Why We Love New Beginnings
We all love new beginnings. When we enter a new year, most of us tend to think back on the past year–we look back at the accomplishments and failures and wonder if the forthcoming year will yield more progress and…
Category Reformation21
Essential Tools for Preaching Christ (Part 1)
Owning a home brings blessings and liabilities with it. While a home can be a good investment it requires maintenance. Homeowners generally have two options in maintaining their homes: they can hire someone to do the work, or they need…
Praying for Revival
Prayer has invariably preceded revival. The revitalization of the Baptists in the eighteenth century was no exception. As Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) Fuller emphasized in his Causes of Declension in Religion, and Means of Revival (1785) that we began looking at last…
Of Mary’s Virginity and Humility
A seasonal quotation from Sermons of St. Bernard on Advent and Christmas: “Who is this Virgin so reverently saluted by the angel? and so lowly as to be espoused to a carpenter? Beautiful commingling of virginity with humility! That soul…
The Origins of a Great Christmas Hymn
One of my favorite hymns of the Advent and Christmas season is O Come, O Come, Emmanuel because of its rich use of biblical imagery to recount the prophetic references to the coming Christ. The Latin text for this hymn…
Sola Scriptura and the Onus Probandi
Last month, I participated in a Protestant & Roman Catholic dialogue about the Reformation at a nearby Christian university. The experience has left me reflecting on the fundamental issues that continue to divide Protestants and Roman Catholics, one of which…
Reformation 500, Social Justice and the Gospel
This year has been a veritable Reformation-fest– a marvelous celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation (1517-2017). Protestants from all over the world have been recounting the amazing events, courageous figures, and key doctrines of the sixteenth- century…
A Better Jerusalem
On October 27, 1994, President Bill Clinton, while addressing the Knesset (i.e. the legislative assembly in Israel) cited one of his former pastors when he said, “If you abandon Israel, God will never forgive you…it is God’s will that Israel,…
Creation, Incarnation and the Immutability of God
The late professor John Murray captured the essence of the incarnation when he said, “The Son of God became in time what He eternally was not. He did not cease to be what He eternally was, but He began to…
The B.A.R. Podcast
We recently asked Dawain Atkinson if he would be willing to answer a few questions for our Reformation21 audience about his podcast, the B.A.R. podcast, and about the usefulness of podcasting in general. Here is our brief interview with him:…