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The Degeneration into Political Soteriology
“This insurrection is sometimes called ‘conservative counter-revolution,’ but it never is. It claims to be restoring the moral order overturned by Leftists, but it is actually an attempt to reverse the new Leftist (dis)order after assimilating the revolutionary gains — and strategies — of Leftism. It is a variant of revolution whose eyes are hidden to… Continue reading
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Will You Help CCL this Year’s End?
Dear friends and supporters: A number of you have already sent a generous year-end donation. Thank you deeply. Most Christian ministries receive a large proportion of their income at the end of the year, and CCL is no exception. If you haven’t sent a donation yet, will you consider a tax-deductible donation via PayPal or Venmo? You can… Continue reading
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Christmas: Excarnation Versus Incarnation
This Advent and Christmas season we celebrate the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Incarnation literally denotes enfleshment. The eternal Son of God assumed humanity as a babe in Bethlehem in order to grow to adulthood and die for the sins of the world. This death and subsequent resurrection, the source of our salvation, presuppose… Continue reading
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The Post-Resurrection Gospel Presupposes the Pre-Resurrection Kingdom
The reason that the life and message of Jesus Christ portrayed in the gospel accounts, particularly the Synoptics, seem so far removed from the post-resurrection Gospel of Paul and the other apostles to our thinking is that we wrongly see a chasm between the kingdom of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The former… Continue reading
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The 2020 Political Victory
“The 1619 Project and BLM are right — you must get rid of the United States as we’ve known it to produce ‘The Good [i.e., Godless] Society.’” Read the article here. Continue reading
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The Political Pietism of John Piper
Likely no prominent evangelical exemplifies both the assets and liabilities of contemporary pietism more than Piper…. Read the entire post here. Continue reading
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CCL November 7 Symposium
2020 Vision for a Blurry Year Topics: The upsides of a downside year Presidential election as chaos The political ideology of the COVID-19 drama Cultural Marxists in the streets The Supreme Court battle and the assault on Amy Coney Barrett Social justice goes to church — unmasked The wokeness of sports No screaming insults, no… Continue reading
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Dead to Sin, Alive to God
If we’re true Christians, and living in sin, we’re like zombies: the living dead; we’re alive, but carrying around the residue of the defeat of death every‐ where we go. Paul says this is no way to live. This is not the Christian life. Listen here. Continue reading
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The Church After Covid – Why Bother Going Back?
The COVID-19 crisis, both the real crisis and the manufactured crisis, will subside, though much too quickly for the panic-porn purveyors in our major media outlets. Consequences of the crisis will, however, persist. No, we will not feel the effects of the crisis in our economy for 70 years, as a September 3 USA Today… Continue reading
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Our Promissory God
Several decades ago a Canadian schoolteacher Everett Storms read the Bible through 27 times specifically counting God’s promises. The number he came up with is 7,487. We might dis‐ pute that number, but of this there must be no doubt: you can find thousands of God’s promises in the Bible. If you read nothing but… Continue reading
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The Actual Culture War, October, 2020
Today’s progressives are in line with Marx’s vision…. They support radical egalitarianism in family and church and the wider society, because God’s order is based on benevolent hierarchies. They start right in Genesis 1:1 with the Creator-creature distinction; God himself is the highest, absolute hierarch. The egalitarians’ goal is to fashion the perfect society without… Continue reading
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What Whites Owe Blacks
Fledgling editor Timothy Dalrymple of Christianity Today (Astray?) has called for the evangelical church to pay blacks reparations for the Unites States’ history of slavery and 19th century ministers’ defense of it. Dalrymple invoked the biblical account of Zacchaeus to buttress his proposal …. Read the rest here. Continue reading
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Pessimism Is Not a Strategy
“Hope is not a strategy” — this is an increasingly popular adage. It means that we can be hopeful all we want, but unless we have a plan and strategy in place to accomplish what we’re hoping for, that hope will likely be dashed. This adage is a gleaming example of commonsensical, contra-biblical, worldly wisdom.… Continue reading
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Reductionist Christianity Gets Its Comeuppance
Three discernible schools have emerged among conservative Protestants since the 2000s with respect to Christianity’s relationship to culture. Richard Niebuhr’s standard five-fold classification (Christ against culture, Christ of culture, Christ above culture, Christ and culture in paradox, and Christ the transformer of culture) is still germane. However, in the present situation, these three schools, though sometimes overlapping,… Continue reading
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Crusading Christianity
Where there is ungodly peace, we are called to be troublemakers. Where there is great peaceful evil, we’re not called to be peacemakers; we’re called to be peace-breakers. Where there are families filled with peaceful pornography and abortion and homosexuality, we are called to disrupt the peace. Where husbands abuse wives and children, we are… Continue reading
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Religious Exclusivity Is Inescapable
We live in a time that champions tolerance above virtually every other virtue, but there have been few times in recent memory marked by more fiery divisiveness. How do we explain this seeming contradiction? Today’s tolerance isn’t genuine tolerance, but is much closer to what the apostle Paul in Romans 1 calls the approval of… Continue reading
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The Great(est?) Easter Poem
Seven Stanzas at Easter John Updike (1932–2009) Make no mistake: if He rose at allit was as His body;if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the moleculesreknit, the amino acids rekindle,the Church will fall. It was not as the flowers,each soft Spring recurrent;it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddledeyes of the… Continue reading
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COVID-19 and Technology: An Interview with Kevin D. Johnson
The epidemiological models that have been used to estimate the impact of the virus have received a lot of criticism in the last few weeks mostly because of the consistent overestimating that has been done in terms of the suggested mortality risks to the United States and the rest of the world. However, the models… Continue reading
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COVID-19 and Theology: An Interview with Brian G. Mattson
Christians … are equipped to understand that God has purposes; that he is not a cold, distant, silent, and mute machine dispensing what we’ve got coming, but a merciful Father who calls us to cry out to him in our need; and that in Christ Jesus we have no ultimate existential fear of death. I… Continue reading
P. Andrew Sandlin 