Special Events

The Sovereign Grace Baptist Church in Ladysmith will be hosting two special speakers.

On August 24th, Pastor Tom Henry, Associate Pastor of Bible Baptist Church, St.Louis, Missouri, will be preaching at both the Sunday morning and evening services. Pastor Henry is also the past Chairman of the Sovereign Grace Baptist Fellowship and involved in teaching at the Sovereign Grace Baptist Seminary, the alma mater of Pastor Mantl. Pastor Henry will be a featured speaker at the upcoming Northwoods Baptist Church family camp and conference held at Camp Nicolet north of Eagle River, Wisconsin.

The following week, on August 31st, Pastor Conrad Murrell of Grace Church of Bentley, Louisiana, an Evangelist, Author, and Director of Grace and Truth Bible Camps will begin a four day speaking engagement at the church. Pastor Murrell has also been a contributor to the Sovereign Grace Messenger, a publication of the Sovereign Grace Baptist Fellowship, and a conference and small church speaker. He will speak at both services on Sunday followed by evening services on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

Sunday Bible study is at 10:00 a.m. followed by the Worship Service at 11:00 a.m. Evening services begin at 7:00 p.m.

Everyone is invited to receive a blessing from both these gifted preachers. If you have any questions please contact Pastor Mantl at our website, www.sovereigngracebaptistchurch.net

Storm Damage Photos

The cleanup continues at the Pastor's home after the Sunday windstorm. I thought I'd post a few photos to give you an idea of the damage. The first two are of his home as it was before the storm. The latter photo's indicate the aftermath. The tree rings indicated it was about 80-90 years old. Some of the damage occurred to the roof on the west side of the house when a tree-top struck it breaking three or four roof rafters and damaging the plywood roof sheathing. Repairs will be extensive to that portion of the roof.

The good news; the village work crew assisted in removing the huge pile of branches, etc., to a local landfill.

The bad news; the vehicle is not covered by any insurance and the repair estimate is about $4,000.

Set the Battle in Array!

To sin is one great misery, and then to forget our sins is a misery, too. If in repentance we could set the battle in array, point to every individual sin in the true and praticular times of acting and reacting, O how would our hearts be more broken with shame and sorrow, and how would we adore the richness of the treasure of mercy which must have a multitude in it to pardon the multitude of our infinite errors and sins!

By, Obadiah Sedgwick 1600-1658

Megan & Mandy: Taking A Stand For Christ

The following was posted on July 11, 2008, 0n the website The Rebelution which is defined as "a teenage rebellion against low expectations." It appears to be the brain child of Alex and Brett Harris who state, ..."it's not a rebellion against God-established authority, but against the low expectations of our society." I haven't explored their site "in toto" but have noted that Albert Mohler has given his endorsement....if you need that sort of thing. The Harris' focus on three words, "Do Hard Things" and seek to improve young men and women in character and competence through collaboration, in the context of 2 Timothy 4:12. I encourage you to check them out and read their entire statement of purpose. I shared this with my children hoping they could encourage my grandkids to review it and perhaps it can be an alternative to some of the trash they may currently be immersed in.

I have posted the entire text of the blog... you can get more at their website.


"For some reason Alex and I have a certain penchant for stories about twins doing hard things — so we were very excited this past week when we heard the story of Megan and Mandy Chapman, twin sisters from Russel County, Kentucky. They provide a wonderful example of what it looks like to "take a stand" for Christ.

A Federal Lawsuit Filed by the ACLU

Megan and Mandy were graduating high school on Friday. Megan had been selected to conduct a prayer during the ceremony. Friday morning a federal judge issued an order barring Russell County High School and Megan (she was cited in the order by name) from conducting prayer during commencement.

With graduation just around the corner and her entire life ahead of her, Megan faced a difficult choice. Can you imagine how it would feel to read your name in a federal lawsuit filed by the ACLU? As Megan wrestled with her decision, Mandy began to formulate a plan of her own.

Liberty Counsel and The Lord's Prayer

At 4:00 PM, only three hours before the graduation ceremony, Megan received a phone call from Liberty Counsel, an organization devoted to protecting religious freedom. Liberty Counsel founder and chairman, Mat Staver, told Megan they'd be behind her every step of the way and counseled her that God can turn apparent adversity into great opportunity when we're willing to trust and obey Him.

