John Calvin gave lectures in the Geneva Auditory throughout his ministry. These lectures make up most of his biblical commentaries. What follows are his final comments from his final lecture before his death, on the 20th chapter of Ezekiel.
"For ourselves, then, let us learn that we cannot otherwise worship God with acceptance unless we adopt whatever pleases him as pertaining to our salvation. For if we wish to come to a debtor and creditor account, or to consider that he is in the slightest degree indebted to us, we in this way diminish his glory, and as far as is in our power we despoil ourselves of that inestimable privilege which the Prophet now commends. Hence let us desire to acknowledge God in this way, since he treats us with amazing clemency and pity out of regard for his own name, and not according to our sins. And since that was said to his ancient people because they returned to the land of Canaan, how much more ought God’s gratuitous goodness to be extolled by us, when his heavenly kingdom is at this day open to us, and when he openly calls us to himself in heaven, and to the hope of that happy immortality which has been obtained for us through Christ?"
After months of hard work — it’s released!
The definitive documentary on the Female Pastor controversy in the SBC.
Featuring @BobPearle, @TomBuck, @DavidSchrock, @megbasham, and more.
What messengers will be debating next week in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.
From the Conservative Resurgence to whistleblowers, Beth Moore, and the Law Amendment — we uncover how female pastors became a controversy in the SBC and WHY this is a modern battle for the Bible.
https://t.co/Xw6xxC27TM
Thomas Sowell: “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”
The Chicago Bears managed to stay in Chicago despite the 1929 Great Depression, WWII, and the 2008 financial crisis, but they couldn't survive two incompetent Democratic leaders in Illinois and now they are moving next door to the Republican run red state of Indiana!
Milton Friedman's greatest regret.
The federal government discovered the perfect crime in 1943: make employers collect taxes before workers ever see their paychecks. You think you earn $60,000 per year, but you actually earn $75,000 and hand over $15,000 to politicians without ever touching it. The psychological difference is enormous.
Before payroll withholding, Americans wrote quarterly checks directly to the Treasury. Picture yourself sitting at your kitchen table, writing a $3,750 check to the IRS every three months. The pain was immediate and visceral. Politicians faced constant pressure to justify every dollar because citizens felt the extraction in real time.
Withholding transforms this concrete loss into an abstract accounting entry. Your employer becomes an unpaid tax collector, and you never experience the actual cost of government. Worse, most people celebrate their tax refunds as government generosity rather than recognizing them as interest-free loans they provided to politicians. The Treasury collects your money throughout the year, spends it immediately, then returns your own cash and receives gratitude.
This system enables the explosion in government spending you witness today. Defense contractors billing $640 for toilet seats, agricultural subsidies for corn syrup, and congressional salaries for 535 people who rarely show up to work. When taxation feels painless, voters stop demanding accountability for how their money gets spent.
Milton Friedman helped design withholding as a wartime emergency measure and later called it his greatest regret. Free market economists recognized that the psychological pain of direct taxation creates political pressure for fiscal restraint. The temporary always becomes permanent in government hands, and the emergency justification disappears while the extraction mechanism remains forever.
Election Day should mean Election DAY. Counting ballots for weeks afterward undermines trust & creates opportunities for fraud. IMO, this is why deep blue states have been so eager to embrace & defend this scheme.
https://t.co/B8vxkbYqyh
Chicago lost the Bears this week. A team that's been in the city since 1921.
They didn't lose them to a bigger market or a better deal. The Bears decided they'd rather be a tenant in Indiana than deal with Illinois for one more year.
Think about how badly you have to run a place for that to be the smart move.
They lost them for two reasons.
The people running Illinois would rather villainize a builder than keep one. And they're bad at their jobs.
In 2021 the Bears spent $197M on the old Arlington Park racetrack.
Before they could break ground, Cook County valued the empty lot at $192M (Bears said $60M). They were salivating at the chance to extort a building that didn't even exist yet.
That fight dragged on for years.
The Bears were ready to put $2B into the stadium. All they wanted was a promise the county wouldn't reassess them into oblivion, plus $855M for infrastructure everyone uses. Roads, transit, utilities. A $3B project, two thirds of it private money pouring into Illinois.
Springfield had since 2021 to get this done. They dragged it to the final night of session, passed it through the Senate at 3:39AM, and the House went home without voting.
So now it's all gone.
The funniest part? This started because Cook County tried to grab the tax early. They knew a built stadium would pay $53M a year. Now they get under $4M on a vacant lot. No jobs, no buildout, no new anything.
Congrats on fighting for scraps and losing the whole prize.
Pritzker: they're "an $8.5B valued business" that doesn't need propping up.
But be smart for a second. Almost every NFL city throws in public money for a stadium. Not charity. The return is real. Tourism, hotels, restaurants, jobs, game days, property tax on a huge development. The math works.
Indiana did the math. While Illinois sat on it for years, Indiana passed a bill in months, put up $1B, and took the team.
And the Bears took a worse deal to get there. In Illinois they were going to own their stadium. In Indiana they rent it from the state. A team that wanted to build its own home gave up ownership just to escape Chicago.
