Deputy Principal at Ridley College. Neutestamentler. Anglican Priest. Love Jesus, hate coffee! CEO Evangelia Media. Views my own. Pronouns: χριστῷ συνεσταύρωμαι
Melbourne, Australia
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The evangelical world needs leaders who embody holiness, not hubris; who grow disciples, not groom sycophants; who see themselves as naked before Christ, not robed in the prestige of their platforms; who know that when success becomes an idol that bullying becomes a sacrament.
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Controversial thesis: If the highest paid person in your university or college is the basketball coach or the football coach, then it is not a university, it is a sporting franchise with a side hustle in tertiary education.
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On mask-wearing at church:
Things in the Bible:
"Carry one another's burdens"
"Love does no harm to a neighbour"
"Use your freedom to ... serve one another"
Things not in the Bible:
"My face, my right"
"Get government off my face"
"Fauci is a fraud"
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Let me explain how secularism works, the UK currently has:
A Christian King
A Hindu Prime Minister
A Jewish home secretary
A Muslim mayor of London
And none of them want to kill each other!
They are free to practice their religion and participate in politics.
That is secularism!
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I miss the gold old days when the Romans hated Christians for being pro-women, pro-slave, and pro-child.
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Yeah, and that’s why we don’t have mass shootings, no drive-by shootings, less gangland violence, less suicides, and less intimate partner murders.
A few months ago, Kamala Harris said we should follow Australia on gun control.
Australia confiscated 650,000 firearms owned legally by law-abiding citizens.
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Everybody, repeat after me, "Western views of human rights are not universal or self-evident. They emerged in a particular context. Expecting the Taliban to embrace rainbow flags and women's suffrage is like asking Alabama to embrace mandatory veganism and sharia law."
Taliban leaders are asked if they’d support women leaders. Watch this reaction. Thankfully our government has written them a sternly worded letter demanding inclusivity.
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I wouldn’t mind Twitter banning Donald Trump if Twitter also banned the Chinese government and other evil regimes around the world from tweeting. Remember, Twitter will only ban people if it’s useful for its public image and helps its profit margin, not on the basis of principle.
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American evangelicals are the only evangelical group in the world discussing Christian nationalism because only American evangelicals think they were divinely elected to rule the country.
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I tried to show the theobros that, yes, we call God "Father," and we can't make up divine pronouns as we like, BUT the ancient church rejected God as "male" since (a) God doesn't have a body; (b) A male god is anthropomorphic like the pagan gods; (c) women are in the image God.
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Mary did you know that your Magnificat makes you sound like a raving Marxist
Mary did you know that powerful men consider your words alarmist
Mary did you know that governments will censor the song you sang
And although I am a Protestant, I really want to join your gang.
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And yet, here we are, still talking about the apostle Paul 2000 years later, and not about Maximus Gluteus, the leading teacher of rhetoric in Thessalonica, who said Paul's sermons were "Meh."
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I need to visit America, I miss Chik-Fil-A and that sport Americans weirdly call "football." Plus I'm so sick of Australia's free healthcare, the lack of gun violence, transparent elections, my family never yelling at each other about CRT, and so many kangaroos.
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Someone needs to re-write the lyrics to "Mary did you know" but with the words of the Magnificat.
"Mary did you know, that your baby boy, will one day smash the mighty."
"Mary did you know, that the child you bear, will humble all the haughty."
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For those critiquing the British Constitutional Monarchy, do remember that Britain currently has:
A Christian King
A Hindu Prime Minister
A Buddhist Home Secretary
A Muslim Mayor of London
An Atheist Opposition Leader
How religiously diverse and tolerant is your "republic"?
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In Australia I’m considered a fundamentalist conservative, but by US standards I’m considered a socialist theologian. So weird.
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I think we need a new Christian satire site, kind of like the Babylon Bee, but without the pathological fixation on AOC.
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Wow, I've had multiple US friends tell me that their churches are bitterly divided over wearing masks at church. This is so not an issue in Australia!
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New Secret Gospel Found: John the Baptist urges Galileans to overlook Herod Antipas’s unbiblical marriage to his sister-in-law because Herod will make Judaism great again and will build a wall to keep the Samaritans out and rumours he collaborated with Rome are fake news.
