Terrence Hynes Jr

Elder at my LCMS church. Deacon student.

In God we trust, all others bring data.

[Chad Bird @birdchadlouis]

If I call God “God” I speak truthfully.
If I call God “Lord” I speak submissively.
If I call God “King” I speak servilely.

But if I dare to call God “my Father,” I speak with a brassy audacity, chutzpah, that is shockingly familiar and intimate. So it seems anyway.

You dare to call the Master of the Universe “Father”?
You dare to call the One who controls heaven and hell “Father”?
You call the Omnipotent one “Father”?

Who do you think you are?

It is difficult to imagine a more audacious act than to stand before the Creator of the world and to name him “Father.” And mean it. And not only to mean it, but to act and speak as a child acts and speaks before a loving and doting Dad.

It’s shocking. It’s exhilarating.
And it’s beautiful beyond words.

But here’s a secret: it’s not really chutzpah. It’s not some brassy boldness that we work ourselves into, nor it is gained by swallowing a bottle of liquid spiritual courage, as it were.

To call God “Father” is simply to live in the space which Jesus created. To move from residing far from God as his enemy; or on the other side of town from him as a stranger; or down the street as an acquaintance; or in an adjoining house as a servant; and to move into our own bedroom as a child in his family. To wake up in the morning and see our Father sipping a cup of coffee and saying, “Good morning, my child,” as we respond, “Good morning, Father.”

You see, when we live in this house, when we move into the room built by Jesus, we inhabit the home not merely of a Master or Lord or King, but the one who’s given us his name and made us his own, now and forever.

“Our Father”: two of the most amazing words ever uttered.

[Faithfulness Okom @AttorneyF_]

Even at its absolute best, a localized spectacle like splitting the moon is a pedestrian climax. It falls into the same category as Moses parting the Red Sea: a raw command over nature, but one that completely misses the point of an ending.

If theology is God’s ultimate art form, then the sequence of prophets is a story He is telling. The final act must contain and exceed everything that came before it, or the claim of finality is just an empty assertion.

What does earning that climax look like? Jesus is the only figure preceded by a dedicated prophet just to announce his arrival. John the Baptist’s whole ministry exists as an external credential for someone else.

Look at what Jesus does with the legacy before him. Moses gave manna, but Jesus feeds 5,000 with leftovers to spare. He performs miracles with zero prophetic precedent, like giving sight to a man born blind. Restoring sight is one thing; creating functional vision where it never existed is closer to original creation than healing.

Elijah raised one person, but Jesus raises three, culminating in a man four days decomposed, done publicly before his sharpest enemies. But even that undersells what is happening.

Every civilization has tried to solve death. The Egyptians built pyramids for immortality. Gilgamesh crossed the world searching for it. Silicon Valley billionaires burn fortunes trying to reverse aging right now. Death is the one wall every king, philosopher, and scientist has hit. Jesus doesn’t raise the dead as a demonstration of power; he does it as a declaration of war on death itself, and then he wins it emphatically. The Quran mixes things up but at the core presents Jesus as the only prophet who did not taste death.

The Quran also never warned Muhammad what it was doing to him. Surah 3:49 openly grants Jesus the grandest portfolio: creating life from clay, healing the blind and leper, and raising the dead. Yet, when Muhammad is pressed for spectacular signs in Surah 17:93, he retreats and says signs belong only to Allah. His own scripture gives the man he supersedes a far more spectacular miraculous record than he possesses.

If you are God and you have both figures in the arsenal, it makes zero narrative sense to put Jesus in the middle of the book. Why would the ultimate Author send a sinless, virgin-born Messiah who commands reality itself, only to follow him 600 years later with an illiterate prophet who needs his wife and her cousin to confirm his calling, marries a minor, and lives a highly contested historical life? It is a complete de-escalation of power and mystique.

The moon splitting comes with fewer witnesses, zero external corroboration, and no world-historical consequence. The Red Sea in contrast opened to birth a nation.

To defend this finality, Islam eventually retreats to the Quran as a literary miracle which is in itself comical. A book certifying its own author is not evidence. It is the exact thing that needs to be proven.

