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How fas­ci­nat­ing. His skep­ti­cism notwith­stand­ing, this is a great source for ser­mon illus­tra­tions on David v Goliath.

The Straight Dope: Has an impor­tant bat­tle ever been decid­ed by sin­gle com­bat?

Dear Cecil: I’m cur­rent­ly read­ing Poly­bius’s Rise of the Roman Empire and stum­bled on a quote that begs for elab­o­ra­tion. In book VI, Poly­bius offhand­ed­ly remarks, “Many Romans have vol­un­teered to enga…

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An excel­lent sto­ry from one of the Ph.D. can­di­dates in my min­istry.

A Light In The Dark­ness

The very first hike i went on as a Boy Scout was to Daniel Boone Nation­al For­est in Ken­tucky. We had sched­uled a 12 mile course to take 5–6 hours. It was a beau­ti­ful April day, cool and bright, a gr…

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This is a good expla­na­tion. If you are a Chris­t­ian con­sid­er­ing min­istry, this is worth reflect­ing upon.

Why Go to Sem­i­nary?

A sem­i­nary’s most impor­tant task is to pass on sound doc­trine to the next gen­er­a­tion of pas­tors for the ben­e­fit of the church­es. A sem­i­nary’s most impor­tant task is to pass on sound doc­trine to the ne…

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This is a very dis­turb­ing post. I knew in vague terms that there were dis­in­cen­tives for the poor to earn more mon­ey, but this is aston­ish­ing. Col­or me depressed.

Tax­es and cliffs

The whole tax debate is supreme­ly frus­trat­ing to any­one who sur­vived econ 1. The ill effects of tax­a­tion — the “dis­tor­tions” — depend on the total, mar­gin­al rate includ­ing trans­fers. If I earn an ex…

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This could sub­sti­tute for RA train­ing on a lot of cam­pus­es…

Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis, Novem­ber 27, 2012 Via @GoComics

At its heart, Pearls Before Swine is the com­ic strip tale of two friends: an arro­gant Rat who thinks he knows it all and a slow-wit­ted Pig who does­n’t know any bet­ter. Togeth­er, this pair offers caust…

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I some­times teach as an adjunct for the Assem­blies of God The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, and I must con­fess that I hate assign­ing grades. This essay is a help­ful reflec­tion on the noble task of eval­u­a­tion.

Grad­ing as Truth-Telling | John G. Stack­house, Jr.

A false bal­ance is an abom­i­na­tion to Yhwh, but an accu­rate weight is his delight. (Proverbs 11:1). Grad­ing papers is among the most dif­fi­cult parts, and is cer­tain­ly the least plea­sur­able part, of my …

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Some news sto­ries catch you off-guard. This one def­i­nite­ly sur­prised me.

Defin­ing deprav­i­ty down­wards in Deutsch­land

YouTube Pre­view Image. Der Spiegel’s Eng­lish-lan­guage bul­letin reports that con­ser­v­a­tive deputies on the Agri­cul­tur­al Affairs com­mit­tee of the Bun­destag have intro­duced leg­is­la­tion ban­ning sex with an…

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My ques­tion is the first one. That’s right — I’m an inter­net big shot now. Feel free to tell peo­ple you knew me when.

Freako­nom­ics » How to Get the Best out of Col­lege? Your Ques­tions Answered

HOME · BLOG · Fea­tured Post · Levitt Posts · Dub­n­er Posts · Sur­prise Me! Sub­scribe to RSS Feed · RADIO · Sub­scribe at iTunes · Lat­est Pod­cast · Pod­cast Archives · BOOKS · Freako­nom­ics · Super­F­reakonom…

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This is real­ly quite star­tling to think about.

All in One Lit­tle Life­time: All Gone with the Wind

A reflec­tion by a great 20th cen­tu­ry jour­nal­ist on the var­i­ous empires and rulers he has seen rise and fall in his lifetime—and who remains stand­ing at the end.A reflec­tion by a great 20th cen­tu­ry j…

What The Bible Teaches About Baptism

African American citizens attend a baptism

I just added an arti­cle about bap­tism to my repos­i­to­ry of essays and Bible stud­ies. It’s a pdf called What The Bible Teach­es About Bap­tism.

Here’s an excerpt:

Why Should I Be Baptized?

“Why should I be bap­tized?” is a rea­son­able ques­tion, but I pre­fer the ques­tion asked by the Ethiopi­an eunuch: “Look, here is water. Why should­n’t I be bap­tized?’” (Acts 8:36). Get­ting bap­tized is some­thing that Chris­tians do – it should be your default deci­sion for the fol­low­ing rea­sons:

1) I Should Be Baptized To Obey Jesus

Jesus com­mand­ed his apos­tles to bap­tize peo­ple as they pro­claimed the gospel (Matthew 28:18–20), and so we see that he expects new believ­ers to be bap­tized as part of the process of becom­ing his dis­ci­ples.

2) I Should Be Baptized To Identify With Jesus

Being bap­tized is a procla­ma­tion of our spir­i­tu­al union with Christ. Colos­sians 2:12 says that Chris­tians are “buried with [Jesus] in bap­tism” and that we are then “raised with him through our faith in the work­ing of God, who raised [Jesus] from the dead.” Anoth­er way to approach this point is to rec­og­nize that Jesus, though with­out sin, was bap­tized and there­by iden­ti­fied with us, and we com­plete the cycle when we are bap­tized and like­wise iden­ti­fy with him.

3) I Should Be Baptized To Proclaim My Devotion To Jesus

In 1 Peter 3:21, bap­tism is described as “the pledge of a clear con­science toward God” (that’s the NIV: some oth­er trans­la­tions phrase it as “an appeal to God for a good con­science”). Whichev­er is the bet­ter ren­der­ing in Eng­lish, it is clear that bap­tism is an act of for­mal­ly giv­ing our­selves to God.

And so if you name Christ as your Lord and have not been bap­tized, then seize this oppor­tu­ni­ty and be bap­tized.

Read the rest of the pdf.