The truth is that we cannot know or do what is good apart from Jesus Christ. It is not that people who don’t know Christ as their Lord and Savior actually do good, and that Christians must account for the good that they do apart from Christ. No, that frames the problem in the...
I could title this post “The Jubilee Factor” because it is a simple observation about the teaching of the biblical Jubilee and how it speaks to the current world financial crisis. So, what is the Jubilee? The Jubilee year (Leviticus 25:11-13) is the year at the end of seven cycles of Sabbatical years, and...
When people get serious about taking America back from the Liberals, they will need to go back in history to see when and how our constitutional republic was lost. It will be discovered that Barack Obama is not responsible for turning America in to a socialist nation. That project began centuries earlier with a...
1 Peter 1:22: Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart… Calvin complained that Erasmus mistranslated the first word of verse 22 in a past tense, as if Peter was congratulating people on the accomplishment of having purified themselves....
Paul said that many of the Corinthians had wrongly discerned the Lord’s body and that their faulty discernment caused many among them to be weak and ill, and many to die (some translations use “sleep”). To die or to sleep? The Greek word can be translated either way, depending on the context. In this...
“Do this in remembrance of me,” said Jesus. The purpose of the Lord’s Supper is to re-member, to reconnect with the body of Christ. This remembering is not simply a matter of memory, but a matter of membership. It is a matter of re-membership-ing, of reinforcing the bonds of membership. “In the same way...
Until very recently in history families were considered to be a single economic unit. This is still part of the U.S. Tax Code. The word “economic” comes from the Greek word “oikos,” which means household. It did not mean that men “worked” and women didn’t. It did not mean that men worked outside the...
The following review by Adam T. Ross is on Goodreads (with comments by Doug Jones): I had a lot of trouble with this book. I wanted to like it given how many people in so many corners have commended it to me. And there is true insight here, but I feel those insights are...
This psychological process of accommodation is the basis of the long strategy to make sin acceptable. The first time a Christian encounters sexual sin he is repulsed. It is dismissed without consideration because of the biblical prejudice against it. Make no mistake that the Bible is prejudiced against all forms of sin, as it...
Paul has been talking about our freedom in Christ, that in Christ people are free from superstition and godless cultural practices. He began this section in chapter eight talking about various food prohibitions and practices as an example of Christian freedom. He had elsewhere discussed the fact that Christians are free from the Old...
Just as God is identified as Trinitarian, so are His people, and so is His world. We have been created in God’s image, and God is Trinitarian. Christians are to understand the world through God’s eyes, and God’s eyes are Trinitarian. There is nothing outside of or apart from God. God is all encompassing,...
Paul had raised the ante of his accusations against the Corinthian leaders from sexual immorality to idolatry. Note that Paul did not recommend that the faithful Corinthian Christians make the effort to save those who had been captured by idolatry. He did not recommend that they maintain fellowship and try to convince the idolaters...
This is a response to Doug Wilson’s post, The Spiritual Drive Train. I put it here rather than as a comment to his post because of the length of my response. He suggests that knowing what not to do is not the same as knowing what to do. True enough, but knowing what not...
From Arsy Varsy — Reclaiming The Gospel in First Corinthians, by Phillip A. Ross, ©2008, 352 pages, Pilgrim Platform. Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God shall destroy him. For the temple of...
Rodney Stark has written another great book, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (Random House, 2005). In recent years, a number of important books have offered a counter-narrative to the version of European history that has seared itself into the Western consciousness since the Enlightenment, in which...
Why should government or businesses provide health care or retirement benefits at all? Think of Social Security: it began after the Great Depression as a way to provide for people so that such a situation would not happen again. People had not been saving for their own retirement/rainy day and when the Great Depression...
According to Miriam Keith in a recent article in the Marietta Times, “Tribe Helps Overcome Depression,” which follows the lead of Bob Murray and Alicia Fortinberry in their book, Creating Optimism: A Proven Seven-Step Program for Overcoming Depression, a loyal network of friends and family can be the most powerful tool available for overcoming...
The publication of this book began early in the Twenty-First Century when Dr. Douglas Vickers suggested that Ross publish his work with Wipf & Stock, one of the early academic oriented publish on demand companies. The book on Colossians was originally titled Nothing But Christ—Another Look at Colossians (Wipf & Stock, Eugene, OR, 2001)...
I have been reading The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle That Changed the World by W. Cleon Skousen. It is the curriculum for the current 9/12 Project groups that have sprung up across the nation. From another source, I found the following: During the debate over ratification of the Constitution, many mainline Christians howled...
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6). Jesus was surely speaking to hungry and thirsty people. Crowds, like sheep, eat and drink all the time. But it was not hunger or thirst that Jesus spoke of. The object of the desire here is critical. Jesus...
People can copulate, but only God can create life.
Buy our "No Other gods" and "Bail Worship" merchandise and to help support this ministry an remind the world of the First Commandment.
Peter's Vision of Christ's Purpose in First Peter by Phillip A. Ross, November 2011, 317 pages.
The True Mystery of the Mystical Presence by John Nevin & Phillip A. Ross, October 2011, 355 pages.
Rock Mountain Creed — Jesus' Sermon on the Mount by Phillip A. Ross, 2010, 325 pages.
Colossians — Christos Singularis by Phillip A. Ross, 2010, 263 pages.
Wordpress by WebPropper.com 