Just read an article that when disaffected young people were given the opportunity to explain, in their own words, why they left the church, they claimed it was because the church wasn’t offering cogent responses to the criticisms of science…
...would smell as sweet. That line may sound romantic, from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, but it just doesn’t work when applied to the religions of the world. I sat in my very first doctoral class years ago and listened to…
I say, "almost all benefits," because if God can speak through a donkey, He doesn't need your or my devotions to communicate with us...and He did it millennia before Disney came up with the idea of talking animals. But He…
We tend to despise small things in our culture...except maybe diamonds. We think small things are less exciting than the big things. Less impacting. Less effective. Less worthwhile. Until we run into stories like this. The young man was nineteen…
Luke 3 & 4 is the launch of Jesus’ earthly ministry. He was thirty years old (Luke 3:23). He was baptized in water by John, affirmed by the Father, and filled with the Spirit (Luke 3:21-22). He was full of…
Satan is a created being (Isaiah 14/Ezekiel 28). He does not have unilateral power or authority over any of God’s creation. The most he was able to do was tempt the Lord, and then orchestrate but not control the events…
It’s only two letters of the alphabet. How much difference can two letters make? They are the two most neglected letters in contemporary Christianity. If we see them together in the Bible, we either don’t see them, or we slide…
I recently picked up a reprint of a series of lectures published in Scotland by ministers reflecting on the revival that had just swept through the churches there in 1839. The book was published in 1840, so their reflections were…
One of my favorite places to go, when I visit Israel, is Shiloh. It’s where the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant rested for the first 360 years of Israel’s occupation of the Promised Land. The Ark of the…
When I was growing up in South Africa in the 1960’s most worship service planners called everything before the sermon, “preliminaries.” That word conveyed what everyone was thinking in those days... that the main attraction in the worship service was…