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Dec 2018 31 Dec 31, 2018

Worship involves our bodies as well as our hearts and minds. Our posture tells a story. It makes a statement to God and to others about the state of our souls and the affections and passions of our heart. If you were to visit Bridgeway, you would immediately recognize that we freely and frequently lift our hands when we worship. Some people may be seen kneeling. Some sit throughout the course of a service, either by preference or due to some physical limitation. Some ju...Read More

Dec 2018 28 Dec 28, 2018
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Last year, at almost precisely this time, I posted the following article on the subject of New Year’s Resolutions. If you struggle to articulate them, and struggle even more to keep them, perhaps this will help you. So here it is once again. Resolving in the grace of God to bring one’s life into greater conformity to the image of Jesus is an appropriate expression of Christian sanctification, regardless of the time of year. It was in the late fall of 1722 th...Read More

Dec 2018 24 Dec 24, 2018
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No biblical text so vividly portrays for us the true meaning of Christmas as does 2 Corinthians 8:9. There the apostle Paul wrote this: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9). In what sense was Christ “rich” or “wealthy”? I want you to think with me about what kind of “wealth” or “rich...Read More

Dec 2018 19 Dec 19, 2018

It’s time once again to list what I believe were the best books released in 2018. And it gets more and more difficult each year to keep the list to only ten. So, in addition to the ten, I’ll include a few who are deserving of “honorable mention.” This was originally posted in two parts. Here I have combined them into one article. (10) Gregg R. Allison, 50 Core Truths of the Christian Faith: A Guide to Understanding and Teaching Theology (Grand R...Read More

Dec 2018 19 Dec 19, 2018
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Here are numbers five through one, as well as a few that are deserving of “honorable mention.” (5) Joe Rigney, Lewis on the Christian Life: Becoming Truly Human in the Presence of God (Wheaton: Crossway, 2018), 310 pp. The most recent installment in Crossway’s Theologians on the Christian Life series may well be the best one yet. I can’t think of anyone else who could have written this book besides Joe Rigney, Professor of literature and theolog...Read More

Dec 2018 17 Dec 17, 2018

It’s time once again to list what I believe were the best books released in 2018. And it gets more and more difficult each year to keep the list to only ten. So, in addition to the ten, I’ll include a few who are deserving of “honorable mention.” Instead of trying to list and briefly describe all ten in one article, I will break these down into two posts, beginning with numbers ten through six, and concluding with numbers five through one. (10) ...Read More

Dec 2018 14 Dec 14, 2018

Following the posting of my brief article, Plagiarism: My Copyright Law is that You have the Right to Copy, John Piper responded with a suggestion. I think he’s right. Here is what he said. Sam, I love your free-hearted permission to use all your stuff that you just wrote about. One question. Don’t you want to add one more qualification to the two you gave: You wrote: There are only two qualifications to that rule. First, I ask that you not charge people...Read More

Dec 2018 14 Dec 14, 2018
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Hardly a day passes that I don’t read somewhere of someone being accused of plagiarism. This past week it was a Christian college president accused of plagiarizing a sermon and book by Joel Osteen. Aside from the fact that I find it surprising that Osteen could say or write anything that is worthy of being copied, it is just one more example of what is happening on a daily basis. The evangelical publishing world has been forced to deal with this problem in recent ...Read More

Dec 2018 11 Dec 11, 2018
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100 years ago today, December 11, 1918, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born. He entered into the presence of his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, August 3, 2008. So in honor of his 100th birthday, I want to re-post an article I wrote about him back in 2013. It’s difficult to explain the personal impact of Solzhenitsyn. He was such a massive figure in the public eye and provoked controversy (the good kind) throughout the course of his life. He was born on December 11, 19...Read More

Dec 2018 10 Dec 10, 2018

Last week I wrote about the Montanists and probably caused many of you to scratch your heads wondering, “Who in the world are the Montanists?” Today we turn our attention to another odd group known as the Nicolaitans. There is at least one profound difference between the two: the Montanists were most likely genuine believers in Jesus; the Nicolaitans were most assuredly not. (1) The Nicolaitans are mentioned by name twice in the NT, both in the book of Revel...Read More

Dec 2018 6 Dec 6, 2018
Dec 2018 6 Dec 6, 2018
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My former colleague at Wheaton College, Alan Jacobs, now a professor at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, is without question the most widely-read and brilliant man I’ve ever known. There is virtually no intellectual discipline on which he cannot speak with remarkable insight. I’m sure he’d blush (and protest) to hear me say that. In any case, on November 30 of this year he wrote a blog article (http://blog.ayjay.org/) about our President. The title cau...Read More

Dec 2018 3 Dec 3, 2018
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About what? I suspect that many of you have never heard the name Montanism or the individual Montanus from whom the movement is named. Often times when contemporary cessationists wish to ridicule or caricature charismatics they accuse us of being modern day Montanists. So, what was this movement and what did they believe? (1) We can date the emergence of Montanism in Phrygia to about a.d. 155. However, Eusebius and Jerome both date the movement to a.d. 173. One of the p...Read More