Apologies for being AWOL, but Monday the phones went out at my hotel, and that put me way behind. I’ve been updating PowerPoint presentations, one for tonight on the Witnesses (did you know their baptism rate continues to decline, down 20% since 1999?) and then a pretty much fully new presentation for the American Bible Society on Saturday. Google’s image search sure was helpful in tracking down new images for that KJV presentation! I have now incorporated two great Gail Riplinger clips, including her explanation of “Acrostic Algebra” as well (for those who don’t go back as far as the ol’ Gail Riplinger days, you might want to listen to this). If there is anyone left to see it (I’m the last one to speak), they should find it at least mildly interesting.
There have been some comments made over the past few days that just beg for reply (no, I’m not talking about the mockery of the perspicuity of Scripture, nor the importance and centrality of exegesis, nor the constant straw-man dishonesty of some of the more radical NCRs [New Counter Reformationists, my thanks to David King for the terminology]), especially about what it means to practice “radical biblicism” and what Paul was saying in Galatians chapter five. But it may be a few days before I can get to those things, as the celebration of the beginning of the translation of the KJV begins tomorrow, my wife arrives, we celebrate our twenty second wedding anniversary in Manhattan, and hence, well, priorities are priorities. But for your reading pleasure, I offer the following from William Cunningham (as cited just today by Pastor King in another context):
And we find in the Reformers in discussing these matters with their Romish opponents, accommodated themselves to this mode of putting the case; and having thus adult baptism chiefly in their view, were led sometimes to speak as if they regarded baptism and regeneration as substantially identical. They certainly did not mean to assert or concede the popish principle, of an invariable connection between the outward ordinance and the spiritual blessing, for it is quite certain, and can be conclusively established, that they rejected this. …They never intended to teach baptismal regeneration, and they have said nothing that appears to teach it, or that could be supposed to teach it, by any except those who were utterly ignorant of the whole course of discussion of these subjects as it was then conducted. The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust), pp. 248, 249
