Blog - Page 231 of 318 - John H Armstrong

Trinity Sunday

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:55-05:00May 18th, 2008|Categories: The Trinity|

Last Sunday we celebrated Pentecost Sunday in the Western Church. Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday.
I love the way the cyclical and seasonal Church calendar requires the people of God to remember the great historical facts and doctrinal truths of the Christian religion. I grew up in a conservative church and yet I do not ever remember a serious discussion of the Trinity, much less a Sunday given to the celebration of the doctrine of the Triune God.

Following the lectionary I will preach this morning at First Reformed Church in South Holland, Illinois, from Matthew 28:16-20. This is one of those rare texts where you have all three persons in the Godhead referenced in one sentence. And the words are attributed to Jesus by the Gospel writer Matthew. We are to baptize those who embrace the Christian faith in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Notice, Matthew does not say "names."

[…]

Is Big Oil the Problem or the Solution?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:55-05:00May 17th, 2008|Categories: Economy/Economics|

Big Oil is taking a beating these days, especially now that gasoline prices are above $4 a gallon in most areas of the U.S.
It is as common as “daily workplace chatter” to attack the major oil companies for their greed and huge profits, all the while blaming them for some, or even all, of the economic problems that we currently face.

Last week the congressional Democrats blamed Big Oil with their usual attacks while they did nothing serious to address the need they have never addressed for over thirty years—the production of more energy within the borders of the United States. So, expect to hear the same message that we have heard in every election since the 1960s–“we must find more energy (alternative sources) within the U.S.”–but this time expect that the next president and the Congress will finally have to do something about it. We cannot depend on alternative energy for decades so something has to be done with oil supply […]

Do You Really Believe in Freedom of Religion?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:55-05:00May 16th, 2008|Categories: Islam|

A 24-year old Assyrian Christian woman, who is a citizen of Iran, was
recently rejected for a job as a flight attendant with Air Iran, the state-run airline. What was the reason for her rejection? She had not read the Koran. Her comment about her rejection underscores a major point that I believe is true with regard to all religion in public society. “Religion without the freedom to reject it is not a true religion. It makes life very claustrophobic.”

Christianity has not always recognized this principle clearly, given the history of certain events that followed the conversion of Constantine and the millennium long developments of European Christendom. Christendom plainly had long periods where there was little or no freedom in European states that allowed a person to openly “reject” the Christian faith without real personal and social consequences.

But there […]

John Hagee and the Catholic Church

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:55-05:00May 15th, 2008|Categories: Roman Catholicism|

John Hagee, an influential Texas televangelist, is a huge supporter of the state of Israel. His theology is plainly dispensational and his support of Zionism is well-known. The same could be said about the views and practices of many other evangelicals. What has created considerable public conflict, in Hagee’s case, is his endorsement of John McCain. John Hagee’s anti-Catholicism, not his pro-Zionism, has been made an issue in recent weeks. Since McCain had previously accepted Hagee’s endorsement the media has made strong comparisons between Hagee’s anti-Catholicism and Jeremiah’s Wright’s anti-Americanism.

This issue became even more contentious when the association of Jeremiah Wright with Barack Obama was made an issue over the last few months. This support of McCain by Hagee has been compared to the Wright-Obama matter, even by Obama’s campaign on several occasions. It seems to me that fair-minded people, who are not blindly committed to either one of these two candidates, can see an obvious difference here. Whereas John Hagee […]

The Rise of a New Ecumenism

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:55-05:00May 14th, 2008|Categories: Unity of the Church|

The word ecumenical has suffered great harm over the past
100 or so years. A movement that bore this name began well in the early 1900s but
it came to represent something that had less to do with the gospel of Christ
and much more to do with alliances for political and social change after World
War II. In opposition to these more liberal tendencies in the worldwide ecumenical
movement more conservative Christians raised up various groups to unite their
churches and constituencies around the gospel.

