John Mark Hicks

May 21 is a dark day in my own history. Joshua died eleven years ago today at the age of sixteen. I offer this chapter out of my ebook on The Shack and spiritual recovery in his honor. ******** Oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, […]

Why a second speech? One might think that one speech from Yahweh would be enough. Perhaps it is a literary device.  The two speeches may reflect the two council scenes in the Prologue–a “prologue” (1:1-5) heads the two council scenes and an “epilogue” (42:7ff)  follows the two Yahweh speeches. That may be true, but it […]

Now available on Amazon. Over the years I have reflected on William Young’s book The Shack in the light of my own personal journey into the world of spiritual recovery.  I found much in Young’s novel that paralleled my own experience. Previously, I posted on some significant themes I found in the the book–both in […]

Over the next few months I will teach the “Revelation (Apocalypse) of Jesus Christ” in a bible class at the Woodmont Hills Family of God. I have a specific interest in doing this and it is to highlight the apocalyptic struggle between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world. When the seventh […]

[Note: I am attempting to keep these SBD installments under 2000 words each, but that is–of course–quite inadequate for the topics covered. Consequently, these contributions are more programmatic than they are explanatory or defenses of the positions stated. You may access the whole series at my Serial page.] Defending God is not my job. Good […]

May 21, 2001 and May 21, 2008 have something in common, and I remember that today, May 21, 2016. Those are the days on which our children died–my son Joshua and John & Maggy Dobbs’ son John Robert. The memories are painful and today we will each remember, commemorate, and reflect. I pray for peace […]

 “Theodicy in Early Stone-Campbell Perspectives,” in Restoring the First-Century Church in the Twenty-First Century, ed. by Warren Lewis and Hans Rollmann (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2005), 287-310. In honor of Don Haymes, I penned an article concerning the various “theodices” that were prominent in the 19th century Stone-Campbell Movement. It was interesting to […]

As part of a pre-conference gathering entitled “Theology in the Service of the Church” in conjunction with the 1996 Christian Scholars Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, I presented a paper entitled “The Doctrine of God.”  The presentations at this pre-conference were published in Leaven 8.3 (2000). Some of these themes (providence, pneumatology, etc.) are pursued in my Kingdom […]