Anonymous Asks (246)

“Is it wrong to pray for your ex back?”

When a relationship ends, it is axiomatic that the partner who ends it suffers less than the partner who gets no say in the matter. There are rare exceptions, like the woman who leaves an alcoholic husband she loves very much for his own good, or the man who separates from a fidelity-challenged woman he adores, but generally speaking the partner who gets left behind is the one most injured.

Still, some believers are able to let go of a departed partner easier than others. For those of us who make it our practice to cast our cares on the Lord, the temptation to try to use God to get what we want most out of another person is very real and very common.

What Does Your Proof Text Prove (27)

“Then they turned back and came to En-mishpat (that is, Kadesh) and defeated all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites who were dwelling in Hazazon-tamar.”

The passage quoted above is from Genesis 14. It describes the actions of four kings who fought with five other kings in the valley of Siddim in the land of Canaan, where Abraham lived. Battles were going on around the patriarch as he pitched his tent in the land God had promised him, and Abraham, it seems, generally kept as far away from these as he could.

In this case, his relative Lot lived in Sodom, which had been pillaged in the conflict. With family involved, Abraham couldn’t morally stay out of it.

Mining the Minors: Habakkuk (2)

Manifest Destiny was an ideology promoted by newspaper editor John L. O’Sullivan in the 1850s in order to justify the annexation of Texas and Oregon by the United States. He maintained it was God’s will for the new nation to expand “from sea to shining sea”. Though contested by some, his idea had sufficient currency to get itself trotted out repeatedly to validate the acquisitions of New Mexico and California, and later the purchase of Alaska.

All Manifest Destiny really means is “It should be obvious we deserve whatever we want.” But attaching God’s name to it was magic in selling it to the nation.

Too Hot to Handle: The Virtual Soapbox

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

IC and I watched a video the other day. Not in the same room, because we live many miles apart and can’t get together as often as we’d like. But we share many interests and tend to bounce links back and forth, and this was one of them.

I’d like to think we could learn something from it.

Tom: IC, I think we might be better off leaving out the names of the principals, because I’m going to be blunt about issues that have to do with body language and manner, as opposed to the content of a man’s argument, and since ‘the internet is forever’, I’d rather not go on record with those sorts of criticisms of people whose overall Christian testimony and handling of the word of God I respect and value. Cool?

The Pastor of Disaster

Andrew sat back and stirred his tea. “What kind of church are you in?” he asked.

“Well,” I said, “I was in a conservative evangelical group, but it seems perhaps I’ve been kind of bumped out.”

“What do you mean?”

“We were in one kind of church, but we had to leave; now we’re sort of in-between, looking for what the Lord would have us do.”

“I will tell you why you left.” His voice was even and certain. He leaned forward. “It was because of … that man.”

Wisdom to Know the Difference

Remember the ‘Serenity Prayer’? Alcoholics Anonymous used it all the time, and sometimes credited it to an early twentieth century theologian. Many 12-step programs were still using it as recently as 2022, despite the general disfavor into which all things religious have lately fallen. It goes like this:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”

I’ve never been to AA, so I haven’t heard it in a while. There is probably a good reason. Wisdom is in pretty short supply these days.

The Language of the Debate (7)

When a 28-year old former student who identified as a man shot and killed six people, including three nine-year olds, at a private Christian academy in Nashville the last week of March this year, more than a few media outlets took the unusual step of discreetly numbering the killer among the victims. Follow-up reporting on the tragedy chose to heavily emphasize the broader issue of gun violence rather than dwelling on the specific nature of the shooter’s mental and emotional difficulties. Audrey Hale left behind a manifesto rather than a suicide note, which to date has been quietly suppressed. Three days later, with impeccable timing, Joe Biden opined that “Transgender people shape our nation’s soul.”

Point made. When people from a protected class do wicked things, society treats them differently.

Anonymous Asks (245)

“Can a believer be content to live a worldly life?”

