The Conquering Truth

What makes a rich country rich or a poor country rich? What causes them to stay that way? Often, when people think of countries that are wealthy versus those that are poor, they discuss factors like natural resources, but that isn't really the case. If you look at North America vs. South America, there were more resources in South America, but yet North America is far wealthier than South Amer...

People used to have their children walk long distances to school and would assume that they would be safe. Now there are cases where that has been treated as child abuse. Children are afraid to ride a bike without a helmet, but with less bike riding, there are more bike head injuries. We are a society that is filled with fear In this episode, we want to look at risk from a Reformed perspective. We...

Mother Teresa is considered one of the great humanitarians of the 20th century and is revered as a saint by the Roman Catholic church. But she did not really help many of the people that she talked about helping. The help she gave was very different from the way it was described by her and others and she often taught doctrine contrary to Roman Catholic teaching. But in the end, according to the Ro...

A little over a month ago, Dan Horn had a debate with Pastor Rich Lusk about Paedobaptism and the place of children in the church. After the debate was posted on YouTube (see link below), there were a number of comments that seemed worth responding to. A couple of the comments are from credobaptists, but most are from paedobaptists whose viewpoints seem to diverge from orthodox Presbyterian views...

How can we think about pain and suffering from a Reformed perspective. While suffering exists because of sin, both sin and suffering are part of God’s means to glorify Himself through his Son. Because of this, those who seek to glorify God with their lives must approach suffering not only as God’s decree, but as one of the ways that He glorifies Himself. In this episode, we discuss why suffering e...

Replacement theology is a derogatory term often used by dispensationalists to accuse those who believe in Covenant theology. Specifically, they claim that covenant theology teaches that the church replaced Israel. And while Christ does say to national Israel that the kingdom of God will be taken from them and given to another who will produce it’s fruit, the way that is fulfilled is through the pe...

One of the biggest disagreements between Baptists and Presbyterians is related to baptism, it’s administration and what it means within the church. And these differences in practice are tied directly to differences in how God’s Covenant and the covenants that He has made with men are understood. One primary difference that we want to concentrate on is that the Baptist view has more of an upward fo...

When you consider the fact that God calls those He has called out front the world, a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and His own special people, it should be obvious that He intended the church to be the ideal form of community. What group could have more in common and closeness than one made alive by His Spirit and called for His purposes into His family and household? But w...

Sharing the gospel is central to the Great Commission. But doing so on a day-to-day basis is more complicated than we often want to admit. It’s definitely more complex than just memorizing the Romans Road or learning a three-step approach for door-to-door witnessing. So in this episode, we want to ask two different questions about sharing the gospel: first, we want to ask why don’t we do it, and s...

Many Christians would describe justice and mercy as being at odds with one another, but most confessions of the faith, such as the SLBC and the Westminster Confession, say that God is most just and He is most merciful. But if they are in opposition to one another, how can God be both merciful and just? Thumbnail image by Manu_H on Flickr under CC-BY 2.0 Timecodes 00:00:00 Intro 00:02:57 Sproul 00:...

Many churches teach that Matthew 18 is the generally applicable text about church discipline and it should be followed in all circumstances. But Matthew 18 is primarily about forgiveness between brothers and when you look at other cases of discipline, such as when a man has his father's wife, there is no hint that Matthew 18 should be followed. So when is Matthew 18 appropriate? And why is thi...

Both of the primary Reformed confessions explicitly call the pope that Antichrist. They saw the man of perdition from 2 Thessalonians 2 and that Antichrist from 1 John 2 fulfilled in the office of the pope. So what does it mean for the Pope to be that Antichrist or for the apostasy of the Roman Catholic Church to the falling away that Paul writes about to the Thessalonians and also to Timothy? One...

Leprosy in the Bible was a picture of sin. And God uses it many times throughout the Old and New Testament to help us to think about different types of sin and the redeeming work of Christ. Recently we did a podcast on reading the Old Testament and how we should think abut the types and shadows whose substance has come in Christ. Leprosy, which was never intended to be primarily about health, was...

In the 1960s, less than 4% of bodies were cremated. Now, it is about 2 out of 3 and by 2040, it is expected to be around 80%. Much of that is driven by the rising cost of funerals, since the burial plot is expensive and you can send a significant amount of money on a nice casket. On average, a cremation probably costs half of the cost of a burial. Another thing that seems to drive it is that the c...

How you read the Old Testament impacts how you read all of God’s word. It frames the questions that shape our understanding of God and His purposes. What was the purpose of the garden? Why did God choose, separate, and protect the nation of Israel? What is the church? Who is Jesus Christ and the nature of his atonement? It frames all of these and a hundred other questions as well, none of which ar...

Credobaptists and Paedobaptists differing views of baptism have real-world implications over how they view their children and their relationship to the church. Presbyterians (paedobaptists) hold that baptized children are part of the church, with the church having authority over and membership responsibility toward the child. Baptists (credobaptists) hold that they only become part of the church t...

A hundred years ago in America most wives considered themselves to be homemakers with very few working outside the home. Now about 57% percent of them do. What should we think about this shift in the fabric of the American home, and more importantly what does God’s word have to say about it. Throughout history, there have been societies that have been very confused about men's roles and women&...

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14, that we are to pursue love and to be zealous for spiritual gifts especially that we may prophesy. We are not just to sit back and wait for God to bestow them on us. It is part of pursuing love and edifying one another. And if prophecy is about love and edification, then it cannot be primarily about telling the future. So what is prophecy? Prophecy is about declaring...

People often think that what made America unique was its separation of powers and system of checks and balances, but those ideas were not really new at the time or unique to America. What actually was unique was having the Constitution as a single written document that formed the structure and scope of powers of the government and having every officer in that government take an oath to uphold and...

Can Baptists actually be Reformed? To answer that, we probably have to answer another question, “What does it mean to be Reformed in the first place? Is it a tradition, a specific set of beliefs, or something else entirely? There are a lot of online debates and discussions about whether Baptists can be Reformed or not. And while some of those debates are just good-natured ribbing between Presbyter...

Does the Bible teach that there are sins serious enough that a pastor should be permanently removed and never be able to serve as a pastor again? Frequently, when an elder or a pastor falls into sin, people immediately start to say that they hope he can repent, so he can resume his ministry. This is often because the pastor was particularly gifted in preaching or teaching or leading the church. He...

Both Daniel Penny and Luigi Mangione were in the news recently due to associated murder charges. Both men claimed they were trying to stop evil. Both men claim their use of force was justified. The public is also divided, with some claiming one or both of them a hero and many others strongly believing the opposite. But for those of us who believe in the sufficiency of scripture, we should be able...

Jimmy Carter was one of the most outspokenly Christian presidents of the modern age, but was he an accurate representative of Christianity in the public sphere? His view of Christianity was that his beliefs should not impact his decisions or inform his policies, a view that many professing Christians shared at the time. In this episode, we examine the legacy of Jimmy Carter, both during his time a...

Who has authority over marriage? When a man and a woman are married, the official often says something like, “by the power vested in me by…”. But what does that mean and it is even remotely Biblical? Does the civil government have any authority over marriage? What about the church? And do people need to get married in a church by an ordained minister for the wedding to be recognized by God? In thi...

One of the most hotly debated topics in Protestant circles is the doctrine of infant baptism, the practice of baptizing the infant children of professing believers. As we are unapologetically baptists, we disagree with this practice and believe that it goes against scripture and causes many problems in the church. In this episode, we look at some of the issues caused by the practice of infant bapt...