According to 1 Corinthians 7:14 God views our children as “holy”—separated to his work and his purposes, “clean” and not “unclean” or pagan—as a result of their relationship with us as believing household heads. Acts 2:38-39 says that the promise of the Holy Spirit was not to discrete individuals who believed, but to households who... Continue Reading

For Peabody and many addicts he’s sponsored, the key to becoming “a free man” has been rigorous and urgent application of the 12 steps, from taking fearless moral inventory to making painful amends. Yet mainstream AA meetings routinely do a “disservice,” he argues, by leading attendees to believe that meetings and sponsors – rather than... Continue Reading

Iceland is trying to ban internet pornography, and people all over the world are outraged. Supporters think it’s a good idea that will protect children and women; opponents don’t like the consequent implications against the freedom of speech and expression. While the US has not started a national campaign to ban internet pornography, many of... Continue Reading

Notice that right from the beginning these apocryphal writings are described as “lost scriptures.” Thus, it is already assumed from the outset that these books are scripture, but somehow they have been left out of the canon (no doubt by those pesky, narrow orthodox folks). The problem with this language, of course, is that the... Continue Reading

That’s right, the main reason for rookie pastors getting fired or, even worse, rookie pastors destroying a church, is not intellectual, moral, or theological failure, but failure in basic common-sense humanity. We’ve all seen it, haven’t we: exceptionally clever, technically skilled, and self-disciplined people utterly fail in pastoral ministry. They just couldn’t connect with people... Continue Reading

The policy has not only cost hundreds of millions of lives, but also changed the demographic make up of the population of 1.3 billion. A preference for boys has led to gender imbalance, with 34 million more men than women in China. The dearth of women has led to an increase in sex trafficking, child... Continue Reading

This is usually a positive statement, but it didn’t turn out that way for David. I’m sure you are familiar with the clever confrontation Nathan the prophet had with Kind David in 2 Samuel 12:1-15. I’ve been reflecting on it this week. First of all, there’s a little history. We see Nathan introduced earlier in... Continue Reading

So then, Dr. Belcher asked, what should our response be? There is a good solid response which Dr. Belcher called the historical, biblical, confessional view: Adam was formed from the dust as the very first human being. Dr. Belcher noted that Dr. Jack Collins had written his own response to the question of the historicity... Continue Reading

Not that we must be theologians, able to grapple learnedly with all heresies or controversies; but we should be well read in our Bibles, and able to do what Aquila and Priscilla did to Apollos. Elders should be men to a certain extent “established, strengthened, settled” (1 Peter 5:10), not “novices”, whom the elevation to... Continue Reading

Does God promise me a suffering free life? No. But he does promise to be with me, step for step, as I walk through the Valley of Death (Ps. 23:4). He promises that I will not be burned when I walk through the fire (Is. 43:2). He promises to work and weave every circumstance together... Continue Reading