Northern Seminary is sponsoring a tour to Turkey and Greece to visit the sits of the apostles Paul and John. And I will be the lead teacher. Our tour will be nearly two weeks long and we will visit major cities and sites. Let me suggest that your church sponsor a pastor and spouse to take this trip with us.  If you are not from the USA and want to join us in Istanbul — that works too, but you... Read more

Aron Heller: JERUSALEM (AP) — Jewish immigration to Israel from western Europe has reached an all-time high as a result of a rise in anti-Semitic attacks, a leading nonprofit group said Thursday, as France’s beleaguered Jewish community grapples with whether to refrain from donning Jewish skull caps for their own safety. The Jewish Agency, which works closely with the Israeli government and acts as a link to Jews around the world, told The Associated Press that 9,880 western European Jews... Read more

By Sean Palmer Sean Palmer is Lead Minister at The Vine Church in Temple, TX. Read more from Sean at The Palmer Perspective (www.thepalmerperspective.com), follow him on Twitter: @seanpalmer or follow him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/seanpalmerwriter. American Christianity is facing a critical turn. I don’t consider myself stuffy or prudish, though my children may disagree, but last December I witnessed an online worship service, which made little liturgical sense. I know and love several leaders in this congregation, and trust... Read more

Income equality seems to be an intuitional or instinctual moral posture in today’s economy and politics. It was behind the 1% protests and is running on high octane in the Democratic runoff to see who will represent the Democrats in the 2016 election. I’d like to open up a conversation about income equality on the blog today. I’ll begin with the Bible, for so far as I know there are only two really strong lines about equality — income or... Read more

Roberto A. Ferdman: The baby carrot, like so many inventions before it, was birthed by necessity. In the early 1980s, the carrot business was stagnant and wasteful. Growing seasons were long, and more than half of what farmers grew was ugly and unfit for grocery shelves. But in 1986, Yurosek, itching for a way to make use of all the misshapen carrots, tried something new. Instead of tossing them out, he carved them into something more palatable. At first, Yurosek used... Read more

Before delving more completely into how God creates, Ron Highfield in The Faithful Creator first looks at the nature of God. The theology he develops is what he terms the “traditional” view espoused by “traditional Christian theologians.” I have to admit that this terminology turns me off. It may be a conventional terminology in theology, but it removes the onus of argument from Highfield … this is not just a traditional view it is The Traditional View. The implication, at... Read more

Gary G. Hoag. Wealth in Ancient Ephesus and the First Letter to Timothy: Fresh Insights from Ephesiaca by Xenophon of Ephesus. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2015. A review by Lucy Peppiatt. Gary Hoag revisits the topic of wealth in the letter of 1 Timothy, asking whether the teachings found there are consistent or inconsistent with other teachings in the NT, or whether it might be a mixture of the two. Scholars are divided on this question. Hoag’s findings rest on cross-referencing... Read more

Christopher Ingraham: I come across an awful lot of strange data in my line of work. Toilets.Goats. Ugly counties. But today, I stumbled upon what may be the finest dataset in existence: a comprehensive database of incidents where squirrels and other critters have knocked out part of the power grid. The slightly tongue-in-cheeck Cyber Squirrel 1 promises a list of “all unclassified Cyber Squirrel Operations that have been released to the public that we have been able to confirm. There are many more executed ops than displayed on... Read more

RJS made me aware of the letter drafted by the Montgomery Improvement Association to instruct folks on how to participate in the bus boycott and here is the letter, a letter revealing the methods of ML King Jr, who led the entire protest: Read more

Martin Luther King. Jr. Letter From Birmingham Jail April 16, 1963 MY DEAR FELLOW CLERGYMEN: While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I... Read more