Civility
[This essay was originally published on January 21, 2011.] Civility is in vogue again, at least for a few moments. The nation has been traumatized by another mass murder. A psychopath in Arizona cut down half-a-dozen innocent people, including a federal judge. A...
God, Creation, and Humanity, Part 8: The Future of Human Dominion
God has entrusted humans with the responsibility of managing the created order. He made it and brought it to a significant level of order and utility, but then charged them with exercising dominion, thereby increasing its order and usefulness. While humanity has...
God, Creation, and Humanity, Part 7: The Deification of Nature
Sometimes human beings undervalue the created order. When that happens, they may bring disorder into the natural world because they begin to prey upon creation. This behavior is a reversal of God’s intention, which was that humans should continue the work of...
God, Creation, and Humanity, Part 6: The Devaluation of Nature
During creation week, God brought the world from a relatively lower level of order to a relatively higher level of order. In an unfallen world, humans would have continued this process of ordering creation as God’s sub-regents, exercising dominion and subduing...
Missions as Church Planting
[This essay was originally published on November 2, 2007.] Historic Baptists agree that the work of missions is the work of planting churches. They derive this conviction from the uniform pattern of the New Testament. When the churches of the New Testament...
God, Creation, and Humanity, Part 5: The Consequences of Sin
God made humans as mediatorial rulers to rule over creation. In the beginning, God made the world at a relatively lower level of order. Throughout creation week, He brought it to higher levels of order. At the end of the week, He delegated the task of further ordering...
God, Creation, and Humanity, Part 4: Why God Made Humans
The creation account of Genesis 1–2 is indispensable for a right understanding of both God as creator and the world as His creation. It is also essential for a right understanding of human beings in relation to both God and the created world. What the Bible teaches is...
Indefensible Dispensationalism
[This essay was originally published on October 12, 2016.] Dispensational theology has gone out of style. Fifty years ago, probably a majority of American evangelicals held some version of dispensationalism. Today, the balance has tilted in the opposite direction. Not...
God, Creation, and Humanity, Part 3: The Created World
The opening verse of the Bible has profound implications for a right understanding of God. Its implications for a right understanding of the created world are just as significant. Together with the following chapters, it provides a necessary and adequate foundation...
God, Creation, and Humanity, Part 2: The God of Creation
Nothing is more fundamental to right thinking than the first sentence of the Bible: “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” These words, supplemented by the following description, claim that God made the entire created order from the...
God, Creation, and Humanity, Part 1: Beginning a Conversation
When we think wrongly about God, we necessarily begin to think wrongly about other things, too. When we feel wrongly toward God, we inevitably feel wrongly toward other things. When we choose against God, we direct our wills such that making wrong choices about other...
Acton University
The last week of June, I had the opportunity to attend Acton University for a second time. Acton University is not really a university but a week-long conference held in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It is sponsored by the Acton Institute, and its focus is represented by...
Thinking About Immigration
The immigration policies and procedures of the United States are a mess. Anyone who has had to deal with the department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement knows that this agency is unpredictable to the point of seeming arbitrary. It sometimes feels like a Third...
On Knowing One’s Limitations
Nobody is omnicompetent. Nobody. At some point, everybody has to rely on somebody else for information, advice, and perspective. The trick is in knowing whom to rely upon. Most people gain considerable expertise in some one area. I had a friend who was an outstanding...
The Foundations Baptist Fellowship International 2024
This week I had the opportunity to attend the annual meeting of the Foundations Baptist Fellowship International. The meeting was hosted by the Tri City Baptist Church in Westminster, Colorado, pastored by Will Senn. The meeting began with scheduled training for...
Those Pesky Premillennialists
[This essay was originally published on July 31, 2009.] Disagreeing with someone’s perspective is one thing, but dismissing it is something else. People can disagree respectfully. Respectful disagreement involves listening carefully to other individuals in...
Dominion
It was never meant to be easy, this business of exercising dominion. When God blessed the first humans, he gave them the power to fill the earth and to subdue it. Yes, subdue it, like the sons of Manasseh were to subdue the land across the Jordan (Num 32:22), like the...
That Dog Won’t Hunt
Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, recently stirred up controversy when she admitted in print to shooting an unmanageable dog. The story is in her new book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward (Center...
It’s Time To Live It
Among the books that I was reading last week was Peter Sammons’s volume on Reprobation and God’s Sovereignty. Perhaps I should say that if reprobation is understood as symmetrical with election—i.e., that God elects and then creates some individuals simply to condemn...
A Complex Event
Sometimes the events of biblical prophecy are relatively simple. The foretold event occurs and the prophecy is fulfilled. From that moment, it slips into the past. Noah prophesies the flood, and it comes. Elijah prophesies a drought, and the rain stops. Micaiah...
About In the Nick of Time
Occasional Essays and Other Stuff for Christian Students Presented by the Research Professor of Systematic Theology of Central Baptist Theological Seminary of Minneapolis.
American Christianity needs Christian leaders. Christian leaders explain the Scriptures, bringing them to bear upon life’s urgent questions. Christian leaders exemplify the life of faith, finding their ultimate satisfaction in God alone. They unite intellectual discipline with ordinate affection, turning their entire being toward the love of God. These essays are dedicated to the task of inviting Christian students to become tomorrow’s Christian leaders.
—Kevin T. Bauder
“Be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.”
APPLICATION & AID