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There is no doubt that our world is becoming more hostile to Christians. Oh, sure, I wouldn't classify it as "persecution". I mean, we're being told we can't practice our faith in some instances, but it's not like other places in the world where they're being tortured and killed for it. I don't even know if it would ever come to that here. But we are long past the days when people thought America was "a Christian nation" and Christian morality was good for everyone. And there are more and louder voices out there calling for our suppression, repression, and oppression.…  ( Click for more )

Anyone who knows of Jonathan Edwards will know that he wrote the definitive work, The Freedom of the Will. I am not writing any such thing. I just want to examine, for a moment, what we know about the human will and its freedom and lack thereof. Free will is important. We know that because if there is no free will, there is no free choice, and if no free choice, no accountability. That is, if humans do not have free will, they can't be held responsible for their sin or credited with their successes and Christianity falls apart. But what exactly is this so-called "free will"? …  ( Click for more )

Talk to any Christian and you will find basic agreement on basic beliefs. We believe in monotheism -- one God. We believe that Jesus lived and died and rose again. Basic. We believe that He was God Incarnate. We believe that the Holy Spirit is God -- the Third Person of the Trinity. We believe that the Bible is the God-breathed Word of God. Basic beliefs. And we agree. It is said that you can tell what a person truly believes by what they do. When, for instance, Al Gore traveled the country with his "inconvenient truth" about the horrors of human-caused global warming,…  ( Click for more )

It is clear (at least to any reasonable reader) that Scripture holds that the husband is to be the head of the household. The Bible repeatedly says that wives are to submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-24; Colossians 3:18; 1 Peter 3:1-6) -- that the hierarchy is Christ -> man -> wife (1 Corinthians 11:3). It takes a carefully turned blind eye and skillful linguistics to wriggle out of this certainty. And, to be sure, the rise of radical feminism has surely produced many a blind eye and skillful linguist. But the Scriptures are not unclear. It's not surprising,…  ( Click for more )

Paul wrote the definitive piece on biblical love in 1 Corinthians 13. Perhaps it's not as much a definition as a description, still he listed all sorts of aspects of what God calls love. And we get most of them: Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends (1 Corinthians 13:4-8).

Yes, yes, we get it.…  ( Click for more )

We are commanded, of course, to "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation." (Mark 16:15) Let no one convince you otherwise. However, that is only the beginning. We aren't sent to make converts; we're sent to make disciples. No, more than that. "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:19-20)

We are to make disciples, baptize them, and…  ( Click for more )

The other day there was someone on the television who spoke of his "husband". (Note the pronoun.) It made me think. What is the meaning of the word, "husband"? I ask myself that because of the apparent connection to the term "husbandry". Husbandry is the conservation and careful management of resources. Usually it's referring to farm management, but not necessarily. And, as it turns out, this is the idea of the verb, "husband". (Did you know there was a verb form?) The verb means precisely that ... to use economically, to conserve. The word…  ( Click for more )

You remember the story of the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. He was a persecuter of the church. He was "breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord" (Acts 9:1) and set out with permission to hunt down anyone "belonging to the Way" (Acts 9:2). Traveling to Damascus to persecute the church there, he ran into an unexpected person -- the person of the Resurrected Christ. There, on the ground, he heard, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?" (Acts 9:4) Oh, now, hold on. I think Jesus made a mistake there, didn't He? I mean, the text was…  ( Click for more )

From my youth I've seen many examples of "American heroes" on the TV and movie screens. John Wayne was probably the quintessential hero. He stood alone, strong, individual, fighting for what was right, that sort of thing. Most of them are like that in American lore. In comic books and their television and movie offshoots we have superheroes like Batman, Superman, and Spiderman. And they're not all fictional types. Abraham Lincoln, for instance, stood alone against slavery and, by his positions and choices brought about the emancipation of slaves in America. Heroic. That's…  ( Click for more )

The standard definition for the doctrine of Christian Liberty is something like this. Believers are free to do that which God has not commanded them not to do or to not do that which God has not commanded them to do in accordance with faith. That is, if God didn't say anything about the subject, your conscience (guided by the Holy Spirit, of course) should be your guide. The doctrine comes from a couple of biblical passages. One is Romans 14 and the other is 1 Corinthians 8. And most Christians who have heard of this principle are rather pleased with it. Odd thing, however.…  ( Click for more )

I recently took a trip through Oregon and Washington, both states where recreational marijuana was "legal". (That's in quotes because it's still illegal by federal law, but I guess no one is looking.) In the lobby of the hotel we stayed in where they have all those brochures on things to do in the area, there was a brochure on where to find weed as well as enlightening information about cannabis in its various forms and effects. Coming from a state where it is NOT legal, of course, this was shocking. For my entire life where I grew up in the era of the drug culture I've…  ( Click for more )

