Husband, father, grandfather; Calvary La Mirada OPC (RE); MA Biblical Counseling 1983 Grace Theological Seminary, Ps 25:14
Joined September 2021
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Bingo! Give the man a cigar
If Romans 8:1 and "no condemnation now" is an eschatological settled present matter because of the finished work of Christ, then how is it that a so-called "final salvation" is dependent on my good works? a.co/d/0dHlnhrp
Jack Miller retweeted
1689 has turned Abraham's star into a flickering ember.
Its confession says it plainly: the covenant of grace is "revealed in the gospel; first of all to Adam in the promise of salvation by the seed of the woman, and afterwards by farther steps, until the full discovery thereof was completed in the New Testament." Revealed at every step, established at none — established, on 1689 federalism's development of those words, only in the New Covenant, the covenant of grace formally constituted in Christ's blood. Under that filing Abraham's star can announce a fire. It cannot be one.
Two texts refuse the filing. Paul calls the Abrahamic covenant "ratified by God" — confirmed beforehand — and rules that the law, arriving centuries later, does not annul it (Gal 3:17). A ratified covenant is a constituted covenant; the inheritance runs on it, not on a later enactment that replaces it. And the Hebrews contrast the filing leans on is aimed elsewhere: the new covenant is "not like" the covenant made with the fathers when God took them out of Egypt (Heb 8:9). That covenant is Sinai. Set beside Sinai, the new covenant stands in Abraham's line — the ratified promise arriving at its fullness, the old national administration set aside.
Establishment language does not wait for Abraham either. The first "I will establish my covenant" in Scripture is spoken to Noah (Gen 6:18). The covenant of grace was established, ratified, and administered from the garden's edge. It was never an announcement awaiting a constitutive act, and its grace was never retroactive.
An ember is what you call a flame you have decided not to see. The star was never flickering. The filing is.
#Romans11 #CovenantTheology #MeredithKline #AbrahamicCovenant
Jack Miller retweeted
Wisdom in Times of Illness, Grief, or Loss
It is often hard to know what to say or what to do when someone you know experiences sickness, suffers a loss, or faces death. Thankfully, our fathers in the faith have thought long and hard about what to say
kimriddlebarger.com/the-ridd…
Must be a Coen brothers film…
"a nearly three-hour Elizabeth Holmes documentary is the #1 movie in the country." worldofreel.com/blog/2026/10…
Jack Miller retweeted
Read Barnabas, Justin, & Irenaeus. They taught the same covenant theology as Bullinger & Calvin. They didn't oppose Baptists & Anabaptists because there weren't any!
So, no, they didn't explicitly tie covenant to baptism but they did baptize babies and they did teach one covenant of grace, multiple administrations.
It's like arguing that Ignatius didn't teach the Trinity bec he didn't use anti-Arian rhetoric.🤦🏻♂️
Jack Miller retweeted
The Law says, “Do this and live.” The Gospel says, “Christ has done it. Believe and live.” If you don't get this, you don't get the Reformation. And you don't get the Gospel.
Jack Miller retweeted
“First, the Covenant of Works with Adam was a covenant of works. Recent discussion distorted this simple truth. There is no grace in this first covenant. Sin had not yet entered human history. There is no demerit for redemptive grace to be applicable. Others have suggested a different use of “grace” to describe God’s beneficence to Adam in the covenant. They argue that the promise is not merited by the obedience of Adam. They maintain that the unmerited nature of the sanction makes it grace. This abstraction obfuscates the actual reality. Just as the disobedience of Adam warrants the unending just wrath of the King, the covenant obedience of Adam warrants the glorification in the royal temple of God. To deny the latter is to deny the former. Finally, the question is not one of merit, but of covenant justice. The legal covenant promises the blessing sanction upon fulfillment of the stipulations of the covenant. It is a matter of strict justice for the King to deliver on what was promised if the stipulation is met. It is precisely a covenant of works because the blessing is contingent upon fulfillment of the stipulation. The sanctioned blessing is merited by obedience to the stipulation.”
a.co/d/0bAXWbt9
Jack Miller retweeted
Excellent deep dive 3-part presentation of the case for Reformed Covenantal Infant Baptism taught by our pastor, Rev. Martin Emmrich:
1) sermonaudio.com/sermons/5525……
2) sermonaudio.com/sermons/5122……
3) sermonaudio.com/sermons/5192……
Everything or nothing. Christ no part-way Savior.
