What is the most important event happening this coming Sunday? The correct answer is not Super Bowl XLIV. Mike Celizic, an NBC Sports contributor, claims that the Super Bowl has become “the greatest one-day event in the history of the world.” Whether you agree with his conclusion or not, the Super Bowl is not very super. As exhilarating, massive, noisy, expensive and popular as it may be, you are hard pressed to find any eternal value in the whole ordeal. What does it prove? What does it accomplish? Nothing very important. Is it interesting? Yes. Is it important? No. (more…)

Ron Meznar was retiring as a veteran missionary. Over many years of service, he had developed a strong testimony as a New Testament scholar and Greek professor. He was also instrumental in planting churches. The last church he pastored was full of high class, well educated, professional people, some being the richest in the country.

A friend of mine, also a missionary, spent some time with Ron a few days before he left the field, asking him several questions. The question I would like to highlight follows. “After all these years of experience, what one thing would you go back and change about your ministry?” Ron answered in the following manner:

For the last few weeks I have been going through my message files, deciding which ones to take back to the United States and which ones to throw away. In doing so, I realized that the trash can was filling up with messages that had failed to transform lives. (more…)

A marvelous description of the new covenant is given in Jeremiah 31:31-34:

Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:  Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they broke, although I was a husband unto them, saith the LORD:   But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.  And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

What is the basis of this covenant?  It is the blood of Christ. (more…)

For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground:  I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring. (Isaiah 44:3)

God wants to send another great awakening, but we must first meet His conditions and claim his promises as if we believed them.  Let us now consider this promise in its context and see what applications it has for New Testament saints.

In chapter 39 Isaiah had prophesied that Judah and Jerusalem would one day be destroyed by the Babylonians.  This was very dreadful and unsettling news for the people of Judah to hear, especially since the Judean kings were of the royal lineage of David.  If the Davidic line were to be destroyed, how could God fulfill his promise to establish the Davidic kingdom forever?  What would happen to the Messianic line if Babylon were to destroy Jerusalem?  This was undoubtedly weighing heavy on the hearts of God’s people, particularly the faithful remnant. (more…)

In 1855 Rev. William Arthur stirred up a Methodist conference with a series of powerful sermons.  He challenged the audience to pray for a fresh revival of Pentecostal power.  Arthur ended the meetings with a passionate prayer to the Holy Spirit:

Descend on all the churches, renew Pentecost in this our age … Crown this nineteenth century with a revival of pure and undefiled religion, greater than that of the last century, greater than that of the first, and greater than any demonstration of the Spirit ever vouchsafed to man. [i]

Two years later, Baptist minister Henry Clay Fish used the medium of printed preaching to outline the deplorable spiritual condition of the Church in America.  Nevertheless, refusing to accept a fatalistic approach to the crisis at hand, Fish cried out for “a general and powerful revival of religion in the Church,” believing that the “the only hope of saving the cities lay in a great revival.”[ii] (more…)

New England Theology, also called New Divinity or Edwardsean Theology, developed out of the revival era of the mid-eighteenth century. Most conventional Calvinists in New England doubted the legitimacy of the revivals, but some, such as Jonathan Edwards, embraced them. His acceptant attitude induced modifications in his Calvinist mindset. In this book, Douglas A. Sweeney and Allen C. Guelzo highlight these modifications and trace their waves of development in succeeding eras. (more…)

Fundamentalists seem to be doing more than they are accomplishing. Standing up for core doctrines is important. Doing this in a context of evangelism and reverent worship is even better. But what about the basic principle of prayer? Will any of this make an eternal difference if prayer is subtly neglected? Can fundamentalism persist if it is not a praying movement?

Ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not (James 4:2b).

The campaign for truth is always necessary, in any generation. Knowing this, it is important to realize that the truth is spiritual as well as propositional. (more…)

Christianity at large and fundamentalism in particular operate on the basis of a very fundamental principle (no pun intended)–Christ-dependence. This principle is so basic that Christian leaders easily neglect it. We assume that our fellow believers  grasp the importance of this necessary truth. But since human nature moves in the opposite direction towards self-reliance and sheer effort, regular review and emphasis on this point is extremely necessary. (more…)

(See Part 1 and Part 2)

As I stared into the casket of the twenty-five year old young man, I asked myself, “Why? … Why did he take his life by overdosing on drugs?”  He had everything to live for and a whole life ahead of him.  Yet he made the fateful decision to end it all.  His body tried to fight back; he laid in a coma for two months but, in the end, death triumphed.  He perished on Christmas Day.  A senseless tragedy indeed. (more…)

A missionary on the field sent me an e-mail one week ago asking two questions: what is preaching, and how does preaching differ from teaching? He didn’t ask these questions because he didn’t know the answers. He was preparing some lecture notes for an upcoming homiletics class and wanted some outside input. I think his questions are worth mentioning here, and I’m sure he would value your input as well as mine (he visits EV periodically). Allow me share my own. (more…)