Ref21 Blog

On the night I proposed to Anna 15 years ago, she gave me a gift--an antiquarian edition of Thomas Brooks The Unsearchable Riches of Christ. It is a work to which I returned many times over the past 15 years....

I just finished watching the TV miniseries Chernobyl. I was brought to tears by the end of the series. In the final episode (spoiler alert, the reactor explodes), Legasov, the nuclear expert rises to speak before the Soviet tribunal tasked...

While a student, I came across an article by Latin American theologian Elsa Tamez titled, "Women Must Not be Silent in the Congregations!"--in which she argued that Paul gave apostolic instruction about how women should exercise the gift of prophecy...

The grocery store cereal aisle has become a common metaphor for distinguishing the West from the rest of the world, and rightly so. Just after we moved to Eastern Europe years ago, my family and I began the hunt...

If you could give a new mom the perfect gift, what would it be? Would it be full night's sleep? Maybe you'd give her a hot meal without interruption or maybe the confidence that she'll be a good mom....

It's been an amazing past few days watching the fallout from David Platt's prayer over president Trump. When I first heard about the situation and read the transcript of the prayer, my initial reaction was quite positive. This was...

Much that passes for Christian decision making in modern Evangelicalism strikes me as a mixture of lazy moral reasoning and illegitimate efforts to discern those "secret things" (Deut. 29:29) that God has never promised to reveal to us. Scripture...

No words can express the sadness I have felt upon news of the failing health of David Powlison. Dr. Powlison has been one of the great gifts God has given to the church. His book Seeing Through New Eyes is...

What is the preacher to do with hell and eternal punishment? In our day and age these truths strike some as comical and others as cruel. To some, hell is a joke. It's about little devils in red tights...

The battle cry of "equity" serves as a summons to action, or at least outrage, wherever a person feels an injustice, or a passing over. The trouble for Christians is, in a field of politically charged verbage, words like...

An individual dies and social media is flooded with sentiments about prayers for the deceased and their family members. Without doubt, it is altogether right and in keeping with a spirit of true Christian charity to pray fervently for the...

I suspect that if we conducted a careful study, we would find that dissolving a pastor's call when he isn't expecting it or disagrees with his session's (or elder board's) assessment is one of the most common experiences of both...

True believers may, and do, experience times when they feel as if God has forgotten them. They feel as if the divine no longer takes interest in them. David felt this as well. He expresses this in Psalm 31...

J.V. Fesko, Reforming Apologetics: Retrieving the Classic Reformed Approach to Defending the Faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019. 250pp. Paperback. Christians often polarize one another over their approaches to apologetics. While different apologetic schools compete for dominance in...

The category of breaking news has grabbed our eyes to report such matters as the latest celebrity gossip and the latest tweet of a politician. Though sometimes the breaking news is of tragedy (because tragedy sells) in some land...