News and Reads

Kingdom Notes

Idols for Destruction
I'm confident that many Christians have not slept well these last few nights. I suspect that tonight they won't do much better. Over the last several days, as I write, the stock market has not performed well. It has reached a five year low, having lost over forty percent of its value since its peak. It is not difficult to muster sympathy in these difficult economic times. Forty percent is rather much to lose, though only slightly more than half of seventy percent. [Keep Reading ...]

Ask R.C.

What is it that makes Saint Peter Church so beloved by you?
It's a difficult question. I sought, in some sense, to answer it in my book Eternity in our Hearts. We tried once again to answer the question in our Basement Tape, That Thing We Do. While both are a help, I'm satisfied with neither. It's not an easy question to answer. One could argue that this is really two questions. First, are you asking what the qualities are that inspires in me such gratitude to God? Or, second, are you asking what brought to pass those qualities? I'll give it my best shot to answer both questions. [Keep Reading ...]

Coming Soon.

The Basement Tapes #83: Priestcraft
Jesus is our one High Priest, and praise Him, His atoning work was finished at Calvary. If we seek to imitate our Lord a nd Savior, then in what way are we in turn called to fulfill a priestly role? If He is our great intercessor, are we permitted, even commanded to intercede one for another? Is it blapshemy to think we might have such a call, or is it foolish to deny the call? How are we priests to each other, in our families, in our churches? Join us as we consider the common call that we would be a royal priesthood (I Peter 2:9), and that we would be loyal to Jesus, our prophet, priest and king.

This CD will be available for sale and download, and shipped to our monthly supporters the first week of January. Click the CD cover to see the CD at our Online Store and listen to a sample.

Friday Double: Kingdom Notes and Ask R.C.

Back on the Road to Serfdom
It's déjà vu all over again, as the evangelical church lurches toward big government. I'm old enough to remember the heyday of evangelical lefties like Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo and Ron Sider back in the early 1980's. Sider wrote a book that caught the church's eye entitled Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, wherein he argued that more socialism is a good and biblical goal. To say that it suffered from bad exegesis is to unfairly stain the word exegesis. Dr. Gary North then encouraged a very young and wooly David Chilton to respond in print. Chilton's book, Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators, point by point sliced and diced Sider's work with all the precision of the sword of the Lord. Chilton not only dusted off the spot on which Sider had stood, he dusted off the dust as well.
[Keep Reading ...]

Should women be permitted to serve the Sacrament of Communion?
Symbols can be tricky things. They are often a great help to us, communicating difficult to express truths in difficult to forget ways. They can, however, get a touch uppity from time to time. Sometimes the symbol loses all sense of proportion and thinks itself more important than the thing symbolized. Remember that the children of Israel thought themselves safe, chanting "The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord." The temple should have been a symbolic reminder of God's presence with His people. But once the people looked to the temple, rather than God Himself, trouble was coming and quick.
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Merry Christmas, and a Kingdom Moment repost.

Tending Your Garden, coming soon, but not as soon as we thought.

In Tending Your Garden, Denise Sproul, wife of homeschool speaker R.C. Sproul Jr. and mother of seven children, seeks to encourage wives and mothers to be about the business of helping their husbands to exercise godly dominion, and to help raise up in their children godly seed for the building of His kingdom.

This book was slated for release in late November, but was pushed back to late January. We will announce the actual date of release when we get it. Be on the lookout for a special promotional price with this book as well.

Click the book cover to go to the store page.

Some Dance to Forget

It is a sure sign of the fall that we so egregiously miss what we lost. Jesus calls us to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness precisely because our priorities are all out of line. Even that for which we long — to get back to the garden — we long for in the wrong way. Eden, to be sure, was Edenic. It was a garden paradise. There were no weeds crowding their way in there. No bugs buzzed in ears, nor did they sting arms and legs. Adam and Eve had no need to fear that prowling lions would consume humble lambs or that cyclones would tear up their garden by the roots. Eden was a place of joyful, fulfilling work. Adam would never feel the pressure of too many deadlines. His laptop would never go on the fritz. Neither had he any reason to fear an industrial accident. And then Adam and Eve had each other. This was a love relationship that would stagger us in its glory, that would blow us away in its intensity, that would in turn calm us in its beauty. [Keep Reading ...]

From Tabletalk magazine, on the Ligonier Ministries blog.

Politics and Principles

Watch more Politics and Principles here.

Ask R.C.

My ten year old daughter asked me at breakfast this morning how come God "regretted that He had made Saul king over Israel" (I Sam 15:35)?
You have an astute daughter. This particular text is just one of several in the Bible wherein we see God describing regret, or remorse, where we see God appear to change His mind. In other portions of Scripture, see for instance Numbers 23:19, God affirms what seems more plausible to us, that because God is God, He never regrets, repents, or changes His mind. To understand how this can be we must do our best to come to grips with the different ways that God interacts with His creation. [Keep Reading ...]

ELECTION ALERT!!! (Last minute help for a friend.)

Friends, despite what you may have heard, it is not too late to vote. My friend, and all around he-man Matt Chancey is in a neck and neck political contest, and could use your help. Matt is running, through the labors of his dear wife, Jennie Chancey, for Old Spice Man of the Year. In the last day or two this critical contest has turned ugly, with negative campaigning of the worst sort. While Matt is serving the saints in the Sudan (please remember him in your prayers as he works there with the Persecution Project) the usual suspects have taken to character assassination. Simply on the basis of the nature of his enemies, angry feminists and other gender confused folk, you can come to the one right conclusion, Matt is not just a man, but our man. Please visit the site, and get behind this godly young man and friend.

This contest Sunday, December 14. PLEASE HELP AND VOTE! Click this link to go there and vote!

Kingdom Notes

Wealth and Poverty
Though one could argue that it is bad for business, it has been my habit of late to emphasize a rather simple point — that wisdom is rather simple. God has not hidden His Word, but revealed it, and anyone laboring in too many complexities to reveal it is, more likely than not, actually concealing it. If your exegesis of a passage ends up looking like one of those equations from Good Will Hunting, or A Beautiful Mind, you know the kind, where there are more letters (often Greek) than numbers and it takes up the whole chalkboard, then you're probably doing it wrong. [Keep Reading ...]

Politics and Principles

Watch more Politics and Principles here.

The Basement Tapes #82: Mostly Modern, now available.

As the broader culture slides from the folly of modernism to the self-delusion of postmodernism the church either follows, or stays put. We either keep up with the times, or embrace yesterday's foolishness. Indeed, those portions of the church most eager to fight the beast of postmodernism seem to be most cuddly with snake of modernism. In this candid discussion on the worldiness of the church we consider the influence of both these movements on the broader evangelical church, on the Reformed church, even on our own churches. We encourage all of us to get back to the Bible, and the Word who first gave it to us. We remember that we are neither modern nor postmodern, but are called to be ancient, and called by the Ancient of Days.

This CD is now available for sale at our online store for $4, or for $3 as an MP3 download. This CD was shipped out to our monthly supporters today, December 9. Click the CD cover to go to the product page.