Standard practice at the time dictated that a city that refused to surrender at the sight of a siege army would suffer any and all consequences of a successful siege; this is why many cities agreed to terms before commencement of the siege. Both Christian and Muslim armies followed this policy. If a city surrendered before the siege, the inhabitants were allowed to remain in the city and keep their possessions.

Ligonier Ministries’ mission statement includes a phrase that takes my breath away: “reach as many people as possible.” You probably dream big like me, so the number of people we have to reach is staggering, almost 7 billion by last count

One of the side effects of this contest was to learn some details about who is reading The Aquila Report. Quite honestly, we were pleasantly surprised. Neither one is a Minister. Neither one is a Presbyterian.

The Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America, through her Testimony, has in effect long been amending the Westminster Standards, so I don't think my proposal as controversial as some might conclude.

All government is premised on force. Every government everywhere, at all times, if it has any power, will dispatch armed individuals to apprehend any persons who violate its laws and, ultimately, detain them in places surrounded by armed individuals empowered by lethal force.

It isn’t a different gospel that is needed. It’s not a different Jesus. It’s just a real gospel and a real Jesus. See, when every day of our lives is doused in a deluge of Jesus/gospel/Bible talk from our earliest memories, it is so easy for it all to become rote or rubbish to us. Satan’s greatest weapon against church kids is familiarity, and the contempt it breeds. So we need our families, biological and Christological, to show us the gospel.

Editor's Note: Word spread during the day on Tuesday that Wes White was closing down his blog. Here is his final post.

But breaking with the church in which one has been nurtured in the faith, often from childhood, can be like abandoning one’s mother. Like marriage, according to the Book of Common Prayer, such a decision should not be made unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in the fear of God. The words of the apostle Paul are surely pertinent here: “Let everyone be persuaded in his own conscience.”

But lest we be guilty of hypocrisy ourselves, Eric Liddell’s example is one that Christians also should think deeply on. The willingness to sacrifice is a dimension that has largely disappeared from Christian discipleship today. The Gospel is proclaimed more in terms of the personal fulfilment it brings, the emotional and material benefits that accrue, rather than a dying to self and a wholehearted and sacrificial commitment to Christ.

We have to make a distinction, though, between the "working theology" of Mormonism today and its previous declarations. In the past, they put much more emphasis on good works. The most important development in recent decades has been an increasingly strong emphasis on the substitutionary atonement of Christ on the cross.