Reformation21

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 month: "Finally, brethren, let us...

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 is in no small degree pleasing to God, in whom humility...

Of all the hymns written about the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the words of Charles Wesley's "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing" are among the most theologically dense and substantive--because all five stanzas are filled with Scriptural truths about Jesus. Before considering the Christology of this...

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 is found in a 1710 German publication but its roots go back to the early days of...

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 is the authority of Scripture vis-à...

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 movement that...

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, the biblical home of the people of Israel, continue...

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 be what He was not."1 On a prima facie reading of this statement, one might be tempted to draw...

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: Dawain, when my friend, Joe Thorn, introduced me to the...

Recently, the Bible-believing world has celebrated the 500 year of Martin Luther's life and the Reformation. We remembered great qualities and the positive legacy of such a remarkable man of the sixteenth- century. Now that this celebration is over, it is wise to consider that Luther was not...