Only a few hours later more than 3,000 people packed into the Russell County High gymnasium to watch 200 seniors graduate. As the principal finished his opening remarks the senior class suddenly stood as one body and began to recite The Lord's Prayer! Before they could finish the audience erupted into thunderous applause. Some students were too overcome with emotion to finish. But the statement had been made. They would not bow down to the ACLU.

A Secular Poem or Her Testimony?

Then, Megan came to the podium prepared to deliver a secular poem, The Road Less Traveled. But when she looked out at the large audience, and at the hundreds of seniors who had just completed The Lord's Prayer, she asked God to give her a message. 'You did not put me here to recite a poem, Lord'.

Putting aside what she prepared, Megan spoke from her heart. She shared how God had led her since she was a child. She spoke of the peace that comes from giving your life to Jesus. And she wished her classmates the same peace through a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Again and again the speech was interrupted with applause and punctuated by several standing ovations. The Louisville Courier-Journal reporter covering the event described the evening as having a "revival-like atmosphere," to the complete dismay of the ACLU! In trying to silence a prayer they had sparked a revival!

Fox News and Liberty University

The following morning, Megan received a call from Fox News, and that night shared the story of her personal salvation through Jesus Christ — with millions of viewers!

That same afternoon, Mat Staver spoke with Dr. Jerry Falwell, Founder and then Chancellor of Liberty University, and was authorized to offer Megan full scholarship to join the 2006 freshman class. Upon hearing the good news, Megan was overcome with tearful amazement.

"Are you kidding?" she asked. "I've been praying for several years to be able to attend Liberty University, but I simply could not afford it." But to Mr. Staver's bewilderment, Megan did not immediately accept the offer. He was puzzled.

Mr. Staver called her a few days later and voice that sounded just like Megan answered the phone. "Megan?" he asked. "No, this is Mandy, her twin sister," the voice replied. Mandy, he found out, was the one who orchestrated the recitation of The Lord's Prayer — distributing bookmarks with a copy of the prayer on it in case anyone forgot the words (see the bookmarks in this post's header).

Mr. Staver immediately called Dr. Falwell. "Guess what," he said. "Megan has a twin sister!" Dr. Falwell paused briefly, and offered Mandy a full scholarship as well! The twin sisters, who had been planning to attend University of the Cumberlands together, now had an open door to their first choice — Liberty University!

From Liberty Counsel's May 2008 Newsletter

"Almost two years later, Megan and Mandy have completed their sophomore year. Since arriving at Liberty, Megan has been volunteering in the Liberty Counsel office. She now wants to enter law school and eventually work with Liberty Counsel defending our religious freedoms against the ACLU bullies!

But there's even more to the story. When CNN Headline News called wanting to feature Liberty Counsel in their series "God's Warriors," we introduced CNN correspondent Christiane Amenpour to the twins. The story of Megan and Mandy and their faith has now been shown several times around the world in the two hour documentary called "God's Christian Warriors." Megan and Mandy have received emails and notes of appreciation from all over the world!

God loves irony. Megan had a choice — buckle to the pressure of the ACLU or stand up for Christ. Had she buckled, her graduation would have been silent and her life would have taken a different direction. But she stood for Christ, and her witness was heard around the world. She is now at Liberty University and may soon go head-to-head in court with the ACLU as a practicing attorney. She did the right thing, and God honored her."

Closing Thoughts and Application

Of course, taking a stand for Christ doesn't always involved the ACLU — and it doesn't often result in CNN documentaries, and full scholarships to your favorite college. The audience won't always give you a standing ovation.

So what can we learn from Megan and Mandy? Well, I see a God who is in complete control. He brought Megan and Mandy an unwelcome test (via the ACLU), rewarded their obedience almost immediately (via Liberty University), and gave them a platform to spread the Gospel (via Fox News and CNN).

We can look at that story and say, "Wow, God is amazing! We obey Him and He gives us scholarships and fame!" But what if Megan had been booed? What if the ACLU had won? What if Megan and Mandy were made "media-martyrs" for standing up for Christ? Would God be less amazing?

I love stories like Megan and Mandy's because I can see what God was up to. And at those times when it's not so easy to see, I can say, "God, I know that you are in complete control. And even though I don't understand what you are doing, I trust you, because I've seen you work before."

