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Thursday, June 27, 2019
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Unhobbling Don Quixote’s Horse
In a couple of earlier posts this week I looked at some of the differences between the premillennial and
amillennial schools of thought about Bible prophecy. You can find them here
and here if you’re interested.
All beliefs about prophecy have practical
implications of one sort or another, but the one most likely to ruffle feathers
in the here-and-now, I think, is postmillennialism. That makes it worth
chewing over a little.
Labels:
Douglas Wilson
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Islam
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Politics
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Polygamy
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Postmillennialism
Tuesday, June 25, 2019
A Cup of Weak Tea
“Facts don’t care
about your feelings,” Ben Shapiro is fond of saying. Unlike much of his recent book
The Right Side of History, that
statement is fairly accurate.
But facts also don’t
care about your eschatology. Not a bit. Premillennialist Bible teachers and
popular writers who make careers out of dogmatically applying specific prophecies
to current events tend to find this to their chagrin — well-known date-setter
Harold Camping being one recent example.
Facts take no joy in embarrassing the likes of Camping. They are not mean-spirited. They simply are
what they are.
Labels:
Amillennialism
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Book Reviews
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Kim Riddlebarger
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Revelation
Monday, June 24, 2019
Anonymous Asks (46)
No ghosts, but if you’re not familiar with
the concept of worshiping God in spirit, maybe it can be a bit confusing.
Jesus said God the Father is looking for people who will worship him
“in spirit and in truth”. That became possible when the Father sent the Son into the world to
reveal God to mankind.
To understand the meaning of worshiping in
spirit, we need to understand a little bit about the alternative.
Labels:
Anonymous Asks
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Spirit
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Worship
Sunday, June 23, 2019
Don’t Stop Now, You’re Almost There
The devil may be in the details, but far-reaching doctrinal errors are all in the broad strokes and
almost never in the minutia. I’m becoming convinced of it.
My test case at the moment is the expanded edition of Kim Riddlebarger’s A Case for
Amillennialism: Understanding the End Times (2013), in the
event you’re wondering. But I have found the same thing with several books I’ve
read recently: they advance a fundamentally flawed major premise. Once you’ve
done that, you can pile up the proof texts to highest heaven without
successfully proving anything. Your original, glaring defect of thought makes
them all irrelevant to the greater argument.
Labels:
Amillennialism
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Book Reviews
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Kim Riddlebarger
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Premillennialism
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Prophecy
Saturday, June 22, 2019
How Not to Crash and Burn (64)
Psychology Today analyzes
excuses for adultery. Here’s one of the more spectacularly trivial:
“Adultery may be the lightning conductor of modern indignation, but are there not other, subtler ways of betraying a person than
by sleeping with someone outside the couple; by omitting to listen, by
forgetting to evolve and enchant, or more generally and blamelessly, by simply
being one’s own limited self?”
I must admit, that one’s a beauty: “My wife failed to evolve and enchant me, so I was compelled to explore my options.
There was really nothing else for it.”
What do you think, gents? Have you been “evolving
and enchanting” fast enough for your wife?
Labels:
Adultery
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Agur
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How Not to Crash and Burn
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Proverbs
Friday, June 21, 2019
Too Hot to Handle: Screened Out
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Technology
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Too Hot to Handle
Thursday, June 20, 2019
Mastering the Pastor Disaster
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Clergy
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Elders
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Leadership
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Pastors
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Inbox: Is Socialism Biblical?
Jeff says:
“Hey, long time lurker of your site here. With all the recent debate in the US about the ‘Green New Deal’ and ‘democratic socialists’,
I was curious about what your thoughts are regarding socialism and
capitalism from a biblical perspective. I immediately think about the year
of Jubilee in Leviticus 25:8-13 and about the early church described
in Acts.”
Well, we love long time lurkers. We have a bunch. Thanks for a great question, Jeff. Here goes …
Labels:
Capitalism
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Inbox
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Jubilee
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Socialism
Tuesday, June 18, 2019
The View from Eternity
This is not without reason. God and man come at things from vastly different perspectives. Two of
the most common features of online discourse about God are befuddlement and
frustration. “How can a loving God permit this or that?” “How could God command genocide?” “Why animal
sacrifices? Doesn’t God care about his creation?” “Why does the Law of Moses
contain so many weird and apparently pointless rules if God was really behind
it?” “Why would God say two people who love each other cannot be together?”
For older Christians these can be challenging questions.
Labels:
Character of God
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Questions
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Witnessing
Monday, June 17, 2019
Anonymous Asks (45)
It very much depends on what you mean by “nice”. Christians often confuse being nice with
being good. But the word “nice” is never used in our English Bibles.*
There are solid reasons for this. “Nice” is an awkward word, very much open to being misinterpreted. I can understand why Bible translators would make an effort to avoid its potential ambiguities. Its
original meaning (now obsolete) was “wanton” or “dissolute”. Later, it came to mean “fastidious” or “exacting”. (For example, to make a “nice” distinction was to make a distinction so subtle that a lot of people would fail to grasp it.) All these historic ways of using “nice” are various degrees of negative.
