Christian Heritage News

  By Edgar Ibarra - Posted at  YouTube :

 By Elizabeth Prata - Posted at The End Time: "the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. (1 Corinthians 14:34). Paul was exhorting about orderly worship here. Worship had gotten out of hand. Worship must be orderly, quiet, and respectful, that was the watchword. And Paul gave that word in this passage. Is there a time for a woman to holler and throw stools at the pastor? Apparently there was for Jenny Geddes. She’s gone down in Reformation History as someone who stood up for Jesus. Here’s how . Read more...

By Dewey Roberts - Posted at Vanguard Presbytery : When I woke up on Saturday, October 23, 2021, there were two texts that had been sent to me earlier that morning. One was from a pastor in the PCA. The other was from a pastor in Vanguard. The sentiments were the same for both of them with respect to the most recent decision of the PCA’s Standing Judicial Commission. On October 21, 2021, the SJC denied all the complaints against the actions of Missouri Presbytery for protecting and exonerating TE Greg Johnson in his professed same-sex attraction. The vote was 16-7. That means the issue is dead. It is over. If there had been at least 1/3 of the SJC jurors to vote against the decision of the highest court, then it would have automatically triggered a floor vote by the next General Assembly on whether to accept the majority report or the minority report. No such vote will be forthcoming now. But wait… the SJC voted on these same complaints against Missouri Presbytery at their March 2021 m

Image Source: Servants of Grace By Thaddeus Williams - Posted at Servants of Grace: Is Reformation theology still relevant today? Absolutely! It reminds us that we have a big God and that salvation is found in Him alone. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for God’s glory alone. And we know this because Scripture alone is our highest standard for truth. We don’t determine what is good and true about God. God does. I would argue that the biggest problem in the church today is that many of us have too small a view of who God is. We have shrunk an infinite being. We have diminished His glory and put Him into very small and manageable boxes. This ignores the objectively there God altogether to the point that He becomes (to us) just a projection of what we think He is like, what we feel He should be like. We need a new reformation—a re-reformation. As the church in the 21st century, we need to recapture a sense of the grandeur of God—how vast and awesom

 By Elizabeth Prata - Posted at The End Time: Social media is great! I like it. You can see how friends and family who live far away are doing. I enjoy seeing their kids get older as photos are posted year after year. We can celebrate each other’s accomplishments. People share tips and recommendations. People encourage each other. We become aware of needs we can fulfill. But one thing I do not like about social media is the tendency for people to pass along gossip from comments and to circulate false information from poorly researched ‘news’ sites. People do that a lot. Since the advent of the internet, there has been opportunity for people without credentials or training to call themselves journalists. Organizations write the news but they are really just anonymous gossipmongers. If I’m in a charitable mood I’d say it’s because these less than credible organizations are simply inexperienced with how to gather news properly, or they are inexperienced at how to write news well. Read mor

By Alejandra Molina  - RNS - Posted at Christian Headlines : (RNS) — Texas voters will decide on Election Day (Nov. 2) whether state and local governments can impose limits on religious services, such as the public health orders that shut down houses of worship and businesses earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic. If voters approve the measure, known as Proposition 3, it would add a clause to the Texas Constitution forbidding state or local authorities from prohibiting or limiting religious services. The amendment has divided religious groups in Texas and has also amassed bipartisan support, passing both the state Senate and House of Representatives with a number of Democrats joining unanimous Republican support. Read more...

 By Al Baker - Posted at Forget None of His Benefits : FORGET NONE OF HIS BENEFITS volume 20, number 42, October 21, 2021 “Now when Daniel knew that the document was signed, he entered his house and he continued kneeling on his knees three times a day, praying and giving thanks to God, as he had been doing previously.” -Daniel 6:10 When the power brokers in Babylon were offended by Daniel’s continued allegiance to Yahweh, they convinced King Darius to put forth a law requiring all of his subjects to pray to him alone. Daniel, in good conscience, could not and would not submit to the decree. He continued praying daily to the only true God. Hence his banishment to the lion’s den and miraculous deliverance by Yahweh, the eternal, sovereign, all powerful God of creation, providence, and salvation. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic the Federal and state governments of our nation severely restricted public gatherings for family picnics, sporting events, concerts, church worship serv

