WHERE HAVE ALL THE PURITANS GONE?

Well if you are reading this, you might just be one. That does not mean that this blog has been transcribed from screen to paper so you can read it by candle light before 5 am Hebrew prayer just early enough to fill up your horse with some fuel and traverse the glorious countryside.

This is an Ode to the Puritan of the 21st century. The NEO-PURITAN!

With Bible in mind, heart, and backpack, he walks the streets with an ipod filled with truth. As he listens to modernized hymns by Bob Kauflin he walks to the local Starbucks to sit and mediate on Edwards"Religious Affections" laboriously digging away at the vast vocabulary in order to mine the deep spiritual truths that will feed his soul.

To what purpose? Intelligence, knowledge, clout, or to be the unique guy who sits in the corner of the local coffee depot who reads books with men who wear but a Whig and a black tablecloth? None of that. Simply put. Glory. With every breath of lung and every beat of heart, and every moment of consciousness, it is dedicated to the undisputed glory of God. For whatever he does, whether he eat a scone, drink a latte, walk the streets, load his ipod, fill up his dodge neon, he does all to the glory of God.

But where is he? Where is this guy who we want to meet at that coffee shop and be the only one that knows that the cover of Edwards bio is not about a man with a bad haircut. If he is not in the coffee shop, is he at work? If he is not at work, is he at church? Well if you make your way through a service and through the bulletin that resembles something more of the local PennySaver, you might have to question...Is he even in the pulpit? Why has the dedication to the study of God's Word, the ever present understanding of Gods holiness as the standard for every word that proceeds from mouth, the purity of the pulpit, and the exhaustion of all been exchanged for a non-offensive sermons and a copy of the Message?

O where have all the puritans gone. Now don't go crazy and wish that you lived in the 16th Century in order to be with such surveyors of the cross. Really...small pox and no plumbing aren't all its cracked up to be.

Where are they you ask? Well the answer is the title of this blog. They are dead. The originals are gone from this earth and now basking in the eternal presence of Christ himself. Yeah...I'm jealous too. But What of us today? Do we take up the mantle of the neo-puritans. Do we wield our powerbook with purpose, do we enjoy the ease of excavation with libronix. Do we do all unto the glory of God with diligence and dedication and all love? Well if the answer is yes, grab a bumper sticker that says "I Brake because God sovereignly decreed it" and may we seek to find one another out.

In order to reach the Neo-Puritans from the far reaches of this globe I dedicate this blog. As a fellow NP I understand what is happening to our churches today. I can see the decay of the quasi-Christianity that was built upon sand. I hear the clammering of the evangelical dinner bell that seeks to feed our flesh and starve our souls. BUT MAY IT STOP! May it stop not through anger, hatred, bitterness, or malice for our so-called brethren. But may we live unto the glory of God with saturating heart soul and mind with nothing else but God's Precious Word, and once we have our fill may we pour it out to him in prayer and proclamation not for our best life now, but for the express purpose of Glory and adoration of He who died for Me.

Where are all the Neo-Puritans. Well. There is one right here. Writing this blog. This one is laboring through Overcoming Sin and Temptation by John Owen. Seeking to write a blog about each chapter, while its gravity takes my attention nearly 15 minutes a page to fully mediate on this quarry of nuggets of truth.

So where are you? Are you out there?