Christianity does not ask you to take its word for it. It points to prophecies written centuries before the birth they describe, fulfilled before hostile witnesses who wanted nothing more than to disprove them, culminating in a resurrection that broke the logic of human history. The finale has to earn its finality. Jesus did.

[Terrence Hynes Jr @thynes2537]

@orthodoxscribe Yep, I've also heard that. On 2 occasions!

[TheScottishLutheran @TartanLutheran]

I’m not a Walther expert, but I think he would see “neighbor” in a Law category before it is an ecclesial category. Your neighbor is the one God has placed before you to love, serve, warn, protect, correct, and help. Walther, in Law and Gospel, cites Matthew 22:39 as the universal law: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” then explains it concretely as giving aid in emergency, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and so forth.
So, for Walther, the categories would probably work something like this: Every person is my neighbor, the unbeliever, the weak Christian, the schismatic, the heretic, even the enemy, remains my neighbor. I owe him love under the Law of God.
That means I do not get to hate him, slander him, mock him, dehumanize him, or wish his damnation. I owe him prayer, truth, patience where possible, and mercy.
As you can see, we all fail at this… the whole “perfect love” thing in this week’s Gospel (1 year lectionary). This is why it is Law. Our failure accuses us and ought to lead us to repentance.

[Shahriq Khan @RealShahriqKhan]

As an Ex-Muslim turned Christian apologist, here is how I handle almost every Muslim objection:

Stop playing theological whack-a-mole with Islam. It will be fruitless.

When I debate Muslims, I don’t start with the Trinity.

I'm not starting with original sin.

I'm not starting with "How can God have a Son?"

I start with one question:

Is the Bible the revelation of God, or not?

Because every other debate comes after that.

I believe in the Trinity because the Bible teaches it, I believe in original sin because the Bible teaches it and I believe Jesus is the Son of God because the Bible teaches it.

Muslims believe the same about the Quran. They believe Islam because the Quran tells them to.

That's the real issue that so many Christians miss.

Why spend hours arguing doctrine when the deeper question is: Which book actually comes from God?

If the Bible is historically reliable and divinely inspired, then most objections disappear before they even begin.

You can debate theology forever, but if we're reading from different books with different authorities, we're never getting to the root of the issue.
Settle the Book issue first.

Then the conversation stops being an argument.

It becomes a Bible study.

[Terrence Hynes Jr @thynes2537]

@HansFiene "Everyone else is more wonderful than you think".
I love that!
Those minimized in my imagination are those minimized in my life, I suppose.

[Rang @Faustzme]

Maybe this will help Mormons understand.

Think about it this way.

Mormonism is basically trans-Christian. It was born outside of Christianity, put on all the Christian clothes, Jesus, salvation, scripture, gospel, and now insists it’s the real thing. Sound familiar?

Same words. Totally different meanings.

When a Mormon says “Jesus” they mean the spirit brother of Lucifer who progressed to godhood. When a Christian says “Jesus” they mean the eternal God who took on flesh. That’s not a small difference. That’s a completely different person.

When a Mormon says “salvation” they mean resurrection plus exaltation earned through covenants, ordinances, temple work and faithfulness to the end. When a Christian says “salvation” they mean Christ paid it all and you’re trusting Him alone. Again, not the same thing.

“Gospel” not the same. “God” not the same. “Scripture” not the same.

Every single load bearing word in Christianity has been gutted and restuffed with something else. But they kept the label.

Joseph Smith didn’t restore Christianity. He replaced it and kept the wardrobe.

That’s not a denomination. That’s not a different stream of the same faith. That’s a different religion doing a Christian cosplay.

And the crazy part? Most Mormons genuinely don’t know this because they’ve only ever been handed the redefined version of those words. They’ve never actually seen what Christianity really teaches.

[Gottesdienst @Gottesdienst2]

https://t.co/rnYS1efMa2

[Terrence Hynes Jr @thynes2537]

@TartanLutheran Thanks!

