A Ministry of Bob and Maureen Hoffman providing free web hosting to Indpendent Baptist Ministries.
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Aurora Colorado (CO)
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Hendersonville North Carolina (NC)
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We are an independent, fundamental Baptist church
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The surprising argument that Saul of Tarsus was born into bondage.Of the many letters the apostle Paul wrote, few survived. We have a good deal of his communication to churches as a whole—letters to groups of believers in particular cities. This makes sense. Such letters were read publicly and often; they were copied and disseminated and celebrated as Scripture soon after the ink had dried.Paul sent a number of letters to individuals as well. To read his biblical writings is to sense that you are glimpsing only a fraction of his relational network and influence. Almost all of those letters have been lost.But there are exceptions.It was a tall order for personal letters to ascend to the level of canon. It helped to be bound up with a great figure, a leader of a great community. Timothy, for instance, was a towering second-generation church leader; he was also the bishop of Ephesus, a major city of the Roman Empire and a major Christian center. Titus was a pillar of the Gentile mission and served as the bishop of Crete. Their eponymous letters had huge communities to champion their inclusion in Scripture.A mystery for the ages, then, is why Paul’s letter to Philemon—the leader of a house church in the minor city of Colossae—survives at all. It’s the most personal letter we have from Paul. It runs only 25 verses.The letter reveals a story. In it, a man named Onesimus has fled his master Philemon. Onesimus was most likely a household slave, a bondservant high in the pecking order.To call him a runaway slave is true, though it is misleading for modern readers, who might imagine Onesimus attempting to escape through something like the Underground Railroad.In fact, some scholars argue that Onesimus sought out Paul but planned to return to his master. Steven M. Baugh, ...Continue reading...
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Every sin requires Christ's atonement. But the Bible shows God punishing—and repairing—different sins differently.Christian theology consistently holds together truths that seem to want to fall apart: Jesus is fully God and fully human. People are sinners and created in the image of God. The church is local and universal.And yet, despite what we affirm, in practice, Christians are often unable to walk and chew gum at the same time. Instead of holding two truths in tension, we tend to slide to one side or the other, distorting it in the process. We treat Jesus either as an invulnerable, transcendent being or as a mere prophet. We speak as if humans are either so degraded we are capable of nothing but sin or mostly fine with a few rough edges. We think of the church as if it were only our own sect or we minimize the local congregation.Evangelical theologians have done great work in Christology, anthropology, and ecclesiology, respectively, to retrieve those three truthful tensions. But there is a fourth tension yet to be retrieved: All sins ruin us, and yet not all sins ruin us equally.To start, let us be clear: Sin—however small—is a serious thing. And sin is only atoned for by the work of God in Jesus Christ. But saying that Christ is the only one who atones for all sin is different from saying that all sins do the same kind of work on us.All sins break the sinner and create havoc around us. And yet the Scriptures consistently depict the sins we do as different, not only in effect on one another but before God. Within the Law, for example, different social remedies are given for different sins, and so are different sacrifices (Lev. 4; Ex. 21). Not everything requires a bull or a goat. Sometimes a dove will do. In the Prophets and Proverbs, God distinguishes—and even prioritizes—certain ...Continue reading...
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Archaeological study challenges assumptions, revealing ancient village in southern Levant thrived during 8.2ka event, showcasing human resilience and cultural evolution.
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IDF Chief Of Staff Herzi Halevi Approves Plans For Rafah Operation IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi has approved plans for a major operation in Rafah, the IDF ... Read MoreThe post News Digest — 4/29/24 appeared first on The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry.
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Televangelist Jesse Duplantis recently defended his wealth as being “blessed by God” and calling poverty a “curse.”
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