The Riddleblog

A Blessed, Healthy, Happy, and Prosperous New Year to You All!

A Prayer for New Year’s Eve (The Year’s End)

Almighty and most gracious God, as we close the year with this day, we thank You for all Your tender mercies bestowed upon us during the whole course of our lives, and especially during this past year. Accept our thanksgivings for all Your blessings; fill our hearts with humility and love, with gratitude and trust. [Specific thanksgiving may be offered.]

For all these blessings we offer to You the sacrifice of our praises, and we acknowledge that through Your great goodness and help we are enabled to live our lives in peace, even though we have offended You in countless ways. O merciful God, pardon all who sincerely repent of their sins. Grant that, while our years are passing away, we may work out our salvation with fear and trembling in the time You give to us.

Enable us to press onward, always towards the end of our heavenly calling, even that blessed eternity, which Jesus Christ, Your Son and our Lord, has prepared for us. Amen.

New Year’s Day

Eternal and almighty God, we humble ourselves in Your presence to dedicate to You the beginning of this year by adoration, prayer, and praise.

We come before Your Supreme Majesty and acknowledge with gratitude the manifold blessings which You have freely bestowed upon us through the whole course of our lives. We thank You that, having preserved us to the present time, You have permitted us to enter upon a new year. You have not ceased, O most gracious God, to give to us the abundance of Your loving-kindness.

But You have especially sustained us with every spiritual blessing by keeping in our midst the light of Your gospel. You have granted us repentance through Your mighty help, through Your great goodness, and through the warnings of Your Word and Spirit, and have mercifully given to us favorable opportunities to grow in grace. Despite our unworthiness, for the love of Jesus Christ, take not away from us Your protection and favor.

Moved by Your grace, we devote ourselves to You at the beginning of this year, desiring to employ it better than we have done in the years that are past. And since this day also warns us that our years pass away like a flood, like a dream, give us grace that we may seriously number our days, that we may have a heart of wisdom, that we may discern the vanity of this life, and that we may aspire to that better life, when days and months and years shall be counted no more, forever.

While we continue in the flesh, may we more and more live, not according to its desires, but according to Your will. And grant, O God, that when our years shall come to an end, and the day of our death arrives, we may depart in the peace that passes all understanding and in the sure hope of life everlasting.

Favorably hear us through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

From the Liturgical Forms and Prayer of the URCNA

Riddleblog PublicationKim RiddlebargerDecember 31, 2021New Year PrayersComment

Review of Tim Bouverie's "Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War"

Tim Bouverie: Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War (London: Vintage, 2019) 497 pgs.

I know, it sounds cliche. If you look in a dictionary under “appeasement” you will likely find mention or a picture of Neville Chamberlain—possibly both. Yet, as Tim Bouverie contends in his recent book, Appeasing Hitler, there is far more than “appeasement” to the story of Neville Chamberlain’s diplomatic efforts as English Prime Minister in the eighteen months or so before World War Two. The disaster which everyone feared was coming, yet could do nothing to stop, was at hand. Chamberlain tried and failed to prevent it from happening. Postwar history has not been kind to him. His name is synonymous with political appeasement and naivete.

A political journalist now writing in the field of history, in Appeasing Hitler, Tim Bouverie covers the period from Hitler’s rise to power in Germany (January 1933) until England’s declaration of war on Germany (September 1939). Bouverie recounts the behind the scenes diplomatic efforts made by the British government to prevent the Second World War. If you’ve watched any of the recent Churchill movies (i.e., The Darkest Hour, which, for the most part, is outstanding) and wondered about the tensions between Neville Chamberlain (the current PM), Lord Halifax (the king’s personal friend and the likely P.M. after Chamberlain), and Churchill (the loudest voice opposed to Hitler, but discredited in the eyes of his contemporaries due to his role in the Gallipoli debacle of 1915), Bouverie gives the backstory to the distrust (if not dislike) between Chamberlain, Halifax, and Churchill. Appeasing Hitler is well-written and cogently argued. Bouverie captures quite well the sense of futility on the part of the British government which went with trying to change the mind of a megalomaniac (Hitler) with nothing available to them to stop him but Chamberlain’s best of intentions.

