“Nonsense does not improve by being bellowed” (Charles Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, p. 42).
Good and Necessary Consequence
Lane has picked up our discussion of faith as evangelical obedience here, and Tim Prussic has captured the problem with Lane’s argument in the second comment there at Green Baggins. The issue is not really an exegetical one — I granted in an earlier part of our discussion that his exegesis pointing to sanctification is …
Serve Him With What You Have, and All You Have
“When grace abounds, learning will not puff you up, or injure your simplicity in the gospel. Serve God with such education as you have, and thank Him for blowing through you if you are a ram’s horn, but if there be a possibility of your becoming a silver trumpet, choose it rather” (Charles Spurgeon, An …
How God Made the World
Holidays can be divided up into three general categories. The first would be holy-days, ecclesiastical holidays. In these, the Church remembers and commemorates the life, death, resurrection, and the continued work of Jesus Christ in them—Christmas, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost. Then we have what we might call civil holidays—like the Fourth of July. And third, …
Preach With Your Feet Off the Bottom
“We have only waded ankle-deep in faith as yet. We though the water very cold and chill when we timorously ventured in; but having tried it up to the ankles, we have found it good and pleasant. Let us advance until we are breast-deep, yea, and deeper. Blessed is that man who gets his feet …
But the Westminster Confession Is Not a Rubik’s Cube
“Well, brethren, to sum up a great many things in one, faith is to us a great enlargement of our souls. Men who are morbidly anxious to possess a self-consistent creed, — a creed which they can put together, and form into a square, like a Chinese puzzle, — are very apt to narrow their …
Evil as Slave
“Sin and death are, like the Gibeonites, hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Divine purposes; and, though they know it not, when the Lord’s enemies rave and rage most, they fulfil His eternal purposes to the praise of the glory of His wisdom and grace” (Charles Spurgeon, An All-Round Ministry, p. 17).
Which Is Why It Takes Courage
“A minister should not preach before the people, but he should preach right at them; let him look straight at them; if he can, let him search them through and through, and take stock of them, as it were, and see what they are like, and then suit his message to them” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures …
Is This Checkmate?
Here is a quick response to Lane’s latest, and then I am content to move on. First, I don’t object to detailed grammatical exegesis, and I don’t object to it in the Thessalonians passage that Lane was dealing with. I was simply pointing out that we were talking about the kind of problem that remains …
The Great Cretan Gaffe
A few weeks ago, N.T. Wright responded to a few of his critics on the debt relief issue here. A more detailed interaction needs to wait for another time, but I want to put a few thoughts up now. As Wright himself put it, “I don’t have time for a full answer, but I hope …