Notes from the margins
A reading room.
Slow notes on faith, scripture, and the days in between — with the occasional tech footnote.
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When Did the Gospel Become a Plan of Salvation?
In my last post, “The Gospel Is Bigger Than the Plan of Salvation,” I admitted something that has stayed with me: for years, when I thought I was sharing the Gospel, I was usually sharing the Plan of Salvation. I talked about sin, separation from God, the death of Jesus, personal faith, repentance, and the…
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The Gospel Is Bigger Than the Plan of Salvation
I have been reconsidering the way I should share the Gospel. For years, when I thought I was explaining the Gospel, I was usually explaining the Plan of Salvation. I would talk about sin, separation from God, the death of Jesus, personal faith, repentance, and the decision each person must make. None of those things…
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I Thought Heaven Was the Finish Line. I Was Wrong.
If you had asked me years ago what happens to Christians after they die, I would have answered without hesitation: "We go to heaven." That's true. But it's not the whole story. In fact, I think many of us have unintentionally shortened the biblical story. We've turned heaven into the destination when the Bible presents…
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“Many Mansions” Was Never in the Greek: What Jesus Actually Promised in John 14
For as long as many of us can remember, the mental architecture of eternity has been furnished by a single, resonant line: “In my Father's house are many mansions.” We grow up imagining a celestial suburbia: endless rows of custom-built estates, gleaming marble porches, and sprawling celestial real estate awarded according to our spiritual productivity.…
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Did the New Testament Writers Believe in a Divine Council?
Have you ever noticed how casually the New Testament talks about unseen powers, as if everyone in the room already knew the invisible furniture of the universe? For a long time, when I read verses about “principalities and powers,” I knew they weren’t just metaphors for political oppression in the Roman Empire. I knew the…
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The Day I Rode My Bicycle into the Eye of a Hurricane
There are only a handful of childhood memories that remain crystal clear more than sixty years later. One of mine happened on a September afternoon in 1960, when I was eight years old and living just a block north of the Gulf of Mexico in Biloxi, Mississippi. Our home stood on Father Ryan Avenue, under…
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Signal vs. Noise: Learning to Hear What Scripture Is Actually Saying
One of the most valuable questions I’ve learned to ask isn’t just for technology or current events. It’s equally important when opening my Bible. What’s signal, and what’s noise? In my professional life, signal is the information that actually matters. Everything else is distraction. Noise is everything that distracts from it. The same principle applies…
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The Bible’s Forgotten Turning Point: Why Genesis 11 Explains the Rest of Scripture
If you were to walk into a coffee shop and ask a well-read Christian to summarize the storyline of the Bible, you’d likely hear a familiar cadence. It usually sounds something like this: Creation (Everything is good) The Fall (Everything breaks) The Flood (A cosmic reset) Abraham (The promise begins) Israel (The chosen family) Jesus…
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My Zechariah Study with ChatGPT: A Snapshot
I’ve been working through several books of the Bible with ChatGPT providing commentary. I’ve given it a lot of information, actually about five volumes full, about: I instructed it to draw on trusted sources but to challenge me, not just tell me what I want to hear. It’s done a pretty amazing job. I really…
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Seeing the Whole Story: How Greg Koukl and Michael Heiser Illuminate Different Dimensions of Biblical Reality
The more I immerse myself in the study of Scripture, the more I find that good theology is rarely a matter of selecting one isolated concept over another. It is, rather, an exercise in allowing the entire counsel of God to speak in its own voice, even when those voices seem to operate on different…
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