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Life in the Regeneration
Written by Douglas Wilson   
Tuesday, 23 October 2012 06:03

In the first chapter of Isaiah, we find all the necessary foundation stones for a true and robust evangelicalism. The Lord has called a people to Himself, having brought up children to Himself (Is. 1:2). So they have a formal connection to Him, like good Episcopalians and Presbyterians, but those children have rebelled against Him. The formal worship of God has become corrupt (Is. 1:11-15). This is not just some random thing they did, but rather it came about because they were a "seed of evildoers," they were "children that are corrupters" (Is. 1:4). They did evil because they were evil. Their generation was all wrong, which meant there must be regeneration. The solution is to be converted. The answer is to have their sins, like scarlet, become as white as snow (Is. 1:18).


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Michael Bull  - Trimming Jesus to Half a Man  Tuesday, October 23, 2012 3:06 pm
There you go again, conflating natural sons with spiritual sons. Spiritual sons respond to God in the way that the Son responds to the Father.

This complaint by the Lord isn't a complaint against Israelite boys and girls but against The Children of Israel, the adult descendants of Jacob who consciously, audibly vowed to obey Him, the ones who took His name (took on His yoke) but in vain.

The serpent has only "spiritual" children, which forces us to contemplate what, or rather Whom, the Lord actually meant by the phrase "the Seed of the Woman."

Certainly, credobaptism can also be misused as a "formal connection," but this idea you present in To A Thousand Generations finds no New Covenant support. This is because our "formal connection" is not the same as that of "Israel according to the flesh." The entire world now has that "formal connection." That's the whole point. All men everywhere are commanded to repent. If this is not the case, then the New Covenant, contrary to Hebrews, is really no better than the old. You have pruned the global, Pentecostal tree of Jesus back to a single, Jewish, burning bush hidden in a cave in the wilderness. It cuts Melchizedek back to Aaron, turning "one new man" back into half a man, a new Judaism.

That said, keep preaching regeneration! It ruffles all the right feathers, including baptist ones.