Touchstone magazine has just made available an article in which Dr. Russell Moore talks about what he learned from rude questions about his adopted sons. This is a poignant, punchy piece, and I highly commend it to you. Moore has a profound grasp of the gospel and a unique gift for communicating it. His basic contention is that common misunderstandings about adoption reveal how much we often fail to grasp our very real adoption as sons and daughters of God. Moore writes:
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D. A. Carson on Perfectionism
D. A. Carson has recently reviewed Chris VanLandingham’s Judgment & Justification In Early Judaism And The Apostle Paul. VanLandingham has a provocative thesis that will no doubt add fuel to the fire of debates about the New Perspective on Paul. Carson’s review is helpful and devastating—helpful to those who are trying to decide whether or not to read this book, devastating in its analysis of VanLandingham’s method and results. One item in the review is worthy of note. VanLandingham argues for the quirky thesis that Christ’s death provides atonement only for the believer’s past sins. Sins committed after conversion will be counted against believers at the judgment. Thus the final…
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A Great Commission Resurgence
I wish to address this post to all my Southern Baptist readers. So the rest of you have fair warning that what follows is a bit of inside baseball for my fellow SBC’ers. Last week, I wrote about the “Building Bridges” conference that was taking place in Ridgecrest, North Carolina. The conference theme communicated the organizers’ intention to “build bridges” between the Calvinists and the non-Calvinists of the SBC. The divisions of late between some Baptists on this issue have left many SBC’ers wondering if the heated controversy might prevent future cooperation for missions. Thus it was good to hear many of the speakers (both five-pointers and non-five-pointers) communicate their…
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Un-stinking-believable: LSU in the National Championship?
I woke up this morning thinking that Les Miles would likely be leaving LSU for Michigan and that an injured LSU team might very well lose the SEC championship game against Tennessee. Boy was I wrong. Les Miles announced this afternoon in no uncertain terms that he would be staying at LSU. Then LSU beat the Vols to win the SEC title game. And as if that weren’t enough, the top two teams in the nation lost, and now LSU is back in the hunt for the national championship. Un-stinking-believable.
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Albert Mohler on NBC Nightly News
NBC Nightly News produced a feature on the emerging church in which Tom Brokaw interviewed Dr. Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. It’s a short, but interesting bit. Dr. Mohler does a great job, as usual. I would make one observation about this piece. It seems to me that the media’s interest in the emerging church is almost entirely political. Brokaw’s coverage in this segment is a case in point. Underlying Brokaw’s attention to the new movement is a curiosity about how this new section of evangelicalism will affect electoral politics. I suppose that this should not be very surprising. But it is interesting to note…
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The Phony YouTube Debate
On Wednesday night, CNN hosted a “YouTube” debate for the Republican candidates for President. Questions came to the candidates from “ordinary” citizens who videoed themselves asking questions about the important issues of our time. Anderson Cooper hosted the event for CNN, and it came off without a hitch . . . until the post debate discussion.
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Support CBMW, but count the cost.
David Kotter, the Executive Director of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW), has some wise words about how to prioritize your giving for kingdom causes. Read this one, and support CBMW.
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Huckabee Clinches Nomination with Chuck Norris’ Endorsement
In case you didn’t know, Chuck Norris has a huge cult following among the American electorate. And he has recently thrown his weighty political endorsement to presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. This is big news, because we all know that the world must defer to the superior martial arts skills of Chuck Norris. Here are some facts to support the point:
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Southern Baptists, Calvinism, and W. A. Criswell
Are Southern Baptists Calvinists? That’s one of the questions being discussed this week in Ridgecrest, North Carolina at the conference “Building Bridges: Southern Baptists and Calvinism.” This conference could not have come at a better time, given that debates about Calvinism among Southern Baptist often generate more heat than light. I have great hopes for better things from this conference. Speakers include Albert Mohler, David Dockery, Malcolm Yarnell, Tom Nettles, Voddie Baucham, Danny Akin, Tom Ascol, and many others. You can podcast the messages from the conference through iTunes at the following link: Building Bridges Podcast (SEBTS Audio). Or you can visit Lifeway’s site and download the MP3 messages directly…
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Programming Note: Luke’s Gospel in Prime Time
This is a programming note about a special television broadcast this evening. Tonight on ABC at 7pm (Central Time) there will be a one hour broadcast that culminates with the reading of Luke 2:8-14. The broadcast will consider the excesses of holiday commercialism and then conclude with the assertion that the real meaning of Christmas is to be found Luke 2:8-14. This program might seem to be sort of an odd thing to find among the banal offerings of prime time television in 2007. But the broadcast is actually an annual event, and I’ll bet you’re already familiar with it. The program is called “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” I’ll be…