The more I've worked on this project for @crossway, the more I've become convinced that the New Testament use of the Old dismantles the case for slow incremental development and utterly vindicates "early high Christology." Here we have Peter (casually!) replacing YHWH with Christ, in a passage that's not even making a wider point about Christology.

On this day, in 1536, William Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake for translating the Scriptures into English for the common man. His final words, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.”

If you don't like "object lessons" used to teach spiritual truths, you're going to hate the Bible... - Mustard seed (Jesus) - Setting a child in front of people (Jesus) - Holding up a coin (Jesus) - Using a fig tree (Jesus) - Writing in dirt (Jesus) - Making mud and using it on a man's eyes (Jesus... although this is a mindblowing Genesis 2 redux illustrating Jesus = God) - Breaking bread + holding up a wine goblet (Jesus) - Tearing a cloak in 12 pieces (Ahijah) - Walking naked and barefoot for 3 years (Isaiah... but I'm not doing this one anytime soon) - Smashing a clay jar in front of listeners (Jeremiah) - Wearing a wooden yoke (Jeremiah) - Joining 2 sticks into 1 in front of hearers (Ezekiel) - Using rope to bind your hands and feet in front of hearers (Agabus) - Making a rainbow (God... also, this was cool and not gay) - Smearing blood on house doorposts (God) - Lifting up a metal snake (God) There's a way to use "object lessons" that are more distracting and kitsch than illustrative... but there's also a way to do it so that it sticks in the hearer's soul. Also, I do not own a single pair of skinny jeans, but I am cursed with one pair of Howerton legs that turn straight leg jeans into 'skinny jeans' (let the reader understand :)

When you look at Nigeria, you see Muslims persecuting Christians. When you look at Somalia, you see Muslims persecuting Christians. When you look at Sudan, you see Muslims persecuting Christians. When you look at Egypt, you see Muslims persecuting Christians. When you look at Iraq, you see Muslims persecuting Christians. When you look at Syria, you see Muslims persecuting Christians. When you look at Iran, you see Muslims persecuting Christians. When you look at Iran, you see Muslims persecuting Baha'is. When you look at Pakistan, you see Muslims persecuting Christians. When you look at Pakistan, you see Muslims persecuting Hindus. When you look at Bangladesh, you see Muslims persecuting Hindus. When you look at Bangladesh, you see Muslims persecuting Christians. When you look at Afghanistan, you see Muslims persecuting Christians. When you look at Libya, you see Muslims persecuting Christians. When you look at Mali, you see Muslims persecuting Christians. When you look at Burkina Faso, you see Muslims persecuting Christians. When you look at Niger, you see Muslims persecuting Christians. When you look at Algeria, you see Muslims persecuting Christians.

Introducing 'Enjoying Scripture': a new commentary series from Union Coming next year, the goal of this series is not only to help you understand Scripture better, but to enjoy Christ more deeply – to 'taste and see that the Lord is good' (Psalm 34:8). More details coming soon!

I always appreciate the link from you, Tim. Thanks.

Should I plead my righteousness? / Don't let AI steal your blessing / The ministry of saying less / Science can't tell us the most amazing things about the human body / Who are the 144,000? / Rummaging through bins / What I'm enjoying / and more. challies.com/a-la-carte/a-la…

It is not democracy to force this through parliament without the proper scrutiny of both houses. It is a dangerous and deadly bill that will harm very vulnerable people. Please vote against this @ClaireCoutinho

Lots of people are saying that we have a unique opportunity, a spiritual openness in our society that they haven’t seen before. I agree. Can you point me to helpful quotes about this from solid sources in the last year or two? Thanks

100% this.

Pastors: take a sabbatical. Seriously. Pastoral ministry is glorious, but it is a grind, and it has gotten more complex in recent years. This is true not just for Lead Pastors, but for the whole pastoral team. TAKE A SABBATICAL. This is really, really good advice from Jason.

