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Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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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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Eucharistic meditation, Third Advent

Micah 3: Hear now, O heads of Jacob, and you rulers of the house of Israel: Is it not for you to know justice? You who hate good and love evil; who strip the skin from My people, and the flesh from their bones; who also eat the flesh of…

December 16, 2007

Exhortation, Third Advent

Doctrine matters, and no doctrine matters more than the doctrines concerning Jesus Christ. One of the earliest and most intense controversies in the early church had to do with Arianism. Arius taught that the Son of God was not equal to the Father, not eternal God, but only a very…

December 16, 2007
Music

Wedding sermon

I am reading a portion of the text from 2 Corinthians 4. We have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but…

December 16, 2007
History

Hunger and power

In imitation of Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” the Cambodian tyrant Pol Pot attempted to rationalize the inefficiencies of Cambodian agriculture. In an essay in the Black Book of Communism , Jean-Louis Margolin writes: “It was perhaps the sons of the soil who controlled operations on the ground, but their real…

December 15, 2007
Music

Savant

In his wonderful Musicophilia , Oliver Sacks describes a patient named Martin, who suffered meningitis at the age of three and was never mentally normal afterwards. He spent hours listening to operas and by the time Sacks met him in 1984, he claimed to have more than 2000 operates memorized,…

December 14, 2007
Music

Concert gnostics

In many cultures, music and dance go naturally together. Music moves the body, and so bodies move to the music. Not ours, or at least not in “high culture.” Patrick Shove writes, “Many twentieth-century composers focus on sound qualities or abstract tonal patterns, and performers of their compositions often neglect…

December 14, 2007

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