Transparent heart icon with white outline and + sign.

Life's busy, read it when you're ready!

Create a free account to save articles for later, keep track of past articles you’ve read, and receive exclusive access to all RP resources.

White magnifying glass.

Search thousands of RP articles

Articles, news, and reviews that celebrate God's truth.

Open envelope icon with @ symbol

Get Articles Delivered!

Articles, news, and reviews that celebrate God's truth. delivered direct to your Inbox!

A A
By:

Saturday Selections – December 19, 2020

Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is not a Christmas song (1 min)

Like many a pop song, the lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah are hard to decipher but a close listen shows this isn’t the Christian song it might initially appear to be.

The story behind Handel’s Messiah 

“Two-and-a-half hours of the world’s most magnificent music was composed in less than twenty-five days.”

Why (some) Reformed pastors won’t use COVID to preach the gospel

You don’t have to agree with Tim Bayly’s take 100% to think there’s something here we all (not simply pastors) could benefit from considering. For the many in the world who are scared COVID might kill them, are we pointing them to their only hope in life and death?

A creationist take on RNA vaccines (15-minute read)

This is sure interesting but also involved, so to give it the attention it warrants, you’re going to need to block out some time.

Parents should focus on humility

Rev. Tim Schouten – and C.S. Lewis – pass along a helpful warning against a parenting “tool” most of us have used at one time or another.

ARPA Canada on governmental authority and Christian submission (30-minute read)

Here are wise folk, working together, to think how best to honor God in the face of government lockdowns on churches and God’s command to honor our authorities. It’s a 4-part series, with each part well worth reading slowly.

Part 1 – God’s commission to the civil government and the Church

Part 2 – Biblical freedom ≠ personal autonomy

Part 3 – So what if we have legal rights? Aren’t we called to submit to government?

Part 4 – The freedom to do as we ought

Modern child sacrifice (3 min)

In the past babies were sacrificed to secure prosperity: they were burned on altars to get rain, or victory in war. Today we abort babies to secure prosperity too: they are torn limb from limb to secure a career, or freedom, or to pursue sex without consequences.

While the visuals in this video are muted, this is not an all-ages video. It is well worth sharing on social media.

Enjoyed this article?

Get the best of RP delivered to your inbox every Saturday for free.



Red heart icon with + sign.
News

Saturday Selections – December 12, 2020

John Piper and Tedashii on the need for Christians to make war Not everyone will love the musical genre, but it's a good match to the message that we should not be complacent about our sins. Endlessly twitterpated? What does real love look like? "A TV drama recently set off my baloney-meter. A character was talking about how he knew he was still in love with his wife by the way his stomach still did flip-flops when she walked in. Hmm. Call me a cynic, or maybe just deprived of that level of marriage, but stay with me..." The sexual revolution's next frontier In the hole created by parents relinquishing their God-given educational role, schools are being used to sexualize childhood. Why the scientific consensus can be unreliable If ten people, with no connections, in isolation from one another, agreed to the facts of a car accident, their consensus would give us good reason to trust what they are saying. But not all consensus is so trustworthy, because it is not so independently arrived. This article details, in Fidel Castro's Cuba, how the Communist Party got overwhelming support at the ballot box each "election" but that was a coerced consensus due to limited choices, and fear. When we hear of a consensus around evolution, it is more the second type of consensus than the first, with those who point out Darwin's deficiencies risking their livelihood to do so. This is an article that rewards the effort invested. How Christianity is the basis for rights, science, and civilization (10-min read) Tim Keller is a mixed bag, but here he gives a fantastic review/summary of Tom Holland's book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, making the case that it is God's Truth that stands as the foundation for so much of what even the secular culture celebrates as good and right in the world. Tim Challies on why his family didn't do sleepovers (6 min) While Challies doesn' think there is any sort of biblical command against sleepovers, he explains why his family decided against them. ...