In Greece, we hate Islam more than anything. But there is a reason for that. It's called: Greek history. Lebanon and the entire Middle East have experienced for centuries the true face of Islam. That Islam which does not hide behind the lies it needs in order to invade the West as a religion of love and wisdom, but as what it really is: a political ideology full of death, hatred, and destruction. I know many of you will wonder how I can know the true face of Islam. Well, of course all Greeks know, because all of our ancestors suffered martyrdoms for their faith and their origin. That is why the Greeks love and care for the Christian communities of the Middle East, and you should know that if it were in our hands, Greece would protect these peoples from barbaric Islam at the first opportunity. Reading @GadSaad 's post, I could not help but think of the countless moments of modern Greek history, when from the fall of Constantinople until 1821 the Greeks lived through the worst period of their lives. Enslaved for almost 400 years under the monster of Islam, which stole, raped, murdered, and tortured in the most horrific ways the Greek Christians who lived throughout Asia Minor (Anatolia), Pontus, Greece, and Cyprus. For 300 years the Muslim Turks were stealing kids from their mothers. They were waiting for women to birth, raise their kids, and then at the age of 8 were collecting them. The devşirme known as "collection of children" or "blood tax" or in Greek as "paidomazoma", was a systematic practice that forced the recruitment of young Christian boys, typically aged 8–18. Historians estimate the total number of Christian boys taken across the entire Ottoman Empire around 300.000 kids. From those kids 150.000 were Greek kids (over 300 years). It means the half of the total kids that were stolen were only Greek. For example in 1540, a levy in the Greek regions of Thessaly & Macedonia took 1.000 Greek boys in one season and in Chios (the Greek island) 200 boys taken in 1567 alone. The peak was 5.000 kids/annual from Greece. The most common torture inflicted by the Muslims during the Ottoman period was whipping. The usual victims were the Christians. It was the introductory torment in every other torture, so common in the persecutions of Christians that the phrase became proverbial: "I will whip you until you change your faith." During that period, Muslims enjoyed performing all kinds of mutilations. Ears, noses, lips, tongues, breasts, and genitals were primarily cut off. Not just those, though. Let's recall here the Saint Raphael of Mytilene, who was hanged from a tree and had his lower jaw cut off, while the twelve-year-old martyr Irene was roasted in a barrel on the Tuesday of Easter in the year 1463, ten years after the fall of Constantinople. In many cases, the severed body parts "adorned" the warrior collection of the janissary. The pashas gave bakshish (tips) to every "brave" Muslim warrior according to how many ears of "infidel" Christians he brought back. He himself confirmed his bravery and "manliness" among his peers by having a "komboloi" (worry beads) made from the nipples of breasts he had cut off from women. The bravest man was the one with the longest komboloi after a massacre and looting. Blinding with various sharp objects was also common. This was particularly frequent during periods of massacres and atrocities. Many unfortunate Christians remained blind for the rest of their lives because they had the misfortune of a horde of janissaries passing through their land. The Egyptians under Ibrahim Pasha were especially notorious for this crime. Many times Christian captives were placed in front of cannons that were fired, turning them into human shreds of flesh. In other cases, they were tied to galleys that sailed in opposite directions and were torn apart. Dismemberment of victims also occurred with horses. After the Ottoman conquest of Crete (1669), local officials and governors began to oppress the Christian population in every way: killing, abducting and abusing women, demanding money, and preventing the performance of the subjects' religious duties. We Greeks, called the Muslim Turks, "The grand masters of torture." In 1821, in Patras, they captured a father and son and, after impaling them, lit a fire and forced the other captives to roast them like lambs. Ali Pasha at that point was more inventive: When he impaled Christians, he forced their relatives to turn the spit, threatening that otherwise he would impale them too. Immediately after the hanging of Patriarch Gregory V in Constantinople, the Turks hanged three metropolitans at various points in the city. However, one of them, the very elderly Metropolitan of Nicomedia, breathed his last before reaching the place of execution. Such, however, was the Turks' mania for revenge that they punished even the dead man by hanging his corpse. Just 65 years after the Fall of Constantinople, Sultan Selim I Yavuz, grandson of Mehmed the Conqueror and father of Suleiman, decided to definitively abolish the Patriarchate of Constantinople during the patriarchate of Theoleptos I, and to slaughter all the subjugated Christians (rayah) of the empire who refused to convert to Mohammedanism. Just 65 years after the Fall of Constantinople, the Greeks of Thrace were collectively placed before the forced dilemma of either converting or being wiped off the face of the earth, that is, to suffer ethnic cleansing or genocide, as we would say today. Between those two barbaric options, the Greeks of Thrace (the ancestors of today’s Muslim Greeks of Thrace) chose ethnic cleansing at their own expense; that is, they chose to convert in order to survive as an ancient indigenous people, in the hope that at some point in the future their descendants would regain their