Oct 29, 2021 | Theology
Last week my son and I went to see the Christian band Mercy Me. Even though I’m not really a fan of the band, nor do I listen to Christian contemporary music (I don’t listen to much of any kind of music anymore), it was an enjoyable concert. It was held at the arena where I understand the Stanley Cup Champion Tampa Bay Lightening play ice hockey (there were plenty of banners), and while it wasn’t packed, it was a substantial crowd. For a Christian band that’s been around for 27 years, I was impressed. The production, sound, and musicianship was impressive, and lead singer, Bart Millard, has a powerful voice and a winsome demeanor. His life was the inspiration for a hit movie staring Dennis Quaid called I Can Only Imagine, the name of a song he wrote after his father died. He is also clearly in love with Jesus, and the reason I write about it has to do with that. (more…)
Oct 24, 2021 | Notable Quotations
The transition from secular hope to existential despair requires only the instant in which the bubble bursts and all is nothingness. Just now, a secular optimism is the mood of the American mind and the key-note of contemporary theology. The call is to clear away the defeatism of old and new orthodoxies and to venture with the secularists in the building of the new metropolis, the city of man. Let the church nail up its escape hatch to heaven, renounce its heritage of accomplished salvation, and become a partner with Christ, establishing in history the new mankind, which is the essential manhood of all men.
Yet this mood does not dispel more reflective and more somber expressions of despair. Sub-Christian hope will always disintegrate into despair and sub-Christian despair will always generate illusory hope.
The glory of the Christian hope has another center than the economy of abundance or the new mankind. God is the hope of Israel, the promised portion of his people. “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord…I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope…Let Israel hope in the LORD: for with the LORD there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption” (Psalm 130:1, 5, 7).
—Edmund P. Clowney
From his Inaugural Address as the First President of Westminster Seminary Philadelphia, 1966.
President 1966-1984 (1917-1984)
Oct 21, 2021 | Explanatory Power
It’s amazing to me how many Christians in the 21st century live in a state of insecurity about their faith and the nature of reality. I’m not myself immune to the secular temptation that wafts unseen through the secular culture pushing material reality as the only reality. Mind you, I and very few other people believe that the universe and everything in it is somehow a product of mere matter and chance. Just ask anyone you come across if they believe that there is no God, and that the universe is a product of mere matter and chance, and 95 plus percent will say, no way! Yet most of them live as if God is absolutely irrelevant to their lives, practical atheists if you will. Yet we, if we’re honest, are tempted to live the same way. I know I am, which I why one of the verses most on my mind and lips and prayers is Paul’s declaration in Romans 1:20, that “God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” Meditate on that, clearly seen, being understood from what has been made . . . . We just need to open our eyes! And we will know, God is. (more…)
Oct 17, 2021 | Apologetics
Given I’m not a “somebody” with a big “platform,” getting book reviews is not easy. I
finally did get one, and it was at a site that was instrumental in my journey back into apologetics, Apologetics315. It was worth the wait. The author’s final words are most gratifying: I love this book!
I think you will too. So if you’d like to see why she thought so, get yourself a copy of The Persuasive Christian Parent and you can find out for yourself. Let me know what you think.
Oct 15, 2021 | Theology
God has revealed himself to us in creation, Scripture, and Christ. My first thought experiment post was on creation, and my second on Scripture. Now we come to the ultimate thought experiment, Jesus Christ, the Jesus who was from Nazareth who claimed to be Israel’s long awaited (400 years!) Messiah, and the Savior of the world. Here is our thought experiment: try to make sense of reality without Jesus. One time atheist C.S. Lewis tried and realized the futility of such an exercise. He came to this conclusion:
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.
That’s what Jesus does, he makes sense of everything, all the puzzle pieces that puzzle us can now fit into the biggest of big pictures. Without him, all you have is the pieces, and they will never fit together because there is no universal (big picture) into which the particulars (the puzzle pieces) fit. Speaking of Russia in 1939, Winston Churchill’s description fits life without Christ perfectly: It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. (more…)
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