Cornerstone Baptist Church Clinton SC

02/21/2026

https://tabletalkmagazine.com/article/2025/12/the-rise-of-root-seeking-evangelicals/

Many Protestants in recent years have indeed decided to abandon their churches and swim the Tiber over to Rome.

02/04/2026

The upright are righteous because the righteous Lord has shown grace in changing their hearts.

Stephen Charnock [1628-1680]: “It is not agreeable to God’s holiness to make any an inhabitant of heaven, and converse freely with him in a way of intimate love, without such a qualification of grace: Ps. 11:7, ‘The righteous Lord loves righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright.’ He must, therefore, hate iniquity, and cannot love an unrighteous nature because of his love to righteousness; ‘his countenance beholds the upright,’ he looks upon him with a smiling eye, and therefore he cannot favourably look upon an unrighteous person, so that this necessity is not founded only in the command of God that we should be renewed, but in the very nature of the thing, because God, in regard of his holiness, cannot converse with an impure creature. God must change his nature, or the sinner’s nature must be changed. There can be no friendly communion between two of different natures without the change of one of them into the likeness of the other. Wolves and sheep, darkness and light, can never agree. God cannot love a sinner as a sinner, because he hates impurity by a necessity of nature as well as a choice of will. It is as impossible for him to love it as to cease to be holy.
“This change cannot be then on God’s part; it must therefore be on man’s part. It must therefore be by grace, whereby the sinner may be made fit for converse with God, since God cannot embrace a sinner in his dearest affections without a quality in the sinner suitable to himself. All converse is founded upon a likeness in nature and disposition; it is by grace only that the sinner is made capable of converse with God.” Stephen Charnock, The Complete Works of Stephen Charnock, vol. 3 (Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; W. Robertson; G. Herbert, 1864–1866), 23.

01/30/2026

Good answers to think about

Recently, I spoke at a conference on the subject of my recent book by Free Grace Press, The Doctrine of Last Things: An Optimistic Amillennial View. Following up my lectures on the “Two Ages” (See my book, chapters 3-5.), there was a Q&A in which I answered questions submitted in writing before ...

01/26/2026

Tired of superficial, emotionally-driven, and anti-intellectual worship? There's no need to "cross the Tiber" and become Roman Catholic. Classical Protestantism is not only intellectually satisfying but, even more importantly, is more biblical than Rome and much of contemporary evangelicalism.

[I hope someone somewhere sees and corrects the article link that has “Belivers” instead of “Believers”! ]..................................

Emma Freire: "[C. S. Lewis] singled out three points where he rejected Catholic doctrine: Mary, the papacy, and transubstantiation. On those three vital matters, Lewis believed Catholic teaching is 'utterly foreign to the New Testament.'

“'The whole set-up of modern Romanism seems to me to be as much a provincial or local variation from the central, ancient tradition as any particular Protestant sect is,' Lewis wrote."

Emma Freire | Why are so many evangelicals in America's power centers converting to Catholicism?

01/23/2026

Sam Emadi: "Baptism isn’t just something we do, but something done to us. Despite the way evangelicals often individualize baptism as though it’s a public expression of an otherwise private faith, we don’t baptize ourselves. Someone, or a group of someones, has to actually hear a person’s profession of faith, understand it to be in accord with the gospel, and then dunk them in water.

"That verdict about whether someone should receive baptism should happen in a church. I won’t rehearse all the arguments from Matthew 16, 18, and 28 to make that case.... Ultimately, Christ authorized local churches, two or three or three hundred, who agree on the gospel (Matt. 18:19) to mark out kingdom citizens by baptism. So, as Bobby Jamieson argues in Understanding Baptism, baptism isn’t just a believer’s act, it’s also a 'church’s act.'”

If you can answer four questions affirmatively then I think you’re looking at a true baptism.

01/19/2026

David Mitzenmacher: "The danger of [Russell] Moore’s approach is that it transforms Romans 13 from a fixed doctrinal boundary into a flexible rhetorical instrument. When the meaning of 'submission' and 'the sword' expands or contracts based on desired political outcome, the text is no longer the master of the conscience; the interpreter is.

"This theological instability does not exist in a vacuum. By severing Romans 13 from a stable, confessional doctrine of the magistrate, a void is created. Into that void steps the 'spirit of the age.' When a theologian consistently finds that the Bible’s 'nuance' happens to align with the editorial sensibilities of The New York Times or The New Yorker, we must ask whether the Word is shaping the world, or the world is shaping the Word.

"A political theology that readily grants the state authority over the gathered worship of the church, yet recoils at the ordinary exercise of civil authority in preserving public order, is not the theology of the Bible nor the Baptist tradition. It is a theology of social accommodation."

Romans 13 does not merely restrain Christian impulses toward vengeance. It positively defines the office and task of civil government.

01/16/2026

Matt Emadi: "In an individualistic and consumeristic culture, the very notion that church members bear significant responsibilities comes as a surprise to some Christians. But responsibility and church membership go hand-in-hand—you simply can’t have one without the other. In fact, wherever you have a defined group of people, those people necessarily incur responsibility simply by belonging to the group. You’re not a member of the Tuesday night bowling league if you don’t take responsibility to show up on Tuesday nights to bowl. Even more so, if you join a church, you have responsibilities....
"... Church membership is far more important than participating in team sports. But sadly, individualism, consumerism, easy-believism, and unbiblical church polities have left many church members intentionally or unintentionally sidelined."

Sadly, individualism, consumerism, easy-believism, and unbiblical church polities have left many church members intentionally or unintentionally sidelined.

01/14/2026

From infant baptism [paedobaptism] to believer’s baptism [credobaptism]

Gavin Ortlund explains why he has changed his mind on baptism, specifically discussing his experiences with paedobaptism.

01/13/2026

Matthew Bingham: "Wise Christians will make good use of the other people God brings into their lives."

Whether at home or church, one of the primary ways that Christian relationships advance our spiritual formation is through honest, serious, God-honoring conversations.

01/12/2026

Do you think that the historical evidence for infant baptism during the first five centuries of the Christian church is overwhelming?

Gavin Ortlund describes how infant baptism may have arisen in the early church from a credobapist perspective.Gavin's article, "Why Not Grandchildren?": http...