Tried With Fire

Congratulations to.... Raine and Samuel!!!!! Thanks to all who entered. Stay tuned for another giveaway next month, Lord willing.

I will be giving away 2 copies of Jesus, the Only Way to God by John Piper. This book gives a biblical defense of salvation through Christ alone in a day that demands inclusivism in the name of tolerance and love.  I also chose this book because of the topic of our annual theology conference, The Theology of Missions . If Jesus is not the only way, doesn't that render the Great Commission superfluous? What is to be said of the missionaries who have laid down their lives to take the gospel to the ends of the earth? Was their sacrifice all for nought? "At stake in this issue are our own souls. If we embrace a limitation on the universal necessity of the gospel to be heard and believed, we will begin to lose the gospel and with it our own souls. When God appoints the gospel of his Son as the universal remedy for the guilt and corruption of mankind, and we diminish that, the gospel is diminished. And you cannot diminish the gospel without diminishing yourself. The spiritual ...

In Jesus the Only Way to God , John Piper writes: [W]hen we ask, "Is Jesus the only way to salvation?" we are asking the question: Is he the only way to escape from an eternal conscious torment called hell? (pg. 24) He tackles this issue and responds to two alternatives: universalism and annihilationism.  Several well-known Christians who hold these differing views are quoted.  Interestingly, they use words such as "moral revulsion", "loathing", and "emotionally intolerable" to express their views on hell. While I would not dare put myself in the same league as these particular theologians, their views brought a few questions to mind: Are we more outraged at the idea of hell or more outraged that we would sin and rebel against a holy God? As sinners, is our outrage at the idea of hell more of an indication of our revulsion to the holiness of God? Without Christ , do I deserve eternal conscious torment because I am a sinner and have sinned...