Ignorance Is Not an Excuse

I found it interesting while reading through the Old Testament law that the commands that God gave His people He expected them to keep. Ignorance of the law was not an excuse. As soon as the person who had broken the law found out about it, he wasn’t given a freebie and told, “Since you didn’t know the law, it’s okay this time, but next time do better.” Instead, once the person found out that he had broken the law, he was required to make atonement for his transgression. I found that principle interesting. Though he acted in ignorance, he was still a transgressor who had to make atonement. Ignorance of God’s law was not an excuse from keeping it.

I pondered this principle for quite some time, thinking of the state of the church. There are so many people who profess to be Christians and yet, they don’t know God’s Word. They don’t study it. They are ignorant of what it says. One night while studying the Bible with my husband, I stumbled across something else that Christ said that seemed to further demonstrate this theme. In Luke 12, Christ tells His disciples a parable about a master returning to home to his servants from a wedding banquet, telling them to watch and be ready for their master’s return.

“The Lord answered, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the menservants and maidservants and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers. That servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows. But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” Luke 12:42-18

So 3 types of servants are briefly mentioned here:

1. The servant who knows and does his master’s will.
2. The servant who abuses his master’s absence and mistreats his fellow servants and becomes a drunkard.
3. The servant who does not know his master’s will and in ignorance does “things deserving punishment.”

Notice the fates of these servants:

1. The servant who knew and did his master’s will was rewarded.
2. The servant who knew and did not do his master’s will was severely punished.
3. The servant who did not know his master’s will and did not do it was also punished, albeit, lightly.

So that brings us back to main point of this post: ignorance is not an excuse. Those ignorant of God’s Word will be punished still.

God expects us, His servants, to know His will and requirements by studying His Word. Saying to God “but I didn’t know” when we have access to the Scriptures is completely inexcusable.

Let us study His Word so that we may do His will and be ready for the Master’s return!

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Does Christ’s Intercession Make Us Eternally Secure?

In the previous post entitled Is God Able to Keep People from Falling Away?, I posted the answer J.C. Thibodaux gave to TurretinFan on this topic in their debate about eternal security and the warning passages of Scripture. As the debate has continued, TurretinFan has asked JCT about how Christ’s intercession affects our salvation:

TurretinFan asks,

Given your comment, “God can do whatever He pleases within the range of His holy nature, nobody prevents Him,” is it pleasing and within the range of Christ’s holy nature to save to the uttermost those whom he wishes to save by making intercession for them?

Answer:

Most definitely. Just as the priests in the Old Testament made intercession for the people, so Christ eternally makes intercession for His, and is our Advocate with the Father if we sin, and the Mediator of the better covenant God has made with us. Unlike the Levitical priests which were imperfect and subject to death, Christ lives forever and is perfect, and so can save to the utmost, in contrast with the animal sacrifices by the Levite priests that could not. He being the sole way to God, our salvation wholly relies upon His mediation between ourselves and the Father. The question as far as the conditionality of salvation is concerned is not whether Christ makes intercession for us, but whether He’ll do so for one who departs from Him. He indicates that He won’t, as He states,

“But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 10:33, similar statement made in 2 Timothy 2:12)

Some may argue that Christ’s intercession will imperatively keep all genuine believers from apostatizing, but such an idea is not found in scripture. Indeed the fact that His confession of us before the Father is conditioned upon our confession of Him indicates conditionality. Others point to Christ’s prayer in John 17,

…keep through Your name those whom You have given Me… (John 17:11b)

The conditional nature of salvation comes to light when one considers that God keeps us through faith (1 Peter 1:5), which we are exhorted to hold fast to, and told that not all have done so,

Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck… (1 Timothy 1:19)

It must be noted that Paul does not distinguish the latter as some superficial, ineffectual form of faith; nor would the exhortation to hold to faith be coherent if no one with true faith could ever forfeit it. The theme of continuance in the faith of Christ as being necessary to our being forgiven runs throughout the New Testament, many wicked acts such as unforgiveness being incompatible with saving faith:

“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:14-15)

This sentiment is also reflected in the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18. When scriptural warnings (including the three in question) indicate consequences of damnation for believers who unrepentantly commit certain sins, taking them as serious and violable is not salvation “by works” as was erroneously insinuated in the opening statements –such actions necessarily reflect a heart no longer in union with Christ.

