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Biblical Horizons

Was the Last Supper a Passover?

Some readers of my essay, “ Strange and Glorious New Rites ,” have written to object that I have strained a gnat and swallowed a camel. I have strained out the gnat of a possible link to the memorial bread of the minchah (Lev. 2), while overlooking the camel that…

by James B. JordanMarch 22, 2011
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Biblical Horizons

Planetary Judgments

In his lectures on Comparative Religion, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy points to five fundamental gods that were over ancient man and still can dominate us today, and which must be respected. When we sin, we respect these gods more than we respect the Creator, disobeying the First Word: “You will have no…

by James B. JordanMarch 22, 2011
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Biblical Studies

Notes on the Book of Judges

A. Israel’s failure to hold land against the Canaanites. Progressive compromise, leading to judgment. 1:1–2:5. B. Israel’s idolatry, the cycle of judges, and war as God’s chastisement. 2:6–3:6. C. Northern Gentiles (Mesopotamia), and Othniel. 3:7-11. D. Lot: Moab, and Ehud. 3:12-13. E. Minor judge: Shamgar. 3:31. F. Canaanites opposed. Women…

by James B. JordanMarch 21, 2011
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Biblical Horizons

Principalities and Powers, (Part 2)

The great question for the emerging East, for Asia and other awakening third world areas, for an emerging nation like China is, “what fate awaits them?” They are now emerging from an analogous paganism that the West emerged from centuries ago. Here an amazing quotation from David Aikman, the Time…

by Richard BledsoeMarch 15, 2011
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Colossians

The Principalities and Powers, Part I

Paul contends that with the death of Christ on the Cross, there was an overcoming of the Principalities and the Powers (Col. 2:15). A great deal has been written on this subject over the last 60 years. What was for a long time either ignored, or regarded by liberal scholars…

by Richard BledsoeMarch 10, 2011
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Biblical Horizons

Eating and Drinking Together

One of the odd customs that has arisen in the 20th century is that many evangelical churches warp the rites of the Lord’s Supper by insisting that everyone wait so that they eat and drink together. Supposedly this is to emphasize the unity of the Church. This practice has no…

by James B. JordanMarch 3, 2011

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Future Holiness

Several times, Revelation identifies God triadically, triunely as the one “who is and who was and who comes” (1:4, 8; 4:8). He is the present God, the God who reaches back beyond the origins of all things - the God of whom it could always be said “He is” -…

September 24, 2015

Learning to Lament

In the introduction to his recent Prophetic Lament , Soong-Chan Rah summarizes studies that show that “lament is often missing from the narrative of the American church” (21). One study “found that in the Lutheran Book of Worship , the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer , the Catholic Lectionary for…

September 24, 2015

Creation and Providence

Ron Highland's The Faithful Creator is “sustained argument with evangelical open theism, liberal process theism and other models of creation and providence that deny that God accomplishes his good will in all things.” All such paradigms, he argues, fail ‘to take God's transcendence seriously enough, thinking that God cannot relate…

September 24, 2015

Future Freedom

Ron Highland argues ( The Faithful Creator ) that discussions of providence and freedom often get off on the wrong foot because of a faulty definition of freedom. “Many recent discussions of freedom give the impression that the Bible speaks directly and often about a freedom of the will given…

September 24, 2015

Song of Moses

The exalted martyrs sing “the song ( ode ) of Moses the slave of God and the song of the Lamb” (Revelation 15:3). That could mean that the martyrs sing the song about or even composed by Moses and the Lamb. It could also mean that they sing a song…

September 23, 2015

Americanizing Rome

In an address to Congress in 1826, Charleston's Catholic bishop John England declares his allegiance, and the allegiance of his church, to the American polity: “I would not allow to the Pope, or to any bishop of our church, outside the Union, the smallest interference with the humblest vote at…

September 23, 2015

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