One of the great prayers from the Valley of Vision, a collection of old puritan prayers, says this, "No trial is so hard to bear as a sense of sin. If thou, oh Lord, should give me choice to live in pleasure and keep my sin, or to have them burnt away with trials, give … Continue reading Sanctified Affliction Seldom Seems Sanctified
For Your salvation I wait, O LORD. Gen. 49:18 In our text we see Jacob, who is coming to the end of his life, prophesying over his sons; the twelve tribes of Israel. As we read the text, we can see him propped up in bed weak from age, blessing his sons with perfect accuracy … Continue reading Longing for Home
“[Approximately] 75-80 percent of Mormon converts come from specifically Protestant background. A well-known saying within LDS circles, based on the average size of a Baptist church in America, is “We baptize a Baptist church every week.” Whatever the actual figures are, the fact is that far more people convert to Mormonism from evangelical churches than … Continue reading The Mormon Challenge to Seeker Churches
But they will become his slaves so that they may learn the difference between my service and the service of the kingdoms of the countries. 2 Chronicles 12:8 In this verse, we find the nation of Judah in a humbling position. King Rehoboam had only been king of Judah for five years, but in that … Continue reading When God’s Love Hurts
We have been looking at how moral absolutists understand moral dilemmas. So far, we have covered an introduction to moral absolutism, non-conflicting absolutism, and conflicting absolutism. We will now, in this final post on this topic, look at a graded absolutism Graded Absolutism (GA) The last way to address moral dilemmas is to argue that … Continue reading Understanding Moral Dilemmas 3: Graded Absolutism
“We do not regard it to be soul-winning to steal members out of churches already established, and train them to utter our peculiar Shibboleth: we aim rather at bringing souls to Christ than at making converts to our synagogue." "In the next place, we do not consider soul-winning to be accomplished by hurriedly inscribing more … Continue reading On Soul Winning – Charles Spurgeon
So far we have covered a basic introduction to moral absolutism, and we have looked at how non-conflicting absolutism handles moral dilemmas. Today we will consider conflicting absolutism. Conflicting Absolutism (CA) Another way to deal with moral dilemmas is to admit that they do exist and try to deal with them head-on. This is the … Continue reading Understanding Moral Dilemmas 2: Conflicting Absolutism
Everyone has a worldview. Even the person who says worldview studies are a waste of time says it because of their worldview. A worldview is a person's perspective of the world, but at its core, it is a set of basic presuppositions that a person believes through which they filter all other non-basic beliefs. … Continue reading 7 Questions to Get to the Heart of Any Worldview
In a recent post, I introduced Moral Absolutism in relation to God's moral law and said that I would be posting three posts on how moral absolutists handle ethical dilemmas, here is the first post in the series. Non-Conflicting Absolutism (NCA) One way to deal with moral dilemmas is to argue that the so-called dilemmas only … Continue reading Understanding Moral Dilemmas 1: Non-Conflicting Absolutism
"Blessed are they that mourn." This beatitude is clearly one of the great paradoxes of scripture. "Blessed" and "mourning" almost seem to be contradictory. When we think of mourning, we rarely think about blessing, Typically our minds think of death because mourning is something we do when someone dies, but here again, Jesus is showing … Continue reading What Does it Mean to Mourn? [Beatitudes]
The Fight of Faith 