Cover of a 1901 edition of The Yellow Wallpaper by American Feminist writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman   (Image Source: Wikipedia )  By Pastor Mike Meyers - Posted at HeritageOPC.org:  In 2020 Zondervan Academic published Aimee Byrd’s fifth book, “Recovering From Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: How the Church Needs to Rediscover Her Purpose.” Here is a basic overview of the major points of the book: Purpose : “This isn’t a man-bashing book. And this isn’t a woman-empowerment book. This is a book that appeals to the reader to look at the yellow wallpaper in the church and to do something about it…One of our biggest challenges is to actually see this yellow wallpaper’s scrawling patterns that are stifling the force of the biblical message and strangling the church’s witness and growth. Don’t we want to rip those away and reveal the beauty and unity in God’s Word?” (19). [1] Later she writes, “I am writing because we need to recover a better way. We need to peel off this yellow wallpaper

 By Anna Grace Wood - Posted at Femina Sola Gratia: Someone reached out to me with some questions concerning certain aspects of domestic abuse. This is not the first time I’ve had such questions from readers and others. I’ve worked with pastors who wanted to understand DV better and to understand the needs of women who have been abused. I’m not a trained DV expert. I am a woman who has lived with abusers most of my life . I’ve experienced it at the hands of parents, husband, other family, and even wolves in a church I once attended. I’ve studied it extensively when I was co-authoring a book on the subject. However, the most important aspect of understanding domestic abuse is to know what God has to say on this subject. It is always Him that we are to seek to honor and obey, no matter what the subject might be. So, towards that end, the questions… Why do I say women will lie about being abused? Worldly women will lie and say they have been abused, raped, attacked, etc., when they haven’

 Posted at Churches Without Chests : Africa receives some American errors that are quite beneficial. For example, before the NBA finals, the Super Bowl or the World Series, sports merchandisers produce memorabilia of both finalists winning, so as to be able to immediately sell when the final is over. Unfortunately, half of that merchandise represents an alternate universe: where the team that lost actually won. What happens to the champions-that-never-were T-shirts and caps? Much of it is donated to third-world countries, where needy folks wear shirts displaying an event that never happened. Hey, we’re not complaining. Another shirt on a poor man’s back is a good thing, even if it celebrates what never occurred. Error is sometimes beneficial. Some imported errors are profoundly destructive, though. The worst of them are theological errors, for what touches Scripture touches ultimate realities. Two such errors that originated in America are particularly devastating for a country like m

 By Denny Burk  Former editor of Christianity Today, Mark Galli, wrote a jaw-dropping column last week. Galli’s essay discusses where the next generation of evangelical leadership is going to emerge from. Will it be from among “elite evangelicalism” (e.g., Fuller Seminary, CT, Intervarsity Press, World Vision, etc.), or will it be from among the constellation of “reactionary Reformed conservatives” (e.g., Doug Wilson)? Galli then goes on to talk about his tenure at Christianity Today and what it revealed to him about the priorities of “elite evangelicalism.” He writes , Elite evangelicalism (represented by CT, IVPress, World Vision, Fuller Seminary, and a host of other establishment organizations) is too often “a form of cultural accommodation dressed as convictional religion.” These evangelicals want to appear respectable to the elite of American culture. This has been a temptation since the emergence of contemporary evangelicalism in the late 1940s, the founding of Christianity Tod

 By Jonathan L. Master - Posted at Tabletalk : Hardly a month goes by when we do not hear of another minister or Christian leader who has fallen publicly. Usually, it turns out that the leader led a double life for years before being caught. With each public fall, commentators scramble to provide a postmortem and to suggest a solution. But the fundamental issue is clear: integrity is in short supply. Yet, Christians most of all should know the value of integrity. Words must be matched by actions. The public persona must match the private. The Apostle James goes so far as to write this: “But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your ‘yes’ be yes and your ‘no’ be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation” ( James 5:12 ). Proverbs tells us that this kind of integrity is far more valuable than money: “Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than he who is crooked in speech and is a fool” (19:1). And integrity—the mat

