Last week, Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat Congresswoman from Chicago, defended deficit spending and welfare by advancing the old Social Gospel on the floor of the House. She asked fiscal conservatives four questions and quoted the Bible in support of each one. (Why there was no huge outcry from the ACLU or the Freedom From Religion [...]
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You know the First Amendment, right? It’s the one about free speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion, right? Nope. I am talking about the First Amendment. That is, the original First Amendment. And it was not about these freedoms—vital as they are—but rather about adequate representation in Congress. A primary concern among some [...]
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Sometime around AD 405, a sixteen year-old boy strolling the English seaside was attacked by pirates. They kidnapped him and sold him on the slave market to a chieftain in Northern Ireland who forced him to herd pigs. The young man endured filth, the elements, separation from family, and years of servitude. Yet the open [...]
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We are by now familiar with the list of tyrannies that God said Israel’s desired King would impose upon them (1 Sam. 8): conscription for military service and civil service, a military-industrial complex, high taxation, confiscation of property, slavery, etc. (See my previous discussions here and here.) What we learn from the following two chapters [...]
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When Jim Wallis declares that he opposes “American exceptionalism,” no one should be surprised. Wallis’s first commitment is Marxism. He started his career in activism not as a church minister nor as a Christian, but as a member of the Students for Democratic Society, a socialist organization originally known as League for Industrial Democracy (LID). [...]
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I was intrigued with the headline, “How Can I Break Free From an Addiction to Entertainment?” I was engaged when I read the author’s name, John Piper. But I was disappointed with the answers. I should offer a few of my own. To begin with, Piper’s right, this is a serious problem for Christians (and [...]
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In my libertarian activities in Bulgaria I often had to confront questions by secular libertarians about the connection between Christianity and libertarianism. My reply was that one can not be a libertarian without the true source of liberty. And the true source of liberty is Jesus Christ. Therefore I can not be a libertarian without [...]
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How bad has the expansion of federal government power into every area of life become? Consider the following statement about federal intrusion into local government: The federal government is already so enmeshed in the affairs of American cities that no one knows the extent. Federal tax money is used for schools, health facilities, public power, [...]
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“I have conquered an empire but I haven’t been able to conquer myself.” Thus said shortly before his death Peter the Great, the ruler of the Russian Empire from 1682 till 1725. There were good reasons why he said that. The man who controlled the destinies of millions of people couldn’t control his own epileptic [...]
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I haven’t had the chance to read John Frame’s The Escondido Theology yet. If it is anything like what Dr. Frame has written before, it will be a very good book, I am sure. In fact, I already know it is a very good book, even without reading it. How do I know? Michael Horton [...]
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