Professor Richard Gaffin said: “The church wins by losing.” In a similar vein, John MacArthur said, “We lose down here.” What is the result of such thinking? What would have become of our world if the early Christians had acted on the theme of losing? Some recent history might help: About 3,000 of the approximately 18,000 Protestant pastors in Germany in the 1930s openly supported Adolf Hitler, an [...]
Critics of Christmas need not reply. Every Christmas there is the inevitable talk about a “war on Christmas.” Not all opposition comes from secularists, atheists, and Muslims. Some Christians believe the Bible does not set aside the birth of Jesus as a special calendar day to honor His birth because such a celebration violates the “regulative principle of worship.” Others believe Christmas has a p [...]
Twelve immoral and insane Republicans voted with the always immoral Democrats (pro-killing unborn children, supporting genital mutilation of children, and defending an array of gender definitions and the courts to enforce them) to protect same-sex marriage and everything associated with it. We’re already seeing the implications of legalized immorality in the way bakers, web designers, and photogra [...]
While I was a student at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, I was also the Assistant Manager of the bookstore. The bookstore afforded me the opportunity to learn about books, not only the authors and their content but their construction. Books from Great Britain had the best bindings. Hardback books published by the Banner of Truth Trust were beautifully designed. Older works f [...]
I received the following from three high school girls who go to school in Denmark about a school project they were working on. “The answers will be used in the presentation and nothing else, we will not be using it for social media or anything else…. We got your number from ‘the American vision’ and then under ‘contact us’ your mail was there and then we just wrote to you.” [...]
On Thursday, September 24, 1789, the first House of Representatives voted to recommend—in its exact wording—the First Amendment of the newly drafted Constitution to the states for ratification. The next day, Congressman Elias Boudinot from New Jersey proposed that the House and Senate jointly request of President Washington to proclaim a day of thanksgiving for “the many signal favors of Almighty [...]
The usual dissenters come out of the woodwork every October to denounce Christopher Columbus and November to attack Thanksgiving. Here’s one from 2020: Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is being called “a racist piece of trash” and a “white supremacist” after defending the legacy of the Mayflower Compact and criticizing an article in the New York Times that called the story of the Pilgrims a “myth” and re- [...]
You do not need to know Greek to understand what the Bible says about sexual relationships, including same-sex sexuality. When someone appeals to the Bible to make a case for a theological or moral position, it’s necessary to begin where the Bible begins. Starting with the New Testament and something that took place in 1946 is not the best starting point. An old argument is getting some press via [...]
The George Soros-supported leftist group ProPublica is demanding the IRS investigate churches for violating the Constitution based on a law passed by Congress in 1954. This is a decades-old battle. Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) called “on the Internal Revenue Service to look into allegations that Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, Tenn.,” violated “restrictions for post [...]
I saw the article “Preterism Examined and Refuted” by Charles H. Campbell on the AlwaysBeReady website. I picked a few of his examinations and refutations and quickly put together a short response. There were many more, but I didn’t see anything new that I and many others have not already dealt with in great detail over many centuries. For example, see my book Wars and Rumors of Wars, an expositio [...]
The latest in last days madness comes from, naturally, the Middle East. It concerns the drying up of the Euphrates River. Supposedly the dry Euphrates is an end-time sign that the end is near. When Russia invaded Ukraine, that was said to be an ancillary fulfillment of Ezekiel 38-39. Linking Russia with the Hebrew word rosh in Ezekiel 38:2 and 39:1 goes back a long way. Rosh is not a prophetic mar [...]
Some readers get upset any time I point out how modern-day prophecy writers misrepresent the Bible. My critics don’t seem to mind that Hal Lindsey has been wrong over the years in an area of study that has made his reputation and so much of Christendom has embraced as “gospel.” I’ve pointed out a number of these “miscalculations” in previous articles and books. It was amazing to see how people def [...]
My wife will tell anyone that my mind works in mysterious ways. It seems to ramble around until it finds disparate bits of information and makes odd connections that mystify her. “How did you get that from that?,” she often asks. To be honest, I don’t really know. The latest is from the film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) that stars John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Lee Marvin, Vera Miles, Edmon [...]
When I became a Christian in 1973, last days madness was all the rage. Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth was becoming a mega-bestseller. Lindsey had implied rather strongly that something called the “rapture” would take place before the 1948-1988 generation passed away. You can read his comments in the hardback edition on pages 53 and 54. I don’t know if he ever revised LGPE. I was new to [...]
Once Christians adopt a quietist and radical separationist perspective on Christ and culture, the other tyrannical shoe will drop. In time, churches in Nazi German were “confined as far as possible to the performance of narrowly religious functions, and even within this narrow sphere [they] were subjected to as many hindrances as the Nazis dared to impose.” This assessment is from a 1945 report pu [...]
A Christian posted on Facebook that she was eager to leave this world because it’s not home. Actually, it is her home. Similar to her dual citizenship (Phil 3:20), she has two homes, one in this world and one in the next. Until God calls us to our heavenly home, we are responsible for our earthly home that God made possible for us to have. Christians are often caught between “This World Is Not My [...]
Each October, Christopher Columbus is hammered for his voyages of exploitation of native peoples. For example, Seattle, Washington, has designated the formerly Columbus Day as “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” as if Indigenous People were free from conquest, slavery, and brutality. Like Martin Luther King, Jr. Day hasn’t done a thing for black people, Indigenous Peoples’ Day won’t do a thing for the desce [...]
“Just preach the gospel.” How many times have you heard pastors and critics of social and political action scold Christians concerned about the moral direction the church is taking for mixing the gospel with politics? The gospel is more than a life insurance program or a “Get Out of Hell Free” card. It is to transform everything we think about and act on. There is no neutrality or areas that are o [...]
“The publishers did not see that my purpose was to write a moral lesson of the punishment that befell a mortal man who dared to emulate God.” — Mary Shelly’s character in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). October is horror film month because of Halloween (“Hallow,” not “Hollow”). The genre has come a long way. The older horror films often blend elements of legitimate science with the occult, alche [...]
Most people who have seen the film The Ten Commandments on television have never seen Cecil B. DeMille’s opening introduction. DeMille had something more in mind than just making a film about a religious figure from the Bible. He considered his production to be so important that he came out on stage to deliver a short but powerful statement on the nature of freedom under the law of God: The theme [...]