There’s probably a “no true Scotsman”-type answer to questions like this one, where you simply say, “No, because anyone who is content to live a worldly life cannot possibly be a genuine believer.” I might have used that one once or twice myself.

That answers the question, but I’m not sure it’s really sufficient. My experience is otherwise.

The Commentariat Speaks (26)

Talk show host David Pakman comments on Twitter about the recent spree shooting at a Nashville Christian school:

“Very surprising that there would be a mass shooting at a Christian school, given that lack of prayer is often blamed for these horrible events. Is it possible they weren’t praying enough, or correctly, despite being a Christian school?”

If you guessed that a tidal wave of negative feedback prompted Pakman to quickly delete his tweet, points for getting used to the drill.

Mining the Minors: Habakkuk (1)

We have been moving through this study of the Minor Prophets in as close to chronological order as possible. Our last book was Nahum. Internal evidence strongly suggests Nahum wrote it between 660 and 630 BC. That makes my next choice a tough one: Zephaniah or Habakkuk? Both are roughly the same length, and neither can be dated with pinpoint accuracy.

I’m going with Habakkuk first for two reasons: (1) because ‘H’ comes before ‘Z’, and (2) in order to get the judgment of Babylon out of the way before we consider the judgment of Judah.

Too Hot to Handle: Snatched Up

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Tom: So we did the Millennium, IC. Care to walk me through the ‘Rapture’?

Immanuel Can: I thought that was the same as the Second Coming. Next you’re going to tell me that Israel still exists and that I wasn’t predestined to election before the foundation of the world.

Tom: Do I need to put a </sarc> at the end there? Never mind. Sometimes you open a can and the worms just go everywhere ...

IC: Well, one way to manage the worms is to focus on making the distinction between the Second Coming and the Rapture.

Tom: Okay, then.

Dear Dinesh: On Evil and Suffering

[Dinesh D’Souza is a writer, scholar, filmmaker and Christian apologist.]

Dear Dinesh:

Thank you very, very much for your 2007 book, What’s So Great About Christianity? I regret having not gotten around to reading it earlier. What a fine piece of writing!

It seems to me it fills a very necessary gap in our growing corpus of apologetics literature: rather than merely defeating atheist reasoning (yet again), it rightly points to the need for a more positive take on Christian achievements. It is an apology without an “apologetic” tone, if you take my meaning; a confident treatise on the goods of faith, rather than a defensive reaction to the current round of atheist hate literature. More of this is what we need.

In the spirit of supporting that, I wonder if I could offer a thought that might further strengthen the case you are so courageously putting forward?

Glory Unassailable

“When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”

A friend and older brother in Christ who has been a role model going on thirty years never fails to distinguish between the sloppy, euphemistic way evangelicals use the word “glory” (as in “We’re going home to glory” and other such expressions) and the more precise way the writers of the Bible use it. Glory, he says, is not a synonym for heaven. Rather, glory is a state of being.

I used to wonder why he made such a point of this. Now I get it.

More Beads on the Abacus

A Belgian man obsessed with climate change reportedly took his own life recently after a series of exchanges with a so-called artificial intelligence (AI) on his smartphone. His widow says “Eliza” (the app’s default chatbot) had become his “confidante” and encouraged him to consider suicide as a contribution to saving the planet when his worries about the effects of global warming on earth’s environment became the primary topic of their “conversations”.

I read the article the morning of April 1 and immediately started thinking the writer was pulling my leg.

Anonymous Asks (244)

“Is freedom of speech a biblical value?”

There is no such thing as a right to free speech. Jesus Christ didn’t have one. The apostles certainly didn’t have one. What they had was a divinely authorized responsibility to engage in costly speech. They walked out into the public square with a message almost nobody in positions of authority wanted to hear and inflicted it on the world in spite of all efforts to silence it.

As a result, the Lord Jesus was tortured and crucified. The apostles were delivered over to courts, flogged in the synagogues, dragged before governors and kings and, like Stephen, stoned by their own neighbors and kin.

About the Weather

“Whether for correction or for his land or for love, he causes it to happen.”

