Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Mark Horne has done a good job elucidating how martyrdom paves the way for revival and success of Christ’s kingdom in the world, just as it also can bring more hardship and suffering. The diverging wheat and tares both growing up together, both benefitting from the watering of blood on…
For Part 1, click HERE . Anyone who has read James B. Jordan’s Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World and appreciated it as a revelation of how God communicates in symbols and types—both in His Word and in the created order—understands what it is like to…
Abel was the first martyr in history. There is no evading this. Jesus pairs him with a murdered prophet (Matthew 23:35; 2 Chronicles 24:20-22). Abel’s blood was heard by God (Genesis 4:10), and God responded to the cry by driving out Cain, Abel’s killer, from the eastern borderland near Eden…
Adapted from The Shape of Isaiah: A Covenant-Literary Analysis The prophetic texts are the most difficult parts of the Bible to understand. And when it comes to baffling the reader, they are no respecter of persons, perplexing with their Delphic wiles even the studied scholars. It has been said that…
The subtitle for the 2004 film Dodgeball is “A True Underdog Story.” If the viewer lets the words pass by without a double-take, he or she will likely spend the rest of the movie, which applies the “unlikely teammates make the best teams” trope to the “sport” of dodgeball, asking,…
The book of Ezra gives an almost odd amount of attention to vessels. These holy vessels, whether cups, bowls, or flagons, are either dedicated as tribute or were used in temple service. The two Hebrew words translated as ‘vessel’ in most English translations are used a total of 14 times.…
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Psalm 122:1: I rejoiced when they said to me, Let us go to the house of the Lord. Worship is a journey. Every Sunday, we literally leave home and go on a pilgrimage, for most of us a fairly short one, to this place, where we gather as the house…
Matthew 28:19-20: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. As Pastor Sumpter pointed out in this morning’s sermon,…
Freedom is a heady thing, and some of you students are experiencing the rush of adult freedom for the first time. Perhaps for the first time, you are making your own decisions about how to organize your life, what you are doing to do with your day, when your day…
Change was virtually the only campaign theme Obama has used. Then he picks Joe Biden as a running mate. Ron Fournier gets it right: ” The candidate of change went with the status quo.” And Fournier adds, ” The picks say something profound about Obama: For all his self-confidence, the…
As a philosophy of history, typology highlights the unintended consequences of our actions, the unintended meanings of our words. Conspiracy theories have no room for unintended events. If something happened, someone somewhere planned it. Typology and conspiracy are competing theories of history.
Typology is a philosophy of history. It is also a theory of meaning. Typology is a historical theory of meaning, a theory of historical meaning. That Matthew can say “Out of Egypt I called My Son” is fulfilled in Jesus isn’t evidence that Matthew was a midrashist. It’s not merely…
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