To read the rest of the review, Tim Bouverie: Appeasing Hitler

A Blessed Christmas from the Riddleblog!

Merciful Father, You so loved the world that You gave Your only begotten Son.

He who was rich became poor for us, the eternal Word made flesh, a great Light shining in the darkness.

Only because of Your Word and Spirit have we seen that Light and been drawn into its brightness.

Give us the grace humbly and joyfully to receive Your Son, even as the shepherds and princes who welcomed Him, and to look no further for our redemption than to this child lying in a manger.

This we pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.

From Liturgical Forms and Prayers of the URCNA

Riddleblog PublicationKim RiddlebargerDecember 24, 2021The Word Made Flesh John 1:14Comment

Evil in the Millennial Age? An Exposition of Zechariah 14

I am convinced that one of the major weaknesses of all forms of premillennialism is the presence of evil in the millennial age (The Presence of Evil in the Millennium -- A Huge Problem for Premillennarians). How do people in natural human bodies pass through the events associated with Christ’s return (the general resurrection, the final judgment, and the creation of a new heaven and earth) without being raised from the dead and appointed to their eternal destiny (heaven or hell)? There is a related question also raised by the premillennial understanding of redemptive history: “how can evil exist on the earth, while Jesus rules over the nations from David’s throne in Jerusalem after he has judged the nations?” Premillennarians seek to avoid this conundrum by assigning final judgment and elimination of evil to the close of the millennial age, fully one thousand years after Jesus returns. But the millennial age is not future as premillennarians claim, it is a present reality. Christ’s return is the final consummation, the summing up of all things, not but another step on the way to the final consummation a thousand years later.

Premillennarians respond to this amillennial challenge by asserting that the presence of evil in the millennial age was foretold by the Prophet Zechariah in the fourteenth chapter of his prophecy, thereby parrying the thrust of the amillennial argument.[1] The purpose of this essay is to set Zechariah’s prophecy in its context, summarize the varying interpretations of Zechariah 14 (including premillennialism and Reformed amillennialism), then interpret the entirety of the chapter, before drawing some final conclusions.

To read the rest of the essay: Evil in the Millennial Age? An Exposition of Zechariah 14

Using God

Using God — The Entrepreneurial Spirit of American Christianity

It has been said that pride is the oldest sin in the universe and that it shows no signs of growing weaker with age. Pride is the overestimation of our own worth and the inevitable tendency to exaggerate our own accomplishments. If the Bible is clear about anything, it is that ours is a fallen race and that human pride is the inevitable consequence of the fall. God warned the people of Israel to exercise great care in this regard, “lest you forget the LORD your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery . . . . Beware lest you say in your heart, `My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’” In Romans 1:22, Paul speaks of human pride in these terms; “Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” Because of sin, we suppress the fact that God is the source of all that we have. We see ourselves as far more important than we are. We act as though all of life rises and sets upon our own shadow. Therefore, we are constantly tempted to use God to suit our own sinful ends.

Perhaps it might help to frame the matter like this. When we become great in our own eyes, our estimation of God and his purposes is necessarily diminished. Like two people sitting on opposite ends of a playground teeter-totter, when the person sitting on one end goes up, the other person goes down. The same applies to our estimation of God. When our own desires and whims are elevated over God and his glory–the very essence of sinful pride–God is necessarily diminished in our estimation. When this happens, our own skewed self-estimation replaces the uncomfortable truth we seek to evade–that God is great and we are not.

