“It should not be about imposing faith. It could be about encouraging knowledge.” - RNS

“As I read the Christmas story that year, I saw I was in good company as a mom when my festive expectations were dashed. Mary was the first mother to experience Christmas, and I doubt it was what she expected” - TGC

“The 2024 movie Bonhoeffer has many positive qualities: but does it risk distorting the German theologian’s legacy?” - Gavin Ortland

“Some people suppose happiness is uniquely human, unrelated to God’s nature: as He gave us a body and hunger, which He doesn’t have, He gave us a capacity for happiness, which He also doesn’t have. I believe something radically different” - Randy Alcorn

A Review of Harrison Perkins, Reformed Covenant Theology: A Systematic Introduction, Bellingham, WA., Lexham, 2024, 520 pages, hardback.

Darkness, to our sight, corresponds to silence, in our hearing. It is the absence of any stimulus to inform, direct or encourage us.

But darkness also entails a moral component. Darkness, by its very nature, spreads a covering over sin (see John 3:19-21; 8:12; 12:35, 46; Eph. 5:11-14).

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!
Serve the Lord with gladness!
Come into his presence with singing!

Know that the Lord, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!

For the Lord is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.

(ESV)

“Long before James Cameron’s Terminator and Stanley Kubrick’s H.A.L. 9000, there was Prometheus…. The theme of playing God resulting in horrible unintended consequences runs through the Western canon, including the Golem of Jewish mythology…and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” - Providence

“Church membership makes sense of a Christian’s obligation to other Christians…. Church membership makes sense of a Christian’s obligation to his spiritual leaders…. Church membership makes sense of a pastor’s obligation to his church.” - Challies

“The conquest of Canaan may be the most difficult part of the Bible for modern readers…. Those of us who are followers of Christ should take all concerns about evil and violence seriously.” - Gavin Ortlund

“Last month, the National Institutes of Health found one of its top neuroscientists guilty of scientific misconduct.” - Breakpoint

“Many of his readers will feel stretched by the high strangeness of the stories he tells as well as the spiritual medicine he prescribes. But in my view, time has largely vindicated the central theses of his last two books, and this ought to earn him a more generous—which is not to say uncritical—reading.” - Mere Orthodoxy

Read the series.

”’… ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.’ How do you pronounce that word? Or is this an entirely different word than our regular ‘show,’ s-h-o-w?” - Mark Ward

“The custom of praying to thank God for each meal is a wonderful one. But why should we restrict this custom to meals? Why not thank God throughout the day for a hundred other things?” - Randy Alcorn

“A job is worthy of our efforts if it harmonizes with God’s original mandate that humans steward the earth in submission to him (Gen. 1:28). Legitimate work must serve God by serving people.” - TGC

“But note what the verse doesn’t say: that believers will get step-by-step instructions for every decision in life, only that they will be ‘equipped.’ That’s what we mean when we say that while sufficiency is ‘comprehensive,’ applicable to every area of life, it is not ‘exhaustive.’” - Seminary Viewpoints

“the American Council of Christian Churches… resolves to oppose as murderous any IVF procedure which produces more children than a woman is willing to carry to birth.” - ACCC

From Lectures to My Students: A Selection from Addresses Delivered to the Students of The Pastors’ College, Metropolitan Tabernacle

First Series, Lecture IX
By C.H. Spurgeon

“The future inheritance for believers is not subject to death or decay since God Himself has protected it in the safest possible pace: ‘in heaven.’ These descriptions are decisive—the believer’s future inheritance is absolutely secure, not subject to forfeiture.” - P&D

“Famously, he insisted that faith and reason are in harmonious partnership, integrating the known science, philosophy and theology of his day into a comprehensive, interconnected system. All this helps explain why his work has maintained an enduring appeal, even as equally brilliant medieval thinkers have sunk into oblivion.” - RNS

“Smile on face. Energy in eyes. Hair in place. Face of happiness … something I had refined over many years. Heart wounded. Mind and body tired. Soul empty.” - CPost

“Prioritize the singing of familiar carols for the sake of theology…. Prioritize the singing of familiar carols for the sake of unity…. Prioritize the singing of familiar carols for the sake of quality….” - Baptist Press

“In contrast to the progressivism in ascendency for more than a decade, Buckley celebrates a liberalism of empathy, benevolence, and kindness. ‘Today we wouldn’t say we need kindness….Justice has taken its place. But if kindness made us more liberal its abandonment has made us illiberal.” - Acton

This is the beginning of a series of brief devotional articles on The Orthodox Catechism (“OC”), a Particular Baptist document written by Baptist pastor Hercules Collins in 1680. It’s basically the Heidelberg Catechism (first ed. 1563) with Baptist flavor and a few other additions. It is a rightly famous tool for doctrinal and devotional instruction in Baptist churches. In the congregation where I serve as pastor, we discuss one question from the OC each week during the worship service.

“When we consider the state of the family at the beginning of the twenty-first century, our tendency is to reflect nostalgically on imagined idyllic days of generations past when families weren’t perfect but pretty close to it, or so we like to think.” - Ligonier

“Sunday Assembly lacks the anti-religious mockery of the Flying Spaghetti Monster crowd. Its tone is more therapeutic and upbeat. With sixty chapters globally, its motto is ‘live better, help often, and wonder more.’” - First Things

“…the longer we’re in church and the higher we go up the Christian ladder, the more likely it is that we’re stuck in the Christian bubble…. we need to recognize some of the signs that we’ve insulated ourselves from a world we’re called to reach.” - Chuck Lawless

“Most Christians define apologetics… as ‘rationally persuading someone of the truth of the Christian faith through arguments and evidence.’ That approach is too blinkered, for it fails to account for the wider context where people are persuaded and beliefs are formed.” - TGC