🧵 on the Israel and Palestinian conflict. Let’s set the record straight. There’s no such thing historically as the Palestinian people. Prior to 1948, the term was applied to Jews that lived in the British mandate. Prior to that, the land was occupied by Ottoman Turks, not 2/ Palestinians since there was no such thing. After Israel declared itself a state, Jordan pushed a lot of their unwanted population into Israel, and together they invented this Palestinian identity. They are just Jordanians. They have a state. It’s called Jordan. Regardless of

🧵There’s one thing that I hate to see. I hate watching my fellow conservative Christians with the right theology acting like jerks to people who are vulnerable. Some folks are a mess, and they’re trying to figure out their lives and where God fits into it. Because they say 2/ immature things, or side with an ideological opponent on one issue here and there, many pounce on them, harass them, call them names, and accuse them being vile. Was your theology perfect when you first came to the Lord? Did you still think in worldly ways for a while? Did you

Given that left leaning folks (i.e., @AOC) are misusing the word “fascist” again, a 🧵is in order where I repeat some of the basic stuff I’ve said before.

The word fascist can’t be applied to somebody just because he or she is a conservative, or even a nationalist. It certainly 2/ can’t be applied to Christians for believing in historic Christian doctrines. Fascism is a very specific ideology, and political and religious conservativism does not meet the criteria. Facism was born out of a combination of right wing and left wing ideas, duly named after

The word Pharisee is more complicated than its normal usage in Christian circles. Many people today will accuse someone of being a Pharisee for simply cherishing and expecting sound and orthodox, biblical doctrine. I’ll take that accusation as a compliment. And it’s a fair 2/ accusation. The Pharisees, for the most part, had their theology right. Paul never stopped being a Pharisee (Acts 23:6). But, there’s another side to this label that we need to reckon with. There was also a negative side to the project of Pharisaism. They became prideful. They

A 🧵for your consideration. In the movie, Return of the King, they put a line in Gandalf’s mouth, which in the book actually came from Fairmir’s mouth. The quote nevertheless makes me think of many of my fellow Reformed pastors. It also rebukes my heart. The quote says:

“The old 2/ wisdom borne out of the West was forsaken. Kings made tombs more splendid than the houses of the living, and counted the old names of their descent dearer than the names of their sons. Childless lords sat in aged halls, musing on heraldry or in high, cold towers, asking

Against the notion that Acts does not present healthy churches as growing churches, consider that every town mentioned in the first missionary journey of Paul has statements to the contrary. The Jerusalem church was no anomaly; it was the norm.

Acts 13:44,48-49 CSB
[44] The following Sabbath almost the whole town assembled to hear the word of the Lord. [48] When the Gentiles heard this, they rejoiced and honored the word of the Lord, and all who had been appointed to eternal life believed. [49] The word of the Lord spread through the whole region.

A 🧵 on systemic sin. Systemic sin is real. No Christian should question this. It is a basic teaching within harmartiology. Let me give you the prevailing example of our day. All aspects of LGBTQ are sinful: the practices, philosophy, agenda, etc. But is it just individual sin? 2/ No. How have they gained such cultural momentum? They’ve taken over institutions/systems where they have not only access, but are now the gate keepers. One system/institution is public education. It was not built by them, and it was not built for them. But they have

In 1800, only 10% of United States population were church members. I think that’s a very important fact about the beginning stages of our nation. By 1910, the number jumped to 40%, but that was due to revivals, evangelism, etc. Thus, our nation was not created by a covenant with 2/ God and was thus a Christian nation from the beginning. No, it was the city of man like every other nation on earth. Nine out of ten Americans in the first couple decades were unbelievers. NINE OUT OF TEN! But the pilgrims on the way to the City of God did some good work

One thing has stood out to me as of late. We need to make sure that we do not spiritualize the gospel in some sort of neo Gnosticism. The gospel has both spiritual and physical connotations. It’s telos is a physical resurrection and a restored universe. Jesus defined the gospel 2/ during his earthly ministry (Luke 4:18-19) as the good news, but as such it was help for the poor, sight for the blind, liberation for the oppressed, etc. We have this tendency in the West to reduce those things to only spiritual realities, and yet in Jesus’ own ministry He

A 🧵 for consideration. Some folks believe as long as someone holds to the ecumenical creeds, we can count them as orthodox, regardless of any of their other views. That is reductionistic, and quite honestly it’s foolish. It has been used as cover for progressives to push very 2/ anti-biblical ideas into evangelicalism. Here’s the first thing you need to remember. The creeds are not the Bible. Each one of them was socially located to a specific space and time and dealt with a specific heresy for that time. They were not meant to solve every possible