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I noticed that @BethMooreLPM is trending and I cannot for the life of me figure out why people are angry at Beth for being happy that Jesus, the Son in/by whom all things were made, made grapes. What am I missing?
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Nothing better summarizes why Christianity was an absolutely radical message in antiquity, that revolutionized the world by siding with victims rather than victors, than this juxtaposition by a derisive neo-Pagan Nietzsche fan-boy.
Real gods, like Zeus, are forms of the good: strength, power, beauty, health, virtue.
Fake gods, like Jesus, are forms of the bad: weakness, powerlessness, humiliation, ugliness, emaciation.
Which gods we worship determines what we manifest. Manifest the good. Manifest Zeus.
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Pray for Tim Keller as he enjoys his last moments with family and prepares to meet his King and Savior.
Health Update: Today, Dad is being discharged from the hospital to receive hospice care at home. Over the past few days, he has asked us to pray with him often. He expressed many times through prayer his desire to go home to be with Jesus. His family is very sad because we... 1/3
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An Anglican and a Baptist debate the conversion of @BethMooreLPM to Anglicanism.
Baptist: "You did done sheep steal Beth Moore."
Anglican: "We Anglicans don't steal steep, we just offer better grass."
#AnglicanHumour
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Thesis: Multi-site churches are not congregational, they are episcopally governed, the senior minister is a de facto bishop, in fact, multisite churches are more centrally controlled than any Catholic or Anglican diocese in church history.
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Tom is (w)right as usual!
N.T Wright says Americans' defense of gun rights is inconsistent with their defense of the unborn, because they are too polarized by social media, they accept "over-simplified" arguments to fall in line with a particular leader, they can't handle "nuance," and ultimately, they just aren't an "educated electorate."
But does this sound like a nuanced, educated take on gun laws?
"When I go to America, it always astonishes me that the same people are vitriolically opposed to abortion and vitriolically in favor of everybody carrying guns and being prepared to shoot people at any time.
On the one hand, you'd have thought if they're so concerned about preserving human life, even in embryo and in vitro, etc., then why are they not concerned about preserving human life when it comes to, say, a school shooting by somebody who's been able to walk into a store, even though mentally disturbed, and buy a weapon-grade automatic rifle? I mean, for somebody from the other side of the Atlantic, and I suspect for you [Carey Nieuwhof] in Canada, this is just nonsense."
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My mother is about to pass away after a 25-year battle with a brain tumor. Comforted by the words of Macrina the Younger:
"O Lord, you have freed us from the fear of death. You have made the end of life here the beginning of a true life for us. You give rest to our bodies in sleep, and you awaken us again with the last trumpet. The dust from which you fashioned us with your hands you give back to the dust of the earth for safe keeping, and you who have relinquished it will recall it after reshaping with incorruptibility and grace our mortal and graceless substance"
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Dear seminary students, remember, that every time you quote Matthew Henry in an exegetical essay, an angel takes a Xanax.
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Today I felt powerfully challenged by @aimeebyrdPYW who noted that egalitarians need to make sure they are not simply treating women as honorary men who can achieve manly things in a man's world, but recognize the distinctiveness of women & how to make the world better with them.
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Wow, the responses to the @CTmagazine piece on Trump has revealed a real fissure in evangelicalism between those who value character and those who will trade it for expediency.
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I am not one to be provocative, but I find complementarian readings of Rom 16:1-7 - Phoebe was just the delivery lady, Junia was a dude, Prisca was Aquila's helper - to be thinner than a French crepe & about as convincing as vows of fidelity at a Trump family wedding ceremony.
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I'm guessing there are no psychiatrists, psychologists, or pediatricians at MacArthur's church.
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A new N.T. Wright and Michael Bird collaboration coming in March 2024!
spckpublishing.co.uk/jesus-a…
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Despite my pleas, I've learned that you can't reason with people who proudly reject the Great Tradition, who only interpret the Bible in the context of American culture wars, and who imagine God as a divine version of William Wallace.
