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Latest from Stephen Nichols
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Is Sola Scriptura a Rejection of Teachers and Tradition?
from Stephen Nichols Jun 01, 2018 Category: Articles
It’s one of those moments we wish we could have seen firsthand. It took place in the square before the Water Gate. At daybreak, Ezra brought out the law. He unrolled the scroll and began reading. He kept on until noon, and all the while the great crowd gave their rapt attention. The law was read, interpreted, and studied. Nehemiah 8, which records this event, also tells us that this Bible study session resulted in worship. The people were humbled, and their faces looked to the ground. They bowed before God as He revealed Himself in His holy Word.
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What Is the Mercy Seat?
from Stephen Nichols Mar 28, 2018 Category: Articles
One of the most important paragraphs in the Bible may very well be Romans 3:21-26. This densely packed paragraph offers a thorough and glorious discussion of justification by faith. Not surprisingly, this paragraph plays a crucial role in the history of doctrine. Martin Luther camped out here. And not surprisingly, the roots of this paragraph extend throughout the Bible itself. Two key places deserve notice. The first takes us back to Exodus, while the second comes near the end of John's Gospel.
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Who Was Saint Patrick and Should Christians Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?
from Stephen Nichols Mar 17, 2018 Category: Articles
When it comes to Saint Patrick, the true story is even more exciting than the legend and the myth. The facts are far better than the fable. This day that belongs to St. Patrick has become about leprechauns, shamrocks, pots of gold, and green—green everywhere. Famously, the City of Chicago dumps forty pounds of its top-secret dye into the river. A green racing stripe courses through the city. But long before there was the St. Patrick of myth, there was the Patrick of history. Who was Patrick?
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Why Do You Work?
from Stephen Nichols Feb 26, 2018 Category: Articles
Why do you work? I once heard a rather depressing answer that went something like this: "We get a job so we can buy our kids shoes, so they can go to school, so they can get a job someday, so that they can buy their kids shoes, so that they . . . " In other words, work is meaningless. In fact, from this perspective life itself becomes rather meaningless—simply an endless cycle.
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Youth-Driven Culture
from Stephen Nichols Jan 22, 2018 Category: Articles
Maybe it began earlier than the 1950s and '60s, but those decades seem to mark the rise of the fascination with youth in American culture. The famous line that celebrates all things young, often wrongly attributed to James Dean, declares, "Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse behind."
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Remembering R.C. Sproul, 1939–2017
from Stephen Nichols Dec 14, 2017 Category: Ministry News
R.C. Sproul, theologian, pastor, and founder of Ligonier Ministries, died on December 14, 2017, at the age of 78, after being hospitalized due to complications from emphysema. Dr. Sproul is survived by his childhood sweetheart and wife of fifty-seven years, Vesta Ann (Voorhis); their daughter, Sherrie Sproul Dorotiak, and her husband, Dennis; and their son, Dr. R.C. Sproul Jr., and his wife, Lisa. The Sprouls have eleven grandchildren, one granddaughter deceased, and seven great-grandchildren.
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The Peace We All Long For
from Stephen Nichols Dec 13, 2017 Category: Articles
In order to understand the story of Christmas, we have to go back. Not back just a few thousand years to the birth of Jesus, but all the way back, back to our first parents, Adam and Eve. God placed them in the lush and perfect garden of Eden. They had everything they needed. It was perfect. Then they sinned. As a consequence, God banished them. Now Adam and Eve lived under the curse. But as God pronounced the curse, thundering from heaven, He also gave them a promise.
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What Is Thanksgiving Day?
from Stephen Nichols Nov 22, 2017 Category: Articles
Thanksgiving is an American holiday that stretches all the way back to a time long before America became a nation. The Pilgrims landed in 1620. They faced brutal conditions and were woefully unprepared. Roughly half of them died in that first year.
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The Bible Belongs to Every Age
from Stephen Nichols Nov 17, 2017 Category: Articles
In 1734 and 1735, Jonathan Edwards and the congregation at Northampton experienced a revival. So did many other churches in the Connecticut River Valley in the colonies of Connecticut and Massachusetts. In the fall of 1733, Edwards preached some hard-hitting sermons. One of them, preached in November 1733, has been titled “The Kind of Preaching People Want.”
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The Story of Martin Luther’s Conversion
from Stephen Nichols Oct 28, 2017 Category: Articles
The actual date of Martin Luther's conversion is disputed. Some place it before the posting of the Ninety-Five Theses; some put it before the Heidelberg Disputation. It is highly likely, however, that Luther’s conversion came in 1519. In reading the whole of the Ninety-Five Theses, it is clear that Luther still held on to a number of formative Roman Catholic doctrines. At that point, he was not in favor of jettisoning the whole of it; he sought instead to correct and purify it from the corruptions that he saw as creeping in during the 1200s through the early 1500s. The corruption culminated in the indulgence sale of Tetzel and Albert and the relic exhibit at Wittenberg. There is also Luther’s own testimony that his “breakthrough” came while he was lecturing through the Psalms a second time. Those lectures were given in the early months of 1519. Many years later, in 1545, Luther reflected on his conversion, and offered up an extraordinary account of this event, one that hinges on understanding the difference between the active and the passive. So, Luther tells us: Keep Reading
