Bible Discussions

Why Doesn’t Everyone Believe In Jesus?

2009-10-20T10:30:00.008-04:00

This seems a very reasonable question to ask. After all if Jesus can save us from sin and death, why do many not accept him? Some people have not heard about Jesus, of course, so they can’t be expected to believe in him. However, there are many people who have heard about Jesus but still do not believe. This should come as no surprise, for the Bible makes it clear that even when Jesus was on earth, teaching and performing many miracles, only a minority of people in Israel believed on him.

Rejected!

On one occasion, after the miraculous feeding of 5000 men, as well as women and children, when Jesus was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum we are told that: “From that time many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more” (John 6:66). Their only recorded explanation was: “This is a hard saying; who can understand it?” (6:60). This teaches us that whilst Jesus’ message of life should appeal to men and women, there are times when people do not find it attractive. Or they find it too hard to understand or to accept. Jesus’ message is demanding and challenging; it is not an easy option. On one occasion he said this: “If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).

Cast Out

On another occasion we learn that “even among the rulers many believed in him, but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God” (John 12:42.43). These were people who actually believed in Jesus but would not make an open commitment because they were concerned about what others would think about them. So we see that people would not follow Jesus’ teaching even when they knew it to be true. The reason, essentially, was that those people did not want to accept the commitment required of those that would be Jesus’ disciples.

The question we have to ask of ourselves is ‘Are we willing to make a personal commitment to Jesus?’ Or do we make the excuse that because others did not commit themselves to Jesus, we will not either?

~Bro. Peter Forbes, Glad Tidings

THE SWALLOWS OF CAPISTRANO

2009-05-01T15:39:00.001-04:00

There’s a lovely little legend about these birds, the cliff swallows.

Every year on March 18th – Time has newsreel footage of this actually happening some years ago - the swallows return to the town of San Juan Capistrano in California. Many people flock to see the sight, apparently. A song has been written about this: ‘When the Swallows return to Capistrano.’

The previous day, the 17th, the scouts of the flock come sweeping in, then fly back out to sea. On the 18th itself, they come in clouds, to nest and breed. Then, on October 23rd, they fly up, circle the town, saying goodbye it seems, and then fly away.

One fascinating thing is that they are reputed to fly to Capistrano from Goya in Argentina, a distance of some 7000 miles! and back again. The migration does take place – that is a fact, and the legendary bit now follows:

The flight is mostly over water – and swallows can’t swim. They sleep on the wing, according to some accounts – but each one carries a twig in its mouth, and when fatigued, drop the twig into the water, and rest on it as it floats.

Whether the legend be true or not, the astonishing feats of bird navigation and migration defy belief. The star of this particular show must, I think, be the Arctic tern, which flies from its northern breeding grounds in the arctic, to the Antarctic (some 19,000 km) and back again every year!

A bit of imagination soon makes these feats quite unbelievable. Imagine flying at 500 - 2000 feet, clouds below, temperature low, not a landmark in sight, ploughing bravely on for 7000 miles in the case of the swallows, right down the western coast of the whole of South America. Finding food somehow, finding rest somehow, driven by some mysterious urge to do this marvellous thing.

Whatever the reason for these flights, they speak in the most powerful way imaginable of the Creator’s powers. That they should do this, heading for a destination they cannot see, with terrible problems they must meet, navigating only with a heavenly guide – it can be nothing else – they do it, unflinchingly, unquestioningly, and heroically.

And in so doing, remind us of the journeys people of God have undertaken because of their faith in the unseen and the unknowable. The birds have no choice – their instinct drives them relentlessly on, but Abraham had a choice – and he did as he was commanded.

In many ways, we have each done the same. We have embarked on a journey in complete faith. There was no way of knowing what the end is going to be – we only have the writings of those who have gone before us. We had, and have, no idea of the difficulties before us. But like those wonderful little birds, we go – not knowing whither we go. “Whither I go, ye cannot come” said the Lord. We follow our heavenly guide to a land far away, invisible to the natural eye, but with a Captain who knows the way, and assures us of success.

There’s no question that some of the birds die on the way. Some are blown off course, some are captured by predators. Some have not the strength for the journey. Some are sick, and some are sad – but they all go nonetheless. And yet, as the Lord says, “one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.”

It is when we look carefully at what He did say, that we see the full beauty of the saying.

Mt 10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.

Lu 12:6 Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?

Notice: two are sold for a farthing, FIVE are sold for two farthings.

That should be FOUR, not five in strict mathematical terms. It’s the old ‘buy two, get one free’ deal. And yet, says the Lord, not one of them – not even the extra one that’s thrown in to sweeten the deal – is forgotten before God!

Is that not a most wonderful statement from The Son of God? And doesn't it make our task that little bit easier if we know this? Whatever our circumstances, He cares. And the only thing that will stop us reaching the promised Land is if we should join another flock, find another Captain, or forgetting our goal, head for other destinations.

Join with me in marvelling at these beautiful little creatures, who despite their small size, achieve such great things. Who by their faith in the unseen, discomfit the unbelievers, and may yet save some who take notice of these great facts in the natural world, from the burning.

The Great God of heaven and earth cares for you. He loves you. He calls you to higher flights and greater things. He points us to a land far, far away, but which draws nearer with every day that passes.

Isa.40. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:
But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

“Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward.”

~ Credit to original author

Forgiveness

2009-05-01T15:34:00.001-04:00

The ability to forgive is a powerful tool for personal transformation.

We do ourselves a huge favour when we truly let go and forgive. There is an extremely high return of peace and joy in our hearts when we sincerely forgive those who hurt us. When we forgive others, it is really for our benefit more than for those who cause the offence (Matt. 6:14,15). Often the people whom we haven't forgiven don't even know it. But failure to forgive wastes our energy ⎯ causing us mental and emotional stress.

It is difficult to forgive
It seems difficult to forgive when we have been betrayed or deeply hurt. When we feel justified not forgiving someone, that bitterness stays with us, and it can gnaw away inside us as long as a whole lifetime. Sometimes we think it's okay to say, 'Well, I've forgiven him, but I don't want to see him or talk to him again.' Sorry to say, but the truth is that we have not really forgiven. True forgiveness erases all negative associations from our hearts. If we don't truly forgive, then resentment festers in our hearts ⎯ causing anger. Anger then turns into hate (1 John 2:9-11). Hate is a total inversion of love. Brethren and sisters, remember that hate destroys (1John 3:15; 4:20,21). It is quite possible to react with anger or hate just for the moment, and that is wrong too. But it is far worse if those feelings constantly replay in our minds; then we need to try again, asking God to help us overcome this weakness. Total forgiveness takes time. Don't let pride stop you from forgiving others. Be as little children. They don't keep malice or hatred in their hearts (1 Cor. 14:20).

Christ understood the importance of releasing, letting go, and truly forgiving. That is what he did for us when he hung on the cruel cross and begged, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). He expects us to do the same. Surely, when Jesus was on the cross, we were on his mind.

Practice forgiveness
As we practice forgiveness, let each one say in his heart: "I forgive him. Maybe he didn't realize what he was doing"... or "He was probably doing the best he could."

Sometimes we judge others and then upset ourselves by refusing to forgive them. A young man was supposed to meet a young lady at a stoplight at 2:15, after which he would drive her to the store. The lady was looking forward to a chance to catch up on happenings in his family. Unfortunately, the man didn't arrive until 3:30. The lady was really hurt. She only faintly responded to his hello. She assumed he was inconsiderate and unkind, and then felt even worse toward him when he offered no explanation or apology. The lady was so hurt that she refused to open any conversation with the man.

Two days later the young lady found out that the secretary had written down the wrong time, and the young man had no idea there was a problem.

We too make mistakes in life and need others to forgive us. As we forgive others it helps remove any negative ideas that may be held against us, thus recreating a harmonious flow between ourselves and others.

In Matthew 6:14,15 Jesus reminds us that forgiveness is not one-sided: "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." Forgiveness is a two-way street. How can we expect our Father to forgive us if we don't forgive those who offend us (v. 12)?

Forgiveness is a lifetime process (Matt. 18:21,22); if necessary, it must go on forever. We can't forgive today and then forget about forgiving tomorrow. Jesus told Peter to forgive as many as seventy times seven, essentially forever. Don't worry whether or not the person you forgive finally understands you. Love him and release him. God brings truth to people's minds in His own time ⎯ just like He does for you and me.

Responding to hurt
It's not who hurts us or what happens to us, but our response to that hurt that entraps us, taking away our real freedom. Once we have totally forgiven, we feel the connection of a clean, or purified, heart between ourselves and others.

Do we blame others for our difficulties in life? I hope the answer is 'No' ⎯ because if we do, it will rob us of true freedom and peace of mind; it will sap our energy. It's forgiving and letting go of these inner entrapments that bring us lasting freedom.

Is there someone whom you need to forgive? Do it today, and then go freely into the presence of the Lord our God. Only then will He accept the gift you bring to Him (Matt. 5:24).

~Gerzel Gordon

At the Last Supper

2009-05-01T15:32:00.000-04:00

Mark 14 describes the events leading up to the Last Supper, the details of the meal, and the effects of that evening. It is relatively easy to read through the account of the meal without imagining the scene. Thus we fail to realize the emotional drama that unfolded in the upper room. Let’s see if we can recreate the scene and thereby learn some of the practical consequences of the events.

The disciples would have made their way down darkened streets to the place where Jesus had instructed them to go. As they climbed the outer stone staircase, they would have wondered about the significance of this meal about which their Master had made several comments recently. At the top of the steps, they would have pushed open the door on its leather hinges and entered into a smoke-filled room. Oil lamps would have cast a warm glow on the rough stone walls. On the floor there would have been a number of hay cushions and woven mats.

Jesus had taken the role of servant at the doorway as the disciples removed their dusty sandals; in this capacity he washed their feet and dried them. There was much embarrassment at this act, but they each in turn submitted to his careful kindness. They rinsed their hands in the water from the jug in the corner, and made their way to sit down. Again, there was some debate about where to sit, or rather where the Master was going to sit, so that they could be close to him.

In the alcove at the side of the main room, two or three women were preparing dishes for the thirteen men. The wood for the fire had been collected earlier, and the vegetables brought in from the villages where they lived. The pita bread had been baked earlier; its aroma, mixed with that of the vegetables, was enticing. Wine in its leather wineskins had been carried up the stairs by one of the disciples and was now being poured into newly glazed mugs and passed around the room.

There was an air of expectancy tinged with fear and uncertainty. The conversation was in hushed tones, and everyone was uncertain about what was going to happen. They thought that they had been planning for the Passover meal. But this was a day early, and it wasn’t quite right!

The meal was probably served hot. It resembled the Passover meal, with its bitter herbs and unleavened bread, and its multiple cups of wine to aid digestion. As they ate, they talked quietly amongst themselves. Then Jesus announced that one of them was going to betray him. He gave a piece of bread to Judas, who took it and afterward went out quietly into the dark night.

Initially, each man thought that the betrayer may have been himself. But later, when it finally emerged that the betrayer was Judas, they were understandably filled with consternation and anger at the betrayal.

Jesus continued to teach them, and their eyes would have been drawn to their Master as he spoke to them about his true nature, his sacrifice, and his resurrection. Possibly there was an intensity of commitment, an identification with Jesus, and a sharing in his work that they had never experienced before. Yet even at this moment of heightened awareness, there were still doubts and uncertainties.

Then Jesus took a piece of the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to each of the disciples in turn. He took the last of the wine, blessed it, and passed it around to the disciples. Thus they all shared the wine together. After they had sung a hymn they went out to Gethsemane. At the table and along the road, Jesus taught them many things; surely they listened to him with some fear and trembling.

In many ways this was an ordinary meal, a group of men meeting together to share food, wine, and conversation. At this time of the year, in Israel, it was also customary to meet and have a special meal together. But, in another sense this was a meal like no other!

The timing of the meal was significant. It came at the time of the Passover festival, but not exactly at the time for the great Passover meal itself. In fact, Jesus was to be sacrificed at the very time when the Passover lambs were being killed in the temple courts. However, all the symbolism of the Passover was to be fulfilled in him. His body was the "bread broken"; he was the bread of life! He himself was the Lamb, selected and prepared — the Lamb of God destined to "take away the sin of the world"! He was the lamb, "pure and undefiled", foreordained from the beginning of time. He was the one who was to be "Christ, our Passover Lamb" (1Co 5:7). However, he was also "the Lamb" to be raised from the dead, to be glorified by being exalted to the throne of God. And the Lamb described by the apostle John in the Book of Revelation: "a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne" (Rev 5:6). He was to be the "first begotten from the dead", given immortality, never to die again.

These are the things Jesus taught the disciples at the meal table and as they walked through the streets of Jerusalem, out of the city gate, and across the Kedron Brook to Gethsemane (cp John 13:31-17:3).

However, let’s get back to the Last Supper. It was a relatively ordinary meal, yet at the same time a meal alive with high drama. The emotional stakes were high, and the tension was acute. How would we have felt if we had been present?

Would we have been embarrassed that we had allowed the Master to wash our feet? Would we have helped to prepare the meal? Or would we just have arrived at the last minute, hoping that someone else had done everything? Would we have been jostling for position, trying to be on the right hand of the Master, so that we would be included in the discussion? Would we have listened spellbound to the teaching, but secretly hoped it would not involve any serious personal commitment and sacrifice? Would each of us have thought deeply and sadly that it could have been "I" who betrayed Jesus? Would we have shared Peter’s denial, vehemently claiming that we would give all and never deny our Lord and Master?

And yet, I am sure that if we had been there, we would have tried to do what was right. We would have failed to achieve the high standard set by the Master’s example. Surely in some way, each of us would have been somewhat like Judas and Peter. Like them, we are frail, erring creatures, prone to sin and failure. The one betrayed and did not seek forgiveness, while the other denied and repented. The one died, but the other lived. Whatever our response to the Master, however, we come to the Lord’s Table, whether we have betrayed or denied, whether we have not done what we could, whether we have done what we should not have done. The Lord shares this bread and this wine, and we receive it gratefully. We know that in him, the Lamb of God, we are forgiven, and refreshed and reinvigorated by this meal. It is a simple and ordinary meal, yet it speaks volumes in spiritual lessons.

~Colin Edwards

Joseph and the Prophecy of Immanuel (Matt. 1:18-25)

2009-01-13T19:08:00.002-05:00

When the great promise of God came to David, he must have been sorely perplexed by what seemed to be an inherent contradiction in it: “I will set up thy seed after thee which shall proceed out of thy bowels... I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son” (2 Sam. 7:12-14). The two sections of Matthew 1 resolve this in a way David could hardly have foreseen. The genealogy established descent from David. The rest of the chapter shews how Messiah is also, quite literally, Son of God.

Mary’s husband-to-be was a poor man. This can be readily inferred from the kind of offering that was made when the baby Jesus was presented before the Lord in the temple (Lk. 2:24; Lev. 12:8). Probably, too, it was a struggle for a livelihood which had taken him, or an earlier generation, to Nazareth, for it may be taken as fairly certain that, if possible, the heirs to the throne of David would remain in Bethlehem, David’s city.

It is not clear how Joseph came to know that Mary was pregnant. One guesses that it was disclosed to him by her mother after her return from the home of Elisabeth-”she was found with child” (v.18). Here was an unpleasant problem to resolve. Joseph was a good man, and not merely “just” in the technical Law-of-Moses sense of being one who faithfully observed all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord. This may be taken as certain, for was he not chosen by God to represent to Jesus in his earliest formative years the meaning of the word “Father”?

He had to make up his mind whether or not he should “put her away”, that is, divorce her, for, unlike a modern engagement, among the Jews this betrothal reckoned as a legal tie between man and woman. “From the moment of betrothal a woman was treated as actually married. The union could not be dissolved except by regular divorce; breach of faithfulness was regarded as adultery, and the property of the woman became virtually that of her betrothed” (Edersheim). It is for this reason that he is referred to as “her husband”, and she as “thy wife” (Mt. 1:19,20). Indeed, it did often happen that without any formal marriage ceremony the two came together as man and wife, the betrothal being regarded as the marriage. This was the way it worked out with Joseph and Mary, as the record proceeds to shew (v. 24).

With great delicacy the record leaves a lot of questions unanswered. When did Joseph learn of Mary’s condition? Did she explain to him? If she did, was he able to believe it? In any case, why was he unwilling to continue their marriage (consider Hosea 3:1-3)?

It would seem that Joseph had decided on what today would be called a separation-a quite remarkable decision, committing him (most probably) to continue unmarried for life, and also bringing to an end his branch of the family of David. This to save Mary from being “a public example”. The alternative would be the quietest form of divorce allowed by the rabbis- before two witnesses only.

Help from Heaven

However, Joseph was not given to precipitate action. He had come to his decision, but was still turning over in his mind how best, for Mary’s good, he should implement it, when there came a revelation from heaven (Gabriel again, surely). And this put the whole thing in a completely different light.

“Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.” How reassuring this would be to his troubled mind, for he feared offending his God and he feared public opinion. This latter would be an important consideration, for Joseph would have in mind his position as heir to the throne of David. Hence the angel’s first words: ‘‘Fear not...”

The child to be born was not to be Joseph’s son (contrast Gabriel’s words to Zacharias: “Thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son”); nevertheless he was to be acknowledged as though Joseph’s own: “Thou shalt call his name Jesus.” and thus it came about in later years that the ordinary people knew Jesus as the son of the carpenter in Nazareth (Lk. 2:48; 4:22; Jn.6: 42).

The next words of the angel lifted the soul of Joseph from wretchedness and perplexity to a level of profound spiritual exaltation: “He shall save his people from their sins.” In the text the emphatic pronoun seems to imply: ‘he, and no one else, shall do this’. Time after time in ancient days God had raised up a saviour for Israel (Judges 3:9), but these were men who fought and routed physical enemies and saved the kingdom of the Lord from invasion and oppression. But the Scriptures foretold God’s provision of a greater Saviour: “He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities” (Ps. 130:8); and “not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles; as he saith in Hosea, I will call them my people, which were not my people” (Rom. 9:24,25). The use of “people” (loos) in these passages points to a New Israel dependent not on circumcision but on Baptism and the Breaking of Bread “for the remission of sins” in Christ (Acts 2:38; Mt.26:28). The use of the pronoun in “Immanuel” confirms this. In the prototype “us” meant the faithful remnant, the true Israel: “Unto us a child is born” (Is. 8:10; 9:6). Now it means the New Israel, including believing Gentiles (Mt. 28:19).

The Immanuel Prophecy

These wonderful truths, very concisely put in Matthew’s record, were no doubt explained at greater length by the angel, it is more than likely that Isaiah’s famous prophecy about the birth of the Messiah was quoted by him. But in any case, on waking, the mind of a devout man like Joseph would quickly recall, with fuller understanding, that “which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.” There is so much, both of importance and difficulty, attaching to this Scripture that it would not be amiss to spend some time considering it.

A careful reading of Isaiah 7 makes it fairly evident that the prophecy, like so many other Messianic prophecies, had a primary reference to Isaiah’s own day. Ahaz, king of Judah, was making frantic preparations to stave off an invasion by the confederate kings of Syria and Israel. “If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established”, reproved the prophet, making effective play on the sound of the Hebrew phrases: “No belief, no relief!” Then, as always, deliverance could only be on the basis of one abiding God-honouring principle: Salvation by faith.

So the king was encouraged to ask for a sign concerning the Messiah, the point being that if God renewed His promise of a king who should sit on David’s throne, reigning for ever, no imminent overthrow of the kingdom need be feared.

“Ask in the depth, or in the height above.” There are three different ways of interpreting this enigmatic expression:

It is an idiom for the Messiah, who is to be of human and divine origin (2 Sam. 7:12,14; Gen. 49:25; Prov. 30:4; Deut. 30:12; 33:13; Is. 45:8; Gen. 27:28; 22:17; Zech. 8:12).
Ask a sign from Isaiah, a prophet living in “the valley of vision” (Kidron valley) — “the depth”; or ask a sign of divine manifestation in the temple, “the height”.
Allusion to a spring of water originating in the temple area, close to the place of sacrifice, and flowing out via the Virgin’s Fountain to En Rogel where the kings were crowned.

After his public desecration of the temple of Israel, Ahaz was not prepared to make a public recantation. “I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord”, said he hypocritically. But a sign was given nevertheless: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (7:14).

A good deal of argument has taken place about this Hebrew word almah. Does it mean “virgin”, or merely “a young woman of marriageable age”? All the other occurrences of this word seem to require the former meaning. Also, it is very remarkable that the Septuagint translators, doing their work long after the time of Isaiah and also long before the time of Jesus, chose to translate it by a Greek word which certainly means “virgin”. Over against this is the interesting fact that the versions of the Old Testament in Greek made by Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus all read “young woman”. But these translators were all Jews or Jewish proselytes after the time of Christ, so they all had a large doctrinal axe to grind!

It is suggested here that in the first instance Isaiah alluded to the young queen elect of king Ahaz, actually present with him when the words were heard. The child who was born in due time was Hezekiah, who deserved the name “God is with us” more than any other king since David (2 Kgs. 18:7; 2 Chr. 32:8). Hezekiah is almost certainly the basis of the other outstanding Messiah prophecies in Isaiah—with great appropriateness since in so many remarkable details he was a most impressive type of Christ. Most probably, when Isaiah was making his prophecies concerning Hezekiah, he knew that he spoke also about the Messiah.

Here, as happens with so many other prophecies of the Old Testament, the proximate fulfilment matched the words only approximately (the words “virgin” and “Immanuel” especially!), whilst the application to Christ is exact. (In the rest of Isaiah the reverse appears to be the case.)

Variations in the Text

There are certain interesting variations in the different versions of this passage. The Hebrew text has: “she shall call his name Immanuel”, which implies a contravention of the normal Jewish usage that the father decided the name of the child! This supports the idea that Isaiah’s prophecy intended a reference to a virgin, there being no human father to pronounce the child’s name. At the same time, the true father of this divine child did assign the name in the pronouncements made by the angel separately to Mary and to Joseph, and more publicly later at his baptism.

When Matthew quotes the prophecy he makes a deliberate variation: “and they shall call his name Immanuel.” Fairly evidently the allusion here is to the “us” in the Immanuel name, those who depend on this God-given Saviour for help which can come from no other.

With what gladness do they hail him as Immanuel. Perhaps also Matthew intends his readers to see the mother of the child as a type of the faithful remnant rejoicing in Immanuel, whilst Ahaz is a figure of the faithless nation which has constantly tempted the Lord their God by an unbelief and self-dependence bringing them no lasting peace.

All this, Matthew is also careful to stress, was “in order that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet”. But of course the main intention behind the Virgin Birth was not simply to provide a striking fulfilment of prophecy. Here the great redeeming Purpose of God was taking an impressive step forward. Matthew’s “in order that” is only his way of emphasizing this important truth.

