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, &lsq [...]
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 [...]
David Jeremiah has written a flurry of books on Bible prophecy that deal with end-time themes that claim that the rapture of the church is near with the rise of “the Antichrist” and a great tribulation to follow. The following is about his 2021 book Where Do We Go From Here?: I’ve studied the signs of the times and believe we’re approaching a global cataclysm — one predicted in our Scriptures and [...]
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 wi [...]
The claim that an English translation of the Bible was changed to accommodate the Christian Right to support its anti-abortion stance is biblically and historically bogus. I made note of these points in the previous article on this subject. But there is even more exegetical and historical evidence that the best translation of the text should read in English “so that her children come out” long bef [...]
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 Imp [...]
Christianity’s failure to be a practical religion in the past 150 years or more has meant the success of a perverted and twisted secularism and an advancing militant Islam that are doing incalculable harm at home and abroad. Humanism and Islam have gained the upper hand by default. The rejection of any type of this-worldly application of the Bible has resulted in the proliferation of a man-centere [...]
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 [...]
In my 2020 debate with Kent Hovind, the topic of Daniel’s 70-weeks-of-years prophecy in Daniel 9:24–27 came up. Like all futurists like Hovind who hold to a rapture during a seven-year interval in which supposedly the antichrist shows up and makes and breaks a covenant with Israel, the temple is rebuilt, and the Great Tribulation takes place, includes a parenthesis after the 69th week (483 years). [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
“A student is not above the teacher; but everyone, when he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). God’s plan for His people is growth. The entire experience of life is characterized (or should be) by continued maturity—from infancy to adulthood. Parents teach their children “the way they should go” (Proverbs 22:6), while also gaining a deeper [...]
It’s October 12th, traditionally known as Columbus Day (celebrated on the second Monday in October) but now designated in some parts of the country as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Which “indigenous people” do these historical revisionists “have in mind? Is it the Kalinago people, who ate roasted human flesh, with a particular affinity for the remains of babies and fetuses? Is it the Aztecs, who killed [...]
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 overv [...]
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. [...]
