Free Republic

I believe that the greatest ethical issue today is that of abortion. In recent years many have come to see terrorist as more concerning than abortion. I am baffled by that, because more people were killed on September 10 in the womb of U.S. women than were killed on 9/11 in New York City. More babies were slaughtered on September 12 than adults were killed on 9/11. If we had a camera on the womb so that CNN could show us graphic videos of what actually happens in the slaughter of unborn children, abortion would be quickly abolished, but the...

R.C. Sproul: There Is No True Prophecy Today By Julio Severo According to Charisma magazine, Calvinist theologian Dr. R.C. Sproul says he was “deeply immersed” in charismatic circles in the 1960s and that after receiving about 50 false prophecies, he said to himself, “You know, I’m going to live my life by what it says in the Word, because I know the Spirit has superintended that.” So, with his bad experience with prophecy, Dr. Sproul concluded that there is no genuine gift of prophecy for today. By coincidence, his personal bad experience aligns itself with a strong theological view in...

R.C. Sproul: There Is No True Prophecy Today By Julio Severo According to Charisma magazine, Calvinist theologian Dr. R.C. Sproul says he was “deeply immersed” in charismatic circles in the 1960s and that after receiving about 50 false prophecies, he said to himself, “You know, I’m going to live my life by what it says in the Word, because I know the Spirit has superintended that.” So, with his bad experience with prophecy, Dr. Sproul concluded that there is no genuine gift of prophecy for today. By coincidence, his personal bad experience aligns itself with a strong theological view in...

“Making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables” (John 2:15).- John 2:13-17 Clearly, there are some things that are right for the Lord to do that are not right for us to do. For example, because He is the Creator and sovereign of the universe, it is right for the Almighty to demand worship from His creation. However, though we are made in His image, Scripture tells us we are not to do the same. It is evil for a man...

“Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly” (Prov. 14:29).- Proverbs 14:29 A wise man once compared the human personality to a minefield. “Some people,” he said, “have relatively few mines and interacting with them does not often provoke anger. Others have mines lined up side-by-side from one end of the field to the other, and it does not take much to push them over the edge into a fiery rage.”All of us have mines buried in our personalities. Some of us respond calmly to most situations that upset us. But others among us...

Is the Reformation Over? by R.C. Sproul Is the Reformation over? There have been several observations rendered on this subject by those I would call “erstwhile evangelicals.” One of them wrote, “Luther was right in the sixteenth century, but the question of justification is not an issue now.” A second self-confessed evangelical made a comment in a press conference I attended that “the sixteenth-century Reformation debate over justification by faith alone was a tempest in a teapot.” Still another noted European theologian has argued in print that the doctrine of justification by faith alone is no longer a significant issue...

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther tacked up 95 theses on the church door at Wittenberg. With this act, he hoped to provoke a discussion among the scholars about the abuses of the indulgences by the Roman Catholic Church. He was not trying to create a public furor by any means, but within a fortnight, these theses had spread through the country like wildfire. The last thing Luther had in mind was to start some kind of major controversy, but nevertheless major controversy did begin. From the discussions at Wittenberg, the disputations began to accelerate and escalate. Copies of the...

A new Bible college in central Florida has been established by Reformed theologian Dr. R.C. Sproul and his teaching fellowship, according an announcement this past week. Ligonier Academy of Biblical and Theological Studies in Sanford, Fla., was established as a "premier center for discipleship and for in-depth instruction and fellowship," announced Sproul's Ligonier Ministries on Tuesday. "Ligonier Academy is a Bible college for the next generation that offers a Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies, a Bachelor of Arts in Theological Studies, and an Associate of Arts in Biblical and Theological Studies," commented Sproul, Ligonier's founder and president. "I am...

On November 20, 2009, a document called the Manhattan Declaration was presented to the public by a coalition of co-belligerents. The document is concerned primarily with three very important biblical and cultural issues: the sanctity of life, the meaning of marriage, and the nature of religious liberty. Without question, these issues are up for grabs in our nation. As anyone familiar with my ministry will know, I share the document’s concern for defending the unborn, defining heterosexual marriage biblically, and preserving a proper relationship between church and state. However, when the document was sent to me and my signature was...

