As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
(Hebrews 6:3-9 with Numbers 13-14)
In the United States, many people who had at one time professed allegiance to Jesus Christ have turned away from their previous commitment. We refer to a person who once knowingly professed the faith — but has since renounced it — as an “apostate” (from the Greek, “one who stands away” from what he once professed). Theologically, how do we account for apostates?
Read Part 1.
The Book of Hosea continues to pour out its condemnations of the malpractices of Israel (in particular the northern tribes spoken to “synecdocheally” under the heading of the largest tribe, Ephraim), but at the end of chapter 5 there is a passage which expresses another truth that will seemingly run in tandem with God’s wooing of Israel as described in chapter 2:14f.
I will return again to My place till they acknowledge their offense.
Then they will seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me. (Hosea 5:15)
The scene is of God retiring from the scene until such a time as His people acknowledge the fact that they have continually sinned against Him. The theme is found earlier in Deuteronomy 30:1-6 where the prediction of worshipful obedience transcends any state of affairs known after that time.
The interesting thing about the Gospel of Mark is that Jesus doesn’t tell us (over and over again) He’s the Messiah; He proves it by His actions.1 This passage (Mk 6:45-52) is full of trinitarian implications. It follows right on the heels of the feeding of the 5,000 (“for they did not understand about the loaves,” Mk 6:52), and it can’t be rightly understood without that connection.
“You shouldn’t be somebody’s friend for 20 years, and hope ‘one day’ to have an open door.” How a Church Ought to do Evangelism
A Draft for the book The Words of the Covenant.
Hosea (active c. 755-725 B.C.) is best known for his on/off relationship with the harlot Gomer and the message God entailed in it. Hosea had married Gomer and she (predictably) committed adultery and was put away by the prophet. But then the prophet was told to take her back! What was the meaning of this story?
Upon the naming of his third child with Gomer we read this:
Then God said: “Call his name Lo-Ammi, for you are not My people, and I will not be your God. “Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, `You are not My people,’ There it shall be said to them, ‘You are sons of the living God.’
Then the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and appoint for themselves one head; and they shall come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel!” (Hosea 1:9-11)
“The Heritage of the Reformation” was the theme at this year’s annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, where Southern Baptists delivered nearly a third of the gathering’s presentations and Trinity International University President David Dockery was elected president.” BPNews
If Christians confess that the Son proceeds from the Father, then is it proper to call this “generation?” Doesn’t this term imply the Son had a beginning, or at least owes His existence to the Father? Is the “eternal generation of the Son” a Biblical concept?
Many Christians assume the medieval period lacked original theological insight. Almost unconsciously, they often assume the church entered a dark age at the end of the patristic era; a darkness which was only pierced by the bright and shining rays of the Reformation 1000 years later. This is incorrect.
Discussion