The Book of Acts Today

I already wrote a blog this morning. I’m going to write another, anyway. I got a newsletter from Gospel for Asia, and I loved reading their first story. They trained a man named Joseph Rao in India for three years, and then he followed a leading on his heart to an unreached area of Maharashtra [...]

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The Sign of the Cross and Other Early Christian Traditions

I often run across historical claims that make me angry, especially from Roman Catholics. Because they assume so much they are constantly reinterpreting early church history into their own viewpoint, even when their viewpoint is ludicrous. Worse, when I point it out to them, they are completely blind to it. They can’t see anything except [...]

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The Gnostic Attempt at an Alternate Christian History

I don’t know if you run across the modern gnostic attempt at an alternate Christian history much, but it’s in the news a lot. The Da Vinci Code borrows a lot from Hugh Schonfield’s The Passover Plot, and Dan Brown, the author, likes to quote Elaine Pagels, another modern gnostic who likes to make up [...]

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“Alternative” (read “Fake,” “Fraudulent,” or “False”) Christian Histories

Okay, I just put up a blog minutes ago. Rather than go edit it immediately (and probably too quickly) as I normally do, I’m going to rant about false, fraudulent, fake, feigning, and phony historians like Elaine Pagels and Dan Brown. Fume, fume, fuss, fuss … Just gets my ire up! Listen to this utter [...]

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John Calvin and the Church

It’s funny that while I’m doing a series on Calvinism, I ran by chance across some statements by John Calvin on the Church. They’re pretty amazing. I found these in Volume VIII of Philip Schaff’s History of  the Christian Church, an excellent eight-volume history written in the late 19th century. In fact, in the introduction [...]

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Predestination, Calvinism, and Bible Interpretation: Part Three

We have been looking at Calvinism’s TULIP a little bit. I considered going point by point through TULIP–and I still want to do that–but there’s something more important than that. Does the Scripture ever really bring up Calvinism? Are the 5 points of Calvinism ever a central discussion of Scripture at any point? In any [...]

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Romans and Calvinism: an Excursion

I’m doing a series on Calvinism and Predestination here on this blog, but I want to make a quick side trip. I mentioned in the last post that Romans has a series of arguments concerning Jews and Gentiles and the righteousness of faith vs. the righteousness of the Law. I believe the first of those [...]

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Calvinism, Predestination, and Bible Interpretation; Part Two

Well, since Britt–a dear friend of ours and a good, godly man–has put it on my mind with his comment, let me make part two to cover Romans 9-11. I need to keep this short enough for a blog, which will be a lot of work for me, so let me get right to the [...]

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