All things work together for good for those who love God and are the called according to His purpose. This assurance from God is a deep assurance in times of natural calamity, but it is even more profound when we are confronted with the consequences of sin and rebellion. This too, is controlled by God …
Tell Me More About This Eternal Life
“In the Koran, he repeatedly redefines Judeo-Christianity’s heaven as an enormous God-owned bordello in the sky. In that heavenly brothel, loyal Muslim men—especially those paying the door price of martyrdom—would find a host of virgins called houris, who would forever satisfy all their sexual cravings (see Koran 38:51; 44:54; 55:55-74; 56: 22, 34-36)” (Don Richardson, …
Metaphors of Bounty
“From this perspective the Reformation can be seen as an infinitely varied, but coherent and extended, metaphor for the bountifulness of God’s grace. If, however, there is anything to be said for this argument, then we are going to have to look in quite a new way at Protestantism, which — we have generally been …
High and Lonely Destiny-ism
“It has been like this since the eighteenth century when the old concept of the artist as craftsman began to be exchanged for a concept that saw him as both a gifted genius and a social and economic outcast” (H.R. Rookmaaker, Art Needs No Justification, p. 5).
Tradition and Testimony
“A modern church cannot base everything it does on ‘Scripture solitaire’ without any reference to the testimonies of the historic Church. For one of the central testimonies which the Church has given, and which the historic Protestants continue to give, is that the sixty-six books of the Bible are the only ultimate and infallible Word …
Some Things Never Change
“[W]e cannot be ignorant that there is a generation of men who are vexed when they hear how near their brethren come to them by way of agreement. It serves more to their advantage to have the distance wide. They would keep open the wounds, yea, widen them” (Burroughs, Irenicum, p. 61).
Why Don’t You Hear?
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! How long are You going to forget me? You are eternal; Is Your forgetfulness the same? How long do You intend to hide Your face? How long will I have to counsel myself? Communing with nothing but my own sorrow? How long …
Quite Cozy in the Basement
One day the apostles and prophets backed their concrete truck up to the building lot, and they poured a marvelous foundation. Jesus Himself came and placed the cornerstone, and when they all had left, the foundation cured, and was soon ready for building. The evangelists were capable loggers, sawmill operators, and truckers. They soon brought …
Obedience to Glory
St. Paul tells us that Jesus did not consider His equality with God as something to be grasped, but rather took the form of a servant. And, having done that, He was obedient to the point of death, to the point of the cross. We need to see here, and remember, and meditate on the …
And It Figures
One of the most obvious characteristics of our relativistic, postmodern times is a schizophrenic approach to different kinds of authority. The radical individualism pioneered by modernity, and carried on by its sham-alternative, postmodernity, is an individualism that reacts violently to all forms of godly authority, and capitulates immediately in the face of brow-beated bluster. Relativism …