In his commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, John Calvin discusses Jesus’ statement that the “Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matt 6:8). Calvin addresses the question of why believers should pray if God already knows what we need. He suggests the...
Resource materials from 2014 Mid-America Conference on Preaching, "Striving Together for the Faith of the Gospel," are now available for free download. Included are audio recordings (mp3) from all general sessions and workshops, as well as printed notes (pdf) from the...
The Mid-American Conference begins this Thursday, October 16, at the Inter-City Baptist Church, 4700 Allen Road, Allen Park, MI. The theme is "Striving Together for the Faith of the Gospel." The speakers are: David Doran, Pastor, Inter-City Baptist Church &...
A few weeks ago, Mark Snoeberger had a post arguing that in the matter of salvation, especially the issue of regeneration, there are only two possible options, which he labeled as Calvinism and Arminianism. As might be expected, there was some push back to the idea of...
It’s mid-September here in Michigan. The much-anticipated, season-changing cold front has gone through, the mornings have become crisp and clear, and the first smells of Autumn have started to fill the air. And this week my son and I are observing a little-celebrated...
A few weeks ago there was an event here at Dodger Stadium with Joel Osteen, thirty-five thousand people at Dodger Stadium, something like that. He is now the largest, quote/unquote church.... I’m using the word loosely...in America down in Houston. You need to...
For my whole life I’ve been broadly a part of an ecclesiastical culture/movement that has been disinclined to commit either to Calvinism or Arminianism. A steady stream of articles, essays, and blog posts have kept this delicate balancing act alive for decades (for a...
While visiting a church a few weeks back I heard something I’ve not heard in many years: a sermon on predictive prophecy. Not a general sermon on the Second Coming, the final judgment, or the joys of heaven, but a sermon on the grind-it-out details of eschatology from...
For a number of years the Seminary faculty has produced the Basic Library Booklist. It is updated every few years, and you can find the 2014 edition here. The Booklist has been specifically designed to answer the question of which books are the best on a particular...
Who was John Stott? It’s been a couple of years since Stott died, and his legacy is still taking shape. I suspect that for many of us he’ll be remembered as the author of one or two books on our shelves—probably The Cross of Christ and/or Basic Christianity—or as the...
Last week I received one of those Tweets that had been forwarded about a half dozen times before it landed in my inbox. It purported to offer an idea for a “Calvinist Graduation Card”: “Happy graduation. You did nothing. You are nothing. So just march.” It was funny...
Commencement season has revived a fresh spate of debate about separation. Should Liberty University have invited Glenn Beck to speak? Should Al Mohler have gone to BYU (again)? And related, should Bob Jones University have invited Dennis Praeger to speak? None of...
"I’m going to be gone soon. Don’t be sad. I’m not afraid of death.... Mother, we are all going to die someday. Don’t be discouraged by my death. Continue in your faith."... After a final public condemnation meeting, the militiamen shot him by the roadside and dumped...
We teach many subjects in seminary: languages, theology, history, hermeneutics, etc. We teach classes in these areas, expecting students to learn, grow, and improve in their ability to effectively minister the Word. This is good and right. As elders, we are supposed...
I recently had a conversation with a man who made a major life decision that turned out poorly. This man apparently did everything right—he based his decision on careful research of the available facts, the application of sound biblical principles to these facts, the...
But I ask: Did they not hear? Of course they did: “Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world”—Rom 10:18, citing Ps 19:4 How can Paul prove that Israel has heard the gospel by citing Ps 19:4? The psalm doesn’t seem to have the...
A few weeks ago, I mentioned a new little book written by Justin Holcomb, titled Know the Heretics (Zondervan, April 2014). At the same time that book was published, a companion volume titled Know the Creeds and Councils was also released. While the volume I mentioned...
Last week in this blog post, I suggested that if the current surge of evangelical social attentiveness shares identity with surges that preceded it (as Joel Carpenter has affirmed), then we should look to history to accurately predict the course and end of the current...
I just finished browsing through an engaging new title, The New Evangelical Social Engagement. No, it’s not an obscure book by a rock-ribbed fundamentalist who remains skeptical about the conservative resurgence in evangelical life (though it might cast a few of these...
Among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, there is a rather troubling document dated from the year 1 B.C. It’s a letter written by a husband to his wife. The husband is out of town, and the wife is apparently expecting to deliver a child in the near future. Here’s the text:...
I’ve visited sub-Saharan Africa a few times and have started to get a handle on the grassroots economic theory that dominates the local villages: zero-sum economics. In brief, traditional African culture understands that there is a fixed amount of wealth available at...
This morning I scanned through an interesting book put out by Georgetown University that analyzes the value of 171 common college majors available today. By “value” the authors mean almost entirely fiscal value, or how much money a graduate can expect to make after...
This past week many people on both sides of the abortion issue commemorated the 41st anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision (issued 22 Jan 1973). Since that time, more than 56 million unborn children have been legally killed in the United States....
I just finished Scott Oliphint's generally excellent book on apologetics, Covenantal Apologetics (P&R, 2013) and was fixing to write a review when I stumbled upon an insightful review by Paul Henebury to which I had very little to add. In short, I would agree with...
