“You shall not steal” is a fundamental biblical commandment that’s found in both Testaments (Ex. 20:15; 21:16; Lev. 19:11, 13; Matt. 19:18; Rom. 13:9). If property is theft, as one Christian stated on his Facebook page, then every person in the world is a thief because everyone owns something. Property rights are fundamental in the Bible, so much so that they’ve been written into our nation’s laws [...]
Matthew Dowd who was the chief strategist for the re-election campaign of former President George W. Bush who’s now running as a Democrat in the Texas lieutenant governor’s race implied in a tweet that conservatives and Republicans would criticize Jesus as being “woke” if He were alive today. Given the definition of being woke, Jesus would denounce it since it’s being used to promote racial [...]
John Piper writes that Christians “exert influence as happy, brokenhearted outsiders” who should only count on having limited and temporal success this side of heaven. “American culture does not belong to Christians,” he continues, “neither in reality nor in biblical theology. It never has. The present tailspin toward Sodom is not a fall from Christian ownership, &rsq [...]
Ideas have consequences and history often provides some interesting examples. The book review below was written in 2009 and there have been several ironic turns in the intervening years. The author of the book, Jason Stellman, was a PCA minister in the Pacific Northwest Presbytery and served as the prosecutor at Peter Leithart’s trial over teaching “heresy.” Leithart was acquitte [...]
Change takes time and people are generally impatient. It is easy to get frustrated and discouraged by what we see happening around us, but Christians need to have a long-term vision. The Church has existed for 2000 years, Israel for 2000 years before that, and the patriarchs 2000 before that. We have the time; now we need the vision. Unconditional Surrender: God's Program for Victory A primer [...]
In a paper titled “Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law,” law professor Arthur Leff laments the impossibility of disconnecting law and religion. In his refreshingly honest assessment of the dilemma, he wrote: My plan for this Article, then, is as follows. I shall first try to prove to your satisfaction that there cannot be any normative system ultimately based on anything except human wil [...]
As we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune-telling. She followed Paul and us, crying out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.” And this she kept doing for many days. Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command yo [...]
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg and pro-abortion Baptist “minister” Katey Zeh argue that opposition to abortion is based on “a single word being mistranslated more than 2,000 years ago.” The Christian responses to the claim made by these two pro-abortion women are OK, but they do not go far enough in pointing out their very bad exegetical work. I’ve run across additional twisted exegesis and history simila [...]
Pushback is beginning against the “cancel culture” and Southwest Airlines, Netflix, and the NFL are right in the middle of it. In the upside-down world of today’s politics and culture, there are celebrities and groups getting silenced and/or shouted down for “unapproved” facts and beliefs. These attempts to shut down freedom of speech are not going unnoticed. The Impo [...]
Secularists of all types, best exemplified by the new Marxists, entered “into every civil, cultural and political activity in every nation, patiently leavening them all as thoroughly as yeast leavens bread.”[1] To change the culture, Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) argued, “would require a ‘long march through the institutions’—the arts, cinema, theater, schools, colleges, seminaries, n [...]
Every area of life is affected by the Gospel. There is not one topic of discussion, or any activity, that is outside the realm of the Kingdom of God. The Gospel announces that King Jesus is victorious and is moving and growing His Kingdom throughout history. In Him, we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). A defeatist eschatology and a generally pessimistic worldview has created a weak an [...]
There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. (1 Corinthians 12:4–6) In His providence, God supplies individuals and churches with the talents they need to perform the work for which He has called them. Personal di [...]
The Gospel is not just “getting people saved.” Salvation is the start of a lifetime-long journey of sanctification and growth. For too long, the Church has been abandoning its role as the “change agent” within culture and society. Cursing the darkness is much easier, because shining a light requires more effort and more time. But the fact that it’s difficult doesn&rsq [...]
Guest article by Mark Dewey The Lord has blessed my wife and me with the privilege and challenge of raising fourteen children. Our family has been afforded the opportunity to interact with men, women, and children from multiple states and other countries. When people first see “all those children,” they often ask if we are Amish, Mormon, or Roman Catholic. In one sense this is understandable; in a [...]
Movements for change require leaders, but they also require those willing to do the everyday work. While most people have their eyes trained on the captivating individual at the forefront, the real change is coming from deeper inside. Somewhere in the “middle management” of the change movement is where the real work gets done. History 101: Lessons from the Past History 101 is an overvi [...]
Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.” (John 8:12) “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. [...]
As a Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Dr. Bart Ehrman is well-regarded in the area of New Testament textual criticism. He has written many books and given many lectures on the topic. He even participated in a debate in early 2009 with Dr. James White on the topic of the reliability of the NT manuscripts. Dr. Ehrman’s recent fascination is with [...]
“The first to plead his case seems right, Until another comes and examines him” (Prov. 18:17). Is there such a thing as “science”? There isn’t. Science is not a thing like a shovel used for digging, a microscope for viewing what can’t be seen with the naked eye, or a gun to send a projectile through the air. To “follow the science” means to follow the opinions, theories, and conclusions of people [...]
Christianity built the modern world. From science to music to art and architecture, the Christian worldview has influenced and informed all the “modern” technology and way of life that we (too often) take for granted. Dr. Greg Bahnsen was known for his phrase “stolen capital.” By this he meant that anti-Christian worldviews take what they like and enjoy from the Christian w [...]
Movies are a self-contained world. The writers and producers make the rules and the circumstances for the worlds they create. Most often though, films use the assumed order of the natural world and don’t attempt to re-write reality for the viewer. Films either reinforce the real world or they rebel against it. Either way, they provide a great way to think through worldview issues and their c [...]
