“Civil governments rest upon force, and the gospel does not. How can these two principles ever abide together? There are some who have wanted the church to train its sons in the arts of politics, encouraging them to have their try at shinnying up the greasy pole of civil ambition. Others want the church to …
High Hearted, Not High Arted
“High church Puritan thinking begins with the authority of the Word of God, and one of the first things we are told in Scripture is that God has established enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. An understanding of this enmity, this antithesis, must undergird all that we do” …
No Kidding
“I was once visiting my grandmother’s home in a tiny, sleepy farm town in Nebraska. While there I saw a bumper sticker that said, ‘You don’t see much in a small town, but what you hear makes up for it'” (5 Cities, p. xiii).
Maturity Grows
“As Scripture tells the story of the world, it begins with a garden, and it ends that story with a Garden City” (5 Cities That Ruled the World, p. xi).
A Great Thunderhead
“We were commissioned — I believe the word is ordained — to compel every manifestation of worldly power, glory, wisdom, and exaltation to yield to and obey the majesty of God, in full accordance with God’s Word. We were ordained to feed the sheep and drive away wolves, and all by God’s Word. We were …
No Derivative Light
“We were not sent to preach about the perfections of a perfect by distant star, cool and twinkling against a black, velvet sky. We were not even sent to preach a moon, reflecting derivative light — we are not servants of the ruler of the evening. We were sent to preach a blazing sun, one …
Preaching Drives the World
“In sum, our view of Scripture drives our view of preaching, and our preaching drives the world. If the world is not in fact driven, then we need to work our way back up the drivetrain and ask ourselves some hard questions” (From With Calvin in the Theater of God, p. 94).
Risky Business
“Who today thinks that the Bible open in the pulpit is a lit stick of divine dynamite, one that mere mortals are ordained and authorized to throw out into the world? How many preachers have sermons on file that they would not dare to preach without purchasing some extra life insurance first?” (From With Calvin …
An Authoritative Word
“The Scriptures are not a possession of ours, which we may put into the world’s balances to be weighed. Rather, the Scriptures are God’s scales, in which he places the entire world. They are the scales in which he places heaven and earth, and all the nations. He says to us, ‘Mene, Mene, Tekel, and …
Who’s Grading Whom?
“One day the schoolmarm in the one-room schoolhouse of modernity gave a test to all the kids in her class. The schoolmarm’s name was Mrs. Enlightenment, and one kid was named the Bhagavad Gita, another was the Koran, another was the Book of Mormon, and of course, a test was also given to the best …