Image Source: Wikipedia  By Pastor Obbie Tyler Todd - Posted at Desiring God: When Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton through the liver in Weehawken, New Jersey, on the morning of July 11, 1804, Hamilton clung to life for another 31 hours after the duel. Although his illustrious career and ignominious death have not typically been remembered for their piety and devotion, Hamilton’s beliefs about God, Christ, sin, and salvation came to the fore in these last excruciating moments. Hamilton was no stranger to the Bible or the church. As a child on the Caribbean island of Nevis, where he was born across the street from St. Paul’s Anglican Church, he attended a small Hebrew school and learned to recite the Decalogue in its original language. At Elizabethtown Academy in New Jersey, he wrote commentaries on the books of Genesis and Revelation. At King’s College in New York, he attended chapel and began “the habit of praying upon his knees both night and morning.” 1 In fact, Hamilton owed his

Transgender Flag - Source: Wikipedia  By Michael Wilson - Posted at The Culture Alternative: I seemed to have lost track that HIV is still an issue. Here is an update of the current risk, particularly to the transgender community. Chad Felix Greene is a senior contributor to The Federalist. He is the author of the “Reasonably Gay: Essays and Arguments” series and is a social writer focusing on truth in media, conservative ideas and goals, and true equality under the law. You can follow him on Twitter @chadfelixg. I earnestly hope and pray that every child and adult struggling with gender identity issues will find wholeness, peace, and happiness from our Master Jesus. I earnestly hope and pray that we will live to see the day when every person who feels trapped inside the wrong body will find internal resolution without hormones and radical surgery. At the same time, I wholeheartedly oppose the transgender revolution and predict that, ultimately, it will fail. Jesus is the answer and t

  By David de Bruyn - Posted at Churches Without Chests: It’s hardly disputable that global Christianity has been overwhelmed and colonised by the Pentecostal and charismatic movement. After Roman Catholicism, the Christianity identified variously ascharismatic, Pentecostal, Prosperity Gospel, or Latter Rain (with all its permutations and differences) makes up by far the largest percentage of what is classified as Christian. In just over 100 years since its beginnings in Azusa Street, California, it has come to dominate Christianity, and particularly the Christianity spreading in the Global South and and South-east. The growing and new-born Christianity in South America, Africa, and south-east Asia is overwhelmingly of the Pentecostal kind. Non-Pentecostals, or cessationists as they are sometimes called, have dwindled into the minority. Very few voices have been raised to counter the theological distinctives of Pentecostalism: an emphasis on the supernatural sign gifts of the Holy Spir

 By Anna Grace Wood - Posted at Femina Sola Gratia: God is sovereign even over abuse Sister, if you are being abused or if you know someone who might be being abused, I’m sorry. Welcome to my page on abuse. I pray it’s a blessing to you. Here we’ll look at what domestic abuse is and is not, the difference in a bad marriage and an abusive one, my own story of being abused, and some resources that might help you. I was born into abuse and I married an abuser. I’ve experienced everything from physical to emotional abuse, from sexual to spiritual abuse. I’ve lived under the heavy hand of extreme financial abuse both with my father and my husband. Outside of my immediate family, I’ve experienced molestation by men I ought to have been able to trust and once was nearly raped. But abuse doesn’t define me and it needn’t define you or those you love, either. God is sovereign, even over abuse. Read more...

 By Paul Helm - Posted at The Banner of Truth: One of the most difficult things at present for the Reformed Christian is to strike a balance between yesterday and today. This is not perhaps surprising. The Reformed Christian believes that in the sixteenth century the Reformers recovered the biblical faith, and that no Protestant ministry has excelled that of the seventeenth century. Reformers and Puritans have together given the churches an enormous wealth of theological learning and pastoral insight. Our attention to the past is reinforced by the present failure of the churches, and by the ways in which the Reformation is ignored by Christians at large. It is enormously beneficial to be made aware of our heritage in this way, for besides educating us in the faith the Reformers and Puritans remind us that in an important sense the Christian message does not change, and is not to be made to change; they counter the half-belief of many of our fellow-evangelicals that the years between