Prompt Obedience

Joseph, faced with the problem of his wife’s pregnancy, had been cautious, considerate, and unhurried. But once he knew the mind of God on this, as revealed by the angel and confirmed by Holy Scripture, in glad relief he lost no time in giving ready obedience: “Being raised from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord had bidden” (cp. 2:14,21)-and what a relief this must have been to Mary! Even God provides things honest in the sight of all men! That immediate response by Joseph invites comparison with the prompt obedience of Abraham who “rose up early in the morning” and set out without delay for mount Moriah and the offering up of his only son (Gen. 22:3).

In this experience of Joseph is exemplified the power of Christ (even before he was born) to win men from doubt to faith. John the Baptist, bewildered and uncertain in prison, the two crucified malefactors, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, the twelve (Peter especially) constantly swithering between loyalty and puzzled uncertainty-these are other examples recorded to illustrate to men who will read about him how Christ has the power to lift them out of their chronic weakness of doubt into the satisfying confidence of faith.

The Brothers of Jesus

Matthew reverently adds a further significant fact to what he has already told. Joseph, quietly but unhesitatingly receiving Mary as his wife, “knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son.” The problem of the parentage of the other children in the family of Joseph - there were four brothers and at least three sisters (Mt. 13:55,56) has often been discussed. There are two possibilities: either they were the children of Joseph by an earlier marriage, or they were Mary’s children, born after Jesus.

The first of these, conjectured out of a mistaken reverence for Mary, is to be rejected, not because it is the standard Roman Catholic interpretation, but because there is no Bible evidence in support of it. On the other hand several arguments seem to require acceptance of the alternative view.

1. The word “until” in the passage just quoted seems to imply pointedly a normal married life after Jesus was born. However this by itself could hardly be regarded as decisive, for in the Bible “until” does not always carry this implication. But there is also the word “firstborn” which would be altogether pointless if Mary had no other children. (See the strong implication behind “firstborn” in Col. 1:18; Rom. 8:29). The usual rejoinder here is that the Vatican manuscript and several fourth-century fathers omit “firstborn”. This evidence can hardly be regarded as satisfactory, for Codex B is often guilty of unwarranted omissions in its text of the gospels. And these “fathers” all belonged to a period when an excessive reverence for Mary and reprobation of a normal sex life were dominating the church.

2. The Greek imperfect tense in “knew her not” would be quite inappropriate if the Catholic view is correct. It would need to be aorist.

3. If the rest of the family were Joseph’s children by an earlier marriage, then the genealogy of Matthew 1 should end with James, and not with Jesus, for Joseph’s firstborn would be the one who then had the right to the throne of David. ,

4. The Greek text of Matthew 12:46 clearly implies the reading: “his mother-and-brethren.”

5. For those who accept Psalm 69 (and not just a few verses of it), as Messianic, verse 8 there is decisive: “I am become a stranger unto my’ brethren, and an alien unto my mother’s children.”

It is perhaps worthwhile at this point to consider how carefully and suitably this beginning of Mary’s family was planned by divine wisdom. Suppose, for example, she had been betrothed to no-one or that conception had taken place before her betrothal to Joseph. Then what provocation there would have been! not only for gossip but also for the sanctions of the Law of Moses to operate? Or, if conception had taken place after marriage, then the child would certainly be assumed to be Joseph’s, and no evidence available to the contrary. Again, suppose Mary betrothed to a man not of the line of David, then his putative son Jesus would have no legal right to the throne of David.

Thus, from every angle, there was divine imperative and divine contrivance about the birth of Jesus, the Son of God. “All this was done in order that (the prophecy) might be fulfilled.” “It behoved the Christ” (Lk. 24:46) to fulfil all of this prophecy — a virgin pregnant, a male child, his name, and its meaning.

-- Harry Whittaker, Studies in the Gospels

SATAN: CURRENT BELIEFS

2008-10-19T22:19:00.003-04:00

Beliefs in a literal supernatural evil being called 'the devil' or 'Satan' are rapidly declining in North America:

‘The notion that Satan, or the devil, is a real being who can influence people's lives is regarded as hogwash by most Americans.

Only one-quarter (27%) strongly believes that Satan is real while a majority argues that he is merely a symbol of evil.

Mormons are the group most likely to accept the reality of Satan's existence (59%) while Catholics, Episcopalians and Methodists are the least likely (just one-fifth).’
The Barna Group, 25 June, 2001

‘In 2007 more than half of adults (57%) say that the devil, or Satan, is not a living being but is a symbol of evil. In 2007 46% of born again Christians deny Satan's existence. Two-thirds of Catholics (64%) say the devil is non-existent and only a symbol of evil’

The Barna Group, 2007

Increasingly, Christians are coming to an understanding of what the Bible really says about 'satan'.

EARLY JEWISH BELIEFS
The famous 18th century Baptist commentator John Gill, acknowledged that early Jewish teachers interpreted 'satan' as a reference to the natural inclination people have to sin, the 'evil imagination':

‘'...they {a} often say, "Satan, he is the evil imagination", or corruption of nature…’
John Gill, ‘Commentary On the Bible’, note on 2 Corinthians 12:7, 1748

Current Jewish groups confirm this is a historic understanding of 'satan' within Judaism:

‘Rather, Satan is a force or adversary, according to rabbinic sources, equal to the serpent-tempter of Genesis, and the yetzer ha’ra, the evil inclination that Judaism says exists within all of us alongside our better impulses.’ ‘Judaism teaches that these images “are different manifestations of the same [force of evil],” Kahn says. “Not that there is a physical person or an angel out there doing things, but that it's the way in which we hold or characterize the destructive or negative forces that exist in ourselves or in the world.”’
Jewish News Weekly, Leslie Katz, ‘Never underestimate the power of evil, say scholars’, January 19, 1996

This understanding of 'satan' is found in the New Testament. In the following the apostle Peter places two statements in parallel to show that 'satan filled your heart' is another way to say 'you thought this deed up in your heart':

Acts 5:3-4 But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back for yourself part of the proceeds from the sale of the land? Before it was sold, did it not belong to you? And when it was sold, was the money not at your disposal? How have you thought up this deed in your heart? You have not lied to people but to God!”

SO 'SATAN' IS NOT A NAME?
The Hebrew word ‘satan’ is not a personal name. It is a word meaning ‘adversary’. It is used of different adversaries in different places. As noted previously, it can refer to the internal temptation to sin which we all face. It can also refer to any external adversary:

• In Numbers 22:22 it is used of an obedient angel (as a verb)
• In 1 Kings 11:14, 23-24 and Psalm 109:68 it is used of mortal men
• In 1 Chronicles 21:1 it is used of an enemy nation
• And in Matthew 16:23 and Mark 8:33 it is used of Jesus’ disciple Peter, when he was opposing Jesus.

The ‘devil’ is also sometimes used of evil rulers or kingdoms: 1 Peter 5:8 (quoting Proverbs 20:2; 28:15), Revelation 12:9 (quoting Daniel 7:7, 19-23)

HISTORICAL INTERPRETATIONS
As noted previously, this understanding of 'satan' is not new. It has been a historic interpretation among Jewish commentators, and for centuries it has also been believed by various Christian commentators. It is not a new doctrine which has been invented recently.

The following is a list of Christian expositors who held to this same view of 'satan', preceded by their date:
• 1858: Horace Bushnell
• 1854: Hosea Ballou
• 1842: John Epps
• 1842: William Balfour
• 1836: Amos Alcott
• 1819: ‘Philalethes’
• 1804: John Simpson
• 1799: ‘AN’
• 1791: William Ashdowne
• 1772: Thomas Barker
• 1761: Hugh Farmer
• 1737: Arthur Sykes
• 1727: Sir Isaac Newton
• 1699: Ludowick Muggleton
• 1695: Balthassar Bekker
• 1651: Thomas Hobbes

The following is a list of Jewish expositors who held to this same view of 'satan', along with the passages of Scripture they interpreted according to this understanding.
• 1344 (d): Levi ben Gershon (1 Samuel 24:1)
• 1160 (b): David Kimchi (1 Samuel 24:1, Zechariah 3:1)
• 892-942: Saadia Ben Joseph (Job 1:6)
• 400s (?): Judah, (Micah 7:5, compare Deuteronomy 15:9 LXX)
• 330-360: Ben Isaac (Micah 7:5, compare Deuteronomy 15:9 LXX)
• 230-270: Simeon Ben Lakish (said that satan/the heart/angel of death are all one)
• 135-160: Joshua Ben Kar’ha (Deuteronomy 15:9)
• 100s AD: Jonathan Ben Uzziel (Zechariah 3:1)

J.Burke (http://bibleapologetics.wordpress.com/)

Christian Science Monitor Op Piece: "The Real Force Behind the Mass Murders of History"

2008-10-01T09:27:00.003-04:00

Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history
By Dinesh D'Souza
RANCHO SANTA FE, CALIF.

In recent months, a spate of atheist books have argued that religion represents, as "End of Faith" author Sam Harris puts it, "the most potent source of human conflict, past and present."

Columnist Robert Kuttner gives the familiar litany. "The Crusades slaughtered millions in the name of Jesus. The Inquisition brought the torture and murder of millions more. After Martin Luther, Christians did bloody battle with other Christians for another three centuries."

In his bestseller "The God Delusion," Richard Dawkins contends that most of the world's recent conflicts - in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in Northern Ireland, in Kashmir, and in Sri Lanka - show the vitality of religion's murderous impulse.

The problem with this critique is that it exaggerates the crimes attributed to religion, while ignoring the greater crimes of secular fanaticism. The best example of religious persecution in America is the Salem witch trials. How many people were killed in those trials? Thousands? Hundreds? Actually, fewer than 25. Yet the event still haunts the liberal imagination.

It is strange to witness the passion with which some secular figures rail against the misdeeds of the Crusaders and Inquisitors more than 500 years ago. The number sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition appears to be about 10,000. Some historians contend that an additional 100,000 died in jail due to malnutrition or illness.

These figures are tragic, and of course population levels were much lower at the time. But even so, they are minuscule compared with the death tolls produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants murdered more than 100 million people.

Moreover, many of the conflicts that are counted as "religious wars" were not fought over religion. They were mainly fought over rival claims to territory and power. Can the wars between England and France be called religious wars because the English were Protestants and the French were Catholics? Hardly.

The same is true today. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not, at its core, a religious one. It arises out of a dispute over self-determination and land. Hamas and the extreme orthodox parties in Israel may advance theological claims - "God gave us this land" and so forth - but the conflict would remain essentially the same even without these religious motives. Ethnic rivalry, not religion, is the source of the tension in Northern Ireland and the Balkans.

Blindly blaming religion for conflict
Yet today's atheists insist on making religion the culprit. Consider Mr. Harris's analysis of the conflict in Sri Lanka. "While the motivations of the Tamil Tigers are not explicitly religious," he informs us, "they are Hindus who undoubtedly believe many improbable things about the nature of life and death." In other words, while the Tigers see themselves as combatants in a secular political struggle, Harris detects a religious motive because these people happen to be Hindu and surely there must be some underlying religious craziness that explains their fanaticism.

Harris can go on forever in this vein. Seeking to exonerate secularism and atheism from the horrors perpetrated in their name, he argues that Stalinism and Maoism were in reality "little more than a political religion." As for Nazism, "while the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a predominantly secular way, it was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity." Indeed, "The holocaust marked the culmination of ... two thousand years of Christian fulminating against the Jews."

One finds the same inanities in Mr. Dawkins's work. Don't be fooled by this rhetorical legerdemain. Dawkins and Harris cannot explain why, if Nazism was directly descended from medieval Christianity, medieval Christianity did not produce a Hitler. How can a self-proclaimed atheist ideology, advanced by Hitler as a repudiation of Christianity, be a "culmination" of 2,000 years of Christianity? Dawkins and Harris are employing a transparent sleight of hand that holds Christianity responsible for the crimes committed in its name, while exonerating secularism and atheism for the greater crimes committed in their name.

Religious fanatics have done things that are impossible to defend, and some of them, mostly in the Muslim world, are still performing horrors in the name of their creed. But if religion sometimes disposes people to self-righteousness and absolutism, it also provides a moral code that condemns the slaughter of innocents. In particular, the moral teachings of Jesus provide no support for - indeed they stand as a stern rebuke to - the historical injustices perpetrated in the name of Christianity.

Atheist hubris
The crimes of atheism have generally been perpetrated through a hubristic ideology that sees man, not God, as the creator of values. Using the latest techniques of science and technology, man seeks to displace God and create a secular utopia here on earth. Of course if some people - the Jews, the landowners, the unfit, or the handicapped - have to be eliminated in order to achieve this utopia, this is a price the atheist tyrants and their apologists have shown themselves quite willing to pay. Thus they confirm the truth of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's dictum, "If God is not, everything is permitted."

Whatever the motives for atheist bloodthirstiness, the indisputable fact is that all the religions of the world put together have in 2,000 years not managed to kill as many people as have been killed in the name of atheism in the past few decades.

It's time to abandon the mindlessly repeated mantra that religious belief has been the greatest source of human conflict and violence. Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.

• Dinesh D'Souza is the Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution. His new book, "The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11," will be published in January.

A Study of John 1 - Part 4

2008-08-04T10:17:00.002-04:00

Moving on through the Johannine prologue, we arrive at verse 14:

The Word was made [ginomai] flesh and dwelt among us.

Here we must take care to read the text properly. We have been told that it was the logos which was made flesh - not God Himself. But what does this mean?

I refer once again to Dunn’s analysis:

But if we translated "logos" as "God's utterance" instead, it would become clearer that the poem did not necessarily intend the "logos" in verses 1-13 to be thought of as a personal divine being. In other words the revolutionary significance of verse 14 may well be that it marks . . . the transition from impersonal personification to actual person. [3]Indeed, it certainly does! Just as the spoken logos of God had once brought forth light, it now resulted in a living entity – Jesus of Nazareth; the promised Messiah.

Notice also John's use of ginomai, denoting a change of the logos from what it already was, to something that it had not previously been.

Once again, Scripture is our guide.

In Matthew 4:3 and Luke 4:3 we read

...command that these stones become [ginomai] bread.

And again, in John 2:9 -

the water... was made [ginomai] wine.

Examples could be multiplied.

The logos (God's plan and purpose, originally residing in His divine mind and later spoken in an act of creation) was now embodied in a new creation: the immaculate conception of Jesus Christ in the womb of the virgin Mary.

John's use of metonymy (in which the part is taken for the whole) employs "flesh" as synonymous with "person" or "human being." He is telling us that the logos did not simply become a piece of abstract flesh; it became a literal person; it became Jesus of Nazareth.

Centuries of Misinterpretation - the History of the Trinitarian Logos

The astute reader of early Christian history will discover that it is possible to follow the evolution of the logos as a Jewish theological concept into the logos as a Hellenic philosophical concept - and, ultimately, a stepping-stone to Trinitarianism. It all began with the work of a man called Philo.

Philo (a well-educated Hellenic Jew from Alexandria) had a considerable influence on Christian leaders of the "Alexandrian School", such as Clement of Alexandria and Justin Martyr. His allegorical method for interpreting Scripture also influenced Origen, Ambrose, Augustine, and others.

Philo attempted to interpret Scripture in terms of Greek philosophy. His approach was innovative and eclectic. Philo taught that human beings can know God, whether directly from divine revelation, or indirectly through human reason. Various forms of proof for God included Plato's argument for a Demiurgos in Timaeus and Aristotle's cosmological argument for an Unmoved Mover.

Interacting freely with Greek philosophy, Philo borrowed certain Platonic concepts to express his own theistic views. His concept of the logos is a case in point.

In De Opificio he describes the logos as a cosmological principle, saying:
God assuming, as God would assume, that a beautiful copy could never come into existence without a beautiful model...when He willed to create this visible world, first blocked out the intelligible world, in order that using an incorporeal and godlike model he might make the corporeal world a younger image of the older. [4]Philo's philosophy was the original source of what later became the logos theology of mainstream Christianity. [5]

Philo himself had been influenced by Plato’s Timaeus, in which he called the logos “the image of God”, and “the second God”. Many Trinitarians today are emphatic in their insistence that John's gospel deliberately makes use of the term "logos" because (according to them) he was fully aware of its Philonic meaning, and expected his readers to understand this! Some Trinitarians even go so far as to say that John himself was responsible for using the term in a new and especifically religious way.

But, as we have already seen, Robinson dismisses both claims with a common-sense reply:

John is a typical representative of the New Testament, not the anomalous exception, with one foot in the world of Greek philosophy, that he is so often presented. [6]

Of course, there is no disputing the fact that the term logos was widely used in the Greco-Roman culture (and also in Judaism), but not until the writings of Philo does the logos eventually become personified beyond personification and regarded as a, personal literal entity.

In the LXX, the term logos (Hebrew: dabar) was used frequently to describe God's utterances, and the messages of prophets - by means of which God communicated His will to His people. Logos occurs in both the major and minor prophetical books, as a figure of speech designating God's activity or action.

The Greek, metaphysical concept of logos is in sharp contrast to the concept of a personal God described in anthropomorphic terms typical of Hebrew thought. Thus when Hebrew mythical thought encountered Greek philosophical thought, it was only natural that some would try to develop speculative and philosophical justification for Judaism in terms of Greek philosophy.

Philo (who was, we must remember, a Hellenized Jew) produced a synthesis of both traditions developing concepts for the future Hellenistic interpretation of Messianic Hebrew thought. His theology was drawn not just from his traditional Jewish background, but also from the philosophical ideas of the Greek culture in which he found himself.

One of his more creative ideas was the suggestion that Plato had borrowed his own conception of the logos from the writings of Moses! Consequently, Philo’s logos is not entirely foreign to the Jewish or Hellenic schools of thought - but at the same time not entirely compatible with either of them.

Thus:

This Logos, which according to the Stoics is the bond between the different parts of the world, and according to the Heracliteans the source of the cosmic oppositions, is regarded by Philo as the Divine word which reveals God to the soul and calms the passions (see LOGOS).

It is finally from this point of view of the interior life that Philo transforms the moral conception of the Greeks which he knew mainly in the most popular forms (cynical diatribes); he discovers in them the idea of the moral conscience accepted though but slightly developed by philosophers up to that time.

A very interesting point of view is the consideration of the various moral systems of the Greeks, not simply as true or false, but as so many indications of the soul's progress or recoil at different stages. [7]

Many elements of his philosophy made an impact on later Christian thinking, including his use of proofs for God's existence, his logos doctrine, his views about the unknowability of God, his negative language about God, his position on ex nihilo creation, and his interpretation of Divine providence.

[3] Dunn, James D. G. (1980), Christology in the Making.

[4] As quoted by Norman L. Geisler (2000) in his Baker Encyclopaedia of Christian Apologetics.

[5] This argument is comprehensively articulated (and defended) by a number of classical historians. For additional reading on the evolution of early Christian theology and practice (with particular reference to the infiltration of Hellenism), see Jaeger’s Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (1961), Engels’ Die Neue Zeit, Vol. 1 (1894-95), Werner’s The Formation of Christian Dogma, An Historical Study of its Problems (1957), and Reynolds’ The Christian Religious Tradition (1977).

[6] Robinson, J.A.T. (1984), Twelve More New Testament Studies. Robinson (now deceased) was a former Bishop of the Anglican Church in Woolwich during the 1960s.

[7] The Catholic Encyclopaedia (1908).

A Study of John 1 - Part 3

2008-07-25T16:21:00.002-04:00

Let's begin with the first part of verse 10:

He was in the world,

This is easy enough to understand, for Scripture provides us wth many examples:

John 9:5
As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
John 17:11
And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.
John 17:12
While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.
John 17:13
And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

Then we have the second part of verse 10:

and the world was made [ginomai] by [dia; "through"] him

This is difficult to understand in the context of Biblical Unitarianism... unless we take care to examine the wider application of that vital word ginomai.

Thayer's Greek Lexicon defines it in the following way:

to become, i.e. to come into existence, begin to be, receive being
to become, i.e. to come to pass, happen
of events
to arise, appear in history, come upon the stage
of men appearing in public
to be made, finished
of miracles, to be performed, wrought
to become, be made

The use of ginomai to denote something which has been finished (alternatively "fulfilled" or "completed") is far better suited to the context of John 1:10 than the customary "made", since verse 10 refers specifically to the period during which Christ was "in the world" and thereby draws our attention to the mission that he was sent to perform.There are many other passages in Scripture which support this reading of ginomai:

Matthew 5:18
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. [ginomai]
Matthew 24:34
Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. [ginomai]
Luke 21:32
Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled. [ginomai]
John 13:2
And supper being ended [ginomai], the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him;
Hebrews 4:3
For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished [ginomai] from the foundation of the world.
Revelation 16:17
And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done. [ginomai]
Revelation 21:6
And he said unto me, It is done. [ginomai] I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

In each of these verses, ginomai is used to denote something which has come to pass in the sense of completing or fulfilling a particular aim or goal.

The same is equally true of John 1:10, where the purpose of Christ being "in the world" is to complete it; to fulfill it; to bring into fruition God's purpose with it.

But the strongest support for this reading comes from Christ himself, for in John 5:36 he makes an explicit reference to his role as the "finisher" of God's work:

But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me.

An alternative and equally justifiable interpretation can be made from the word dia (translated "by" in verse 10.) In the context of my ginomai argument, I have argued that it should be translated "through" - but it is just as legitimate to leave ginomai as "made" and translate dia another way.

The range of this preposition is seen elsewhere in the New Testament, where dia is variously translated as "for", "because" and "for [his/her] sake" (not to mention many others.) Any one of these would be perfectly viable in John 1:10, thereby indicating that the world was created with Jesus in mind and as part of the purpose in which he would ultimately play the central role.

The only proviso is that dia must be found in the genetive case if it is to be translated as “for [his] sake”; but in John 1:10 dia does indeed occur in the genetive case, thereby vindicating the non-Trinitarian gloss.

Additional support is found in Matthew 13:21, Matthew 13:58, Matthew 14:3. Matthew 14:9, Matthew 17:10, Matthew 19:12, Matthew 24:9, Matthew 24:22, Matthew 27:18, Matthew 27:19, Mark 2:4, Mark 2:27, Mark 3:9, Mark 4:17, Mark 6:6, Mark 6:17, Mark 6:26, Mark 13:13, Mark 13:20, Mark 15:10, Luke 8:19, Luke 11:8, Luke 21:17, Luke 23:19, Luke 23:25, John 3:29, John 4:39, John 4:41, John 4:42, John 7:12, John 7:43, John 10:19, John 10:32, John 11:15, John 11:42, John 12:9, John 12:30, John 12:42, John 14:11, John 15:21, John 19:42 and John 20:19 (to name only a few places), where dia is translated in precisely the way that this argument requires.

But whichever way we choose to read ginomai (whether "fulfilled", "completed" or "finished") and whichever way we choose to read dia (whether "for", "because" or "for [his] sake") the meaning of John 1:10 is clear: Christ did not create the world, but instead came to change it - for he is both the focal point of God’s creation and the means by which it is redeemed.

This is the crucial point that John wishes us to understand.

The final part of John 1:10 now falls naturally into place:

and the world knew him not.

