Toby Sumpter

What does holiness have to do with the wars in Ukraine, Iran, Israel, or the growing divisions in our nation, the church, or your family? That's what this year's Fight Laugh Feast Conference is all about. 14 Days.

When you were little and your Dad put you in the car and told you he was taking you to your favorite place, you never doubted him. When God forgives all your sins and says He's going to make you perfect and holy like His Son so you can dwell with Him forever, never doubt Him.

Historically, many people have reduced "race" to skin color and other physical characteristics. Maybe "nobody" in your circle is making that claim, but as Stephen Wolfe says, please do the reading. Even if the word "race" has sometimes been defined differently, Voddie was clearly mocking that historic materialistic determinism.

No, you haven’t actually done any logic here. Logic requires careful definitions and conclusions that follow from premises. Voddie simply explained why “race” should not be defined by amount of pigment in our skin. The amount of pigment in skin is not deterministic. Which is correct and accurate. Simple as.

Please think more carefully. God created mankind male and female — those are fixed and immutable realities. Physical characteristics, family traits, cultural practices are actually fluid and change over time. This is not that hard.

Man, I miss Voddie

We must fight our enemies bound by God’s law and not take up the tactics of darkness (Ps. 17:4) – we are not to return evil for evil but we are to overcome evil with good (Rom. 12:21) – but this doesn’t merely mean making them cupcakes – it can also include good legislation, good lawsuits, good arguments, good mockery and jokes, and good works of every sort. tobyjsumpter.com/the-right-k…

We are Protestants, which means that we are the people of the Protestant Reformation. We celebrate that great movement of the Holy Spirit, a time in which millions of professing Christians became real Christians. The Roman Church had distorted the message of the Bible: while they taught the holiness and justice of God, cultivating great fear and dread, they created a manmade ladder to Heaven, turning worship into a superstitious ritual, trying to earn God’s favor. Martin Luther’s great breakthrough was the realization that God is holy and perfectly righteous, but by His grace, He sent His only Son to be that holiness and righteousness for us, and faith alone unites us to Him. We live in a day in desperate need of a new Reformation. Millions of professing Christians in our land need to become real Christians. But in our day the great distortion is that we have turned God into a benighted, benevolent old man. And so when grace is preached, it hardly means anything because no one actually fears God. But the God of the Bible is Absolute Justice and Holiness and Wisdom. He is high and lifted up, and the pride of man is utterly consumed in His presence. And therefore our only hope is His grace alone.