Jeff Ragan > Recent Status Updates

"Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, 'I have found the Book of he Law in the temple of the Lord.' He gave it to Shaphan, who read it. Then Shaphan the secretary went to the king and reported to him... 'Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.' And Shaphan read from it in the presence of the king. When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes." - 2 Kings 22:8-11

"One senses only through change, appreciates only after absence. I haven't been far enough away to know the earth before. For twenty-five years I've lived on it, and yet not seen it till this moment" (394).

"That judgment was compounded by the deporting of much of the surviving Israelite remnant and the importing of pagan hordes, who contributed to the delinquency of the land with their alien religions" (211).

"When the Lord made a covenant with the Israelites, he commanded them: 'Do not worship any other gods or bow down to them...But the Lord, who brought you up out of Egypt with mighty power and outstretched arm, is the one you must worship...You must always be careful to keep the decrees and ordinances...he wrote for you...it is he who will deliver you from the hand of all your enemies.'" - 2 Ki 17:35-39

"Death to sin is not of itself an adequate characterization of the believer's identity; it is basic and it is the fundamental premise of the argument. But death to sin is but the precondition of that life which is the final issue of grace...And baptism as signifying union with Christ must mean also union with Christ in his resurrection and therefore in his resurrection life" (216).

"Then a great & powerful wind tore the mountains apart & shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After...there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After...came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heart it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave." - 1Ki19:11-13

"A sex-ratio imbalance created by men retreating from relationships...would then boost the power of the remaining men to navigate the mating market to their advantage. This means women who have no interest or experience with pornography-but are seeking a committed relationship-can be harmed by porn's effects on the mating market if enough men retreat from it because they have decided that porn is 'good enough'"(128).

"When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the Lord. And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled his temple." - 1 Kings 8:10-11

"Born among the humblest, Han Yu reached to the highest ranks in the service of the state, and fell from grace only because he protested too intelligibly against the imperial concessions to Buddhism. To Han the new religion was merely a Hindu superstition; and it offended him to his Confucian soul that the Emperor should lend his sanction to the intoxication of his people with this enervating dream" (719).

"Justification is a constitutive act, not barely declarative. And this constitutive act consists in our being placed in the category of righteous persons by reason of our relation to Christ. The same principle of solidarity that appears in our relation to Adam, and by reason of which we are involved in his in, obtains in our relation to Christ" (205-6).

"As to his deportment in general, it is defined for us by the disciple Tseng in terms that exactly correspond to the traditional Western conception of a gentleman: we recognize him by the fact that his movements are free from any brusqueness or violence, that his expression is one of complete openness and sincerity, that his speech is free from any low and vulgar or as we should say 'Cockney' tinge" (28-9).

"Isaiah described Assyria as the 'rod of God's wrath' (Isa. 10:5). These prophetic words not only warned of impending judgment on Israel's and Judah's sinful ways, but they underscored the dramatic changes occurring in the power structure of the Near East. For more than three centuries (1200-900 B.C.) no superpower meddled in the affairs of the small states of the Levant" (131).

"The appetite has always been there, but it had restricted availability; with new technologies the restrictions are being stripped away and we see people sort of going crazy with it. I think the same thing is happening with this unlimited access to sex partners. People are gorging. That's why it's not intimate. You could call it a kind of psychosexual obesity" (112).

"What the judgment unto condemnation took into account was simply the one trespass; the sentence needed only the one trespass to give it validity and sanction...But the free gift unto justification is of such a character that it must take the many trespasses into its reckoning; it could not be the free gift of justification unless it blotted out the many trespasses" (196).

"...the 'all sinned' of verse 12 & the 1 trespass of the 1 man of verses 15-19 must refer to the same fact or event, that the 1 fact can be expressed in terms of both singularity & plurality, as the sin of 1 & the sin of all. And the only solution is that there must be some kind of solidarity existing between the 'one' & 'the all' with the result that the sin of the 1 may...be regarded as the sin of all" (186).

"To function coherently as part of an integrated military unit, every soldier must have a detailed, practical grasp of his army's Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)" (35).

"Non! Je veux te l'acheter a son prix; je n'offrirai pas a l'Eternel, mon Dieu, des holocaustes qui ne me couteraient rein!" - 2 Samuel 24:24

"What looms up in our conviction when our ungodliness is properly weighed is our detestability and the wrath of God, and it is impossible to take God's love for granted. That God could love the ungodly, far less than he did love them, would never have entered into the heart of man...The marvel of God's love is that it was love to the ungodly" (166).

"Ta deliverance me sert de bouclier. Par ta sollicitude, tu me rends fort, grace a toi, j'avance plus vite, mes jambes ne flechissent pas. Je poursuis tous mes adversaires, je les detruis et je ne reviens pas sans les avoir brises. Je les acheve, je les frappe: aucun ne se releve, ils sont etendus sous mes pieds. Tu me rends for pour le combat, tu fais plier mes agresseurs: les voila a mes pieds." - 2 Sam 22:36-40

"...the local manager for the Royal Greenland Trading Company who by virtue of that office was the Upernivik Pooh Bah, harbourmaster, customs, health...and governor of the Province. We got out the gin but this did not stop the manager, a stern-path-of-duty man, from asking to see our health certificates...With the assistance of more gin and some talk...this far-flung piece of bumbledom was strangled at birth" (400).

"The death of Solomon in 922 B.C. marked the end of an era in which one king exercised authority over all the tribes of Israel. Henceforth, two independent nations emerged: Judah in the south and Israel in the north, each with distinct governments and national character. Israel survived the complex international changes of the Iron Age for two hundred years (922-722 B.C.), while Judah managed until 586 B.C." (115)

"...the Chinese believe that all poetry must be brief; that a long poem is a contradiction in terms - since poetry, to them, is a moment's ecstasy, and dies when dragged out in epic reams. Its mission is to see and paint a picture with a stroke, and write a philosophy in a dozen lines; its ideal is infinite meaning in a little rhythm" (712).

"The consummation of redemption, in the teaching of the New Testament, is coincident with the manifestation of the glory of God...And this is more than mere coincidence; it is because the glory of God will be made manifest that redemption will be consummated and the hope of the saints realized" (162).