As you browse through a threads on X you are unexpectedly inundated with explicit sexual content. Scrolling through your Facebook feed you stumble upon AI-generated…
Posts published in “Bold Christian Writing”
A disturbing trend has been emerging over the past few decades: the birth rate of every US state, along with the birth rate in most western nations, has dipped below the replacement population level. This has sparked widespread concern and fear, as this demographic shift could have catastrophic consequences for the long-term survival of some of the world’s most prosperous and influential societies and people groups.
The recent incidents at Jesus Dwelling Place Church in North Braddock, Pennsylvania, and the Assyrian Christ The Good Shepherd Church in western Sydney serve as stark reminders that Christians are at war whether we acknowledge it or not. The attempted shooting of Pastor Glenn Germany and the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel underscore the need for self-defense training and a strategic plan for our churches. We must recognize that we are living in a time of war – a war against our faith, our values, and our way of life. To effectively navigate this tumultuous period, it is essential for pastors and churches to adopt a wartime mindset, as opposed to a peace time one that many currently hold.
Do I need to remind you of what has been happening over the past year? How “Christ is King” has been labeled “antisemitic?” Or how Resurrection Sunday was mocked by the Biden White House with a declaration of “trans visibility?” Or how about our elected representatives passing “hate speech” legislation that effectively outlaw parts of the Bible? Not to mention how quickly we forget the horrific massacre of six Christians including three young children at a Nashville school. Being winsome and “nice” won’t cut it anymore, Christian. It’s time to get serious.
The United States House of Representatives has passed H.R. 6090, a bill that criminalizes basic Biblical Truth. This alarming legislation seeks to weaponize the Civil Rights Act for the enforcement of federal anti-discrimination laws, thus having a chilling effect on the free speech of Christians across the nation.
The United States of America is undergoing a radical demographic shift, with tens of millions of people from various cultures and beliefs being imported into the country over the past few decades. This transformation raises a critical question: Can a nation survive such a significant demographic change and remain united? The answer, as history has shown, is unequivocally no.
The Biden White House just announced a proclamation declaring this Sunday, Resurrection Sunday, as the “Transgender Day of Visibility.” This follows almost one year after a member of the trans community unleashed a wave of devastation upon Christians in Nashville that ended the lives of six of our brothers and sisters in Christ including three young children.
In light of Candace Owens and The Daily Wire “ending their relationship” last week after the factual statements she made about Israel and Jews, I…
“We must give eleventy gazillion dollars to Israel because ‘they are God’s Chosen People’ and ‘those who bless you I will bless’” is a refrain Christians have been told their entire lives. There is no single theological issue that is the cause of greater confusion among Christians than what the status of Israel is in the New Covenant.
Christians are in the New Covenant. Most Christians understand this. But the confusion begins when we consider the Old Covenant. What was the point of the Old Covenant?
When God made a Covenant with Abraham and then developed it further with his descendants under Moses, what was the purpose of it?
How is the New Covenant made in Jesus’s blood so radically different?
These are questions that were sorted out throughout the New Testament. And despite much of the New Testament dealing with this issue, and millennia of Christian tradition extrapolating from it, confusion reigns today.
Introduction
The pattern of New Testament missionary preaching is laid out in Acts 13. Paul and Barnabas go to the synagogue first, they preach to the Jewish diaspora, and there the New Creation and New Covenant break into and break apart the Old Creation and Old Covenant. Some Jews believe, but the majority reject Paul’s preaching, but their rejection of Christ is set against and actually drives the preaching of Christ to the Greeks who, despite not having all the advantages of the Jews, believe anyway. The belief of the Greeks drives the Jews who reject Christ into envy and rage against Paul and Barnabas, driving them out of the city.
This, here, is the major conflict throughout the entire New Testament in a microcosm. The Old Creation rejects the New Creation and provokes the gospel going out to and saving the other peoples of the world. Just as God used Israel’s rejection of Christ to bring about the salvation of the world in Christ’s crucifixion, God is using Israel’s rejection of the witness of the Holy Spirit to bring about the salvation of the Gentiles.
The Crisis of the Common Era
by John Heers, First Things Foundation
What is time? It’s weird, right?
If you think of time you inevitably start to think of aging and movement, a passing, a thing that is going “forward” and something that catches up. Most of us think of time this way. If you’re a student of history, time and the notion of a timeline go together. This Substack article is about the way people and cultures understand themselves in time, and the crisis of meaning in which we people of the “common era” find ourselves.
The word calendar, which connotes the keeping of time, comes from the Latin calare. Calare means to proclaim, and the connection of the calendar to a proclamation comes from before the reign of Julius Caesar. In those days, a pagan priest of the temple would come to the court and say aloud, “The moon is full, I proclaim the new moon.” In this way the new month began and time was made manifest.
by Pastor Andrew Isker Introduction In the Book of Acts, the people of God are sent out to conquer the world as Israel conquered Canaan…
by Pastor Andrew Isker Introduction In Acts, the church is the New Covenant People of God. God’s people are in a similar situation as Israel…