Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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Like it or not, we live in a world dominated by social media. While many older forms of media continue to exist and to exert their influence, all have in some way had to bow before the ascendancy of new media. It is pervasive, it is ubiquitous, it is addictive, and it is changing everything. Yet because social media rose with lightning speed and so quickly became nearly omnipresent, we may already have lost sight of the influence it has …
I have been meaning to write a review of the latest book by my friend Leonardo De Chirico: Same Words, Different Worlds: Do Roman Catholics and Evangelicals Believe the Same Gospel? Leonardo is a pastor and scholar in Rome whose primary area of expertise is a Protestant perspective on Roman Catholicism. In this review, written by missionary Glenn Ainsley, you will learn why this book is interesting, informative, and helpful. Like most evangelical Christians who were raised under the influence of the American …
You know as well as I do that you are a finite being. Yet you know as well as I do that at times you fight against your finitude, you battle against your inevitable limits and boundaries as if they are a problem to be overcome or even a sin to be repented of. Yet what if your limits are not a bug but a feature of your humanity? What if these limitations are God’s gift and, therefore, good and …
These are confusing times, aren’t they? These are confusing times for those who wish to live according to God’s Word and unto God’s glory. There is a host of questions we need to wrestle with, a host of ethical dilemmas we need to consider. Is abortion permissible? Is it permissible in cases of rape or incest? Is it permissible when a child has been diagnosed in utero with a developmental disability like Down syndrome? What about with a fatal condition …
Most of us are familiar with the term “means of grace.” Means of grace are the ways in which the Holy Spirit works in our lives to lead us into holiness. You might think of them as the “channels” through which sanctifying grace flows from God to his people. Most prominently he does this through Scripture, prayer, and the ordinances of baptism and Lord’s Supper (or, more broadly, through the unique ministry of the local church). But did you know …
Every generation of Christians faces the very same challenge: To learn the Bible for themselves and to teach it to those who follow in their footsteps. This task cannot be willed, it cannot be inherited, it cannot be passed down. Rather, each generation must accept afresh the challenge to honor, to know, and to obey the Word of God. Gary Millar’s Read This First is, according to the subtitle, “A Simple Guide to Getting the Most from the Bible.” It …
I’ve come to the conclusion that Aileen and I parent weirdly. But I’ve also come to the conclusion that so does everyone else. When each of us looks at other parents, there are almost invariably some components of their parenting we would love to imitate, but others that strike us as, well, a little bit weird. This is why it is rare, or perhaps even impossible, to find a parenting book that we would follow completely rather than only partially. …
There is perhaps no book of the Bible that offers as many interpretive challenges as the book of Revelation. I sometimes debate whether the book is actually perfectly clear while we are pathetically thick or whether the book is extremely difficult to understand because God intended it to be. Either way, though the intent and general message of Revelation is clear enough, the details present a challenge worthy of the most eminent theologian. Speaking of which, Thomas Schreiner has recently …
I once sat at George Müller’s desk and read James 1:27 from his Bible. I once visited a library that contained artifacts from William Carey’s life and leafed through a Bible that he had owned and studied. I have pondered the color-coded notes in Amy Carmichael’s Bible and have paged through a first-edition King James. Closer to home, my father’s Bible was placed at the front and center of the church during his funeral and I had a special wooden …
Christians are known for being people of the cross—people who rightly focus a great deal of attention on the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. But while the cross stands at the very center of the gospel, it does not stand alone. Rather, it is surrounded, as it were, by the wider context of Jesus’s humiliation and exaltation—by all he did before and after he was crucified. The humiliation and exaltation of Jesus Christ are the twin subjects of Jonty …