The line above is from the book of Job. The speaker is Elihu, the young man who attempts to correct his elders on the subject of suffering, since all four men who have held forth previously have, in one way or another, erred in their understanding of how God works. Like most young men, Elihu is full of earnestness and conviction, but also shows admirable restraint in allowing the discussion he is witnessing to reach an impasse before stepping in to offer his own opinion. Age and experience receive their appropriate deference.

Elihu’s mission is not to attack Job as all the other speakers have done, however unintentionally, but rather to justify God. So he begins to talk about … the weather.

Mining the Minors: Nahum (9)

The New Testament is full of staggering numbers of quotes and allusions to the Old. Its writers directly cite or make passing reference to all but four Old Testament books at least once: Ezra/Nehemiah (a single volume in Hebrew), Esther, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. If we are going to be technically correct, we should probably add Nahum to these, as I will shortly demonstrate.

So here’s a question for you: if the New Testament writers can find no reason to quote Nahum, what good is the book to Christians?

Too Hot to Handle: Situation Critical

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Tom: By the time a cultural phenomenon makes it to The Daily Wire, it’s probably already at the tail end of the news cycle, which is about the time I usually discover things these days. Then, upon closer examination, I just happen to notice this “new phenomenon” is something that’s always gone on, except that somebody young and tech-savvy has coined a clever new name for an awful interpersonal dynamic and wants to tell us we should like it instead of hating it.

IC, let’s talk about “situationships”. Want to try to define this one for us?

Immanuel Can: In short, a “situationship” is an emotional and/or sexual relationship in which the terms of involvement are not defined to either participant. Usually it’s sexual, but the primary driver of the relationship is emotional entanglement with a decided “lack of commitment or clearly defined roles”. That’s how Corina Hsieh, the inventor of the term, defines it.

“I Love You,” She Said Determinedly

A man and a woman are going to bed. It’s been a long day — work has been vexing, the children have been demanding, calls and emails have piled up, and best efforts at getting it all done have failed. Irritations have built up; and at times, the couple has actually been a bit snappish.

The husband is middle-aged, and somewhat dumpy and slightly graying. His earlier grumpy mood has subsided only into a plodding weariness as he gets ready to turn in. He’s left his slippers askew in the corner again, and hung his trousers over the chair instead of putting them in the closet.

The wife turns to her husband and says, “I love you.”

Turnabout is Fair Play

Having given Michael Heiser’s The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible three posts of reviews that some will probably say border on hagiography, I promised to take a few lines to consider the other side of the story, as comparatively trivial in spiritual seriousness as Heiser’s “errors” may be — if indeed such they are.

Turnabout is fair play. Your mileage may vary. Here goes …

More About the Divine Council

I dislike systematic theology as a way of learning about the Bible: Dispensationalism, Calvinism, Replacement Theology, Covenant Theology, Amillennialism — you name it. “Isms cause schisms,” it is said. This testimony is true.

“Isms” also build weak Bible students who accept other men’s assumptions uncritically.

Anonymous Asks (243)

“Should Christians reject sentimentality and nostalgia?”

The writer of Ecclesiastes penned these words: “Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.” Some Christians take this to mean that all periods of history have their disadvantages and one may as well be born in any given century as in another. Clarke’s Commentary, for example, says, “This is a common saying; and it is as foolish as it is common. There is no weight nor truth in it; but men use it to excuse their crimes, and the folly of their conduct.”

Actually, it’s Clarke’s assertion that has no weight or truth in it, as a moment’s consideration easily demonstrates.

Mustard Seed and Leaven

Matthew 13 neatly collects many of the Lord’s kingdom parables in a single chapter, which is appropriate since Jesus taught seven of these on the same day, some by the sea to a large crowd, and others indoors to his disciples only. Among the parables he shared with the crowds (but did not explain to them) were two that were obviously intended to go together: the first compared the kingdom of heaven to a mustard seed that grew into a great tree, the second compared it to leaven that contaminated three measures of flour.

