Albert Mohler is back from his summerly hiatus and has started into his second season of his podcast “The Briefing.” If you aren’t a regular listener to this program, you need to be. It is Mohler’s daily commentary on items in the news, and he packs it all in about 15 minutes or less. It’s smart and steeped in a Christian worldview perspective. Mohler’s take on the debt-ceiling crisis from today’s program is as thoughtful and balanced as any I’ve heard. I highly recommend that you listen to it. If you missed it, you can listen to it here or just press the play button below. [audio:http://albertmohler.com/media/audio/totl/Podcast/20110802_TheBriefing.mp3] In the podcast,…

Don’t miss Nick Kristof’s generous tribute to John Stott in Sunday’s The New York Times. He sees Stott as a kind of kinder, gentler evangelical. Given their diametrically opposed worldviews, Kristof’s words come as a bit of a surprise (at least to me). It is not often that you hear a liberal columnist at a secular bulwark like The Times giving honor to an evangelical. But what is perhaps even more surprising about this article is Kristof’s generous tribute to evangelicals in general (at least some of them), which he bases on interactions that he has been having with them over the last several years. He writes:

The situation of Iranian pastor, Yousef Nadarkhani, is getting more dire. Right now, he is facing one of two outcomes. Either he must face execution or be forced to become a Muslim. Here’s the latest: A pastor in Iran found guilty of leaving Islam is awaiting the outcome of a judicial investigation into his spiritual background to see if he will be executed or forced to become a Muslim, according to Christian groups with ties in Iran… The court’s ruling, which took a month to reach Christian and human rights groups outside of Iran, said that according to Islamic Republic Criminal Law, the matter must be “further investigated to prove…

From ChristianityToday.com: From 1973 to 2010, the General Social Survey (GSS) has asked Americans if they think sexual relations between same-sex couples are wrong. Up until 2008, a majority of Americans have answered that such behavior is ‘always wrong.’ But the latest GSS, conducted in 2010, finds that only 46 percent of Americans hold this position.

Christianity Today is reporting that John Stott passed away this afternoon at the age of 90. His death comes after “complications related to old age.” In his final hours, family and friends gathered to him to listen to Handel’s Messiah one last time. He passed away at 3:15pm London time. It is be difficult to overstate the influence that John Stott has had on generations of evangelicals. He combined a pastor’s heart with an academic mind and was prolific in both his preaching and his books. In the coming days you will hear testimonials from evangelicals worldwide who have been shaped by his ministry.