Refresher Course
In AD 64, a great fire engulfed the city of Rome. It burned unchecked for nearly a week, driving innumerable people from their homes and devastating a vast swath of the city. Of the 14 districts of Rome, 3 were virtually destroyed, and a further 7 were reduced to a handful of scorched ruins. Only 4 completely escaped damage. In the aftermath, a rumor started that Nero, the emperor, had started the fire to clear land for his massive new…
Valuing Small Things
As difficult to believe as it is, this is the final Sunday of 2018. Tomorrow, we will close the book on this year and then embark on 2019. We are probably all focused on the challenges of the coming year, the changes we would like to make, the improvement we would like to see. As we think about that as it relates to the church here in Liberty, our desire for growth and development both numerical and spiritual, I am…
Merry Christmas
This article was originally written by Reuel Lemmons and published in Firm Foundation. I encountered if for the first time online with no issue reference, and though I have several decades worth of the paper in my possession, I cannot seem to track it down. In any case, considering the mixed feelings some of us have about the Christmas season, I wanted to commend this editorial to your attention. BP We are again at that time on the calendar when the…
Joy to the World
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises! Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who dwell in it! Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity.–Psalm 98 Isaac Watts is considered…
Silent Night
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”(Luke 2:13-14) Joseph Mohr was born in Salzburg, Austria in 1792. In 1815, he was ordained to the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church and served in a number of parishes in the Salzburg area. As of Christmas 1818, he was the assistant priest at St. Nicholas church in the…
Practical Atheism
A news story caught my eye last week. The United Church of Canada, the largest Protestant denomination in the country, reached a settlement in the pending heresy trial of one of their clergy, Gretta Vosper. The General Council of the church released a statement announcing that they had settled all issues with Vosper, and she was allowed to keep her pulpit. Ordinarily, this sort of thing would hardly be worth noticing. In fact, you are probably wondering right now what…
Enter With Thanksgiving
Special times for giving thanks for blessings as well as celebrations of bountiful harvests are ancient traditions in a number of cultures. In the New World, both the Spanish and French conducted thanksgivings in the 16th century. English settlers in Jamestown held a thanksgiving in 1610. But what we consider the “first Thanksgiving” was, of course, held by the Pilgrims in Plymouth Colony in 1621. We all learned about that in elementary school and know names like Squanto and Miles…
Church and State Postscript: What Now?
The election is now behind us. Perhaps you are distraught that the Democrats gained control of the House. Or maybe you are on the other side, upset that they did not gain the Senate too. Or maybe you are one of those in the middle who thinks a divided government is a good thing because it forces compromise. In any case, we have spent multiple weeks laying out fundamental Scriptural principles that should guide us politically: the sovereignty of God;…
Church as Social Strategy
We have attempted to refine our thinking on the relationship between Christians and the government. After laying down some fundamental principles, we moved last week toward application, exploring the mission of the church: to call people out of the world and into the kingdom of God. That leads to a second, closely related observation: attempting to co-opt the government to promote a Christian vision of society is not only the wrong mission, but it is also the wrong method. Political Activism…
The Mission of the Church
Over the last few weeks, we have studied three principles that run throughout all Scripture to help orient us in the political realm: the sovereignty of God, the Lordship of Christ, and God’s people as a holy nation. Now we want to turn our attention to application, not encompassing specific scenarios, but in terms of the overall attitude of the church and Christians toward the state. A number of points could be made, but we will limit ourselves to two:…
The State of the Church
For several weeks, we have considered Biblical principles that help guide us politically. We examined the sovereignty of God and the Lordship of Christ. Now let’s turn our attention to the political status that accompanies being God’s people. The church is God’s holy nation (1 Pet 2:9-10),the place where the Lordship of Christ is recognized. Christians live in this world as strangers and aliens (1 Pet 2:11)– those who define their reality as rooted in God’s empire rather than any earthly…
The Lordship of Christ
We are in the midst of a series of articles considering Biblical principles that should orient us politically. Last week, we saw the Jewish conviction that God was king. But the great, prophetic hope of 1st-century Israel was that God would come and inaugurate a new age, liberate his people, and establish his kingdom. For Christians, that event transpired in Christ. We cannot comprehensively discuss the kingdom of God here, but we can observe a few points. First, note the…