partsofspeaking

The Reformers were bold.   They had no choice. They were standing against a great tide, a massive power.   They probably took to heart Jesus’ words, “And the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (the rock upon which the church was built, or the church itself” and many probably saw the Roman Catholic Church as the gates of hell.   This address is a defense of the evangelicals in France who were being persecuted by those who blamed them for, among other things, the incident of the Placards on October 18, 1534, when “copies of a handbill containing crude attacks on the mass were in the night attached to public buildings” (from the notes to the translation I am reading and referenced earlier).   To be a Protestant was to be a seditionist, the charge went.   How far we’ve come!   Separation of church and state today means that Christians of all stripes can be attacked publicly with no concern for the government being...

Before I get into the lesson, a few notes about reading the Proverbs.   You will notice they are in couplets for the most part:   these are two-sentence units.   Some are punctuated with “and” and some with “but.”   However, in Hebrew, the same word is used for both words in English (I think it is “em”) and the translators have to make the call on which is right by the context.   So in the couplets you have a second statement that intensifies or a second statement that contrasts.   Not all the Proverbs are Solomon’s, and the text is clear about that.   He compiled many proverbs and Songs, as the book of I Chronicles tells us.   They were edited and arranged as well by Jewish scholars after the Babylonian exile.   As we have seen, after that episode in Jewish history, the attraction to paganism was never really a problem again.   Being too insular may have been, but not letting pagan elements into t...

"The Paul of the New Testament, therefore, is not anti-Jewish. He was faithful both to the Scriptures and to his Jewish heritage. He preached Jesus as the promised Messiah of Israel, but was insistent that salvation in Christ was not limited to ethnic Jews. According to his gospel, all Jews needed to receive Jesus as Messiah, and all followers of Jesus—Jewish and non-Jewish—needed to embrace one another as siblings in God's global family in Christ." http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/july/paulwethink.html  In response, check out this long but important article from the Ligonier people: http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/whats-wrong-wright-examining-new-perspective-paul/

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/julyweb-only/john-stott-obit.html Saddened to hear of the death of John Stott, but not for him.  From all accounts, he is enjoying perfect fellowship with his Lord now.  I was privileged to hear him speak at a missions conference at First Presbyterian of Chattanooga about the turn of the millenium; he would have been about 80 at the time!  His message was simple--commitment to missions.  I was impressed with how unimpressive he was--not remotely flashy or self-important.  Based on the obituary posted above, that was him. "Here then are two instructions, 'love your neighbor' and 'go and make disciples.' What is the relation between the two? Some of us behave as if we thought them identical, so that if we have shared the gospel with somebody, we consider we have completed our responsibility to love him. But no. The Great Commission neither explains, nor exhausts, nor supersedes the Great Commandment. What it does i...

I went to my cardiologist yesterday.   Every year I have to wear a Holter monitor for a day because of a heart ablation I had in 2007.   If you don’t know what a Holter monitor is, it’s a 24-hour mobile, wires-hanging-off-your-body EKG.   The nurse practitioner saw me, (not the doctor, which is ok because his voice puts me to sleep).   She was very sweet.   She asked me if I was still taking Estradiol and Progesterin.   “No,” I said. “I’ve totally gone off those.   I was on them for a very long time and I wanted to be sure to stop.” What I didn’t tell her is how long I actually had taken those hormones.   37 years.   I started with HRT when I was 17 because I have Kallman’s Syndrome.   You may never meet a person who has this condition.   It only affects 1 in 10,000 people (or 1 in 86,000, according to one source) so that’s quite a range and far more males have it than females (as do most neg...