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Featured why this love of the puritans?

Discussion in 'General Baptist Discussions' started by nodak, Apr 24, 2012.

  1. Jerome

    Jerome Well-Known Member
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    Exactly.

    http://www.wordsmyth.net/?level=3&ent=puritan

     
  2. nodak

    nodak Active Member
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    I think some are defending calvinism or reformed baptist theology.

    Not at all what I was meaning.

    I'm talking about the rules and regulations, and the wanting everyone to conform to them.
     
  3. gb93433

    gb93433 Active Member
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    If they have had such an impact where are they today in America?
     
  4. 12strings

    12strings Active Member

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    If today is the standard of whether someone truly had an impact you would have to say that NO major Christian group has had an impact on this country!

    I would say several DID Have major impacts (consider the great awakenings) but that impact must be passed on through the generations or it is lost.
     
  5. Martin Marprelate

    Martin Marprelate Well-Known Member
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    I think you may have been reading some caricatures of the Puritans. There were certainly some on the Presbyterian side who were very legalistic, but those on the Congregationalist or Baptist side were much less so.

    I was informed once that some Puritan group banned mothers from kissing their children on the Lord's Day. I can't say definitely that it's untrue, but I have never been able to find any evidence for it.

    I would urge you to read some of the Puritans and find out what they were really like. You might be surprised.

    Steve
     
  6. Jerome

    Jerome Well-Known Member
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  7. gb93433

    gb93433 Active Member
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    Christ still continues to have an impact. Isn't that what really matters?

    It is a good thing that groups do not last long because typically a group starts out with what they should focus on and as the organization gets larger the focus shifts to maintaining the organization and its survival.
     
  8. gb93433

    gb93433 Active Member
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  9. Iconoclast

    Iconoclast Well-Known Member
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    Yes....could you give one or two examples of a puritan who does this?
     
  10. Iconoclast

    Iconoclast Well-Known Member
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    Again,

    Could you give an actual example of what you mean? Give two or three examples and what you mean by wanting everyone to conform to them.
    Nodak.....most who discover and take an interest in the Puritans.....enjoy to an extent the seriousness and godly reverence for the Lord and his word. Their writings were very long, because they in most cases were striving to know the Lord as much as is humanly possible...squeezing out every drop they could from the verses.

    It is instructive how they would approach a text, open it up, examine and meditate on it...then seek for the practical uses of the text.When anyone today reads them it is like an oasis compared to the modern day ideas suggested as bible teaching.
     
    #30 Iconoclast, Apr 25, 2012
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 25, 2012
  11. Alcott

    Alcott Well-Known Member
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    That would be today's "environmentalists."
     
  12. Iconoclast

    Iconoclast Well-Known Member
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    Almost no one who is critical of the puritans has any actual knowledge of them:thumbs: They look up one report of someone ,somehwere ,who was a legalist......then dismiss all puritan writings.....Many have no desire to read more than a page from a daily bread devotional,and in truth despise the teaching of scripture. Instead they want to fabricate a christian ideology without the words of Jesus as central. The aversion they have to the Puritans,is that many a puritan was long winded...in their writing...

    It is worth it to work through as they opened up many passages of the word.
    Anyone who reads honestly and sorts through the writing.....will flee many of the modern day fluff:wavey:
     
  13. Iconoclast

    Iconoclast Well-Known Member
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  14. Amy.G

    Amy.G New Member

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    I have a little book called The Valley of Vision which is a collection of Puritan prayers. They are beautiful and I enjoy reading them.
     
  15. Iconoclast

    Iconoclast Well-Known Member
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    AMYG,

    It is hard to imagine that those believers who were before us,without many of the worldly distractions, would not have a deep knowledge of the Lord and His word. We can do it today, but in a prosperous nation like America...we are being over-run , by the prosperity, and even things that are good in and of themselves....can keep us from learning and growing as we should.
     
  16. nodak

    nodak Active Member
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    No question the puritans wrote some good devotionals and some good books.

    Its the whole "do it our way or we hang, behead, or burn you at the stake" thing I object to.
     
  17. Jerome

    Jerome Well-Known Member
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    Here's a sample of what dissenters endured under the Puritan regime in early New England:
    —Louis Taylor Merrill, "The Puritan Policeman" ASR 10, No. 6, Dec. 1945. pp. 768-769
     
  18. Ed B

    Ed B Member

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    I have a friend here at work who is very intelligent and a great critical thinker. He was raised a non-practicing Catholic and married into a protestant family with no real preference on whether they attend a Baptists, Methodist, (fill in the blank) Church. They attended a very legalistic rural Baptist Church in until the last year or so complete with ruling families, dictatorial pastor, who were Landmarkist, and very concerned with keeping out those poor kids from the trailer parks instead of standing up a bus ministry for them. Since that was his first extended experience with Baptists and because they very legalistic and tried to be oppressive, he cannot be convinced that this is not representative of the vast majority of Baptist Churches. It clearly isn't but he can't see past the bad example to consider the good.

    Maybe Puritans are a little like that. Without a doubt there were abuses and excesses among the Puritans. I suspect there were many more excellent edifying works done by Puritans that Baptists inherited and/or benefit from - Spurgeon seems to have like them.
     
  19. Iconoclast

    Iconoclast Well-Known Member
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    Yes.....legalism...if it is done by anyone is deadly to a church.
    Jerome provides an example of how some began in the Spirit....but finished in the flesh[literally whipping the flesh off this person]....Puritans were not immune from legalism.....and God who will not be mocked....cut them off.

    It is hard to figure that a few hundred years ago,presbyterians,and catholics, would kill baptists.....where today you can find conferences where presbyterians and baptists share the pulpit during a bible conference...despite differing views of the continuity of the Covenant.

    it is an improvment......so ...I will still look to take what was good from the time period,and leave the rest to the judgement of God.:thumbs:

    This is the key...with any "trusted guide"....see where they saw Jesus in the word,leave the rest:thumbs:
     
  20. Iconoclast

    Iconoclast Well-Known Member
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    yes.....this might qualify as abuse:thumbs::thumbs: We should not follow this example of government.
     
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