A mass of people are gathered at a bus stop marked “Planet Earth.” Along comes the Celestial Bus marked “Destination Heaven.” It pulls up and stops. The driver, who is God, opens the door, and says, “All destined for heaven get on board.” A number do. A missionary couple who with zeal have served Christ all their lives start on and God says, “Step aside. You haven’t been chosen to ride this bus.” A couple of infants start on and God tells them to step aside. Persons who from youth have loved and ministered in Christ’s name are told to step aside. As the bus is about to depart and the door is closing God says to those not on board, “Catch the next bus.” “No,” they plead, “here comes the next bus and it is driven by Satan and marked ‘Destination Hell.’”
   “Sorry,” says God. “I didn’t choose to save you. Your love and commitment to Jesus doesn’t matter.”

   AT a time appointed by and acceptable to God, those whom God has predestinated to life are effectually called by His Word and Spirit out of the state of death in which they are by nature, to grace and salvation by Jesus Christ. Their minds are given spiritual enlightenment and, as those who are being saved, they begin to understand the things of God. God takes away their heart of stone and gives them a heart of flesh. He renews their will, and by His almighty power He sets them to seek and follow that which is good, at the same time effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ. And to all these changes they come most freely, for they are made willing by divine grace.

Archbishop James Ussher (1581-1656), author of the newly reprinted "Annals of the World," wrote his Body of Divinity in a way that would make it useful to the family. Long out of print, used copies regularly bring $400.00 and more on the used market. This edition is newly typeset and will be a smyth-sewn hardcover volume with a full color dusty jacket that will endure for generations. A new Introduction by Dr. Crawford Gribben and a complete Bibliography on Ussher make this the most valuable edition ever produced.

You guys have spent the past years attempting to convince the evangelical world that your form of Calvinism is the only true preaching of the Gospel. We do not believe that.

You believe one must be a Calvinist or an Arminian. I am neither. I am a Free Church, General Atonement, Sandy Creek, congregational polity, Southern Baptist.

   It caught my eyea small booklet, tucked in the fold of a chair in the corner. I normally wouldn't have seen it, but it was sticking out just enough to be seen. I picked it up. The blue-and-white cover bore the title, Devotions in Honor of Our Mother of Perpetual Help. I thumbed through the booklet, scanning a few of the prayers it contained. My eyes caught a line about my eternal salvation, so I backed up and started from the beginning:

   O Mother of Perpetual Help, thou artthe dispenser of all the goods which God grants to us miserable sinners, and for this reason he has made thee so powerful, so rich, and so bountiful, that thou mayest help us in our misery. Thou art the advocate of the most wretched and abandoned sinnerswho have recourse to thee. Come then, to my help, dearest Mother, for I recommend myself to thee. In thy hands I place my eternal salvation and to thee do I entrust my soul. Count me among thy most devoted servants; take me under thy protection, and it isenough for me. For, if thou protect me, dear Mother, I fear nothing; not from my sins, because thou wilt obtain for me the pardon of them; nor from the devils, because thou are more powerful than all hell together; nor even from Jesus, my Judge himself, because by one prayer from thee he will be appeased. But one thing I fear, that in the hour of temptation I may neglect to call on thee and thus perish miserably. Obtain for me, then, the pardon of my sins, love for Jesus, final perseverance, and the grace always to have recourse to thee, O Mother of Perpetual Help.

   At first I could not believe what I had just read. So I ran back through the last few lines. Was this prayer really saying that the petitioner did not fear his or her sins, the devils, and Jesus?? Thats what it said. I shook my head in disbelief.
   A few years later I found myself in a radio studio in Boston, Massachusetts, doing a radio discussionwith a former Protestant turned Roman Catholic named Gerry Matatics. The topic was Mary and the saints. Mr. Matatics and I were scheduled to do two public debates at Boston College over the course of the next week. But today we were live on the air taking calls on the subject of prayers to Mary and the saints. As I packed for the trip I found the little blue and white booklet and decided to bring it along. Now I reached into my bag and brought it out. Surely quoting this prayer would bring a strong reaction from Mr. Matatics. Surely hed deny that such a prayer is proper, and that the people who had written it were just going overboard in their piety. The talk show host involuntarily gasped as I read the final lines, and as I put down the booklet I looked across at my opponent, waiting for the expected reaction. The host, likewise, turned to Mr. Matatics. He was quiet for a moment, and then spoke. "Mr. White," he began, "I can only hope that someday you, too, will pray that prayer."

Have you ever noticed that those who proclaim the centrality of the preaching of God’s Word over and above all else in the worship and life of the Church never really provide scriptural justification for their point in addition to assuming that what Paul did as an Apostle is somehow immediately relevant to the ministry of your everyday pastor?

Your assumption (like those of the radical baptistic presbyterian David King) that Paul’s role as an Apostle is to be seen in his successors is nothing other than that–an assumption. There is no biblical passage or other relevant data to force us to conclude that we should look at the issue similarly. Aside from that, as ‘the Foolish Sage’ has pointed out so nicely, reading back the centrality of preaching as some do it today into the actions of the Apostle Paul is incredibly anachronistic and amounts really to special pleading on the part of those who are so convinced of this doctrine.

   Reformed preaching, as it stands on the whole, whether baptistic or Presbyterian wise (which isn’t too far apart), bores me silly.
   It lacks imagination, epic, and myth because the Word has stagnated into words about Jesus. It has stopped being foolish and has taken on downright sensible and rationalistic tones to feed, not the soul of man, but the brain of man. The didactic dimensions of the prophetic enterprise of the pulpit needn’t degrade into lookup tables and algebra: we must recapture the fantasy in preaching.