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Some Parts of Evangelicalism Do Not Need To be Deconstructed ... They Need To Be Destroyed! My response to @JonathanLeeman with HT to @kkdumez @dpgushee @JemarTisby michaelfbird.substack.com/p/…
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For the love of St. Ronald Reagan, can some please tell these people that NTW didn't write the headline, @TIME did it as clickbait. NTW argues that (1) We don't know why God let this happen; (2) But the Bible calls us to Lament; and (3) Even God laments!
N. T. Wright says the Bible offers no ultimate answers to #COVID19 and the profound suffering it has caused. The Bible disagrees. thegspl.co/3bG28pS
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How does one vaunt slogans about taxing the rich, while wearing a dress that costs more than what most people earn in a year, and relish sitting in the company of the obscenely rich and famous? This is the recreational marxism of the bohemian bourgeois that really ticks me off.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attending the $35,000-a-ticket #MetGala in a Brother Vellies gown blaring "Tax the Rich" is a complicated proposition.
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Saving Inerrancy from the Americans?
"The doctrine of Scripture needs to be de-Americanized. We need to save Scripture from the American culture wars, their tribalism, borderline bibliolatry, their gatekeepers, weird shibboleths, and myopic fixations."
michaelfbird.substack.com/p/…
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Burke's conservatism also included prosecuting the East India Company for its exploitation of India, the enfranchisement of Catholics, self-determination for the American colonies, and standing up to head-chopping Jacobins. He is a hero to conservatives and political liberals.
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25 March is the date that J.R.R. Tolkien chose for the day when the One Ring was destroyed. It is the traditional date of both the Annunciation to Mary and Jesus's crucifixion. It is the date which marks the triumph of life over the forces of evil and death.
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Sweet Mother of Melchizedek, drop what you are doing, and listen to the @CTmagazine podcast on "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill." Mandatory listening for every Christian leader or seminarian!
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Sweet Mother of Melchizedek. How the hell does someone in the epicentre of a church and seminary swirling with allegations of abuse and toxicity, have the gall to write a critique of a book that tries to counter abusive and toxic churches? Stop! @scotmcknight @laurambarringer
A “good” church may not have a famous pastor, an impressive building, or a professional-quality worship band; but it will be marked by gospel faithfulness, spiritual fruitfulness, and furthering the Great Commission. thegspl.co/31JxufO
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Can the West learn from African theologians?
Ghanaian theologian Kwame Bediako said, “Well, Christianity is thriving where we are, and it’s waning where you are, so maybe there is something that could be helpful to you all.” HT @alifeoverseas
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Again, this is part of his marketing strategy!
No mention of Matthew Barrett, Kevin Giles, Liam Goligher, Michael Bird, Lewis Ayres, or other critics. He focuses ONLY on Aimee Byrd.
20 theologians and 1 laywoman accuse you of doctrinal aberration and you go for the laywoman!
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I am not surprised by the fact that Trump wants to turn the US Republican party into his own personality cult: but what is tragic is the high number of supposedly principled and patriotic men and women who want to be part of it even at the expense of both truth and democracy.
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Things I've learned from the Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast from @CTmagazine
- Choose character over ability.
- Choose honesty over loyalty.
- Choose truth over tribe.
- Non-denominational means personality cult.
- When success is sacred, bullying becomes a sacrament.
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How in the #MeToo era do Democrats invite Bill Clinton to speak at their convention?
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He's right though. Read Matt 28:18, WCF 1.10, and BFM1963 1. Biblical authority cannot be unhitched from Christology and Pnematology. The Bible is not a magical book of rules, it is nested within the triune economy of revelation and redemption.
“Jesus is our ultimate authority, NOT the Bible!”🤦🏿♂️🤦🏿♂️
Unhitching from the OT eventually leads to this nonsense. 2 Tim 3:16-17
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Confession, I sometimes read 2 Cor 8:13-15 to students and tell them it's a quote from a French Marxist Theologian. After several minutes of denunciation, I point out it's actually a quotation from Paul. #NaughtyProfessor
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My twitter interactions are so weird, I have one group of people hounding me as a right-wing fascist, and another group of people labelling me a woke cultural marxist. It's about tribes, networks, in-group integrity, and deviant labelling. In other words, sociology.
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I think @smcalpine6 nailed it: "The really cool thing about writing a book called The Sin of Empathy is that you are probably writing it for a group who won't even come close to committing that aforementioned sin."
