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GO TO PART 1 PART 2   THE SALVATION OF BABIES WHO DIE Part 2 byJohn F. MacArthur1939 - present This is part two of a subject that I began last Sunday night, the salvation of babies who die. I'm very thankful and gratified for the response that I have received to part one. Last Sunday night when I finished the message, there were certainly three or four, maybe five or six, sets of parents who came up to me and thanked me for the message because they had recently lost little ones. Some after the majority of the...

  THE SALVATION OF BABIES WHO DIE Part 1 byJohn F. MacArthur1939 - present Some of you who tuned into the Larry King Show, a week ago Saturday, will remember that Larry fired a question to me on the air--it came out of nowhere--a question that reveals a nagging, troubling issue in the human heart. He asked me, "What about a two-year-old baby crushed at the bottom of the World Trade Center?" I answered, "Instant heaven." He replied with another question: "Wasn't a sinner?" I again answered, "Instant heaven." That's a compelling question: what about a baby crushed at...

Did Athanasius Have Any Right?08/06/2009 - James Swan It's sometimes argued the Reformers didn't have the right to call for the reform of the Roman church. How could a small minority challenge the authority of the established majority? Of course, there are many nuances and rabbit trails to meander down when one gets into this discussion- like did the reformers have miracles to prove their reform efforts? or who left who: did the reformers leave, or were they expelled? I'd like to bypass those topics for a bit, and apply what I'll dub, the rule of consistency. Let's assume...

07 Jul 2009 01:24 pmThe Ministry Continues Posted by Pastor Don A. Elbourne Jr. If you have been following the Rebuild Lakeshore efforts, you know that back in February the Hancock County Planning and Zoning Commission ruled that we needed to remove all temporary structures on our church property by May 31. This eviction would have included all our buildings being used to host volunteers as well as our primary worship space. In late May, we went before the commission again asking for an extension. They denied our request. We appealed that decision to the Hancock County Board of...

Friday, July 03, 2009 Gregory of Nyssa's Unwritten Traditions.... Here's an interesting tidbit I didn't find, but is well worth pointing out why one should check sources and references, particularly those put forth by the advocates of Romanism. Sometimes when they mine nuggets from the church fathers, what they weigh on the scale of truth is Pyrite, fool's gold. The following is from Revds. J. Berington and J. Kirk, The Faith of Catholics, Confirmed by Scripture and Attested by the Fathers of the First Five Centuries of the Church, three volumes, Third Enlarged Edition, with Preface, Corrections, and Additions by...

A Reasonable Question by Frank Turk Someone shrewdly asked this question in the meta yesterday:Do you think that the "insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers" were Christians or false teachers?And my response was, "That's a great question." Because a question like that deserves at least more than a one-line answer, I'm back today to give you some things to think about here. So here's my first thought: the apostle Peter was a Christian man. Now, I bring him up because, sadly for him, he went to Galatia, and while he was there (this being the alleged holder of the keys...

The faith-shaped life From Rev. Ian Hamilton: Faith and Disappointment The life of faith is not immune from the disappointments and heartaches of what Paul calls "the sufferings of this present age" (Roms.8v18). God does not exempt his children from unexpected, sorely wounding providences. In 2 Cor.1v8, Paul tells us that the hardships and pressures he and his friends were experiencing were so severe, that "we despaired even of life"! Even in the model life of faith, we find our Lord Jesus Christ experiencing disappointment, opposition, hardships, and bereavement. Nowhere does God imply that his believing children will be...

Reflections on the #SBC2009 The 2009 Southern Baptist Convention may well go down as the one that has left me the most hopeful...ever. My first convention was 1979 when Adrian Rogers was first elected President and the "Conservative Resurgence" (CR) officially began. I am grateful for that movement because it inhibited the slide toward liberalism that was taking place in many of our agencies and institutions. Some doubt that such tendencies were present, but I lived through them and have many personal stories to illustrate the documented case that has been made in various places. Others (Ed Stetzer, Aan...

By John PiperJune 25, 2009   Now that the video of the Q&A at Advance 09 is available, I can look at it and feel bad all over again. Here’s what I regret, indeed what I have apologized for to the person who asked the question. The first question to me and Mark Driscoll was, “Piper says get rid of my TV, and Driscoll says buy extra DVRs. How do you reconcile this difference?” I responded, “Get your sources right. . . . I never said that in my life.” Almost as soon as it was out of my...

No-Cross Protocol May 18, 2009 By Sharon Lindbloom “It’s no accident that Mormon steeples, temples and necks are free of Christian crosses.“LDS leaders long have said the cross, so ubiquitous among traditional Christians, symbolizes Jesus’ death, while Mormons worship the risen Christ.” So begins a recent article in the Salt Lake Tribune (Mormons and the cross).This interesting article by Peggy Fletcher Stack takes a look at the newly completed master’s thesis, “The Development of the LDS Church’s Attitude Toward the Cross,” by Michael Reed. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, “[The] Mormon aversion to the cross is a relatively...

