Husband. Father. Pastor. PNW native. Christian missionary to rural Japan. Opinions are my own. https://teapawt.net/t.co/DlRQPpLsMi .
Wakayama, Japan
Joined December 2008
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Ian Smith retweeted
Those who believe grace means God’s law no longer applies rarely end up free of law.
They simply replace it with man-made laws, often built on someone’s perception of the "idols of the heart."
Ian Smith retweeted
If you're a pastor who preaches God's Word without compromise and speaks the truth even when it's hard, you'll eventually be the villain in someone's story.
You have to be ok with that.
Ian Smith retweeted
Just as the devil seeks to cultivate a war between the sexes, so he seeks to cultivate a war between the generations. Yet stable, lasting things cannot be built without men and women and old and young working together. This is one of the Bible’s basic assumptions. You see it in the fifth commandment, the household codes, and the creation mandate itself.
Throughout Scripture, God deals with families and generations, not isolated individuals. Generational hostility is destructive because it cuts against the grain of how God made the world.
Ian Smith retweeted
At the SBC pastor's conference, @WillyRice gave a timely word about Christian faithfulness to God's word over the allure of pragmatism.
It's worth 30 minutes of your time. Watch it and be edified.
Ian Smith retweeted
Rosaria Butterfield on why Charlie Kirk was assassinated and why as a Christian you should not take your marching orders from Phil Vischer:
"Charlie Kirk died...because of two reasons: Number one, he said things people didn't like, and number two, he championed Christian conservatism and he highlighted the moral bankruptcy of leftist progressivism.
If you tell me, like Phil Vischer of VeggieTales, that the problem is political polarization, the solution is coming to the middle...The problem is not political polarization, but that Christians are accommodating lies...
The progressive left and true Christianity are not morally equivalent. We don't bring the light to the darkness by meeting in the middle. We defy lies, and we tell the truth."
Ian Smith retweeted
You could read Beowulf today. You could just do that. It only takes a couple hours, and once you've finished, your ears will forever ring with the clamor of battle and the roar of the feasting hall.
ALT Tolkien's translation of Beowulf
Ian Smith retweeted
Shakers, Cathars, Manichaeans, Bogomils, ascetic Gnostics, Encratites, Marcionites... it's almost hard to find an early Christian heresy that *didn't* take a harder line on celibacy than the orthodox
Ian Smith retweeted
I have LOVED using this new study Bible, so I’m going to give one away.
🚨 GIVEAWAY! 🚨
Just do these simple things to enter…
1️⃣ Follow me ( @JoshuaBarzon )
2️⃣ Share this post
3️⃣ Comment below with your favorite book of the New Testament! 💬👇🏼
Picking the winner on Friday!
Ian Smith retweeted
Fantastic article by @herandrews on The Great Feminization.
"Everything you think of as “wokeness” is simply an epiphenomenon of demographic feminization... Everything you think of as wokeness involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition."
It's why there's a chapter in The Sin of Empathy called "Feminism: Queen of the Woke."
"All of us depend on a functioning legal system, and, to be blunt, the rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female. The rule of law is not just about writing rules down. It means following them even when they yield an outcome that tug at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense of which party is more sympathetic."
"Feminization is not an organic result of women outcompeting men. It is an artificial result of social engineering, and if we take our thumb off the scale it will collapse within a generation."
Ian Smith retweeted
Evangelical political "engagement" is nothing but moral reaction to the news cycle. They create nothing of their own. They have no independent existence. They are passive, reactive, and mentally captured. When alone they cease to exist.
Ian Smith retweeted
If Eric Liddell can skip the Olympics because it’s the Lord’s day, your seven-year-old is probably okay skipping soccer practice to go to church.
Ian Smith retweeted
Many confuse Jesus’ words, “Love your enemies,” with a command to yield to all evil. Jesus said, "Love your ekthroi", those enemies who personally wrong you; a slanderer, persecutor, or offender. Show him mercy, forgive, and pray. (Matt 5:44; Luke 6:27).
The polemios, though, is the warring enemy--the one who attacks your people or seeks to destroy your household and order (Luke 14:31; Heb 10:27).
Jesus is not commanding affection toward invading armies or surrendering the sword to a polemios.
The magistrate “does not bear the sword in vain” (Rom 13:4), and Nehemiah told the people, “Fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes” (Neh 4:14).
This distinction keeps us from collapsing personal ethics and civil ethics.
We forgive our ekthroi (personal enemies) but oppose and resist our polemioi (national enemies) for love of our neighbors (Lev 19:18; Luke 10:27).
Christ calls us to personal mercy without civic cowardice.
Love your enemies without aiding evil (Rom 12:17–21; Ps 97:10).
Private virtue must never become public abdication.
ht: @RonDodson
Ian Smith retweeted
Pornography is satanic discipleship.
It grieves God,
encourages abuse,
destroys marriages,
funds sex trafficking,
corrupts consciences,
demeans image-bearers,
and exploits people rather than honor them.
Resist the temptation and flee to Jesus.
Ian Smith retweeted
William Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake for translating the Scriptures into English for the common man, on this day, October 6th, 1536.
His final words were, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes!”
This man is one of the main instruments God used to make it so that you could hear and read the Bible in English. He went willingly to the stake; we should go willingly to the Word preached and read. May God give us a burning zeal to both hear and proclaim His word like Tyndale!
Ian Smith retweeted
Make sure to read all the duties of the 9th Commandment.
Sins include—“undue silence in a just cause, and holding our peace when iniquity calleth for either a reproof from ourselves, or complaint to others” (WLC 145).
Perhaps the concern is the possible breaking of the 9th Commandment? Because, at minimum, the 9th requires—preserving the good name of our neighbor; a charitable esteem of them; desiring and rejoicing in their good name; sorrowing for and covering weaknesses; defending their innocence; ready receiving of good report; unwillingness to admit of evil report… other neighbor-loving things like that.