This, too, receives ample support from the rest of the New Testament - and lest we mistakenly assume that it refers only to unbelievers, John the Baptist himself openly admits that even he did not recognise Christ until he received a sign from the Holy Spirit:

John 1:31
And I knew him not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water.
John 1:33
And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.
Act 13:27
For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him.
I Corinthians 2:7-8
But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

A Study of John 1 - Part 2

2008-07-22T07:44:00.002-04:00

The “orthodox” Trinitarian Creeds (in which we find various references to the “eternally begotten Son of God") stand apart from the witness of Scripture. Their language is peculiar, paradoxical, nonsensical, and above all… unBiblical.

Thus:

The notion that the Son was begotten by the Father in eternity past, not as an event, but as an inexplicable relationship, has been accepted and carried along in the Christian theology since the fourth century....

We have examined all the instances in which 'begotten' or 'born' or related words are applied to Christ, and we can say with confidence that the Bible has nothing whatsoever to say about 'begetting' as an eternal relationship between the Father and the Son.[2]

We see therefore, that when John speaks of the logos he does not refer to a pre-existent Messiah – he refers to the conception of a Divine plan and purpose, which found its literal expression in the person of Jesus Christ.

As previously noted, James Dunn agrees with this interpretation, but still finds it difficult to reconcile the necessarily impersonal nature of the logos with the text of the KJV.

His chief concern is that:

The point is obscured by the fact that we have to translate the masculine "logos" as "He" throughout the poem.

But Dunn is clearly labouring under a false assumption. There are no grounds on which it might be argued that we have to refer to the “logos” as “He.” It is true that the word “logos” is masculine (at least, in the grammatical sense) but this is irrelevant. Instead of focusing his attention on the word "logos", Dunn would do better to examine the word autos, which the KJV has translated as “Him.”

In fact, right up until the publication of the KJV 1611, most Bibles referred to the logos of John 1 as “it” instead of "he", even though their translators believed the logos to be a pre-existent Christ.

Yes, the logos was “in the beginning… with God.” But it was not God Himself, nor was it another divine being beside Him. So, while the logos (according to John) is divine, the logos is not the pre-existent Christ.

This distinction is crucial.

It is in verse 10 of John 1 that we encounter the next phase of the Trinitarian argument:

He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not

Here we seem to have a reiteration of John 1:3 -

All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Under the Trinitarian interpretation, both verses are taken as saying that Christ himself was personally responsible for the Genesis creation; and at face value, this seems to be an inescapable conclusion.

We are told that Christ was "in the world"; we are told that he "made the world" and we are told that "the world knew him not." Clearly, the "world" being referred to here is the same "world" in each instance: the material world of verse 1. It seems most unlikely that John is speaking of the spiritual world (or "new creation", as Paul calls it in Colossians 1), since this would make no sense in the context of the statements "he was in the world" and "the world knew him not."

While it is true that John is no longer speaking of the logos at this point (for verse 10 is actually speaking of "the light"), it is nevertheless clear that "the light" is an unequivocal reference to Christ.

However, there is a proviso to this reference, for we must remember that verse 4 has described the light as something that was in the logos - proving that the light is not synonymous with the logos. This is conclusive proof that Jesus cannot be the logos himself.

But how are we to understand verse 10? While we agree that Christ was "in the world" and also that "the world knew him not", in what sense can Christ be said to have "made" the very world in which he lived, and which knew him not?

The answer is found by interpreting Scripture with Scripture.

A Study of John 1 - Part 1

2008-07-18T10:16:00.003-04:00

God Speaks, and His Will is Performed - the Basic Message of John's Prologue

John 1:1-3 is known amongst Christians as “the battleground of the Trinity” – and it is not hard to see why. At first glance, this passage may appear to show irrefutable evidence for the deity and pre-existence of Christ. But a careful analysis will show that the entire Trinitarian case turns upon a spurious translation of John 1:1-3, by means of which the Greek word ”logos” is subjected to the most astonishing abuse.

As with any other proof text, the most effective way to refute the Trinitarian claim is to build up a counter-argument on the basis of first principles, in addition to the socio-historical context of John’s Gospel. But before we do anything else, we must establish that the logos is not a person, but rather the outworking of God's purpose and plan. This is even clearer when we read the Genesis record, in which:

God said… and it was so.

Even a cursory glance at Scripture is enough to show that the Old Testament creation account never uses the language that Trinitarianism requires. Not once does Genesis attempt to persuade us that this spoken word was a divine person. Not once is this spoken word referred to as a distinct entity. It is always described as “the word” of God – never as God Himself.

Thus, in the words of Psalm 33:6 & 9...

By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth... For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.

See also Psalm 107:20; 147:15, 18, 19, Hebrews 11:3 (compare with Jeremiah 10:12, 13:5) and II Peter 3:5,7:

. . . by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water . . . But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

Ignoring the fact that the message of the New Testament is necessarily founded upon the old (and therefore cannot contradict it) Trinitarians place great emphasis on the alleged significance of the word logos in the Johannine prologue, which they claim is a direct reference to the pre-existent Christ.

The superficial nature of this argument is easily exposed.

In the KJV, for example, logos is translated by more than twenty different English words and is used for utterances of men (e.g., John 17:20) as well as those of God (John 5:38). The Bible, as we have already seen, informs us that there was no creation without the word; no creation without God speaking and causing it to occur. Nothing occurring without a direct expression of the Divine will.

That is the context in which the word "word" is used, both in the OT and the NT. This means that even if we accept the KJV reading (“…he was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him… by him was not anything made that was made…”) at face value, it must still be proved that a literal, personal being is here referred to. The very most that a Trinitarian can claim (on the basis of the KJV rendition) is that the logos has simply been personified.

Hence the following observations from a standard authority:

Prior to verse 14 we are in the same realm as pre-Christian talk of wisdom and logos, the same language that we find in the wisdom tradition and in Philo, where as we have seen we are dealing with personifications rather than persons, personified actions of God rather than an individual divine being as such. The point is obscured by the fact that we have to translate the masculine "logos" as "He" throughout the poem.

But if we translated "logos" as "God's utterance" instead, it would become clearer that the poem did not necessarily intend the "logos" in verses 1-13 to be thought of as a personal divine being. In other words the revolutionary significance of verse 14 may well be that it marks . . . the transition from impersonal personification to actual person. [1]

Christ was certainly God's spoken word in action – and therefore His representative on Earth – but that was all. He did not pre-exist as some sort of supernatural thing called "The Word."

This point is confirmed by the Old Testament, where we see that angels and prophets have also been vehicles by which God has transmitted His logos.

In most instances, Scripture describes this event in the following way:

The word [dabar] of Yahweh came to…

At some point however, we must address the fact that there are a couple of passages in which Christ is called “the logos of God.” What do we make of them? What are they telling us, and how might they be explained to our interested friends?

The answer is found in the principle of God manifestation.

Christ is the complete manifestation ("revelation") of the logos, for "in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." (Colossians 2:9.) This same logos was “in the beginning with God”, before the existence of Christ.

When the "word was made flesh" (John 1:14) then, and only then, did Christ come into existence as “the logos made flesh.” Christ is called the logos (Revelation 19:13, compare with I John 1:1; Luke 1:2) because he constitutes the outworking of God’s logos; the physical reality of a plan which had previously existed in the mind of God.

Was there is a pre-existence of that which was and is Jesus Christ? Not in any literal sense whatsoever. A man might say that he existed as "A twinkle in my father's eye and a knowing look on my mother's face", but this is radically different from literal pre-existence. Could we honestly tell our friends that "That which is me, existed before I was conceived"? Not at all.

Christ came into existence when he was conceived and subsequently begotten. When did this occur? Luke 1:35 tells us that it was some two thousand years ago in Palestine, when the power of God overshadowed Mary, the betrothed of Joseph. (See also Matthew 1:20.)

[1] Dunn, James D. G. (1980), Christology in the Making.

Why They Hated Jesus - The Diabolos (Lying) Mind

2008-04-30T11:11:00.002-04:00

The Pharisees actually voiced their reasons for killing Jesus. These reasons, as expressed, are bogus. In other words, I don't believe they are their actual reasons, but only their excuses. For example, the Pharisees offered this reason for killing Jesus amongst themselves

Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, what do we? For this man doeth many miracles. If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation. (John 11:47-48)

The "reasoning" goes something like this.

Jesus is undeniably doing miracles.
Because of this, ALL men (a bit of hyperbole don't you think) will believe that he is the promised Messiah.
This will cause the people to want to revolt against Rome.
Rome will quell the rebellion by taking away "our place" and our nation.

There are a number of built-in assumptions in here:

Assumption: Jesus was convincing people that he was the Messiah through miracles. More Accurately: As the Gospels show, people seem more interested in the miracles for their own personal benefit than the more important issue of what this all means. The conviction of the people seems much more superficial than what they Pharisees are suggesting.
Assumption: This will cause the people to revolt against Rome. More Accurately: Jesus had no intention of leading a revolt against Rome. In fact, when people did start moving in that direction on a few occasions, he put an end to it quickly.
Assumption: This will cause the Romans to come in and take away "our place" and our nation. More Accurately: The Pharisees fall into the common trap of man and that is predicting confidently what will happen in the future. There are many possible outcomes based on their hypothetical scenario. Taking a man's life based on such flimsy prognostications is criminal.

It seems to me that this interchange does show the truth as to why they were planning to kill Jesus. The truth comes in the simple phrase "our place." The reason that the Pharisees hated and were going to kill Jesus was that he was taking their place rather than the Romans. Jesus was challenging their teaching, their traditions, their legalistic self-righteousness and their authority to instruct the people. He was supplanting the Pharisees on a daily basis. Their place among the people as leaders was in dire straits as more and more people came to understand the superficial leadership these men were providing.

What is very enlightening and instructive for us is the self-deception that is going on here. We have a bright and shining display of the diabolos mind at work. I honestly believe that these men had convinced themselves of their little story and felt justified in doing what they were doing. If they had only asked themselves a few simple, honest questions as to their motives, they might have averted executing the son of God. The diabolos mind is so strong and deceptive and they had spent years working on the art of self- justification rather than self-examination, they really didn't stand a chance. Herein lies the lesson for us. We each have that same mind. That fact is not in debate. The question is how have we spent our lives: learning to question and challenge the diabolos or looking for ways to justify it? If it is the latter, we will also do what these men did. That too is beyond question.

If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. That which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned. (Heb. 6:6,8)

http://www.wcfoundation.org/tftw_blog/

A Brief Bio on the Twelve Apostles

2008-04-28T14:54:00.001-04:00

Simon Peter - one of the first of the 12 to be called by Jesus. He was in the "inner circle" of disciples - "Peter, James, and John" and was regarded as the leader of the disciples after Christ. He was a fisherman as were James and John from the area around Beth-Saida on the sea of Galilee. He took the lead on the day of Pentecost when 3,000 Jews were converted to Christianity. He was also involved in the first conversion of Gentiles to the Gospel (Acts 10) and played a key role in the differentiation of Christianity from Judaism at the Jerusalem conference in Acts 15. He wrote 1 Peter and 2 Peter and tradition has it that he was executed in Rome not too long after Paul's execution by Nero.

Andrew (Peter's brother) - Not too much has been written about Andrew. He was a fisherman like his brother, Peter and a disciple of John the Baptist until he was directed to Jesus by John. Andrew introduced Peter to the Lord.

James (son of Zebedee) - James was the elder brother of the apostle John (writer of the gospel and letters). Interestingly, while he was alive, he was more influential than John. He was always mentioned before his brother and just after Peter. I believe that he wrote the epistle of James, usually attributed to James, the Lord's brother, in response to the death of Stephen recorded in Acts 7 and that's why Herod had him killed. (note the scathing attacks in that letter on the rich and powerful persecutors).

John (James' brother) - An early disciple, younger brother of James and friend and co-worker of Peter and Andrew. He wrote the Gospel of John, the 3 epistles which bear his name and the book of Revelation and so, in the end, became the most influential of all the apostles. John's brother, James, was the first apostle to die but John was the last. He died in Ephesus about A.D. 100 at a good old age. He was the only apostle not to have died a violent death. The ones we don't know about from scripture, we are told about in the early church writings. For a time he was exiled by the Emperor Domitian to the island of Patmos off the coast of present-day Turkey and while there wrote the book of Revelation.

Philip - He was the brother of Andrew and Peter and an early disciple of John the Baptist. In John 1:43-45, after being directed by John the Baptist to Jesus, he brought Andrew to the Lord. Philip the Apostle is not the same person as Philip the Evangelist who appears in Acts. (See Acts 8).

Bartholomew (same as Nathanel) - Not much is known about him. He is mentioned in Mt 10:3, Mk 3:18, Lk 6:14, and Acts 1:13 but only by name. In John, in 1:45-51 we get a better glimpse of him. What would any of us give to have the Lord say of us as he did of Nathanel "Behold an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile!" He was from Cana in Galilee and it may have been at his house where the wedding was held at which Jesus turned the water into wine.

Thomas - We know almost nothing about Thomas except that his name means "twin" in Aramaic. He is sometimes called "Didymus" which means "twin" in Greek. The incident in John 20:24-29 is where he earns his nickname "doubting Thomas" when he had to touch the wounds of the Lord before he would believe that he had truly risen from the dead.

Matthew (the tax collector) - Surprisingly little is know about Matthew other than the fact that he was a tax collector (perhaps a friend or even an employee of Zaccheus?). He was the brother of James, son of Alphaeus. He wrote the gospel of Matthew.

James (son of Alphaeus) - He has been called "James the less" to differentiate him from James the son of Zebedee. Mark 15:40. He is mentioned in Matthew 10:3; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13

Thaddaeus - He is "Jude" and is also called "Lebbaeus". See Luke 6:16; John 14:22; Acts 1:13;As Lebbaeus Matthew 10:3;As Thaddeus Mattthew 10:3; Mark 3:18. As another son of Alphaeus perhaps? He is referred to as "the brother of James." See Jude 1 - is he the writer of this epistle? I think so.

Simon the Zealot - The Zealots were a terrorist group bent on freeing Judea from the Romans. In Christ, Simon found his true Liberator. Matthew 10:4; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13 He is also called "the Canaanite" another name for the same terrorist organization.

Judas Iscariot* - The surname "Iscariot" could mean "of the dagger" and indicates that he might have been an assassin before coming to Jesus. The surname could also mean "Man of Kerioth" in southern Judea and so, the only one of the Apostles not from Galilee. What do we know of him? He was a thief. He betrayed Jesus and when he repented of his sin, he went back to his partners in crime to set things straight instead of to the Lord. There was no help for him there and he hanged himself. Matthew 10:4; 26:14-27; Mark 3:19; 14:10, 43; Luke 6:16; 22:3-48; John 6:71; 12:4 13:2-29; 18:2-5; Acts 1:16-25

*After Judas betrayed Christ, Matthias was chosen by the other disciples to take his place. Saul of Tarsus who became Paul the apostle was chosen by Jesus. (Acts 9:3-6). After Matthias was chosen in Acts 1, we never hear of him again.

Provided by Mike LeDuke at http://www.thisisyourbible.com

Collins: Why this scientist believes in God

2008-04-25T15:32:00.000-04:00

Editor's note: Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. His most recent book is "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief."

ROCKVILLE, Maryland (CNN) -- I am a scientist and a believer, and I find no conflict between those world views.

As the director of the Human Genome Project, I have led a consortium of scientists to read out the 3.1 billion letters of the human genome, our own DNA instruction book. As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God's language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God's plan.

I did not always embrace these perspectives. As a graduate student in physical chemistry in the 1970s, I was an atheist, finding no reason to postulate the existence of any truths outside of mathematics, physics and chemistry. But then I went to medical school, and encountered life and death issues at the bedsides of my patients. Challenged by one of those patients, who asked "What do you believe, doctor?", I began searching for answers.

I had to admit that the science I loved so much was powerless to answer questions such as "What is the meaning of life?" "Why am I here?" "Why does mathematics work, anyway?" "If the universe had a beginning, who created it?" "Why are the physical constants in the universe so finely tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms?" "Why do humans have a moral sense?" "What happens after we die?" (Watch Francis Collins discuss how he came to believe in God )

I had always assumed that faith was based on purely emotional and irrational arguments, and was astounded to discover, initially in the writings of the Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis and subsequently from many other sources, that one could build a very strong case for the plausibility of the existence of God on purely rational grounds. My earlier atheist's assertion that "I know there is no God" emerged as the least defensible. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, "Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative."

But reason alone cannot prove the existence of God. Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page. Ultimately, a leap of faith is required.

For me, that leap came in my 27th year, after a search to learn more about God's character led me to the person of Jesus Christ. Here was a person with remarkably strong historical evidence of his life, who made astounding statements about loving your neighbor, and whose claims about being God's son seemed to demand a decision about whether he was deluded or the real thing. After resisting for nearly two years, I found it impossible to go on living in such a state of uncertainty, and I became a follower of Jesus.

So, some have asked, doesn't your brain explode? Can you both pursue an understanding of how life works using the tools of genetics and molecular biology, and worship a creator God? Aren't evolution and faith in God incompatible? Can a scientist believe in miracles like the resurrection?

Actually, I find no conflict here, and neither apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers. Yes, evolution by descent from a common ancestor is clearly true. If there was any lingering doubt about the evidence from the fossil record, the study of DNA provides the strongest possible proof of our relatedness to all other living things.

But why couldn't this be God's plan for creation? True, this is incompatible with an ultra-literal interpretation of Genesis, but long before Darwin, there were many thoughtful interpreters like St. Augustine, who found it impossible to be exactly sure what the meaning of that amazing creation story was supposed to be. So attaching oneself to such literal interpretations in the face of compelling scientific evidence pointing to the ancient age of Earth and the relatedness of living things by evolution seems neither wise nor necessary for the believer.

I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God's majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship.

Can We Be Good Without God? Finale

2008-04-25T09:24:00.002-04:00

All One in Christ Jesus

Humanists adhere to ethical values which belong to a tradition which they claim to have discarded. A good example of this is the modern notion that all ethnic groups are 'equal', therefore it is wrong to discriminate against members of racial minorities, to denigrate or abuse them verbally. Most reasonable people would agree with this principle. Even so it is worth asking exactly on what basis racial discrimination is morally wrong — who laid down this principle? To this, the Bible gives a clear and unambiguous answer. From earliest times God's people were commanded to show compassion for the 'alien' (i.e. the immigrant) who, with the orphan and the widow, was to be protected from exploitation:

He (the Lord) defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt (Deuteronomy 10:18,19).

God had shown compassion towards His people when they were strangers in another land, therefore they must show the same compassion towards members of other races who lived among them. As always, it is the character of God which determines human conduct. The Bible proclaims a vision of human unity based upon the fact that all nations and races are the creation of a God who has a purpose for mankind:

"From one man He (God) made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth, and He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live" (Acts 17:26).

Therefore, for members of one racial or cultural group to despise members of another group is contrary to the will of God.

The Apostle Paul describes the Christian ideal of a community of men and women sharing a unity in Christ and a status before God in which all distinctions of race and gender are transcended. He writes:

"There is neither few nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for van arc all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).

This is surely the ideal after which humanists are striving, but which they can never attain despite all their talk of equality. freedom and rights. The Apostle Paul does not predict that these ideals can be attained through parliamentary legislation, or social reform. They can be attained only by those who are united under the fatherhood of God and the lordship of Jesus Christ.

It was in part this biblical view that all men have value in the sight of God that inspired the great reformers of the past to abolish slavery and serfdom and improve the conditions in factories and prisons. It inspired them to denounce as immoral anything which violated the dignity which Christianity attributed to mankind. While rejecting this Christian vision, liberal humanism still affirms the wrongness of discrimination, and often pursues the crusade against it with great dogmatism. Yet in the absence of the original Christian ideal, the justification for this goal is no longer clear.

If we are not in fact the creation of a wise and loving God, then we are left with a purely naturalistic explanation for our existence. A Darwinian account of human origins sees life as a struggle, in which we have evolved according to the principle of the survival of the fittest and strongest. The strong must eliminate the weak in order to survive. It was an interpretation of Darwinism which gave us racism in the original sense of the term, i.e. the belief that some races of mankind are further up the evolutionary scale than others, and are therefore have a greater capacity for civilisation.

The study of nature does not teach the equality of the races nor do the laws of nature teach us that conflict and exploitation are immoral. On its own nature is neither good nor evil. Humanism, however, does not always take its own beliefs to their logical conclusion.

As in so many issues, liberal humanism has borrowed certain ideas, principles and phrases from Christianity — human dignity, brotherhood of man. tolerance, freedom, equality — setting them up as though they were basic laws of our being. But detached from the context which once gave them meaning, they appear increasingly arbitrary and lacking any real authority.

“Humanism as a doctrine tends to be somewhat vague, powerless and lacking in the power to stir the imagination. Like streams which flow into the desert and disappear in the sand, it tends to ebb away and leave a religions vacuum.” (Lloyd Geering, Faith's New Age, p.165).

Accident of Nature or Divine Creation?

Our answer to such questions as—Where have we come from?—and—What is the purpose of our existence?—will inevitably influence the way we conduct ourselves. If we believe that the world was created by a wise and loving God, who desires our eternal welfare, then we will tend to conduct ourself in a way that is consistent with that interpretation of human life. If we believe that our existence is no more than an accident of nature, then we will tend towards attitudes and behaviour quite different. It is a bit like children who inevitably develop in different ways depending on whether or not they were brought up by parents who love and trust them.

However, there are many voices in the modern world who assure us that God has no part at all in our origin or in our ultimate destiny. He makes no moral demands upon us. He does not even exist. We are nothing more than an accidental offshoot of the processes of nature, an intelligent species of animal which, by a caprice of the evolutionary process has developed a larger brain than the other.

If such an atheistic explanation for our origins is true however, then we are no longer potential children of our heavenly Father, made for eternal fellowship with Him. Therefore we have no destiny. The individual will die and that is the end of him forever. Eventually the whole human race will become extinct. Human life is a "tale told by an idiot". Much of modern culture, its art, films and literature reflects this moral and spiritual emptiness—reflects it and influences it: life without the hope and the vision which faith in God once provided.

“That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs arc but the outcome of the accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labour of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, arc destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, arc yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built (Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic, p.47).

"Not by Bread alone ..."

Modern society has many benefits, technology has provided the means to travel, to communicate, to cure disease. As a result people enjoy better health, they live longer, they have more money and time, they can fill their houses with electronic gadgets. At the same time many feel that there is something profoundly wrong at the very heart of modern society and that for all the technical progress around us, we have lost something and that our humanity is debased when we live without that spiritual dimension.

