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We have often heard statements such as “War is hell” or “I went through hell.” These expressions are, of course, not taken literally. Rather, they reflect our tendency to use the word hell as a descriptive term for the most ghastly human experience possible. Yet no human experience in this world is actually comparable to hell. If we try to imagine the worst of all possible suffering in the here and now we have not yet stretched our imaginations to reach the dreadful reality of hell. Hell is trivialized when it is used as a common curse word. To use...

The appeal of ethical relativism is rather plain to see. If there is no right and wrong then I can’t be convicted of any wrong. Ethical relativism allows me to write my own law, to edit on the fly, to finish “I may do this…” with an unassailable “…because I want to.” Desire becomes its own justification. My will becomes my law. Relative Morality? This appeal, however, soon enough begins to dissipate if we have any interest at all in being coherent, consistent in our thinking. We quickly turn, “I may do this, because I want to” into “You may...

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...

Is this a Christian country? There are likely as many ways to answer the question as there are stripes on our flag. Yes, the country was populated at its beginning with Christians looking for a place to worship freely. But that was before we became a country. Yes, many of our founding fathers were sincere professing Christians. But many of them were not. Yes, we are Christian in the same sense as all of Europe is Christian — it is the faith tradition of the majority in our country. But no, we have rejected the faith of our fathers. Yes,...

During the month of January, Reformation Trust is giving away the eBook edition of R.C. Sproul’s commentary on the Gospel of John. In John, the second volume in the St. Andrew’s Expositional Commentary series, Dr. Sproul deals with major themes in his easily understandable style. This introduction to the Gospel of John is packed with insights and exhortations that will draw the reader closer to the Savior and encourage him or her to a greater depth of love and devotion to Him. “Since stepping into the pulpit of St. Andrew’s and committing himself to the weekly discipline of biblical exposition,...

God’s decretive will is sometimes described as the sovereign, efficacious will by which God brings to pass whatever He pleases by His divine decree. An example of this may be seen in God’s work of creation. When God said, “Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3), He issued a divine imperative. He exercised His sovereign, efficacious will. When He did so, it was impossible for the light not to appear. It appeared by the sheer necessity of consequence.The decretive will can have no other effect, no other consequence than what God sovereignly commands. He did not request the light to shine. Neither...

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...

The purported value of ethical relativism, the idea that there are no transcendent, binding rules for right and wrong that all humans are morally required to submit to, is that it allows us to live in peace. That is, if you have your ethics, and I have my ethics, well then there is no real need for us to fight over whose ethic wins. (So long, as, of course, our lives never actually cross.) The real value is far more sinister. We find ethical relativism appealing because we find our own guilt unappealing. Though we seek to suppress such knowledge,...

Evangelicals are usually very sensitive as to what people say and think about them whereas the driving force for Fundamentalists generally is not their perception by others, but their faithfulness to Scripture. Many years ago Evangelicals sold their souls for respectability. However, genuine Christians will always be persecuted and scorned as Paul wrote in I Cor. 4:13, “We are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day.” Evangelicals will polish all the liberal apples and “make a deal with the devil” to gain the favor and acceptance of polite society, seeking...

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...

The pulpit of Saint Andrew's Chapel isn't off to one side in deference to the altar, as it is in a Catholic church. It isn't a lectern wheeled onto the stage after the Christian rock band sits down, as it is in many nondenominational megachurches. The pulpit that conservative evangelist R.C. Sproul ascends every Sunday is a large, imposing wooden centerpiece in a church designed to embody his throwback theology. Opened a year ago, Saint Andrew's Chapel is modeled after the Gothic cathedrals of Europe, just as Sproul's preaching is a return to the days of John Calvin and Martin...

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...

Thinkers in the ancient world sought to plumb the depths of ultimate reality. With that quest for ultimate reality came the birth of the discipline of philosophy. Some philosophers focused on one particular aspect of philosophy called metaphysics (ultimate being). Others focused their attention on epistemology (the science of knowing). Still others stressed in their investigation the basic principles and elements of ethics (the study of the good and the right). And others focused on the ultimate foundations for aesthetics (the study of the beautiful). One philosopher stood out as being deeply involved in the study of all of these...

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The law of God has all but been abandoned today in gospel preaching and has produced "Finneyesque fruit" of half-hearted committments and temporary conversions all across our nation. The "new life" claimed by nearly forty million evangelicals today makes one wonder: if there is so much light in America, why is everything becoming so dark? Antinomianism is rampant today in evangelicalism (cp, Rom. 6:1) and due in part to the absence of the law in the proclamation of sola fide. I trust the following will encourage you to live by the Word of God, the gospel of God, and the...

The adage tells us that there is a destination, the road to which is paved with good intentions. It is the destination that we would prefer not to reach. Good intentions can have disastrous results and consequences. When we look at the revolution of worship in America today, I see a dangerous road that is built with such intentions. The good purposes that have transformed worship in America have as their goal to reach a lost world – a world that is marked by baby boomers and Generation Xers who have in many ways rejected traditional forms and styles of...

You can watch it here: R.C. Sproul interviews Ben Stein

Anyone who spends more than ten seconds reflecting on life can usually recall dozens, if not hundreds of people who have had positive effects on their thoughts, opinions and outlook. Among the hundreds of people I've learned from over the years, two came to mind recently as I was watching A Thousand Clowns for the four hundred and eightieth time. Herb Gardner, the playwright, and Barbara Sproul, Chairman of the Religion Department at Hunter College. I never met Herb Gardner. Like everyone else, I knew him through his work. But during my years at NBC I met people who had...

"It is Augustine who gave us the Reformation." So wrote B. B. Warfield in his assessment of the influence of Augustine on church history. It is not only that Luther was an Augustinian monk, or that Calvin quoted Augustine more than any other theologian that provoked Warfield's remark. Rather, it was that the Reformation witnessed the ultimate triumph of Augustine's doctrine of grace over the legacy of the Pelagian view of man. Humanism, in all its subtle forms, recapitulates the unvarnished Pelagianism against which Augustine struggled. Though Pelagius was condemned as a heretic by Rome, and its modified form, Semi-Pelagianism...