Discussing the provocative book title, "The Sin of Empathy," with @joe_rigney. Our Thinking in Public conversation publishes first thing tomorrow morning.
Subscribe and watch it here: ow.ly/UN8K50V2prW
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Dear seminary students, remember, every time you quote Matthew Henry in an exegetical essay, an angel asks to be reassigned to the wrath of God division.
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When hatred is a virtue civility becomes a crime!
BREAKING
Brent Leatherwood removed as president of ERLC
baptistpress.com/resource-li…
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To my many complementarian friends, Kristin is not your enemy, you can still be a complementarian, but she's showing you that some of the stuff you were told and sold was more cultural than biblical, more patriarchal than prophetic, more Hollywood than holiness.
To me, what is primarily at issue is not whether some guys think I'm a Christian, a wolf, wolf-adjacent, or if I otherwise meet w/ their approval. Rather, I'm interested in addressing the nature of historical research & role of Chr academics in pursuing legitimate scholarship.
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I just heard the sad news that Gordon Fee passed away. I only ever corresponded with him, I never met him in person, but he was known as a very gracious Christian man and a truly brilliant and erudite exegete. May he rest in Christ and rise in the new creation.
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Biggest victims of this election:
A. Kanye West
B. Antifa activists now having to get jobs
C. Sean Hannity having to co-host his show with Donald Trump
D. Floridan Cubans being told they are now technically "white"
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Anthony, as I've long said, when success is an idol, bullying becomes a sacrament, and cover-ups become part of the middle management's daily to-do list.
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A textbook example of protect the abusers at all costs, cower the victims into silence, and dismiss critics as apostates.
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I don't understand
Why TGC has to make complementarianism the center of gravity in a "gospel" movement.
How someone can champion the "plain sense" of Scripture and argue that prophecy is not didactic when women do it.
Who would argue that Junia was not a woman or an apostle?
Nowhere in Paul’s letters do we get the smallest hint that male and female have ceased to be important categories for life and ministry.
—@RevKevDeYoung
thegspl.co/34j0hpn
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Dear seminary students, whenever you cite wikipedia in an essay, an angel checks into a mental health facility.
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I submit that Galatians should be printed in capital letters because Paul was probably screaming the whole thing when he dictated it to some poor sap.
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Tolerance does not mean the absence of debate and division, but the ability of people with differences to live side-by-side together without seeking to harm each other.
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I hit "send," and so the manuscript for, Jesus among the gods: Early Christology in the Greco-Roman World, is emailed to @Baylor_Press.
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First they came for women’s leggings and I didn’t speak up. Then they came for women’s yoga pants and I didn’t speak up. Then they came for women’s bike pants and I still didn’t speak up. Then they came for my budgie smugglers and there was no one left to speak up.
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Hmm, I seem to be getting a lot of DM's. I wonder what that's about?
Oh, they have comments on masks.
Aha ... aha ... yeah ... what ... wait ... no ... what ... seriously?
Sweet mother of Melchizedek, some people are angry in the dumbest possible ways I can imagine.
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Oh boy, you make a couple of jokes about Matthew Henry, and a bunch of neo-Puritans, who supposedly believe in the doctrines of grace, lose their bundle and launch vicious attacks on you. If only they had the same passion for evangelism or helping the poor.
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This was filmed in 2012, not 1912, and it is morally abhorrent to the extreme. I mean, how does he say it with a straight face?
Unbelievable clip by @johnmacarthur from 2012, highlighted in recent article by @baptist_news.
"It is a little strange that we have such an aversion to slavery because historically there have been abuses..." 1/5
Follow link to read story: baptistnews.com/article/what…
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I have recently been made acting acting principal of Ridley College ... for 10 days. I have already embarked on the project of enfacing my image all over the college (like a good ANE king) and nominating the Bible verse that will be the theme of my regime, which is Luke 19:27.
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I miss the good old days when the Romans hated Christians for being pro-women, pro-slave, and pro-child.
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Dear America,
It is Day/Month/Year NOT Month/Day/Year. Think about it, it makes sense to go from lesser to greater. Why do you have to find ridiculous ways of being different?
Oh, and another thing, an entrée is an appetizer, not the main course.