That must have left more than a few Jews scratching their heads. More than a few Christians are still scratching theirs over them.

Mining the Minors: Nahum (8)

You may have seen a version of this meme cropping up on social media lately, attributed to one person or another. Best I can figure out, it was a science fiction writer named G. Michael Hopf. It goes something like this: “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”

This saying is true. It ain’t scripture, but it’s good pattern recognition, and there’s no small value in being able to learn lessons from the past.

Too Hot to Handle: The Golden Age

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

A few weeks back we spent some time considering eternity as described in our Bibles, and the various misunderstandings that exist about it even among believers.

Tom: I promised at the end of that exchange that we would put together some thoughts on the subject of the Millennium, the coming thousand year reign of Christ, a subject explored mostly in the psalms and the writings of the Hebrew prophets and touched upon only briefly in the book of Revelation, where we are told that Satan will have no part in it, having been consigned to the abyss.

So let’s talk about this golden age a little, IC. Why have a Millennium at all? Why is it so important? Why not transport Christians straight into our promised eternity with Christ?

Who’s Minding the Store?

I’m seeing more and more of those “self-checkout” units at the local stores. They always creep me out a bit. There just seems to be something really weird about the idea of walking up to a mechanical box, shuffling around my own transaction, and then leaving, going out of a store without passing by a person.

I feel as if I owe somebody some kind of explanation, like “Here’s my purchase, and here’s my money, and they match up; so don’t call the cops.” And then this person is supposed to give me the nod, like, “Okay, you’re alright this time; but when you come back, we’ll need to see each other again.”

Implications of the Divine Council Worldview

The “divine council worldview” is a way of looking at scripture that recognizes the supernatural elements that shaped the devout Israelite mindset well into the first century. The late Michael Heiser, writer of The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, used the phrase extensively. I’ve had occasion recently to re-read Heiser’s magnum opus, and have been particularly interested in the implications the divine council worldview has for the rest of scripture.

It answers more than a few questions, major and minor, and reinforces a boatload of important truths and principles we find in our Bibles.

Back in the Unseen Realm

I’m back in the unseen realm this week.

It wasn’t my idea really. One of the men who attends our weekly Bible study proposed we have a look at Genesis 6:1-4, the much-disputed “sons of God” passage. That was fine by me, but studying it together opens up a can of worms best addressed in the late Michael S. Heiser’s The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible, a book I last read through a few years ago but never got around to reviewing here.

Heiser was probably the most recognizable modern proponent of something he calls the “divine council worldview”.

Anonymous Asks (242)

“What does it mean to hand someone over to Satan?”

Paul gives a command in his first letter to the church at Corinth to “deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh”. The man to whom the apostle refers was carrying on a relationship with his stepmother, a sin Paul said was “of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans”. That’s where this phrase comes from.

So what was the apostle saying exactly?

What Does Your Proof Text Prove? (26)

Grammarly.com says, “A straw man argument is a logical fallacy in which an arguer distorts an opposing point of view and misrepresents it … creating the impression of refuting an argument rather than addressing or refuting it.” That’s as good a definition as any, and will do for our purposes.

Rick Warren is a Southern Baptist pastor and author who has become one of the most influential evangelicals of our day. He is also very well acquainted with the straw man argument, though he probably doesn’t put that on his resume.

At the age of 69, after a lifetime teaching the Bible, Rick Warren has finally decided the Lord always intended women to teach in church. This is absolutely not, Warren says, based on culture or anecdotes or outside pressure, but based on the Bible.

Mining the Minors: Nahum (7)

History shows us empires never last.

People groups do. Israel, for example, has been around as a distinguishable national and genetic entity for something very close to four thousand years notwithstanding its lack of a country to call home for most of that time; the Chinese have been almost completely ethnically homogenous even longer. In this respect at least, China holds a tremendous advantage in our present day should the US opt to go to war with them over Taiwan. Ideologically divided right down the middle, some say the US is on the brink of civil war; though occasionally experiencing internal unrest, the Chinese are comparatively unified.

