June Musings (6/03/2026)

Riddleblog and Blessed Hope Podcast Updates:

  • Season Five of the Blessed Hope Podcast, a deep dive Bible study in the Book of Romans is now underway. Give it a listen!

  • My series on James is coming to an end. Next up, the Epistles of John

Thinking Out Loud:

  • With the landslide victory of James Paxton in the Texas Senate primary, and the democratic defense of Graham Platner’s Nazi Tattoo and horn dog behavior, it is all too clear that the personal morality of political candidates no longer matters to voters. I remember Bill Clinton’s claim “I didn’t inhale,” or the last minute revelation of George Bush’s DUI, that nearly cost each of them the presidency. Now, all the political tribes care about is gaining political advantage even if their chosen candidate is a moral degenerate. That does not bode well for the future of our Republic, which depends upon the virtue and morality of its elected officials

  • Spencer Pratt’s campaign against Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass has been absolutely brilliant

  • I believe that Satan is currently bound to the Abyss by the preaching of the gospel. But he does retain limited power to deceive. One place where he has been successful is deceiving publishers into using endnotes, not footnotes

  • Churches ought to begin instructing their members about Islamic history and doctrine in conjunction with training to evangelize our Muslim neighbors. Islam will not be going away, and the mission field has come to us

  • Aaron MacLean (School of War Podcast) host, nails it. “If each day we travel half the distance to an Iran deal, and then the day after that travel half *the remaining distance*, and then so on the day after that… logically there can never be an Iran deal.” I do worry that somehow Trump will manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory

  • I would love to have the dollar amount spent on printing and mailing candidate advertisements to my home, which I throw away without even looking at them. What a waste

  • It doesn’t show up as a polling question, but like him or not, “Trump fatigue” is a thing. I hope our next president (I’m hoping for Rubio) stays off social media, limits interaction with the press to several times a week, and is not on the news or social media on a constant basis

  • My vote for the worst possible title for a book about Jan Hus is On Fire for God, by Victor Budgen and published by Evangelical Press in 2007. How did that get through editorial?

Recently Read:

Brett Whalen’s Dominion of God, (2009) was mentioned in someone’s social media discussion of resources on the end-times. Having just finished Michael Horton’s Magician and Mechanic, I realized how litle I knew about specifics of the eschatology of the medieval Roman Church, other than eschatolgical speculation was widespread due to the end of the millennium (just as with the Y2K craziness of our own age) and greatly influnced by Joachim of Fiore. But Whalen’s was a book I knew I needed to tackle.

Brett Whalen is a professor of intellectual history at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The volume does a capable job of recounting the eschatological speculation of the period. As such it filled in a signficiant lacuna in my own knowledge of the goings on in Rome during this time. Several of my recent posts on Medieval Antichrist speculation were prompted by Whalen’s book. If you are interested in the details spelled out by Whalen I will direct you there: A Holy Pope yet to Come?, Well, That Didn't Come to Pass As Expected -- More Medieval Antichrist Expectations, and Antichrist Speculation: Nothing New.

This is a well-written, quick-paced volume and serves as yet another reminder that nearly a millennium later, Christians are still prone to wild speculation about the end times in relation to their own current situation. Joachim’s stress upon the three stages of history—with the third stage (the “age of the Spirit” yet come)—prompted all sorts of speculation about when an “Age of the Spirit” would dawn, what it would be like when it did, and what must happen before it could come to pass. This expectation took place at a time when the Roman Church was exceedingly corrupt, Islamic armies had occupied the “holy sites” in Jerusalem and Palestine, the great East-West schism ocurred, and the crusades began with all manner of fleeting successes, dismal failures, and unexpected consequences. Whalen recounts these events in a very readable and informative manner.

In additional to covering ground with which I was not familiar, Whalen’s account brings to light some fruitful debate and discussion of the relevant biblical texts during this period, while at other times reveals that many of the church’s sounder minds were also prone to make sensational predictions which were offered in an attempt to explain the challanges and tribulations of their own age. Fear and uncertainty about the future drove much of this speculation, but when these efforts become unhinged from the biblical data, all sorts of craziness ensues.

Surely, there is a lesson there for all of us. So while we cry out, “Maranatha, Come Quickly Lord Jesus,” let us be careful not to do what Peter warns us about (2 Peter 3:3-4) —“knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, `Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.’” Let us not give scoffers things to scoff about, while we go about the business the Lord has assigned to us in Matthew 24:14. “And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Taking the gospel to the ends of the earth is the only sign of the end we can do anything about to hasten the Lord’s return.

Whalen’s book is not for all, but well worth reading if this period and topic is of interest to you.

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Spring 2006

Video:

There are not words! We need might “gender equity cards” for speakers at Synod and General Asssembly

MusingsKim RiddlebargerEndnotes, gender equity cards, Paxton and PlatnerComment