A CREC 🧵

One thing I love about the CREC is the ethos of just doing stuff, of amateurism in the best Chestertonian sense of the word. It's been baked into the CREC from the beginning.

1/ "Hey we're three churches with a close connection who want greater denominational accountability, but some of us are credobaptist and some are paedobaptist so there's no denomination we can all join together.

Let's start our own."

2/

Immigrant vs sojourner 🧵

"Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as permanent residents." -from Wikipedia

1/ By contrast, a sojourner/stranger (גֵּר in Hebrew) was often a temporary resident, in the land to escape famine or war in their own land or to look for work, but with the intention of eventually moving on.

There were provisions for sojourners to stay which I'll mention below

2/

A follow up on the doxxing issue. Specifically why it's bad and why people who do it shouldn't be trusted.

One of my favorite stories about Robert E. Lee comes from his son. It happened when Lee was superintendent of West Point.

1/

https://twitter.com/TheRhetorRick/status/1856816129127125013

It was Lee's job to enforce the rules, but it was more important to him that his son not be a snitch.

It used to be understood that parents should teach their kids not to tattle. I'm not sure that's the case anymore.

2/

I normally try not to give this guy any attention, but this was such dumb thread I thought I would break it down breifly.

1/ He says that pais can't mean son here because Roman centurions were forbidden from marrying.

It's true that in the first two centuries centurions couldn't contract legal marriages. This didn't prevent a large number of them from living with a woman and having kids with her.

2/

Envision the worst sinner you can. Make him the most vile person imaginable. Serial killer? Serial rapist? Serial child molester?

Now imagine he hears the gospel, the Holy Spirit convicts him of sin, and he repents and looks to Christ's death on the cross to save him.

1/ At that moment, instantly, he is as clean in God's eyes as Christ Himself, as morally perfect and pure as Jesus, because all of his sins are laid to Christ's account and paid for by Christ's sacrifice, and all Christ's righteousness is laid to his account.

2/

Okay. I'll bite.

1. The best account for morality that atheism can provide is that it is a faculty evolved to promote the survival of the race. Which is to say it's not morality at all, but a simple pragmatic if/then. If we want the human race to continue, we shouldn't do X.

1/

https://twitter.com/lance_atheist/status/1737637608484901291

Unfortunately, that only works if a person is concerned about future generations. It has nothing to say to the determined hedonist who only cares about his own pleasure. It can't even say that he's actually wrong, only different.

2/

A New Christmas Song.

Trumpets blow, are you waitin'?
In Des Moines, I see Satan.
But I'm doing fine,
I'll leave my body behind,
Walking in a Gnostic Wonderland.

1/4 Those postmils are offensive.
They're so rude and dismissive.
Don't they know that we lose
To make way for the Jews?
Walking in a Gnostic Wonderland.

2/4

A true story I heard from a family I met. (And I bet there are many others like it.)

They were involved in starting a house church because they wanted to do church just like the early Christians did. No building, no creed, no senior pastor, etc...

1/6

https://twitter.com/TheRhetorRick/status/1728376524900835527

When they came together, they sang, they prayed, and various people brought messages from the Word.

And it grew. More people wanted to be part of this. So many more that they soon outgrew the house.

So they pooled their resources to rent a school gym to meet in.

2/6

Santa Claus🧵. This is going to be a *very* long one, so buckle up.

Before I start, I want to say that I mean no disrespect to my parents here. I have great Christian parents who raised me in the church, gave me a solid grounding in Scripture, and preached the gospel to me.

1/

https://twitter.com/TheRhetorRick/status/1724274633082306591

I’m just sharing my experience. I’m sure there are blind spots that I’ve had in raising my kids, and I hope they’ll be gracious with me when they’re grown. With that being said, here we go…

2/

About the history of Halloween:

Yes. We've all seen that Chick Tract about the evil pagan origins of Halloween. And, no, none of it is true. Here are some fun facts about the real history of Halloween as we know it today.

1/ - Halloween is a contraction of Hallows Eve, the eve of All Hallows Day/All Saints Day, a Christian holiday.

2/

Oh noes!
John Owen did a Christian Nationalism! Oh noes!
John Calvin did a Christian Nationalism!

#PrimacyOfPreaching🧵

The fellowship meal with God was the culmination of the peace offering, but cutting up the animal and burning the meat on the altar took way longer than eating the meal afterward.

1/ It's like when mom spends all day cooking the Thanksgiving meal and it's devoured in half an hour. No one would suggest that maybe mom should just spend less time or effort on the cooking.

2/

The goal of high school education should be to create self-learners who can hear and understand arguments and can have informed opinions. In other words, to form well-educated generalists.

1/ To the extent to which we've failed to do that, we have created a culture in which "expertise" in a subject is seen to be the prerequisite for being part of the conversation. "Shut up, pleb. I have a degree."

2/

All right, I'm going to engage in a little long-form tweeting/rambling which will tangentially on regeneration and pastoral counseling with some mild grumbling about the federal vision. When Isaac Watts wrote his wonderful logic textbook in 1725, he took over half the book to talk about things, concepts, and ideas, along with ways to categorize and define them in our minds. It was about 2/3 of the way through the book before he started talking about syllogisms.