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If you spend any time talking to me about the Trinity, you’ll know that I’m quick to recommend Matthew Bates’s book, The Birth of the Trinity. This book received wide acclaim from various tribes, and it’s on many people’s lists of go-to works on the Trinity and the early church. His new book, however, is getting a little more heat. I was provided a review copy of the book, and it’s certainly worth dealing with—whether one ends up agreeing with Bates’s proposal or not.
In S..

Follow @BrandonSmith85
As a Baptist, I’m often frustrated or confused by how my fellow denominational brothers handle the Lord’s Supper. At churches I’ve attended in the past, we’ve participated in the Supper every week in some places, ted quarterly at others. There is one instance in which I can’t remember eating a single little wafer in my entire time at the church.
But how often should we take the Supper? While I know that the Bible doesn’t give a mandate for how often churches should remembe..

“It is a remarkable event not merely because of the risks incurred (200 lashes of the whip often awaited those caught at such a meeting) but because of the hurdles overcome merely to arrive at this moment. For decades all manner of people and circumstances conspired against African Americans even hearing the gospel, let alone responding to it in freedom and joy.”

Peter Randolph, a slave in Prince George County, Virginia, until he was freed in 1847, described the secret prayer meetings he had at..

When Kay and I arrived in Orange County, it wasn’t our mission to plant a mega church. We wanted to plant a mission church.

That is, we wanted to plant a church that would plant other churches.

We wanted to plant at least one daughter church per year, and we’ve gone beyond that.
We wanted to send out at least 200 career missionaries, and we’ve sent out hundreds more than that.
We wanted to send thousands to the mission field, and we’ve sent tens of thousands.
I’ve been saying for thirty years ..

We are more than our thoughts and more than our desires, but we are certainly not less. What fills our minds and forms our dreams tells us who we really are, what we really long for, whom we really serve. Evil thoughts and evil desires reveal a deep captivity to sin and evil. This should concern us, for God assures us he has a deep loathing for evil thoughts. He has a deep loathing for those who think evil thoughts. We have already seen that God hates idolatry, sexual immorality, injustice, hypo..

If confession is good for the soul, then writing this post should be like spring cleaning for my heart. Hi, my name’s David and I have a football problem.
I’m a loyal, 3rd-Generation Miami Dolphin fan (don’t laugh… “it’s root-root-root for the home team. If they don’t win, it’s a shame”). I’ve rooted for them since I was little and Dan “The Man” Marino was lighting up the record books. I rooted for them when they went 1-16, with their only win coming off a last-second field goal against a strugg..

Is Pantheism a threat to Christianity? What is Pantheism?

Pantheism
Pantheism is the view that God is in everything and in everyone and everything and everyone is God. Pantheism comes from the Greek word pan (all) and theos (God), so all things are God and God is all things. He is in all and all is He. That sounds a bit confusing, but if you see something in nature and see the beauty of it, we attribute the beauty of that to the glory of the Creator. For pantheists, they see the beauty as being..

Our Twitter and Facebook habits make praying harder than ever.

But before we look at the stats, let’s take a moment to appreciate the magic of conscious life, the capacity to focus on one thing, like this article and this unfolding sentence, following it along until it ends with a little dot. No doubt, as a reader, you’re fighting the chronic digital urge to skim.

We give our attention because we have attention to give. With our attention we can attend to one thing and avert from another t..

Is there any trait more deceptive? Is there any vice easier to see in others, but harder to see in ourselves? We despise its presence in them, but defend its presence in us. It is the ugly trait of pride, one of a number of traits for which God has a special disgust. In this series, we are looking at things God says he hates, he despises, or he considers an abomination. We have already seen that God hates idolatry, sexual immorality, injustice, hypocrisy, and deceit. Today we will look at God’s ..

Is it right for Christians to judge those outside of the church?

Church Discipline
The Bible teaches through the Apostle Peter that “it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God” (1st Pet 4:17)? We know that the outcome will be utterly horrible for them, and since “the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner” (1st Pet 4:18), but does this mean we’re to ..