"Man shall not live by bread alone", said Jesus, "but by every word which comes from God" (Matthew 4:4). He meant that people cannot live only on a material level. They need a spiritual dimension also. It is surely this need which has inspired a reaction against what many see as the dehumanising influence of science and its purely materialistic explanation for human life. Many have turned to alternative forms of spirituality offered by a proliferation of cults and pseudo-religions: astrology, the worship of Gaia, New Age philosophy, the occult, witchcraft. All these are surely expressions of a deep-rooted desire to believe in something. They are a reminder also that human nature needs a hope, a vision to live by. G. K. Chesterton is reported to have remarked: "When men cease to believe in God they do not then believe in nothing, they believe in anything'". It could be said that there is a 'god-shaped hole" in the human heart. If traditional forms of religion are seen as inadequate and the Biblical God is denied, then people will find a new object of worship, a new vision and a new hope.

“If redemption is to come, it has to come from outside the things that science and contemporary politics have to offer. It has to come from outside us altogether, from a recognition that our efforts on their own arc not enough. We have to see ourselves as part of a larger process, whose end is not just that human beings should breed and swarm, but that is addressed to higher ends. We exist neither to serve nature's blind reproductive ends, nor to manipulate nature for our own purposes.” (After Progress - Finding the Old Way Forward, Anthony O’Hear, p.248)

Failed Utopias

There have been many attempts to bring about a new social order by revolution, by legislation, by economic means. They have all failed simply because it is impossible to impose the high ideals of humanism on a population by force or legislation. The ideals of Marxism were not evil. A society where each individual works for the common good was a noble ideal. But how can people be persuaded to treat their neighbours as brothers, to seek the interests of others before their own, to make selfless contributions to the common good? It simply does not work. Every attempt to impose moral improvement on people by government decree has failed, because government decrees are external to human nature.

Throughout the twentieth century the optimism about human capacity for self-improvement was repeatedly exposed as hollow. When the thin veneer of civilisation was removed and darker forces came to the surface, then the world was shown the barbarism of which human nature is still capable. War against civilians, tyranny, genocide and ethnic cleansing have repeatedly given the lie to the prophecies of unending progress so common at the turn of the 20th century.

The reason why man cannot achieve a perfect society is that the root cause of wars, injustice and tyranny are due to dark forces deep within the human psyche. Tanks and guns do not cause wars, secret police and prison camps do not erect tyrannies. Greed, pride, mistrust, folly, lust for power do. If the earth is polluted by the effluent of civilisation it is because the heart of man is polluted by greed. And the solution is not ideology, legislation or technology but a radical change of heart.

"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you" (James 4:1).

The words of James describe the root cause of all conflict, whether it be on a personal level or between nations.

A New Heart

For much of his life H.G. Wells proclaimed a Gospel of progress by technology and optimism. In time man could transform the world and inaugurate a new order based upon rational principles. By the end of his life, however, and during the Second World War, he wrote his final book, appropriately entitled Mind at the End of its Tether, in which he acknowledges that technical progress had not led to greater wisdom or maturity:

“The writer sees the world as a jaded world devoid of recuperative power. In the past he has liked to think that Man will pull out of his entanglements and start a new creative phase of human living. In the face of our universal inadequacy, that optimism has given place to a stoical cynicism. The old men behave for the most part meanly and disgustingly, and the young are spasmodic, foolish and all too easily misled. Man must go steeply up or down and the odds seem to be all in favour of his going down and out. If he goes up, then so great is the adaptation demanded of him that that he must cease to be a man. Ordinary man is at the end of his tether” (H.G. Wells, Mind at the End of its Tether p.30).

So writes one of the prophets of humanism. It is significant that Wells blames the nature of man for his inability to make progress, and that such progress can come only if man makes an adaptation to his basic nature. It is precisely this need for a change to man's basic nature that the Christian Gospel demands of those who accept it.

The Gospel of Jesus is radically different from all the Utopian dreams which have been promoted as offering the salvation of the world. His followers did not hear from him the political slogans of the freedom fighter nor the high ideals of the social reformer. A programme to put the world right or to strive for a more just society does not enter into his teaching nor did he urge his followers to undertake such a programme. Instead, he began the work of transformation where it was most needed —in the hearts of responsive individuals. His Gospel was given to remove from their hearts those things which stand as a barrier between them and God.

He looked forward to a future transformation of the whole world, urging his disciples to pray: "Your kingdom come, your will be done in earth as it is in heaven'" (Matthew 6:10). Significantly, he never described the economic, political or social arrangements of this future new order. He described only the qualities of character that must be shown by those who hoped to enter it. The citizens of God's Kingdom he taught, were "the poor in spirit", "the meek", "those who hunger and thirst for righteousness"—"Anyone who will not receive the Kingdom of God like a little child will not enter it" (Mark 10:15).

He taught that one day he will return in glory to judge the world and gather his disciples to himself. With this in mind, he urged his followers to view this world as a temporary sojourn; its wealth and pleasures, its loyalties and power struggles are not worth the allegiance or affection of those who have embarked upon this pilgrimage towards the Kingdom of God. Neither their security nor their true wealth are rooted in this passing life.

How then do we qualify for a place in that Kingdom? Jesus gave the answer: "Unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3). To be "born again" means to be baptised, to be immersed in water. This symbolism of going into water and coming out again is a very important part of the Christian life. It means symbolically to die with Christ, that is, to put to death the selfish side of our nature, so that we can rise with him to newness of life (read Romans 6:1-19). In this way we turn from the darkness of this life with all its selfishness and futility and set ourselves instead to face the light of a new life derived from him.

A Transforming Influence

The Apostle Paul provides a good example of this transformation. He began his career as an implacable enemy of the Christian Gospel, persecuting it as subversive of everything which he believed. Yet he was not wicked or irreligious. On the contrary, he strained every nerve to obey the law of Moses, to irradicate the badness within his heart. Despite this, he found that his efforts to obey the law were unsuccessful. This was because his own lower nature, what he called his 'flesh'. prevented him from achieving the moral perfection which the law demanded. (See Romans 7:7-25). But when he discovered that Jesus had returned from the dead then Paul found a new way to achieve moral goodness:

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20).

Notice in these words how closely the Apostle Paul identifies himself with the life of Christ, All that Paul had once been, the proud, self-righteous Pharisee, the intolerant persecutor had died in the waters of baptism. In another sense he lived on, yet not him, but Christ in him, as an influence and a power which came from beyond himself.

To return then to the question with which we began—can we be good without God? The answer is Yes, we can—but only up to a point. We can obey the law, pay our dues and live in peace with our fellow men. Nevertheless, we cannot achieve the standard of perfection which alone is pleasing to God. Only in Christ can we, like the Apostle Paul, find a new influence, a new power whose source lies outside ourselves and which can transform us in our innermost being and strengthen us to do what is right. In this way Christ's victory over sin can be a reality and a transforming influence in our lives. What Christ transforms us into is not something contrary to our nature, but what God intended all along that we should be. When we put His will before our own, then we find our true selves.

This is not to suggest that when we are joined to Christ we can expect to attain moral perfection within this life, or that all trace of sin and self-will is irradicated. That would be quite unrealistic. One who has been baptised is still very much subject to the weaknesses of human nature and to the temptations common to all men. Only on the other side of the resurrection of the dead will we attain perfection. But until then, we have the assurance that when we fail God will forgive us, strengthen us against temptation and enable us to move forward.

Jesus was the perfect man and only by his influence can we grow into that maturity for which God made us and fulfil the purpose and goal of our creation. "Then-fore, if anyone is in Christ be is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has conic!" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

But the fruit of the Spirit is lore, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we lire by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-25).

Can We Be Good Without God? Part 4

2008-04-07T16:48:00.002-04:00

Theory and Practice

Much that reflects a high moral tone in the secular world is due to the influence of the Christian Gospel. Many people, even those who do not believe in God, have expressed an admiration for the teaching of Jesus about how people should live and deal with one another. There is, however, a limit to how much atheists can borrow from the teaching of Jesus.

This is because his ethical teaching was only one element in his Gospel. To take the Sermon on the Mount out of its context and treat it as no more than a set of moral maxims is to misunderstand its meaning. For it is part and parcel of his teaching about God and our position before him. We cannot separate theory and practice. His Gospel also affirms the sovereignty of God, His desire to rescue us from the plight into which our selfishness has led us and our need for His forgiveness and grace to restore us to spiritual health. It affirms that man is made in the image of God and is destined for eternal fellowship with Him.

If we do not accept these truths, then the morality which Jesus taught will not last long as the basis of our conduct. Once we begin to question the truth of one part of his teaching, then it is only a matter of time before we start to question every part. As the generations pass, the Christian element in morality will grow thinner and thinner. What survives will be an empty husk, a pale shadow, having ever less authority or force.

On a superficial level there are some aspects of humanist morality which resembles Christian ethics. For example, the Christian Gospel has always emphasised the control of human appetites and passions. Such things as gluttony, drunkenness and promiscuity were once as signs of bad character, in religious terms as sin. a barrier between an individual and God. In the modern secular society these things are still considered wrong, but only in so far as they are detrimental to health. Sexual promiscuity is considered unacceptable unless it can be practised 'safely'. So called 'safe sex' harms no-one, therefore it is all right. In other words, personal morality is founded on pragmatism, not on the authority of God. It is the baneful effects of overindulgence upon the body which determine whether an activity is wrong, not their spiritual effects.

The morality of the humanist exists solely on what we might call a 'horizontal' level, that is, it is concerned only with relationships between people or issues which concern human welfare. The Christian Gospel on the other hand, emphasises a 'vertical' dimension. It is concerned firstly with the relationship between man and God, our understanding of His character, will and purpose, our standing before Him. It is our knowledge of these things which inform us in our understanding of right and wrong and guides us in our dealings with our fellow men.

There is a world of difference between a religious ethic founded on the will and authority of God, and a system of right and wrong in which human need and welfare is the sovereign principle.

Humanist morality is incomplete Christianity. It takes seriously what Jesus called the second commandment, to love one's neighbour as oneself, but it ignores the "first and greatest commandment", to love God with all the heart, soul and mind. Jesus taught his followers to address God as 'our Father', and it is only when we acknowledge the reality of one Father in heaven that we can legitimately speak of the 'Brotherhood of man'. That lofty ideal has no real meaning, nor any power to unite men without the conviction that they shave the same Father in heaven.

The humanist has too facile a view of the moral depths to which human nature will sink. He is over-optimistic about its capacity for self-improvement. He imagines that people can be improved by education, by legislation or by a better social environment. In matters of personal morality the humanist can look to no higher authority than his own conscience or the shifting sands of public opinion. He lives by a moral code which can offer no hope to those who fall short, except an exhortation to try harder next time. His most lofty ideals and aspirations are powerless to save him from the certainty of death. He has no hope of any life beyond the end of this one.

In contrast the Gospel directs us to a power which lies outside human life—a power that can forgive, transform and raise the dead. That power is God Himself, without whom there can be no true goodness. He promises what the humanist cannot:

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled" (Matthew 5:6).

“So I find this law at work: when I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law but I see another law at work in the members of my body, wages war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death. Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:21-25).

The Post-Christian Era

A tree needs roots to nourish and support it. If the roots are damaged or detached then the tree gradually withers and dies. Western society is like this. It has become detached from its roots, disconnected from those traditions, shared values and impulses which gave birth to civilization and sustained it for centuries. Since the 1960's there has been a change in western society, a cultural revolution. Like all revolutions it began with a questioning of long-standing assumptions, a challenging of authority and a discarding of traditional restraints. This included those shared values which had held society together for centuries but were now to be dismissed as repressive, outmoded and irrelevant. In their place was supposed to emerge a new moral code based on freedom of individual expression, the pursuit of pleasure and a relaxing of the rules governing sexual conduct.

It may have seemed to the liberals who initiated this revolution that less restraint in these areas would lead to greater happiness, freedom and a more fulfilled existence. Now we see the dire effects of this 'liberation', the dark side to the permissive society. The restraints on selfishness, greed and promiscuity have also been removed—things which were once held in check by former generations who drew on the Christian tradition for guidance. Now we are living in what one writer has described as 'the faint afterglow of Christianity'.

The effects of all this can be seen throughout western society, a society which has effectively cut its moorings from the true source of moral goodness. Now it is reaping a harvest of materialism, violence, promiscuity, drugs and a general breakdown of law and order. It is no coincidence that all this has gone hand in hand with a decline in religious belief and practice. The influence of the Christian faith has been weakened, sometimes even by the efforts of theologians and clergymen. They have tried to divest the Gospel of anything supernatural or miraculous and have openly questioned the validity of its central truths. It is no wonder then that churches are empty and that those who would once have gone to church now go to the supermarket on Sunday morning instead.

This is not to suggest that everyone who lives without religion abandons themselves to pleasure and immorality. There are many exceptions in our own society, as there were in the first century—people who have no faith in God, nor any hope of life beyond this one and yet still try to live by high standards and devote themselves to the pursuit of truth, to serving their fellows, to helping refugees and the victims of war, tyranny and famine. There is something both noble and tragic about this. After all, why should truth and compassion be of value if all human endeavour ends in oblivion? Why attach dignity and worth to human life if it is no more than an accident of nature?

The great civilizations of the world do not produce the great religions as a kind of cultural by-product; in a very real sense the great religions are the foundations on which the great civilizations rest. A society which has lost its religion becomes sooner or later a society which has lost its culture (Progress and Religion, Christopher Dawson, p.245).

Can We Be Good Without God? Part 3

2008-04-04T08:28:00.001-04:00

Limitations of Law

The maintenance of social order is not the same thing as instilling a high moral tone in its subjects. A government can pass any number of laws, but that does not make its citizens any more pure in heart or compassionate towards their fellows. The highest form of morality is found only when people do the right thing because they want to and because right behaviour is ingrained in their nature.

The main limitation of any legal system is not so much that people will break the law, but that they will simply go through the motions of obedience. They will make their behaviour conform without putting their heart into it. A man who obeys the law only so as to stay out of prison can hardly be said to live by a very high moral standard. It can hardly be called morality at all, it is simply enlightened self-interest.

Even the Ten Commandments shave this limitation. They were not the highest form of morality as long as they legislated only on outward behaviour, and as long as they were imposed on subjects who had no real inclination to obey them. For example, the sixth commandment states 'You shall not murder' A devout Israelite could claim to have obeyed this simply by not murdering anyone, even though he might heartily have wished his enemies dead. Which is not the kind of morality that God wants. He does not want an adjustment of behaviour, but a change of heart. One of the Old Testament prophets Jeremiah, mindful of this problem, looked forward to a future time when the law which came from God would no longer be imposed from above upon reluctant subjects:

“I will put my law in their minds, and write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they will be my people (Jeremiah 31:33).

The prophet Jeremiah recognised that the drawback to any legal code is that it is external to ourselves, imposed from above. The law of Moses was mostly concerned with outward behaviour, with visible actions. It had to be. because its original function was to provide magistrates with a means of assessing guilt. A human magistrate cannot see the state of a man's heart, he can judge only on the basis of outward appearances. Jeremiah predicted a future age when morality will be more than outwardly good behaviour, but something ingrained in people's hearts. How can this be achieved? It is no use offering rewards for obedience or punishments for disobedience, because morality then becomes self-centred; its aim is to gain the reward and avoid the punishment.

The Morality which Matters

One of the aims of Jesus was to solve this problem. Therefore he did not simply provide his followers with a list of do's and don'ts. In fact he was sharply critical of a morality founded on a rule-book mentality, which seeks to modify behaviour according to a written code. He knew that the morality which really mattered was achieved by transforming people's hearts, changing their underlying motives.

In the Sermon on the Mount, the great manifesto of his teaching, (see Matthew chapters 5-7) he deliberately contrasts the legislation of Moses with its emphasis on the outward act with a moral code that emphasised inward purity of motive. This was the theme of his own teaching: "You have heard that it was said to the people long ago ..., but I tell you ...". For example, where the old Law legislated against murder (Matthew 5:21), adultery (5:27) and false witness (v.33). Jesus goes further. He forbids the hatred which animates murder, the lust from which all adultery springs and the spirit of deceit which stands behind all false witness. His teaching therefore does not simply add a bit more to the old law: it has a different character from the old, it governs not just behaviour, but the motives behind behaviour.

There is another difference. The old Law had represented strict justice: "You have heard that it was said, Eye for eye and tooth for tooth" (Matthew 5:38). That is natural justice, to give enemies exactly what they deserve. But Jesus replaces justice with a dignified submission to injustice. He urges his followers to meet hostility with kindness. "But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right check, turn to him the other also " (verse 39). And so he continues—if someone demands your coat then give him your overcoat as well. Go the second mile with the exploiter: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute yon" (verse 44). The purpose behind all these sayings is that the followers of Jesus should take whatever course of action will turn their enemies into their friends and neutralise their animosity. They must never allow the spirit of revenge to motivate their dealings with others.

Morality and the Character of God

But why should the followers of Jesus obey such an exacting standard of morality, a morality which penetrates so deep into their very nature? Why should they go out of their way to turn enemies into friends? The answer of Jesus is simple—because God is like that—His love, compassion and benevolence is extended to friend and foe alike:

... that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to shine on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45).

Jesus urged his disciples to show benevolence to others and to turn their enemies into friends because that is how God deals with people. God comes in at every point in the Sermon on the Mount — His reality, His love for us. His claim upon us. All these things form the basis of Jesus' ethic. A God who is ever present, though unseen, and before whom all of us must one day give account.

Moreover, the message of Jesus was more than words. He himself practised what he preached. It is often said that Jesus led a life that was 'sinless'. So it was. But that is far too negative a description. His was more than an absence of sin. but rather a dynamic, moral goodness, a radiant warmth of character. This flowed out of him spontaneously and continually, filling every aspect of his life, so that those who came in contact with him felt strengthened, cleansed and forgiven.

His compassion for suffering humanity prompted him to identify himself with their hardship and afflictions. When he submitted to the unjust and violent death which his enemies inflicted upon him he demonstrated that his love was stronger than their hatred, and his power to forgive greater than their evil. In all this he provided an example for his followers and a vision for them to live by. That was the extra dimension which Jesus introduced into morality. A new understanding of God's love, with self-giving and self-sacrifice at its very heart:

My command is this: Lore each other as I have loved yon. Greater love has no-one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends (John 15:12,13).

In this way Jesus revealed to us what the character of God is like. It could be said that a man's character is shaped by what he worships. If he has a view of God that He is cruel, vengeful and intolerant, then these qualities of character will reveal themselves in his own dealings with his fellows. If he worships a God of love and compassion then he is more likely to be loving and compassionate himself.

The Greatest Commandment

Jesus took the Ten Commandments and made each one a matter of the heart, not of outward behaviour. In fact he went further than this. He reduced the Ten Commandments to two, and did so in answer to the question "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law'? (Matthew 22:36). There were ten to choose from, but Jesus did not pick out one from the ten and elevate it over the other nine. His answer was:

“Love the Lord your God with all vow heart and with all your soul mid with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbour as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37, quoting Leviticus 19:18 and Deuteronomy 6:5).

In this answer of Jesus we see his remarkable facility for reducing religion to its essence. These two commandments summarise the Ten Commandments: Love God and Love man. We can understand why. If we truly loved God, then it would not occur to us to take His name in vain. If we truly loved our fellow men, then it would not occur to us to steal from them, kill them or bear false witness against them.

How simple his two commandments sound: 'Love God' and "Love man'—that's all there is to it, everything else will fall into place. Yet how much more difficult to obey. It is far easier to obey a list of do's and don'ts, no matter how long the list. Yet these two commandments to love cannot be imposed upon us from above, they cannot be coerced. We must want to love.

Suppose that our own government tried to introduce a law stating that every individual in society must love his neighbour as himself. Such a law would make most other legislation superfluous. There would be no need to make murder and theft illegal, simply because no one would ever think of committing them. If every member of society placed the common good before his own. then there would be no need for legislation to protect property, no need for laws against burglary or violence against the person. If everyone were honest, there would be no need for surveillance systems and security guards. Of course, no government could hope to make such a law work. The most they can do is to prohibit wrongdoing and punish wrongdoers; which is far different from instilling positive goodness in their citizens.

A man can be compelled by legislation not to harm his fellows, even to act benevolently, but he cannot be compelled to love them. Christ, on the other hand, expects those who follow him to love both him and one another, not because he compels or induces them or because they are afraid of the consequences of disobedience: but because he has demonstrated the depth of his own love for them. This has given him an authority over them that no government has ever had over its subjects.

Can We Be Good Without God? Part 2

2008-03-31T22:30:00.002-04:00

Who Made the Rules?

The view of morality as something dependant on the will of God has often been criticised by ancient writers. Why do we need God to tell us that some actions are right and some wrong? — they ask. Do we mean that the difference between right and wrong depends upon His arbitrary decree—an action is good if God commands it and bad if He forbids it? Is He so far above all categories of right and wrong that there is no difference between them until He makes a decree one way or the other? On this view God could conceivably have created a world in which truthfulness were a vice and dishonesty a virtue, which would be absurd.

Do we mean then, that goodness is somehow independent of God, like the laws of arithmetic and logic, part of the fabric of reality? Actions are inherently either right or wrong, even if no one were to believe it. An atheist would then argue that that is even less reason to invoke God as the source of moral standards. He would say that the ethical section of the Ten Commandments simply codifies what to any reasonable person is already obvious. We hardly need God to tell us that it is right to seek the welfare of our fellows and wrong to seek their injury. To put the question in its simplest form: Is an action good because God has commanded it – which makes Him appear arbitrary? Or has God commanded it because it is good – which makes Him appear superfluous? This dilemma is held to prove the independence of morality from religion.

In fact both horns of the dilemma are false. For a start, God is not subject to a law higher than and separate from Himself. Everything He does and everything He commands His people to do is an expression of His own nature and God cannot do that which is contrary to His own nature. As Creator He cannot be malevolently disposed toward His own creatures. Whatever He does must lead to their ultimate good. Everything that promotes His own purpose and conforms to His will must therefore in itself be good. There is nothing arbitrary about the commands of God. He is not like a tyrant handing down edicts which His subjects must obey without question. He is best compared to a father who offers advice and instruction to his children for their welfare, even though his children might not see it like that at the time.

A code of morality must have an objective scale of reference to measure good and evil and to determine the boundary between them, in the same way that we need a thermometer to measure temperature. Otherwise, terms such as "good" and "evil" are no more than words. By what yardstick do we measure them if we do not believe in God? Public opinion is fickle, individual conscience is subjective, the laws of nature say nothing about moral issues. The only reliable yardstick is found in the Bible which reveals the character and will of God. That provides a reference point which alone is perfect, unchanging, and transcendent. That is the reality by which all other views of reality must be measured.

The Ten Commandments

What then does the Bible say about the morality which comes from God? The first great summary of moral law is recorded in Exodus chapter 20. This is the legislation called the Ten Commandments, which God gave to Moses. Moses did not invent these commandments, a committee did not compile them; they were engraved on tables of stone by the finger of God.

The first four concern people's duty to God and the remaining six concern their duty to others and to society at large. In a sense they all concern duty to God simply because respect for parents, prohibitions against murder, adultery, theft, false witness and covetousness are God's laws, to break them is not only an offence against society, they are sins against God the source of all morality.