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Everyone I know seems to be reading the Bible these days in search of answers. That is usually a good thing but not always. In fact, too many of the Biblical discussions I get into with friends and family members relate to the “End Times” and whether they are upon us. That is a shame because reading the Bible can enrich one’s daily life provided one is not obsessed with using it as a device to decipher the future. Because of one relatively simple error in dating one book of the New Testament, author Tim LaHaye has misled tens of...

There may well be any number of arguments against the doctrine of covenant succession. Perhaps the recent release of To You and Your Children, a compilation of essays on that theme put together by Ben Wickner and published by Canon Press (and with a foreword by the present writer) will prompt someone to make some of those arguments. My limited focus today is not to make the case for or against covenant succession, but instead to answer one rather silly objection. Baptists of varying stripes, though by all means not all Baptists, are concerned that if we treat our children...

You know I've been around. I didn't grow up in Ligonier, the village of the happy people, and then move off to southwest Virginia, the region of the happy people. I spent many long years in plenty unpleasant places, among lots of folks who didn't see things quite the way I did. In the middle 1980s I spent a fair amount of time in San Francisco. Not "the Bay area," but in San Francisco. I even rode the cable cars to work. I was an odd duck out of water there. People thought I dressed funny. Me, of all people....

R.C. Sproul, the prominent Protestant pastor and theologian, thinks the Terri Schiavo case marks a huge, perhaps irreversible, moral decline: "Many years ago, Harold Lindsell described America's culture after the revolution of the 1960s as 'neo-pagan culture.' I think now what Terri Schiavo's death marks is the transition to a neo-barbarian culture," Sproul said. Democrats (and more than a few Republicans) think the GOP stepped in it by intervening in the Schiavo case. They cite polls which indicated between two-thirds and three-quarters of Americans disapproved of the bill Congress passed to permit the federal courts to take a second look...

Why Did God Save Me?by R.C. Sproul -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why did God save me? I know of no more difficult a theological question to deal with than this one. I've been studying theology for many years, and I still can't come up with any exhaustive reason to explain why God would save me, or anyone else for that matter. Some people give a very simple answer to this question. They say that God saved you because you put your trust and faith in Christ when you answered the summons of the gospel. On the surface that's certainly a legitimate answer because...

Justification by Faith Alone(The Forensic Nature of Justification) In the popular jargon of religion the word "forensic" is used infrequently. The term is not foreign to ordinary language, however, as it is used regularly in newspaper and other media reports, particularly with reference to criminal investigations and trials. The work of criminal pathologists and coroners often touch on what is called forensic medicine and/or forensic evidence. Here the term "forensic" refers to matters that concern the judicial system and judicial proceedings. A second manner in which the term "forensic" is used in ordinary language has to do with public speaking....

The Origin of the Soul by R.C. Sproul Students of philosophy are well aware of the watershed significance of Immanuel Kant’s epochal work, The Critique of Pure Reason. In this volume Kant gave a comprehensive critique of the traditional arguments for the existence of God, wrecking havoc on natural theology and classical apologetics. Kant ended in agnosticism with respect to God, arguing that God cannot be known either by rational deduction or by empirical investigation. He assigned God to the “noumenal world,” a realm impenetrable by reason or by sense perception. The impact on apologetics and metaphysical speculation of...

In this series, Dr. R.C. Sproul discusses key Scriptural texts that deal with the doctrine of predestination and addresses common objections to it. He explores what the word means and how it differs from foreknowledge. He applies vital truth about God’s sovereignty, grace, justice, and mercy to help us grasp the sweetness of God’s choice in election.

There is no such thing as merit; but all who are justified are justified for nothing (gratis), and this is credited to no one but to the grace of God. . . . For Christ alone it is proper to help and save others with His merits and works. Martin Luther Justification is conferred in baptism, the sacrament of faith. It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who makes us inwardly just by the power of his mercy. The New Catechism (of the Roman Catholic Church) I have found that my beliefs are essentially the same as those of ...

This is the watershed issue? Think again. Unlike the rest of the evangelical world, I am not all aflutter while waiting for the Episcopals to decide. I have friends, all strong opponents of sodomy, who are on both sides of the issue. Some desperately hope that sense will prevail, and the bishopric won’t be handed over to Reverend Lightinhisloafers. What a tragedy, after all, to see this old and honored denomination sink to such depths. On the other side of the aisle are my friends who want to see the man don a pink mitre. The feeling from these folks...