To read the rest of this essay, click here Using God

False Jesuses

We begin by noting that the nature of our Lord’s incarnation almost guarantees the presence of false Jesuses. The very idea of God taking to himself a true human nature is in and of itself a unique and somewhat mysterious historical event. That Jesus was a real flesh and blood human, who is also the second person of the Holy Trinity, and nevertheless remains one person, raises many profound and important questions. Questions regarding Jesus’ person and his origin are closely related, and arise throughout the ministry of Jesus as recounted in the gospels.

Those who actually heard Jesus preach about the kingdom of God, were said to marveled at his words, for Jesus spoke as someone having authority–unlike anyone they had heard preach previously. Jesus performed miraculous signs and wonders which were obviously not trickery or chicanery. He instantaneously healed people well-known to crowds who were following him. Jesus even raised the dead–several times. All of this was to confirm that the content of his preaching had its origins in the will of YHWH. The buzz surrounding Jesus was that he might be the long-expected messianic prophet, and some among his followers understood Jesus to claim he was older than Abraham or Moses.

It was impossible to hear or see Jesus and not ask, “who is this?” “Where is he from?” In Matthew 16:13–15 we read of an interesting exchange between Jesus and his disciples regarding this very matter. “When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, `Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ They said, `Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, `But who do you say that I am?’” People have been attempting to answer Jesus’ question ever since.

To read the rest, click here: False Jesuses

Riddleblog PublicationKim RiddlebargerOctober 18, 2021False Jesuses, Who Is Jesus?Comment

Princeton and the Millennium: A Study of American Postmillennialism

In this essay, I address the postmillennial eschatology of the famous “Old Princeton” theologians, Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge, and B. B. Warfield. I look at the postmillennialism of Daniel Whitby and Jonathan Edwards, move on to discuss the various postmillennial distinctives, the rise of a distinct Amillennial view (which had previously been discussed under the heading “postmillennialism”) before I draw a series of conclusions about how each of the Princeton theologians modified and moderated the postmillennialism which they inherited from Whitby and Edwards.

You can find the essay here: Princeton and the Millennium: A Study of American Postmillennialism

"For the Sake of the Gospel" -- Paul's Apologetic Speeches in the Book of Acts

I am one of the first people to acknowledge that the contemporary debate over apologetic methodology between the “evidentialists” and the “presuppositionalists,” however unpleasant, nevertheless can be a vital and healthy exercise. It is very important to have a biblically based and carefully honed apologetic methodology in place before confronting the learned paganism of our age. In those instances when this is the goal of the evidentialist-presuppositionalist debate, it ought to be greatly encouraged.

I am perplexed, however, that the parties to this in-house debate spend little time analyzing the Apostle Paul’s apologetic speeches in the Book of Acts. It is here, in Luke’s record of the ever-extending reign of the Risen and Exalted Christ, that we are given a clear picture of how the Apostle Paul sought both to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and defend the Christian truth claim, and this not only in the synagogues of the major cities of Greece and Asia Minor—before Jews and “God-fearing” Gentile proselytes—but also before magistrates as well as in the marketplaces of those Roman and Greek cities where little or nothing was known of the God of Israel and the inspired texts of the Old Testament.

To read “For the Sake of the Gospel” — click here

Riddleblog PublicationKim RiddlebargerMarch 22, 2021Paul's Apologetic, Mars Hill, Apologetic Speeches in ActsComment

New Riddleblog Publications

I am continuing to move resources from the old Riddleblog to the new.

Here are two new essays.

The first is an essay from Modern Reformation magazine on the reactions of Jerome and Augustine to the fall of Rome: Jerome, Augustine, and the Fall of Rome (2009)

The second is an essay written for the volume, Always Reforming (a 2010 Festschrift for Dr. Godfrey) which defends a frequent celebration of the Lord’s Supper: The Reformation of the Supper

Riddleblog PublicationKim RiddlebargerDecember 30, 2020Jerome and Augustine, Fall of Rome 411

Two New Riddleblog Publications

I have uploaded two essays from the old Riddleblog to “Riddleblog Publications.”

You can find them here:

Eschatology by Ethos

A Rival to Biblical Christianity