Category: Blog
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A Perspective on Judgement
The other day I was driving home, and I experienced someone with road rage—me. A car cut me off in what could only be described as an audition for a job as stunt driver in the next Jerry Bruckheimer movie. As this car cut in front of me, I slammed on the brakes, honked my…
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"For One Look at the Self, Take Ten Looks at Christ"
In Adolph Saphir’s classic book The Hidden Life, he passes along a piece of perfect evangelical advice: “for one look at the self, we ought to taken ten looks at Christ.” Saphir is exactly right: Too much attention to the state of your spiritual life can be poisonous for a Christian. Precisely in examining your own…
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12 Things to Do Now that You’re Graduating
I’ve been teaching in the Torrey Honors Institute for four years now, and nearly all of the students I have mentored over that time will be graduating in a few weeks. I still remember sitting in a circle of desks in the McNally buildings with a bunch of eager – and, okay, maybe a bit…
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Z72
Freddy Age Nine is well known for his mastery of highly complex compositions, but his recent work has tended toward a stark simplicity. The image below is striking for its vast quantities of white space, so much that the two major figures in it seem to belong to separate drawings. The open triangle at the…
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Seeing the Resurrected Son of God
Easter is not a day, it is a season. Thus, instead of remembering our celebration of Easter a few weeks ago as we polish off the last remaining ear of the chocolate bunny or choke down that final Peep, we need to be continually living in the Easter moment. The Lord is risen, alleluia! In…
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The Modern Doctrine of the Trinity
The Trinity is God, and God does not change. The Trinity doesn’t develop, mature, improve, shift around, wax or wane, or alter with the latest trends and fashions. But the doctrine of the Trinity is something theologians talk about, and theologians do change, and the way they talk changes. So it’s possible to describe the…
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Whiteboard Mathmachine Mousehouse
Freddy Age Nine isn’t opposed to math. But as an accomplished visual artist, he knows how to use visual design to add interest and motivation to the routine arithmetical functions required of today’s busy fourth grader. Simple operations can be carried out with this mouse-operated math machine: At the center is the mouse, facing the…
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The Eternal Trinity
Some time ago I got a note from a reader asking if a certain Baptist statement of faith was adequately trinitarian. I think the question came from somebody who didn’t know the Baptist heritage very well, and was just doing his best to understand the words of the words of the statement of faith. The…
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Happy Birthday, J.B. Lightfoot
Today (April 13) was the birthday of J.B. Lightfoot (1828-1889), Bishop of Durham, New Testament commentator, historian of early Christianity, and Christian apologist. Lightfoot’s strict classical training (Trinity College, Cambridge) equipped him for what turned out to be his life’s work in an uncannily providential way. In all his scholarly work, it has been said…
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Happy Birthday, Samuel Zwemer
Samuel Marinus Zwemer (1867-1952) was born this day, April 12. Zwemer has been called “the Apostle to Islam” by many people, including a historian of missions as great Kenneth Scott Latourette. He worked in frontier missions in a variety of ways, willing to go anywhere there were Muslims and to use any technique that was…
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Happy Birthday James Orr
Scottish theologian James Orr (1844–1913) was born on this day, April 11. He was a prolific author and an important figure in conservative evangelicalism at the very beginning of the twentieth century. Orr wrote at a time when everything seemed to be flying apart: historical-critical studies of the Bible were reaching a sort of critical…
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The Life Book and High School Evangelism
You may have seen the little ad in our rightmost column, for “a quick way to change someone’s life forever,” with one hand taking a tract from another. That ad is for something called The Life Book, a remarkable little evangelistic tool designed for high school evangelism. The main thing about the Life Book is…