Children of Obedient Parents Turning Out for God–Certainty or Mere Possibility? Part 2
Other texts in Scripture confirm the fact that parents who train up their children rightly can rejoice in a joyful certainty that their children will be saved and serve God. Proverbs 29:17 states: “Correct thy son, and he shall give thee rest; yea, he shall give delight unto thy soul.” As Proverbs and the rest […]
Children of Obedient Parents Turning Out for God–Certainty or Mere Possibility? Part 1
Does the Bible teach that godly parents who raise their children as they ought have a Divine promise that their children will be saved and live for Him, or is such only a possibility? If they do what is right, can they be certain that God will save their children and lead them to follow […]
Our Strategy for Sacramento, California part one
What is our church in El Sobrante, California doing in the vicinity of Sacramento, California? At the root of this is Acts 1:8, Mark 16:15, and Matthew 28:18-20. We are following the pattern we see with Jesus in Galilee. He preached in every village and town. Right where we are at in El Sobrante, we […]
Are All Believers Disciples? part 3
Mark 8:34-38[i] teaches that one who does not become a disciple of Christ will be eternally damned. In v. 34,[ii] denial of self and taking up the cross is a representation of the sinner’s coming to the point of saving repentance, with a resultant lifestyle of continued following of Christ.[iii] As already indicated above, Christ’s […]
Are All Believers Disciples? Part 2
Disciples are never distinguished from the regenerate who are at a lower plane, but are regularly distinguished from hell-bound lost people. Disciples are contrasted with publicans and sinners (Matthew 9:9-13; Mark 2:13-17) from perishing multitudes (Matthew 9:35-38; Luke 19:36-38) and from the persecuting ungodly, (Matthew 10:22-27). Disciples are those who have been given spiritual truth […]
Interpreting Violence
How is that the murderer in the Fort Hood massacre wasn’t influenced to kill by Islam, exposed to heavy dosages every day and uttering an Islamic chant as he shot his victims, but the murderer in the Tucson, Arizona massacre was influenced to kill by a political poster he had never claimed to see?
Are All Believers Disciples? part 1
Are All Believers Disciples? Some affirm that only certain believers are disciples. Discipleship is said to be a status that certain believers chose to enter into at some point after their conversion, so that, within the larger class of believers, a smaller, elite group of believers are disciples. Others affirm that, while there are such […]
The Necessity of Poetry in the Praise of God
Growing up, I didn’t like poetry. I thought that a person should just say what he meant in a simple sentence that anyone could understand. “Get to your point,” I felt. When in college, I minored in speech and took two semesters of oral interpretation. The first semester was all poetry. We memorized and performed […]
Jerome’s Preface to the Canonical Epistles–Ancient Evidence for 1 John 5:7
The preface below, which, besides being on my website, does not appear to have been available easily in English, was translated, by my request, by Thomas Caldwell, S. J. of Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI. The translation comes from the Codex Fuldensis (c. A. D. 541-546), one of the earliest copies of the Vulgate. This […]