“They talked more readily than we about large universals such as death, change, fortune, friendship, or salvation; but also about pigs, loaves, boots, and boats. The mind darted more easily to and fro between that mental heaven and earth: the cloud of middle generalizations, hanging between the two, was then much smaller. Hence, as it …
Talk to Your Text
“One of the first things a preacher has to learn is to talk to his texts. They talk to you, and you must talk to them” (Lloyd-Jones, Preachers and Preaching, p. 202).
Sheik, Rattle and Roll
“When I was a feshman at Al-Azhar University in 1980, I enrolled in class called Quaranic Interpretation. Two times a month we would gather to hear lectures from a blind sheik whose passion for Islam made him popular among the students. Yet his radical side was obvious. Anytime he encountered a reference in the Quran …
Late to the Party
“The Enlightenment . . . did not arise in this country with the American Revolution. It came much later through the universities. And it did not affect the culture at large until after World War II, when the influence of German Kulturbolschewismus, the de-Nazification and subsequent dissemination of the thought of Nietzsche at American universities” …
Conservatives Are Stuck With What They Read
“Often a liberal is far more honest in handling the text than is an evangelical. This is because the evangelical is stuck with the results of his exegesis. The liberal can say that the apostle Paul taught the headship of the man in marriage, and wasn’t that silly? The evangelical, trying to keep up with …
De Regno Christi
I am happy to refer you all over to De Regno Christi, which is hosting a discussion of the Federal Vision, starting today. Many thanks to them for the privilege of participating in that discussion.
It Only Encourages Them
This Lord’s Day begins a series of exhortations on the subject of our civic responsibilities. We are about a month and a half away from a local election, and I have come to believe that there is no little confusion on the part of many of us as Christians about what our responsibilities actually are. …
No Need to Crawl
God is kind to His people, tender with them. He forgives us, and He provided us with the means of forgiveness when He knew how desperately we needed it. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He did not do this because He saw how good we were being. This means that when …
Bellwether Worship
A friend once commented to me, echoing Wolterstorff, that there are three currents in the Reformed river. First, there are the pietists, to whom personal conversion and resultant personal devotion is everything. And then there are the doctrinalists, to whom precise doctrinal conformity to the Canons of Whatsitburg are everything. The third group is the Kuyperian, …
A Constant God
This post does not need to be an extended response to Green Baggins. He largely agreed with the chapter in RINE on assurance of salvation, and had just a couple questions or concerns. The first was his response to my statement that we should not try to “peer into the secret counsels of God, or …