What Happened to the Seven Churches of Revelation?
The trip of a lifetime landed in my lap — visiting the Seven Churches of Revelation
“Today, Bergama is made up of an ‘old city’ of narrow, cobbled streets and a more modern city. The locals I interacted with didn’t disappoint as they extended their famous Turkish hospitality. Happy to offer information, one man told me Christians visit the seven churches like Muslims visit Mecca—to earn merit before God.” The... Continue Reading
The Simplicity of God
While divine simplicity is not the only way to characterize the Creator-creature distinction, it is a doctrine without which the distinction becomes nearly impossible to maintain.
Upholding the Creator-creature distinction is indispensable for ensuring that we steer clear of false worship. Yet here we discover a difficulty: Christians can sometimes fail to properly recognize or characterize this all-important distinction. And when we do this, we can fall unwittingly into the trap of worshiping the creature rather than the Creator. Theology... Continue Reading
10 Things You Should Know About Quenching the Holy Spirit
In 1 Thessalonians 5 we are told that the Spirit has, in some sense, granted to the Christian the power and authority either to restrict or release what he does in the life of the local church.
What are we to do with this? Certainly the Holy Spirit can accomplish all that he wills to accomplish. But it is no less true that in certain instances, especially when it comes to spiritual gifts, he will rarely, if ever, force himself upon us against our will or judgment. Were it not for... Continue Reading
I Believe in Theistic Evolution
Theistic evolution can mean different things to different people, as can “evolution” without the modifier “theistic.”
Theistic evolution can refer to common or universal common descent or to the creative power of the natural selection/random variation (or mutation) mechanism. But evolution can also just simply mean “change over time.” And if one believes that God causes “change over time,” then that can be understood as a form of theistic evolution. I... Continue Reading
How To Live The Victorious Christian Life
The new life we have by the blood of Christ is ultimately how we must measure victory in this age.
The real power and wisdom are not found in principles for our victorious living but in the announcement of God’s victory in Christ. In fact, Christ does not just show us wisdom, he “has become our wisdom, righteousness, holiness and redemption” (v. 30). This is exactly the same situation in which we find ourselves to... Continue Reading
What Proverbs Teaches about Being Teachable
If you’re wondering how to grow in teachability, perhaps there’s no better place to turn than the Bible’s wisdom book.
Humility is the starting point for teachability because teachable souls know their need for learning. Prideful people think they know more than everyone else and don’t need to learn more. Teachable people know there is always something more to learn from everybody. If there is any quality that helps in every area of life,... Continue Reading
The Wisdom of Impartiality
But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere (James 3:18).
Why does he include impartiality as a quality of wisdom? I believe one answer to that question is that all of these qualities get to the heart of what wisdom is, Biblically speaking. Often when we think of someone who is wise or possesses wisdom, we think philosophically about it. We think of someone who... Continue Reading
He Will Carry You Through the Fire
When fears arise, how do you respond?
When Moses died, a whole nation was terrified. We know God’s people were afraid, because he says to Joshua three times in four verses, “Be strong and courageous. . . . Only be strong and very courageous. . . . Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous” (Joshua 1:6–9). Maybe you can feel their fear... Continue Reading
10 Reasons Why You Should Trust the Bible
We can have confidence in the Bible as God’s true and trusted speech to us.
The Bible was written by many authors over more than two thousand years, and yet it has a unity to it that is unlike any other religious collection of books. This unity exists because one divine author wrote it—God. The Old Testament anticipates the New Testament, and the New Testament recasts old metaphors and imagery,... Continue Reading
10 Things You Should Know about Money
Every sin dethrones divine wisdom and enthrones human wisdom. So it is with money.
Money is an accurate window on what is truly important to us. It exposes the fact that this side of eternity it is really hard to hold in our hearts as important what God says is truly important. There is a dangerous tendency in each of our hearts to assign increasing importance to things beyond... Continue Reading