The Greatest Preacher of the Century
I was editing a lesson for the 12th grade Bible textbook put out by BJU Press, and I formulated a critical thinking question to go with the material: “According to this lesson, what rule is Charles Spurgeon an exception to? Why was he an exception?” The general rule I suggest in the lesson is something like this: Aspiring pastors should get some sort of formal theological training if it’s available to them. It would be foolish to spurn such an opportunity. The Bible has a lot to say about...
Pray for the Unborn
I don’t find myself incredibly attentive to politics, but I do care about the unborn. I have one. Pray that Bart Stupak holds on.
God’s Will
Kevin DeYoung argues in the best-titled book of 2009 that God has a sovereign will and a moral will, but He does not have what is typically thought of as an individual will of direction. He has an individual will only in the sense of those two other wills: He has in fact decreed whom you will marry, and in addition He has expressed moral guidelines for how to choose him or her. You don’t need to agonize through extra-scriptural means of finding out what His individual will of direction is,...
Towel-reading
A true story from the teacher’s edition for a BJU Press Bible Truths textbook, which I’m now halfway through editing: A Christian college student interested in a Christian girl at the same school couldn’t decide whether dating her was God’s will. In an attempt to discover God’s will, he decided to “put out a fleece.” He actually placed a towel on the street outside his dormitory. He had determined that if the towel was wet the next morning, he would keep dating the girl. If the towel was dry,...
Just Do Something: How to Make a Decision without Cabbage-Reading
By [Jonathan] Edwards' time witchcraft and the preternatural had almost disappeared from clerical attention. In 1690 Cotton Mather could preach about a prodigious cabbage root he had seen that had one branch shaped like a cutlass, another like a rapier, and another like an Indian club, and pronounce that this was a special providential warning to New England. By the next generation such interpretation of prodigies would be a bit of an embarrassment. —Marsden’s bio of JE, p. 69