In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year that were read on The Aquila Report site based on the number of hits. We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run on five lists on consecutive days. Here are numbers 41-50.
In 2020 The Aquila Report (TAR) posted over 3,000 stories. At the end of each year we feature the top 50 stories that were read.
TAR posts 8 new stories each day, on a variety of subjects – all of which we trust are of interest to our readers. As a web magazine TAR is an aggregator of news and information that we believe will provide articles that will inform the church of current trends and movements within the church and culture.
In keeping with the journalistic tradition of looking back at the recent past, we present the top 50 stories of the year that were read on The Aquila Report site based on the number of hits. We will present the 50 stories in groups of 10 to run on five lists on consecutive days. Here are numbers 41-50:
We are at a crossroads in the PCA. I believe that the next two years will reveal what path the denomination will choose. Will it choose the path of biblical and Reformed confessionalism, the way that strives to fulfill the Great Commission through the means that God Himself promised to bless for the salvation of the elect? Or will it choose the path of compromise, allowing the culture to shape the agenda and message of the church?
I have experimented with my retort, “Are you ESV-only?” only a couple times, and realized that it carries very little rhetorical force because there has never been a Ruckmanite movement in the ESV camp. There probably never will be, by the way, since the ESV has been marketed to academic-minded Christians.
I encourage qualified and faithful men who lead in the Church to teach the Word clearly and unapologetically. I encourage all you faithful Priscillas to recognize the unparalleled worth of offering yourselves freely to the glory of God in those things for which he has blessed and equipped you. You do not have to teach men in the church to be a faithful servant of Christ. For these Priscillas we have plenty of room in our churches.
We all have much to learn in this area. Nor is it to disparage Christians who struggle with homosexual sin. While sin no longer reigns in the hearts of true believers, the remnants of sin still remain in true believers. Rather, it’s to make the point that a corrosive progressivism has clearly infiltrated the PCA. Revoice doctrine and the new “gay Christian” identity is a clear departure from biblical orthodoxy. It does not belong in the PCA and will inevitably lead to the inclusion of practicing homosexuals in our churches.
We are to obey our civil authorities as powers that God Himself has ordained. However, while civil government is invested with divine authority to rule the state, neither of those texts (nor any other) grants civic rulers jurisdiction over the church. God has established three institutions within human society: the family, the state, and the church. Each institution has a sphere of authority with jurisdictional limits that must be respected.
A man is revealed by the way he responds when the receipts are handed to him. These Christian leaders should be ashamed. They should be modeling repentance to us. Instead, they put the shame on the victims. Well, I’m not going to stay a victim.
Lent as we know it today did not arise out of this biblical understanding of fasting. Rather, Lent came about as a superstitious misunderstanding both of the purpose of fasting in general and the purpose of Christ’s forty-day fast in the wilderness in particular. As a result, Calvin correctly summarizes, “the superstitious observance of Lent had prevailed everywhere, because the common people thought that in it they were doing some exceptional service to God, and the pastors commended it as a holy imitation of Christ.
Here is a summary of our actions over the past two years that demonstrate these two points. In late 2018 we convened a committee to examine and respond to Revoice and Memorial Presbyterian Church’s involvement in the conference. That committee presented its findings at a called meeting of Presbytery in May of 2019. At that meeting we approved nine theological judgments and one judicial judgment regarding Pastor Greg Johnson and Memorial Church. As part of that action, Memorial and Pastor Johnson were required to respond to the report and a new committee was convened to work with them on our findings and judgments.
The Report of the Ad Interim Committee on Human Sexuality to the 48th Presbyterian Church in America General Assembly
If a virtual assembly is an assembly, would a virtual Incarnation have been an Incarnation? Could the Christ simply have waited for the Internet era, and livestreamed His presence? Clearly the divine purpose was to come in the flesh, and not ‘appear’ via Facebook Live. Jesus dwelt among us; he was the one “from the beginning” whom the apostles “heard”, had “seen with [their] eyes”, and their “hands…handled”. Centrally, the Cross could not have been livestreamed—it required the Word to become flesh, to bear our griefs and carry our sorrows.
