12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13 God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.” 1 Corinthians 5:12-13 (NIV)

  Before his 1978 Harvard commencement address, Russian exile Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was the darling of the American liberal intelligentsia; when he finished, he was a pariah. (The New York Times called him “dangerous” and a “zealot.”1) They were expecting a grateful message, worshipful of their “Great Society.” Instead, he rebuked them for their cowardice, legalism, superficiality, herd instinct, materialism, humanism, and flirtation with socialism.

  Intolerance is the quickest route to social leprosy on the modern university campus. Intolerance simply cannot be tolerated. So argued University of Chicago Professor Allan Bloom in his courageous book, The Closing of the American Mind.1 By his account, a student could be known for promiscuity, drunkenness, profanity, laziness, and dishonesty and still be popular among his peers. But if he argued that homosexuality, Wicca, or any other deviant lifestyle or belief system was mistaken and harmful, then he was a marked man. At best, he was shunned, at worst, expelled and sued.

Pastor John Scripture Reference: Psalm 98:1-9

  2 And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” 3 And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. 4 And Jesus said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a proof to them.” Matthew 8:2-4 (ESV)

 On the morning of December 22, 1641, Edmund Calamy, a London curate, calmly climbed the steps into the pulpit of St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster. Facing the assembled House of Commons, he opened his Bible to Jeremiah 18:7-10 and proposed a simple doctrine: “Sin ruins kingdoms.” Calamy told his listeners that the only way to avert God’s wrath over national apostasy was through national repentance and a desire to “reform the Reformation” according to the Word of God.1 He set the tone for many of the decade’s sermons that day: “It is about the ruin and repair of kingdoms and nations, […]

   by John MacArthur In their zeal to eliminate good works as a requirement for salvation, some have gone to the extreme of arguing that good works are not even a valid evidence of salvation. They teach that a person may be genuinely saved yet never manifest the fruit of salvation—a changed life.

   Albert M. Wolters is the current professor of religion and theology and classical studies at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario. While teaching philosophy at the Institute of Christian Studies in Toronto in 1985, he compiled a collection of his lectures and published them under the title Creation Regained. In this book, Wolters proclaims that Christians are to understand the world through the lens of Scripture—more specifically through the biblical paradigm of Creation, Fall, and Redemption. The following quote not only defines “worldview” but also emphasizes the need for Scripture to inform all areas of life. Wolters asserts that […]

Pastor John Scripture Reference: Psalm 69:1-36

  The second Sunday of February 1904, Florrie Evans rose to speak in a youth meeting at Tabernacle Calvinistic Methodist Church in New Quay, Wales: “I am unable to say very much today but I love the Lord Jesus with all my heart—he died for me.”1 Her words were few, but they were quite enough to spark a nationwide revival, with 85,000 new professions of faith in Christ.