All rock solid theology. Thanks for the ping. Like you, I have sympathy for the good intentions of the message here. There may even be some legitimate comparison to the style of John the Baptist. However, there are tactics and there is truth. As your post reveals, God is always in complete control of everything according to His already set-in-stone time table. Nothing we say or do will change this so there is no sense in getting up in a lather about anything. But to be clear of course we are NOT saying that witnessing is therefore unnecessary. Witnessing is commanded so we do it gladly. There just may be a bit of a difference in the motivations and expectations behind that witnessing.
Absolutely true. We are told to be ready to give a defense for the hope within us AND we have the model of Paul, Peter and others speaking out about the truth. These two expressions are part and parcel of our life in Christ.
The difference I detect between this and the tone on the initial thread is whether one thinks a frenetic tone about the message (bordering on panic) is needed or whether we are called to a calm, deliberate disclosure of the truth.
Amen. We witness to Jesus Christ before all men because God has determined that the preaching of the Gospel is the way and means of God, the Holy Spirit, reaching His children -- through the teaching of the written word of God.
All in all, a wonderful plan for redemption. His word endures. His word does not fail. His word convicts sinners and sanctifies His flock. His word realigns our minds from self-love to Christ alone.
"... God speaks to us now, in Scripture, not only mediately through his representatives, but directly through the Scriptures themselves as his inspired word. The Scriptures thus become the crystalization of God's authoritative will. We will not say that Christianity might not have been founded and propagated and preserved without inspired writings or even without any written embodiment of the authoritative apostolic teaching. Wherever Christ is known through whatever means, there is Christianity, and men may hear and believe and be saved. But God has caused his grace to abound to us in that he not only published redemption through Christ in the world, but gave this preachment authoritative expression through the apostles, and fixed it with infallible trustworthiness in his inspired word. Thus in every age God speaks directly to every Christian heart, and gives us abounding safety to our feet and divine security to our souls. And thus, instead of a mere record of a revelation given in the past, we have the ever-living word of God; instead of a mere tradition however guarded, we have what we have all learned to call in a unique sense "the Scriptures."