some thoughts

Today we took up the last topic in our series on the foundations of the faith, namely, The Doctrine of Redemption (Redemption Applied). Together with Redemption Accomplished, [Creation, and Providence] this could be subsumed under the greater heading of “The Works of God.”
We began by reviewing our last session on Redemption Accomplished, remembering Christ’s work […]

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We set aside today’s class for questions about last week’s teaching on the Doctrine of Redemption (Redemption Accomplished). Not all of the questions were directly about this topic, but we did have a few good ones.

One student asked about the somewhat cryptic passage in 1 John 5:16-17. We basically decided that we don’t know what […]

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The topic of today’s class was another of the Acts of God, namely The Doctrine of Redemption (Redemption Accomplished). We started at the beginning, in Genesis 3, and reviewed the fall of mankind–which established our need for a saviour. We briefly mentioned the idea that without the Fall, there would be no display of God’s […]

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…It is in vain for any to reason as philosophers on the workmanship of the world, except those who, having been first humbled by the preaching of the Gospel, have learned to submit the whole of their intellectual wisdom (as Paul expresses it) to the foolishness of the cross, (1 Corinthians 1:21.) Nothing shall we […]

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Today we took up The Doctrine of God III. Having covered The Being of God over the past three weeks, most of the remaining topics (3-4 more weeks) could be subsumed under the heading of The Works of God. Included in this are 1) The Divine Decree, 2) Creation, 3) Providence, and 4) Redemption. Today […]

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I found this while moving some things out of my grandparents’ home recently. This was published in the Maine Sunday Telegram on June 11, 1978, when my Dad was almost exactly my age (just before his 31st birthday). I was 4 at the time.
He didn’t win the election, but the issues he was dealing with, […]

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II. The true rules of an upright life are these that follow:

He that will walk uprightly must be absolutely devoted and subjected to God: he must have a God, and the true God, and but one God; not notionally only, but in sincerity and reality: he must have a God whose word shall be an […]

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In honor of what happened 488 years ago today, I thought the following information was rather pertinent:
For his visit to Cologne Ratzinger revived a practice that led to the Reformation indulgence. He granted “complete indulgence” to all pilgrims at the World Youth Day on the condition of confession of their sin, renunciation of all sins, […]

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Today we covered the clear but incomprehensible Doctrine of the Tri-une Nature of God. Calling to mind the topics of Scriptural Authority (i.e., that our reason is subject to revelation, not vice versa) and the Incomprehensibility of God (Deut. 29:29, etc.), we acknowledged with Paul–at the outset–that this is a “great mystery” (1 Tim. 3:16).
As […]

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We started our class today by reading/praying Exodus 33:12-23 together, praying that God would show us his glory and all his goodness as we ascend his holy hill to fix our eyes upon his beauty.
The specific subjects today, conitinuing in The Doctrine of God (The Being of God), were his unshared (”incommunicable”) and shared (”communicable”) […]

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