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Writing

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

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Biblical Studies

Advice From a Sojourner, Part 2

In our first essay in this series ( part 1 ), we saw that Proverbs 30 opens with a puzzle, a cryptic sentence that challenges the reader to search out a matter in order to gain understanding. "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory…

by James B. JordanOctober 26, 1989
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Isaiah

Hezekiah’s Sign

The story of Hezekiah’s illness and recovery is familiar to every child who has attended Sunday School. Informed that he would die, faithful King Hezekiah pleaded in tears for a longer life. God heard his prayers and saw his tears, and promised fifteen more years. As a sign that He…

by Peter LeithartOctober 13, 1989
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Proverbs

An Antidote for Yuppie Postmillennialism

1. The Blessed Hope "Looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus." Titus 2:13 I was recently asked how I as a postmillennialist would preach on "The Blessed Hope." This is often a sticky question, because postmillennialists believe that…

by James B. JordanAugust 26, 1989
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American Culture

Elijah’s War with Baal

1. Jeroboam and Ahab After Solomon died, the people came to his son, King Rehoboam, and asked for tax relief. Rehoboam refused to give it, and indeed told the people that he was going to tax them even more severely than his father had. At that point, with the blessing…

by James B. JordanJuly 26, 1989
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Biblical Horizons

The Love Feast

One aspect of truth is unity. It was Truth Incarnate who prayed for the unity of His people in John 17, which certainly makes unity a priority for them as well. In one sense, we know by faith that the Church is always invisibly unified in Christ, but there is…

by James B. JordanJune 16, 1989
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Biblical Studies

The Son of Joseph, Revisited

Mr. Paul Miller of Vancouver writes that he is not persuaded by my remarks on Luke 4 on " The Son of Joseph ." He calls attention to Mark 6:1-6, where Jesus came "to His own part of the country," taught in the synagogue, and astonished many. The people said,…

by James B. JordanMay 16, 1989
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Communicative Piety

At the center of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches about three duties of Jewish piety – alms, prayer, and fasting. Regarding the last, He says, “when you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites, for they render their faces unrecognizable in order to be…

February 8, 2016

Nevin Lectures, 2016

This Friday and Saturday, the Theopolis Institute will host the third annual Nevin Lecture series. The Nevin Lectures are an exercise in what Paul Murray calls “receptive ecumenism.” Each year, Theopolis invites a theologian, pastor, or thinker from outside our Protestant Reformed tradition to lecture about what divides us. We…

February 8, 2016

Kings and Commanders

Revelation has several lists of social classes. The first is given when the Lamb opens the sixth seal and the world starts coming apart at the seams (6:12-17). There is another when the land beast imposes his mark on every class of society (13:16). The last comes after the Rider…

February 5, 2016

Esther's Exodus

Esther is a dramatic story of God's rescue of the Jews, His clever inversion of Haman's plot, the courage of Esther. It is also an exodus story. Haman the Agagite is a Pharaoh who wants to wipe out all the Jews. Ahasuerus, fortunately, is an anti-Pharaoh who works to protect…

February 5, 2016

Protestants and Writing

A number of people have raised objections of different sorts to my posts on Protestants and writing. In the nature of the case, I'm not going to resolve these issues with a blog post or two, and it would be passing tedious to answer every criticism of every critic. The…

February 5, 2016

Exodus and Gospel

In a 1962 article in JBL , Houston Smith traces the connections between Exodus and the gospel of John, focusing attention on the parallels between the plagues (signs and wonders) performed in Egypt and Jesus' signs. There are not only parallels between individual plagues and Jesus' signs but, Smith argues,…

February 4, 2016

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