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Theopolis News

2015 Biblical Horizons Conference

This year’s Biblical Horizons conference was another great success and we would like to thank all those who were involved by helping out with the catering or opening up their homes to attendees and speakers. The talks, open-ended as they were, offered a fresh perspective and food for thought on…

by Abi KayJuly 30, 2015
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Children

Training Tools

I find myself often rehearsing conversations with my children. When the house is quiet in the late evening, and I'm standing in front of a pile of soapy dishes, I think about what I am going to say to them in certain situations. When I am driving in the car,…

by Lindsey TollefsonJuly 30, 2015
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Biblical Studies

Cosmic Language, (Part 1)

In Matthew 24:29 , Jesus employs “cosmic language,” signs in the sun, moon and stars, to predict the imminent end of the Old Covenant. His first-century audience would have recognized His allusion to the prophecy against Babylon in Isaiah 13 and understood His discourse as a condemnation of Jerusalem as…

by Mike BullJuly 28, 2015
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Revelation

Triune God of Israel

The Enthroned One speaks to John (Revelation 21:6): “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost.” It's a little theology proper. For starters, there's the Greek version of…

by Peter LeithartJuly 23, 2015
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Homosexuality

Stealing a Page from Our Playbook

In reading about how we got into this mess, I came across a very interesting couple of paragraphs that I think the church could learn from if we are going to counter the Obergefell ruling. Prior to 2009, same sex “marriage” had gone to the ballot box thirty-one times in…

by Rich LuskJuly 21, 2015
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Literature

From Garden to Gate of Hell

In my previous essay on Macbeth , I pointed out that Shakespeare rewrote Scottish history to construct a play which points to Adam’s Fall — a man and a woman tempted by devils to steal the throne and become like gods. It is hard to imagine anyone in Shakespeare’s day…

by Ralph Allan SmithJuly 16, 2015

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Ritual and Spontaneity

For the first 1500 years of its existence, Christianity was a liturgical faith. That began to change with Wyclif and the Hussites, and the Reformation produced permanent forms of un- and even anti-liturgical Christianity. Ceremony took on negative connotations, synonymous with hollowness and superstition. Ritual was no longer seen as…

October 13, 2015

Locusts and Honey

John the Baptist is presented in the gospels as the fulfillment of the Old Testament promise that God would send His messenger to prepare the way for the coming of the glory of the Lord (Isaiah 40), and the promise to send Elijah before Him to turn the people to…

October 12, 2015
Eucharist

Showing the Lord's Death

How does the Lord’s Supper proclaim the death of Jesus until He comes? (1 Corinthians 11:26). Historically, liturgists have attempted to locate some act in the rite of the Supper that corresponds to the death of Jesus: the fraction (breaking of bread), or the fact that bread and wine are…

October 12, 2015

Eucharistic Modalism

One of the earliest Trinitarian heresies is called “modalism.” It taught that the “persons” of the Trinity are not distinct persons, but only the masks or roles that the one Person of God adopts at various times. The fundamental problem with modalism is that it stretches out a veil, or…

October 12, 2015

Irritability and Intellect

We like to pretend our notions are the product of careful study and rational analysis. We like to pretend our likes and dislikes are deeply rooted in principle. Montaigne thought otherwise. In “An Apology for Raymond Sebond,” he wrote, “I have seen some, who without infringing their patience, could not…

October 12, 2015

From the Mouth

Four times Revelation refers to the sword that comes from the mouth of Jesus, twice at the beginning of the book (1:16; 2:16) and twice at the end (19:15, 21). Jesus' mouth-sword frames the book, and the four uses hint at His universal conquest: Jesus will extend the reign of…

October 9, 2015

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