this man - “of God” - has forgotten the second of the greatest commandments - “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jeremiah Wright’s actions show little love displayed at all towards those who are different than he.
As a pastor of an American Baptist Church and with their consent, I urge you as our Regional Association Minister of the Indiana-Kentucky Region Association and the Association to strongly condemn Judson Press and its publisher, Laura Alden, of their untimely and uncalled for promotion of such.
Pastor Bruce Allen
Underwood Baptist Church
Underwood, Indiana 47177
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Judson Press Offers Jeremiah Wright Sermons
of Hope, Joy, Strength
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In the wake of negative media attention surrounding the “sermon bites” of Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright Jr., Judson Press offers the more contextualized Good News! Sermons of Hope for Today’s Families and What Makes You So Strong? Sermons of Joy and Strength from its backlist. The larger context of Wright’s preaching can be placed in what Temple University Professor Molefi Kete Asante has called Afrocentrism (i.e., Africentrism). Wright, and other Africentrists, seek to bring together Christian theology and African culture in a meaningful way. (See Africentric Christianity: A Theological Appraisal for Ministry by J. Deotis Roberts, Judson 2000).
Contained in What Makes You So Strong? is “The Audacity to Hope,” the sermon from which presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama drew the title of his recent best-selling book.
Jeremiah Wright has long been part of a well-respected and leading group of African American preachers and authors associated with Judson Press, the publishing arm of National Ministries, American Baptist Churches USA. For a complete list of African American Christian resources from Judson Press, visit www.judsonpress.com.
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| Judson PressLaura Alden, Publisher800-458-3766
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02.29.08
Posted in Bruce at 12:00 pm by ebenezer
It seems appropriate that today should be my last at this blogsite because February 29 only occurs every four years. February 29 is the only true odd day of years. When you have your birthday on February 29 you are not sure when to celebrate the day. Do you celebrate on the 28th / on the 1st / or just every four years on the 29th? It is an awkward decision to make. Yet as awkward as it is the decision must be made.
I have decided to move to another host site. I have renamed the blog “Pilgrim’s Keyboard” located at: www.pilgrimskeyboard.blogspot.com.
I have enjoyed the interaction among some of the bloggers here with reformedblogs.com. I trust you will come by the new site | still under some on-going construction | and visit for awhile.
Bruce
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02.07.08
Posted in Quotes - Some Famous | Some Not So Famous at 1:12 pm by ebenezer
Hebrews 2:13
I will put my trust in Him.
If you put your trust in banks you could lose all your money. If you put your trust in Christ you will gain everything.
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02.05.08
Posted in Quotes - Some Famous | Some Not So Famous at 8:46 am by ebenezer
SPIRITUALITY AND THE HOLY SPIRIT’S WORK
If we ask the New Testament authors, “What is the nature of the Spirit’s work?” we receive a plethora of information. It is the Holy Spirit, for example, who is the one who makes God’s love real for us–”God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 5:5). In a sense, it is he who stands at the threshold of the Christian life, for only he can enable us to embrace Christ as Savior and Lord–”no one can say, “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3). Then, it is the Spirit who gives us the boldness to come into the presence of the awesome and almighty Maker of heaven and earth and call him “Dear Father”–”God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal. 4:6). It is the Spirit who enables believers, from various racial, social and religious backgrounds, to find true unity in Christ and together worship God (Eph. 2:18). In fact, without the Spirit, worship and the glorification of Jesus Christ cannot take place (Phil. 3:3). And it is the Spirit who is the true Guarantor of orthodoxy (2 Tim. 1:14).
An excellent summary statement of the range of the Spirit’s work is Galatians 5:25, which speaks so plainly about the Spirit as the Source from which we are to live our lives: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” The Spirit thus undergirds and empowers the entirety of our lives as Christians. To paraphrase John 15:5: apart from the Holy Spirit, we can do nothing of any true eternal value.
