The KISS Method for James 2
Imagine that you get a knock on your front door and are faced with two Jehovah’s Witnesses. They proceed to evangelize you according to their works-based doctrine. They’re nice and seemingly sincere, but obviously confused about the free gift of eternal life. As the conversation goes on, you share the saving message of eternal life […]
Being Open to God’s Word (Part 3)
In my last two blogs, I pointed out that often the people we least expect to be open to God’s truth are, and those we expect to be open are not. I gave the example of the widow of Zarephath. In this blog, I will address another example—Naaman the leper. The Lord spoke of these […]
Is Virginity “Simply a Social Construct”?
My, how times change. When I was a teenager, virginity was important. It was important because God Himself said sexual relations would be confined to marriage (e.g., Gen 2:24; 1 Corinthians 7). Sex before or outside of marriage is a violation of God’s Creation mandate. I read an article today (June 20, 2023) by Nia […]
Being Open to God’s Word (Part 2)
In my last blog, I pointed out that the Lord said that those we would expect to be open to the teachings of His Word often are not, and that those who are open are often those whom we would not expect to be. Those who preach the message of grace find this to be […]
Is Hell the Absence of God?
Ben asked the following question via email: “Is hell the absence of God? If not, please explain.” God is omnipresent. That means that He is present everywhere all the time. That is true of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Three separate Persons, but one being. The entire Godhead is omnipresent. […]
Being Open to God’s Word (Part 1)
When we teach Free Grace, which is Biblical to the core, it is strange that the people one would expect to be open to it are often not. It would make sense that students of the Bible–including seminary students, professors, pastors, Sunday school teachers, and long-time members of evangelical churches–would be the first to see […]
Does Faith Save, Or Does Jesus Save?
On June 26th, on our YouTube channel, we posted a video by me called “Can Miracle Faith Save?” You can see the 7-minute video here. One of the comments at the bottom of the video caught my attention. S.P. wrote: “Faith does not save a person. There is no such thing as ‘saving faith.’ Jesus […]
Be Careful with Allegory
Many people consider Charles Spurgeon to be one of the greatest preachers of all time. I am sure he was a great speaker, and there are literally millions of copies of his sermons available. He was obviously much more successful as an orator than I will ever be. So what I’m about to say may […]
What Does Confess Mean in 1 John 1:9?
This came up in my Sunday school class this past Lord’s Day. I suggested that confessing our sins means acknowledging to God that we sinned when we become aware of it. But do we need to feel sorry for our sins? If so, how sorry do we need to be? And how do we know […]
Freedom
The Fourth of July is just around the corner. It is a day on which we celebrate our freedoms. In the US, we have a lot of them, even if many of them appear to be in jeopardy. Our disintegrating culture might actually cause us to value our freedoms to a greater degree. I consider […]