“Our task is not to lecture about Jesus with philosophical detachment. We have become personally involved in Him. His revelation and redemption have changed our lives. Our eyes have been opened to see Him, and our ears unstopped to hear Him, as our Saviour and our Lord. We are witnesses; so we must bear witness” …
Mary and Miriam
“Surah 19:29 . . . claims that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was a sister of Aaron. Because Surah 66:12 describes Mary as the daughter of Imram (the Amram of Exodus 6:20), it would seem that Muhammad was again confused about the facts. He had evidently mistaken Mary (the mother of Jesus) for Miriam (Moses’ …
Spasms of Self-Righteousness
“There is nothing so absurd, wrote Macaulay in the middle of the nineteenth century, as the spectacle of the British public in one of its periodic fits of morality; but now the spectacle is sinister as well as absurd. To make up for its lack of a moral compass, the British public is prey to …
Away or To?
“Our ability to drive an hour to get to church has more often than not created distance from our next door neighbors, and it has done this without really creating closeness to those we worship with when we are done with our drive. For various reasons, we do more driving away than driving to” (Mother …
Baked Lust
“Eight, further, as they stir up sin so they harden in sin. Fire hardens the clay into a brick. Thus are men’s hearts hardened in evil by our divisions. The hearts of men who heretofore had tender spirits were ready to relent upon any brotherly admonition. Now they are stiff; they stand out sturdily, yea, …
The Death of John Baptist
When Jesus comes to His own hometown, He is rejected by the people there. After this, He sends out His disciples to preach on His behalf, but before they return we hear a parenthetical explanation of the death of John the Baptist. “And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and …
Deep Roots
“My contention [is] that the poetics of much seventeenth-century religious lyric derives primarily from Protestant assumptions about the poetry of the Bible and the nature of the spiritual life” (Lewalski, Protestant Poetics, p. 5)
Double Witness
“This brings us at last to the fifth aspect of Christian witness, which concerns the preacher . . . We may summarize the biblical view of Christian witness by saying that it is borne before the world by the Father to the Son through the Spirit and the Church . . . This double witness …
Religion of Force
“Clearly Islam is a religion of force which denies basic freedom. It may not be politically correct to say so, but pretending that the Quran is a pacifist document and that Islam has a consistent track record of peace and tolerance is either foolish or deceitful” (Peter Hammond, Slavery, Terrorism & Islam, p. 46).
Don’t Know What We Think Anymore
“Thanks to the sexual revolution, current confusions are manifold. In a society that forms sexual liaisons with scarcely a thought, a passing suggestive remark can result in a lawsuit; the use of explicit sexual language is de rigeur in literary circles, but medical journals fear to print the word ‘prostitute’ and use the delicate euphemism …