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Showing posts from September, 2025

Charlie Kirk, say hello to Henry Scougal, a Fellow Scot

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Some 322 years ago a 28-year-old Scot by the name of Henry Scougal lost his life to disease. Scougal shared many personal attributes and accomplishments with Charlie Kirk. He took on significant roles at an unheard of age, such as teaching Philosophy at a college when he was 20. His subsequent ministry was spent primarily as a Professor on university campuses. When Scougal was nearing death in his 28th year, he wrote a treatise called "The Life of God in the Soul of Man." The treatise was a private letter to a personal friend, not intended to be published more broadly. "…but  Bishop Burnet,  seeing  it,  appreciated  it  so  highly that  he hastened  to  give  it  to  the  world with the  most  generous  and earnest  commendation.  "It  was written," he says, "by a pious and learned countryman of mine, for the private use of a noble friend of the author's, without the least design of...

Charlie Kirk Was Not an Apostle

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Christians, I am one of those niggling Reformed Christians who believe that the office of Apostle has ceased. In that regard, I do not consider Charlie Kirk to have been an apostle. I also don’t consider you an apostle. And I don’t esteem myself an apostle.  But I do believe that Jesus certainly intended for us to follow the examples of the Apostles, and to experience the same kind of reactions to our Christian lives lived in obedience; and I would be surprised if Charlie Kirk did not agree. There are many passages in the Bible that we can cite in the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Perhaps none are more appropriate, comforting and necessary than the tenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.  I won’t reproduce Matthew 10 here, as you have (or should have) your Bible to consult. I will only say, that for those in the media and otherwise in the public eye, who are trying to make sense of it all, and who are asking questions about how we ought respond to not just Ch...