Last year, we informed you about Gabriel Olivier, a street preacher who was told that if he wanted to preach the Gospel in the city of Brandon, Mississippi, he needed to keep within the confines of a “protest zone” near its public . . . Continue reading →
HeidelQuotes
Bad Company Corrupts Good Morals
To begin, we need to cover two key topics: the words, behavior, and associations of Zachary Garris and the teaching record of the Presbyterian Church in America on issues of racial sin. After that, I want to move toward a broader point . . . Continue reading →
Eusebius To Constantia: No Images Of Christ
The church historian Eusebius declared himself in the strongest manner against images of Christ in a letter to the empress Constantia (the widow of Licinius and sister of Constantine), who had asked him for such an image. Christ, says he, has laid . . . Continue reading →
Prior To Constantine Only The Gnostics Used Images Of Christ
Previous to the time of Constantine, we find no trace of an image of Christ, properly speaking, except among the Gnostic Carpocratians, and in the case of the heathen emperor Alexander Severus, who adorned his domestic chapel, as a sort of syncretistic . . . Continue reading →
A New Defense Of The Sufficiency Of Scripture
The church today finds itself amidst a revived trend of advocating for hearing God speaking to his people apart from his word. While there are new figures in this movement, the content of their message is hardly original. One can think of . . . Continue reading →
Halyburton On The “Evil Of Legal Preaching”
I saw the evil of legal preaching, which lies in one of two things, or in both. 1. In laying too much stress upon the works of the law, our duties and strength: Or, 2. In pressing evangelical doctrines without an eye . . . Continue reading →
John Brown of Wamphray: Once Justified, Always Justified
This new state of Justification is continuing and permanent; not in this sense, that God renews and frequently reiterates the enstating of them into this new relative state; but in this sense, that once justified always justified; they are fixed and preserved . . . Continue reading →
Ben Sasse On Indoor Childhood
The digital revolution is remaking nearly every aspect of modern life. A top concern of parents, educators and sociologists is screen time. How much is too much? The question points to a larger problem: American children are weirdly held hostage indoors. In . . . Continue reading →
Bilkes: The Church Needs Clarity On Law And Gospel
The church in our day suffers greatly from a lack of clarity on many things, but not least issues of law and gospel. Many mix law and gospel or swing too far, thereby discounting one while thinking they are doing justice to . . . Continue reading →
Don’t Mistake Verbal Fluency For Education
In an era when AI can write anything, authentic education must go beyond the mere production of words. “The end then of Learning,” wrote John Milton in 1644, “is to repair the ruines of our first Parents.” The image is hard to . . . Continue reading →
Why The Reformation Distinguished Law And Gospel
“Are you getting in the Word?” “You gotta get in the Word.” Christians hear phrases like this constantly. They sound deeply spiritual and unquestionably biblical. But when you stop and think about them, they are often so broad and undefined that they . . . Continue reading →
San Diego Mosque Shooters: Atomized, Nihilistic, And Angry “Victims”
If these are supremacists, they have absorbed a large dose of victim culture to go with it, which is why they see themselves neither on the right nor the left, and sound like both and neither. That’s the heart of it, for . . . Continue reading →
Ben Sasse: Not Just Filling Time
Kevin Nelson and his family once received a print of Gustave Dore’s “Adam and Eve Driven Out of Eden” as a gift from a congregant. In the work, Adam and Eve stagger toward the viewer surrounded by thorns and thistles, while a . . . Continue reading →
A Consequence Of The Appropriation Of The Therapeutic Culture
Another well-known minister has resigned from his pastoral office due to a previously undisclosed inappropriate relationship. The twist in this grimly familiar tale is that he had largely built his ministry around his struggle with homosexual temptation and his advocacy for celibacy. . . . Continue reading →
SCOTUS Defends First Amendment Liberties Of Donors
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday that First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, a collection of five faith-based pregnancy centers in New Jersey, may challenge in federal court an unconstitutional, coercive subpoena issued by New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin. Alliance Defending . . . Continue reading →
ARP Report Condemns Kinism
Simply put, any idea that posits racial superiority as a basis for church or civil social order is to be seen as out of bounds with Christianity as a religion and as a source of truth, and is sin. The Synod is . . . Continue reading →
Two Stages Of Justification Is Roman, Not Reformed
The Reformed understanding of Scripture is that believers are as justified and saved now as we will be at the judgment. There are not two stages of justification, initial and final. Rather, we distinguish between justification and vindication. At the judgment it . . . Continue reading →
Deconstructing Without Apostatizing
For the past eight years, Nate Hanson served as the host of a podcast called Almost Heretical. The show generated millions of downloads and rose to become one of the most successful “deconstructionist” podcasts on the market. On Wikipedia, it’s listed among . . . Continue reading →
As If
When I was a teenager, we sometimes had a cynical way of responding to certain things. So, for example, one of my friends might say, “I think the teacher is going to give us a free period so we can go outside . . . Continue reading →
Presbyterian Signers Of The Declaration Of Independence
The almost mythical status the Declaration holds for many Americans is not the product of some twentieth-century PR spin either. From the beginning, whether from prescience or hubris, Americans believed that the founding of their new nation was an act of profound . . . Continue reading →