For those who are interested and somewhere close enough, Nate is doing a mini-book tour early this next week. Portland: 10:30am, Monday, May 12th/A Children’s Place/4807 NE Fremont St. Beaverton: 7 pm, Monday, May 12th/Barnes and Noble/18300 NW Evergreen Pkwy Spokane: 7:30pm, Wednesday, May 14th/Auntie’s Bookstore/402 W Main.
Speaking in Code
Hamartia in James is used six times. James begins by describing the genesis and destination of sin. Sin is born from desire (1:15), and death is born from sin (1:15). James tells us that if we show partiality — specifically with regard to rich and poor — we are guilty of sin (2:9). This is …
Speaking of Non-Evangelistic Calvinists . . .
“A system which cannot touch the outside world, but must leave arousing and converting work to others, whom it judges to be unsound, writes its own condemnation” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 343).
Our Enemy the State
“Modern statism is the soured remnant of the Enlightenment idea of inevitable progress. This miserable wreckage, which once heralded joyfully the coming of the secular version of the kingdom of God, now hoarsely wheezes that if we worship it we shall receive salvation from extinction. The danger is not to be taken lightly. Woebegone as …
Humorless Reformers
“Few things are more terrible in human society than the humorless reformer . . . a man who cannot see what he most needs to see, which his own contribution to the problem. In this vain and fallen world, a man who cannot laugh has no business undertaking to cure the world’s ills, because he …
He Has a Hole Under His Nose. And Money Runs Into It.
We may be induced to throw our money away in any number of ways. Here we need to consider some of the ways we lose money through the sensual snares which wait for us. Typically, when such sins are mentioned, it is so that God’s people will know that they are bad. This is of …
Sin and the Priests
The word hamartia occurs very frequently in the book of Hebrews (25 times), and 10 of these uses are found in chapter 10 alone. Not surprisingly, most of the references have to do with the sacrificial system, which was set up because of sin. The Son of God, when He came to earth, did so …
Pathos Is No Fallacy
“They require not so much reasoning as heart-argument — which is logic set on fire . . . argument must be quickened into persuasion by the living warmth of love. Cold logic has its force, but when made red hot with affection the power of tender argument is inconceivable . . . When passionate zeal …
Because the Fearful Have a Choke-Chain On
“The entire ‘exhaustion-of-resources’ syndrome is one huge apology for totalitarian control over the citizens” (Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction, p. 224).
Twenty Days to a Smoke Free Tomorrow
I have been asked what I think of An Evangelical Manifesto, and so I read through it this evening. A short twenty pages, it was mostly magnificent. I read into it for sixteen pages without reading anything I differed with, and I was reading much that was weighty, solid, good, and desperately needed. But if …