Posts by Ray Heiple

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A Biblical Case Against the Deaconess

Ray Heiple
Oct 6, 2021
Editor's note : Theology for Everyone (TfE) recognizes that churches and denominations hold different views on the deaconate. We also recognize that these are intramural debates among those who embrace the essentials of the faith. However, we also believe that iron sharpens iron. We believe that...

How Does God Harden Hearts?

Ray Heiple
Jul 9, 2021
Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens (Rom. 9:18). In the well-known story of Israel’s exodus from Egypt, God is described as hardening Pharaoh’s heart so that Pharaoh disobeys God. In point of fact, ten times God is said to harden Pharaoh’s heart, six times it...

The Absolute Sovereignty of God Over All

Ray Heiple
Jun 9, 2021
For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together, (Col. 1:17-18). Reformed...

The Resurrection: Historical Reliability

Ray Heiple
Jun 22, 2020
He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. Mat. 28:6 NKJV Very early in the second century, a Roman historian named Publius Cornelius Tacitus referred to the resurrection of Christ as a “pernicious superstition.” Gaius Suetonius, another Roman historian...

Justification and Assurance

Ray Heiple
Jun 3, 2020
These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life… 1 John 5:13a NKJ The Protestant Reformation is most often remembered and celebrated as the time God restored the crucial doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone to the church...

Justification and Martin Luther

Ray Heiple
Apr 17, 2020
It was a hot, humid afternoon in July, 1505. A brilliant young law student was traveling near the German village of Stotternheim in what was then Electoral Saxony. Having recently earned his Masters degree, he had by all accounts, a promising and lucrative law career ahead of him. But as often...

The Ordo Salutis: Perseverance

Ray Heiple
Apr 2, 2020
The doctrine of the perseverance of the saints means if a person is truly saved he cannot lose his salvation. Roman Catholicism and some strands of Protestant theology, such as traditional Arminianism, Methodism, and Pentecostalism reject this final point of Calvinism. They instead hold that a...

The Ten Commandments: The Eighth

Ray Heiple
Dec 4, 2019
…he was a thief, and had the money box; and he used to take what was put in it. John 12:6b NKJV We often consider stealing to be a minor sin. Especially if it is only shaving a few dollars off of our tax returns, borrowing a few items from work, adding a few minutes on our timecards, remaining a...