By Bill Leonard “When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were 2 years old and under, according to the…
A nation confronted by conscience
By Bill Leonard “Our enemies act without conscience. We must not. This executive summary of the [Senate Intelligence] Committee’s report makes clear that acting without conscience isn’t necessary, it isn’t even helpful, in winning this strange and long war we’re…
Advent: Jesus’ DNA?
By Bill Leonard “What was Jesus’ DNA?” That’s a question my Wake Forest University colleague, physics professor Jed Macosko, says someone once asked him. Macosko mentioned it while concluding a superb lecture on DNA, Darwinism and evolution offered in the…
Religion’s killing fields: When will we ever learn?
By Bill Leonard “Afterwards it happened, before I had ever heard of the existence of [Anabaptist] brethren, that a godfearing, pious man, named Sicke Snyder, was beheaded at Leeuwarden, for being rebaptized. It sounded strange to me, to hear a…
Conversion crisis?
By Bill Leonard Of his 1821 conversion, evangelist Charles Finney wrote: “As I went in and shut the door after me, it seemed as if I met the Lord Jesus Christ face to face. … No words can express the…
The ‘Dogma of Revelation’ revisited (again)
By Bill Leonard In The Galileo Affair, George Johnston quotes Cardinal John Henry Newman’s 19th-century assessment of Galileo’s 16th-century “crusade” to establish the veracity of the heliocentric Copernican idea that the earth revolves around the sun. Writing long after Galileo…
Appalachian preaching: ‘A Hart Cheareing and Affecting Surmond’
By Bill Leonard In Primitive Baptists in the Wiregrass South, John G. Crowley describes an 1829 sermon preached at Union Church in Lakeland, Ga., by Reverend Matthew Albritton who, one listener said, rose “in the fullness of the gospel and…
‘He Tells Me I Am His Own?’ Maybe …
By Bill Leonard In his 1736 treatise, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, Jonathan Edwards described conversion as “a great and glorious work of God’s power, at once changing the heart of infusing life into the dead…
Debtors!
By Bill Leonard We recently purchased a new car, the first we’ve bought since 2005. “Sticker shock” is an understatement in 2014. That’s why St. Paul caught my attention with his advice to the Roman Christians: “Leave no debt outstanding,…