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An Open Letter to the Elders and Deacons of Heritage Christian Fellowship

Let’s Keep Some Things in Mind “Thenceforth I began to love him, at first indeed not as a teacher of the truth but as a person kind towards myself.” Augustine said these words in his Confessions. He was commenting on how Ambrose didn’t win him over with his preaching or rhetorical style. Augustine loved him because of his kindness. I’m struck by this fact. Ambrose had a reputation for being a phenomenal preacher. I would have thought that that would be most impressive to Augustine. Maybe it’s because, in my ministry experience, there was great emphasis placed on sermon delivery and preparatio...

One Way Christians Can Find the Truth

It’s clear that there are times that Christians seemed entrenched in a difficult version of conflict. There are two sides to a story, and Christians find themselves having to decide which side to believe. Well-meaning, Godly Christians probably will seek to apply Proverbs 18:13 to these types of situations. They don’t want to make a judgment before investigating and listening to what’s going on. Even more so, Christians have probably learned the truth of Proverbs 18:17. We can’t just listen to one side of the story. And if we do, the first person we listen to can likel...

No, Jesus is not a god, He is God

"How is He God if He is created? For that which is created is not God."I remember two Jehovah’s Witnesses coming to my door a while back. They were doing their very best to try to argue that we have a lot of our beliefs in common. They were insistent that all we had to do was just read the Bible and we’ll see that JW’s and Christians have a lot in common. I certainly couldn’t resist asking them which Bible they were talking about. One of them responded indicating that it didn’t matter because they were all saying essentially the same thing. I couldn’t help but bring up the New World Transl...

Review of Michael Kruger's Bully Pulpit Series

Michael Kruger had written an excellent series exposing a serious problem. Because this is such a serious issue and Kruger has captured the problem so helpfully, I’ve decided to collate his series here and provide a few comments that I think would be helpful. The first article introduces the series and highlights that spiritual abuse is a growing problem. https://www.michaeljkruger.com/bully-pulpit-a-new-series-on-the-rising-problem-of-spiritual-abuse-in-the-church/. One of the reasons it’s an increasing problem is that it often goes undetected. People have grown tolerant of pugnacious beh...

Newsletter — June 2021

Greetings in the blessed name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and God! We have been so blessed by the Lord and continue to give thanks to Him for His unending kindness and mercy. Our family is doing well as the Lord continues to preserve our lives.Jeremy just completed his fourth semester at Westminster and we are excited!!!  Even with classes remaining online this past semester, the campus was open and Jeremy was able to meet with professors in person and had full use of the library. His classes this past semester consisted of Church Leadership, Counseling, Preaching, New Testament, Old Testam...

Newsletter - June 2022

Hello family and friends, We are beyond blessed to share with you the exciting news that Jeremy has graduated from Westminster Theological Seminary with his Master of Divinity! The Lord is good and all glory belongs to Him!   We are still in amazement at the Lord’s kindness to us as Jeremy was able to complete the intense, three-year t...

Revisiting John 1:1

The fact that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, also known as the hypostatic union, is both a tremendous mystery and a precious truth. It would be a tragedy for anyone to miss out on understanding what the Bible says about Jesus Christ—his person, nature, and work. Not only would they miss out on understanding some of the greatest, soul-satisfying truths there are, but they would be forced to believe in a lessor, different Jesus. This different Jesus is really no Jesus at all. If a person has faith in a different Jesus, then they have substituted the real savior for a cheap knockof...

What is Reader Response Criticism And Is It Valid?

Reader Response Criticism is a literary theory focusing on the reader's interpretation and response to a text. It suggests that the meaning of a text is not fixed and objective but rather subjective and dependent on the reader's experiences, beliefs, and cultural background. The reader plays an active role in creating meaning from a text, and their interpretation is just as important as the author's intention. It encourages readers to analyze their own responses to a text and examine how their personal biases and perspectives affect their understanding of it. It emerged in the latter half of t...

From Medium: What Annihilationists Don’t Want You to Know About the Unbeliever’s Punishment

What the Bible says about the eternal state of unbelievers is dramatically different from what annihilationists say.Photo by Guido Jansen on UnsplashAnnihilationism is the view that after the final judgment, those who are not saved are completely destroyed — body and soul — so that they no longer exist. Proponents of this view overemphasize language in the Bible that appears to describe the unbeliever’s punishment with such finality. Various explanations are then propounded to explain the Bible’s description of the unbeliever’s punishment as eternal. What results is annihilationism’s attempt to reconcile passages of Scripture that teach both...

