Flavel was flexible, resilient, and persevering amid suffering. When he could not preach, he wrote. For example, during the persecution of Nonconformists in the 1670s and early 1680s, Flavel published at least nine books, including A Token for Mourners, The Touchstone of Sincerity, The Method of Grace, and Treatise on the Soul of Man. Flavel’s Mystery of Providence is perhaps the... Continue Reading

Pastor 1 has rightly been defrocked. Even apart from the relationship, I think it’s hard to square his other behaviors with the requirements for pastors given in Scripture. We need to become far more serious than we have been about corruption, starting with the actual real enforcement of all the Pauline and Petrine demands for pastoral... Continue Reading

Just last year, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in 303 Creative v. Elenis, which upheld free speech for creative professionals like Phillips. ADF attorneys asked the Colorado high court to apply that ruling and similarly affirm Phillips’ free-speech rights in this case. Though the Colorado Supreme Court did not decide that issue... Continue Reading

Basham has named names and provided copious footnotes detailing public comments, tweets (or now “posts”), and other bits of the record. She goes after powerful and popular figures like Tim Keller, J.D. Greear, and Rick Warren. I really have no reason to believe, however, that any of it is done in bad faith, despite accusations... Continue Reading

Safety, I assumed, required freedom from others: freedom from commitment, something as close to full material and psychological autonomy as possible. But freedom from others had left me enslaved to an untethered, empty self. In these times it became obvious that the freedom I was pursuing turned out to be utter isolation. Maybe I could... Continue Reading

From the trauma of enslavement to repeated loss of loved ones and material suffering, Phillis’ story is a tragic one. Yet her poems show her unflagging belief in God’s providence within and beyond her circumstances. While acknowledging the sorrows of her early life, she praises divine mercy for allowing her to learn “That there’s a... Continue Reading

One of the consequences of taking your baby’s life through the abortion pill is that it might make you lose yours. Therefore if you are abortion-minded, for your baby’s sake—for your own sake, please do not take the abortion pill or pursue any form of abortion. Amber Thurman’s mother says her last words were: “Promise me you’ll... Continue Reading

God promises: “Even a woman may forget her nursing child, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” (Isaiah 49: 15,16) Among those who first heard these words, who could have anticipated the Greatest Cost, Christ’s engraved/cross-scarred hands, seven hundred years later?   Friends, pastor/poet Holy... Continue Reading

Pope Francis, once again, has landed himself in hot water by stating that there are many roads to God – not just Christianity. And it was not enough for him to state this once, but he doubled down on it again a few days after his first remarks. He said this a week ago at an... Continue Reading

“John Warwick Montgomery was an evangelical, evidential, and confessionally Lutheran apologist, a defender of the faith for all people and for all seasons. The raison d’être for the degrees, the books, the debates, and his tireless contribution to the defense of the faith was not his pursuit of an esoteric idea or an intellectual chess... Continue Reading