“The beast of the Revelation was reported to be Napoleon I, and then the creature suddently reappeared in his nephew, Napoleon III. By-and-by, the deadly wound was healed, and the Prince Imperial wore the dreadful honours of the prophetic book; but the prince is now dead, and it will be needful for the seers to …
Hatred Directed Upwards
“Egalitarianism, the prevailing and acceptable religion of our generation, teaches not a love of equals but a hatred of superiors” (Steve Schlissel, Christian Culture in a Multicultural Age, p. 146).
The Loving Eye
“There, then, is the role of the amateur: to look the world back to grace. There, too, is the necessity of his work: His tribe must be in short supply; his job has gone begging. The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of a pack of trolls. Indeed, the whole …
Ferocity
In English, the word fierce can represent virtuous characteristics or the opposite. A fierce opponent can refer to the guy playing across your son in a high school basketball game, or it can refer to a terrorist trying to blow things up. In the New Testament, the word is anemoeros, and its one use refers …
A Wing and a Prayer Is All Very Well, but You Need Two Wings
“I have heard of a brother who trusts in the Lord, and does not study; but I have also heard that his people do not trust in him; in fact, I am informed that they wish him to go elsewhere with his inspired discourses, for they say that, when he did study, his talk was …
Thump Thump Music
“A guilty conscience, such as our generation has, often tries to drown out consciousness in order not to be aware of the pain of guilt. Drugs, booze, and the pursuit of deadening pleasures of all sorts, the constant thump-thump music or the ubiquitous narcotic of television—all are ways to drown out the guilt of consciousness, …
Surrendering Slowly Is Not Fighting
“This is the same phenomenon which caused one wit to observe that if the liberals in our Congress were to introduce a bill to burn down the Capitol, the conservatives would counter with a bill to phase the project in over the course of three years. When one group wants to drive us over a …
The Fallen Booth of David/Amos 9
INTRODUCTION: We come now to the conclusion of Amos, at least in the form of going through it passage by passage. Next week we will look at the book as a whole, and then some applications—Amos for Americans. THE TEXT: “Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of …
Getting Back to “A and not A”
As I continue to reflect on the state of things in the UK, I wanted to post something that might be a tad provocative, and by this, I don’t mean provocative to those who are currently agitating for the ordination of sea urchins, or whatever it is they are doing these days. Those folks have …
Pikestaff Texts
The global Anglican communion is blowing apart, as we speak. N.T. Wright is unhappy about it, as he ought to be, but unfortunately he analyzes the situation wrongly, almost from top to bottom. I wrote about this some years ago, as one who appreciates much of Wright’s scholarship. But I noted then that his anti-gnostic …