You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol.
You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.
Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
Honour your father and your mother.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour.
You shall not covet.

Compared to the law-codes of the other nations in the ancient world, the laws which God gave to Israel were remarkably humanitarian and enlightened. Other nations treated foreigners, slaves and peasants as inferiors. The class-divisions of society were seen as part of the divine order. By contrast, the laws of the Israelites emphasised the humanity which all men have in common. Those laws applied equally to kings, aristocrats and peasants. It was the Word of a moral God who was concerned for social justice, for the plight of the weaker members of society, the orphan, the widow and the immigrant (Deuteronomy 10:17-19).

On His behalf the prophets rebuked the rulers who hoarded wealth and oppressed the poor. They denounced hypocrisy, complacency and greed. Many of the higher ideals of the modern world are foreshadowed in the Law of Moses, such as its imperative to look after the less fortunate members of society, its concern for racial minorities and its belief that the individual possesses dignity and worth.

Not only this legislation, but everything else in the Bible, has had an enduring influence upon Western culture over the last two thousand years. The Christian faith became woven into the very fabric of that culture, influencing its art, music, philosophy and its moral and ethical values. Our ancestors took for granted that there was a God, that human life was part of a wider spiritual order and that present conduct would have a bearing upon the destiny of the individual when he left this world for the next.

Natural Law

Are we suggesting then, that if God had not made His will known, then humanity would live on the moral level of savages? No, the Bible tells us that, even without God's revelation, human nature retains a capacity at least to recognise the difference between right and wrong. Jesus implied as much when he urged his followers: ''Let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds, and praise your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:16). Clearly he expected people to recognise good behaviour when they see it.

The book of Genesis tells us that man was made in the "image and likeness of God". That being so all men must reflect. however dimly, something of the nature of God. Human reason, which is itself a God-given gift, can develop a love for truth, virtue and beauty, for the humane values which give richness to human life and transform barbarism into civilisation. This is sometimes called 'Natural Law". In Romans 2:14 we find the clearest statement of 'natural law' in the New Testament:

“Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law arc written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them. This will take place on the day when God will judge men’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.” (Romans 2:14-16).

What is the Apostle saying? He is describing two kinds of divine law. One which God had made known through Moses and which Israel alone had received. The other a law "written on the hearts", and which all mankind is endowed with. So even the "Gentiles', that is people who had not heard of the law of Moses, still possessed a knowledge of right and wrong. They had a conscience, they were aware of moral values. This is sometimes called "general revelation'. The Apostle does not say that the Gentiles lived up to that knowledge, in the previous chapter he describes how far they fell short. But they knew enough, he says, to be held accountable by God for their actions.

Without this knowledge of right and wrong "written on their hearts", there could be no ordered society, no civilisation, no cultural achievements. The Apostle Paul lived in the Roman empire, an empire renowned for its civilisation, its legal system and its achievements. He was doubtless familiar with the ideas of its great philosophers many of whom lived by a moral code outwardly very close to the Christian ethic. There were plenty of contrasts with Christianity, but at its best it rose far above the popular paganism of the ancient world.

People like that can be found within every culture. People who try to live by a high moral standard despite the low standards around them. They know that there is a difference between right and wrong. That much at least seems to be ingrained in human nature. Even among those who do not acknowledge the authority or even the existence of God there can be morality and a love for truth and goodness.

"Let everyone submit himself”

The Apostle Paul tells us that governments, in their task of maintaining law and order in society, are given their authority by God. Those who rule, do so on behalf of God, even if they do not know this:

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgement on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do von want to be fire from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend von. For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he docs not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer (Romans 13:1-4).

The Apostle is referring to the Roman government and by implication, all human governments. Insofar as they restrain evil and uphold social order, the civil authorities of this world are the instruments of God, even those governments which do not acknowledge His authority. Such a role however, is essentially a negative one. There is little that governments can do to instil positive virtue in their subjects. Faced with rising crime figures the answer of politicians is to recruit more police, hand out longer prison sentences and install more CCTV cameras in the streets. It is like a doctor treating the symptoms of an illness instead of its cause.

Every aspect of modern life is governed by laws, from traffic control to drug control, from industrial relations to the protection of property. Countless thousands of laws, by-laws and regulations all designed to protect the law-abiding and restrain the lawbreaker. Yet few would deny that society is less law-abiding than it was a generation ago. There is an obvious link between these two social trends. It is simply because so many conduct themselves in a way that is antisocial or selfish that the government has to bring in more and more legislation in order to restrain the prevailing anarchy and close the loopholes which the unscrupulous are willing to exploit. It is a paradoxical position. The more anarchic a society becomes and the more contemptuous of authority, the more laws have to be handed down to hold the fabric of society together.

Can We Be Good Without God? Part 1

2008-03-25T12:11:00.001-04:00

The Missing Element in Humanism
by Paul Wasson

Moral Standards—Who Made the Rules?

Any responsible man or woman would agree that there is a difference between right and wrong, good and evil, vice and virtue, just as there is a difference between truth and falsehood, beauty and ugliness. Standards of right and wrong, like standards of aesthetic beauty, may vary from age to age. from culture to culture, but every reasonable person would agree that they exist.

Have we ever wondered however, where moral values come from, this distinction between right and wrong? Who made the rules in the first place? Who decided that some actions are right and commendable, and others are not? To this there are, broadly speaking, two answers; one secular, the other religious. If we were to ask the average man or woman, they would probably answer that they know instinctively that it is right to give to charity and wrong to steal. They were brought up to think that way. They live in a society which has developed laws and conventions to ensure that the law abiding can live in peace while lawbreakers are restrained.

These laws, conventions and moral standards are like cement which holds society together. If they were abandoned, then society would fragment into anarchy. It holds together only if there are generally accepted standards of right conduct, which require all its members to pay their dues and treat their fellows with respect. Most people are guided in this by conscience. They are aware of an obligation to do what is right and feel guilty if they fall short of the standards they live by.

The other possible answer concerning the origin of moral standards is that they are determined by the will of God. It goes without saying that the men who wrote the Bible believed this. They looked up to God not only as the Creator of heaven and earth, but also as the Author of the moral code. All that they needed to know about the right conduct of human life had been revealed by God. They took for granted that His guidance alone gave meaning and direction to human life.

Now, however, perhaps for the first time in history, morality is divorced from religious faith. Even a belief in God is viewed as an optional extra to human life. Just as there is no need to recognise the hand of God in the natural order, so there is no need, it is assumed, to look up to divine authority as the source of moral standards.

There are many people in the modern world who do try to live morally good lives. They devote themselves to serving their fellows. They seek to cultivate all that is good and noble in human life. Acts of benevolence, self-sacrifice and heroism have often been performed by people with no religious faith at all to underpin their actions.

Such people are humanists. They believe in the worth and the dignity of human life and the brotherhood of man. They emphasise the humane values of compassion, tolerance and freedom and take a positive view of human potential and achievements. They reject religious faith with its claim to be based on divine revelation and authority, putting their trust instead in reason and scientific enquiry. To them, such values as love and compassion are purely human values needing no religious support. Some, though not all, are hostile towards religion and see it as an obstacle to freedom and progress. Its hope of an afterlife is a disincentive to strive to improve the present world.

The Christian Roots of Morality

It is worth asking, how much of the Christian faith have humanists really discarded and where have they derived the moral values which are supposed to have replaced it? It might be said that many humanists and good-living atheists are far more dependant than they might care to admit on the Christian tradition which they claim to have rejected.

Standards of kindness, justice, honesty, compassion, respect for truth owe much to that tradition, to the teachings of the Bible and to past generations who had some respect for the Bible. Those who have chosen to discard the Christian tradition yet continue to believe in the worth of human life and the brotherhood of man are, to a great extent, simply living on Christian capital.

If we have a bank account we can draw money out of it only as long as we keep putting money back into it. Otherwise we find ourselves bankrupt. The traditional values on which western civilisation is founded are like this. We can reasonably draw on that tradition only as long as we continue to believe in its validity. Otherwise we will gradually find ourselves in a state of moral bankruptcy. Unfortunately, this seems to be the course which our own society has chosen. Little by little it is discarding those values which it has inherited. Therefore it is only with increasing difficulty that its members can look to traditional morality to find guidance.

Humanists often mistake the influence of that Christian tradition for a basic goodness in human nature. However, what may appear as self-evident differences between right and wrong may not be at all self-evident in a society which does not have that tradition behind it. A totalitarian government, for example, might govern by the principle that the individual exists only for the benefit of the state. It is therefore right to eliminate opposition: to imprison, torture and liquidate those who do not conform. To them this right because they, the government, make the rules and they are subject to no higher authority. A humanist would disagree. He would abhor and condemn the use of torture: simply because his conscience tells him to. A Christian would take a similar view, but on the grounds that there is indeed a higher authority than either governments or individual conscience. It is God who has defined the difference between right and wrong, who condemns cruelty and commands, respect for our fellow men.

Historical Trinitarian Quotes

2008-02-26T13:24:00.004-05:00

The Old Testament tells us nothing explicitly or by necessary implication of a Triune God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.... There is no evidence that any sacred writer even suspected the existence of a [Trinity] within the Godhead.... Even to see in the Old Testament suggestions or foreshadowings or ‘veiled signs’ of the Trinity of persons, is to go beyond the words and intent of the sacred writers...The Jews never regarded the spirit as a person; nor is there any solid evidence that any Old Testament writer held this view. . . . The Holy Spirit is usually presented in the Synoptics and in Acts as a divine force or power. ... Although this spirit is often described in personal terms, it seems quite clear that the sacred writers never conceived or presented this spirit as a distinct person.

Fortman, Edmund J. (1972), The Triune God, Baker Book House, pp. xv, 8, 9.

"It must be admitted by everyone who has the rudiments of an historical sense that the doctrine of the Trinity, as a doctrine, formed no part of the original message. St Paul knew it not, and would have been unable to understand the meaning of the terms used in the theological formula on which the Church ultimately agreed".

Dr. W R Matthews, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, "God in Christian Thought and Experience", p.180

"In order to understand the doctrine of the Trinity it is necessary to understand that the doctrine is a development, and why it developed. ... It is a waste of time to attempt to read Trinitarian doctrine directly off the pages of the New Testament".
R Hanson: "Reasonable Belief, A survey of the Christian Faith, p.171-173,1980

The doctrine of the Trinity is not taught in the Old Testament.
New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967, Vol. XIV, p. 306.

The Old Testament can scarcely be used as authority for the existence of distinctions within the Godhead. The use of ‘us’ by the divine speaker (Gen. 1:26, 3:32, 11:7) is strange, but it is perhaps due to His consciousness of being surrounded by other beings of a loftier order than men (Isa. 6:8).
Davidson, A.B., Hastings Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. II, p. 205.

"The formulation ‘One God in three Persons’ was not solidly established, certainly not fully assimilated into Christian life and its profession of faith, prior to the end of the 4th century.... Among the Apostolic Fathers, there had been nothing even remotely approaching such a mentality or perspective"

New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967, Vol. 14, p. 299.

It may startle those who are but acquainted with the popular writing of this day, yet, I believe, the most accurate consideration of the subject will lead us to acquiesce in the statement as a general truth, that the doctrines in question (viz., the Trinity and the Incarnation) have never been learned merely from Scripture.

Surely the sacred volume was never intended, and is not adapted to teach us our creed; however certain it is that we can prove our creed from it, when it has once been taught us. . . . From the very first, the rule has been, as a matter of fact, for the Church to teach the truth, and then appeal to Scripture in vindication of its own teaching.
Cardinal Newman, Roman Catholic - Arians of the Fourth Century (1833)

We are to consider the order of those persons in the Trinity described in the words before us in Matthew 28:19. First the Father and then the Son and then the Holy Ghost; everyone one of which is truly God. This is a mystery which we are all bound to believe, but yet must exercise great care in how we speak of it, it being both easy and dangerous to err in expressing so great a truth as this is. If we think of it, how hard it is to imagine one numerically divine nature in more than one and the same divine person. Or three divine persons in no more than one and the same divine nature. If we speak of it, how hard it is to express it.

If I say, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost be three, and everyone a distinct God, it is false. I may say, God the Father is one God and the Son is one God, and the Holy Ghost is one God, but I cannot say that the Father is one God and the Son is another God and the Holy Ghost is a third God. I may say that the Father begat another who is God; yet I cannot say that He begat another God.

I may say that from the Father and Son proceeds another who is God; yet I cannot say that from the Father and Son proceeds another God. For though their nature be the same their persons are distinct; and though their persons be distinct, yet still their nature is the same. So that, though the Father be the first person in the Godhead, the Son the second and the Holy Ghost the third, yet the Father is not the first, the Son the second and the Holy Ghost a third God.

So hard it is to word so great a mystery aright; or to fit so high a truth with expressions suitable and proper to it, without going one way or another from it.
Bishop Beverage, Private Thoughts, Part 2, 48, 49, cited by Charles Morgridge (1837), The True Believers Defence Against Charges Preferred by Trinitarians for Not Believing in the Deity of Christ. (Publisher: Boston: B. Greene.)

The subject of this fatal controversy, which kindled such deplorable divisions throughout the Christian world, was the doctrine of three Persons in the Godhead, a doctrine which in the three preceding centuries had happily escaped the vain curiosity of human researches, and have been left undefined and undetermined by any particular set of ideas.
J. L. Mosheim (D.D.), Lutheran, Ecclesiastical History (1863), from the translation by Murdock and Soames.

I ask with all humbleness where the idea of Threeness is expressed in the New Testament with a doctrinal sense and force? Where is the Triune God held up to be worshipped, loved, and obeyed? Where is He preached and proclaimed in that threefold character?

We read 'God is one,' as too, 'I and the Father are one;' but nowhere do we read that Three are one, unless it be in a text long since known to be interpolated. . . .

To me the whole matter is most painful and perplexing, and I should not even speak as I now do, did I not feel on the threshold of the grave, soon to appear before the Throne of all truth....Certainly not in Scripture do we find the expression 'God the Son,' or 'God the Holy Ghost.' Whenever I pronounce the name of God, simply, and first, I mean God the Father, and I cannot help meaning that, if I am meaning anything.
Reverend T. Mozeley, brother-in-law to Cardinal Newman, As quoted by H. A. Stannus (1882), in A History of the Doctrine of the Trinity in the Early Church.

My belief in the Trinity is based on the authority of the Church: no other authority is sufficient. I will now show from reason, that the Athanasian Creed and the Scripture are opposed to one another.

The doctrine of the Trinity is this:

-- There is one God in three persons; Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The Father is God, the Son is God: and the Holy Ghost is God. Mind, the Father is one person, the Son is another person, and the Holy Ghost is another person. Now, according to every principle of mathematics, arithmetic, human wisdom, and policy, there must be three Gods; for no one could say that there are three persons and three Gods, and yet only one God. . . .

The Athanasian Creed gives the universal opinion of the Church, that the Father is uncreated, the Son uncreated: and the Holy Ghost uncreated -- that they existed from all eternity. Now, the Son was born of the Father; and, if born, must have been created. The Holy Ghost must also have been created, as he came from the Father and the Son. And, if so, there must have been a time when they did not exist.

If they did not exist, they must have been created; and therefore to assert that they are eternal is absurd, and bangs nonsense. Each has his distinct personality: each has his own essence. How, then, can they be one Eternal? How can they all be God? Absurd.

The Athanasian Creed says, that they are three persons, and still only one God. Absurd; extravagant! This is rejected by Arians, Socinians, Presbyterians, and every man following human reason. The Creed further says, that our Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God and of man, 'not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God.' Now, I ask you, Did the Divinity absorb the manhood? He could not be at the same time one person and two persons. I have now proved the Trinity opposed to human reason.
Rev. James Hughes, Roman Catholic Priest, As quoted in Percy White's The Doctrine of the Trinity (1913.)

The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the “mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God” (Dei Filius 4: DS 3015). To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel’s faith before the Incarnation of God’s Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit.
Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, Paragraph 237

People who adhere to sola scriptura (as they believe) often adhere in fact to a traditional school of interpretation of sola scriptura. Evangelical Protestants can be as much servants of tradition as Roman Catholics or Greek Orthodox Christians; only they don't realise that it is "tradition."
From Bruce's personal correspondence.
F. F. Bruce (M.A., D.D.), Evangelical Protestant

The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict sense, one of the “mysteries that are hidden in God, which can never be known unless they are revealed by God” (Dei Filius 4: DS 3015). To be sure, God has left traces of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament. But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel’s faith before the Incarnation of God’s Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit.
Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, Paragraph 237

He Could Do No Miracle

2008-02-06T12:07:00.000-05:00

And He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. (Mark 6:5 NASB)

This verse is unexpected. We would expect the verse to say "And He would do no miracle there." In other words, we would expect the verse to say that Jesus went to his hometown, saw the hardness of their hearts and as a lesson or punishment, refused to perform any miracles. That is not what this verse says. The verse says he could not do miracles or, in the cross referenced passages, just a very few miracles.

The lesson of this passage seems to be that Jesus can work in the faithful and cannot work in the faithless. The weakness is not on the part of Jesus, per se, but on our part. His righteous character, which is the perfect image of his Father's character, works in faithful people by design and is thwarted by faithlessness.

So what are the implications for us? Well, it seems to me that our impressions of God and Christ can end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we do not believe that God and Christ are at work in our lives, it will probably be true. They won't come to work in our lives because of our unbelief. On the other hand, if we do think God and Christ are at work in our lives, they will be. Our faith will activate, if you will, the power of God in our lives.

Think about the astonishing implications here if this is true. If we are one of those who see God as only involved in major world affairs such as appointing rulers, then as far as we are concerned, that is true. However, if we see God at work in every day events in a personal way, He is.

I am a believer of God being at work in everything. How do I reconcile these two seemingly opposing perspectives that God is in everything but we can somehow block Him by lack of faith? The answer is simple. Think of it this way. For those who do not see God in the details, that unbeliever does not get the full benefit of Romans 8:28: "all things work together for good to them that love God." Compare this idea to the passage in question. When Jesus was in Nazareth amongst the unbelievers, he was there. He did do things. He just didn't do many miraculous things because of their unbelief. Similarly, I think God and Christ are always there in our lives. They are always doing things. However, if we don't believe they are there in the details, they aren't going to do much. If we believe, however, they will work miracles.

James 1 seems to give us the same idea:

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. (James 1:5- 7)

Just because we ask God to give us wisdom, which He is glad to do; it doesn't mean it is going to happen. We must have faith that it will happen. This is true for all of life's miracles. We can't ask God to heal someone and not really think He will do it. We can't ask for God to direct our paths and then think that He is too busy with bigger things to bother with us.

In this age of reason and science, belief in the miraculous has fallen out of style. Let us not be like the men of Nazareth which "took offense at him" and didn't believe. We worship a big God who knows the number of the hairs on our head and loves us so much He gave His son for us. We worship a savior, Jesus Christ, who willingly laid down his life for us and now sits at the right hand of God. The God who created the heaven and earth, divided the Red Sea, brought fire down from heaven and raised His son from the dead is alive and well and still working to take a people out for His name. You can bet your life on it and I hope you do.

--http://www.wcfoundation.org/

Dreams II

2008-01-03T13:07:00.000-05:00

Last week we started a discussion on dreams. Thank you to all of those who participated in the survey. We had 137 participants before we closed the survey. We hope to share the results with you in the coming weeks. Before we begin, we need to share a quick disclaimer or two. The survey is not statistically representative of anything but the actual respondents. In other words, we would be mistaken if we take the percentages presented herein and extrapolate them to a larger group of people. We would be equally amiss if it was suggested that the survey proved a right answer or a wrong answer to any of the questions. The only thing the survey “proves” is what 137 people think collectively.

Our first question was “Do you feel that God still communicates with men via dreams today?” Thirty-two percent of our respondents said “yes” and another forty-five percent said “I don’t know.” This makes our fifth question (If you believe God communicates with us today via dreams, how would you distinguish between a dream from God versus an ordinary dream?) that much more important. If seventy-seven percent of our respondents believe that God does or possibly does communicate through dreams, how would we know when He did?

We have everything we need in the Bible in order to walk properly before God. (2 Tim. 3:16,17) Therefore, IF God does speak to us through dreams, those dreams are supplementary to that experience, never contradictory to the Bible and ultimately must be validated through Scripture.

Many peopled shared dream experiences with me in which the dream actually prodded them to act Biblically. They knew what the right thing to do was, but were not doing it until they had a dream. For example, one brother confided in me that he had a dream where God talked to him very vividly. He had not told anyone about the dream for fear of being ridiculed, chided or worse. In this dream, God told him very plainly to forgive another brother for whom he held a longstanding grudge. This brother said that because of the dream, he had finally forgiven this brother. It was not as if he didn’t know he should forgive, but his dream experience finally moved him to do what he had been reading in the Bible all along.

--http://www.wcfoundation.org/

Dreams

2007-12-19T20:02:00.000-05:00

Gideon arrived just as a man was telling a friend his dream. 'I had a dream,' he was saying. 'A round loaf of barley bread came tumbling into the Midianite camp. It struck the tent with such force that the tent overturned and collapsed.' (Judges 7:13 NIV)

The Bible is full of incidents when men have dreams where God communicates something of importance to them. This belief in God communicating through dreams was held by Jew and Gentile alike. In fact, some of the most important dreams in Scripture were from Gentiles such as Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar. In this age of science and psychoanalysis, however, believing that dreams are anything more than the workings of our subconscious is met with the some degree of skepticism.

What should the modern believer think about dreams? Does God still use dreams to communicate with men? If so, how do we distinguish between dreams from God and other dreams?

In the account of Gideon from Judges 7, the understanding of dreams plays a critical role in the story. First, Gideon is given a message from God "in the night" which leads us to believe this was in a dream. God tells him:

Get up, go down against the camp, because I am going to give it into your hands. If you are afraid to attack, go down to the camp with your servant Purah and listen to what they are saying. Afterward, you will be encouraged to attack the camp. (vs. 9-11 NIV)

Because of his belief in the message he has received is from God, Gideon sneaks down into the enemy encampment. While he is down there he overhears the conversation quoted above. A Midianite has dreamed that a round loaf of bread rolled into their army encampment struck a tent and knocked it over. The associate of the dreamer then offers his interpretation of the dream. He says:

This can be nothing other than the sword of Gideon son of Joash, the Israelite. God has given the Midianites and the whole camp into his hands. (v. 14)

Let's see if we can establish a few facts from this story as it relates to dreams:

Gideon believed that dreams were a medium by which God communicated with men.
The Midianites believed that dreams were a medium by which God communicated with men.
Gideon believed in these dreams so strongly he was willing to sneak into his enemy's camp and also attack them with victory assured.
These Gentiles knew enough about dreams to interpret correctly the obscure symbol of a piece of bread rolling into a tent and knocking it down.

If all of these elements did not come together, the story would be significantly different. It was only because there was a belief in dreams that God was able to work through dreams to bring this event about. It is possible that our own understanding of dreams opens or closes opportunities for us?

Lord willing we will explore this more in the coming weeks along with your input.