–Michael A. G. Haykin, THE GOD WHO DRAWS NEAR: AN INTRODUCTION TO BIBLICAL SPIRITUALITY, Webster, NY: Evangelical Press USA, 2007, xix-xx. ISBN-13 978-0-85234-638-9. www.evangelicalpress.org
[Gleaned from WQOTW@wqotw.org, downloaded 02/05/08]
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01.30.08
Posted in Bruce at 1:25 am by ebenezer
Femina (Nancy Wilson) wrote on 1-21-08 concerning her Bible reading schedule. Like her I too attempt to read at a regular schedule. A friend of mine (more like my spiritual father/mentor) encouraged me to read from both the OT & the NT daily. He was reading about 2 chapters each day from each testament. This sounded like a good idea and thought that I could incorportate it easily. However, over time I have found my self reading closer to 3 chapters daily from both the OT & NT. What this format does is allows me to read the OT about once a year and the NT over the same time period at three times a year. I start at Genesis and Matthew and read through each book respectfully thereafter. I have also taken up the challenge by Dr. David Jeremiah to read the Book of Proverbs each month. I look forward to this task. Happy reading!
Bruce
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01.25.08
Posted in Bruce at 12:02 pm by ebenezer
1. By conscience - man knows the difference between right/wrong
2. By religiousity - man needs to worship something greater than himself
3. By creation - just look and one knows that someone made all of this
4. By man’s soul - how wonderful the human body | man knows very well
5. By His Son - in these last days God has spoken to us by His Son
Are we listening? | Bruce
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01.23.08
Posted in Other Noteworthies at 11:17 am by ebenezer
A Legacy of Conviction and Courage
Wednesday, January 23, 2008 at 4:04 am ET
Dr. Albert Mohler, Jr. | www.AlbertMohler.com
The year was 1980 and the controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention was in full force. Adrian Rogers, pastor of the Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis has been elected SBC President just the previous June — setting the stage for what became known as the Conservative Resurgence in the denomination.
The issue of biblical inerrancy was front and center. Harold Lindsell, former editor of Christianity Today, had diagnosed the crisis of biblical authority in his 1976 book, The Battle for the Bible. Lindsell had identified theological liberalism within the Southern Baptist Convention (and among others as well) and a great number of Southern Baptists were sufficiently concerned to sound the alarm and mount a movement to elect conservative leaders who would return the denomination and its institutions to an affirmation of biblical inerrancy.
Conservatives had committed leadership in men such as Paige Patterson, then President of the Criswell Center for Biblical Studies in Dallas, and Judge Paul Pressler of Houston. The movement had a powerful theological voice in Paige Patterson, an organizational expert in Paul Pressler, a statesman preacher in Adrian Rogers, and a host of concerned pastors and laypersons. What is lacked was a corps of supportive seminary professors and a book that would set the record straight.
Both were badly needed. The argument against biblical inerrancy was dominant in the Southern Baptist establishment, and revisionist historians had pushed the idea that inerrancy was an essentially modern argument. This theory had been popularized in a book that was an assigned text in many seminary classrooms — The Authority and Interpretation of the Bible: An Historical Approach, by Jack B. Rogers and Donald K. McKim, published in 1979. Later, Russell Dilday, President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, would make virtually the same argument in his 1982 SBC doctrine study, The Doctrine of Biblical Authority.
Southern Baptists had lacked a book that would document the fact that biblical inerrancy was not a new idea at all, but the explicit affirmation of faithful Baptists throughout the Baptist experience. That book appeared in 1980 as Baptists and the Bible by L. Russ Bush and Tom L. Nettles — both young professors at Southwestern Seminary. Bush, a philosopher and apologist, and Nettles, a historian, documented their case and set the record straight. Their book was timely, urgent, controversial, and filled with ample documentation. It changed history — quite literally.
As Bush and Nettles argued:
This particular doctrine, the inspiration of Scripture, deserves special historical attention because of its inherent importance. Moreover, present-day Baptists have inherited the churches, associations, societies, agencies, and boards that were founded by men who held a particular, definitive view of history. Present-day Baptists, if only for the sake of tradition and historical identity, are under obligation to understand the view of Scripture that bolstered the founding of their vigorous and active institutional life. What did the Baptist forefathers mean by “the sole authority of Scripture?” Once that is determined, extreme caution should characterize any movement away from the position that has produced the basic and successful institutions of Baptist life.