I hope that Megan and Mandy's story will inspire you to take radical stands for Christ, trusting firmly in God's goodness, whatever the outcome might be. My prayer is that our generation would count the cost and stand anyway. That we would be able to stand firm and say with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego: "If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and He will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if He does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." (Daniel 3:17-18)"

The Psalm of Praise

Psalm 148:8 Fire, and hail; snow, and vapour; stormy wind fulfilling his word:

The news media warned of it; the dark and greenish colored skies announced it's coming; the birds at the feeder left in anticipation of it, the rains accompanied it's entrance. And it came.

One of our summer windstorms swept through parts of our area in northern Wisconsin yesterday afternoon. Sixty foot trees were toppled over like sticks, others were snapped at mid-point, some with a thirty inch girth; still others had their tops broken off hurling them as missiles toward the ground. And the result was considerable damage to possessions and homes.

The Pastor's house was not spared. His house is closely bordered on the west side by tall, one hundred year old, white pines - and the wind was from the west. One tree was uprooted leaving a three foot hole in the ground. Two other trees lost their tops sending them crashing onto the roof of his house and doing damage beyond. Branches and debris covered the yard. The electrical service to his house was torn from it's mooring and bent to the ground. Electrical power went out throughout the area.

What a display of God's Sovereign control over the elements. As Dr. Gill commented on the elements fulfilling His Word,

"He (God) creates it, brings it out of his treasures, holds it in his lists, and lets it go out at His pleasure to fulfil His will; either, as at some times in a way of mercy, as to dry up the waters of the flood, to make a way for Israel through the Red sea, to bring quails to them in the wilderness, and rain to the land of Israel in Ahab's time; and sometimes in a way of judgment, to drown Pharaoh and his host in the Red sea, to break the ships of Tarshish, to fetch Jonah the disobedient prophet back, and to distress him afterwards (see Psalm 107:25); to do all this is an argument of divine power, and a proof of deity, as it is of our Lord's (Matthew 8:27)."

And perhaps to reveal His Mercy.

As the Pastor recalled the event later he stated that when the storm struck he remembered his car was outside the garage parked in the driveway. He thought it wise to move it into the garage parked a few feet away. As he began to exit the house with car keys in hand a large tree top whizzed over the house and struck the drivers side of his car at the mid-point of the door. The impact shattered the glass sending shards inside the passenger compartment, destroyed the door, and damaged other parts of the vehicle. If he had been but a few seconds faster and was in the car at the moment the tree top struck he could have been seriously injured. But he was spared.

As we discussed the incident during the latter part of the evening our conversation turned to a topic that had been on some young people's minds after the church service that morning; does God intimately and personally control and intervene in His creation or did He create it and let it operate by intrinsic laws? In other words, is deism (the belief that a supreme God exists and created the physical universe, but does not intervene in its normal operation) true? Did God create all things but now withdraws Himself and let it run itself?

The events of yesterday confirm the Word of God. The deist is weighed in the balance and found wanting.

The Scriptures and Christ

My wife and I are reading through A.W. Pink's book "Profiting From The Word" in our evening devotions and one particular reading this past week really impressed me, so I'll share...

"An individual is profited from the Scriptures when they reveal to him his need of Christ. Man in his natural estate deems himself self-sufficient. True, he has a dim perception that all is not quite right between himself and God, yet has he no difficulty in persuading himself that he is able to do that which will propitiate Him. That lies at the foundation of all man’s religion, begun by Cain, in whose "way" (Jude 11) the multitudes still walk. Tell the devout religionist that "they that are in the flesh cannot please God" (Rom. 8:8), and he is at once offended. Press upon him the fact that "all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags" (Isa. 64:4), and his hypocritical urbanity at once gives place to anger. So it was when Christ was on earth. The most religious people of all, the Jews, had not sense they were "lost" and in dire need of an almighty Saviour.

"They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick" (Matt. 9:12). It is the peculiar office of the Holy Spirit, by His application of the Scriptures, to convict sinners of their desperate condition, to bring them to see that their state is such that "from the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness" in them, but "wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores" (Isa. 1:6). As the Spirit convicts us of our sins—our ingratitude to God, our murmuring against Him, our wanderings from Him—as He presses upon us the claims of God—His right to our love, obedience and adoration—and all our sad failures to render Him His due, then we are made to recognize that Christ is our only hope, and that, except we flee to Him for refuge, the righteous wrath of God will most certainly fall upon us.

