The Bishop of our souls knows us better than we know ourselves. Although ministers and bishops are called to follow our Lord’s example, we will never have a pastor or elder who cares for our souls anywhere near the degree to which Christ, our Bishop, does. The titles that the New Testament writers use for... Continue Reading

What eluded Paterno, and what is crystal-clear from the Freeh report, is that the quasi-religious reverence with which the football program was held within the culture of the university, and in particular the secular godlike authority granted to Paterno, made this horrifying scandal possible. When the perceived good of the institution is taken as the... Continue Reading

In the Reformed church we are not comfortable with “numbers.” It is not numbers that count but faithfulness…The danger, however, is that we come by this route to develop an “un-expectant mindset.” We see our smallness and assume that “small is beautiful;” the more truly Reformed we are, the smaller we inevitably will be. But... Continue Reading

Air power is intrinsically awesome, involving—as it does—death from above, out of the blue. Its technological handmaiden flows from humanity’s greatest intellectual accomplishments. When absent God, human advancement—whether ideological, political, philosophical or technological—reflects our intrinsic nature, which is evil. Better we fly with a wing and a prayer. Not long ago, a group of 66... Continue Reading

But, as J.I. Packer points out…the truth actually lies in the opposite direction. Rather than being a hindrance to evangelism, God’s sovereignty is the grounds for believing that our evangelism has any chance of success at all.

The country’s most visible Christian entrepreneur is Stephen Tong, founder of the Indonesian Reformed Evangelical Church, which despite its name has much in common with the Pentecostal worship style. In 2008, the church opened its Messiah Cathedral in Jakarta, a classic megachurch seating 6,000, a grandiose structure that would not look out of place in Seoul or Singapore.

We dare not try to cut Christ in pieces, as if we could receive him deliverer from sin's guilt but not from its dominion, or as Savior but not as Lord. Nor can we cut ourselves in pieces, severing our body from our soul—as if we could give our heart to Jesus and keep the title deed to our body. It's precisely because our bodies are too important to the biblical drama that they cannot be exempted from biblical discipleship.

“I did this not out of spite, but out of a feeling against the prevailing self-righteousness that stems from religion, particularly in Lancaster County,” the atheist said. “I don’t consider it an earthshaking affair, but in this area in particular, we seem to have so many self-righteous religious people, so it just annoys me.”

According to Kreider, what lies behind this busyness isn't simply ambition and drive; it's also a "dread [of] what they might have to face in its absence." That's because "busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, [and] a hedge against emptiness.It's our way of telling ourselves that our lives "cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless" if we are "in demand every hour of the day."

He believed the Bible was all true, all edifying, all important, and all about him. He believed absolutely that the Bible was from God and was absolutely free from error. What Scripture says God says, and what God said was recorded infallibly in Scripture. On Sunday I finished an eight week sermon series on the doctrine of... Continue Reading