We have a tremendous privilege here—two congregations are seated together, partaking of the Lord’s Supper together. This is an emblem, a sign, a small statement of a much more glorious statement—one that actually occurs in the heavenly realms all the time. In the power of the Spirit, all the churches of Christ throughout the world …
American Smile
This morning I was flipping through the 150th Anniversary edition of The Atlantic Monthly, and was cracked up by this image from Michael Beirut.
No Incumbents
Our Moscow City Council election is about a week and a half away. For those involved, the simplest rule of thumb is to vote for no incumbents, which would include Lamar, Ament, and Pall. They have been been hip-deep in the antics of the last several years, and there are a few reminders of that …
So Then, Dumbledore Is Gay, They Say
I don’t think there is any way to take the news that Dumbledore turns out to be homosexual as anything other than a stellar business. I haven’t heard such good news since that business about Gore and the Nobel Prize. This announcement made a bunch of issues just float right up to the surface, where …
Making the Unclean Clean
When Jesus comes back across the sea, He performs two remarkable miracles, the first performed while He is on His way to the second. The woman with the issue of blood was healed while Christ was on His way to the house of Jairus. “And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the …
From Donne to Taylor
“Specifically, my concern here is with the biblical, Protestant poetics informing a major strain of English seventeenth-century religious lyric: the chief characteristic of that poetics can, I suggest, be clearly discerned, and the history of the literary impact traced with some precision — from the quickening of Donne to the developing theory, to the exhaustion …
Testimony Rhymes With Me
“So much so-called ‘testimony’ today is really autobiography and even sometimes thinly disguised self-advertisement, that we need to regain a proper biblical perspective. All true testimony is testimony to Jesus Christ, as He stands on trial before the world” (John Stott, The Preacher’s Portrait, p. 64).
Brief Polytheism
“Muhammad also compromised with the Meccan merchants during a particularly intense time of persecution. Formerly he had fearlessly condemned polytheism. Then, under pressure, he accepted the Meccan belief that Allah had a wife, Al-lat, and two daughters, Al Uzzo and Manat (Surah 53:20-23). Later Muhammad repudiated these so called Satanic verses and claimed that all …
Confused Enlightenment
“If there is one thing of which modern man is utterly convinced, it is that he has reached a state of sexual enlightenment . . . Yet, as enlightened as we believe ourselves to be, a golden age of contentment has not dawned—very far from it . . . The sexual revolution has not yielded …
The Siren Call of Weirdness
“A cult mentality is ‘obviously’ exhibited by anyone who does not want to live in the prescribed atomistic and detached way — one who does not want to be just another loose ball bearing rattling around in modernity’s machine. The contemporary standards will beckon with a siren call — any kind of weirdness is accepted …