Just a thought for consideration. The SBC, by design is a Baptist cooperation holds to complementarianism and the inerrancy of the Bible. It holds to a biblical understanding of marriage, gender, and sexuality. It is the only large Protestant denomination with these distinctives. 2/ That is why many of us are SBC. If you want a Baptist ecclesiology that has a loose definition of inerrancy, then there are organizations out there that you can join that agree with you. If you want a form of egalitarianism (which includes ordaining women as pastors below the

Christians, please hear me. We cannot set worldly conditions & expectations upon who can & cannot be a pastor. Only the biblical qualifications matter on this question. Additionally, you cannot use sins committed before a person knew Christ as a permanent disqualification. You 2/ are setting yourselves up to allow the world to literally disqualify everyone from being a pastor. Stick to the Bible and you won’t have to worry about that. Does not the gospel have the power to change the one it saves? And if it truly has changed a person to where that sin

Sometimes I see people misinterpret and misapply 1 Cor 8. The point of that text is NOT that it’s a liberty issue to eat food sacrificed to idols and you just need to have the weaker brother in mind. Chapters 8-10 are a single unit and they need to be read together. Chapter 8’s 2/ point is even though we know the gods represented by idols aren’t real, and there’s only one true God, a new believer who came straight out of paganism might come to the conclusion that all the gods are real, including ours, if they see you in a pagan temple enjoying the party

So I saw the Batman yesterday, and it’s nowhere near as good as Dark Knight. Admittedly, the action and pacing of the movie was great, especially for its length. And the Riddler was a seriously frightening villain. But the background story and the lore was lacking. The previous 2/ movies have a better background story. It’s more compelling for him to be trained by the league of shadows and to become a symbol more meaningful than a man. It’s more compelling to have Lucius Fox provide him military grade technology refitted for vigilante use. I am

Great point. Quick 🧵here. I think this is definitely something David French should consider in his opinion pieces. I remember when I was still a public school teacher, a co-worker asked me in the 2016 GOP primaries why so many evangelicals supported Trump over guys like Cruz. At

https://twitter.com/NeilShenvi/status/1494698544615374854

2/ that time, I believe the pew center pointed out that the vast majority of them were people who attended church less than once a month. Hardly the model evangelicals. The vast majority of those who were regular attenders supported one of the other candidates. We were actually

So some out there would have Christians believe that 1 Corinthian‘s 11 requires women today to wear a head covering. The same text says it would be shameful for a man to do so (1 Cor 11:4). That’s kind of interesting for those who want to insist this is a universal command 2/ rather than a cultural expression of Corinth. Take a moment to look at the photos I’ll post on the last part of this thread. Jewish men from the time of Deuteronomy 22:12 all the way to now pray with their head covered. The Lord Jesus walked around with a head

I’ll keep this one simple. Canadian Bill C-4 is entirely wicked. It defines biblical sexuality as a myth and criminalizes in many respects biblical evangelism, counseling, and parenting. @johnmacarthur and James Coates are taking a very much needed public stand. For all the 2/ Christians who tweet about justice day after day, if you do not see this bill as a massive injustice, and if you do not see the need for Christians to engage the culture and change the culture on this issue, then you lend evidence to what many of your critics say is true. It

I appreciate this man’s candor, but I think he actually offers justification of the current case against deconstruction, at least from a Christian point of view. Some of the items he deconstructs are essential Christian beliefs. You lose the right to say you’re a Christian if you

https://twitter.com/micahjmurray/status/1472007679824564233

2/ reject them. The other items are caricatures that do not reflect what the Bible actually teaches. Some people may have wrongly taught these things, but they do not reflect a biblical position. But overall, the inability to distinguish the essential teachings from the

I believe I need to weigh in on a lot of Christians attacking biblical counseling and acting as if secular psychology or psychiatry is a better or more responsible route. I think the Christians who think this way represent an example of being unaware of their unknown unknowns.
🧵 2/ Their opinion assumes that the medical model for mental health is both true and adequate. But is it? Second, they assume there is therapeutic efficacy by the trained & licensed professionals. Let me push back against these assumptions. There are quite a few people who have a

1 John 3:14 CSB
[14] We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers and sisters. The one who does not love remains in death.

The meaning here really simple. As is the implication. If a parent abandons a child, none of us would argue that the parent 2/ loves the child. Likewise, the person who abandoned the church does not gather with the church. This means they do not love the brothers and sisters, and this text makes it very clear that such people are not saved. I don’t care how much one tries to rationalize this. Someone

This is the devotion that I sent our secretary for this months’s newsletter. I figured it would be helpful to others as well.

As we draw ever closer to the end of 2021 and are preparing to welcome 2022, we should be thinking of this as a time to re-engage. COVID-19 definitely 2/ put a stop to a lot of things in both the wider society and within the church. People got used to doing normal things from a distance. Well, for those who are bought by the blood of Jesus Christ, we can’t be disciples from the distance. Therefore, it’s time to re-engage. In