From Medium: Does the Bible Condone Slavery?

Does the Bible Really Endorse Slavery? The Answer Is More Nuanced Than You’ve HeardPhoto by Tasha Jolley on UnsplashWhat the Bible says about “slavery” is far more charitable than how skeptics and critics describe it. For them, the Bible condones slavery, and that’s all there is to it. What the Bible actually says about slavery is far more nuanced than that, and we should let the Bible speak for itself. The time has come for us to be honest about the Biblical text and move to translate the underlying Hebrew words differently to avoid confusion with modern conceptions of slavery as crimes against humanity.The Bible only recognizes two forms of...

From Medium: A Masterclass in Scripture Twisting: Response to Rich Tidwell’s Polygony

The degree to which someone will go to justify their sin is staggering. In what follows, I will critically interact with what could be considered one of the best examples of twisting Scripture out there.Photo by Matt Artz on UnsplashWhen presented with Biblical evidence that contradicts his approach to Scripture, Rich Tidwell doubled down and appealed to… himself as the final authority for his recent out coming as a “polygonist,” having take on a second “wife.”https://medium.com/media/fa49fcb5fa94acfc659504c5569f21cd/hrefIn his comment on my post, Tidwell appealed to his blog post, exhorting me to “study up.” Ironically, polygamy is not new,...

From Medium: Turn to Lamentations 3 When You Need Hope

It might not be the first place you would think to look, but if you’re having a rough time, Lamentations 3 has just what you need.Photo by Francisco Gonzalez on UnsplashIntroductionIn several of my posts recently, I have mentioned that Lamentations might not be the first book you think of in various situations. The least of which would be when we’re having a rough time. Much of Lamentations appears to be rather bleak. In this post, I want to explore some reasons why you should add Lamentations to your repertoire of tools to deal with grief.Turning to the Scriptures during times of adversity is problematic for some on its own. Some might be of...

From Medium: 5 Reasons Why You Should Read Lamentations

Lamentations has been a historically understudied book. Let’s change that. Here are five reasons why you should read it.IntroductionLamentations has not received the same attention historically as many other Old Testament books. Several reasons contribute to this, but perhaps most prominently, Lamentations has not garnered much attention due to its brevity and the challenging material it contains.Lamentations 1–2 portrays Jerusalem as a personified woman, and as expected in a siege context in the Ancient Near East, the woman is treated horrifically. Her status as royalty changes to slavery (Lam. 1:1). She is severely depressed, with no one to...

From Medium: How Lamentations Points Us Further to Christ

Lamentations contains powerful pointers to Jesus ChristIn my previous post, I discussed ways that Lamentations 3 can be used as a lens through which we can view Easter. I attempted to draw out how Lamentations 3 pictures Jerusalem as a personified man who appears to be the sole recipient of the wrath of God. “The man” of Lamentations 3 experiences intense suffering and hopelessness, followed by a change in his experience of God. The man moves into a state of hopefulness and renewed vigor as God changes His disposition from the man’s enemy to the man’s advocate.Lamentations 3:53–54 described the man’s experience in a pit, having been cast into...

From Medium: What Lamentations Can Teach Us About Easter

There’s a lot that Lamentations can teach us about Jesus Christ’s resurrectionWhile Christians worship on Sunday because Jesus rose from the dead, making every Sunday resurrection Sunday, Easter Sunday is a special opportunity to celebrate it even more. Jesus’s resurrection is a mind-blowing event. Jesus was alive, as attested by scholars including Bart Ehrman, Jesus was crucified, and then, after His death, He was alive again.It is not common to find someone alive after they’ve died. For this spectacular reason, celebrating Christ’s resurrection once a year and worshipping Him every Sunday makes perfect sense. Jesus was worthy to rise from t...

From Medium: What Lamentations Can Teach Us About Good Friday

Reading Lamentations gives us a glimpse at what our Savior suffered on our behalf.Good Friday is a day like no other. It commemorates the most heinous and most precious event of history: the crucifixion of Jesus. Its heinousness relates to the murder of the perfect, sinless Son of God. Its preciousness relates to our redemption from sin, enabling us to enter into a right relationship with God. Jesus bore the wrath that was due to us, taking on our hell so we can have his heaven. “Precious” might be too light of a word to describe the glorious reality that we have based on what Jesus accomplished on our behalf.Many New Testament passages descr...