The Duck Dynasty controversy has finally slipped into the periphery, and most are glad to leave it that way. Franklin Graham, however, recently fired a parting shot—and one that crossed a key line of demarcation. Specifically, he expressed “amazement at how many...
The Student Global Impact national conference begins tomorrow, and I am presenting a workshop titled, "Give of Your Best to the Master: The Life and Lessons of Adoniram Judson, Missionary to Burma." I would highly recommend the reading of one of the many biographies...
The hymn “Joy to the World,” published by Isaac Watts in 1719, is one of my favorites. But it’s not my favorite Christmas song—because it is not a Christmas song at all. The hymn is instead based on Psalm 98 and conceived by Watts as a proleptic anticipation of the...
I want to both inform you and ask you to spread the word about the 2014 Student Global Impact Missions Conference taking place in about one month on January 2-3, 2014 at Inter-City Baptist Church. We pack several inspiring and informative workshops and sessions on...
Last week I made my annual pilgrimage to the meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, this year in Baltimore, MD. The ETS is a professional society made up of several thousand professors, students, academically-minded pastors, and other thrill seekers who...
This past week the good folks at Crossway sent me a copy of a new book that will likely stir the theological waters a bit. I’m referring to From Heaven He Came and Sought Her: Definite Atonement in Historical, Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Perspective, edited by...
Billy Graham just preached his final sermon (well, sort of—it was more a few sentences inside of a state-of-the-art video presentation). We’ve not seen a lot from him lately, so we instinctively tuned in to hear America’s pastor one last time. Everybody liked it. It...
If you have been around the internet the past couple weeks, you have undoubtedly become aware of the controversy over the Strange Fire Conference sponsored by John MacArthur and Grace to You. MacArthur's book by the same name (Strange Fire: The Danger of Offending the...
After using Kindle for PC for several years, this past week I finally bit the bullet and purchased a Kindle Paperwhite. My initial impression of the device is very positive. I think I’m really going to like this thing. Perhaps I’ll write a post reviewing the device...
I think I can make a pretty good case that Hebrews was a sermon, probably, in fact, a handful of sermons stitched together to respond to the urgent needs of a community in crisis. (You’re just going to have to trust me on this one.) Here I want to reflect on three...
I just finished reading Samuel Miller’s book Thoughts on Public Prayer. As the title suggests, the book does not offer a cohesive treatise on the topic, but a governing thesis nonetheless emerges: since prayer rivals preaching as the most important of a pastor’s...
How does your church feel about the need for new churches? Sometimes statistics can help out our feelings. Consider these simple statistics briefly: The population of the United States, the third most populous nation in the world, is about 316,700,000. The population...
Here is an important and helpful discussion on religious liberty with panelists Kirsten Powers, Ross Douthat, Russell Moore, Jennifer Marshall, and Timothy Shah. Panel starts at the 12:15 mark. HT: Denny Burk
Recent discussions about the nature of worldliness reminded me of a statement that dates from the late fourth century. In his book On Christian Teaching, Augustine (354–430) discusses what it means to live a holy and just life. He says that a person who lives such a...
There is an elephant in the room of Evangelicalism that very few want to talk about. If we bring it up, we face ridicule and labels. "Legalist!" some shout, having little understanding of what legalism really is. "Traditionalist!" others say, as if we don't have a...
A pair of articles on the question of whether to send one’s child to a secular or to a Christian college here and here and discussed further here has recently captured my attention. My eldest son is a high school senior and this decision is imminent for him, so I’m...
If you have ever wondered what it's like being a Jew living in the "Disputed Areas" of Judea and Samaria (i.e., West Bank), you will probably enjoy this interview between a secular Jew, Judith Levy, living in Tel Aviv, and a religious Jew, Evan Pokroy, who lives in...
Last week I had the distinct pleasure of teaching the presuppositional approach to apologetics to a group of believers in Tanzania, most of whom had no more than an elementary education. More challenging to my goal than any deficiency of education, however, was a...
If you’ve read anything about the history of the discipline of biblical theology, then you’ve come across the name J. P. Gabler and his now-programmatic lecture “On the Proper Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology....” The lecture, his inaugural duty for...
The pastor had a tough assignment. While on sabbatical he’d received word from his fellow elders that a group of Jewish families in the church were beginning to cause a bit of trouble. They were threatening to abandon their Christian confession and return to the...
One of the more interesting discoveries I made when researching Baptist polity a few years ago was the lost practice of “recognition councils.” Most Baptists are familiar with ordination councils, in which a local church calls together a group of elders and messengers...
Today, the Supreme Court issued a couple of landmark decisions in the same-sex marriage battle. What the Court did was not really unexpected, but unfortunately is a further step down the path away from biblical marriage. One of the best summaries of what the Court did...
Dr. Al Mohler delivered and important address in 2010 on the exegetical and theological reasons we should believe in a young universe and young earth. The video and a transcript can be found here. It is well worth your attention.
I spent the last two weeks teaching a leadership class for our seminary’s summer school program. It was challenging and encouraging to spend four hours a day looking at this subject with men involved in and preparing for vocational ministry in the church. My last post...
The leadership of an institution is a stewardship entrusted by both God and men. I followed a man who shepherded this congregation for forty years. The same man was the founding president of DBTS. I serve a congregation with a clear set of doctrines and by-laws which...