I invite you to pull your horse up to this stream of thoughts and insights and relax a moment from your travels. I hope you find salient information and inspiration in the essays, sermons and book reviews below. Enjoy! (Image Credit: “Around the Bend” by Tim Solliday.)
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A hymn written by Robert Lowry in 1876 begins with a good question:
The answer is immediate and accurate:
What about the water of baptism? Doesn’t it wash our sins away too? Be careful. The real sin-cleansing power comes from above and works only through the blood of Jesus. Baptism has no power or meaning apart from Jesus’ blood. The water itself is neither magic nor holy. Without the ...
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Would you like to be spiritual without being religious? First, I commend your desire to be spiritual. Second, I commend you to Jesus as inspiration for not leaving the religious part behind. Here are seven points to ponder about Jesus:
I may want to change this list tomorrow, but for today, here are the ten greatest paintings of all time, in my humble opinion.
America is currently experiencing a decline in church attendance and health. Buildings are being sold, young people are bolting and biblical literacy is evaporating. With sincere concern, many are rearranging deck chairs as the ship continues to sink. Some seek a more polished strategy to stem the decline but in many cases, it doesn’t. Others feel helpless and sing, “Nearer my God to Thee.”
In the face of tumultuous change, many churches turned inward and ...
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What sort of fruit grows on a tree of “the knowledge of good and evil?” What looked so irresistible to Eve that it made her disobey God? Was it an apple, a pear, a pomegranate or what?
Wrong question. The fruit (undoubtedly delicious) did not produce the sin. Something went wrong deep inside the hearts of Adam and Eve when they fell for the forbidden fruit. Eve tried to blame the serpent and Adam blamed Eve, but in fact, they ...
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A shocking magazine cover on display in a public bookstore in Minnesota few years ago featured a man with both arms raised and the middle finger of both hands raised higher. I approached the information desk and asked the manager, “Do you intend to keep this crass cover on public display?”
A clerk trying to impress his manager proudly replied, “Yes, we don’t discriminate! We have gay magazines, sex magazines and so on. If we took this one down, we ...
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During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama said, “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian … it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.”
When he reversed this position for the 2012 campaign, no one asked if he still thought marriage was a “sacred union” or if God was still in the mix. Over 16 years, Obama went from supporting same-sex marriage, to being “undecided,” to ...
Continue Reading →![[Not] Going to Heaven, Part III](http://www.solliday.org/wp-content/uploads/800pxValley_of_Hinom_PA180090-538x218.jpg)
Having performed countless funerals over 30 years, I can say that the idea of not going to heaven is one that rarely occurs to most people anymore. Most Americans think that all we have to do to go to heaven is to expire. The idea that accountability for sin, absent repentance, extends beyond this life is becoming rare. In the Bible, however, it is clear:
The same professor who told me it is egocentric to want to go to heaven when you die (see Going to Heaven, Part I) proceeded to ask me where heaven is—not that he wanted to go, mind you. It’s not often a man asks for directions, so I opened up my “map” to help me reply. The thoughts below are adapted from my response.
Sometimes, the Bible uses fixed terms for heaven (a place with “pillars”, “foundations”, “gates”, ...
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This came to me in a personal e-mail from a Stanford University professor:
POW returning home
Is it selfish for a prisoner of war to want to ...
Continue Reading →Joel Solliday
E-mail: joel@solliday.org
302 Southway,
Lewiston, ID 83501