--http://www.wcfoundation.org/

Immortality of the Soul - Absurdities To Consider

2007-10-28T18:56:00.000-04:00

Believers in the concept of an immortal soul should consider some "difficulties" that exist if in fact all men have immortal souls:

1) Why did God not reveal that all men have immortal souls right from the beginning? The book of Genesis is silent about such a doctrine. There is no mention of eternal torments for the souls of the wicked in Genesis, or in Exodus, etc... Would not something so important and vital to the well-being of all mankind be revealed right from the beginning? Many Christians point out that the doctrine of immortal souls and their eternal torment in hell was something that was hidden from the Hebrews and only in the New Testament was this "truth" fully revealed. If this be the case, then one must admit that God kept this "truth" a near-secret for thousands of years, waiting only for Jesus and his disciples to appear and reveal this truth to their listeners. Do you have any idea of how many ignorant, wicked "souls" from Adam to Christ entered an eternity of suffering and torment simply because it wasn't time to reveal this truth to them during their eras?

2) If all men have immortal souls, it begs the question: when exactly did these immortal souls come into existence? Does an unborn baby have an immortal soul? Does a fetus have an immortal soul? Does a fertilized egg at conception have an immortal soul? If so, what do these immortal souls look like if the unborn baby dies in the womb? Does the soul of a stillborn baby instantly gain full adulthood in appearance when they reach heaven (or hell)? Do the souls of these dead babies have fully developed brains when they reach heaven (or hell)? Where will they have gained the knowledge to speak and the powers of memory and reason? What does instantly elevating a dead baby into the presence of Jesus in heaven do to the core doctrines of the Christian faith, such as, "Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him." (Hebrews 11:6) and "If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation." (Romans 10:10)?

3) If an immortal soul comes into existence at the moment an egg is fertilized in the mother's womb, then that would mean that our immortal soul at one point did not exist. If this be true, then why is it inconceivable that this immortal soul could not once more cease from existing? In other words, if our soul at one time did not exist, why cannot that state of non-existence repeat itself?

4) If immortal souls have bodies -- fingers, toes, eyes, etc. (based upon Luke 16 and the parable of Lazarus and the rich man) then what use is there for a resurrected body? If the soul has a physical appearance, with human appendages, then the body rotting in the grave is of no further use, and reuniting the immortal soul with its resurrected body at a future date would be useless. William Tyndale, who first translated the Bible into English made the point:

"And ye, in putting them (the dead) in heaven, hell and purgatory, destroy the arguments wherewith Christ and Paul prove the resurrection....if the souls be in heaven, tell me why they be not in as good a case as the angels be? And then what cause is there of a resurrection.... The true faith puteth forth the resurrection, which we be warned to look for every hour. The heathen philosophers, denying that, did put that the souls did ever live. And the pope joineth the spiritual doctrine of Christ and the fleshy doctrine of philosophers together: things so contrary that they cannot agree....And because the fleshy-minded pope consenteth unto heathen doctrine, therefore he corrupteth the Scripture to establish it."

William Tyndale was able to see what most in our day cannot. A resurrection of those who are still alive (in heaven or hell) is no resurrection at all but an empty show.

Consider what the Apostle Paul had to say concerning the necessity of the resurrection:

But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. 1 Cor 15:13-18

5) The belief that the righteous and wicked go to their reward in heaven or hell not only destroys the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, but it destroys the core doctrine of the necessity of Jesus' death. If Abraham and Lazarus and all the ancient faithful were rewarded for their lives of righteousness BEFORE Jesus was even born and died, then why did Jesus have to die in the first place? Obviously Abraham got to "paradise" without Jesus, so why does one need Jesus in the first place?

6) And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. Revelation 20:13, 15

What purpose is the Final Judgment if all men and their immortal souls are judged immediately upon death? What sense is there in calling back the dead from "hell"? If the "damned" are sent to a fiery, eternal torment when they die, then what is the logic of judging them a second time at the "Final Judgment"? Will there be new evidence that will exonerate some of the damned so that a new "final" verdict will move them from hell to heaven? Will new witnesses come forward to testify that some of the wicked were in fact righteous and that they were assigned to the fiery torment in error? If not, then what purpose does it serve to raise the dead? Is not their future fate the same as the one they were experiencing prior to the Final Judgment?

Who are the Christadelphians?

2007-10-24T11:18:00.000-04:00

First Century Patterns
The Christadelphians are a small religious body who have attempted to get back to the faith and character of the early Christian church. We have been in existence for nearly 150 years. The name "Christadelphians" comes from two Greek words and means "brothers in Christ".
Col 1v2, Heb 2v11

We are located in many countries throughout the world with large groups of Christadelphians in the United Kingdom and Europe, Australia and New Zealand, North America, South East Asia and Africa. Like the early Christians, we meet in homes, rented rooms and, in some cases, our own halls.
Acts 1v13-14, 2v46-47, 18v7, 19v9, 28v30

We are a lay community patterned after first century Christianity. Each congregation is called an "ecclesia" (the New Testament word for church). We have no paid clergy or church hierarchy. Members of each congregation are addressed as 'brother' or 'sister', and all are involved in organising our activities. All members contribute their time and energy voluntarily in service to God. A strong common belief binds our brotherhood together.
Rom 12v4-8,1Cor 12v4-27, Gal 3v28

We accept the Bible as our only guide and believe it to be the inspired word of God. Membership is extended to those with similar beliefs after being baptised (fully immersed in water).

A Brief History
Many believers since the apostles have held the same faith as the Christadelphians. There have been countless independent communities around the world who have eagerly studied the Bible and accepted its simple teachings.

The Christadelphians trace their history to the mid-1800s. In 1830, an English physician named John Thomas sailed to America. On the voyage, the ship met some unexpected bad weather and nearly sank. For the first time, Dr Thomas faced the reality of his own mortality and was dismayed to discover that he was not sure what lay beyond death. In the midst of the storm he vowed that, should he survive, he would not rest until he had found a satisfactory answer.
He did survive and kept his vow, beginning a life-long search for the truth. It soon became evident that many of the doctrines that were popularly taught and believed were inconsistent with the Bible. Dissatisfied, Dr Thomas devoted himself to a careful independent study of the Scriptures. He made no claim to any vision or personal revelation.

The work of Dr Thomas attracted the support of others in America and Britain who were convinced of the truth of his conclusions. Together they formed the Christadelphian community. Since then, Christadelphian communities have been established in many countries all over the world.

Our Beliefs
The Bible
We believe that the Bible is God's only revealed message to mankind, given to bring responsive individuals to the obedience of faith. The Bible is our only authority and we teach that it should be read prayerfully and with care at every opportunity.
Acts 17v11, Rom 16v26, 2 Tim 3v16-17, 2 Pet 1v20-21

God
There is only one eternal, immortal God. Jesus Christ is his only begotten son and the Holy Spirit is his power.
Isa 45v5-7, Luke 1v35, Acts 1v8, 1Cor 8v6, 1Tim 1v17, 2v5

Man
Man is mortal and a sinner before God. His whole being is prone to sin and the punishment for sin is death the end of all life.
Jer 17v9, Mark 7v21-23, Rom 3v23, Jms 1v13-15, Rom 6v23, Ecc 9v5-10, Psa 146v4

Jesus
In his love, God sent his son, the man Jesus into the world to save men from their sins. Those who believe in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.
Mat 1v20-21, 3v17, Luke 1v35, John 3v16

Hope
The only hope of life after death is the resurrection of the body and everlasting life in God's kingdom on earth.
Psa 49v12-20, John 11v25-26, Acts 24v15, Rom 8v22-39, 1 Cor 15v12,50, Rev 5v10, 20v4

Sacrifice of Christ
Jesus was sinless. He died to show God's righteousness and to redeem those who receive this sacrifice by faith. God raised him from the dead, gave him immortality, granted him all authority in heaven and on earth, and set him as the mediator between God and man.
Rom 3v21-26, Eph 1v19-23, 1 Tim 2v5-6, Heb 4v14-16

Return of Jesus
Jesus will return to the earth soon. Then he will raise many of the dead, judge them with the living, and give his faithful followers everlasting life in the kingdom of God.
Dan 12v2, Mat 25v31-34, Luke 21v20-32, John 5v28-29, Acts 1v11, 2 Tim 4v1, Rev 22v12

Kingdom of God
The kingdom of God will be established on earth. Jesus will be king in Jerusalem, his dominion worldwide and his government will bring eternal righteousness and peace.
Pss 72, Isa 2v2-4, 9v6-9, 11v1-9, 61, Jer 3v17, Dan 2v44, 7v14,27, Acts 3v21

The Promises
The Gospel is inseparable from the promises which God made to Abraham and David in Old Testament times. These promises find their fulfilment in Jesus Christ.
Gen 13v14-17, 22v15-18, 2 Sam 7v12,16, Luke 1v31-33, Gal 3v6-9,16,26-29

The Way of Salvation
The way to enter the kingdom of God is by faith. This involves belief in the Bible and obedience to its requirements that men and women confess their sins, repent, be baptised and follow Jesus faithfully.
Mat 16v24-27, Mark 16v16, John 3v3-5, Acts 2v37-38, 4v12, 1 Thess 2v13, 2 Tim 3v15, Heb 11v6

Some Important Differences
Often we are asked, "How are you different from other Christian groups"? Apart from our distinctive organisation (with no clergy or hierarchy), some of our doctrines are quite different from most churches.

For example, we reject the doctrine of a 'Trinity'. This doctrine developed in the 300 years after Jesus died as a result of disputes within the orthodox church. The Bible teaches that Jesus was the Son of God but nowhere does it speak of him 'pre-existing' in heaven as "God the Son".

We also reject the idea of an "immortal soul" that goes to heaven at death. The Bible teaches that the only hope for eternal life is through a resurrection when Jesus returns.

Another difference is that we believe that baptism is essential and for adults only. We believe that sprinkling of babies is not baptism.

We also believe that the Bible uses the 'devil' as a symbol of sinful human nature, and so we reject the doctrine of a supernatural tempter.

Our Way of Life
The Bible gives effective direction to our lives. We try to rely fully upon God and develop a faith which is active in prayer and good works. At the same time, however, we recognise that salvation is by grace.

With God's help, we seek to please and obey him every day, striving to imitate Christ who faithfully obeyed his Father. We therefore endeavour to be enthusiastic in work, loyal in marriage, generous in giving, dedicated in preaching and happy in our God.

A widespread custom amongst Christadelphians is to read the Bible every day using a reading plan which enables us to systematically read the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice each year. Of course, many read much more widely than this.

We may also attend one or more evening Bible classes each week. Every Sunday, we attend a service we call the "Memorial Meeting" or "Breaking of Bread". This is similar to the "Communion" of some churches. All members partake of bread and wine and an 'exhortation' is given based on the Bible. Attendance at this service is the focus of our religious life.

We also have Sunday Schools and Youth Groups; a weekend away at a Bible Study camp is always popular with Christadelphian young people.

Some members travel overseas on mission work; others care for the elderly in our nursing homes and hostels. There are several monthly magazines to read (and write).

The Christadelphians are a close-knit community working in God's service in whatever ways we can.

Hard copies of this leaflet are available from:
Bethel Publications, P.O. Box 285, Beechworth, VIC 3747, Australia.

When Exactly Was Jesus Born?

2007-10-08T22:41:00.000-04:00

The short answer is that nobody knows exactly. The year that seems to have the most votes in favour of it is 6 BC. In any case the birth of the Lord must have been at least during or before 4 BC because that is the year of the death of Herod "The Great." Here is a timeline taken from Wikipedia the online Encyclopedia:

c. 6 BC – Suggested birth (earliest)
c. 5 BC – Herod the Great's death (earliest)
c. 1 BC – Herod the Great's death (latest)
c. 6 AD – Suggested birth (latest), Quirinius census
c. 26/27 AD – Pontius Pilate appointed governor of Judea
c. 27 AD – Suggested death (earliest)
c. 36 AD – Suggested death (latest)
c. 36/37 AD – Pilate removed from office

The consensus favours a date between 4 BC and 6 BC as the date of our Lord's birth. However, the exact date isn't really of that much importance. The fact of his birth, his life and work, his sacrifice and his resurrection are what really matter. The fact that he will soon return to fulfill his prayer, "Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven" is of primary importance to us while speculation about the exact year of his birth, while of interest, is, relatively speaking, of little importance.

-knowyourbible.com

Answering Common Questions About the Christadelphian community.

2007-09-28T09:15:00.002-04:00

Are Christadelphian doctrines and practices unique?

No. They were common to the following Christians and many others:

Balthasar Hubmaier. (Switzerland, 1527.)
Conrad Grebel. (Switzerland, 1530’s.)
Ludwig Hatzer. (Switzerland, 1536.)
Rudolph Martin. (Poland, 1546.)
John Assheton. (Germany, 1548.)
The Brethren. (Venice, 1550.)
Small Protestant groups. (Transylvania, 1562.)
Joachim Stegman. (Poland, 1633.)
Ferenc David. (Romania, 1579.)
John Biddle. (England, 1655.)

Joachim Stegman: “The argument of Christ (Luke 20:34) wherein he proves the future resurrection of the dead, would be fallacious if before the resurrection they felt heavenly joy…How could it be said of the godly of the old covenant that they ‘received not the promise’ (Hebrews 11:40) if the soul of every one presently after death, even without body, felt celestial happiness?”

Conrad Grebel: “Baptism means a dying of the old man, and a putting on of the new. Christ commanded to baptise those who had been taught, and the apostles baptised no-one except those who had been taught.”

Ludwig Hatzer: “The Father alone is the true God; Christ is inferior to the Father and of a different essence; there are not three persons in the Godhead.”

Are Christadelphian doctrines and practices identical to those of the 1st Century Christian communities?

Yes. The very earliest statements of doctrine and practice are in perfect accord with the Christadelphian faith. By contrast, the beliefs of mainstream Christianity cannot be found in their entirety until long after the 1st Century AD.

Consider:

The Apostles’ Creed (AD 67)

I believe in God, the Father Almighty.
And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord;
Who was born by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary;
Was crucified under Pontius Pilate and was buried;
The third day he rose from the dead;
He ascended into heaven; and sitteth on the right hand of the Father;
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
And in the Holy Spirit;
The Holy Church;
The forgiveness of sins;
The resurrection of the body.

The Didache (Dated Between AD 60 & AD 80)

1:2-4 The way of life is this. First of all, thou shalt love the God that made thee; secondly, Thy neighbor as thyself. And all things whatsoever thou wouldst not have befall thyself, neither do thou unto another. :3 Now of these words the doctrine is this. Bless them that curse you, and pray for your enemies and fast for them that persecute you; for what thank is it, if ye love them that love you? Do not even the Gentiles the same? But if ye love them that hate you, ye shall not have an enemy. :4 Abstain thou from fleshly and bodily lusts. If any man give thee a blow on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also, and thou shalt be perfect; If a man impress thee to go with him one mile, go with him twain; if a man take away thy cloak, give him thy coat also; if a man take away from thee that which is thy own, ask it not back, for neither art thou able.

[...]

3:7 But be meek, since the meek shall inherit the earth.

[...]

7:1 But concerning baptism, thus shall ye baptize. Having first recited all these things, baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit in living (running) water.

[...]

8:2 Neither pray ye as the hypocrites, but as the Lord commanded in His Gospel, thus pray ye: Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done, as in heaven, so also on earth; give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debt, as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one; for Thine is the power and the glory for ever and ever.

[...]

14:1-2 And on the Lord's own day gather yourselves together and break bread and give thanks, first confessing your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure. :2 And let no man, having his dispute with his fellow, join your assembly until they have been reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be defiled;

[...]

16:6-7 And then shall the signs of the truth appear; first a sign of a rift in the heaven, then a sign of a voice of a trumpet, and thirdly a resurrection of the dead; :7 Yet not of all, but as it was said The Lord shall come and all His saints with Him.

Sample of Scriptures Found in the Didache:

Law of Moses
Ecclesiastes
Matthew chapters 5, 6, 7, 24 & 25
Romans 1
I Corinthians 8, 11 & 15
Galatians 1
I Timothy 1 & 3

Did Dr Thomas reject mainstream Christianity in order to set up his own religion and enjoy the benefits of leadership and authority?

No. Dr Thomas instituted no hierarchy, set up no leaders, took no money and gained no political profit from his work. This contrasts strongly with most modern churches and also with the Mormons, Christian Scientists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, to name just a few.

Did Dr Thomas claim to have a comprehension of the Bible superior to that of all his contemporaries?

No. Nor did he claim to have a new revelation or guidance from the Holy Spirit, unlike many Christians today.

Dr Thomas was simply a regular man with a consuming passion for the Word of God. He studied hard, gained great benefit from the Scriptures and made mistakes, just as we all do. Moreover, he explicitly affirmed that his own work should always be tested by its readers and rejected if it should be found to fail.

In Elpis Israel, he wrote:

...as I have said before, no interpretation of prophecy in relation to the past, or present, is worth any thing which is not in harmony with facts.

My interpretation must be tried by the same rule, and if it will not stand the test, then let it fade away into everlasting forgetfulness; but if it prove to be correct, I have no apprehension that it will be lost.

Facts, then, I remark, are in strict accordance with the exposition given, as I shall briefly point out.

Do Christadelphians defer to the writings of Dr Thomas as an authority greater than the Bible?

No. Just like other Christian denominations, Christadelphians have their own exegetes who compose their own commentaries, expositions and study material. Any person who is competent in the study of the Word may freely contribute to this work.

Notwithstanding this, the Bible is our sole authority.

Do Christadelphians believe that you will not be saved unless you are a Christadelphian?

No. We do not claim to be the only group with a correct understanding of the Scriptures, nor do we deny that other individuals not associated with us hold true Bible teaching.

Christadelphians have always maintained that anyone who believes the same things that we do (whether they belong to our community or not) will be saved. It’s not about what name you go by, but what doctrines and practices you accept. When questioned on this issue, Brother Michael Ashton (current editor of the Christadelphian magazine in Birmingham, UK) answered:

"We do not claim to be the only group with a correct understanding of the Scriptures, nor do we deny that other individuals not associated with us hold true Bible teaching."

(As quoted in Barrett’s Sects, ‘Cults’ and Alternative Religions, 1996.)

It is a misrepresentation, therefore, to say we believe that only those bearing the name “Christadelphian” will be accepted by Christ at his return. I am perfectly convinced that those faithful Protestants of the Reformation era will be rewarded with eternal life for their good service to God.

Nevertheless, we can have no fellowship with those whose doctrines are contrary to our own (as the apostle Paul warns us in Galatians 1.) Salvation can only be granted to those who worship God in spirit and in truth, confessing their sins and asking forgiveness.

Why don't Christadelphians serve in the military or take part in politics. Are they pacifists?

Christadelphians are not pacifists - we are disestablishmentarians, believing in a full and proper separation of church and state.

Jesus emphasised the necessity of this separation when he wrote:

Matthew 6:24 "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

The apostle Paul likewise:

II Timothy 2:4 "No man that warreth, entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier

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Source: Evangelion, Bible Truth Discussion Forum

Bible Word - 'Mystery'

2007-07-24T01:17:00.000-04:00

In the New Testament, the 'mysteries' of the gospel are contrasted with the mysteries of the pagan religions of the first century Roman Empire. Those who joined pagan cults were, upon initiation, entrusted with secrets that they were not allowed to disclose, sometimes on pain of death. By contrast, God revealed His mysteries by the preaching of Christ and the apostles throughout the world. The most important 'revealed mystery' was that, in Christ, all the blessings of God formerly covenanted to Israel would be extended to those who were called by God out of the pagan world. No longer would such blessings be limited to Israel (see Ephesians 3:3-6).

"Now to Him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey Him." (Romans 16:25-26).

2007-07-11T02:06:00.000-04:00

This article first appeared on another Christian apologetics discussion form at the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry (CARM) where it was posted by the author himself who goes by the name "Alethia." Here he refutes standard Trinitarian answers to the question "Why didn't God mention the Trinity in His Word, the Bible?" Take careful note of his initial premise: that "The idea of God as three coequal and coeternal 'persons' is never mentioned in Scripture."

This is a problem which Trinitarians have yet to solve. Their proposed solutions are many and varied - but none of these will resist the force of a logical cross-examination.

----

The idea of God as three coequal and coeternal “persons” is never mentioned in Scripture. None of the creedal concepts that make up Trinitarian dogma can be found directly in Scripture. It is not just the lack of the word itself, it is the lack of any direct statement of the concept in any words whatsoever.

So why then did God fail to mention the Trinity anywhere in Scripture? I think we can safely assume that He did not merely forget to tell us about it.

Could it possibly be because it was just not important enough to bother wasting a few verses on here and there? Well, if it wasn’t important to God, why would it be important to you or me?

The most common rationalizations of this problem that I hear from Trinitarians are:

#1 You shouldn’t try to dictate to God how he reveals himself.

Indeed I do not. If He didn’t reveal himself as a Trinity, I trust he did not expect to be understood as a Trinity.

#2 You can’t describe God in a single verse.

True enough, but irrelevant. You certainly could describe God as triune in a verse or two. Men seem to have managed to figure out a statement of the Trinity, so presumably God could have managed as well or better, if He had wanted to. Most Trinitarians can give me a brief one or two sentence summary of the doctrine. Surely God could have found a way to say it if it were what He wanted us to understand.

#3 While the Trinity is not taught directly in Scripture, it can be supported from Scripture.

That is circular. It doesn’t address the question. If God intended us to understand it, why didn’t He say so? To support it from Scripture, we would first have to know what it was we were supposed to be trying to support, and without a man-made statement of the Trinity, we would never know it. People seek to support the Trinity from Scripture only because they already believe in it.

#4 The word Trinity is not in the Bible, but the concept is.

This is a red herring or straw man. It is not just the word which is not there. There is no statement of the concept in any words at all. It has to be assembled from widely scattered, fragmentary, deductions, inferences, and human reasoning. There is no statement of a three-in-one god in Scripture, regardless of words.

#5 There are lots of other doctrines that aren’t directly stated in Scripture either.

This is a great one. This is just saying that you believe lots of things that aren’t in the Bible. So, you believe lots of unscriptural things. Yes, you probably do.

A typical example of this form of illogic is in a Lutheran pamphlet entitled “Why Baptize Children?” It uses this defense:

“The objectors to the Baptism of babies say: ‘Show me a single Scripture passage in which the Baptism of infants is commanded, and we will baptize babies.’ But they cannot show us a single passage in Scripture where God is called the ‘Triune God,’ and yet the whole Christian Church believes in the Triune God.”

Actually, the Lutheran pamphlet there employs both #4 and #5 at the same time, keying in on the word ‘Triune’ rather than the concept. They defend one unscriptural teaching by referring to another commonly accepted but unscriptural teaching.

#6 Everybody already knew about, so there was no need to mention it in Scripture.

Oh? And we know this how? Since it is never mentioned in Scripture, how would one determine that everyone already knew about it? And how could they have known about it, since it was never mentioned in any recorded utterance of any representative of God? Nor in fact was it even directly described by any Christian writer for centuries afterwards.