Jack Miller retweeted
COMMON SENSE: When I watched Katie Zacharias's press conference, like so many, I felt uncomfortable about her performance. Obviously, with her being under a great deal of pressure, she didn't fare well. I felt badly for her.
What I didn't expect was the avalanche of hostile criticism from not only the media, but also from nearly everyone else. In my opinion, the intensity of the malice was undeserved. It was so bad that I suspect Zacharias will have difficulty getting over it.
Her self-worth may even suffer. Not everybody is built to sustain such criticism.
From my own personal experience, I can attest to exactly what it feels like to be constantly bombarded with criticism. Rarely does a day go by when I am not attacked by Woke Leftists and even by friends. America certainly does not lack in its number of mean-spirited people.
I don't mind though. I can handle it. Clearly, Katie Zacharias couldn't. She has been treated worse than the woman who murdered her three children.
I wish Zacharias well. She wasn't a good fit, but she deserved better treatment than she received.
—Jack Watts
amazon.com/Thirty-Years-Sobe…
A cosmopolitan lot! Apparently, from every kindred, every tribe…
“In related news, yesterday the Carolina Journal reported, “10 noncitizens indicted for lying about citizenship, illegally voting.” The ten, who “appeared in shackles before a magistrate judge,” included “three natives of Germany, two of Jamaica, and one each of Canada, Haiti, Panama, the former Yugoslavia, and an illegal alien from El Salvador.””
- Coffee and Covid ( @jchilders98 )
Paul was always a bit goofy-phoophie
people.com/paul-mccartney-cl…
Technological advancement…
There is a mountain of unworn clothes in the driest desert on earth, large enough to be photographed from space. It grows by 39,000 tons a year and almost none of it will ever rot.
The Atacama, in northern Chile, is a place where it may not rain for a decade. On its edge is a duty-free port called Iquique. Every year about 59,000 tons of clothing arrives there from Europe, America and Asia. It is last season's stock that never sold, and the bags people leave at charity shops.
Dealers pick through it for anything they can resell across South America. Two thirds of it is worthless. Nobody will pay to ship it back out, so lorries drive it into the desert at night and tip it.
The local landfill refuses to take it. The reason given is that the clothing does not biodegrade and is full of chemicals. Most of it is polyester, which is plastic, and in a place with no rain and no soil life it will lie there for centuries. Some of it is set alight, and the smoke drifts over a town of 100,000 people.
In 2025 a Chilean court ruled that the dumps had done serious damage to the land.
For most of history this could not have happened. Clothes were wool, linen and leather. They were worn out, handed down and patched, and at the very end a rag merchant paid for the scraps. In Yorkshire, from 1813, old woollens were shredded and spun into new cloth. Anything left went on the fields, where wool breaks down in months and feeds the grass.
Nobody ever had to find a desert for worn-out wool. We invented a fabric that cannot die, and then we started making it to be thrown away.
Jack Miller retweeted
Elon Musk, Starlink, and Starshield are being wrongly attacked overnight and Wednesday over a new speed limit SpaceX placed on moving Starshield terminals in Ukraine.
Starlink is the civilian satellite internet service and its consumer terminals. Starshield is the separate military-grade system with hardened terminals, built and operated for the U.S. government.
Ukrainian leaders and officials are criticizing Musk. They claim SpaceX applied a roughly 100 mph limit to moving Starshield terminals overnight without warning. Above that speed the terminals drop connection for 10–20 seconds, disrupting some mid-range and interceptor drone missions. There’s a good reason for that. Neither was ever intended for real-time weapons guidance.
Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski asked if Musk was playing politics again. Zelensky posted this morning complaining about overnight Russian strikes and demanding stronger U.S. action. Ukraine should be thanking Musk and Trump instead of complaining. Musk isn’t playing politics. He limits the wrongful use of either system by anyone.
Starlink is supposed to help save people, not attack them. It was provided as civilian and humanitarian internet after Russia’s invasion so people could stay connected when Ukraine’s infrastructure was destroyed. It was never intended for guiding offensive strikes, yet that’s what Ukraine has been doing. They’ve also been misusing Starshield the same way. Stationary military communications is one thing. Mobile missile guidance is another and isn’t allowed.
