Justin Taylor recently revived Mark Dever’s 2007 series of articles titled “Where’d All These New Calvinists Come From?” This was a ten-part series that looked to the rise of New Calvinism and sought to discover the sources of a theological resurgence. Dever said, Of course, theologically, the answer is “because of the sovereignty of God.”…
I remember once watching a television show, a sitcom, where a man walked into a restaurant and sat at a table. When the waiter came over, this man put a stack of one dollar bills on the table and explained to the waiter, “This stack of bills represents your possible tip. Every time you do…
All through history there have been the few who have benefitted at the expense of the many and the rich who have benefitted at the expense of the poor. Sometimes the progressive have benefitted at the expense of those who are falling behind. Many cities have produced endless amounts of waste and have flushed it…
A few years ago I read Paul Chamberlain’s Talking About Good and Bad Without Getting Ugly, a book that proposes ways that Christians can talk about difficult issues–issues like abortion, homosexual marriage, euthanasia–in a pluralistic society. The final chapter is a case study that features William Wilberforce as an example of a man who used…
Today I want to wrap up this short series that I’ve titled “The Holiness of God and the Existence of Hell.” It looks at what happens when the holy God comes into contact with sin. So far we’ve seen that God may react to sin with just wrath and that he may react with patient…
I’ve been working on this short series that discusses the holiness of God and the existence of hell. I am looking at what happens when the holy God comes into contact with human sin. Yesterday I showed that God may react to sin with just wrath. Today I want to show that God may also…
Yesterday I began a short series on the holiness of God and the existence of hell. In a day when hell is under attack, I want to show that any question of the existence of hell is not at heart a discussion of whether or not a place exists, but a question of the character…
One of the great questions that faces the church today concerns the existence and the nature of hell. Hell is under attack from outside the visible church and from inside. The question each one of us must answer is this: Does hell exist? Is it, as Christians have long claimed, a place of eternal, conscious…
A little while ago I received an email that, at heart, asked a straightforward question: Can a Christian starve to death? It’s a straightforward question but introduces a fair bit of difficulty. There are many places where the Bible states that the Lord will provide what we need or where Jesus himself says not to…
This is an article about preaching that is meant to be read by non-preachers. I am an unlikely preacher, a guy who was paralyzingly shy through high school and college and into later life who rather suddenly found himself speaking at conferences and preaching at churches. As someone who is rather new to the pulpit,…
Here is a pastoral conundrum for you to think about. In 1412 the pre-Reformation preacher John Huss found himself facing a difficult decision. The Roman Catholic Church had excommunicated him for his refusal to burn his copies of John Wycliffe’s writings and now the Church had also leveled an interdict against the city of Prague…
A reader of the site recently asked me this question: “What is your opinion about using eHarmony or some other online dating site to find a spouse?” He also asked that if I am in favor of such sites, I provide a recommendation of a good service. While this is a distinctly twenty-first century question,…
I guess every preacher has to take on Isaiah 6 (Isaiah’s vision of God’s throne room) at one time or another. My opportunity came this past Sunday. It is such a beautiful and powerful text and it was a great pleasure to just soak in it for an entire week. Don’t worry! I am not…
When you come across the word encourage in Scripture, the sense is make strong, usually in regards to strengthening a person’s resolve so that he will press on in following the Lord. When you understand that meaning, you see that every Christian needs continual encouragement as he lives this Christian life. It is helpful to…
Summer has officially begun here in Canada. School let out last week and then yesterday, July 1, we celebrated Canada Day. Between these two events and the heat wave we’re experiencing, it’s clear that summer is upon us. It won’t be long before my family is traveling and, actually, I have to make a brief…
After writing about this new genre of I went to heaven books, I received many comments and emails asking me about biblical examples of those who glimpsed heaven–John in the book of Revelation, Paul in 2 Corinthians, Isaiah in his prophecy. I will address this briefly today. There are several themes in today’s “I went…
Travelling to heaven and back is where it’s at today. Don Piper spent ninety minutes there and sold four million copies of his account. Colton Burpo doesn’t know how long he was there, but his travel diary has surpassed 6 million copies sold, with a kids’ edition accounting for another half million. Bill Wiese obviously…
John Piper sparked quite a storm with his biographical message on the “frank and manly” J. C. Ryle. One of his conclusion was that Christianity is meant to have a masculine feel to it. Response to his message ranged from outrage to applause. I found myself perplexed and needed to give it some time to…
A couple of weeks ago Carl Trueman posted a review of a new book from G.R. Evans. Trueman had read The Roots of the Reformation: Tradition, Emergence, and Rupture in the hope that he would be able to use it as a text for his Reformation History classes. Very quickly he came to see that…
Have you seen the video of the orchestral flash mob in the Copenhagen metro? A couple of months ago the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra surprised a car full of passengers by setting up shop in the metro and performing Edvard Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” right there in the train. The video is not even two-and-a-half minutes long,…