Blog - Page 180 of 318 - John H Armstrong

A Father, His Son and the Love of Two Great Sports

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:49-05:00September 5th, 2009|Categories: College Football|

Regular readers know that I love two sports: baseball and college football. I enjoy others sports now and then but I am passionate about these two. In a unique way these two loves define my childhood and thus they have remained with me for sixty years. Both interests began by learning and sharing these loves with my dad. From my earliest remembrance dad took me to see the Nashville Vols play minor league baseball. From this experience, and from playing pitch and catch with dad in the backyard, I learned to love baseball. In 1957, as a boy of eight, I adopted the World Series champion Milwaukee Braves as "my" team and the rest is history. All these years later I still love the Braves. Through thick, like in the great run in the 1990s, and through thin (there were several lean decades in Atlanta), I rooted for the Braves. Perhaps my greatest Braves baseball moment was doing chapel for the team at Wrigley Field back in the […]

Living Through the Twentieth Century

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:49-05:00September 4th, 2009|Categories: America and Americanism|

A Century of Living (HBO Films, 2002) is an absolutely amazing documentary. My television provider gave me free HBO for one year so I came across a replay of this sixty minute feature a few weeks ago and recorded it. If you ever get the opportunity watch it. (You can rent if from Netfilx or even find it in some free loan libraries.)

Seventeen men and women, all born in 1900 or before, share their poignant and life-affirming thoughts about the 20th century. Mixing indelible black-and-white film and photographic images with the words of a cross-section of men and women, the film spans key epochs and trends of the last 100 years, underscoring the fact that while the quality of our lives has changed so much over the past 100 years, the essence of our spirit has remained, essentially, the same.

This documentary allowed me to “meet” people who actually lived through the Great Depression and who celebrated […]

The Message of the Prophets

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:49-05:00September 3rd, 2009|Categories: Biblical Theology|

The Old Testament prophets were raised up by God to warn Israel of the promises of God regarding his judgment, when they turned away from him, and his forgiveness, when they returned to him. There message was continually fresh thus always contemporary. The prophets were placed at crisis points in Israel's history so they could address religious and social problems that plagued the people of the covenant. The theme(s) of the prophets seems to have included the following:

1. God rules in history.
2. God calls men and women to repentance.
3. All of society must be rooted in God's commandments.
4. Both judgment and hope are always the order of the day because God saves his people and judges his enemies.
5. The messianic kingdom describes a bright future state for all of those who trust God. It will come in God's time and way.
[…]

Switching the Whole Human Race

By John Armstrong|2009-09-02T05:00:00-05:00September 2nd, 2009|Categories: Christ/Christology|

One of the most staggering, and infrequently understood, texts in all the Bible is found in Colossians 1:19-20. Paul says:

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

I ponder this text a lot. What does it mean to "reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven" through the cross?

The word "all" has led to many interpretations of Christ's work and the way in which he has specifically reconciled all things on the earth. Because of the way Jesus spoke specifically about judgment, and because of the way Bible generally treats the subject, most exegetes agree that this text is not saying that all will be saved. But what is the text saying? Some say that everything will finally be brought under his power and will but this seems to me to only beg more questions. […]

Facebook and Twitter

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:50-05:00September 1st, 2009|Categories: ACT 3|

Some of you are already using Facebook and Twitter as social networking sites. I resisted Twitter for a few months but recently have found it useful as a way of linking me to helpful information in a simple way. I do not much care for people telling me their every move, and meal, throughout the day. I do like hearing about what they are writing, reading and thinking about vitally important issues and subjects. It also allows me to pray for friends when they post a simple sentence seeking my support. Facebook is already a huge social networking resource that I came to appreciate about six months ago. All of my blogs and articles are also posted as links on Twitter and Facebook. If you like these technologies, and enjoy using them, be sure to link to me on one or both of them. If you Twitter be sure to link so I can also follow you as well.

