Note

Text הַֽלְל֣וּ אֶת־יְ֭הוָה כָּל־גּוֹיִ֑ם שַׁ֝בְּח֗וּהוּ כָּל־הָאֻמִּֽים׃ כִּ֥י גָ֘בַ֤ר עָלֵ֨ינוּ׀ חַסְדּ֗וֹ וֶֽאֱמֶת־יְהוָ֥ה לְעוֹלָ֗ם הַֽלְלוּ־יָֽהּ׃ Textual Issues There are no real text issues here. Psalms 113, 115, 116, and 117 all end in “hallelujah” (הַֽלְלוּ־יָֽהּ). Psalms 111, 112, and 113 also begin with hallelujah. The Septuagint moves this phrase to the beginning of the following chapter. Psalm 117 begins with “hallelujah” instead of ending with “hallelujah”. This is an obvious mistake and should be rejected. The MT reading is preferred. ...

London Baptist Confession Table of Contents Of God and the Holy Trinity Paragraph 3 In the modern evangelical world, this is probably one of the more controversial paragraphs. At issue is the relation of the persons within the single Being of God. The traditional orthodox understanding of begetting and procession are key trinitarian distinctions. I think we jettison this language at our peril. We should bring these terms back into our theological preaching. ...

London Baptist Confession Table of Contents Of Gods decrees Paragraph 2 Seems an uneccesary distinction. God knows all possible worlds but chose decreed this world unconditionally. This strikes me as hairsplitting. On the one hand, yes God knows all things and all potentialities. On the other hand, there are no other potentials. The world exists as God decreed it. Paragraph 3 The focus on angels here and in a few other places, strikes me as interesting. While angels are not outside the sovereignty of God, the Scriptures deal with the salvation and decrees of humanity, not of the angels. Biblically speaking, the Bible does not speak of the election to salvation of angels. Angels are not saved in the sense that humans are. ...

London Baptist Confession Table of Contents Of the Holy Scriptures Paragraph 1 I appreciate the logic that is presented about revelation in point one. Natural revelation is there pointing us to God, but it is insufficient for a true knowledge of God and salvation. Therefore, God has revealed himself out of his own good will in various ways for the good of his people. But due to the corruption, he has commited the message to writing. ...

London Baptist Confession Table of Contents Preface Says very little with a lot of words. One thought here in our context, we are in an international church. Many of the people in our church speak English as a second language. The LBC is tough to read for a lot of native speakers.

Intro The church we are attending in Estonia, Grace Bible Church , that uses the Second London Baptist Confession as their statement of faith. I really appreciate a church using a historic confession. It keeps you grounded in the historic faith and connects you to a line of believers. In general, I think it is a bad idea for a church to draft their own statement of faith. It tends to be idiosyncratic and too narrow (both in failing to address things that it should and addressing things that it shouldn’t). ...

Linking Toc In My Docs This is a Hugo site. The nice thing about that for me is that all of my blog pages are written in markdown files. It makes it really portable and easily searchable. If I want to change something programatically, I can grep throught it all and do a find and replace in vim. Since it’s markdown, I can add any html that I need if I want to get fancy. ...

Zadokite Priesthood Gerizim Temple Sanballat Temple Mortgages in Ptolemaic Dynasty