Nor is this to be limited to the initial experience of conversion. The more the Spirit deepens His work of grace in the regenerated soul, the more that individual is made conscious of his pollution, his sinfulness and his vileness; and the more does he discover his need of and learn to value that precious, precious blood which cleanses from all sin. The Spirit is here to glorify Christ, and one chief way in which He does so is by opening wider and wider the eyes of those for whom He died, to see how suited Christ is for such wretched, foul, hell-deserving creatures. Yes, the more we are truly profiting from our reading of the Scriptures, the more do we feel our need of Him."

An on-line copy of the book is available at Providence Baptist Ministries; www.pbministries.org

On The Sovereignty of God

My first exposure to A.W. Pink was at the hands of a Christian couple, and my mentors in many ways, who maintained a book store on their farm. I was, and still am, amazed at how Mr. Pink revealed Scripture interprets itself and how intertwined the Scriptures are. Anyway, after the Bible, "The Sovereignty of God" should be required reading for every man, woman or child who claims to be a follower of Christ. (This is in addition to Pilgrims Progress and Foxe's Book of Martyrs.) Comprehending God's Sovereignty would clear up a lot of misconceptions and error currently being promoted and practiced. An on-line copy of the book is available at Providence Baptist Ministries; www.pbministries.org

Tole Lege

The substitution of so-called "practical" preaching for the doctrinal exposition which it has supplanted is the root cause of many of the evil maladies which now afflict the church of God. The reason why there is so little depth, so little intelligence, so little grasp of the fundamental verities of Christianity, is because so few believers have been established in the faith, through hearing expounded and through their own personal study of the doctrines of grace. While the soul is unestablished in the doctrine of the Divine Inspiration of the Scriptures—their full and verbal inspiration— there can be no firm foundation for faith to rest upon. While the soul is ignorant of the doctrine of Justification there can be no real and intelligent assurance of its acceptance in the Beloved. While the soul is unacquainted with the teaching of the Word upon Sanctification it is open to receive all the crudities and errors of the Perfectionists or "Holiness" people. While the soul knows not what Scripture has to say upon the doctrine of the New Birth there can be no proper grasp of the two natures in the believer, and ignorance here inevitably results in loss of peace and joy. And so we might go on right through the list of Christian doctrine. It is ignorance of doctrine that has rendered the professing church helpless to cope with the rising tide of infidelity. It is ignorance of doctrine which is mainly responsible for thousands of professing Christians being captivated by the numerous fallacies of the day. It is because the time has now arrived when the bulk of our churches "will not endure sound doctrine" (2 Tim. 4:3) that they so readily receive false doctrines. Of course it is true that doctrine, like anything else in Scripture, may be studied from a merely cold intellectual viewpoint, and thus approached, doctrinal teaching and doctrinal study will leave the heart untouched, and will naturally be "dry" and profitless. But, doctrine properly received, doctrine studied with an exercised heart, will ever lead into a deeper knowledge of God and of the unsearchable riches of Christ.

The doctrine of God's sovereignty then is no mere metaphysical dogma which is devoid of practical value, but is one that is calculated to produce a powerful effect upon Christian character and the daily walk. The doctrine of God's sovereignty lies at the foundation of Christian theology, and in importance is perhaps second only to the Divine Inspiration of the Scriptures.

It magnifies His grace. Grace is unmerited favor, and because grace is shown to the undeserving and Hell-deserving, to those who have no claim upon God, therefore is grace free and can be manifested toward the chief of sinners. But because grace is exercised toward those who are destitute of worthiness or merit, grace is sovereign; that is to say, God bestows grace upon whom He pleases. Divine sovereignty has ordained that some shall be cast into the Lake of Fire to show that all deserved such a doom. But grace comes in like a drag-net and draws out from a lost humanity a people for God's name, to be throughout all eternity the monuments of His inscrutable favor. Sovereign grace reveals God breaking down the opposition of the human heart, subduing the enmity of the carnal mind, and bringing us to love Him because He first loved us.

An excerpt from "THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD", Chapter 12 - THE VALUE OF THIS DOCTRINE, by A.W. Pink

www.pbministries.org