By Bill McKeeverOn April 9, 1852, Brigham Young, the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), rose to the pulpit of the Salt Lake Tabernacle and announced, "It is my intention to preach several discourses this evening, but how many I do not know." During his speech President Young explained that he was going to speak on the character of the "well-beloved Son of God, upon which subject the Elders of Israel have conflicting views."At that particular moment it is doubtful that any of the people present realized that their prophet was about to give...

Grace Alone June 5, 2009 @ 6:30 AM  |  Posted By: Tim Challies Right Now Counts Forever by R.C. Sproul Soli Deo gloria is the motto that grew out of the Protestant Reformation and was used on every composition by Johann Sebastian Bach. He affixed the initials SDG at the bottom of each manuscript to communicate the idea that it is God and God alone who is to receive the glory for the wonders of His work of creation and of redemption. At the heart of the sixteenth-century controversy over salvation was the issue of grace. It was not a question...

Thursday, May 21, 2009 IMB cuts and the GCR call What is the relationship between the recent call for a Great Commission Resurgence (GCR) and the vote this week by International Mission Board (IMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention to scale back missionary appointments for this year? Just this: both make the case that Southern Baptist churches desperately need to reexamine and retool their priorities and the latter heightens the importance of the former. The GCR encourages us to face up to the fact that biblical Christianity requires more than strong affirmations of biblical authority. Certainly we should not...

Monday, May 25, 2009 From Apostolicity To The Twenty-Seven-Book New Testament Abbreviations CGM = Craig Keener, A Commentary On The Gospel Of Matthew (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1999) CNT = Bruce Metzger, The Canon Of The New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) CPE = George Knight III, The Pastoral Epistles (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2000) FPP = Craig Blomberg, From Pentecost To Patmos (Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman & Holman, 2006) GJC = Craig Keener, The Gospel Of John: A Commentary, Vol. 1 (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003) HEB = William Lane, Hebrews 1-8 (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1991) INT...

Christianity and Evolution -- Seeing the Problem Posted: Monday, February 16, 2009 at 4:50 am ET This month marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, but the debates over science and religion have only intensified over the last two centuries. In particular, evolutionary theory poses a direct challenge to the Christian faith -- if the dominant evolutionary theory and classical biblical Christianity are to be taken at face value.Numerous efforts to bridge this divide have been offered, and the occasion of Darwin's 200th birthday has brought out still others. Writing in the February 16, 2009 edition of USA...

Thursday, January 15, 2009 Clash of the Titans: Sungenis vs. DA Two of Rome's apologetics giants (Sungenis & DA) are in need of a little theological clarity from an infallible interpreter, before they hurt each other. Friends of the groom may sit here. Friends of the bride may sit here . Refreshments are available in the lobby. Posted by James Swan at 6:26 AM

The obligatory “cussing pastor makes Calvinism cool again” post posted at 5:55 pm on January 10, 2009 by Allahpundit Send to a Friend | Share on Facebook | printer-friendly We’re tossing grenades over it in Headlines, naturally, so I thought I’d move it to the front page for general consumption. Having watched a few of his videos on YouTube, I think the Times gave him a bad rap. For one thing, he didn’t curse. For another, they overplay the machismo angle. There are indeed preachers whose mission is to re-masculinize Christianity, but that theme was conspicuously absent from the...

article printed from: The Christian Century Magazine http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=6046 December 30, 2008 God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer reviewed by William H. Willimon God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer HarperOne, 304 pp., $25.95 by Bart D. Ehrman _2857_Bart Ehrman has written another book that is probably destined to be a best seller. God's Problem is a lively, though thoroughly conventional and utterly predictable, dismissal of Jewish and Christian views of God. It is a real page-turner, quickly written by an author who assumes a...

In The Public Square - Blog May Reason Prevail Dan Barker, of the “Freedom from Religion Foundation” has been all over the news lately claiming his right to post a large placard next to a nativity scene in Olympia, Washington.  The placard reads: “There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens our hearts and enslaves our minds.” Have you ever noticed that avowed atheists are among the most mis-focused people on the planet?  You would think that if they truly believed there is no God and no afterlife, they would furiously...

A Chilling Account and a Word of Warning Posted: Friday, January 09, 2009 at 7:14 am ET Most Americans would probably be surprised to know that Sen. Edward Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, and former Vice President Al Gore all were once solidly anti-abortion. That seems almost incomprehensible now, but the record is clear -- and the pattern is chilling.By the time Jesse Jackson and Al Gore came onto the national stage, abortion rights represented a major plank in the Democratic Party platform. Jackson had actually written attacks on the abortion culture, pointing to the disproportionate number of aborted African-American babies...