Bully's Blog

A while ago, Angie Brennan posted a quote from a Touchstone article on God’s apparent wastefulness when it comes to our natural talents:
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The Bible doesn’t just give us a bunch of facts; it shows us how God works. Many Christians read the Scriptures without any thought of the processes going on in each narrative, let alone in the big picture. So when a question such as “Is there life on other planets?” gets asked, most reply, “The Bible doesn’t tell us.” Well, yes it does. But it seems you weren’t paying attention.

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A quick historical summary of the destruction of Jerusalem for your non-preterist friends:

In AD64, Herod’s Temple was completed, and Nero burned Rome. Both events led to the persecution of Christians — the Great Tribulation.

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“…blood and fire and vapor of smoke.”

The Bible teaches us that flesh is temporary. This is bad news for those who distrust God. Flesh is all they have.

Throughout the millennia, families and tribes have recited the genealogies of their past, and struggled to produce children enough to secure for their culture a future. The bloodline of unseen ancestors and bright-eyed offspring, past and future, was reinforced, thread by thread, in stories around the fires of now. This wasn’t the romantic picture so often painted for us. The struggle for cultural survival also involved blood and fire outside the camp.

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“Unlike YHWH of the Hebrews, the all-transcendent Allah does not stoop to make agreements with mere human beings.”

Having never been much interested in understanding Islam, it has been helpful to read David P. Goldman’s take on it. He is Jewish, (his glowing comments concerning modern Israel are a dead giveaway), but he is surprisingly objective concerning Christianity and Islam.

In the more circumspect of his recent books, he observes that the decisive difference between Judeo-Christianity and Islam cannot be found by arguing about the amount of violence in their respective histories. Their disparate characters are exposed somewhere closer to home:

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or A Nation of Nathans

Jeremy Myers has some words to say about Gregory Boyd’s and Walter Wink’s view that political power necessarily corrupts, even demonizes, the Church:

Is There Such A Thing As A Just War?

The “Just War” theory was originally developed by Augustine to defend the Empire’s actions of arresting and killing the Donatists, with whom Augustine was having a theological disagreement. He argued that in certain situations, a war is not wrong if it furthers the cause of Christ and advances the Kingdom of God on earth.

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or The Practical Expression of Commonality in Primary Doctrinal Truth

Presbyterians and Baptists have a long history of working together. As is God’s way, any new endeavour must take the past into account but not be bound by it. This is a guest post by my friend Matt Carpenter.

The questions surrounding the origins and necessity of denominations have been discussed at great length and I don’t intend on bringing them up here. But it doesn’t mean we have a license to continue without giving it another thought. This isn’t another call for lip-quivering ecumenism. Fellow soldiers in God’s army can learn a lot from one another and the two groups I currently have in mind are Baptists and Presbyterians. Traditionally they have shared a lot in common.

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or As Far as the East is from the West

“That very day Pilate and Herod became friends with each other, for previously they had been at enmity with each other.” (Luke 23:12)

“Secular humanism and Islam are merely the bipolar moods of Christless Christianity. They can be united only in suicide.”

Getting a grip on the Tabernacle layout helps us understand the architecture of Creation, the history of mankind and the structure of the entire Bible. After reading Mark Steyn on the Islamic/secular conflict in Europe, I was thinking that the same “Tabernacle” categories can be found in the world today. Whatever we do, however much we distort the truth, we are still bound by the walls and furnitures set up in Genesis 1. And, in my humble opinion, the light this sheds on the current conflict is not only revealing concerning its true nature, but it also helps us to predict its future.

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Joe Rigney and Doug Wilson sit down to discuss the life, theology, and impact of Jonathan Edwards.

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From the recent book by Douglas Bond, pp. 51-53.

Knox reluctantly began his preaching ministry when he was pressed int service as a chaplain during the siege of the Castle of St. Andrews. By popular demand, the private tutorials he prepared for his “bairns” developed into public exhortations from the Word of God. As we have seen, he was, in his flesh, a timid, fearing man; “I quake, I fear, I tremble,” he said. But when he opened his mouth to preach, all timidity vanished.

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