This week my family is visiting friends in Berkeley, California; returning to that strange little city where we lived for four years in the late 90's and have visited with students every summer since.
Berkeley's easy to make fun of, but also easy to love. Everybody there cares passionately about what they care about, even if what they care about isn't worth caring about. T...
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There are many lines of connection between John Wesley (1703-1791) and R. A. Torrey (1856-1928), but when I was asked recently to speak to an evangelism class about lessons from these two great evangelists, I knew immediately what they had in common. They both understood that the most important thing an evangelist can do is let God speak. And they both knew that the best way t...
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Though it's slightly unseasonal in the sense that we're now two days after Christmas, this Christmas sermon by H.C.G. Moule is about the great thing that lies behind Christmas: the Son's self-consecration to carry out the Father's will for saving us. It is always the right time to ponder that.
This sermon is from about 1900, and was printed in Chapter 6 in his book The Old ...
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Today (December 27) is the birthday of Charles Hodge (1797-1878), who deserves a place on the short list of greatest American theologians. His reputation precedes him, making it hard to know what to write about him: Backbone of Princeton orthodoxy, pillar of Reformed theology, icon of Protestant principle, author of the influential 3-volume Systematic Theology, etc.
Hodge i...
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Too many people think of the Reformation as a one-man show, with Martin Luther starting everything by himself. But even if you stick to the first generation of the Reformation, and confine yourself to Germany, there were still a lot of faithful and creative people involved at all levels of reforming the church. Consider Friedrich Myconius (1490-1546), who was born on this day ...
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He was born on December 25, 1766, so his parents named him Christmas. He was a tough kid (a farm worker who remained illiterate well into his teenage years), but he became a Christian at age 17, and grew up to become famous as "the one-eyed preacher of Wales." The Encyclopedia Brittanica entry on him notes that "his chief characteristic was a vivid and affluent imagination, wh...
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Christmas is a big deal, and Christians know that they should celebrate it in a big way. In fact, there is something strange about how big a deal we are supposed to make of it. The most important things Jesus Christ did for our salvation, after all, did not happen at the beginning of his life, but at the end of it. His death and resurrection are the central events for our faith...
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Today (December 24) is the anniversary of the death of Albert Barnes (1798-1870), the American pastor remembered for his popular commentary on the Bible, Barnes' Notes. Barnes pastored for over 40 years at the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, and generated thousand of pages of commentaries. He has been called "the most prolific commentator of his generation," and he ...
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H. C. G. (that’s Handley Carr Glyn) Moule was born on this day (December 23) in 1841 and died in 1920. Laurels? Moule had them aplenty. A Cambridge man (Trinity College 1864, where he was also fellow from 1865 to 1881 and dean from 1873-1877), he was the first principal of Ridley Hall (1881-1899) and Norrisian Professor of Divinity at Cambridge (1899-1901). Moule then served...
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Today (December 22) is the day in 1899 when Dwight L. Moody died. The Christian world was devastated by the passing of this evangelical giant. Moody had been the figurehead for the aggressive, revivalist evangelicalism of the nineteenth century, and when he died just ten days from the end of the century, it seemed symbolic. At his funeral, A. T. Pierson said:
When a great ...
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It’s His party, but you can come if you want to, even if, like a football poseur at a Super Bowl party, you forget the cause of the fun.
Christmas is not for Christians, it is for the Lord Christ, and Jesus is merry. He loves all people, so if you are not a Christian: “Welcome to the party.” God is not insecure, so even Richard Dawkins is welcome to celebrate the feast...
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Today (December 20) is the birthday of Edwin Abbott Abbott (1838-1926), the English scholar remembered now as the author of Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. A pleasant, short, and stimulating work, Flatland is a great little mental workout that helps you imagine the jump from lower dimensions to higher.
It's the story of a square, living in his two-dimensional world,...
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