So Christ saving those He wishes to the uttermost by making intercession for them is perfectly in line with conditional security, since the only ones He will confess before the Father are those who hold fast to their confession of Him.

(posted with J.C. Thibodaux’s permission)

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Continuing the Story of “Nazi Germany” and their Persecution of Homeschool Families

Since J.C. Thibodaux wrote his article on Nazi Germany Alive and Kicking Kidnapping, we’ve come across even more information on the actions of the German state against homeschoolers.

A few cases of German injustice:
Melissa Busekros, a 15 year old (at the time) was seized by the state, SWAT style, diagnosed with “school phobia” because she was homeschooled and was subsequently placed in a mental hospital. In her mental diagnosis, the state also frowned on her obedience to her father and love for her family. A full version of the story can be viewed at Christian World News and World Net Daily; Christian World News has also published an exclusive interview with Melissa.

The Gorbers who had 6 of their children taken away in January and just recently regained the custody of their youngest child who is 3, for the crime of homeschooling. Though their children underwent psychiatric examination and all came out normal, the state refuses to return them, even with the father’s assurances to the court that he will enroll them in public school. HSLDA has published an article detailing this story.

The German state has declared homeschooling equivalent to child abuse and is trying Bert and Kathrin Brause with this crime for homeschooling their children. They face 2 years of prison time and the loss of their 8 children. Read this story at CBN News.

Klaus and Kathrin Landahl and their 5 children have fled the country, just barely escaping. When the mayor of their German town found out about them deregistrering their German citizenship so that they could leave that country and move to a country in which their homeschooling would be tolerated, he filed a lawsuit to take their custody of their children away. They have relocated to England. You can read about their story from CBN News and from LifeSiteNews.com.

Tilman, Dagmar Neubronner, and their children were informed by their lawyer that no further legal action could be taken and said “only jail and loss of custody are left”. Like the Landahls and many others, this family was also forced to flee Germany. Their story was also published by LifeSiteNews.com.

Interestingly enough, Germany also does not want non-Germans, such as missionaries homeschooling, denying the visas of missionaries like Clint and Susan Robinson. Germany also encourages its diplomats to use their state curriculum to homeschool their children. Thornton said, “Their officials are actually encouraged to home school and not put their children into American schools and into foreign schools.” (Taken from CBN News’ article Germany Declares War on Home-Schoolers.

Germany’s anti-Christian education:
CBN News also chronicled the kind of education public school students can expect in Germany:

“A Questionable Education

A lot of American Christians would have good reason not to want their kids subjected to German state schools. The sex education curriculum is often pornographic, even for young ages, and the occult is often celebrated.

Missionary Robinson told CBN News, ‘I know of schools right in our area where it’s not just mixed swimming but mixed showering after the swim class is over and mixed locker rooms and then they leave and go to the next class.’

German home-schooler Heiko Krautter told us he would be sinning to put his children in a state school.

He said, ‘These things in the school, the official state school, they destroy the children. And we teach the children in the things of God. And the people in the official school teach the children in other things, against God.’

Krautter fled Germany after this interview and took his family to Norway.

Thornton believes Germany’s war on home-schooling is just a part of Europe’s war against Christianity.

‘This is a battle to eradicate spiritual life from every person in Europe, to eradicate spirituality and Christianity from the culture,’ he said.

And the unfortunate victims in this battle are the families who believe educating their children is their God-given right.”

A copy of the German law

For those interested in reading the German law against homeschool families for themselves, Educating Germany has posted a copy of it in both German and in English on their site. Educating Germany is a website that is devoted to the plight of homeschool families in Germany; they have also published an address that readers can send welcome home gifts and encouragement to David Gorber:
David Gorber
Max-Mutscheller-Str. 2
88662 Überlingen
Germany

Contact information:

Life Site News has given contact information in this article to those interested in letting their voice be heard.

