Holiness – The High Calling of God in Christ Jesus
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008I have never heard anyone else equate perfect holiness as being the mark of the high calling of God. Usually ‘high calling’ would be some final and ultimate expression of ministry in the bringing of the Word, but in Spurgeon’s view, which we need to soberly consider, the issue of high calling is the issue of holiness.
Peace Be Unto You
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008I have to say that the most positive benefit of my Seminary experience was the discipline of being required to remain within a text. It made me realize that up until that time, I had conducted myself with a certain kind of charismatic and prophetic liberty, finding a scripture here and there to make my point, but something of a very remarkable kind happens when you confine yourself within a text, and don’t go unnecessarily outside of it to make your point, and let the Lord speak to us about that text.
# Numerical Index of Audio Teachings
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008Please click to view a numerical index of Art’s audio teachings.
On Prayer and Preaching
Thursday, February 7th, 2008In my opinion, prayer undertaken before, during, and after the public ministry of the word affects the quality and power of the word that goes forth, without which we miss the fullness of God’s intention.
Nightclub Disaster: A Parable of Hell
Thursday, February 7th, 2008In a moment, suddenly, the very plastic and synthetic trappings that encouraged a false gaiety, a pseudo excitement, are turned by a pyrotechnic spark into an inferno of relentless and devastating flames.
Some Comments on Netanyahu’s Election in Israel: A Prelude to Coming Disaster?
Thursday, February 7th, 2008While the upset victory of Benjamin Netanyahu may astonish, shock or delight one faction or another, what significance can it hold in effecting any real change in Israel’s perilous situation?
The Necessary Death and Resurrection of Israel
Thursday, February 7th, 2008As with the prophetic “son of man” of this dread and glorious chapter, so also are we, the “prophetic” people of God, required to be set down in the midst of a valley full of dry bones.
The Mystery of the Wisdom of God
Thursday, February 7th, 2008Paul is now going to reveal the mystery for which reason all things were created. This mystery has nothing to do with anything that we can recognize as being valid or relevant for the church. It has not even to do with the world or the benefits that men in the world will receive.
Teaching: A Moral Vocation
Thursday, February 7th, 2008Teaching touches the lives of students in those things that have to do with moral questions: questions of meaning and questions of value. What is really true? What is really desirable? What is real? What is reality itself? Whether you are conscious of it or not, you are touching all of these questions every day, in one way or another; therefore, it is important that you become conscious of it and you need to ask yourself what do I consider moral, true, righteous and good? To be truly moral, one must be heedlessly ruthless against one’s self-indulgence in favor of what is right, no matter what the cost or consequence to one’s own comfort or that of others.
A Message for the Earnest Seeker
Thursday, February 7th, 2008In much the same way as the Shekinah glory lights the holiest place of all, so also are we ‘lighted’ to the degree that first the natural (open daylight at the brazen altar), and later the ‘religious’ (the seven-branched oil-fed priestly serviced Menorah) gives way finally to the unaided Presence of God alone. T. Austin-Sparks […]
God: The Forgotten Father and Author of His Son’s Passion
Thursday, February 7th, 2008In all of the present and increasing controversy over Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion, little or nothing is said about the role of God the Father, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Israel’s God, in the suffering and Crucifixion of Jesus.
Lying Signs and Wonders: Deceptions of the Last Days
Thursday, February 7th, 2008I would appreciate your sympathy as I try to address a subject that is already dividing many of God’s people into defensive and opposing camps. One is put into the uncomfortable, if not dangerous, even in raising elementary cautions, of seeming to oppose to what in the eyes of many is holy and of the Spirit of God.
The Lord’s Coming in the Clouds
Thursday, February 7th, 2008Without in any way questioning the literalness of this eschatological glory, I suspect, as is often the case, that it contains an allegorical and spiritual meaning as well perhaps a necessary principle pertaining to the coming of any revelation of the Lord in fullness: namely, a ‘coming’ or revelation of the Lord that must, somehow of necessity, be preceded or accompanied by ‘clouds.’
Israel’s Restoration:
Thursday, February 7th, 2008The eternal wisdom of God, demonstrated through the Church, as the necessary prelude to the Messiah’s coming
Exploring Israel’s Deliverance through Zion
Thursday, February 7th, 2008I have long been intrigued by the phrase, “There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer.” Clearly Israel’s deliverance is a final, eschatological, closure event. But how is it to be effected?
A Further Guide for the Perplexed
Thursday, February 7th, 2008However faint the spiritual condition of Jewish people, the cry of the Shema is familiar to all. How often have we taken refuge in it, and used it as a bulwark of rejection when the uncomfortable question of an alien Jesus is pressed upon our consideration. Persuaded of the un-Jewishness of the matter, and unwilling for a religious polemic that is threatening or disquieting, we return to the fundamental tenet of our monotheistic belief-though if the truth were known we are not that avid for that ‘God’ either-to put an end to the whole unwelcome matter. Then, comfortably assured we have righteously affirmed our Jewishness, we turn again to the more serious issues of life, which in fact constitute our idolatry and chronic rejection of Him who calls.
God Crucified
Thursday, February 7th, 2008We shall be the victims of such compromise as the intensity of the temptations increase enormously as we come deeper into the end of the age, and increasing to the degree to which we have not really appropriated the Cross of Jesus Christ!
God as a Factor in the Secular Affairs of Men
Thursday, February 7th, 2008I don’t know if anyone has noticed lately, but God, so long restricted to mere Friday through Sunday religious acknowledgment, is threatening to become a factor in the more serious affairs of men where He is usually excluded.
Esteeming the Presence
Thursday, February 7th, 2008I have for a long time been secretly irked in my inner man with the growing preoccupation of many of God’s saints to desire the ‘presence’ of God.
Eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
Thursday, February 7th, 2008Few of us, even as Christians, realize the continual danger that this ultimate temptation constitutes. It is the delicious area of being ‘as God’ – judging and deciding, usually about others, those delicate and intangible things that can only be known by Him who alone is Judge.
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