Twelve years! The Cripplegate has been around for 12 years! I honestly can’t believe it.
The blogging world has changed more this year than any other time since we have started. Professional writers have migrated to substack, and Twitter threads seemed to fill the space that blogs used to take. Here at The Cripplegate, I’ve noticed a change as well. Our readers are up, but our views are down. More and more people are subscribing, less are finding the post “organically.” It used to be that nearly a third of our visits were to our landing page, meaning people came to the blog before knowing what articles were there. Now, almost nobody does that. Instead, people subscribe.
What’s that you say? You are not a subscriber? Well, before you make the jump to our top ten posts, you should go to the box that says “Get new posts by email” (either on your side bar or if you are on your phone, it is at the bottom of the page, or at this link here). Fill that out, and then you will be a bona fide subscriber to The Cripplegate, and you will never have to worry about missing a post again.
Here are our top 10 posts (by unique IP addresses to view it) from 2022.
Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna: are there differences?. This post looked the biblical terms used for these three places associated with the afterlife. There are differences between them, and understanding those differences reminded our readers of Jesus’ ability to reorient everything–even the afterlife–around himself.
Dispensationalism and the promise of land to Israel. This year, several of our most read posts covered dispensationalism. Here, Matt Waymeyer looked particularly at what dispensationalism teaches concerning the land promises given to Israel in the OT, and shows how those promises are in fact a strong argument for dispensationalism.
A Molech Primer. With the fall of Roe vs. Wade, Jesse gave us a crash course in Molech worship. He argued that the response to the fall of Roe can only be understood in terms religion, and showed how the historic worship of Molech lives on in the American culture of abortion.
He/him please. 2022 was the year of the pronouns. People began wearing their pronouns on buttons, in their email signatures, or on their social media bios. But what should Christians do when asked to use pronouns that conflict with truth? This post gave a practical approach to help adults interact with kids on this topic.
Covenantalism vs. Dispensationalism (part 1): covenantalism. This post launched a series on our blog covering dispensationalism, and we started it with an overview of covenantalism. This was a charitable approach, trying to to frame covenantalism in terms that its proponents would agree with, while keeping it simple and straightforward.
When you lose your salvation on a technicality. A Priest in Phoenix was the center of a massive controversy in Roman Catholicism this year, when it was discovered that he had been performing with the first person plural, rather than singular: “We baptize you” instead of “I baptize you.” The diocese of Phoenix declared that thousands of those baptisms were invalid, and this puts people’s eternal destiny in jeopardy. Jordan Standridge–our correspondent at the Vatican–covered the imbroglio for us here.
DJ Mattison’s senior testimony at the Master’s Seminary. Tragically, at this year’s graduation ceremony at The Master’s Seminary, a student walked across stage, got his diploma, then fell down and died. Jordan went back and listened to the student’s senior testimony, and shares some lessons from it that should shape ever minister’s thinking: to live is Christ, to die is gain.
Why you can’t get to heaven through the Mormon faith. The mysteries of the internet: this post from 2019 somehow resurrected and took on a new life this year. Eric lays down four solid reasons why the “salvation” Mormonism offers is not real, and shows how it leads away from heaven, not towards it.
How to become a Calvinist in 5 easy steps. Jesse shares that the path the Lord used to bring him to becoming passionate about the 5 points of Calvinism seems to be a very common one. While this post is a bit tongue-in-cheek, it is (as they say) funny because it’s true. It is also our second most read post of the year.
A city set on a Hillsong: Why light can’t worship with darkness. This year the founder of The Hillsong Church network resigned and then was embroiled in accusations of a hidden life. This matched similar falls of Hillsong leaders in London and New York. Dan Crabtree writes about what lessons can be learned–particularly about worship–from the fall of Hillsong.
As always, if you have requests for something we should blog on, leave it in the comments below.
And, if you are curious, By the way, here are our lists from 2021, from 2020, from 2019, from 2018, from 2017, from 2016, from 2015, from 2014, from 2013, from 2012, and from our first year, 2011.