To contact the German embassies in Canada and the United States.
In Canada:

German Embassy
1 Waverley Street
Ottawa, ON, K2P 0T8
Tel.: 613-232-1101 Fax: 613-594-9330
Email: germanembassyottawa@on.aibn.com

In the US:

German Embassy
4645 Reservoir Road NW
Washington, DC, 20007-1998
(202) 298-4000
The embassy can be e-mailed from its website: http://www.globescope.biz/germany/reg/index.cfm

To express concerns to German authorities:

President of the Federal Republic of Germany
11010 Berlin
Germany
Telefon: +49 30 20 00-0
Fax: +49 030 20 00-19 99
E-Mail: Bundespraesident.Horst.Koehler@bpra.bund.de

Chancellor
Angela Merkel
Willy-Brandt-Straße 1
10557 Berlin
Germany
Telefon: +49 180 272-0000
Fax: +49 1888 272-2555
E-Mail: InternetPost@bundesregierung.de

Politician Joachim Herrmann
Chief of the CSU Party, also knows the Busekros family personally
Joachim Herrmann
Ludwig-Erhard-Straße 9 a
91052 Erlangen
Germany
Telefon: +49 9131- 53 45 38
Telefax: +49 9131- 61 18 40
E-Mail: joachim.herrmann@csu-bayern.de

One possible letter has been posted by Laigles Forum; this letter is written in German but also has its English translation written under it.

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Is God Able to Keep People From Falling Away?

I have been following the debate that J.C. Thibodaux and TurretinFan have been having on the issue of eternal security vs. conditional security and more specifically what purpose the warning passages in Scripture serve. Since TurretinFan’s question and JCT’s answer go straight to the heart of the debate between eternal securists and conditional securists, and since I thought JCT’s answer was very well-stated, with his permission I’m posting his response:

TurretinFan asks,

Given your comment, “God desires that none of His apostatize,” (yet seemingly God might not prevent apostasy) is God able to keep people from falling away into apostasy or does something (man’s free will?) stop God from keeping them from falling?

Answer:

God can do whatever He pleases within the range of His holy nature, nobody prevents Him. If God didn’t care if we apostatized, He wouldn’t give us sustaining grace enough to endure. The fact that men can still fall away despite His provision is easily reconciled by the fact that He doesn’t choose to apply His grace irresistibly. I’d pointed out this concept in 1 Corinthians 10:13, which states that God won’t allow us to be tempted beyond what we can endure. ‘Can’ does not amount to ‘will;’ believers sometimes do fall, but due to our own failures, not want of God’s help.

His provision is evidenced in several passages often mistaken for support of eternal security. John 10:27-29 and Romans 8:35-39 for instance express that no one will ever tear us away from God (as countless martyrs for Christ have by their deaths triumphantly testified), but nowhere does scripture indicate that it’s impossible to willfully walk away from Him, since apostates themselves don’t separate/pluck themselves from God -scripture clarifies that God the Father Himself severs those who don’t remain in Christ (John 15:1-6). Hence, arguments such as the sealing with the Holy Spirit guaranteeing eternal security miss the mark as to how one can be lost: Since the sovereign God has both power and prerogative to cast out those who don’t abide, His own seal is no bar to Him doing so. Having the Spirit is both a gift and responsibility, for those in which the Spirit dwells are the temple of God,

…If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. (1 Corinthians 3:17b)

According to the riches of His grace, God preserves us, sustains us, and works in us to will and do His good pleasure, yet the apostles still plead with us, “not to receive the grace of God in vain” (2 Corinthians 6:1b). God is able to keep us from stumbling and to make the weak in faith to stand (Romans 14:4), yet we are still told,

Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. (1 Corinthians 10:12)

It’s only by God’s grace that the heart can be established in persevering, but the scriptures never portray the operation of grace as something unconditional or irresistible. Grace to endure is never merited, nor is it inescapably instilled, but when enduring temptation it’s written,

Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:16)

So God is able to keep us from falling, but doesn’t choose to do so apart from our willing cooperation (we being freed by His grace to serve Him -Hebrews 12:28), and thus He warns us against the real dangers of apostasy and exhorts us to seek Him,

…be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall. (2 Peter 1:10b)

(J.C. Thibodaux and TurretinFan’s debates can be found at both of these sites: In Death or Life.org and at Turretin Debate Blog)

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Revision to my post on Christians and Politics

I have revised my post on Christians and Politics to more clearly portray what my feelings on this issue are.

