As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
“This shift has landed us in what can be called ‘standpoint epistemology.’ … the view that everything we think and know, and even what we consider knowledge to be, is determined solely by our race, ’gender,’ sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and other identity categories.” - Breakpoint
“We breathe a sigh of relief when we get to chapter 38 and bow in reverence before the Lord God’s majestic monologue. Yet we may be left scratching our heads over the lack of response to Elihu’s speeches.” - Desiring God
“While Lambert marks Bavinck and Kuyper out as being aberrations within the Reformed tradition (an assertion not supported by the literature), Bavinck actually points a way forward …to counseling that affirms the necessity and relevance of Scripture and the usefulness of common grace.” - London Lyceum
“One natural response is to shut down challenging questions for fear faith’s foundations will crack. But forbidding questions is unhealthier than wrestling with honest doubts.” - TGC
Plenty of people are zealous for God, but their zeal is based on bad information. They actually don’t know God at all. This is Israel’s problem.
In Romans 9 to 11, the apostle Paul segues from his theological musings about salvation to a question no Christian can ignore—what about Israel? He spends most of Romans 9 defending God from accusations of failure (9:6-13), unjustness and cruelty (9:14-18), and unfairness (9:19-21). God dispenses mercy and hardness of heart as He sees fit (Rom 9:14, 18). The clay has no right to object to the potter’s decision (Rom 9:20-21).
To me, one of the strangest oddities of the year of 2020 was the call for safety in the face of COVID-19.
“Stay safe,” we were cautioned. Here in Wisconsin, our governor even issued an order titled “Safer at Home.”
This seemed to me to be an extraordinary choice of wording—because COVID-19 results from a virus. I’m sure that experts disagree on the best methodologies for warding off infection from a virus. But one thing that you certainly cannot do to escape it is to stay safe. Your only hope is to stay healthy.
“My preference is to read the poem as a series of metaphors for death—together with its individual, communal, and cosmic implications—drawn from the created order, domestic life, commerce, and warfare.” - DBTS Blog
Gog and Magog: do you know what modern nations would correspond to this? Or are they symbolical? Or nations we cannot identify? Perhaps Ezekiel refers to literal nations, while Revelation’s use of those terms is symbolical of nations rebelling against God? Here are the texts, your comments are welcome.
“Christians can be guilty of making pithy statements of a theological nature that require a lot of explanation for the phrase to be accurate. If an explanation is not offered, we are sometimes demanding a lot of the reader to put all the pieces together.” - Ref21
Discussion