Preparing a sermon from the New Testament to serve a local congregation has always been a challenging spiritual labor. Exegesis and application require a pastor to bridge a language gap from Greek to English, a cultural gap from the first century to the contemporary ethos, and a geographical gap from the Levant to the Western…
I ask the reader’s indulgence as I weave personal narrative into my essay, for my thinking has emerged in these past years through a range of travels, events, and assignments, from which I’ll draw in making my case. On my first visit to Mount Hermon on Israel’s northern border, our tour guide pointed out the…
Overview This brief article examines the nature of human work from a biblical and theological perspective. Creation frames human work because God created humans as his image bearers, giving them the task of building civilization through procreation and vocation. But humanity’s purposeful work became cursed work through sin. Now the gospel transforms and restores our work…
Christopher J. H. Wright is one of the leading evangelical voices today addressing the theology of the church’s mission. Wright, an Anglican pastor and Old Testament (OT) scholar, is a key figure in the Lausanne Movement, including his role as the Chair of the Cape Town 2010 Statement Working Group, which drafted the Cape Town…
Introduction The headlines over the past few months attest our society is experiencing rapid transformation culminating from decades of moral mutiny. Events in Ferguson, Indianapolis, Baltimore, Dallas, Charleston and Supreme Court decisions is a predictable course of America’s trajectory because the moral revolutionaries have secularized the public conscience. The myriad of competing voices through the…
Introduction Our society is one typified as postmodern: it is a society that has left modernism behind it, at least in part. Modernism had its roots in the Renaissance and attained its full flowering in the Enlightenment. The philosopher Immanuel Kant described the Enlightenment as man’s liberation from the dependency in which he had been…
Engaging the Doctrine of Revelation. By Matthew Levering. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2014. 363+xi pages. $44.99. Hardback. One of the biggest divides between Roman Catholics and Protestants continues to be the authority of the Church and Scripture. Roman Catholics tend to have a high view of both sources of authority, allowing for each to construct doctrine.…
Millennials, like the rest of us, are human beings. I know that’s not a terribly surprising thing to say, and I haven’t actually heard anyone deny that fact. But with the coming of age of each new generation, it seems there’s always a flurry of books and articles competing both for the honor of naming…
EDITOR’S NOTE: In what follows, R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, discusses his book We Cannot Be Silent with Towers editor S. Craig Sanders. CS: Shortly after the June 26 Supreme Court decision, you wrote about our Christian duty to speak truth in the face of a moral revolution. How does…
Decades before he became Southern Seminary’s fifth president, John R. Sampey possessed an evangelical conviction for Baptist churches and their pastors. In October 1887, a 24-year-old Sampey delivered his inaugural address as assistant professor of Hebrew, Greek, and Homiletics. This address, entitled “The Proper Attitude of Young Ministers toward Issues of the Day,” exhorted his…
We Cannot Be Silent, R. Albert Mohler Jr. (Thomas Nelson 2015, $24.99) In the span of three months in the summer of 2015, three headlines marked historic events that generations of Americans past could never have imagined. First it was former “world’s greatest athlete” Bruce Jenner debuting his gender transition on the cover of Vanity Fair.…
When William Hoagland was stuck with a needle during his surgical residency, he panicked. The patient he was working with had tested positive for AIDS, which had only recently been discovered. He feared the comfortable life he was pursuing as a doctor was gone. “I was just devastated,” he said, crediting the AIDS scare as…
Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism, Timothy Keller (Viking 2015, $19.95) Review by S. Craig Sanders The release of Timothy Keller’s Preaching, which followed his award-winning book Prayer, makes me wonder: Keller could weave his winsome style and theological framework into the books Eating and Sleeping, and they would be worth your time. In his…
When I hear someone say, “War Eagle,” or see someone wearing Auburn sports gear, I almost reflexively feel obligated to respond, “Roll Tide!” It seems like a duty, a moral responsibility even. To call football in the South culturally a big deal is akin to saying the Grand Canyon is a big hole in the…
The first thing most people will notice in Douglas K. Blount’s office is a big, stuffed Eeyore. A gift several years ago from his two kids, Eeyore sits snugly on a table in his office — one of the many things Blount collects. “I drove up to Louisville in a U-Haul, and he rode shotgun…
Southern Seminary co-founder John A. Broadus is best remembered for his instruction of men for the preaching ministry, but he also demonstrated concern for the health of the preacher’s body. Collected here are quotes from Broadus’ published and personal writings regarding the importance of maintaining a sound mind and body, with special applicability to one…
