Category: Blog
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Evan Roberts Does Not Know When Jesus Will Return.
How should premillenialists regard the revelation of translation of Evan Roberts, published in England (in the December issue of “OVERCOMER”) and the message, “Be ye ready”? All well-balanced students of the Word who understand the clear teaching of the Bible regarding the time of our Lord’s return, namely, that “It is not for [us] to…
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Augustine’s Praying Mother
This is the traditional day when Monica is commemorated; Monica the mother of Augustine. Lots of people having praying mothers, but Augustine’s mother was really serious about praying for her son. By the way, Mother’s day is just a few days from now. Monica has an important role in Augustine’s world-famous autobiographical book The Confessions.…
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To the Johnson House Class of 2009, Thanks
Four years ago this fall the Torrey Honors Institute of Biola University implemented a curriculum of the great literary classics that was thematic in its approach as opposed to being a chronological reading of the texts. My job as professor in Torrey was the result of the creation of this new “house,” named after the…
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Donald Bloesch’s Birthday
Donald Bloesch is a theologian whose name rhymes with “keep it fresh,” “nativity creche,” and “word made flesh.” Born on May 3, 1928, Bloesch has been an important theological voice for decades. He published the widely-used two-volume Essentials of Evangelical Theology back in the early 1980s, and his Christ-centeredness has been a lodestar for evangelicals…
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Athanasius: Battle on Ten Fronts
Athanasius of Alexandria (born around 293, died on this day, May 2, 373) stands out from the great crowd of witnesses that make up the early history of the church. If you’d like to begin reading the church fathers but don’t know where to start, consider starting with Athanasius. Anybody who understands the work of…
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April: An Argument in Poems
April is the cruellest month. So begins, famously, T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, a prophetic and incisive poem (albeit abstruse and alienating), capturing in word and image some of the losses and decadences that marked the modern world. April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out the of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire,…
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3 Pithy Remarks on Handling the Doctrine of the Trinity
Not very helpful: The Trinity: Try to Understand It and You’ll Lose Your Mind. Try to Deny It and You’ll LOSE YOUR SOUL! –mercifully anonymous but sadly widespread Much better: Nowhere else is a mistake more dangerous, or the search more laborious, or discovery more advantageous. –Augustine Sweeeeet: It is rashness to search too far…
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A Smattering of Greek is Worse than None at All
Do you think it is wise for a man who is a pastor in charge of a church to study Greek? Do you think the practical help that would be derived from it would compensate for the valuable time spent upon it when there are so many other important things to do? I most certainly…
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Who Told You God is Love?
How is it that an all-wise and all-loving God could create mankind with a foreknowledge that so many would be doomed to eternal punishment? Finite beings are always getting on perilous ground when they begin to ask how an infinite God could do this or that. An infinitely wise God may have a thousand good…
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Gifted or Determined?
People in general are not born with amazing intellectual or physical giftedness. I continually have to remind myself of this. Most individuals have to work very hard to attain the level of excellence that we admire. Our culture reinforces this belief about natural abilities with language of giftedness–as if some “talent fairy” is throwing around…
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Nothing Happened in April
Actually, lots of interesting anniversaries are coming up in the next couple of weeks: Brainerd was born, Moody was converted, Kant was born, William Miller’s predicted date for Christ’s return came and went, Augustine was baptized, Charles Fuller was born, Luther had his disputation at Heidelberg, and Peter Bohler died. But I’m not going to…
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Corrie ten Boom was Born and Died Today
Cornelia ten Boom was born on April 15, 1892, and died on her ninety-first birthday, April 15, 1983. Corrie was from a remarkable family of pious Dutch Christians who constructed a secret room in their home and housed a number of Jews there, hidden from the Nazis. When their secret activities were discovered, the whole…