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American Politics

Obama as Fool

It is clear now that Barack Obama is a fool. This was clear to anyone with Biblical wisdom during the campaign, but it is now becoming clear to everyone. The following analysis of this narcissist is invaluable: http://www.globalpolitician.com/25109-barack-obama-elections These rather radical comments are also worth considering: http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/print.asp?ID=9668 What is telling…

by James B. JordanMarch 4, 2009
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Biblical Studies

Rainbow Coalition

I was asked to provide comments on the rainbow in the Bible. Here are some for starters: 1. God puts his warbow in the sky for HIM to see and remember the covenant. 2. In Revelation 4-5, this warbow is around His throne, so He sees it all the time.…

by James B. JordanMarch 3, 2009
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Biblical Horizons

Marriage By Faith

We are about to enter a new era of world history. How will it come? The last time it came, it came by means of God conquering the impossible and overcoming barriers that were superhuman. That is how God does it every time He does a new thing. The last…

by Richard BledsoeFebruary 15, 2009
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Biblical Horizons

What Happens if the Church Does Not Sing the Imprecatory Psalms?

What happens if the church doesn’t sing the Imprecatory Psalms? We don’t like them. They are mean and nasty, and the one outstanding virtue inculcated in our public schools and universities (as Allan Bloom noted more than twenty years ago in his observations of American college students) is “niceness.” But…

by Richard BledsoeFebruary 10, 2009
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Biblical Horizons

Objectivity and Schizophrenia

The whole of the modern world is still an outworking of Augsburg and Westphalia. It is now a world incapable of marriage, intimacy, and relationship. The whole of the modern world is terribly, terribly wounded. It gives rise to children who have a variety of dysfunctions. Some of them are…

by Richard BledsoeJanuary 21, 2009
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Anxiety

Marriage and Betrayal

Perhaps the most fearful of all possibilities in the world is the possibility of betrayal on the part of someone who is in a “position of trust.” This, unfortunately, is the first block in what ought to be the foundation of every marriage in the world. Every woman has a…

by Richard BledsoeJanuary 15, 2009

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Sermon outline

INTRODUCTION Jesus opens His sermon pronouncing blessings. The Beatitudes imply certain attitudes and kinds of behavior, which are spelled out in the rest of the sermon. Above all, the Beatitudes are promises. As the one anointed by the Spirit, Jesus announces that God is working to turn the world right…

August 20, 2007

Eucharistic exhortation

Matthew 5:20: I say to you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. I’ve suggested in the sermon that Jesus is giving His disciples and the crowds instructions in redemptive righteousness. He is telling them and us how…

August 19, 2007

Exhortation

“I say to you,” Jesus said, “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” It’s easy to soften the force of this. Don’t. Jesus is not talking about His own personal righteousness imputed to us. He’s not talking about a…

August 19, 2007

Redemptive righteousness

In a 2003 article in JBL, Glen Stassen of Fuller Seminary examines what he describes as fourteen triads in the sermon on the mount. Along the way, he challenges the almost universal assumption that 5:17-48 is a collection of “antitheses,” arguing that Jesus’ instructions are not dyadic (as “antithesis” suggests)…

August 18, 2007

Structure of the Sermon

In a 1987 article and a 2005 revision (published in his Studies in Matthew ), Dale Allison offers a careful treatment of the structure of the sermon on the mount. To begin with, there are multiple verbal parallels between 4:25-5:2 and 7:28-8:1: “great crowds followed him” (4:25; 8:1); “the crowds”…

August 18, 2007

New Sinai, new tabernacle

Jesus teaches the disciples on the mountain, we’re told in 5:1. Jesus sees multitudes, sits down, and the disciples come to Him. On the mountain, there is a circle within the circle. This is a new Sinai. Around Sinai, and around the tabernacle, there was a circle of priests and…

August 18, 2007

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