The most noted group for unit was the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), born in the 1940s. It has
now, at least to my mind, come to mean very little at this point. NAE
was once “a white male club,” back in the 1980s when I attended its meetings
actively. Now it has adopted an agenda that sounds much more like a politically
left-leaning evangelicalism, in opposition to the equally politicized Christian
Right movement.

Much more important to the mission of Christ […]

Preaching on Pentecost Sunday

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:56-05:00May 13th, 2008|Categories: Homiletics/Preaching|

This past Lord’s Day (May 11) was Pentecost Sunday. For many it passed with little or no recognition of this great truth of our Christian faith. But for me, and the congregation of First Reformed Church in South Holland (where I am preaching regularly until the new pastor is installed on June 15,) it was a great day to worship God the Holy Spirit in the fullness of joy.

I preached from the Lectionary and thus the Gospel text was John 20:19-23. This text seems not to be appropriate to the feast of Pentecost since the events presented here happened on Easter eve. But it actually fits perfectly with John’s great theme of “sentness.” This is connected to the Spirit’s power coming upon the disciples (corporately) in order to give witness to Christ and thus to speak with authority and power. This is John’s emphasis here without doubt. I think we sometimes get caught in a bind of trying to create a “harmony” […]

1968: A Year in Crisis

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:56-05:00May 12th, 2008|Categories: The Church|

This past Saturday morning a conversation was hosted by the history department of Wheaton College in conjunction with alumni weekend at Wheaton. This event, with the title: "1968, a Year in Crisis: Evangelical Churches Then and Now," featured three highly regarded scholars and authors:
Dr. Nathan Hatch, the president of Wake Forest University, Dr. Mark Noll,
professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and Dr. John Piper, the highly esteemed author and pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis. Each man spoke for about ten minutes, outlining their thoughts about the year 1968 and then about what has happened to evangelicals over the past forty years since that tumultuous time.

Interestingly all three of these highly gifted men graduated from Wheaton College in the spring of 1968. This was the same year in which Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, […]

Israel's 60th Anniversary

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:56-05:00May 9th, 2008|Categories: Israel|

My good friend, Jim Tonkowich, the president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), wrote a news release yesterday on the birth of the State of Israel, which occurred on May 14, 1948. Jim’s statement about Israel’s past and future reflects my own view of things there quite well. I believe this type of balanced perspective is called for when various confusing voices are raised regarding this important modern democracy in the Middle East.

Since I know Jim very well, and respect his comments profoundly, and because I serve on the IRD Board, I am pleased to share his statement with my readers:

Today the nation of Israel is celebrating the 60th anniversary of its independence, according to the Hebrew calendar. On May 14, 1948, as Great Britain relinquished its mandate over Palestine, Jewish leaders there proclaimed the modern state of Israel. U.S. President Harry Truman, overruling many of his top advisers, was the first to recognize […]

Jeremiah Wright is Your Brother

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:56-05:00May 8th, 2008|Categories: Race and Racism|

Like him or not Jeremiah Wright is your brother in Christ if you are a Christian. I know, some readers will choke and fume and react and then say, "That is simply not possible." I am really not talking to you because you have already determined who is and is not a Christian based upon what you hear and read, not upon the New Testament criteria themselves. (It is not your vocation, I can assure you, to make these kinds of determinations in the first place but never tell that to a person who "knows" that they "know" who is and is not a Christian!)

The biblical criteria are simple: (1) Confess faith in Christ the Lord who is risen (2) Be a baptized follower of the Savior in the fellowship of his Church. Since none of us lives the life of Christ with even the remotest perfection then all such standards should be jettisoned by people of real charity. Wright, by […]

Be Sure to Check Out Transformissional Church

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:21:56-05:00May 8th, 2008|Categories: Missional Church|

Some of my readers know that I write on two different blog spots. Today I posted an article on the Obama campaign that asks a question that nags at me day-in and day-out as this election season unfolds. What should we make of all these young people flocking to the election this year? This is an impressive phenomenon. How should Christians respond? Check it out at www.transformissionalchurch.com.