I want to agree with John Piper on the tornado that struck the Apostate Lutheran Church of America’s national convention this Wednesday. There is a good chance he’s right. On the other hand, I agree with Scott Clark: we can’t interpret providence, nor do we need to. And then there’s this, from Lutheran (the genuine kind), novelist, and ersatz Viking Lars Walker. As a Norwegian-American raised on lutefisk and lefse, I am obligated to take anyone named Lars seriously. In any case, Piper’s reminder to consider Luke 13:4–5 is appropriate. Update: ELCA completely embraces homosexuality.

I have no doubt that Piper is right about this.

Southern Baptists flock to Malaysia.

I love this. Liberals hate Obama now, too. (Warning: contains the kind of language you would expect from sailors or trendy preachers from Seattle.)

If those narcissistic Puritans had only used 140 characters “expressing their thoughts about stuff,” we’d be asking, “Jonathan who?”

Public service message: the weapon referred to in this article is not an assault weapon. In fact, whenever the media or a politician used the term “assault weapon,” you can be sure they are never talking about the genuine article. No one wants to ban assault weapons, because no one but military and law enforcement agencies have them. What anti Second Amendment zealots are against are guns that look like assault weapons. Oh yeah, and any other firearm, as well.

Todd Bolen, previously featured on this blog here, has produced a new collection of photo CDs from Israel.

I am very excited to announce the release of a new photo collection from BiblePlaces.com and LifeintheHolyLand.com. The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection includes more than 4,000 high-resolution photographs taken by professional photographers living in Jerusalem from 1898 until the 1940s. I’ve worked with a team for the last five years organizing and improving this collection so that the photos are the highest quality, accurately identified, carefully organized, and elucidated by observations of well-known 19th-century explorers. (read more here)

I am the fortunate owner of a couple of Todd’s previous collections, and I can attest to the superb quality of both the photos and presentation.