Jesus rose from the dead, and defeated the power of death forever. He did not do this in one moment of time, with all the effects of His work immediately evident, but the central thing was done at that one moment of time. His resurrection was the first fruits of what will be a glorious …
Protection and the Sacrament
As was noted at the Good Friday service, the Lord Jesus at the Last Supper gave bread to Judas. The apostle John says that after this identification of him, Satan entered him and he went out into the night. There is an important sense in which we should fence the Table, and this is what …
Good Friday Homily 2005
This is the day in our calendar when we commemorate the time when the mangled body of our Lord Jesus was nailed to a cross of wood. Not only do we commemorate this, we exult in it. In this divine humiliation, we have learned to see the beauty of the Lord, the wisdom of God, …
Reprobation and Preterition
We must begin by understanding that there are two distinct aspects to reprobation. It is important to keep these distinctions in mind all the time. Preterition comes from the Latin, and means “to pass by.” It is flip side to election and has nothing whatever to do with the merits or demerits of the person …
No Cheese Atall
Dear visionaries, In making the Nazi connection, Anne failed to mention that when I was in the Navy (and Germany also had a Navy, did it not?) I owned a Volkswagen. I think that Will missed one of my key points. I said that I actually think this is appropriate. I believe that some of …
Evangelism and the Beanstalk
“In short, Canaan was a land filled with giants. The invasion of Canaan was a war of giant-killing, and a type of the giant-killing gospel . . . Christ became one of us, and, as a son of David, He bound and defeated the Goliath of that age (Lk. 11:21-22) . . . The Christian …
The National Guard Option
In the grimy world of politics a million consciences have been bought and sold without anyone noticing. But in the providence of God, there are occasional moments when a crisis of conscience comes for someone, and it all happens under the spotlight. At that moment the entire nation goes silent to watch what the decision …
The Gospel as Dragon Bane
“We fell into sin as a race because we were beguiled by a dragon (Gen. 3:1). God promised to send a warrior who would crush the seed of that serpent (Gen. 3:15), and He has done this in Jesus Christ. In sum, the gospel is the story of a dragon-fight. The serpent of Genesis is …
Free Will and Free Agency
No serious participant in this debate denies that men are free, responsible agents, and that they are fully accountable for what they do. There is, however, much debate on what the word freedom means. How Does the Will Operate? Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and …
Help From the Outside
Visionaries, Ralph raised a couple questions based on the reports in the newspaper that our private Christian school was limiting board membership to men only. First, the board has not voted on that proposition. The board approved presenting the proposed change to the school’s constituency, and then collecting feedback. According to our by-laws, the board …