This semester I’ve been teaching World Religions in our evening program. During one class session, I mentioned that there’s been a concerted effort from some religious and political groups to minimize the differences between orthodox Christianity and other factions. For example, many Americans have promoted the idea that Islam and Christianity are not all that […]
Under the authority of God’s inerrant word, Bethlehem College exists to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ by equipping men and women. How did Bethlehem College arrive at this mission statement and what model of education do we, Bethlehem College, use […]
And the master said to the servant, “Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.” —Luke 14:23 Christ has committed himself to the advance of the gospel through building his church. The foundation upon which Christ builds the church is the apostolic testimony of the gospel, namely, […]
Dear Friends of Bethlehem College and Seminary, This has been a challenging week for our school as we announced the resignation of our second president, Dr. Joe Rigney, and my appointment as interim president. I want to share with the school’s wider network of friends, alumni, and supporters some of the remarks that I made […]
Good Friday fuels our worship of the triune God as we meditate on what John Owen calls “the death of death in the death of Christ.” Let’s situate Christ’s death among his nine saving events: The above figure that depicts Christ’s nine saving events is from Robert Peterson’s Salvation Accomplished by the Son: […]
Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15, said that “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testify about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are […]
This message was given at the United for Life rally at the Minnesota State Capitol in February 2023. Ten years ago, I stood in the capitol rotunda and addressed a similar crowd–perhaps some of you were there–and urged our legislators to uphold marriage as the lifelong union of one man and one woman for the […]
For centuries, the Western tradition of thought conceived of beauty as a symmetry, harmony, or proportion between different elements of a thing. It was most likely the sixth-century B.C. Pythagoras, Greek mathematician and philosopher, with his school, who first argued that the origin of all things lay in number, which marked the birth of an […]
I skipped my first Valentine’s Day as a husband. I sort of made that decision on my own: “We’re poor,” “busy,” and “it’s not even a real holiday.” How perfectly sensible those words seemed at the time. We’ll celebrate our 20th anniversary this year! Let’s just say I learned a valuable lesson that first year. […]