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Nazi Germany: Alive and Kicking Kidnapping

Looks like the German government just never learns its lesson. One would think a society that has suffered the stigma of being one of the worst human rights violators and ethnic/religious persecutors in history would display a wee bit of tolerance and respect for human rights. Not so, according to reports released by the Home School Legal Defense Association, which details the inhumanly despicable treatment of the homeschooling Gorber family at the hands of Deutschland’s tyrannical Ministry of Education.

According to the report, the Gorber family had till recently been slapped with fines from the German family court for homeschooling their children, but now the German police and ‘youth welfare office’ in a surprise raid on their home have seized 6 of their children, the family court only allowing the youngest to be returned to them.

‘Godwin’s Law’ (i.e. ‘the opposition will eventually be compared to Hitler’) is something of a humorous social phenomenon, but the comparison in this instance is both uncannily accurate and unavoidable: The German law against homeschooling in fact originated with Hitler’s creation of the German Ministry of Education. Adolph Hitler stated concerning his youth program,

“The Youth of today is ever the people of tomorrow. For this reason we have set before ourselves the task of inoculating our youth with the spirit of this community of the people at a very early age, at an age when human beings are still unperverted and therefore unspoiled. This Reich stands, and it is building itself up for the future, upon its youth. And this new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing.”

(HT: Bob Unruh, from WorldnetDaily wrote about a similar case)

Apparently, one of the worst thrashings in military history has taught the German government absolutely nothing about respect for basic human freedom. Now it appears that some among them are so determined to enforce their policy created by the supreme despot of the absolute worst government of the twentieth century to ensure the indoctrination of Germany’s youth, that they’ve now seized five children from the Gorber family for the heinous crime of trying to educate their own kids. You heard it right folks, these Fourth Reich Fanatics have taken to kidnapping the children of their own citizens for daring to disobey Nazi law!

Germany’s all-out war on and utterly vile treatment of the Jews, the nation that God chose above all others and through which He sent salvation to all men, ranks among the worst atrocities ever committed. The concentration camps they left behind, the gas chambers, the mass graves, and the records of atrocious human experiments stand as a sobering monument to the maniacally cruel spirit of the Nazis which has come to symbolize all that is evil in modern society. Yet that same spirit clearly persists even now in the German government. The Jews no longer being within their legal reach, the sadistic predators infesting Germany’s Ministry of Education parading under the guise of ‘youth welfare’ feel the need to vent their demented savagery, and like their spiritual predecessors have set their sights on yet another helpless target: Home schoolers.

By their bald-faced and unrelenting cruelty, the German Ministry of Education, within even the scope of its limited power, shows itself just as much an embodiment of sheer hatred and wickedness as its founder. The lessons of the past have done nothing to restrain their perpetual madness, as they feverishly goose-step their way towards the ideal of a paranoid, totalitarian barbarism that has no place in the civilized world. The Führer would be proud.

For further information on how you can help fight this problem, please visit the Home School Legal Defense Association.

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A new contributor

I’d like to welcome my husband, J.C. Thibodaux, as a new contributor. I’ve invited him to come on board and help write on occasion. I don’t know how often you’ll see him, though, since he’s involved in a lot of other things already.

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The Children’s Crusade

Rhett had written an article that I really liked a few months back entitled The Children’s Crusade. I linked to it shortly after he wrote it but deleted my link when his blog went offline for a time. I am relinking to it because I find his analogy thought-provoking and agree with his conclusions on children and the public school system.

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An Interesting Article on Original Sin

On his website In Death or Life.org, J.C. Thibodaux has written a Biblically solid and informative article on Original Sin. His article is in response to popular Calvinist pastor John Piper’s writing on the subject on the imputation of Adam’s sin to mankind. To those interested in knowing more about the topic, I would definitely recommend reading this article.

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