Evangelicals and New Calvinists Out-Foxed: MacArthur's Non-Scriptural Basis for Resistance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62nN2RDhjOA

This is a follow-up to the piece that appears here:

http://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-context-of-macarthurs-flawed-stand.html

If I had any doubts about John MacArthur's motivation regarding his defiance of the governor – his appearance on Tucker Carlson's programme certainly cleared things up.

NBC and the Chinese Consulate in Houston

I had to chuckle while watching NBC's coverage of the US ordered closing of the Chinese consulate in Houston. They had aerial shots showing Chinese staffers outside (in a courtyard I think) burning documents. The reporting was ominous in its tone, seeking to cast the Chinese in the darkest possible terms. Clearly they were up to something – hiding their dark deeds taking place within US borders.

Some Reflections on the Death of JI Packer

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2020/july/j-i-packer-died-evangelical-theologian-knowing-god.html

Whenever someone of the older generation of Evangelical leaders dies off, it's always a time to reflect. For me, I am forced to look back to my early days as a Christian in the mid-1990's and consider where I was then versus now and how things in general have changed.

Trouble on the Nile

There is serious trouble brewing in Northeastern Africa. While many of the tensions and conflicts of our day are packaged in terms of human rights and political struggle there is an underlying factor that is driving geopolitical tension and that is the struggle for resources.

How Should We Then Live: The Schaeffer Legacy and the Great Evangelical Disaster

Though the series ended with Part 10, we're using this 11^th installment to reflect on the legacy of Schaeffer and his film. While at this point it's very dated, the leaders of contemporary Evangelicalism were greatly inspired by Schaeffer and his work. Whether they read his books or not, chances are they saw these films. Virtually every leader of the movement was either directly inspired by him or by those who took up his mantle. His presence both hovers and looms over the Evangelical world.

How Should We Then Live Part 10: Final Choices (II)

Schaeffer then launches into a discussion regarding civil liberties and the role of the state and how under the Christian consensus freedoms were able to flourish without chaos (for the racial-tribal majority we might add) and yet once the consensus was removed, the very same freedoms became self-destructive.

How Should We Then Live Part 10: Final Choices (I)

This final episode was certainly one of the weakest and most dated – and yet also necessary. Schaeffer attempts to tie things together and make his final appeal. This episode differs from the others in that Schaeffer is not talking about art and culture from the vantage point of historic places and museums. It's mostly just him talking and he more or less keeps falling back on a couple of points crucial to his project. This is what the series has been all about. He wants his audience to take away these crucial applications and he more or less devotes an entire episode to them.

UK Politics: Labour Continues Phoney Anti-Semitic Purges and the Results of Beijing's Hong Kong Clampdown

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-53183085

Jeremy Corbyn is gone but the Labour Party's 'Anti-Semitism' push to the right agenda continues. It's being used as a means to purge the party of anyone who doesn't toe the Establishment line when it comes to UK foreign policy.

You could almost describe this as the UK's version of a flirtation with McCarthyism.

A Warning to the Egyptian Churches

http://www.christianpost.com/news/treatment-of-christians-in-egypt-much-better-now-than-its-been-for-a-long-time-expert.html

Egyptian ethnic Christians and Protestants have always endured their share of struggles as modern Egyptian society has been torn apart by the conflicts between secular nationalist rule and religious traditionalism. The latter is represented by groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood which would (if allowed) take Egypt in the direction of a more deliberately Islamic society and this would also be reflected in terms of foreign policy – an issue that continues to tear modern Egyptian society apart.

The Sino-Vatican Agreement: The Error of Compromise

https://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/underground-bishop-detained-in-china

If Francis thought Beijing was making a good faith agreement in 2018 he was short-sighted in at least two aspects.

The Larger Context of the China-India Border Conflict

India and China have occasionally sparred since the modern iterations of their countries were formed in the aftermath of World War II. Their disputes are over borders, in this case an irregular and segmented 2100 mile long frontier in the Himalaya region. The conflicts have at times broken out into small-scale war, the worst of which took place in 1962 but as fighting in such terrain is logistically challenging, the wars remain constrained.

Brunson's Legacy: Ankara's Hostility to Foreign Protestants and Evangelicals

https://www.persecution.org/2020/06/21/turkey-resumes-discrimination-protestants/

After Andrew Brunson was released in the fall of 2018 and repeatedly sat on the public stage with Trump and vocally supported his Anti-Erdogan geopolitical posturing – is anyone surprised that Erdogan looks askance at foreign evangelical leaders at work in his country?