Category: Blog
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C. H. Dodd and Realized Eschatology
C. H. Dodd (born this day, April 7, 1884; died 1973) was a major twentieth-century New Testament scholar. He wrote on many topics, but his name is mostly associated with the idea of realized eschatology. If eschatology is the doctrine of the final things (eschaton being the Greek word for “last”), then realized eschatology is…
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Albrecht Dürer, Northern Renaissance Man
Albrecht Dürer (born 1471, died on this day, April 6, in 1528) was widely hailed as the greatest artist of his generation in the northern Renaissance. All kinds of voluptuous shenanigans were going on in the wonderful world of the southern Renaissance, but if you want that stern, northern sensibility, it’s hard to beat Dürer…
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Behold Your King: Reflections on a Palm Sunday
Christians remember on Palm Sunday the triumphal entry of Christ to Jerusalem–the King of Glory riding to the ostensible seat of his political and religious power, received as victor and Lord with shouts of Hosannas. But there is a great deal about the scene that–at least as it hits my imagination–speaks of Christ’s humility: riding…
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Gerhard Tersteegen (1697-1769), Pietist
Today is the anniversary of the death of Gerhard Tersteegen (born 1697, died April 3, 1769), the most pious pietist of pietism’s piousness. Somehow, the words “pious” and “pietism” have been turned into dirty words in contemporary usage. I don’t know how that happened to perfectly good words. Maybe where you live, you are suffocating…
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Mordecai Ham Tried to Baptize a Cat
When he was a seven year old boy in Kentucky, Mordecai F. Ham (born today, April 2, 1877, died 1961) tried to “immerse an old tomcat in a rain trough, and when the subject vented all its feline ferocity in objecting to the ‘baptism,’ little Mordecai threw him down with the disgusted explanation, ‘Go on,…
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The Best Book on Jesus’ Divinity
Many months ago, Ed Komoszewski wrote to me and asked if I might be interested in seeing a forthcoming book he had recently finished co-authoring with Rob Bowman. It was on the deity of Christ; I was interested; he sent me page proofs; I loved it. The book was Putting Jesus in His Place: The…
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David Brainerd Went to the Indians (1743)
It was on April 1, 1743, that David Brainerd (1718-1747) went out into the American wilderness to be a missionary to the Native Americans. Brainerd’s influence on world missions has been enormous, but it has all been through Jonathan Edwards’ posthumous publication of his notes and journals. As edited by Edwards, the Life of Brainerd…
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How to Be Led by the Holy Spirit
Q: How can one distinguish between the leading of the Holy Spirit and a mere impulse of our own heart? A. The most important condition of being able to distinguish the true leading of the Holy Spirit is that we be absolutely surrendered to the will of God. There are many people doing the things…
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Happy Birthday to Haydn
Joseph Haydn was born on March 31, 1732, in Austria. He died on May 31, 1809. There’s plenty of Haydn music to choose from, much of it exquisitely good for casual listening: concertos, string quartets, piano trios, symphonies, etc. But if you want to move to the slightly more ambitious side of Haydn’s works, try…
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Rambam Guided the Perplexed
Today is the birthday of Moses Maimonides (born March 30, 1135, died 1204), the twelfth-century Sephardic Jewish intellectual who wrote The Guide for the Perplexed, which was a very influential book for international philosophical theology in the late middle ages and beyond. In the history of Jewish thought, Maimonides is often referred to as the…
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Charles Wesley was Ready to Die
Charles Wesley (born 1707, died March 29, 1788) lived a long and fruitful life, died peacefully at home, and was buried in the yard of his parish church. His family was gathered around him and some of them wrote descriptions of how he died. His death was not really remarkable except that it was such…
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Happy Birthday to Donald Grey Barnhouse
Donald Grey Barnhouse (March 28, 1895, died 1960) is best remembered as the pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, and his most far-reaching ministry was through the radio show “The Bible Study Hour” (later re-named Dr. Barnhouse and the Bible). Among his many books, the most important is probably his four-volume homiletic commentary on…