All Blog Posts (14)

Easter is the day we celebrate the Lord's resurrection. Christ's rising from the dead assures us with the promise of our own resurrection. This is why we call Sunday the Lord's day. It points us forward to the day when it truly will be on earth as it is in heaven. This is why baptismal fonts historically have eight sides. The new Christian is being placed into the eighth day by their baptism. It was to direct them to the new kingdom into which they were being brought by faith in Christ. it may… Continue

It is one of those things most of us have wondered at some point. Why does Jesus stay in the tomb on Saturday? What is he doing? To understand what is going on, we must go all the way back to the beginning. Genesis 2:13 tells us this, "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on… Continue

This week is traditionally called Holy Week. It is a time when we remember the the last week of Christ’s life. It is a very sombre week, and is one for intense reading and reflection. During our reading times, there will be a temptation to run past the cross to the resurrection. I want us to reflect upon the cross, and what Christ is doing there for us. The Cross can be something we take as a given. It almost becomes somewhat like a silent letter in our Christian life. It’s there, but we don’t… Continue

I hope that everyone has had a chance to look at the penitential Psalms for our Lentin readings. I also pray that everyone is beginning to have a better understanding of why we are to repent, or better still a more biblical vew of the God to whom we are repenting. It is with this latter concern that I am sending out a supplemental reading. I truly want us all to know the Lord who calls us to repentance. I would like everyone to read Joel 2:1-17. There are a few things in this passage which… Continue

In recent days, Rob Bell has released a book which caused a bit of a firestorm. Many people far smarter than I am have written critiques of the book. What I find scarier, and the impetus for my writing this article is the view of God held by Pastor Bell. Rob Bell is on the opposite side of the same heretical coin as the Westboro Baptist folks. Allow me to explain. Rob Bell talks about a God who is only love. On the other hand, the Westboro Baptist members speak almost gleefully of the wrath of… Continue

During Lent, we are going to do a very small look into what are called the Penitential Psalms. These are seven confessional Psalms. One of the focuses of REALife is confession. We as Christians are called to confess our sins. Christ sets it as part of the Lord’s Prayer to confess to God our sinfulness. The Psalms are the…

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Here's the current calendar for 2011. I'll post updates to this as they occur throughout the year. If you have an event, please create a new event so that they appear on our Ning site and our website. Click on the image below to enlarge it.…

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My friend Nate Cline offers his reflections on our current class on God 101: This week - The Bible

 

The Doctrine of the Bible 

 

  For this article, we shall discuss the Bible, its authority, its clarity, its necessity, and its sufficiency.  These four attributes constitute why we can, and in fact, must, trust scripture.  There are many false views or understandings of the Bible, which display a deficient trust in one or…

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After a bit of a delay here now the second installment of this blog post by my friend Nate Cline:

 

The Most Important Thing:

 

    I ended my last article with the words of Peter. “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” This time around we are going to focus on why he confesses this to be true. Jesus didn't come to give us a moral…

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During this Christmas time we turn our hearts and minds toward Jesus Christ. During these weeks of Advent we have been studying the Nature of Christ in our CITY-U. As John led us through the Theological material, I asked Nate to write down some of the class content as succinctly as possible for the rest of us who couldn't attend the class. Please read his article below:

The Doctrine of Christ: Who Do We Say…

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In this episode, we discuss the term Extra Nos. This is the idea that the Christian life is lived from the outside.

We also talk about the function of the Ten Commandments in light of what Christ has done for us.

The episode is available at this link http://undergroundorthodoxy.podomatic.com/player/web/2010-09-25T21_37_52-07_00

What is C.T.S.? If you've been through our membership seminar, then you might be familiar with it. If not, then this might be your first exposure to the acronym because we haven’t discussed it in a while. C.T.S. stands for Connect Train Send. It is a way for us to talk about what we do in a concise way and group our activities under common criteria. They also serve to help us gauge how well we are…

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Here is the third installment of Underground Orthodoxy. Underground Orthodoxy is a podcast which seeks to equip believers to find Christ in all of scripture, and declare the Gospel to all.



In this episode, we talk about hermeneutics, and how the focus of scripture is the Christ, and what he did for us on the cross. We also talk about missing the gospel in the abundant life, and finally we find Christ in Deuteronomy 9.



Hermeneutics is the term for how one reads scripture. If… Continue

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