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Biblical Horizons

The Servant of the Ground

Why was Abel’s offering approved and Cain’s rejected? This question has been debated for many centuries. Some have argued that Cain’s offering was rejected because it was not a bloody offering; others that Cain’s offering was rejected because it was not from the firstfruits; others that Cain’s offering was rejected…

by Peter LeithartSeptember 19, 1990
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Luke

The Unjust Steward Revisited

Last year I had occasion to work through the book of Luke as I did some work for one of my editorial clients, and this year my pastor has been preaching through Luke. Thus, I have twice been reminded of the Parable of the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1-13), a parable…

by James B. JordanSeptember 2, 1990
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Biblical Chronology

The Mysterious Numbers of Edwin R. Thiele

We come now to what some have called the "Gordian Knot" of Biblical chronology: the period of the kings of Israel and Judah. We do not have a summary figure that tells exactly how long this period of time was. The book of Kings provides the years each king reigned,…

by James B. JordanSeptember 2, 1990
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Matthew

Additional Reflections on the Dew of Hermon

In an earlier article , while examining the biblical symbolism of dew, I noted the parallel in Psalm 133 between the dew upon Mount Hermon and the oil poured upon the head of Aaron. Both the dew of Hermon and the oil of ordination are compared to the pleasantness of…

by Peter LeithartAugust 19, 1990
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Biblical Horizons

Cornelius van der Waal, "The Covenantal Gospel"

The Covenantal Gospel was the last book written by the remarkable South African theologian and exegete Cornelius van der Waal. Two other works of van der Waal’s have been translated: Hal Lindsey and Biblical Prophecy , and Search the Scriptures . Because this book was written in 1979, it does…

by James B. JordanAugust 2, 1990
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Beer

The Evangelical Cocaine Lobby

A year or so ago, my wife and I were invited to a Christian school in order to preview a film on drug abuse that was going to be shown to our children. One of the children in this film turned out, of course, to be using drugs. This child’s…

by James B. JordanAugust 2, 1990

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Instruments Make the Man

Samuel tells Saul he will meet prophets coming down from a high place (from worship) playing instruments - harp, tambourine, flute, and lyre (1 Samuel 10:5). Each of these has a history; and the history of each is woven with Israel’s maturation as a people. Israel’s musical development tracks her…

September 16, 2014

Advocacy v. Art

9/11 pushed novelist Ian McEwan from unsettled agnosticism into atheism. Since that day, McEwan says, he has felt that “religion was distinctly unhelpful in making compassionate, reasonable judgments about people’s lives. On the whole, the secular mind seems far superior in making reasonable judgments.” That is an odd conclusion to…

September 16, 2014

Nations Win Out

An analysis from Stratfor Global Intelligence claims that the effort to re-establish medieval caliphates will run into several obstacles. The first has to do with internal divisions among radical Islamists themselves. Muslim nation-states are admittedly artificial, often weak, but still Islamists tend to group together along national lines: “Most Islamists,…

September 16, 2014
Trinity

Social Trinity

Three things stand out in Charles Lowry’s 1946 essay on The Trinity and Christian Devotion . The first is that the book exists at all, since it comes from a time when Trinitarian theology was supposed to be pretty much moribund. (Rahner’s book was published in 1970.) The second is…

September 15, 2014

Hot Semiotics

Wanting to figure out what makes someone attractive on Tinder, Anne Helen Petersen created her own experimental knock-off and tested it on about 800 people. She reports her findings at buzzfeed.com . Petersen found that race was an important factor in attraction, as was religion. Even when religion was not…

September 15, 2014

Silence in Heaven

When the Lamb opens the seven seal, there is silence in heaven for a half hour. There are several questions to ask about this silence. The first is, What is being silenced? Everything? It could be taken as total silence that lasts only from the time that the seventh seal…

September 15, 2014

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