Category Archives: Law

SOCIAL JUSTICE MINISTRY?

Culture, Law April 9, 2019 Leave a comment

PMW 2019-029 by Levi J. Secord (Riverview Baptist Church)

There is a growing trend in evangelical circles to re-brand mercy ministries as justice ministries. I recently came across this reality when I was asked for church recommendations in a different area. In my research, I came across a church with a justice ministry. Under this ministry there was everything from feeding the poor to adoption. Such ministries were once identified as mercy ministries, so why relabel them as justice ministries? What does this shift reveal about us?

You may be wondering if this is even a big deal, and that’s a fair question. With the rise of social justice in our culture, mercy has taken a backseat. Continue reading →

REFORMED POSTMILLENNIALISM

Amillennialism, Dispensationalism, Law, Preterism April 5, 2019 1 Comment

PMW 2019-028 by Jay Rogers (The Forerunner)

When thinking about eschatology today, few Christians are even aware of the postmillennial view. When I have traveled to Russia, Ukraine, Latin America and other nations on short term missions trips, I am usually asked this question by new converts: “Are you pre-trib, mid-trib or post-trib?” as if these were the only three forms of eschatology. I often have to explain that I am not a dispensationalist. It is difficult to show some Christians that there is another way of looking at the end-times and the millennium altogether.

Postmillennialism (literally, “after the thousand years”) is the belief that Christ will physically return to the earth only after a non-literal millennium is completed. Postmillennialism is optimistic about the end times. Christ’s reign over the earth from heaven increases during the millennium, which is thought to be not a literal one thousand year period, but “a very long time.” Postmillennialism places the Church in a role of transforming whole social structures before the Second Coming and endeavoring to bring about a “Golden Age” of peace and prosperity with great advances in education, the arts, sciences and medicine. Continue reading →

THE INFANTICIDE DEBATE

Culture, Ethics, Law, morality February 19, 2019 Leave a comment

PMW 2019-015 by Samantha Gobba (World magazine)

Gentry note: Since the Obama Presidency, America has lurched leftward and become destructively fragmented. Our culture is now in the wholesale process of “integration downward into the void.” That is, as unbelief gets its cultural act together, its deadly consequences and ultimate despair become more integrated in society and obvious to even the simplest citizen. Long predicted, infanticide has now become a topic of discussion and even legalization. I am convinced that this horrific practice may be the “bridge too far” that ultimately explodes in secularism’s face. I suspect that this may begin retarding the downward collapse of our culture. Of course, this will require a revival of Christianity in America, which postmillennialism expects. This article shows the horror of unbelief in our culture.

A Virginia bill that would have flung wide open the door to late-term abortions in that state caused a nationwide backlash and accusations that supporters of the measure were promoting infanticide. The bill died in a House of Delegates subcommittee vote last Monday, but the controversy about it has since inspired a push in the U.S. Senate to protect newborn babies from abortionists. Continue reading →

THE 10 COMMANDMENTS AND THE NT

Ethics, Law, morality November 27, 2018 Comments: 5

PMW 2018-095 by Kevin DeYoung (The Gospel Coalition)

One of the first and most recurring things my kids have learned—at Sunday school, in Christian school, and around the dinner table—has been the Ten Commandments. In fact, my middle three children love to sing (incessantly!) the Ten Commandments song they learned for last year’s choir concert. As a Presbyterian pastor—but more so, as a Christian—I consider it one of my most obvious responsibilities that I teach my kids the joyful responsibility of knowing and obeying the Ten Commandments.

Could it be that I, along with countless other Christian parents and pastors, am making a mistake? Continue reading →

BORDERS, IMMIGRATION, AND THE BIBLE (2)

Culture, Law October 30, 2018 Comments: 2

PMW 2018-087 by Victor Couture

(This is part 2, continuing the previous article)

Standing Precedent Considered

Let’s now consider God’s “no molesting [vexing] a stranger” commands from Exodus and Leviticus. Israel’s Remembrance of being strangers/sojourners in a far off country was to be of special interest in observing this command.

In what way, and where, were they strangers? There were three particular incidents of this sojourning happening (which Peter Leithart dutifully notes in his study – as linked later-on in this article). Except for the one ordeal that spanned five centuries, they were rather short dramas of intrigue. Continue reading →

JESUS AND GOD’S LAW (1)

Culture, Ethics, Law, morality September 21, 2018 Comments: 5

PMW 2017-076 by Kenneth L. Gentry. Jr.

Postmillennialism is an optimistic eschatology. In its definition (as I give in my “Definition” page of this website), one expectation of postmillennialism is that “increasing gospel success will gradually produce a time in history prior to Christ’s return in which faith, righteousness, peace, and prosperity will prevail in the affairs of men and of nations.”

Contrary to some opponents of postmillennialism, it is essentially social-gospel liberalism. However, the postmillennial hope of righteousness and peace prevailing on the earth is a concrete expectation. Not just any sort of “righteousness” and peace will do. Postmillennialism expects God’s grace to change men so that they will live in terms of God’s Law. Continue reading →

UNHITCHING JESUS FROM THE OT?

Christ, Law, Old Testament June 19, 2018 Leave a comment

PMW 2018-049 by Stephen Altrogge (The Blazing Center)

Gentry note: One of the evangelical tragedies of our times is the dismissal of the Old Testament, as if it were God’s word emeritus. Too many in the contemporary church are preaching a truncated gospel based on a truncated Bible. Andy Stanley, son of famous Baptist pastor Charles Stanley, became a tragic case-in-point when he recently declared himself unhitched from the Old Testament. Stephen Altrogge demonstrates the faulty logic of such a declaration in his amusing expose of Stanley’s error.

Following the advice of pastor Andy Stanley, I just unhitched Jesus from the Old Testament. Boy does it ever feel good to be rid of that old thing. It totally cluttered up the first 2/3 of my Bible. And really, it was so irrelevant to modern Christians, am I right?

Plus, have you ever tried to find the book of Habakkuk? It’s like trying to find a needle in a stack of needles, which I can tell you from experience is extraordinarily painful. Continue reading →