I use a Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible (NASB) for my normal reading. It's nice to have some commentary from someone who knows the languages of the original text. The other day I was in 1 Corinthians 7 where Paul talks about divorce. In the notes, the commentary author recommended I read his book on "Can I get divorced and remarried?" If you are married, you may have asked the question yourself. If not, you've surely heard it. If you haven't heard it, you've the evidence of the question is everywhere. They tell me (whether or not they're correct) that divorce is…  ( Click for more )

Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Then He *said to His disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest." (Matthew 9:35-38))

"Distressed and dispirited," those are the words used in this translation…  ( Click for more )

So, here I am, minding my own business, reading along in Romans, and I come across this. We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. (Romans 15:1-2)

If you're paying attention, it's very reminiscent of something Paul wrote in his letter to the Christians in Philippi. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests…  ( Click for more )

I recently finished Rosaria Butterfield's The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. This is not a review of the book. If you don't know who she is, she was a leftist, lesbian professor that despised Christians ... and then became one. Good story. She was redeemed and actually turned her life over to Christ. She has drawn a lot of fire from the LGBT community because she stopped being a lesbian and married a pastor. There was one part in her story, after she was a pastor's wife, that shocked me. It shouldn't have, but it did. She wrote about talking to a woman at a church that…  ( Click for more )

I did a brief search on the phrase "the culture war is lost" and found a host of hits. As far back as 2013 they were writing about how the culture wars are lost. While Jerry Falwell was talking about the "Moral Majority" in the late 70's, we've seen it dwindle to a minority. Today Disney is considering a lesbian relationship for one of their popular animated characters and Pixar is said to be pursuing the same for their sequel to Finding Nemo. The state of Washington is planning to teach kindergartners about transgenderism. Even a young person's video game, The…  ( Click for more )

Our understanding of God is too often predicated on our own redefinitions rather than on what He says about Himself. "A loving God would never send people to Hell" (or whatever else we claim a loving God would never do) is premised on what we think "love" is, not on what God says He will do. "God is gracious; He's not an angry God" presumes that "grace" and "wrath" cannot both be present because we've decided that is the case, not because He said it. We have no problem accepting from God the good things He tells us about Himself.…  ( Click for more )

We have all heard about the terrible shooting in Orlando. Awful. Called the worst mass shooting in American history, too many people lost their lives at the hands of a single deranged gunman pledging allegiance to ISIS. It seems odd, then, although not unexpected, that the first corrective we hear from most corners is gun control. The second appears to be to eliminate Christians. According to Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla, the weapon that was used could fire 700 shots per minute. Now, I don't know about you, but I had no idea that that kind of firepower was available on the streets…  ( Click for more )

In Acts 12 there is a kind of fun story about Peter in jail. Herod had James, John's brother, beheaded and found out the Jews liked it. So he had Peter arrested and planned to further the fun by killing him after Passover. Well, God had other plans. In the night an angel came in, kicked Peter and told him to get up and go, and they walked out. Peter didn't even know it was real until the angel left him outside the prison. Imagine that! So he went to where he knew Christians would be gathered and knocked on the door. Sure enough, there was a group inside praying for Peter, but when…  ( Click for more )

We are Christians. We are to be disciples of Christ -- learners of Christ, students of Christ. We are to be constantly "transformed by the renewal of your mind" (Romans 12:2). We are to be drawing reality from the source of reality -- God Himself -- which He offers in His Word. It is God-breathed, so by the help of the Holy Spirit, we should be able to see truth there that a world blinded by the god of this world will certainly miss. With that truth we ought to be correcting our own fallen views by replacing them with God's position on things. The process itself is fairly…  ( Click for more )

Clearly our culture has lost its way when it comes to marriage. We started our most serious departure from the truth in the '50's when we decided that "marriage" and "offspring" were distinct. We continued that departure with "no fault divorce". With these twin assaults on marriage came a parallel attack, euphemistically called "free love" -- have sex with whomever you want. The cancer has eaten away at the body of marriage for decades and now we have the contradictory concept of "gay marriage" as not merely acceptable, but as law…  ( Click for more )

The cry of the Reformation was "Sola Scriptura!" Okay, maybe not, but it was certainly the undergirding concept. Among all the other "solas", the other "only" references (sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, solus Christus, and soli Deo gloria) were based on this one. That is, the claims that we are saved by faith apart from works, saved by grace apart from works, saved by Christ alone, and that God alone deserves glory are all predicated on the notion that Scripture alone is the authority on matters of faith and practice. It was held over against…  ( Click for more )

I find myself these days more and more defending the argument that the Scriptures in their original documents were without error. We can further conclude, based on the high level of confidence that we have (better than 99.5% confidence), that the texts we have are true to the original documents, that our Bibles are without error. Oh, there may be a minor translation mistake here or there. There may be a transcription error in a number or something. But the doctrine of biblical inerrancy holds that the Bible is 100% infallible and inerrant in what it teaches. I defend that. Lots…  ( Click for more )