Nobody won but Indiana. The Bears lost their stadium. Illinois lost the team, the $2B, and $53M a year in taxes.
Pritzker after they left: "I wasn't willing to give up billions of dollars of taxpayer money to give it to a billionaire-owned family or team."
There it is. "Billionaire-owned."
That's how Democrats talk about any business right before they run it out of town. Call them a billionaire, act like you're saving working families, take a victory lap while the tax base drives across the state line.
Meanwhile they're running the whole state into the ground. And you already know how this ends. You're living in it.
Pensions are $143B in the hole, worst in the country and not close. You pay $6,285 a year in property taxes, double the $2,969 national average, for a city that's $1.15B in the red. The mayor called its finances "the point of no return."
When you run things this badly, you sell what's left.
They leased the parking meters for 75 years to Morgan Stanley and a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi. Took $1.15B and burned through it in two years. The investors already made it all back, with 58 years left to collect.
Sold the Skyway. Sold the downtown garages. Every asset that made money, gone for one check.
But a fixed property tax rate for a team that's been here 106 years? That's "propping up billionaires."
Companies are leaving. Boeing for Virginia. Caterpillar for Texas. Citadel for Miami. In 2023 alone Illinois lost 56,000 people and $6B in income to other states. The ones who left earned a third more than the ones who moved in.
Indiana didn't outbid anyone. AAA credit, 16 years straight. A $676M surplus. Fourth-lowest debt per person in the country. They just weren't a disaster.
Illinois could have collected $53M a year. It chose zero. Ignore all the bad management but make sure to stick it to those evil, pesky billionaires.
🚨🇺🇸The Senate just killed the SAVE Act, 48-50.
Voter ID and proof of citizenship, supported by over 80% of Americans, dead.
Four Republicans voted no: Tillis, Murkowski, McConnell, Collins.
The uniparty showed its face today...
Spencer Pratt got 0 out of 24,000 votes in a late night LA ballot drop.
0/24,000
A guy getting around 30% support got 0 out of 24,000.
Astronomically small probability of happening.
Impossible.
California no longer even hides it.
Doors need to be kicked in.
🚨 SEATTLE’S SOCIALIST MAYOR JUST HUMILIATED HERSELF IN THE NEW YORK TIMES
She called concerns about millionaires fleeing the new 9.9% millionaire tax “super overblown”… and even said “And the ones that leave? Like, okay.”
Now she’s forced to admit those comments “caused more harm than good.”
Meanwhile, Starbucks is building a massive new headquarters in Nashville, Boeing is moving jobs to South Carolina, Amazon is expanding in Virginia, and Seattle is staring at a $140 million budget hole.
The progressive billionaire who helped fund the tax just said: “Virtually every wealthy friend I have has either left or is planning to. It’s a catastrophe.”
The mask is slipping.
This is what happens when ideology meets reality.
We live in a world full of study Bibles. I praise God for the abundance of tools to help us know God’s Word.
I’m also very excited about this new study Bible.
This is a tool I could have used over twenty years ago when I started taking Greek as an undergraduate. It is not only a Greek Reader’s Edition but the notes include syntactical explanations and much more.
Many people don't realize that In-N-Out includes Bible verses on their packaging, as soon as word got out, they started receiving a ton of backlash.
But they owner is not backing down.
The tradition was started in the late 1980s as a subtle, personal expression of the founding family’s Christian faith by Rich Snyder, the former company president and son of the founders, shortly after he became a Christian.
He wanted a way to share his faith and values with customers. After he died in 1993, the Snyder family continued the practice, and current owner/CEO Lynsi Snyder has maintained the tradition.
The verses are discreet and typically only show the book and chapter number. Depending on the item, you might see references like:
• Soda cups: John 3:16
• Double-Double wrappers: Revelation 3:20
• Fry containers: Proverbs 24:16
• Coffee cups: Luke 6:35
@grok can you share the above Bible verses in the comments 🙏🏻
A mathematics professor once discovered that the sink in his kitchen had broken. He called a plumber, who arrived the next day, tightened a few fittings, and quickly fixed the problem.
The professor was pleased—until he saw the bill.
“This is a third of my monthly salary!” he exclaimed.
Still, he paid it. As the plumber was leaving, he said, “I understand your situation. Why not join our company? You could earn much more than you do now. Just one thing—when you apply, say you only finished elementary school. They prefer that.”
The professor, intrigued, followed the advice. To his surprise, he was hired. The work was simple—occasional repairs, tightening pipes—and his income improved dramatically.
Some time later, the company introduced a new rule: all employees had to attend evening classes to complete basic schooling. The professor had no choice but to attend.
On the first day, the subject was mathematics. The instructor asked a student to write the formula for the area of a circle on the board. The professor was chosen.
He walked up confidently—but then hesitated. He couldn’t recall the formula.
Determined, he began deriving it from scratch. The board quickly filled with integrals, derivatives, and complex expressions. After several minutes of work, he arrived at a result:
−πr²
Unsatisfied with the negative sign, he tried again. And again. Each time, the same result appeared.
Frustrated, he turned to the class. Behind him, the other plumbers were whispering to one another:
“Switch the limits of the integral.”