Today is Ash Wednesday. I’m sitting here with ashes on my forehead and the words ringing in my ears, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” That’s a fact that none of us can escape. Of course, Lent is that liturgical season when we certainly are to acknowledge our sins for what they truly are – offenses against the Holy God – and perhaps adopt s...
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John Duncan (1796 – February 26, 1870) was no Rabbi; he was a Scottish pastor who did missions work among the Jews in Hungary. Luminaries like Adolph Saphir (author of The Hidden Life) and Alfred Edersheim (author of The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah) were converted under his ministry. He was so involved with ministry to Jews, and so good with the Hebrew language (he ...
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Today is Ash Wednesday, 2009, and I thought it would be good to reflect a bit on the meaning of Lent.
It seems to me that while Easter has escaped a lot of the ravages of Christmas (yes there are Easter eggs and bunny rabbits, just as there are Santa and reindeer during Christmastime, but Easter has largely remained unscathed from consumerism and greed), it seems that Lent h...
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Listen to Francis Schaeffer’s words from his 1972 book True Spirituality. In the chapter entitled “The Supernatural Universe,” he says:
Little by little, many Christians in this generation find the reality slipping away. The reality tends to get covered by the barnacles of naturalistic thought. Indeed, I suppose this is one of half a dozen questions that are most ...
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Oscar Cullmann was born on January 25, 1902, and lived until 1999. His most influential work was the book Christ and Time, in which he presented the biblical view of time and contrasted it with other theological ideas about time. According to Cullmann, the flow of time really matters to God, and the only way to think properly as a theologian is to understand how salvation histo...
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“How do you explain the apparent contradiction between John 7:39 and 1 Corinthians 12:9? In John 7:39 we are told that we must have faith before the Spirit is granted, while in 1 Corinthians 12:9, we are told that faith is a special gift not had until the Holy Spirit is received.”
The answer to this is very simple. In John 7:39, as the whole context clearly shows, the fa...
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At 10:30 in the morning on February 24, 1930, Harry Ironside's phone rang. It was the assistant pastor of Chicago's Moody Church, telling him that the board was in unanimous agreement that he should be the next pastor. Ironside (1876-1951) eventually accepted the call, and it would be the only pastorate he would serve in his long and busy life. In fact, his Plymouth Brethren ...
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Georg Frideric Handel was born on February 23, 1685. He left us a body of musical work that is unsurpassed. His inescapable masterpiece is the sacred oratorio called Messiah, which is a comprehensive history of Western music and a singable systematic theology all wrapped up in one.
G.K. Chesterton once said that popular misconceptions are almost always right, and the public...
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It's really only for one hymn that we remember Sarah Adams (1805-1848), but what a hymn: "Nearer My God to Thee."
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!
E'en though it be a cross that raiseth me;
Still all my song shall be nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!
Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down,
Darkness be over me, my rest a sto...
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Today, February 21, is the day John Henry Newman was born. I will skip Newman's biographical details and all the ways he makes my Protestant soul grumpy, and instead cut straight to a prayer that he published which I have always found very helpful. Here is the form I copied into a notebook several years ago, marked "prayer for fervor:"
Teach me, O Lord, and enable me to li...
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William Burt Pope (1822-1903) was probably the finest theological mind the Methodist movement has ever produced. I have eulogized him elsewhere, and his major works are finally becoming available online (the three-volume compendium of theology can be downloaded from the internet archive, or in e-book form from this fan).
Here are the top eight lessons I think a young the...
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I sometimes promote myself as the "world's greatest systematic theologian cartoonist," because it's a pretty safe boast. If I ever meet another professional theologian who's also a published cartoonist, I'll have to adjust my bragging to something like "one of the two greatest." But while I might be the only theology prof to publish cartoons, I'm certainly not the only cartooni...
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