Yours sincerely
The World
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"Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
- Captain G. M. Gilbert, the Army psychologist assigned to observe Nazi defendants at the Nuremberg trials.
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White Christians should remember that they worship a brown-skinned Aramaic-speaking Palestinian man seated at the right hand of the Father.
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I understand that the SBC is debating the place and process for affirming the Nicene Creed in its doctrinal affirmations. But ... if you cannot affirm the Creed or if you reject it, then you're outside historical Christianity, and you belong in the same category as Unitarians, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Episcopalians.
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Nice N.T. Wright quote for today: “Easter was when Hope in person surprised the whole world by coming forward from the future into the present.”
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This is truly appalling, to treat the president of a nation who is seekingUS assistance against Russian aggression like this before the media.
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Prediction, Trump evangelicals stop talking like Romans 13 and start talking like Revelation 13.
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The Fundamentalist War on Wokeness is a War on Christian Love - patheos.com/blogs/euangelion…
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Right now I should be heading off to the US, it's not just the conferences I miss, it's the Applebees, Chilli's, Cracker Barrel, Chik-fil-a, uber-polite waitresses, and unlimited soda refills. The things that make America great!
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I routinely sit my children down and try to explain to them, that if we all leave the remote control in the same spot, it will never get lost. And they all stare back at me as if I am the crazy one!
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The Left Behind novels are a mix of dispensational theology, American nationalism and apocalyptic soap opera. The thing I hate the most is that I never wrote them. Cause if I did, I would've bought Yale University and turned it into an institute to prevent the drinking of coffee.
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Dude, this is called "praying"!
.@CocoGauff took a moment to soak it all in after winning her first Grand Slam title ❤️
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Two things I have learned in Twitter in the last 24 hours. First, empathy is free, it cost you nothing, but gives so much. Second, being loving is just as important as being right. I wish men would remember these words when they talk to women or when they talk about women.
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I just came across an American Baptist Seminary who invented their own accrediting agency to accredit themselves.
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Sweet Mother of Melchizedek, this is so bad, it is the same line of thinking as Walter Grundmann's Jesus der Galilaer und das Judentum, written during the third reich, which argued that Jesus was Galilean, not Jewish.
I will never concede this. The notion that Jesus was a Jew only came into prominence after WWII. For literally nearly 2000 years this was not a thought except in fringe academic circles beginning in the mid 19th century and now many just accept it as fact. It is not. Jesus was not a Jew in any sense. His father (God) wasn’t a Jew (and being Jewish back then was Patrilineal). Mary was from Galilee, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, yes. but was raised in Nazareth. Plenty of Arabs today are born in Bethlehem and even in Nazareth (the largest Arab city in Israel) and are not considered Jews. Jesus was considered a heretic and was persecuted and killed for bringing forward a new religion (Christianity), a religion he worked hard to get all Jews to convert to and if it were up to him all Jews would have done so and there would be no Jews today.
People claim Jesus was a Jew because he participated in some Jewish rituals and taught in synagogues yet they fail to realize that there were no Christian churches at the time for Jesus to teach in and Jesus was working very specifically to convert Jews. He was literally persecuted and condemned to death by Jews for being a heretic and no amount of whitewashing can change this fact. Jesus was not a Jew. He was very much a Christian. I understand why it has been pushed since WWII that he was a Jew in other to tamp down on antisemitism in Christian countries but Jesus doesn’t clearly fit within the bounds of any actual definition of what makes a Jew a Jew.
Community note
Jesus of Nazareth was born in Judea, of the line of King David, who was a descendant of the man Judah, from which the word "Jews" was invented. Judah son of Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham.
It is literally the most documented lineage in all of human history.
biblehub.com/nlt/matthew/1.…
biblehub.com/nlt/luke/3.ht
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Beth Moore Becomes Anglican and Some Baptists Pick Up Pitch Forks
"If you don’t like Anglicanism, fine! Just make sure you know what you’re talking about if you trash it!"
michaelfbird.substack.com/p/…
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Okay, I need to crowdfund a short film called "Don't Look Back" where a PhD student and her professor discover that Jesus never said women can't preach to men and eternal functional subordination was invented in the 1970s. Cameo appearances by @kkdumez and @bethallisonbarr.
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