“Hard to Believe” is another hard-hitting, no-holds-barred strike against the modern church. Much as he did years ago in “Ashamed of the Gospel”, MacArthur takes aim at easy-believism and a watered-down, seeker-friendly gospel. In particular, he criticizes the influence of those who preach self-esteem, a health and wealth gospel and aim to be overly seeker-friendly.…
Thanks to Joel for pointing out a great article written by The Internet Monk. He writes about Rick Warren, calling him Pope Rick I, and his almost unbelievable statement that we should “never criticize what God is blessing.” If you hang around my site at all you’ll know that phrase has caused me more than…
Richard Ganz is pastor of a vibrant, growing church in Ottawa, Canada. I have had the privilege of attending that church many times over the years and have always been blessed by Richard’s exposition of Scripture. He truly is a very gifted teacher. While he is primarily a pastor, he has also written several books,…
I’ve been reading “Hard to Believe” by John MacArthur and thought I’d share a quote from that book today. He has just said a rather shocking statement: that being saved is very difficult. I know this shocks some people, because we hear all the time that getting saved is easy. “Just sign this little card!”…
Welcome to another edition of Saturday Ramblings, the weekly article where I attempt to make you believe I have something to say when really I’ve got nothing. I had all sorts of great ideas of what I was going to write today, but then I realized it’s the first day of the Olympics and it…
Today I am honored to post an entry by Doug McHone, author of CoffeeSwirls, one of my favorite blogs. Before we discuss freedom, Let’s take a look at it’s polar opposite: This is the widely-accepted definitions of a slave. Essentially, a slave is one who has no control over their own actions or destiny. They…
Today is BlogSwap 4, the fourth in the ongoing BlogSwap saga. Today’s assignment was to write about Freedom. Here is the list of participants:
A reader of this site posted an interesting story in the forum that I had not read before today. It is taken from the Corpus Christi Caller-Times (which is a newspaper, if that isn’t obvious by the name) and is entitled ” 165 members ousted from Gardendale Baptist.” To avoid copyright infringment I will not…
Salvation is the central theme of the Bible, and indeed the very heart of the gospel. The promise of salvation is what stirs the heart of the new believer and continues to encourage Christians until the time they are called home. Salvation is a promise, a reality and a hope. Today I want to look…
Last week I mentioned that I had discovered 9 Marks Ministries and that I was thrilled to find an organization that is dedicated to recovering many of the traditional marks of a Biblical church. While they mention that the nine marks they outline are not the only important marks of a healthy church, they do…
About a month ago I wrote about Cliched Christianity and spoke of the danger of allowing words to lose their meaning. Today I would like to explore one word that has become little more than cliché to many Christians. I have chosen to begin at the end, so to speak, with the word “amen.” I…
Today my wife and I are celebrating our sixth anniversary. That’s right, on August 8, 1998, a scorching hot day by anyone’s standards, Aileen and I were married in historical St. John’s Anglican Church in Ancaster, Ontario. Our wedding represented was was probably the one and only time a Reformed pastor has spoken from that…
I had big plans for today. I was going to write a book review and so some other good, deep theological writing. Alas, I woke up at 3:00 this morning feeling sicker than a dog. After being up the rest of the night I certainly wasn’t in any shape to do an researching or writing…
I had planned on writing something about procrastination but decided I’d do it later. I’m funny. Anyways, I was thinking today about some similarities between The Passion of the Christ and September 11. That’s a strange duo, I can’t deny, but hear me out. After the Western world was shaken by the events of September…
Today I will be writing about how redemption is applied to the lives of believers. An obvious prerequisite to this article would be one about how redemption was accomplished. I will not be writing about that at this time, so we will have to consider it sufficient to say that redemption was accomplished through the…
Several months ago my daughter, who is one year old, got a urinary tract infection. It was nothing too serious – she just had a high fever and experienced a bit of pain. A bit of Tylenol and antibiotics cleared it up quite quickly. The problem is that our doctor decided that such an infection…
Much has been made in the past few years of mutual submission within marriage. Where traditionally women were encouraged to submit to their husbands, today we are told that the correct Biblical pattern is a mutual submission where the husband and wife submit equally to each other. This teaching seems to contradict the traditional Biblical…
Many months ago, inspired by discussion revolving around The Passion of the Christ, I wrote an article I entitled “Take This Cup Away From Me.” In recent days I have been continually struck by the greatness of Jesus’ sacrifice and my lack of understanding as to how great it really was. My thoughts turned to…
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about unity and a result of that post was some discussion of what foundation unity should be built on. Some people believe that any believer should be able to experience unity with any other, while others believe that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to have unity…
Every now and then I need a change of pace around here. I’m wondering if there are some people who come by here on a regular basis that may be interested in asking a question of me. I don’t consider myself a great authority on matters of the faith (and most of you would likely…