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Colossians

Tychicus and Onesimus

In Colossians 4:7-9, Paul tells the Colossian church that he is sending Tychicus and Onesimus to them. It is clear that they are to deliver the letter Paul has written to the church and that they are also to report to the church the details of Paul’s ministry in chains…

by Ralph Allan SmithJanuary 26, 2023
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Mission

Sustainable Development

On the 11 th of April, 1985, the communist dictator Enver Hoxha breathed his last. It was the beginning of the end of communist Albania. After 40 years of being isolated from almost the entire world, the Albanian people started to see what life really looked like outside their borders.…

by James LeithartJanuary 24, 2023
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Biblical Studies

Sex Drives Building

Karl Ove Knausgaard once reminisced about an author he referred to as “the man with his sweater tucked into his trousers” who, upon entering the room, would declare as if it was his creed, “I write because I am dying.” Knausgaard acknowledges this to be one reason among many why…

by Garrett SoucyJanuary 19, 2023
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Biblical Studies

The World is Charged with the Threeness of God

The Missing “It Was Good” The patterns and repetitions of Genesis 1 are well known: God speaks, it happens, and God sees that it’s good; names are given, and there’s evening and there’s morning: a day. But the patterns of creation, like the patterns throughout Scripture, are marked by variation…

by Josh JensenJanuary 17, 2023
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Biblical Studies

The Day of Christ: Philippians 1:10

And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the…

by Ralph Allan SmithJanuary 12, 2023
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Biblical Studies

Arboreal theology: Trees in Colossians

The Bible is a book about trees. We start in Eden with two trees, we end in the New Jerusalem with a single double-trunked tree, and the story hinges around the tree they nailed our Lord to. Seeing the Forest We find trees singled out on day three of creation.…

by Tim SuffieldJanuary 10, 2023

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American Religion

Wrath of Angels

I came across a reference to James Risen and Judy L. Thomas’s 1998 Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War in a recent article in the Weekly Standard . It’s a riveting account of the development of anti-abortion activism and extremism. It focuses a good deal of attention on the…

July 28, 2009
Economics

Tight Fists, Open Hands

David L. Baker’s recent Tight Fists or Open Hands?: Wealth and Poverty in Old Testament Law is a thorough and judicious introduction to the Pentateuch’s teaching on economics. The book has a limited scope. Baker largely ignores the contemporary economic situation, and gives comparatively little attention to recent works in…

July 28, 2009

Structural analysis, Leviticus 20

Leviticus 18 is about sex. Leviticus 20 goes over the same ground, but it’s about death. The phrase “dying you shall die” from Genesis 3 is used repeatedly in the passage, nine times. The verb “die” is used 20x. Let’s look a bit at the structure of chapter 20. Verses…

July 28, 2009

Statutes and Ordinances

Fragments from lectures given at the recent Biblical Horizons Summer Conference. The notes that follow examine the opening verses of Leviticus 18. 1) “I am Yahweh” or some equivalent phrase is used 49 (7 x 7) times in Leviticus. The phrase is never used before chapter 11, when the “holiness”…

July 28, 2009
History

First Moderns

William Everdell’s The First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought is one of the most satisfying and insightful books of cultural critique and history that I’ve read in a long time. It is impressively broad. Everdell writes with easy and often witty grace about quantum mechanics, the foundations…

July 27, 2009

Sermon notes

INTRODUCTION Jesus has condemned the scribes and Pharisees as hypocrites, and warns that Jerusalem ’s house is going to be left desolate (Matthew 23:37 -39). Just as Yahweh destroyed the abominable sanctuary at Shiloh (1 Samuel 4-6) and Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem (2 Kings 24-25), so Jesus will return to…

July 27, 2009

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