With all due respect to the original, this is my thorough paraphrase, condensation, and updating of George Whitfield’s, “Worldly Business No Plea for the Neglect of Religion,” Sermon 20 of his Collected Sermons Matthew 8:22 – “Let the dead bury their dead.” When Paul preached at Athens, he observed that they were “very religious.” But... Continue Reading →
Will it Kill your Pastor if he Visits You? A Response to Thom S. Rainer
Thom S. Rainer is the president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources and has a very popular blog on church life. Having read with approval a number of his other articles, I was surprised to find one that I roundly disagreed with. It is titled “FIFTEEN REASONS WHY YOUR PASTOR SHOULD NOT VISIT MUCH” And he... Continue Reading →
Thoughts on Hebrew and Greek from a Scholar: Will Varner
Thanks to Dr. Will Varner for this article, to which I here post a link. It's a topic that interests me, but once in a while I come across an article and have to conclude, "This person expresses it so much better than I could, so I'll just link to their article!" DO WE NEED TO... Continue Reading →
Strong’s Concordance – a Good Tool Gone Bad
To download the entire article, click here Shogren_Strongs Concordance For Bible students who don’t use Hebrew and Greek, the Strong Concordance is a popular tool, available online. [1] But it has a serious limitation – namely: the “dictionary” in the back of Strong’s is not really a dictionary at all, and should not be used... Continue Reading →
Love, sure, but during an election year?
A fresh preface to my essay, “The Forgotten Sign of the End Times: icy relations among God’s people.” I include here not only things I observe in others, but principally the things I'd like to root out of my own heart. The Lord's return may - or may not - be near, but no-one who reads church history... Continue Reading →
‘Christianity-without-Christ’ and Other Pointless Projects
This was a commencement address that I gave in 1998 at Biblical Theological Seminary. You can download the text here. Shogren_Christianity without Christ In the last century, during the heyday of Liberal Christianity, a fringe group of thinkers raised the question, “Does a person really have to believe in Christ in order to be a good... Continue Reading →
Women in Ministry, according to F. F. Bruce
This is a topic which interests me very much, not just in theory, but because of my involvement of training both female and male soldiers for the kingdom of God. I hope to publish some thoughts of my own at some point, but for now I yield to the master, and his brief article from 1982.... Continue Reading →
Is the Earth a flat disc after all?
Is it just me, or is anyone else running into Flat Earth proponents lately? (Check this ARTICLE) People who think NASA is doing mind control over us, that no one has ever been to space, that the Bible teaches the earth is a disc? Yeah, it's a thing. It's conspiracy thinking at heart. Basically an... Continue Reading →
Yeshua? Iesous? Jesus? Some other form? Who’s right?
The reader may download the entire article as a pdf file, especially given the presence of long technical footnotes׃ Shogren_Yeshua Iesous Jesus Some other form Who’s right. The results from the TLG search, mentioned in the article, may be downloaded here: Ιησους in TLG first 1000 references The headlines are usually IN BOLD PRINT!! With lots of... Continue Reading →
Thou Shalt Not Bully Those who use a Different Bible Translation!
There are now hundreds of versions of the Bible in English, and more come out every year. And there is great benefit from comparing version with version. Still, if I were king, I would impose a moratorium on new Bible versions for at least a decade. If I were king. But, let’s see what hand life... Continue Reading →