Today, “nice” has come to mean “pleasing”, “agreeable” or “polite”. That is probably the way
you are using it. Let’s go with that.
Labels:
Anonymous Asks
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Christian Testimony
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Goodness
Sunday, June 16, 2019
The Day of Big Things
A handful of times
throughout our earth’s history God has made major public statements. Big things.
The Bible records a number of these great and unambiguous events: the Flood; the destruction of
Sodom and Gomorrah; and Israel’s delivery from Egypt, passage through the Red
Sea and miraculous conquest of Canaan. Even when Israel and Judah went into
their various captivities, God still made appearances to miraculously shut the
mouths of lions, walk around in fiery furnaces and write on the walls of pagan
kings.
Then came the first century miracles of Jesus, and later his apostles. Big things.
Labels:
2 Thessalonians
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Faithfulness
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Judgment
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Service
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Zechariah
Saturday, June 15, 2019
How Not to Crash and Burn (63)
I was originally planning to zip through these last few verses of Proverbs, but I find
myself enjoying them too much to rush through them, even as I remain perplexed
as to their full meaning in more than a few cases. I suppose it helps that
they are among the least-examined verses of scripture I’ve ever encountered.
New territory is always interesting.
So … horrors and marvels, here we go.
Labels:
Agur
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How Not to Crash and Burn
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Proverbs
Friday, June 14, 2019
Too Hot to Handle: When We ALL Get to Heaven
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Faith
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Rob Bell
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Too Hot to Handle
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Universalism
Thursday, June 13, 2019
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
More Teaching Won’t Help
Yesterday I drew attention
to what at first glance might appear to be an imbalance in the teaching of the
book of Proverbs. Solomon gives many dire warnings about “women on the make” to
young men, but no warnings at all to young women concerning the dangers of
lustful men.
This was not because God is uninterested in maintaining the virtue of women, as we will see shortly.
However, ancient Eastern societies, and especially Israel, had a culture of built-in
familial and legal protections for ordinary women which made them difficult for
men on the prowl to access or seduce, and this without imposing on them pillbox-style
face-coverings and body bags.
And of course there was no internet in those days. Where temptation is concerned, that was far from
a negative.
Labels:
1 Corinthians
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Proverbs
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Temptation
Tuesday, June 11, 2019
Discriminating Against the Adulteress
Modern readers flipping the pages of Proverbs would have to be incredibly inattentive to fail
to notice that the warnings about lapsing into sexual sin are ... all
directed at men.
In fact, where adultery is concerned, it could be argued that Solomon viewed women of a
certain sort as cunning predators and men as their potential victims. Foolish
and gullible victims, certainly. Unknowing and uncaring of the consequences of
their actions, definitely. But victims all the same ... even though we
know it takes two to tango, right?
Where are the parallel passages warning
young Hebrew women against the prowling adulterer with lust in his eyes? Why,
they are nowhere to be found.
Labels:
Adultery
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Discimination
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Proverbs
Monday, June 10, 2019
Anonymous Asks (44)
“If you are not a Christian and believe that Jesus died on the cross to relieve us of our sins, can you still go to heaven?”
There is a significant difference between believing about someone and believing in someone.
The book of James points out that even demons get some of their facts right. They are
strict monotheists, for one. Mark’s gospel records that unclean spirits repeatedly fell down before
Jesus and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” In that respect, the demons were better theologians than the Pharisees, who hotly
disputed that very issue.
However, believing something correct about Jesus — even something very
important indeed — doesn’t mean demons are on their way to heaven. Far
from it.
Labels:
Anonymous Asks
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Lordship
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Salvation
Sunday, June 09, 2019
Semi-Random Musings (13)
“Go, tell his disciples and Peter …”
The earliest manuscripts of the gospel of
Mark end with a “young man” (read: angel) instructing three terrified women at the
open tomb of the Lord Jesus to go and share the news that while Jesus of
Nazareth had died and been buried, Christ the Lord had risen and planned to
meet with his followers once more.
No wonder they trembled.
Labels:
Grace
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Peter
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Semi-Random Musings
Saturday, June 08, 2019
How Not to Crash and Burn (62)
Entropy is pretty much the governing
principle of our present universe. Systems and sub-systems are not
independently or permanently functional. They require replenishing from other
sources.
The earth cannot
survive without sunlight. The sun could not warm the earth were it not fueled by
both hydrogen and helium. And without the collapsing clouds of interstellar gas
and dust we call nebulae, there would be no stars.
Labels:
Agur
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How Not to Crash and Burn
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Proverbs
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Satisfaction
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