That the glory of the Lord might cover the dry land as the waters cover the sea
Hearty thanks to Kathleen Nielson for interviewing me on Ezra–Nehemiah for the TGC blog in the run-up to the National Women’s Conference on Nehemiah. Here’s a bit from one of my responses, reflecting on the way that their concern for the nation’s purity ensured the birth of Jesus: In the mystery of God’s providence, we …
Continue reading “So there could be a Jesus: TGC Interview on Ezra–Nehemiah”
Is there anything more important than the Bible? Jesus said Scripture can’t be broken, and he prayed that the Father would sanctify his people in the truth, then said, “Thy word is truth.” God’s people need God’s word. The word doesn’t work like a magic formula, however. We don’t just pass our eyes over a …
I love Jason Duesing’s writing. I started to excerpt his first and last paragraphs, then urge you to go read the whole thing. I decided not to excerpt them because they are so much more powerful in the context of the whole. If you wonder what seminaries have to do with taking the gospel to …
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Broadman and Holman allowed me to put an excerpt of my new book on Ezra–Nehemiah on Christianity.com. The chapter excerpted deals with how to live a wartime lifestyle on a millionaire’s budget. Here’s a bit: Can you imagine slaughtering an ox a day? I don’t know how big Nehemiah’s herd of oxen was, but he …
Searching on Bibleworks 9 for Mac BW9 offers several options to search the Bible and other texts (e.g. Apostolic Fathers, Josephus, Philo etc.). The most common and easiest search options to access are the right-click search option and the command window. When one right-clicks on a word or a selected phrase, BW9 offers different options …
Continue reading “Review of BibleWorks 9 for Mac Part 2: Guest Post by Dieudonne Tamfu”
BibleWorks 9 for Mac: Software for Biblical Exegesis and Research. Norfolk, VA: BibleWorks LLC, 2011, $359.00 Introduction I am so amazed at the wealth of the resources with which God has blessed this era to study his Word. No era before now has enjoyed the blessings of tools such as Bibleworks for easy, fast, and …
Continue reading “Review of BibleWorks 9 for Mac Part 1: Guest Post by Dieudonne Tamfu”
The incomparable Winston Churchill: What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and …
S. E. Morison concludes the Preface to his edition of Of Plymouth Plantation 1620–1647 by William Bradford with this stirring paragraph: Bradford’s history is a story of a simple people inspired by an ardent faith to a dauntless courage in danger, a resourcefulness in dealing with new problems, an impregnable fortitude in adversity that exalts and heartens …
In his brilliant and thought provoking book, Deep Exegesis, Peter Leithart writes (167): “In a book happily back in print, John Breck argues that chiasms are not ‘balanced structures, but instead are dynamic literary devices. He suggests that chiasms should be read ‘helically,’ moving not just from A to B to C to B’ and so …
William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, scene 7: All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. Then …
In a letter to Walker Percy, Shelby Foote exhorted Percy to get to work on his desire to write fiction, saying something that is true about any craftsman pursuing any craft: “But the most heart-breaking thing about it is: the better you get, the harder youll have to work–because your standards will rise with your ability. I …
I just keep cheering Saul Sarabia’s translation work into Spanish. I’m so grateful for the work he is doing on behalf of his fellow Spanish speakers, and so impressed with his industry. He has rendered yet another one of my essays, this time “The Skull Crushing Seed of the Woman,” into Spanish: “LA SIMIENTE DE LA MUJER …
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There’s a ton of good stuff available from the CBMW National Conference. Check it out here.
Have you heard references to the “failed policies of the past”? I always wonder if they think, as it seems, that freedom is the failed policy of the past. It seems that many in our culture want to replace freedom with more governmental control of all of life. Ironically, that’s the failed policy of the past. John Lewis Gaddis …
Continue reading “China’s Great Leap Forward: Will Central Planning Produce Human Flourishing?”
[Note: An edited version of this post was published in the e-book, God and the Gay Christian? A Response to Matthew Vines] Matthew Vines doesn’t throw his knockout punch at the beginning of his book but at the end. The book’s final sentence says of condoning same-sex relations as moral and good: “As more believers are …
Continue reading “How to Condone What the Bible Condemns: Matthew Vines Takes on the Old Testament”
In his book God and the Gay Christian, Matthew Vines assumes that he is correct to call sin righteous, slanders the Bride of Christ, and speaks as though sin produces lasting joy when he writes, “the church’s condemnation of same-sex relationships seemed to be harmful to the long-term wellbeing of most gay people. . . . …
Continue reading “God Issued the Prohibition, Not the Church”
Jonathan Merritt hosted a “conversation” between Albert Mohler and Matthew Vines, but it wasn’t really a conversation. Mohler and Vines answered questions Merritt posed. Merritt gives the last word to Vines, awarding him the Proverbs 18:17 advantage, “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.” Matthew Vines seems …
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In his book God and the Gay Christian, Matthew Vines wrongly suggests that the view that same-sex relations are sinful is a bad tree bearing the bad fruit of hurt feelings in the lives of people dealing with same sex attraction. He bases this argument on a misreading of Matthew 7:15–20, and on his bad exegesis he builds …
Continue reading “Matthew Vines Misrepresents the Apostle Peter”
I think the best people in the world are probably the ones whose names you never hear. These are the people who live and serve like Jesus did. He wasn’t in big cities all the time, didn’t write any books, made no headlines, networked with no one important. He was with fishermen and no-counts, prostitutes …
Continue reading “Unsung Heroes: People Who Made the Response Possible”
The new book by Matthew Vines, God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships (you read that oxymoron right) releases today, and simultaneous with its release comes a book conceived and edited by R. Albert Mohler Jr., God and the Gay Christian? A Response to Matthew Vines. Dr. Mohler wrote the introduction, I …