Last night, I read a recent Christianity Today article about the growth of medically assisted suicide in Canada, where it has been legal nationwide since 2016. (Several U.S. states including Oregon and California also have laws permitting medically assisted suicide. In our postmodern world, suffering of any kind is taboo.
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Jefferson Vann shows how biblical terms for death help to counter the notion that it involves conscious survival.
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When a friend texted me last week and suggested that I watch the new documentary about the Duggar family, Shiny Happy People, I thought it was worth a look. I had heard of the Duggar family but like all reality TV, I ignored them. I may have seen them once or twice on The Today Show but a story about a family with 19 kids struck me as unrealistic at best and bizarre at worst.
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Like so many, I’ve thought much about the death of Tim Keller this week. When he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2020, many of us who benefited from his ministry and his published works knew that he faced a serious life-threatening challenge. Yet, when we heard the news of his death last Friday, it was still a shock. For many, myself included, Keller was the most important Christian apologist of our day.
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Devin Nicely responds to a reader’s email….
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Jefferson Vann examines how the book of Job uses the Hebrew word ‘erets.
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We often confuse the law, what we are to do and even what Christ calls us to do or commands us to do, like follow him and love one another, with the Gospel. For example, Jesus in Mark 8:34 (and elsewhere) said to the crowd and to his disciples. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” This is the call to be his disciple. Yet this is not the Gospel. To be his disciple you and I must heed what Christ’s commands here but this is still not the Gospel. Yet, without the Gospel we could not heed this command.
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Have you considered that Jesus goes to a cross so that you may go there too? I don’t mean that only metaphorically or spiritually or any sense other than physically. Jesus went to a cross so that you could be nailed up there beside him.
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A quarter century ago, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckaby wrote a book titled, Character is the Issue: How People With Integrity Can Revolutionize America (B&H, 1997). I think the book is accidentally prophetic in ways that the author never intended.
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Mandated. Chapel. Service. 3x a week. for college students. Who would ever imagine that any revival would spark from such a setting?
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In “Maclaren on Genesis 2:17” Jefferson Vann responds to some 19th-century arguments against conditional immortality based on that text.
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News of what’s been happening has spread like wildfire. When it eventually reached me, my gut response was honestly skepticism and cynicism. I’m a church kid who has been around the denominational block. I’ve seen passionate worship paired with rotten character firsthand. My instinct is to say, “Let’s see what happens next.”
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For most of my adult life Be Thou My Vision has been my favorite piece of Christian music, whether traditional or contemporary. Its words were composed in the 9th century AD (CE), and slightly updated and translated since then.
Its roots are in Celtic Christianity, a movement from the British Isles that emerged in the life and work of Patrick, the Christian missionary who brought Christianity to Ireland in the middle of the first millennium. Celtic Christianity was unique in western Europe given that it combined both theology and life, intellect and affections, belief and mission. It narrates head, heart, and hands. It describes the Christian journey of faith better than any composition I know outside of Holy Scripture.
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Jefferson Vann discusses his translation of the Hebrew word na’ar in 1 Samuel.
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“Confession: I am an annihilationist. I believe that the wicked will be resurrected on the last day, judged and condemned by God Almighty, and cast into hell to suffer and die. Some of my fellow annihilationists may have just experienced a bit of theological whiplash. You were offering a hearty “Amen” to my belief statement until I threw in the word “suffer.” If that describes you, put on your big boy/big girl pants, because I’ve got something to say that you might not like…”
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