It was certainly not mentioned by any Jewish writer, ‘wisdom Christology’ notwithstanding. There was no Hebrew Trinity. If “everybody knew about it,” they certainly did a great job of keeping it to themselves. Why? Also, does this excuse imply that Scripture speaks only of those things that Christians did not already know about?

#7 The creeds were written only in response to heresy.

Actually I’m not sure what relevance this statement has to the problem, but it is a frequent response. Much of the New Testament was written in response to various heresies. Why did it miss this one? Why should the Trinity be of importance only as a negative response to opposition?

The idea seems to be that it is not important that you believe it, only important that you do not disbelieve it. Ignorance is fine. This sounds like the Church at work alright – ignorance of the masses are fine, just don’t let them start reading the Bible for themselves.

Numbers 6 & 7 have an underlying assumption that should be strongly questioned and doubted by any reasonable person. The unstated assumption is that there was a whole hidden oral tradition outside of Scripture which is the actual means of transmission of the “real” gospel. The obvious but unspoken idea behind this is that “tradition” of the “church” is at least equally as valid a path for the transmission of the gospel as is Scripture itself.

The Roman Catholic Church of course teaches this explicitly and directly. I would think that Protestants would be more doubtful of it, but they seem to buy into it as well for this one doctrine. How they reconcile that with the rejection of Catholicism, I do not know. Actually, this idea of an unwritten oral gospel was a Gnostic tradition, argued against by other Christians in the early centuries.

It is clear that for 6 & 7 to be reasonable assertions, one must assume that “everyone” knew about this very important doctrine to the extent that it was not worth mentioning again. For that to be true, we would have to relegate Scripture to a position of a repository of trivia – a place to read about the facts of lesser importance, but not a particularly necessary or very important source of teaching. After all, it fails to mention what is the most essential dogma of orthodox Christendom (along with other such things as infant baptism).

We should therefore expect that it would fail to mention many other important doctrines, and what do you know? It does indeed fail to mention a number of other of the dogmas that Christendom today believes. I would draw a different from conclusion from that: That Christendom is in error in many respects.

Is the assumption that “everybody knew about the Trinity” at all reasonable? For it to be true, either the Jews of the first century also believed in it, but never wrote about it and totally forgot about it soon after, or else there had to have been a silent mass conversion of those Jews who were the majority of the early church, without the Apostles and Evangelists ever putting a word of it down on paper. The Apostles dealt with all other sorts of heresies and apostasies in Scripture. The bulk of the Epistles are directed at correcting errors such as Judaism, Gnosticism, and doubts about resurrection and Christ’s return.

Surely along with being wrong about the need to continue to keep the Law of Moses, some of those Jews would have been at least a little bit hazy as to finding out that God was really three instead of the One they had previously believed. But the Apostles never bothered to correct them. Jesus continued to preach “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” The God of the New Testament is still the God of Israel, the same as the God of the Old Testament. It seems that neither Jesus nor his Apostles felt any need to directly clarify the supposedly triune God to the Jews.

Of course, there really aren’t any “Bible Only” Trinitarians. There are a few who claim to be, but that claim is patently false. It escapes me why they bother attempting to argue their doctrine from a Bible Only standpoint, when their doctrines very obviously come from their tradition rather than from Scripture. They should just do a better job of justifying tradition as their source of doctrine, and admit that the Bible is not their true source.

If anyone has any better explanations, excuses or rationalizations, I would be interested to hear them. None of these are any good at all.

--http://thechristadelphians.org/

The Evolution of Catholic Doctrine and Practice

2007-07-11T01:43:00.000-04:00

Here follows a list of Catholic beliefs and practices which – although believed and practiced earlier than the dates given – did not become binding on all Catholics until they were officially adopted by church councils and proclaimed by the Pope as dogmas of faith. The question we must ask ourselves is this: Does the record of history suggest that the Roman Catholic Church is a Spirit-guided Church, or a mutable institution of men?

(All dates are approximate.)

• Presbyter (or elders) were first called priests by Lucian...2nd century.

• Prayers for the dead...AD. 300.

• The veneration of angels and dead saints and the use of images...375.

• The Mass as a daily celebration was adopted...394.

• The beginning of the exaltation of Mary, and the first use of the term "Mother of God" by the Council of Ephesus...431.

• Priests began to dress different from the general public and to wear special clothes...500.

• Extreme Unction...526.

• The doctrine of purgatory was first established by Gregory the Great...593.

• Prayers began to be offered to Mary, dead saints, and angels...600.

• The first man proclaimed "Pope" (Boniface III)...610.

• Veneration of the cross, images, and relics authorized...788.

• Holy water, mixed with a pinch of salt and blessed by a priest was authorized in...850.

• Veneration of Saint Joseph...890.

• College of cardinals begun...927.

• Canonization of dead saints, first by Pope John XV...995.

• The Mass developed gradually as a sacrifice, attendance was made obligatory in...11th century.

• The celibacy of the priesthood was decreed by Pope Hildebrand, Boniface VII...1079.

• The rosary was introduced by Peter the Hermit...1090.

• The Inquisition of "heretics" was instituted by the Council of Verona...1184, (also legalized and promoted by the fourth Lateran Council in 1215.)

• The sale of Indulgences...1190.

• The seven sacraments defined by Peter Lombard...12th century.

• The dogma of transubstantiation was decreed by Pope Innocent III ...1215.

• Confession of sins to the priest at least once a year was instituted by Pope Innocent III in the Lateran Council...1215.

• The adoration of the wafer (host) decreed by Pope Honorius III ...1220.

• The scapular invented by Simon Stock of England...1251.

• The doctrine of purgatory proclaimed a dogma by the Council of Florence...1439.

• Tradition is declared of equal authority with the Bible by the Council Trent...1546.

• The Apocryphal Books were added to the Bible by the Council of Trent...1545.

• The Immaculate Conception of Mary was proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1854.

• Pope Pius IX condemns all scientific discoveries not approved by the Roman Church...1864.

• Infallibility of the pope in matters of faith and morals proclaimed by the First Vatican Council...1870.

• Pius XI condemned the public schools...1930.

• Pius XI reaffirmed the doctrine that Mary is "The Mother of God" ...1931.

• The dogma of the Assumption (8) of the Virgin Mary was proclaimed by Pope Pius XII...1950.

• Mary proclaimed the Mother of the Church by Pope Paul VI...1965

*This list has been paraphrased from Lorraine Boettner's Roman Catholicism (1962), pages 7-8

Naming the Animals - Genesis 2:19-20

2007-04-16T14:44:00.000-04:00

God tells us that Scripture “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:” (2 Ti 3:16) Based on this, we know then that there is a reason why some details aren't included in Scripture: God has decided these particular details or stories aren’t important or necessary to our salvation.

Examples:
• Mat 27:52-53 "And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many."
• Luke 3:18 "And many other things in his exhortation preached he unto the people."
• John 20:30 "And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book:"

There are some Bible topics that come up in discussion where it's important to note (and agree) that we’re given only a finite amount of information to work with. Claims and opinions will abound in these circumstances but they should always be taken with a grain of salt. A lack of evidence isn’t evidence in itself.

Such circumstances revolve around many of the accounts in the book of Genesis. How long was each day of creation, where do dinosaurs fit in, how did all those animals fit on the ark, etc. etc. A Bible skeptic will often use these questions as a means to disprove Scripture because from a "logical" 21st century point of view, many of the events in Genesis don't have a logical explaination. We would say first that the primary difference between a Christian and a skeptic is faith and it's certainly worthwhile remembering that ultimately, that is the gulf that will always separate the two sides. But as if faith is an inadequate basis for belief, a skeptic will demand to see tangible evidence, assuming (and often hoping) that none exists. And for this we should be thankful so as not to rely on the "I have faith" conclusion to end a discussion we were weren't properly prepared for in the first place. In other words, questioning Scripture is the best way top find your answers.

In summary, while there may not be enough information required to unequivicolly settle a debate, there's almost always enough available to disprove a specific criticism.

Examples:
• We don't know what the precise sin of Sodom and Gomorrah's inhabitants was, but we know they weren't destroyed for a simple lack of hospitality (as certain modern Bibles suggest).
• We don't know when laws against intermarrying were implemented by God, but we know no one was ever punished prior to Moses for marrying their sister or brother.
• We don't know how different races (white, black, asian, etc) were created in Scripture but we do know Noah had three sons who went to Europe, Asia and Africa respectively.

And so onto the topic of discussion:

How many animals did Adam name in the Garden of Eden and how long did it take him?

There's no way anyone knows precisely how the animals were named (i.e. were they in a line, did Adam walk around and see them, etc.), but based on Genesis, we do know that Adam did so in the span of 24 hours. The criticism then is this: If we use current estimates of the number of animals in existence, it’s impossible for Adam to have taken less then the day God provided him with. How do Bible students explain justify the account in Genesis in light of this criticism?

When considering the land and time in which Adam was created along with supporting Biblical evidence (and in some cases, the lack of evidence), strong and reasonable assumptions can be made to help fill in some of the gaps. Ultimately, it is the hope that this examination of Genesis 2:19-20 will provide enough information to either springboard an individual into further study or be an effective tool in answering Bible critics.

1. Genesis tells us that animals were created according to their “kinds”, rather than their species. This word indicates limitations of variation. Note the definition of the Hebrew word “kind”: Groups of living organisms belong in the same created "kind" if they have descended from the same ancestral gene pool. Therefore “snake” instead of “python”, “corn snake”, “eastern coral snake”, “cottonmouth”, etc.

2. There were less species in Genesis. For example, there were no domesticated dogs which means “wolf” would have been the “kind” that Adam named instead of the as-of-then-non-existent “Irish Wolfhound”.

3. It's often pointed out that Adam alone wouldn't have had time to name the hundreds of thousands of insects that currently exist. This is a bogus argument. While it looks impressive and certainly lends itself to the impossibility of the situation, the fact is Adam didn’t name insects or sea creatures. Genesis 2:20 says he named "cattle", "birds" and "beasts of the field".

5. There is no suggestion in Genesis 2 that the naming was meant to be comprehensive. It would make more sense if Adam simply gave a set of general names to a selection of animals rather then providing scientific taxonomy. The former and not the latter would have been of greater benefit to the humans who would come immediately after him (see below).

6. Cattle: There are several species of cows (at least five) but there’s no indication in the Bible that a breakdown beyond the generic "bos" (the genus of wild and domestic cows and oxen) was ever required or indeed ever implemented, especially when one considers the broad use of the word “cow” in Scripture without there ever being a distinction between a dairy cow, a meat cow or an ox (an animal which isn't actually referred to until the days of Jacob in Genesis 32). Likewise, the same naming structure could easily have applied for animals such as horses, snakes, birds, etc as we'll see below.

7. Birds: When examining the naming of birds, the same possibility applies. For example, there are 300 species of parrot today. Instead of Adam naming them all, the word “parrot” would legitimately have applied. While we don’t know if all parrots are descendants of one created “kind” or several “kinds” which had enough similar characteristics to label them as “parrots”, in either instance, the naming process would have been quick. There are between 17 - 20 species of penguins but they're all legitimately called "penguins". There are approximately 200 species of owls, all of which are a "kind" of owl. There are around 180 species of woodpecker, all of them legitimately labelled under the single kind of "woodpeckers". And so on...

8. Beasts of the field: Firstly, what animals are considered to be “beasts of the field”? The Hebrew word translated ‘field’ has the meaning of a flat plain. Using the Bible to form our description of the word, "beasts of the field" include animals that move in when humans move out (Exodus 23:29), ‘wild asses’ (Psalm 104:11), ‘dragons and owls’ (Isaiah 43:20), animals that prey on sheep (Ezekiel 34:8), and a range of carnivores (Ezekiel 39:17). Therefore, we can conclude that beasts of the field were probably animals that today live in open country and/or who venture close to human habitation. Further, we can conclude that animals living exclusively in forests, jungles, mountains, wetlands, deserts, etc. wouldn't have been named as they don't meet the "field" criteria.

9. Conclusion: Adam spent far less time naming animals then most critics would like to suggest. When one excludes insects, animals living in the sea and all relevant animals on the basis of habitat, it would seem generous to allow for the naming of a thousand or so “kinds” of animals. For sake of argument, if there were a thousand animals to name and Adam named one every 30 seconds or so, the process would have been a relatively leisurely event, taking a little over 8 hours. All in all, a pleasant, normal day’s work in the Garden of Eden.

What the Bible says about "being tormented in hell"

2007-04-14T22:45:00.000-04:00

I've had the distinct privilege in the past few weeks to be condemned to eternal torment in hell by Christians and atheists alike for nothing more then defending my beliefs. I thought it was high time to take a look at this rather ineffective sentence of torture by people who should know better.

That there is a place called "hell", there is no doubt, but no where in the Bible is there any claim that it is to be a place of eternal torment for certain people (wicked Christians or atheists alike). As many are aware, in the Old Testament the word translated "hell" is the Hebrew word "Sheol" ("the world of the dead") and in the New Testament the Greek language shows "hell" to be "Hades" ("the grave").

There is no record in the Bible of God ordaining a place of eternal fiery torment for the wicked
God condemned the Children of Israel for their dreadful crime of burning their children in the fire; which, said God, "I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind." (Jer. 7:31) How then, can any teacher or critic accuse God of a worse crime: burning people for eternity in an imaginary place of torment?

A few Biblical references to hell:
• King David was certain that the wicked went to the grave (sheol): "let the wicked be ashamed and let them be silent in the grave" (‘sheol’, grave, hell, world of the dead) (Ps. 31:17). King David was just as certain that when people die, their thinking process ceases, so they cannot suffer torments: "put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man….his breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth, in THAT VERY DAY HIS THOUGHTS PERISH." (Ps.146:3-4). To be tormented anywhere, one has to be able to understand what is going on , BUT, if his thoughts perish on the day he dies, then so does his understanding. How effective is torment if the person being tormented doesn't know he's being tormented?

• Job knew that ‘the grave’ (hell) was a place where people are at rest and not tormented. "There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest...when they can find the grave." (Job 3:17,22) Job is contradicting the popular idea that the wicked go to hell to be tormented eternally by claiming that ‘there the wicked cease from troubling’.

• Solomon wrote of the state of the dead, "For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten" (Ecc. 9:5). Nothing could be more final and comprehensive: the dead KNOW NOTHING . How can they be tormented if they know nothing?

Hell is the Grave
In the entire Old Testament, there is not one mention of the ‘hell-fire’ taught for generations by misguided Christians and non-Christians alike. In the 31 references to "hell" in the Old Testament, the word will be found to refer to the grave, or a covered place.

• Jonah referred to his ordeal of being in the belly of a ‘great fish’ for three days, "…out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice". To Jonah it was certain this was to be his grave, unless saved out of it.

• Amos the prophet wrote, "Though they DIG into HELL (sheol, the world of the dead…grave….pit.) thence shall mine hand take them." ( Amos 9:2), showing that the grave was meant.

• Again, David was adamant that he believed hell was the grave, for he wrote "..if I make my bed in HELL behold, thou art there." (Ps.139:8)

• The Apostle Peter assures us that David is not in heaven (Acts 2:34), and as there is no evidence he was one of the wicked who was to be tormented in hell for ever, then the only place David can be, logically, is in the grave.

• Isaiah the prophet writes of the death of the King of Babylon, saying, "Yet thou shalt be brought down to HELL, to the sides of the pit" (Isaiah 14:15) Verse 19 refers to the GRAVE, confirming that Isaiah was speaking of hell as the grave

What are all those people doing in hell?
• Daniel answers this question so simply: "And many of them that SLEEP IN THE DUST OF THE EARTH, shall awake, SOME to everlasting life, and SOME to shame and everlasting contempt." (Dan. 12:2) Daniel is describing many who are in the grave as sleeping and some of them are raised from the dead to eternal life, BUT, some of them that sleep experience judgment in the ‘second death’. Thus Daniel shows that righteous and wicked are in the same place, the grave.

• Jesus speaks of many who sleep in the grave: "…the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice." (John 5:28) Jesus is speaking of resurrection and thus shows that all, (or all manner of) the dead in the grave are ‘sleeping’, waiting for the call (from the Lord Jesus), to ‘come forth’.

• Paul writes of the ‘saints’ at the time of the coming of the Lord Jesus, "We shall not all sleep…the dead shall be raised…." (1 Cor. 15:51-52) What he is saying is that some of the saints will be alive at the time of the Lord’s coming, but those in the grave, who are asleep, shall be raised from the dead (e.g. these saints aren't in heaven).

Does it matter what we believe?
Revelation 18:23 shows so clearly that a great number of people were to be deluded by the ‘sorceries’ of the latter day Babylon: "By thy sorceries were all nations deceived". This is an appeal all thinking men and women to study God’s word and learn the truth of all things and reject the false teaching of hell torment.

Easter: It's The Thought That Counts...

2007-04-07T14:58:00.000-04:00

Easter's finally coming to a close and for many Christians, it signifies the last time they'll step foot in a church until Christmas.

1 Corinthians 11:23-26
"For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "Take, eat; this is My body which is *broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me." In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes."

The Pope, along with the vast majority of churches worldwide, chose to use Christ's death and resurrection as a soapbox to focus on the plight of mankind, from the nuclear standoff in Iran to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the explosion of AIDS in Africa (which is ironic considering these same churches believe the people in these guilty nations are all going to hell anyhow - why cry over split milk). Perhaps of more benefit would be to avoid global diversions and use the time to actually, specifically, remember Christ's sacrifice and the importance of doing it a little more often than a single long weekend in March or April. But it's probably not great for business. See, the beauty in using Easter as a global fixer-upper is that for a brief, feel-good moment, anyone and their not-so-religious mother can pretend to be concerned with fixing the world's problems, tell their neighbour to be concerned as well, and then quietly, softly, slink back into religious inaction. Job done for another year. William S. probably said it best himself: "...it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Spiritual mouthpieces missing the stomach to do the work. Bible students uninterested in the Bible.

Hebrews 10:24-25
And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

Part-time Christians, surface believers and proud of it, encouraged by church "elders" and the spiritually "educated", have decided that a few days each year is all God and His son require. There's no provocation to do good works (save perhaps going out and buying a nice, new shiny necklace complete with cross). There's no assembling together, there's no exhorting one another, there's no approaching day, there's no religion after Easter.

Matthew 23:27
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.

Time for God has been relegated to 48 hours each year and a few brief guilty thoughts during another Sunday morning sleep in.

Luke 18:8 Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?

Only if he returns on the March/April long weekend when everyone's good and ready...

Job's Hidden Burden

2007-03-09T09:50:00.000-05:00

An excellent article by Kyle Tucker, WCF:
--
In a casual reading of the book of Job, we are drawn to the personal loss of the man, Job. He lost his livestock, his servants, his children and his health. What we perhaps don’t realize is that this personal tragedy was more that likely a regional disaster of epic proportions and thus carried with it an additional and highly significant stigma.

Job lived in the town of Uz. In fact, before his tragedy unfolds, he was a respected elder in the city (Job 29:7,8). The town must have had extensive arable land surrounding it to support Job and his fantastic wealth. Job “owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred she-donkeys, and many servants besides.” (Job 1:3 NJB) As we recall the story of Lot and Abram separating because of their large amounts of cattle, it is a reasonable assumption that Job was clearly in a class by himself in Uz. He was more than likely not only the chief resident of the city in terms of authority, but also the chief economic engine of the area employing, directly or indirectly, a large portion of the town. The adversary himself recognizes Job’s economic impact when he says to Yahweh concerning Job that “his flocks throng the countryside.” (v. 10)

What sort of manpower would be required to handle some 11,000+ animals? We can only speculate. Abraham had 318 servants (Gen. 18:18). It would seem improbable that Job would be able to handle his considerable household, the households of his children and his large array of livestock with only 318 people. It is possible that Job’s hired hands and servants could well have numbered over a thousand individuals.

The reason we bring this up is the almost incidental reference to the servants in the destruction of Job’s property.

• The Sabaeans swept down on them and carried them off, and put the servants to the sword: I alone have escaped to tell you. (v. 15)
• "The fire of God", he said, "has fallen from heaven and burnt the sheep and shepherds to ashes: I alone have escaped to tell you." (v. 16)
• "The Chaldaeans," he said, "three bands of them, have raided the camels and made off with them, and put the servants to the sword: I alone have escaped to tell you."
• "Your sons and daughters", he said, "were eating and drinking at their eldest brother's house, when suddenly from the desert a gale sprang up, and it battered all four corners of the house which fell in on the young people. They are dead: I alone have escaped to tell you."

Buried in this record are the deaths of hundreds – perhaps thousands of people. These very well may have been the relatives of most, if not all, of those remaining in Uz. This can give us greater insight into Job’s suffering. The people of the city gave Job no comfort. In fact, they seem to go out of their way to make him suffer more. Are these people just intolerably cruel? Perhaps. On the other hand, the surviving townspeople probably had to endured the loss of family and friends in Job’s undoing. Notice their extreme reaction:

"He has alienated my brothers from me, my relatives take care to avoid me, my intimate friends have gone away and the guests in my house have forgotten me. My slave-girls regard me as an intruder, a stranger as far as they are concerned. My servant does not answer when I call him, I am obliged to beg favours from him! My breath is unbearable to my wife, my stench to my own brothers. Even the children look down on me, whenever I stand up, they start jeering at me. All my dearest friends recoil from me in horror: those I loved best have turned against me." (Job 19:13-19 NJB)

"Children of scoundrels, worse, nameless people, the very outcasts of society! And these are the ones who now make up songs about me and use me as a byword! Filled with disgust, they keep their distance, on seeing me, they spit without restraint. And since God has loosened my bow-string and afflicted me, they too throw off the bridle in my presence. Their brats surge forward on my right, to see when I am having a little peace, and advance on me with threatening strides. They cut off all means of escape seizing the chance to destroy me, and no one stops them." (Job 30:8-13 NJB)

Why wouldn’t they if they blamed him for the loss of hundreds of people, the deaths of loved ones and the economic ruin of the region? His comforting friends imagined the same thing. Imagine Osama bin Laden trying to take up residence in New York City. Job carried along this immense weight in addition to his other burdens.

All of these things happened to a righteous man of whom the Lord testifies “There is no one like him on the earth: a sound and honest man who fears God and shuns evil." Let us remember the exhortation brought out by the apostle James:

"For your example, brothers, in patiently putting up with persecution, take the prophets who spoke in the Lord's name; remember it is those who had perseverance that we say are the blessed ones. You have heard of the perseverance of Job and understood the Lord's purpose, realising that the Lord is kind and compassionate." (James 5:10-11)

Do Christians Need Priests?

2007-03-02T09:32:00.000-05:00

ONE GOD AND ONE MEDIATOR
There is no necessity to go through another mediator, for Hebrews 4:16 says, "Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need." The clear meaning of this verse is that we are to free to come right up to, and remain alongside of the throne of grace in our petitions. We come right there in spirit. We do not need the help of someone else to do so. We only need the intercession of Jesus, because like all men everywhere, we sin, and need God’s forgiveness through Him.

