Link - How to calculate when Jesus will come - without even being a prophet! My wish is simple, and it would make me so very happy. I'm going to campaign for it until the proper authorities take notice and step in. (1) I want us to identify all preachers who have mistakenly announced that it was... Continue Reading →
Did they discover a giant skeleton in Greece (or Egypt or Saudi Arabia or Wisconsin?). Well, no…
Don't believe everything you read. When it comes to spams, the rule of thumb is, reject it unless you have credible proof (a second spam is not credible proof). To put in another way, an e-mail that has obviously been circulating for a while with the header THIS IS REALLY COOL is probably not the... Continue Reading →
Should a Christian be politically correct?
Jerry Falwell was fond of describing his Liberty University as “conservative as Harvard is liberal.” In other words, if Harvard University is on the far left, then the appropriate Christian response is to run in an equal and opposite direction. It is Newton’s Third Law of Motion as applied to a Christian political and social... Continue Reading →
The First Amendment, beta version
By Gary Shogren, Seminario ESEPA, San José, Costa Rica Newt Gingrich is on record as saying: There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand... Continue Reading →
The little sermon that jumped the tracks
By Gary Shogren, Seminario ESEPA, San José, Costa Rica I have at last spotted a creature that until now I’d only read about. It is the reappearance of a style of preaching which does an end-run around the rational mind and appeals to the non-rational. I’m probably the last one of my social set to... Continue Reading →
The Parable of the Lost Coin, Luke 15:8-10
8 “Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she has found it, she calls her friends and neighbors together, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the piece which I lost!’... Continue Reading →
Para los lectores de habla castellano…
En el pasado, hemos ofredico en este blog unos artículos en el castellano. Ahora, hemos movido toda la materia al nuevo blog: http://www.razondelaesperanza.wordpress.com Además, es excelente aprovecharse de biblia.com, un blog de teología evangélica en español. Todos están cordialmente invitados! ¡Bendiciones! Gary Shogren
What books have I used to write a commentary on 1-2 Thessalonians? [Studies in 1 Thessalonians]
Note: In November 2012 I published a commentary of 1-2 Thessalonians for Zondervan (click HERE). The advice given below is applicable to all preaching and writing projects. I used to do business at a local office building. On the wall was an engraved map of the New World from the 1600s. It was a real... Continue Reading →
We should challenge all who need correction…young or old (1 Tim 5:1)
By Gary Shogren, Seminario ESEPA, San José, Costa Rica The Bible does not tell us to refrain from correcting our elders; this is a misunderstanding that arises from 1 Tim 5:1 KJV, “rebuke not an elder”. We should understand that there is more harshness implicit in “rebuke”; the NIV for example says “Do not... Continue Reading →
How to Teach your Church to Pray: Don’t tell them, show them!
The Twelve learned to pray by asking, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1 NIV). For that they received the Lord’s Prayer, which functions as Jesus intended, whether used as a model or prayed verbatim. In general the North American church fails to teach its people to pray. For... Continue Reading →