But that’s the problem with multi-ethnic empires: they don’t have the kind of cohesion and staying power that kinship produces. The modus operandi of empire building is perpetual expansion and absorption of new people groups, whether through conquest or immigration. At some point, those so absorbed inevitably begin to influence the empire in favor of their own ethnicity and agendas.

Historically speaking, diversity is the opposite of strength. Biblically too.

Too Hot to Handle: Kissing Through the Fence

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Let me give you a scenario that plays out over and over again.

I’m a young Christian man, say … or maybe I’m a middle-aged Christian woman. Who knows? It doesn’t matter. But let’s go with the young Christian man for a minute.

I have always been told that, for some reason, it’s bad for a believer to partner up with an unbeliever. But now that I’m in the situation myself, I can’t quite see why.

Immanuel Can: After all, girl X (my intended) is a lovely person. She’s just like me. We have great conversations. She thinks exactly like I do about practically everything that matters. We have wonderful times together. And I have deep feelings for her.

Tom: “It can’t be wrong when it feels so right …”

Getting to the Truth

“I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”

— English Common Law
Oath of Testimony

The fight outside a club was broken up by police; but a man was stabbed. Inspector Thomas has been assigned to find the assailant.

When the perp fled, the crowd scattered, but four witnesses remain: a bouncer, the girlfriend, the bar manager and a local cabbie. Inspector Thomas knows procedure; that each must be interviewed separately in order to get a complete picture.

No Half Measures

Tal Bachman is a 54-year old Canadian writer who had a cup of coffee with pop music success back in 1999, not all that surprising given he’s the son of legendary Guess Who guitarist and BTO-founder Randy Bachman. Since 2020, he mostly covers politics from a conservative perspective, but he’s written everything from a four-part analysis of the band U2’s influence on the political landscape to a brilliant 25-parter called “We Have Met the Enemy” that unearths the origins of the lucrative, transparently fraudulent, unbelievably evil and powerful transitioning industry. You can find his archive here, and it’s well worth it.

Tal is an ex-Mormon, the “ex” part being his rejection of the prophetic posturing of Joseph Smith. But his latest post at SteynOnline strongly suggests his belief in God and interest in what the Bible teaches about him did not get jettisoned along with his former confidence in the founder of the LDS Church.

What Does Your Proof Text Prove? (25)

Earlier this month Josh Butler wrote a post called “Sex Won’t Save You” for the Gospel Coalition site that stirred up something of a ruckus. The link above is to an archived version; yes, the ruckus was sufficient to get it deleted, to cause Butler to resign from his position as a fellow with the Keller Center, and to cancel his appearance at an upcoming Gospel Coalition event. Such are the times in which we live.

The status of Butler’s forthcoming Multnomah book Beautiful Union, from which the article was an excerpt, should probably be regarded as “formerly forthcoming”, at least from its original publisher.

Anonymous Asks (241)

“What happens if I miss the rapture?”

Last week was sort of a mini-rapturefest at the blog. I am involved in a home church gathering on Tuesday nights these days, and the rapture loomed large in last week’s study and became the subject of a couple posts here, as often happens with Bible passages I am wrestling my way through with friends.

In one of those posts I made reference to an ex-evangelical named Joshua Rivera who now writes for Slate.

A Fair Chance to Fail

Sometimes I’m grateful there are limits to human knowledge.

Suppose you could see the future with reasonable certainty and could judge within a few minutes of conversing with friends, family members and acquaintances which of them will eventually be saved or how they really feel about you. Might you not be just a little inclined to change your behavior toward the ones you believe will never come to know the Lord, or toward the ones who bear hidden grudges or agendas, or simply don’t care about you as much as you care about them?

Oh, I don’t mean you might treat them differently in big, obvious ways. It wouldn’t be particularly Christian to snub, ignore or dismiss people; we wouldn’t do that. What I might be tempted to do would be a little subtler, and I’d probably rationalize it in the interests of time-stewardship: faced with an invitation to dinner with Person A or Person B, I’d probably opt to spend more time with the ones I judged closest to the kingdom or most in agreement with my own values.