Social networking sites allow ACT 3 to inform its friends about publications, content, research and […]

The World Is Changing: What Will the Church Do About It?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:50-05:00September 1st, 2009|Categories: Missional Church|

The world is clearly changing at a dizzying pace. Everything we know about the world of the 20th Century has changed, is changing, or soon will change. If you do not believe this then watch this documentary video presentation, titled "Did You Know?" If you already believe the world is changing rapidly then watch this anyway. It will only convince you all the more that your sense of things is correct. When I watch something like this I have to ask: “How will we (Christians) prepare the church, our mission organizations, seminaries and other ministries for THIS new world?” If we fail to plan we should plan to fail. Only those who think deeply about the context of Christ's mission will do anything bold and filled with faith to respond to this new world.

Transgendered Persons and the Christian Faith

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:50-05:00September 1st, 2009|Categories: Sexuality|

Some years ago, at a conference on the Wheaton College campus on the life of Malcolm Muggeridge, I met Dr. David W. Virtue. David is not only became a friend but he has provided marvelous resources for me on issues within the Episcopal Church (USA). His regular posts are available at www.virtueonline.org. If you are an Episcopalian, or perhaps you are just interested in hearing an orthodox voice from within the present meltdown of this historic church family, David is your man. He collects articles and news reports and writes some truly remarkable stuff.

Though I was a bit surprised by a recent post of David's I found it provocative and insightful. This subject is almost never discussed by Christians. In the midst of the same-sex debate that now rages in the church-at-large David addresses a subject here that is often wrongly linked to the angst many feel about ecclesial approval of homosexual practice. I now reprint (with David's permission) the August […]

Catholic AND Evangelical

By John Armstrong|2009-08-31T05:15:00-05:00August 31st, 2009|Categories: Roman Catholicism|

This Thursday, September 3, a special "Catholic AND Evangelical?" presentation by Dr. Francis Beckwith and Dr. Timothy George will occur in Wheaton (IL) at 7:00 p. m. I plan to be present and invite any of you from the Chicago area to join me.

"Exploring Christian Identity: Can You Be Catholic and Evangelical?" will be hosted by the Center for Applied Christian Ethics and The Penner Foundation. The event begins at 7 p.m. and ends at 9 p.m. It will be at Edman Chapel on the Wheaton College campus.

This event will be moderated by my good friend Rev. Chris Castaldo of College Church in Wheaton. You can see more details at Chris's Facebook account.

I Am Somtimes Surprised That I Am Still Here

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:19:50-05:00August 31st, 2009|Categories: ACT 3|

My friend Steve Brown recently recalled that Malcolm Muggeridge—the British journalist, author, satirist and Christian—once said when he was an old man that he sometimes awoke in the morning with one foot on earth and one in heaven. “Sometimes,” Muggeridge said, “I wake up surprised that I’m here.”

I not quite to this point yet but I can picture it if I live long enough. I do know, along with Steve, that I wake up at the end of August saying, “I’m surprised we are still here and doing this mission of ACT 3.”

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not surprised that I am still able to minister. I will do ministry whether ACT 3 succeeds or not. But God clearly has shown us that he has a continued purpose for this mission that we formed back in 1991 in my family room in Carol Stream. There have been times, however, when I really wondered.

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The Dark World of Michael Savage

By John Armstrong|2009-08-30T05:00:00-05:00August 30th, 2009|Categories: America and Americanism|

Of all the conservative talk show hosts on radio the most bizarre of them all has to be Michael Savage. I admit I have listened to him just enough to realize how disturbed and nutty he actually is. What is even more amazing is how well his books have sold. There clearly is a deep angst in many conservatives who feed on the anger and dark world of this man.

Kelefa Sanneh, writing a recent piece on Savage in the New Yorker magazine, says he lives in a "dark, apocalyptic world." The talk show host, who has an audience of 8 million listeners, says, "Twenty-one hours a day I live in misery. Three hours a day I'm happy." Having listened to a little of this man while in my car I found this to be exactly what I would have expected. Callers who try to converse with Savage have little chance to say anything of substance. He attacks people, interrupts them and bullies them, and […]