Many ministers during the time of Charles Finney were trained to write out their sermons each week. Finney felt this wasn’t the best way to receive God’s anointing and truly give the people what they needed. He had his own unique way of preparing to preach. Here’s how he explains it in his autobiography: I do not confine myself to hours and days of writing my sermons; but my mind is always pondering the truths of the Gospel, and the… Read more »
Why is it important to study history? In an essay entitled “Learning in War-Time,” C. S. Lewis provides this insight: We need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. People… Read more »
I received a tremendous blessing recently: Southeastern University awarded me a sabbatical for the upcoming academic year. Once the current spring semester ends in May, I will have until the beginning of the fall semester in August 2015 to research and write. In tandem with a colleague in the college of religion, I will have the opportunity to delve into the subject of spiritual advisers to presidents. Our goal is to begin with a couple of articles on the topic,… Read more »
A few follow-ups today on topics I’ve mentioned recently. Yesterday I commented on Secretary of State John Kerry’s insistence that global warming is settled science and that anyone who questions it belongs to the Flat Earth Society. Never mind, of course, that no one of learning ever really believed the earth was flat; to point that out would be inappropriate. I came across what I consider to be a fine rejoinder to Kerry’s rather smug assertion: Our modern-day skeptics of… Read more »
Secretary of State John Kerry certainly takes his job seriously. He always seems to be in a foreign country. And he’s always giving speeches or making statements that can grab the headlines. Last week, in the midst of a crisis in Ukraine, the growing threat of Al Qaeda in Syria, the Iranian drive to develop nuclear weapons, and the Venezuelan crackdown on the massive protest against its socialist dictatorship, what does he decide to focus on? While Americans are digging… Read more »
What does it mean to be holy? What is Biblical virtue? Can we be holy as God is holy? We’re commanded to be. Some people may misunderstand that. Since we are not God, there is a difference. Charles Finney comments in his Systematic Theology, It is a well-settled and generally admitted truth that increased light increases responsibility, or moral obligation. No creature is bound to will any thing with the intenseness or degree of strength with which God wills it,… Read more »
I teach a historiography course each year. In it, I cover not only the basics of the history of history writing and how to research and document sources, but also the philosophy of history. As a Christian, I see history as an ongoing story of the relationship of man to God and man to man. There was a beginning, there was a key moment in the “plot,” so to speak, when God came to earth in the form of man,… Read more »