To finite human beings, that would seem a reasonable way to proceed. After all, there are only so many hours in a day and only so many days in a lifetime. Why not use the moments you have to greatest effect?

Mining the Minors: Nahum (6)

Consider the limitations the Law of Moses placed on Israel and Judah, had they chosen to follow it with any consistency.

The usury laws and the Jubilee would curtail the ability of merchants and profiteers to exploit the lack of financial sophistication among their fellow Israelites. Israel’s law forbade certain forms of lucrative trade: fortune telling, the manufacture of graven images, cult prostitution. The Sabbath laws would restrict commerce to six days a week rather than seven. Tithing obligations would take well over 10% of your income, and the law would permit, even encourage, the poor and the sojourner to help themselves to the excess of your fields and vineyards.

In short, when the provisions of Mosaic Law were observed and enforced, Israel was not the easiest place in the world of its day for profiteers and merchants to get rich quick. That said, it was a great place to live for normal, godly people.

Too Hot to Handle: Crashing and Burning

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

We’ve all seen it, and seen it many times: a Christian in the public eye crashes and burns. He (or she, recently) confesses to the commission of one sin or another, usually an affair of some sort, and follows the confession by taking a time-out from the affected area of service (or leaving it altogether), announcing that the family needs “healing time”, and so on and so forth.

Tom: I bring this up because it’s happened again, IC. I’m not going to mention the name; the details are unimportant and likely unprofitable to pore over. But you and I have discussed the situation a little, and I wondered about your thoughts on how such things should be handled biblically. There aren’t many apostolic scandals recorded for us in the New Testament, are there …

Immanuel Can: No, there aren’t.

Somebody Else’s Lamb

A few days ago, I was talking with an atheist.

Yeah, I know …

Courting Disaster

The conversation came around to the Great Judgment. Of course, he doesn’t believe in it. But I asked him a question I’ve found useful in sorting out how people are thinking about God.

I said, “Well, whether you believe it or not, one day you’re going to face God. And if he were to ask you why he should accept you, what would you say?”

Standing Up for Objective Reality

We live in interesting times.

Back in 2021, ideologically motivated onlookers in Leeds, West Yorkshire reported a forty-two year old street preacher to the Joint Counter Terrorism Team, resulting in his arrest. The Daily Mail did not specify the offenses with which David McConnell was charged and for which he was eventually convicted, but made reference to “harassment” and “illegally espousing an extreme point of view”. I missed the story at the time, but McConnell appealed his conviction last week, putting him back on the front pages for a moment.

What did this Christian “extremist” do? According to witnesses, McConnell quoted 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 in the presence of a man dressed up as a woman, and repeatedly referred to him as “this gentleman” and “a man in woman’s clothing”, which the gentleman in question apparently found distressing.

In short, McConnell stood up for objective reality. That shouldn’t be such a hard sell, should it?

Evidence for the Rapture in Revelation [2]

People who haven’t read the Bible tend to think the doctrine of the rapture is based on the prophetic visions of John in Revelation. This is not actually the case; the rapture as an event is taught explicitly only in 1 Thessalonians, while the mechanics of the believers’ translation into glorified bodies during that same event are discussed in 1 Corinthians. In fact, we don’t find the rapture taught in Revelation at all; its truth is simply assumed.

However, what we do find in Revelation is very much consistent with Paul’s teaching in 1 Thessalonians which, if we believe in the inspiration of scripture, should not surprise us in the least. Since even Christians increasingly reject the Bible’s teaching about the rapture, I thought it might be a good time to have a look at the evidence we find in Revelation for the rapture of the church, some of which even points to a pre-tribulation rapture.

There is plenty of that, as we began to discover in Sunday’s post. You may find it useful to read that one first if you haven’t already.

Anonymous Asks (240)

“What does it mean that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath?”