Musk already made the distinction clear in May: Starlink for civilian usage and Starshield built and operated for the U.S. government. He said SpaceX tries hard to keep them separate, and civilian terminals were being improperly used for military purposes in violation of the terms of service. Starshield is meant for secure military communications. It was never supposed to be used to fire weapons.
Ukraine was misusing both for military missile guidance. Neither was ever intended for that. I’m glad SpaceX has taken steps to shut that down for anyone who tries.
The facts are also narrower than the claims. Starlink and Starshield don’t work inside Russia. Long-range strikes on Russian energy infrastructure use other systems. So Musk isn’t stopping Ukraine from carrying out their military goals.
SpaceX previously moved quickly to block unauthorized Russian use of terminals for offensive means. Russia still attacked Ukraine, but not with permission to use either system that way.
A technical limit is not deliberate sabotage. SpaceX controls the terms of the tools and services it owns and operates and doesn’t want them used as weapons.
SpaceX isn’t playing sides or politics. It’s enforcing its terms and its philosophy of using its tools and services to preserve peace. Anyone complaining about that is just interested in war.
Ukraine should use Starlink for saving people and peace like it was intended. Zelensky should end the war by negotiating a truce, then use Starlink to help Ukraine rebuild. He should use Starshield to keep military communications secure so Ukraine can better defend its people. That’s always been the intent. Treating basic ownership and operational limits as betrayal doesn’t match what SpaceX did. Rather it shows a lack of gratitude for the technological gifts Musk gave the people of Ukraine.
Lewis could not be reached for comment. Too busy rolling over in his grave…
Gerwig is an exceptionally talented film-maker. The aesthetic quality of the trailer is impressive. If all the trailers strike this note, it will be hard for all but the most resolved audiences to resist watching.
Personally, I enjoy the cosmic rock aesthetic. It might not be the best possible option, but it resonates with the world in which we live and is akin to Lewis's own tactic in the Cosmic Trilogy - the modern imagination is still alive when it comes to space and the psychedelic tones of rock; that's fine—we can use that living margin as a way to bring in a renewed experience of the divine.
However, I predict that, like Barbie, MN will be an well-made, incredibly attractive subversion of the cosmic order, rather than a renewal of it. The sci-fi style cosmic rock won't be used to introduce us to the transcendent Christ but to transgressive magic.
A few details in the film indicate the direction of the subversion:
- Diggory is a fearful, passive dough-boy while Polly is attractive, lively, and adventurous. This is tired, typical feminist story-telling. God forbid an active, adventurous boy be shown caring about his mother and capable of a sympathetic and redemptive narrative arc.
- Uncle Andrew is far too attractive. In a world waking up to occult magic, where libraries feature books for kids on how to be a real witch, I am concerned that the film will portray him as sympathetic and his quest to unlock magical powers as something to imitate.
Based off background interviews, I believe the goal of the Lewis Estate and Gerwig is to strip Narnia of its Christianity, leaving only an attraction to the vaguely magical.
- The Wood Between the Worlds is a jungle, unlike the Sequoia-style peaceful wood of the book. This indicates a more pagan vision of the world as chaos rather than Lewis's medieval vision of a cosmic order. This is a minor detail and may be of no real significance.
- We still haven't seen or heard Aslan, but the lyrics land on "SHE'S buying a stairway to heaven" the moment when HIS outline appears, and we get a close up of Polly's face first.
It seems to me that all signs still point to an Aslan more befitting an acid-fueled rager during pride month than the Narnia of Lewis.
Jack Miller retweeted
Except that baptism isn’t an “appointment” exclusive to the new covenant. We see baptism in Gen 3:24, Gen 6-9, Exodus 14, Josh 3, and Christ’s crucifixion. And all of these could be considered circumcisions just as easily as they are considered baptisms. And the cross was both a baptism and a circumcision. And then read Romans 4, where it is made clear that circumcision signifies the same exact thing as baptism, and Abraham receives a “believers circumcision” and yet Abraham is commanded to administer circumcision to 8 day old infants! And despite all of these connections, the apostles are silent as to a proscription of infant baptism!! And add to this the historical evidence that Baptism was the practice of the early church. Not to mention the fact that Jewish believers would have revolted had they been told that their infant children could not receive the sign of the covenant!