And the Winner is...

I've taken much longer than I should have, but it is finally time to announce the winner of "The First Ever Ruling Elder Blog Contest!"

If you remember, the contest entailed watching a video clip and giving a critique. I received several great critiques. Some highlights included:

Lane Keister pointed out the "Enlightenment-driven divorce between fact and experience."

RevK linked to a sermon entitled "What's the Reason for Preaching?" Although not a critique of the video included in the contest, I still encourage you all to give it a listen.

Patrick Pulliam correctly pointed out, "The gospel is words, proclamation, a message based in and communicated by human language. It is propositional truth, which necessarily involves human knowledge (Rom. 10:17)."

Van cut straight to the point when he wrote that a key take-away point of the video was "The biblical Gospel message is irrelevant."

Grit wrote, "It can be dangerous to philosophically compare our encounter with God in epicurean or hedonisitic fashion." Very true indeed!

Finally, Josh H, in a moment of acute philosophical transcendence, opined: "Dude, this video is wack, yo!"

Despite all these great points, the winner is: LARRY. Larry, please contact me at webmaster@therulingelder.com so I can get your mailing info to mail you your prize!

Oh, and the prize is: The Westminster Standards, An Original Facsimile (Old Paths Publications).

Below is the complete text of Larry's winning critique. Thank you all for participating!

Larry said...

I like what Lane said...but keep in mind he's a Teaching Elder ;)

I learned so much about Krispy-Kreme and so little about Christ.

He actually uses the pulpit as a place to praise and bring glory to Krispy Kreme...a place that is reserved for Christ.

The pulpit is a place for gravity not humor. His jocularity was inappropriate given that he was to proclaim God's holy word in reverence.

He creates a false dichotomy in which information about Jesus is divorced from an experience with Jesus. The bottom line is that you can't have an experience with Jesus without learning the truth about Him. You don't need to know the truth about what's in a donut to experience it, but you do need to know the truth about Jesus to experience Him.

He claimed the Spirit of God told him to take a donut. This shows more irreverence for God and puts Him on the same level as Ronald McDonald as being a spokesperson for a food product.

He paints a picture of a hedonistic Heaven in which our fleshly desires (like for donuts) are gratified. Rather, both in Heaven and on earth we are to be gratified by Christ.

He sets a bad example of breaking the Sabbath in that the Krispy Creme donuts were most likely purchased just prior to that Sunday service.

Calling the donut "king of all donuts" and paralleling it to Christ does great disservice to Christ, and once again shows a complete lack of reverence.

He didn't even thank the Lord for the donut before eating it.