Quotations

Today I added a quotations page to my website–https://tonyhepp.com/quotations/. The one that struck me the most was David Chilton’s “Modern theologians are like a pack of dogs who spend most of their time sniffing each other’s behinds.” Related, I tire of seeing professing Christians post banal statements by today’s church “leaders” that are proffered as wise and profound. The comment is almost always elementary and wrapped in a pithy locution. The average nine-year-old boy living 200 years ago would read these “theologian” memes; roll his eyes; and say, “Uh, yeah; I knew that when I was six years old.” Grow up boys and girls. Get busy living for Jesus instead of masturbating with stale, shallow advice from Paul Washer, James White, etc.

Presumptive Regeneration

Are you aware of the doctrine of presumptive regeneration?  If not, I encourage you to learn it and how to soundly refute it.  It is certainly a heresy. 

In early 2020 my family and I listened to the sermon below by Joe Morecraft, a man for whom I have great respect and admiration.  I am very thankful for his ministry.  He is in my top ten list of living preachers.  Even so, he is just a man, a fallen man.  Therefore I must warn my brothers and sisters in Christ when he (and others) publicly preaches an egregious error like the doctrine of presumptive regeneration.

Biblical Baptism

Because the New Covenant differs in radical ways from the Abrahamic Covenant and the subsequent covenants that Yahweh made with the biological descendants of Abraham.  The clearest passage is Jeremiah’s foretelling of it in chapter 31:31-34 of his book (cf. Ezek 36:26ff). 

“Behold, days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares Yahweh.  “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares Yahweh, “I will put my law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know Yahweh,’ for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares Yahweh, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

Every member/beneficiary of the New Covenant knows Yahweh savingly and is therefore forgiven.  No exceptions.  Ergo, only those who evidence this saving knowledge of Yahweh should be considered New Covenant members.  Hence only believers are to receive the signs of New Covenant membership—baptism and communion.   

My wife and I rear our children according to the law of God and we command our children to obey it, all the while knowing that they cannot and will not want to obey it until they are born again, i.e., become members/beneficiaries of the New Covenant.  New Covenant membership, as Hal Brunson often said rightly, is based on grace, not race.  Pedigree, ethnicity, or one’s seed line is absolutely irrelevant with the inauguration of the New Covenant.  The true, ultimate seed of Abraham has always been Jesus (Gal 3:16).  Now, the true sons of Israel/Isaac are those who have faith and those alone; see Romans 2:24-25 and Galatians 3:29.  Being the offspring of a Christian parent is now absolutely irrelevant. 

For more on this vital topic, I commend to you Alan Conner’s Covenant Children Today: Physical or Spiritual? and Gentry and Wellum’s Kingdom Through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants.  The former book is hard to beat for its length. 

Mazda Miata Model from My Boy

For my Christmas present this year, my nine-year-old son, Elijah, made a clay model of my 2011 GT for me. Do you see the Mazda logo in the front view photo? Ha! He and his older sister are standing in front of the car in one of these pics, when I picked it up from my auto detailer last week.

Christmas 2022

For many years the current holy day known as Christmas has been a double-edged sword for me. On one hand I despise its pagan origins; economic materialism; and the inordinate amount of time that professing Christian pastors devote to the story of the incarnation. On the other hand, I love many of the associated hymns and songs; the sheer delight of my children as they open presents; the scrumptious food and drink that my amazing wife makes; and the reminder that the one and only God of the universe became flesh and died for me and all his elect.