[Terrence Hynes Jr @thynes2537]

@LutheranAnswers @JamesDaleWilso6 @MimiSchizo "Thy" or "These"?

[Shahriq Khan @RealShahriqKhan]

I have a lot of practicing Jewish friends who ask me:

"How do you make a Muslim become a Christian? That's impossible."

And my answer always surprises them:

I don't start with Jesus.

I start with the Torah.

Because the same way you challenge Islam is the same way you challenge any tradition that places authority above the text itself.

So I open the Torah and ask:

What happened to blood atonement?

What happened to Leviticus 17:11?

What happened to the sacrifices, the temple, the covenant, the promise that life is in the blood?

Then we talk about original sin.

Adam didn't just make a mistake.

Humanity completely fractured. Then we talk about theophanies.

God walking, speaking, appearing and wrestling.

It's all there in the text. And then I ask a simple question:

Where did all of that go?

Because the Torah says one thing, but later traditions often reinterpret it into something else.

And that's where the conversation gets interesting.

What is the final authority?

The written revelation or the traditions built around it?

Because it can't be both when they disagree.

At that point we're no longer debating Christianity versus Judaism or Christianity versus Islam.

We're asking a deeper question: Who has the authority to reinterpret God's revelation? And why?

The more I strip everything back to the text itself, the more I see the same thing. The Torah does not point toward endless commentary.

It points toward blood atonement.

And ultimately toward Christ crucified.

That conversation never gets old.

[Terrence Hynes Jr @thynes2537]

@RealShahriqKhan I love your uses of the present tense when referring to Jesus. This confesses His resurrection!

[Terrence Hynes Jr @thynes2537]

@orthodoxscribe *your

[Terrence Hynes Jr @thynes2537]

@orthodoxscribe Lamentable indeed. Thank you for refuting that lie that speaks otherwise, and for sharing tour ministry experiences with us.

[Terrence Hynes Jr @thynes2537]

@cherylpickett @HansFiene Same in my case. Gluten is not my enemy!

[Terrence Hynes Jr @thynes2537]

@HansFiene Sourdough bread is also a better choice than plain white bread.

[Terrence Hynes Jr @thynes2537]

@WmWeedon Social media seems to be a mixed blessing in this area, too.

[Hans Fiene 🦬 @HansFiene]

A devotion on earthly glory vs. true glory: Luke 22:24-46

Throughout the earthly ministry of Jesus, His disciples are constantly arguing among themselves as to which of them will be the greatest in His kingdom, which of them will have the most glory, the most honor, the greatest position of power in the presumed earthly reign of our Lord. And here in our text for today, the disciples are doing this again, on the very night of our Lord’s betrayal. It’s all quite amazing. The disciples have now heard Jesus speak numerous words about His rapidly-approaching crucifixion. They’re witnessing His increasing distress, His agony wafting into the air that is already thick with the hatred that the Pharisees and Chief Priests have for their Lord. And yet, they simply can’t make sense of any of this. This isn’t enough to pull their thoughts away from earthly glory.

And so we see something vitally important about the Christian faith. It doesn’t matter how much you are surrounded by Christian stuff, Christian ideas. It doesn’t matter how much you hear the word of the Scriptures or how much time you spend in Christian churches. If you don’t have the Holy Spirit, all of those words will bounce off of your ears.

So pray for a greater measure of the Spirit. Pray that God would take not His Holy Spirit from you. Cling to the Spirit who has pierced through your earthly-glory clogged ears and blessed you to believe in the true kingdom of Christ. And do all of this by looking to the cross of Christ. If you want glory, if you want honor, if you want the praise of God Himself, look to the place where God gave you everything. Look to the cross. In the wounds of Jesus Christ, see the glory of God pouring out upon you. Gaze upon the blood of your Savior and there you will find the crimson fibers that your Father wove together as the robe of honor placed around your shoulders. If you want the praise of God look to the place where God destroyed every sin that prevented you from possessing His kingdom. Look to the place where God washed you in His favor and love, the favor and love that gave you the right to be praised as His beloved child.