Grace in Focus – July/August 2018

Bob’s Second Ordination Exam
By Bob Wilkin The Examination Questions I often receive questions via email. Recently, I received a real doozy. It was not just one question, but ten, concerning justification and sanctification. Here it is: My brother has recently been sharing a lot of GES videos and literature. He spent many years reading the Puritans, and of
You Were Chosen (Ephesians 1:4)
By Ken Yates Introduction When I was a kid, I participated in many pick-up basketball games. When we had too many players, some of us were chosen to play while some of us were not. It was always a bummer when you weren’t chosen to play. You would then have to sit on the edge
Becoming a Fundamentalist: An Interview with Randy White
By Shawn Lazar Christian fundamentalism started a century ago. Bible teachers and pastors organized to resist the onset of liberalism in the denominations. They defended the fundamental doctrines of Biblical Christianity, such as the inerrancy of Scripture, the virgin birth, and the literal resurrection of Christ. Over time, a split began to occur between evangelicals
Coping with Loneliness as a Christian Senior
By Pam Rainey Not all Seniors Are Socializing Have you ever gone to visit a senior adult to cheer her up, only to discover you were the one uplifted? Perhaps the person you intended to encourage may have been going through stages of an incurable illness, or perhaps he was recovering from minor surgery. It
The Importance of the Expression That Day and Hour
By Bill Fiess A New Expression In the middle of His Olivet Discourse, Jesus Christ made this astonishing statement: “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only” (Matt 24:36). Though it is clear that Jesus had been speaking about prophetic events, He unexpectedly used
Faith and Knowledge
By James Morison Saving faith is a kind of knowledge. This is rendered evident by what our Savior says in John 17:3, “This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” Life eternal is the gift of God (Rom 6:23). It is the gift
What Was Zane Hodges Saying about Salvation in 1 Timothy 4:16?
By Bob Wilkin “Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you” (1 Tim 4:16). We ran an article in the May-June Grace in Focus in which Zane Hodges discussed 1 Tim 4:6-16. At the end of the article
The Films of the Kendrick Brothers
By Steve Dehner About fifteen years ago, Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, GA, began making movies. Under the creative leadership of Alex Kendrick and his brother Stephen, Sherwood Pictures so far has produced four feature films and one made under the brothers’ own subsidiary. Despite mixed-to-poor reviews in the secular press, they have amassed a
Grace and Groans
By Charlie McCall We Need Christ God is Himself the grace needed for the Christian life. Romans 7 depicts the Christian experience when a person attempts to live from the Word of God or from his new orientation (new nature) toward Christ but not from the person of Christ Himself. That experience is defeat and
Who You Are Tells You Whom to Love — Ephesians 5:22–6:9
By Shawn Lazar What is important in living the Christian Life? What does it mean to follow Jesus—to live the kind of life He wants you to live? At the very beginning of my Christian life, I was reading very mystical authors like Watchman Nee and Andrew Murray. What they described was so above and