The seventeenth-century Puritans and their more contemporary heirs commonly wrote about "the four last things": death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Earlier audiences were rightly concerned about their future and wanted to learn about their looming eternity. Today, all of these topics have largely fallen out of favor, eclipsed by subjects that focus more explicitly on the here and now.

A phenomenon among us that is gaining notoriety adherents, and sadly making inroads into Christian circles, is the deliberate and systematic desecration of the human body. It is making progress among us for three reasons: the Christian community has 1) neglected the Law of God; 2) largely lost its sense of being a community of grace and law; and 3) bought into the notion that fashion is, for all intents and purposes, a matter in which God is disinterested.

Generally fasting is little spoken about in Reformed circles. It is often either associated with a bygone age or with Roman Catholicism or other religions. Calvin already noted the dangers both of superstition in fasting and of a complete rejection of fasting.1 Since we are called to discern whether the practice is Scriptural and what guidance Scripture gives concerning it, below are several thought-provoking quotations to consider.

Society at large has lost its moorings as to what is right and wrong. Everywhere we look it is obvious that society's standards are changing and declining. We often like to discuss the various issues that are being debated in the public square while we hold our collective noses. It is easy to see how our country and the world are in moral decline, but the sad reality is that we, in the Christian community, are not immune to this moral decay.

How do we dress modestly, especially on Sundays when we go to church to worship God? I am told that it is hard to find decent clothes for our teenagers. Our culture is saturated with immodesty. We only have to look at bare midriffs, exposed navels, necklines too low, skirts that are too short, tops that are too tight and tight fitting skirts, especially when the skirt is cut on the bias (diagonally), which hugs the body, following its contours, and makes the body very revealing. This is the trend.

This article considers some of the characteristics of the Christian life. It speaks mainly of sanctification and a Christian lifestyle.

This article is about the aspects of living a Christian lifestyle. 

How should the church respond to the reality of HIV and AIDS in Africa? The church’s response to AIDS should first start with the root problem.