“In their ongoing effort to be naughtier than the Beatles, the Rolling Stones began making satanic allusions in 1967 . . . Jimmy Page, the lead guitarist of Led Zeppelin, was a Crowley fan even before he accepted the Lucifer Rising job . . . By this route Satanism became heavy metal’s semiofficial religion, observed …
The Shield of Truth Protecting a Lie
“They cry out much of the truth, and they contend for the truth, but the Holy Ghost says they are destitute of the truth” (Burroughs, Irenicum, p. 217).
Lord of Tomorrow Morning
Convocation Remarks 2007 Fleetwood Mac exhorted us all plainly. “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.” Well, okay. And politicians consistently tell us that they want to be elected so that they can build a bridge to the future—as though we could go anywhere else, whether we build that bridge or not. But behind these bromides is …
Put Law and Gospel into a Story
I want to take a brief point I made in the comments section over at Greenbaggins and amplify it. The FV treatment of law and gospel creates the question of how “the law” relates to us as Christians in the course of our Christian lives. And so of course we hold that the law convicts …
Our Little Reformed Contretemps
Thanks to Randy Booth, who supplied me with some interesting quotes on general and special election from Calvin. Here, then, a twofold class of sons presents itself to us, in the Church; for since the whole body of the people is gathered together into the fold of God, by one and the same voice, all …
Abraham and the Gospel
We come now to the glorious example of Abraham, and the apostle Paul draws much gold out of the mines of Genesis. We will be occupied with this gold for much of the remainder of the third chapter of Galatians. Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye …
Larceny 101
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) Growing Dominion, Part 123 “Divers weights are an abomination unto the Lord; and a false balance is not good” (Prov. 20:23). Scripture makes this point in a number of different places, and it would be good for us to note that the sinful …
When Fundamentalists Read the Text More Clearly
“The revival of the model of early Islam in a modern form absolutely mandates the reaffirmation of uncompromising animosity to non-believers and the return to violence as a means of attaining political ends. Islamic terrorism, far from being an aberration, became inseparable from modern-day jihad. It is legitimized by it, and it is its defining …
In Other Words, Not Breaking On Through to the Other Side
“Morrison never made the sustained effort needed to write even passable free verse, and his emotional range—from petulant narcissism to dead-serious angst—is far narrower than that of the least of his poetic idols . . . booze became the formaldehyde in which his adolescent hangs-ups were preserved” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, p. 238).
Bureaucratic Bishopric
“This is the besetting sin of American presbyterianism. When an association of independent churches, or the representatives of presbyterian churches, makes the mistake of establishing a permanent headquarters somewhere (minium requirements: one desk, one phone, on file cabinet), a certain type of bureaucratic mind is immediately attracted to the important task of getting the papers …