Is God going to wipe out the ocean?
At first blush, it might look like that if you read Revelation. But I don’t think that is what will happen. Here, Mike Leake explains why he thinks the text points not to a literal removal of the sea.
Is there a place for blogs in 2020?
Tim Challies writes this one and I think we all know he will say ‘yes, there is!’ But I appreciated his reasons and hope he is right.
But that’s just your interpretation!
‘Many preachers who are not entertaining the sweep of the epistemic challenges that Demas raises may nevertheless face somewhat similar challenges as they prepare their Sunday morning sermons. Which interpretation of the text in front of me is correct? How can I declare what the Word of the Lord is saying if I cannot be certain what it is saying? Or which of us have tried to explain what the Bible says on some sensitive topic or other, only to be dismissed with the line, “But that’s just your interpretation”?’
Are divorced pastors disqualified? (video)
Tom Schreiner gives an answer.
Yet not I, but we/us/our in Christ…
‘We’ve spent so long talking about what my identity in Christ is (again, no bad thing in & of itself), that we’ve forgotten that, biblically, our identity in Christ is far more important. That when God brings his people together as one he is remaking his world to be good again, as it was in the beginning. That pretty much all the pictures of God’s people in the New Testament are corporate: body, bride, temple, house, city. One of each, folks! That, as Paul tells the Romans, ‘in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.’ (Rom. 12.5). That it is the highest of privileges to give of ourselves so that our brothers & sisters might know God’s blessing. That, in fact, it is one of our first priorities.’
Christmas & Advent videos 2019
If you are looking to use this sort of thing, here are a list of of videos you might want to use over the Christmas period.
From the archive: Resource the disciple-makers
‘We should stop resourcing church plants simply because they are the thing du jour. Instead, our focus needs to be upon resourcing the disciple-makers. That may well include some church plants but it will also, necessarily, exclude a good number of them too. For, as keen as we all are to see churches planted in unreached communities, we should have no part in simply funding someone’s special interest nor propping up a zero-sum game of transferring one set of believers to a new area.’