Yet, Bush and Nettles offered far more than an argument from history, necessary as that argument is. They pointed to the biblical, theological, and epistemological foundations of biblical authority and biblical inerrancy.
While Baptists and the Bible set the historical record straight, the controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention continued for well over a decade. The Conservative Resurgence in the SBC eventually led to a transformation of the denomination and its institutions. We can now see that Baptists and the Bible was a critical part of the movement that led to that transformation.
Bush and Nettles were courageous and deeply committed. They set themselves against a bad argument that was nonetheless ensconced within the academy as conventional wisdom. They brought controversy upon themselves and risked their academic careers. Neither could imagine back then where their careers might end. Both risked a premature end to promising ministries of scholarship and teaching.
But Baptists and the Bible was not the end. Nettles now serves as Professor of Historical Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and is widely known through his writings and teaching. He continues the work of historical research and writing that was demonstrated in Baptists and the Bible. Russ Bush went on to serve as Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. Later, he would serve as Academic Vice President and as Director of the seminary’s Center for Faith and Culture.
Bush went to Southeastern Seminary when that school was in the early stages of a complete institutional transition. The Conservative Resurgence had reached Southeastern. Russ Bush served with distinction and courage. He continued his teaching and research and served with honor under three Southeastern presidents, Lewis Drummond, Paige Patterson, and Danny Akin.
Two years ago, Russ Bush was diagnosed with a life-threatening cancer. He fought bravely and provided for all a demonstration of how a Christian should face both disease and death. His faith in his Lord Jesus Christ was evident, even as his humility never faltered. He kept a brave face and refused to resign himself to a disease. He showed up at denominational meetings where healthy persons complained about boredom. He never complained.
He was seldom seen without his constant companion, Cynthia — his wife of almost 40 years. He was also seldom seen without a smile, as Cynthia cheered him and squeezed his arm.
Defining himself as a Baptist theologian, Bush had argued for a recovery of Baptist identity:
Who are the Baptists? We are a Bible-believing people who teach the New Birth, the priesthood of every believer, religious freedom, the gathered church, the sovereignty of God, salvation by Grace through Faith, the permanence of salvation, and the historicity and factual inerrancy of Holy Scripture. We baptize by immersion to symbolize the literal death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. We share the Lord’s Supper in order to remind ourselves of His flesh and blood offered as a sacrifice for our sin; and we do all of this by Faith as we await His soon return. Who are the Baptists? They are God’s faithful band of saints who seek above all to present Christ to the world.
Russ Bush finished his race on January 22, 2008. His death leaves Southern Baptists without his keen mind and his singular influence. He died as he lived — as a faithful disciple, minister, and apologist of the Christian Gospel.
In 2006, President Danny Akin announced the establishment of the L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture. Russ Bush retired from his administrative responsibilities and assumed responsibility for the center. He kept reading, teaching, and writing.
Just a few months before his death, he published an essay on the challenge of New Age beliefs. “Things simply are not what or how they used to be,” he explained. “World population is exploding. Technology is changing our lives before our very eyes. In a fifteen-year time span the Internet literally changed the way we do business, entertainment, shopping, and socializing. What will be next? Even youth (under twenty) hardly recognize the world in which we live today compared to the world in which they lived as a child.”
His confidence? “In Christ all the wisdom of God dwells bodily. In Him alone we find the way, the truth, and the life.”
We will all miss Russ Bush, but his legacy continues in those he taught and in all those he influenced through his life and writings, including Baptists and the Bible. That legacy demands our attention — and summons equal conviction and courage.
___________________
Southeastern Seminary posted the following information:
Tuesday evening, January 22, 2008, Dr. L. Russ Bush, SEBTS’ Academic Vice President and Dean of the Faculty Emeritus, went home to be with his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Dr. Bush was loved by us all at SEBTS, and by many others. God used him in a mighty way during his years of service to the Kingdom. We will be forever indebted to him. Please keep his wife and children in your prayers.
We rejoice that now he sees his Savior face to face, and we cherish the time that we had to serve along side of him.
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