national self-awareness and their religious independence, and would then voluntarily return to the bosom of the Greek Nation and of Greek Orthodoxy. When the Greek Bishop Dionysios the Philosopher of Larissa organized a revolt against the Muslim Turks in 1611, which ended in failure, the Turks flayed him alive, stuffed his skin with straw, and paraded it from city to city. Three days later, the Turks also discovered -the Greek rebels- Deli Giorgos and Lambros. They burned Lambros alive, while they crucified Giorgos and, instead of a crown of thorns on his head, they drilled holes into which they placed feathers. Dionysios’s skin, together with the heads of 85 Greek Christian rebels, was sent to Constantinople, where it was thrown into the Sultan’s stables. After the failure of Daskalogiannis’s uprising in Sfakia (Crete, 1770), the Turks captured him and flayed him alive, cut him in pieces and throw them in the fire and the dogs. The Muslim Pasha of Thessaloniki, Abdul Abud, who had set as his goal the extermination of the Greeks, burned 120 villages and wiped out their inhabitants to the last one. 5.000 Greeks were massacred in Naousa, the rest were sold in slave markets, and the entire city was reduced to ashes. The Janissaries faced no restraint in their behavior toward the Christians. They would even enter churches and desecrate them. And if they discovered a beautiful Greek girl, they would seize her from her parents in order to satisfy their lewd desires. For this reason, anyone who had a pretty daughter was forced to keep her locked inside the house, while most Greek women who lived in towns would wear a burqa when they went out, just like Muslim women. The Janissaries also exterminate Christians without any reason, simply because they were Christians. Sometimes they executed them in cold blood in the middle of the road, just to test the accuracy of their weapons; other times to watch them writhe in their own blood; sometimes to make the abduction of a bride, right after her wedding, more dramatic; other times simply because the Christians were manly-looking, relatively well-dressed, or on horseback. In the latter case, the rayah would hurry to dismount upon seeing a Janissary, but the latter would draw his pistol and say: “Why did you dismount, you infidel dog? So you could make me ride instead?” And the rayah, Greek Christian, would fall dead. On December 18, 1803, at Zalongo in Greece, a group of Greek Souliote women jumped from the cliffs, holding their children. They chose death over falling into the hands of Muslims, where they would face rape, abuse, and enslavement. On March 30, 1822, the Chios Massacre took place. The Muslim Turks slaughtered (Greeks) 42,000 women, men & children. Additionally, 52,000 were sold as slaves in the markets of Smyrna & Constantinople. Young girls were raped publicly in the streets, and newlyweds in front of their husbands, who were then slaughtered. Others were raped in front of their parents, after which the men's genitals were cut off. Women over 40 were set on fire and left to burn alive. Pregnant women had their bellies ripped open and their fetuses pulled out, while small children were thrown forcefully against rocks. The frenzy of the Muslims was unprecedented. In 1822, Muslims also captured the wives of Zafeirakis and Gatsos. The wife of Zafeirakis was built into the wall up to the neck in the church of Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki. Maria Karatasou, daughter of a priest refused to change faith, and for this Ebub Lubut enclosed her in a sack with deadly snakes, where she martyred. Pouqueville describes in the darkest colors to the civilized world the dramatic scenes he saw with his own eyes there: "Many women naked were put up to the neck in sacks with cats, snakes, and mice…". The Greek Christian Woman, during the years when Greece was enslaved to the Muslim Turks, in order to avoid -as much as she could- the abhorrent dishonor from the barbaric Muslims, would destroy the youthful beauty of her face, or create a family from the age of fourteen, believing that she would not give birth to slaves. On September 1, 1821, Samothrace was devastated by the Ottomans through a general massacre led by the Turkish Kara Ali. Approximately 10,000 men & boys were slaughtered. Women & children were sold in the markets of Constantinople & Smyrna (Holocaust of Samothrace). On June 4, 1821, the Turks carried out a massacre against the Greeks of Kydonies in Asia Minor (modern-day Ayvalık). They did pogroms at shops and homes, looting them, while seizing women and children to sell as slaves. Simultaneously, they conducted a general massacre of the population, and the town was set ablaze and completely destroyed. On September 1955 in Constantinople 4,348 Greek businesses, 110 hotels, 27 pharmacies, 23 schools, and 73 churches were damaged or destroyed. The exodus of Greeks from Turkey, reduced the community of over 150.000 (who have already left from the Fall), to fewer than 2.000 today. Muslims commited GENOCIDES and Islamized the Anatolia, Antioch and Seleucia. From the Hellenism of the East (Thrace, Asia Minor, Pontus), around a million people were exterminated (1914-1924). In the Pontus region alone, 353,000 people were slaughtered. Because they stole our lands. Smyrna, Aydin, Kydonies, Prousa, Nicaea (Asia Minor region), Trebizond, Kerasounta, Samsounta, Oinoe, Paphra, Ordou, Amaseia (Pontus), provinces of Derkon, Metron, Herakleia, Myriophytou, Kallipoleos, Ainos, Tyrolois, Saranta Ekklision, Adrianople (Eastern Thrace). I hate Islam with all my heart because I am Greek and because I know my own history. I strongly suggest that you study my history so you can avoid these atrocities becoming your history too. Thank you for reading me, Homer Pavlos

