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Advent

Advent and Christmas Music Recommendations

Inspired by our recent podcast on Christmas and Advent music recommendations, we offer here a list of excellent recordings that are sure to enrich your Advent and Christmas season. Praetorius: Mass for Christmas Morning Paul McCreesh with the Gabrieli Consort and Players Amazon | Spotify | Apple Music 2. Christmas…

by John Ahern and Paul BuckleyDecember 23, 2020
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Advent

Between the Altar and the City: Isaiah 65:17-25

In the year 1483 in the city of Nuremberg, the leaders of the renowned Saint Lawrence Church were seeking to redesign their altar, and above the table where the priests presided over the eucharist, they wanted new art installed above the prestigious Krell altar. What they decided on took everyone…

by Casey BedellDecember 22, 2020
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Advent

Why We're the Real Seventh Day Adventists

The consequences of disobedience start with exile from the garden of God and the Tree of Yahweh, but they do not end there. They cascade down through the structure of the dynastic order. Everything which had previously been given in the Kingdom of Elohim is either taken back or curtailed…

by Jerry BowyerDecember 18, 2020
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Biblical Studies

Psalm 23: A Lesson in Reading Biblical Poetry

Parallelism: A Course Correction If you have ever studied Hebrew poetry, you have probably heard its basic poetic feature described as “parallelism.” Hebrew poetry is not metered, it does not rhyme, it does not employ many of the common poetical tropes, but its distinctive (and almost universal) feature is commonly…

by Ryan HandermannDecember 15, 2020
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Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 17 and the Separation of Powers

In The Crown and the Courts , David C. Flatto traces the development of the idea of judicial independence in Jewish commentaries on the Scriptures – particularly Deuteronomy 17 – from the Second Temple and early rabbinic periods. These periods roughly span 400 BC to 300 AD. Flatto does not…

by James R. RogersDecember 11, 2020
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Advent

Zechariah and John: A Story in Names

A curious feature of the Infancy Narratives in the Gospel of Luke is the naming of John the Baptist. When the angel appears to Zechariah, he is instructed to give his promised son the name John (Luke 1:13). On the day of John’s circumcision, Luke tells us that “they [presumably…

by Rhys LavertyDecember 8, 2020

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Touch of God

An extract from a remarkable sermon given by Rev. Dr. Rufus Okikiola Ositelu, Primate of the Church of the Lord (Aladura) at the 1999 Tabieorar festival in Nigeria: Some of you may be asking the following questions: What can the touch of God do in your lives? How can you…

May 28, 2015

Seven

Jeff Cook's Seven matches Jesus' beatitudes with the seven deadly sins. The beatitudes, he says, “are a picture of the voids created by sin being filled in with the life of heaven.” They provide “eight pictures of resurrection” (26). So, being poor in Spirit is set against pride, envy against…

May 27, 2015

Deceptive God?

Like many young earth creationists, Kurt Wise ( Faith, Form, and Time ) argues that the world is created with the appearance of age. He creates stars whose light already reaches the earth, even though they are only an hour old; trees, not merely seeds, with tree rings. Isn't this…

May 27, 2015
Creation

Why Is There Something?

Why is there something rather than nothing? is usually posed as a philosophical question, the ontological question. Kurt Wise ( Faith, Form, and Time ) poses it as a scientific question. According to current models of the history of the cosmos, “organisms have been in existence hundreds of thousands of…

May 27, 2015

Arousal Addiction

Philip Zimbardo ( Man (Dis)connected ) claims that young American men have become habituated to “regularly experience stimulus” by excessive exposure to porn and video games. He calls is “arousal addiction,” and explains that “in order to get the same amount of stimulation, you need new material, seeing the same…

May 27, 2015

Foolish Worship

Babylon the great city appears in Revelation as a prostitute, offering her wine of passion to the nations (Revelation 14:8; 17-18). She resembles the prostitute from the book of Proverbs, Lady Folly. Both offer illicit love and the wine of passion (cf. Proverbs 7:1). Both try to seduce simpletons. Both…

May 26, 2015

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