Salvation and...

Recently some erroneous and misleading information has been circulated about my doctrinal beliefs, and by association, the beliefs of Cornerstone Bible Church, on our Soteriolgy (The doctrine of Salvation). Whether it was passed out in ignorance or maliciousness I am unaware, and I decided not to publicly dignify these allegations with a response. However, as gossip tends to do, it has apparently been circulated and therefore I wanted to clarify for anyone who might have questions.

Since I was not contacted beforehand to find out if what was circulated was true, and therefore I have not seen what was actually written, I can only comment on what has been reported to me.

The false information, to my understanding, states that we in some way associate eternal salvation with having children. This is no way reflects our belief or doctrine. Nowhere in any of my writing or teaching can you find this assertion, nor have I verbally stated anything of that nature. This is a false and slanderous statement.
Since we adhere to scripture, our belief is that salvation comes by grace alone through faith in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ shed blood (Hebrews 9:22)on the cross (Ephesians 2:8-9; John 3:16; Romans 6:23; John 14:6). It is that simple.

We are deeply saddened that anyone would indicate to others that our belief in matters of justification is anything different, and even more saddened that someone would believe or share these false reports without first contacting us directly to find out whether or not they are true(Proverbs 26:20).

The beautiful comfort is that in all matters Jesus Christ is on the throne and He is merciful, gracious, just and righteous and He will be glorified.

May Christ bless you greatly today and may the Word of God and the Holy Spirit direct you in all things!

Thoughts on Education

My apolgies for not posting recently. I've been neck deep in school work.
I'm enjoying most aspects of it, except the humanist philosphies on education and human development. My classes are all online, which is a great way to go. It's not for the faint of heart. The workload is about 15-20 hours a week, and that's just for one class. I have been able to use the classroom as a witnessing opportunity. It's a great challenge, because it's masters level in education, so we're not dealing with dummies. I enjoy trying to share the gospel in a relevant and thought provoking manner, although I don't know that I'm very good at it. Here's a sample post regarding developmental stages:

"I must confess, the various stages of psychosocial development, as defined by Erikson, are disconcerting to me. Because I am a Christian, I hold to a distinctly Biblical worldview of how children are to be trained and how they should develop. In other words, I believe that we are born with a sinful nature, so the natural tendency is to be defiant and selfish. I don't believe that the best way to help children develop emotionally and socially is to surround them with other rebellious and selfish children. For the most part, they learn to develop in a manner that is acceptable to their peer group rather than what is best for them. It's no wonder that teens want to experiment with drugs, sex and alcohol when most of their friends are pressuring them into it. Especially when studies would seem to indicate that kids with the strongest family bonds have the higher ability to reject peer pressure. Doesn't that tell us something? That maybe the expectation for kids to rebel against authority wouldn't be as strong if parents would foster an accepting yet definitive behavior pattern within the home? That is why I not only have difficulty with the notion, "Oh, they're just teenagers, they're going to rebel", I flat out reject it! Throughout the course of history, we haven't had the problem of adolescent peer pressure at any time like we do now because in times past, the social expectation was that when you reached that age you were expected to be responsible. We are going to rebel (at any age) because we are by nature sinners and our instinct is to do wrong."

Surprisingly, the feedback has been, for the most part, very positive.