So thankful to @howertonjosh - I love the Live Free podcast, so we visited Lakepointe Church. Pastor Josh called me to stand & prayed for our ministry & @TrinityChipp - & gave a gift for our new building project on behalf of Lakepointe! A hug from God as we start sabbatical!

Over a month later and still no news from @PeugeotUK . Is this how you treat all customers? Or is it just when a family is without a car that you leave a problem for two months?

Praying for Iran. (If people are not on X, they aren’t getting much exposure to what is happening. Maybe some will start to wonder why it isn’t the biggest news story.)

Let’s all be praying for the people of Iran—especially for the many Iranian Christians among them. These are courageous men and women standing up at great personal cost. It’s worth remembering that the Iranian regime fears its own people more than any foreign power. That tells you something. Iran is not just a headline or a political talking point. It is an ancient civilization, a biblically significant land, tragically hijacked by terrorists in 1979. But God is not finished with the people of Iran. Let’s pray for freedom, for protection, and for the Gospel to continue spreading—even in the darkest places. God often does His greatest work when oppression thinks it has the final word.”

Excited to be here @RoyalAlbertHall for @gettymusic Christmas concert! And there is a livestream if you want to join in… hs.gettymusic.com/christmas-…

I am wondering if @PeugeotUK is planning to confirm that they will do the work on my car that was recalled, or just leave customers in the dark as our car sits at the dealer? This could become a PR nightmare if they don’t start communicating with us.

Nice to see Pleased to Dwell getting some airtime @FellowshipWW - check out these videos as the month progresses… including @PeterMead youtube.com/playlist?list=PL…