The Sabbath was a weekly day of rest for the people of Israel instituted by God through Moses at Mount Sinai. Keeping it is the fourth of the Ten Commandments. Its basis is the creation week of Genesis 1-2: “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

Evidence for the Rapture in Revelation [1]

Oddly, as we approach the end of our present age, the Bible’s teaching about the rapture of the church is increasingly falling into disrepute among believers. Some call it false teaching, others ridicule it as a scare tactic, still others claim Paul never taught a “rapture” at all. Some reject it because it clashes with their established eschatological beliefs, others because they are ignorant of the scriptures that teach it, still others because they dislike the idea of Christians getting to view the end of the world from the press box instead of from down on the playing field where (they believe) we belong.

Mining the Minors: Nahum (5)

By 616 B.C., Nabopolassar had ruled Babylon for a decade. He had spent those ten years profitably, rebelling against the Assyrians and successfully expelling their forces from Babylonia. Civil wars between major Assyrian cities and the general decrepitude of the empire confirmed his belief that the time had come to transfer the seat of Mesopotamian power from Nineveh to Babylon. Gathering his own Chaldean army, along with allies from Media, Persia, Cimmeria and Scythia, Nabopolassar marched on the capital city of Nineveh in May of 612 B.C.

Resistance was fierce, but they took the city within three months. What Nabopolassar probably didn’t know was that a Judean prophet had accurately describe his sacking of Nineveh as many as thirty years prior to it. Still less did the king of Babylon understand that he was doing the work of Judah’s God when he went about his business.

Too Hot to Handle: Eternity In Their Hearts

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

In Ecclesiastes, Solomon makes the argument that God has put a longing for the eternal into the human heart, yet seems to have provided less revelation about eternity than some of us might wish. And notwithstanding the fact that we’ve had plenty more prophetic revelation since the book of Ecclesiastes was written, we still have a tendency to speculate about what lies in store for us at the end of history as we move into eternity.

Tom: We’re discussing a recent Todd Billings post at Christianity Today entitled “The New View of Heaven Is Too Small”. What was your last point, IC?

Immanuel Can: Serious Christians need some kind of counter to the common misconception that the eternal state involves a lot of unrelenting, undifferentiated, disembodied, white-clad, purposeless hanging about on clouds …

Retro Christianity

“In a post-Christian society, all faithful people begin to look a little Amish.”

— Ken Myers, host of Mars Hill Audio

Nice quote, Ken. Love the way you put that.

He’s got a point, though. In the ongoing moral and cultural decline of modern society, there must surely come a point at which the difference between how Christians live and how their neighbors live becomes too great to escape notice any longer.

And then, in a sense, we will all be “Amish”. I mean those who actually care to be Christians will be.

When the Chickens Come Home to Roost

In his classic The Horse and His Boy, C.S. Lewis wrote a scene I loved as a child, and have never been able to forget as an adult. The lion Aslan (Lewis’s Christ analog) is speaking to Aravis, the Calormene girl who has fled her family and home country to avoid a forced marriage, and is currently recovering from a fairly serious injury inflicted on the way to Narnia by a previously unrecognized lion.

So Aslan tells her the real reason for her injuries.

What Does Love Look Like?

When I go shopping with somebody I love, I pay careful attention to all the purchases they don’t make, especially when they look at an item with great interest, then put it back on the shelf with a sigh because they can’t afford it right now or have other financial priorities. Why? So I can come back later, pick it up and stick it in the closet for the next Christmas, Valentine’s Day or birthday celebration.

Mostly this is a favor to myself: I hate the pressure of having to run out at look for a gift at last minute. But it also means I don’t waste much money on presents people don’t really want or won’t use.

Let me suggest we treat the Law of Moses that way.

Anonymous Asks (239)

“Are cherubs the spirits of dead babies?”

In the gospel of Matthew, the Lord Jesus says this about children: “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.”

Some readers take this to mean that children who die before the age of accountability go straight into the presence of God and become angels. This line of thought probably led to the popular depiction of angels as chubby, naked infants with wings. Google “cherub” and you inevitably get something like what appears above.