CloudofSteam

Unlike many years in the 1990s, Her Majesty the Queen has done a good job identifying the meaning of Christmas.

Ignore all the bluff and bluster about the rapture happening today. Instead, soak in the assurances of 1 Corinthians 15;50-58 alongside Handel’s setting of the same from Messiah.

50 I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

55 “Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”

56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

58 Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

T. David Gordon has done it again! After his provocative book Why Johnny Can’t Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers, in Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns: How Pop Culture Rewrote The Hymnal, Gordon turns his attention to why hymns don’t seem to work anymore (or do they?).

Read a sample at Monergismbooks.com