Today I preached on 1 Kings 1-4 about the death of David,the accession of Solomon, and Adonijah’s abortive coup. 1 When King David was very old, he could not keep warm even when they put covers over him. 2 So his attendants said to him, “Let us look for a young virgin to serve the king and take care of him. She can lie beside him so that our lord the king may keep warm.” 3 Then they searched throughout Israel for... Read more
This evening I’m off with 17 North Park students to Greece and Turkey to encounter the Greco-Roman world of the New Testament. I’ll hopefully be able to give updates and upload some video and pictures during the 12 day trip. I’d appreciate your prayers for safety and for fruitful study tour. My chief hope is that students will “sojourn” long enough in the world of the first-century so that their imaginations will be captured by the mission of the early... Read more
In my teaching and pastoral ministry to Emerging Adults (that’s the name for the 18-25 year-old crowd), and especially the males, I have been frustrated by the absence of drive, vision and dreams. I’ve looked many a young man in the eye to find that there was simply no object or cause that had captivated their heart and mind. The consequence is predictable: they are caught in the “in-between” and drift. They hang out, work entry-level jobs and struggle to... Read more
Much hell has broken loose in the blogosphere about Rob Bell’s book Love Wins. I’ve read parts of it and I’m not impressed. So instead of a response (which Joel Willitts has ably done) I’ll offer my own ruminations on the topic of hell from an evangelical point of view: Reflecting on “hell” is not a very nice thought for your morning devotionals. However, hell, the place of God’s eternal judgment, will be the final fate for the wicked and... Read more
Over at Near Emmaus Daniel Levy asks, “Does Pauline Christology have Implications on how we Understand Synoptic Christology?”. I would reply “much in every way”. (more…) Read more
I am writing a series of posts on writing by engaging the classic book on style by Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (10th Edition). In the lesson 5 they address the topic of cohesive and coherent writing. The topic is the third of four chapters on clarity in writing style. Why does a passage of writing seem “choppy” or “disorganized”? What does a paragraph feel like its moving in fits and starts? Williams and... Read more
Francis Beckwith over at The Catholic Thing responds to N.T. Wright’s comments about the (unlawful?) killing of Osama bin Laden. Quite an interesting read! Consider this quote: Now let us imagine another scenario. It is 2:00 AM on July 6, 1535, and Sir Thomas More, a Catholic, is sitting in his cell in the Tower of London awaiting execution for the crime of treason. For he had denied that the King is the Supreme Head of the Church of England.... Read more
Gospelizers is an Australian conference dedicated to promoting evangelism and gospel-based ministry The first annual Gospelizers conference took place at Crossway College in April 2011. We had a great day, a wonderful line up of speakers, and I’m thrilled to say that we now have the audio available on-line from the major talks. Here they are below: Michael Bird (Crossway College) What’s the “Evangel” in “Evangelicalism”? (Note 7.52 is where I start talking, the rest is intro to the conference,... Read more
Okay the Christianity and Homosexuality thing has come to a head in several quarters in the USA right now. This week the PCUSA (Presbyterian Church USA) decided to change its constitution to allow openly gay people in partnered relationships to be ordained as clergy (see here). The ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) decided something similar last year (see here). In response to a gay advocacy group at Wheaton College called, One Wheaton, President Phil Ryken made a public response... Read more
It is grammatically possible to translate Iesous estin ho christos as ‘the Messiah is Jesus’ rather than ‘Jesus is the Messiah’. Colwell’s rule, though a grammatical generalization determines that where two Greek substantive nouns stand in grammatical concord, the subject of the verb is normally the noun with the article.[1] D.A. Carson argues that an articular noun takes priority over a proper name as the subjective of a clause, so the phrase should be rendered, ‘that you may believe that... Read more
Euangelion
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