People are often surprised when I tell them that I became convinced of the doctrines of grace through the preaching of a dispensationalist. Nevertheless, it is true. It happened when I was in college. Pastor Tommy Nelson’s exposition of Romans 9 changed my worldview forever.
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President Nixon and Chuck Colson
The National Archives has released some new tape recordings of President Nixon’s telephone conversations. Some of the tapes record the President’s speaking to the yet to be born again Chuck Colson. Listening to these exchanges only magnifies the contrast between the old Chuck Colson and the new one. The Chuck Colson on these recordings has given way to the new creation that I heard preach in San Antonio last month. The Lord’s arm is not too short to save (Isaiah 59:1).
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Voddie Baucham’s Unforgettable Message
I wrote last month that the best sermon that I heard at the Southern Baptist Convention was delivered by Voddie Baucham, pastor of Grace Family Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. Baucham’s message wasn’t actually a part of the official program of the Southern Baptist Convention. He preached at the Founder’s breakfast which meets annually in conjunction with the Convention.
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The Gay Shibboleth
This is a follow-up to yesterday’s post on the Surgeon General and his stance that homosexuality is a sin. Christianity Today has an editorial out today titled “The Gay Shibboleth,” which takes basically the same position that I do, but states is much better: Affirmation of homosexual behavior seems to be shifting from an in-group shibboleth to an unwritten requirement for American leadership. Where does that leave biblical Christians? We may soon come to the point where supporting a sexual ethic based on an orthodox reading of Scripture becomes part of our cross to bear. . .
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Was the Iraq War a Mistake?
It appears that the conventional wisdom is that the Iraq War was a mistake. One of the striking things about Michael Moore’s much publicized joust with Wolf Blitzer is that Blitzer seems to just concede the point that now everybody agrees that the Iraq War was a mistake. The conventional wisdom even prevails at CNN. I for one don’t agree with that analysis, and neither does Peter Wallison over at the Wall Street Journal, who writes about what would have happened if Sadam Hussein had remained in power. He writes:
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So the Pope Is Catholic
Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true church because it is the only one that can lay claim to a legitimate apostolic succession. A writer from the Associated Press has figured out the significance of the timing and the content of Benedict’s move:
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Can a public servant call homosexuality a sin?
I don’t look to the editors at the New York Times to agree with Christian teaching on sexuality, but neither do I expect them to advocate a policy that effectively excludes Christians from government service. Yet that is precisely what they have done today in an editorial about President Bush’s nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. James Holsinger. They argue that Dr. Holsinger’s adherence to his church’s teaching on homosexuality should exclude him from being the Surgeon General. They write:
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Tony Jones: A Gobbledygook “Orthodoxyâ€
If Brian McLaren is the author of A Generous Orthodoxy, then Tony Jones is certainly the author of gobbledygook “orthodoxy.” And, yes, the scare quotes are necessary because, as you will soon see, Jones’ “orthodoxy” is anything but orthodox. Tony Jones is the National Coordinator of Emergent Village (a network of emerging churches that constitutes the theological leftwing of the emerging church), and he is not so happy that his plenary address will be excluded from the published volume of essays from the 2007 Wheaton Theology Conference.
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JBMW Articles Available
The contents of the Spring 2007 issue of The Journal for Biblical Manhood & Womanhood are posted on the journal’s website. You don’t want to miss the two articles that are available for download right now: Russell D. Moore, “O. J. Simpson is Not a Complementarian: Male Headship and Violence aganist Women” Jason Hall, “A Review of Jesus and the Father: Modern Evangelicals Reinvent the Doctrine of the Trinity by Kevin Giles” If you are not already subscribed to JBMW, you need to be.
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Mark Driscoll on Women in Ministry
I wrote last month about an article that Jim Hamilton and I have written for the forthcoming issue of the Journal of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. In our research for this article, we obtained Pastor Mark Driscoll’s position statement on church leadership, which was published as a little booklet titled Church Leadership. According to Mars Hill Church’s website, this booklet and others from their “Theology Series” are slated to be published by Crossway in 2008. So you can no longer download Church Leadership from the church’s website. You’ll have to wait for the book. In any case, we were interested in Driscoll’s book because we were trying to figure out…