The Bible says, "there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;" ONE GOD - NOT MANY. ONE MEDIATOR - NOT MANY. God’s word also says, "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous." (1 John 2:1) Writing through inspiration, the Apostle John shows that we do not need a priest to intercede for us, when Jesus Christ the righteous is in the presence of God for that very purpose. How can anyone substitute or deputise for Jesus?

THE OLD COVENANT
Under the Law of God to Israel, the old covenant was based on a priesthood officiating on behalf of the people. The sinner would bring a sin offering to the priest who would make an atonement for him so that his sin could be forgiven. The sinner was not permitted to enter the Holy Place of the tabernacle, let alone the Most Holy Place where God’s presence in Israel was focussed. So a priestly order distinct from the rest of the people was essential under that covenant. But not so under the new, where an approach can be made directly to the throne of grace by the sinner himself.

THE NEW COVENANT IN JESUS CHRIST
This direct approach is confirmed in Hebrews 10:19-22, where it is taught that we can stand in the very entrance of the Most Holy place, by the blood of Jesus our Lord. That is, when stated in plain language, we can approach God through the sacrifice of Jesus and his mediation, to have our sins forgiven. We need not go through any other person or priest. The quotation in full reads, "Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; And having an high priest over the house of God; Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water."

Verse 22 refers to baptism into Christ following a good confession of belief in the Gospel of Truth, and faith in our Lord Jesus. Verse 19 indicates that all with their conscience thus cleansed, can now approach God’s throne of grace themselves, provided they acknowledge Jesus, their one and only mediator. Verse 20 indicates that this has been made possible through a way not previously available, recently slain, yet living. For Jesus has passed through the veil of his flesh to ascend to God’s right hand, there to make intercession for all who come to God through him. There is no room here for priests in the house of God for verse 21 indicates there is one High Priest over His house. Therefore all in this house must be priests in their own right, as Peter indicates in the following verses.

THE NEW ROYAL PRIESTHOOD
1 Peter 2:5 "Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ."

1 Peter 2:9 "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light." So in contrast to the priests under the old covenant, who offered up animal sacrifices to God, the priesthood of believers under the new covenant, offer up spiritual bloodless sacrifices to God--they offer themselves, (Romans 12-1/2).

We note that this spiritual priesthood is called the house of God. Peter even tells us who constitutes this house. 1 Peter:22 and 23 introduce the theme under discussion. ‘Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever."

The word of God has precedence over any man made tradition. So if we have been truly born again by hearing and heeding the Word of God, we not only constitute part of that great house, but are priests of God in our own right. Therefore we do not require any other priest except our High priest, Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 4:15-16 "For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." Why then should we accept another when mercy and grace has already been offered?

Who Tempted Jesus in the Wilderness?

2007-02-15T15:44:00.000-05:00

Matthew 4:1-11: "Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterwards an hungred. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God,command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him, It is written again,Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him,and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him".

There are two vital points to consider before looking at the identity of Jesus' tempter.

First, Jesus "was in all points tempted like as we are" (Heb. 4:15), and: "every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed" (James 1:14). We are tempted by the "devil" of our own lusts or evil desires, and so was Jesus. We are not tempted by an evil being suddenly standing next to us and prompting us to sin - sin and temptation come "from within, out of the heart of man" (Mark 7:21).

Second, if the devil is a physical person who has no respect for God's Word and is interested in making people sin, then why would Jesus quote Scripture to him to overcome him? Notice that Jesus quoted a Bible passage each time. If the devil was simply the evil desires within Jesus' heart, then it is understandable that by his having the Word in his heart and reminding himself of it, he could overcome those bad desires. Psalm 119:11 is so relevant that perhaps it is specifically prophesying Christ's experiences in the wilderness: "Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee".

The Examination
1. Matt. 4:1 says that Jesus was "led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil." This was the Spirit of God which had just been bestowed upon him (3:16). It would be an extraordinary thing for the Spirit of God to lead Jesus into the wilderness so that he could be tempted by a supernatural, superhuman evil entity bent on opposing God.

2. When Jesus was baptized in Jordan by John, he received the power of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 3:16). As soon as he came out of the water, he was driven into the wilderness to be tempted. Knowing that he had the power of the spirit to turn stones into bread, jump off buildings unharmed etc., these temptations must have raged within his mind. If a person was suggesting these things to Jesus and Jesus knew that person to be sinful, then the temptations would have meant much less then if they came from within Jesus' own mind.

The temptation to take the kingdoms to himself would have been far more powerful if it came from within Christ. Jesus' mind would have been full of Scripture, and in his afflicted state of mind, caused by his fasting, it would be tempting to misinterpret passages to enable him to use them to justify taking the easy way out of the situation he was in.

Standing on a high mountain recalls Ezekiel being shown what the Kingdom would be like from a high mountain (Ez. 40:2), and John seeing "the holy Jerusalem" from "a great and high mountain" (Rev. 21:10). Jesus saw the world's kingdoms as they would be in the future (Luke 4:5), i.e. in the Kingdom, when "the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ" (Rev. 11:15). Maybe he would have thought of Moses at the end of 40 years' wilderness wandering (cp. His 40 days) looking out at the Promised Land (the Kingdom) from Mount Nebo. It is emphasized in Daniel (4:17,25,32; 5:21) that "the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will"; Jesus would have known that only God, not anyone else, could give him the Kingdom. Therefore it would not have been much of a temptation if an evil monster claimed to be able to give Jesus the Kingdom, when he knew only God had that power. However, Jesus knew that it was His (the Father's) good pleasure to give Jesus the Kingdom, and it must have been suggested by the "devil" within Jesus that he could take that kingdom immediately. After all, he could have reasoned, God has delegated all authority to me in prospect (John 5:26,27), to the extent that he had power to both give his life and take it again (John 10:18), although ultimately all power was given unto him only after his death and resurrection (Matt. 28:18).

3. With his familiarity with Scripture, Christ would have seen the similarities between himself and Elijah, whose morale collapsed after 40 days in the wilderness (1 Kings 19:8) and Moses, who forfeited his immediate inheritance of the land at the end of 40 years in the wilderness. Jesus, at the end of 40 days, was in a similar position to them - faced with a real possibility of failure. Moses and Elijah failed because of human weakness - not because of a person called "the devil". It was this same human weakness, the "satan", or adversary, that was tempting Jesus.

4. "And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God..." (Luke 4:3). It must have been a constant temptation within the mind of Christ to prove to the world that he truly was the Son of God, something that would ultimately be rejected by the Jews and eventually lead to his death.

5. The temptations were controlled by God for Christ's spiritual education. The passages quoted by Jesus to strengthen himself against his evil desires ("devil") are all from the same part of Deuteronomy, regarding Israel's experiences in the wilderness. Jesus clearly saw a parallel between his experiences and theirs:

Deut 8:2 "The Lord thy God led thee forty years in the wilderness to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments (word) or no." Matt.4/Luke 4 "Jesus led up of the spirit" "forty days" "in the wilderness." Jesus was proved by the temptations. Jesus overcame by quoting the Scriptures that were in his heart (Ps. 119:11).

Deut 8:3 "And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna...that He might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word...of the Lord..." Matt.4/Luke 4 "He was afterward an hungred." In John 6 manna is interpreted by Jesus as representing the Word of God - which Jesus lived by in the wilderness. Jesus learnt that spiritually he lived by the Word of God. "He answered...it is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word...of God."

Deut 8:5 "Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee." Matt.4/Luke 4 Jesus no doubt reflected on his experiences. God chastened His Son, Jesus - 2 Sam. 7:14; Ps. 89:32.

Thus Jesus showed everyone how to read and study the Word - he thought himself into the position of Israel in the wilderness, and therefore took the lessons that can be learnt from their experiences to himself in his wilderness trials.

Conversation with Brent

2007-02-13T12:55:00.000-05:00

A discussion about "contradictions" and "problem verses" in Scripture.

-Tiny Tim

Why Does God Allow Suffering?

2007-01-11T17:35:00.000-05:00

The Bible Answer to Human Tragedy

Suffering is a problem in life that comes home to everyone. A child is born blind, deformed or mentally afflicted; and the question comes: Why? The child has done no harm. A kind & giving woman, in the prime of life, is racked with pain in a hopeless disease that can only end in death. Why her? These are the people who can least be spared, can they not? Millions in the world are suffering semi-starvation and disease in countries with vast populations and little fertility. Others perish or are made homeless in floods and earthquakes. Why should they suffer?

Pain, torture and death have been imposed on helpless millions by the tyranny of man and the destructiveness of modern war. Countless lives are lost in acts of terrorism, by brutality and hijacking. Accidents there have always been, but the scale of today's disasters and natural calamities is often overwhelming: a passenger aircraft crashes; an oil rig blows up; fire traps hundreds in an underground train. People ask: Why does God allow it?

The questions readily rise to mind and on the surface seem reasonable: yet a candid look at them shows that they carry certain implications. They imply that suffering in human life is inconsistent either with the power or with the love of God: that as a God of love either He has not the power to prevent the suffering, or if He has the power then He has not the will, and is not a God of love. It is assumed that the prevention of suffering as it now affects the apparently innocent is something we should expect from a God of love who is also Almighty. Are these assumptions justified?

Facts of Life
Some facts about life must be taken into account before we try to form a judgement:

Man lives in a universe of cause and effect and the consequences of certain causes are inescapable. Fire burns, water drowns, disease germs destroy. These facts have moral implications. Men live in a universe in which the consequences of what they do are inescapable, and therefore their responsibility for what they do is equally inescapable. Without this burden of 'natural law' man could do as he liked with impunity, and there would be no responsibility. God made the universe this way because He is a moral God who makes men responsible beings with freewill to choose how they will act.

Man's neglect and misuse of his own life has corrupted the stream of human life itself, and left evils which fall on succeeding generations. These, again as part of natural law, may manifest themselves as hereditary weaknesses and tendencies to disease. The very stuff of life may be affected as it is passed on from generation to generation.

The consequences of man's acts are not only directly physical. The social and political evils which they have created throughout history have left a gathering burden on the generations following. People today are caught in a net of the consequences of past history, and even when they try to right one evil, another is brought to bear: "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now" (Romans 8:22).

Should People be Saved from Themselves?
Taking such facts as these into account, it must be asked, What is it we are really doing when we require God to remove suffering? Are we not asking that God should (a) suspend natural law, (b) divert the consequences of heredity, and (c) turn aside the effects of man's inhumanity to man? Have we the right to expect God to save men from the consequences of human acts? Would it be a moral universe if He did?

These questions can only be asked of situations when the hand of man is involved. Earthquakes, tempests, famines and floods are called 'acts of God' because usually there is no other explanation for their occurrence. So if we look beyond human acts to natural disaster, we find that it falls upon all, innocent and guilty alike. As soon as we begin to question the suffering of innocent victims of these disasters another dilemma is raised. Are we saying that the calamities should be selective in their working, searching out only those who deserve to suffer'?

An Evil or a Symptom?
Underlying all the loose thinking on the subject which has been surveyed so far is one basic assumption: it is that suffering is evil in itself. It is this belief that suffering is the essential evil that lies at the root of Buddhism. The Bible view is radically different: suffering is not evil in itself, but a symptom of a deeper evil. The Scriptures portray suffering as a consequence of sin: not necessarily the sin of the individual who suffers, but sin in the history of man and in human society. Its origin is succinctly put by the Apostle Paul:

"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Romans 5:12).

The sentence upon the woman after the disobedience in Eden says:
"I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."

To the man God says:
"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" (Genesis 3:16,19).

The teaching is simple. With man's disobedience there came a dislocation in the relationship between the Creator and the created; the relation between God and man is out of joint. The first sin brought a fundamental change which affects all with the evils which are common to man. Death is universal: God does not modify it for the particular individual. The Bible teaching is that men are left to their own ways and the working of natural law, though there may be times when natural disaster is divinely directed as a judgement upon man and for the cleansing of the earth. The outstanding example is the flood in the days of Noah.

At the same time it is true that in the Bible, for those who seek to serve God, suffering takes on new meaning; they are in a new relationship to the Creator, and will learn to see tragedy in a new light. What is it?

A Godly Man's Experience
The answer may be seen in the example of Job. Here is a devout man who meets with disaster in the loss of his flocks and herds-the source of his wealth; with terrible bereavement in the loss of all his children at one stroke; and then is stricken with a tormenting disease which separates him from men. Yet he says: "What? Shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord, and shall we not receive evil?" (Job 2:10). He recognises the important principle that he cannot claim good as a right: it is not for him to decide what God shall do.

"Does Job serve God for nought?"
While, therefore, the Book of Job offers no simple answer to the problem of suffering, it has been raised to a wider level. Only by loss and suffering could Job know that he did not serve God for the sake of houses, lands, flocks and herds, or even children. He did not even serve for the sake of his own skin, his health and wellbeing. He worshipped God for Himself, and in spite of all the wild words which came from his stress of mind and body he had an ultimate belief in God's righteousness and faithfulness. It was only when stripped of everything that he really knew that God was his only refuge, and in that discovery he was triumphantly vindicated against the slander of the Adversary epitomized by the three friends.

Job's faith in God was put to the test under trial, and by trial it was tempered as steel. It was by his final acceptance of the wisdom of God, and by learning that faith could be developed through suffering, that Job came at last to the fuller knowledge of God.

Some Conclusions
The conclusions to be drawn from what has been considered so far may be summarised as follows:

• Man lives in an ordered universe of cause and effect and must accept its consequences; and since sin entered into human life these must involve suffering. The suffering, however, may not be directly related to the sin of the sufferer but may result from the acts of former generations.
• At the same time it is the universe of a God of wisdom and love who can guide and control the suffering for those who seek Him in order to bring them to a deeper knowledge of Him.

A Divine Discipline
It is in the light of this latter conclusion that we may understand a passage in the Letter to the Hebrews based on a saying in the Book of Proverbs: "And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees" (Hebrews 12:5-12; Proverbs 3:11-12).

Read in its context, the passage expounds itself. Suffering and loss are common to man, but for the children of God they are directed by their Heavenly Father as a spiritual training, and as such are the expression of His love.

A Conversation With Jacques

2007-01-04T15:20:00.000-05:00

Jacques original post:

Precisely because Jesus threatens unbelievers with Hell in the NT, the Church used the Purgatory as a place where stillborns and people who died before Christ's coming go to be purified, along with those who died with venial sins.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12575a.htm#II

Christian doctrine fill in gaps and justify biblical contradictions. Were the "Word of God" perfect it wouldn't need an army of apologists through the ages.

I concur with you in that Hell was a place created by men and women. Religions were created by men and women too.

Even Jesus said "let the dead bury their dead" implying that there's no afterlife. But what does he say in Luke 23:43? Verily I say to thee, To-day with me thou shalt be in the paradise.'

Luke 16:23 and in the hades having lifted up his eyes, being in torments, he doth see Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom
After reading the above, to me is clear that Jesus believed in Hell as a place of eternal torment akin to the Hebrew Sheol and Greek Hades.

www.newadvent.org/cathen/05528b.htm
Death is not extinction; but Sheol, the underworld of the dead, in early Hebrew thought is not very different from the Babylonian Aralu or the Homeric Hades, except that Jahve is God even there.

Also, was Lazarus in heaven yet Jesus resurrected him to suffer earthly vicissitudes once again? Was Lazarus in hell? There's no soul at all and Jesus just reanimated Lazarus' body? Lazarus' soul was just asleep?

If even you know Carbon-14 is an unreliable method to measure geological ages past the million years mark, don't you think Paleogeologists and Paleontologists know better than you? They use radioactive isotopes with longer half lives other than those of carbon, such as uranium.

The Hebrew calendar counts since the Creation, we are now in 5767. 2000 years have passed since Christ's coming, 4707 years since Tyre's foundation (Herodotus). What do you think about dinosaur and hominid fossils? Did humans and animals change drastically in the 1060 years between the Creation and Tyre's foundation?
Was Earth created with fossils built-in?

Fossils are very scarce. Had the Flood happened there would be millions of fossils stacked in the same geological layer, everywhere.

There aren't any remains of animals foreign to the Middle East near the site where the Ark is supposed to have landed. There are no fossils of penguins, no kangaroos, no sloths, etc., near Mt. Ararat, Turkey.

Speaking of Turkey, the Black Sea flooding (The Mediterranean pouring its waters in the Black Sea basin) was not a global event. The Black Sea flooding was gradual, it didn't happen in just 40 days and 40 nights.

Daniel is as vague as Nostradamus in his prophecies. http://www.aboutbibleprophecy.com/daniel_2_32.htm

For example:
2. Daniel said that the head-of-gold empire would be followed by an empire symbolized by arms of silver. Christian scholars have often interpreted this to refer to the Medo-Persian empire which later conquered the Babylonian empire. The scholars say that the two arms refer to the two groups - the Medes and the Persians - who comprised the Medo-Persian empire.

Wow, amazing! The Medopersians were described with astonishing exactitude and detail! In this case the prophecy would have been valid had the author clearly written the name of that empire i.e. "Medo-Persian Empire"

According to Genesis 1:14-19 the stars, that gigantic balls of hydrogen that dwarf earth by several orders of magnitude, were made just to modify Earth's darkness a bit. Genesis also says that day, night, Earth, dirt, water, atmosphere, vegetation were created before stars. We now know stars predated Earth, and it seems logical since hydrogen is said to be the most abundant element in Universe and that helium and hard elements like iron, carbon, etc., are created by nuclear fusion in stars.

How Many Creations?

2007-01-02T15:27:00.000-05:00

Bible skeptics claim Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are so different that they exclude each other and cannot be reconciled. Some believe that they are so dissimilar in teaching that they actually contain two different accounts of creation. Does the Bible contradict itself? Were there two creations?

Starting at the beginning, we know Genesis 2 is not a simple retelling of Genesis 1. How can we determine this to be true? First, we examine the overall context. Genesis 2 is considerably different in regard to the emphasis of the content. Genesis 1 dedicates four verses (13%) to the creation of humans, beginning with verse 26. However, Genesis 2 dedicates nineteen verses (76%) to the creation of humans, beginning with verse 7. Since there are no real chapter breaks in the original Hebrew manuscripts, the story of the creation of humans continues throughout Chapter 3 (another 24 verses). Obviously, the emphasis of the two "versions" is quite different. Keep this in mind as we continue forward.

Secondly, Genesis 2 isn't an account of another creation. Why do we know this? Because of what's 'missing' in Chapter 2: heavens and the earth, the atmosphere, the seas, the land, the sun, the stars, the moon, the sea creatures, etc. Specifically Chapter 2 mentions only things directly relevant to the creation of Adam and Eve and their life in the garden God prepared specially for them. This is in keeping with the emphasis mentioned above.

In summary so far, Chapter 1 can be understood as creation from God’s perspective; it is ‘the big picture’, an overview of the whole. Chapter 2 views the more important aspects from man’s perspective. Since Chapter 2 is viewed from the perspective of man after he was created, this would explain why so many of the elements listed in Chapter 1 are 'missing' (creation of the sun, moon, etc.) and more of an emphasis on things relevant to an individual's viewpoint (e.g. Gen 2:9 - trees that were "pleasant to the sight and good for food"). This is further highlighted by the geographic descriptions of the placement of Eden outlined in the text that follows. If Chapter 2 describes man's perspective, then surely this chapter should only describe events that occur in Adam & Eve's immediate environment (Eden), right? Correct. All the events of Genesis 2 occur in Eden.

1. Adam was placed in the garden to cultivate it.
2. God brought to Adam the animals He had already created for him to name.
3. Since a suitable companion was not found for Adam, God created Eve.
4. The narrative concludes with the initiation of the first marriage.

All the creation descriptions in Genesis 2 can be attributed to the preparation of a place in which the first humans will live.

But what about the apparent contradiction between Chapter 1 & 2 in regards to the creation of animals? Between the creation of Adam and the creation of Eve, the KJV/AV Bible says (Genesis 2:19) ‘out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air’. On the surface, this seems to say that the land beasts and birds were created between Adam and Eve. However, Jewish scholars apparently did not recognize any such conflict with the account in Chapter 1, where Adam and Eve were both created after the beasts and birds (Genesis 1:23–25). Why is this? Because in Hebrew the precise tense of a verb is determined by the context. It is clear from Chapter 1 that the beasts and birds were created before Adam, so Jewish scholars would have understood the verb ‘formed’ in Genesis 2:19 to mean ‘had formed’ or ‘having formed’. If we translate verse 19 as follows (as the popular NIV does), ‘Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field …’, the apparent disagreement with Genesis 1 disappears completely.

Summary
Genesis 1 is the account of the creation of the universe and life on planet earth as it happened in chronological sequence, with day 1, day 2, evening and morning, etc. Genesis 2 is simply an expanded explanation of the events that occurred at the end of the sixth creation day – from the viewpoint of earthbound man and woman. The order of events is not the major concern of Genesis 2. In recapping events they are not necessarily mentioned in chronological order, but in the order which makes most sense to the focus of the account. For example, the animals are mentioned in verse 19, after Adam was created, because it was after Adam was created that he was shown the animals, not that they were created after Adam.

The Bible - Fallen Angels

2007-01-02T09:24:00.000-05:00

The biggest and most glaring problem with the belief in fallen angels is the reference to such a fall in Revelation 12. The fall of Satan and a third of the angels is reportedly said to have happened sometime during or before creation, however a quick look at Revelation 1:1 shows that this timeline is impossible:

Rev 1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John.

There can be no doubt here that Revelation does not contain in it any event which has already occurred (since this would be a contradiction of "come to pass"). Thus to use this passage to prove an imaginary event before creation is absolutely incorrect.

If I were to ask: 'Can you give me a brief Biblical history of the devil, according to your interpretation of Bible passages?' the responses would be highly contradictory. According to mainstream Christian 'reasoning', the answer has to be something like this:
1.The devil was an Angel in Heaven who was thrown out into the garden of Eden. He was thrown to earth in Genesis 1.
2. He is supposed to have come to earth and married in Genesis 6.
3. At the time of Job he is said to have had access to both Heaven and earth.
4. By the time of Isaiah 14 he is thrown out of Heaven again and back to earth.
5. In Zechariah 3 he is in Heaven again.
6. He is on earth again in Matthew 4. He is "cast out" at the time of Jesus' death, according to the popular view of "the prince of this world" being "cast out" at that time.
7. There is a prophecy of the devil being 'cast out' in Rev. 12.
8. The devil is "chained" in Rev. 20, but he and his angels were chained in Genesis, according to the common view of Jude v 6. If he was bound with 'eternal chains' then, how is he chained up again in Rev. 20?

From this it should be obvious that the popular view that the devil was cast out of Heaven for sinning cannot be true, seeing that he is described as still being in Heaven after each occurrence of being 'cast out'. It is vital to understand both 'Heaven' and the devil in a figurative sense.

As for the possibility of angels sinning: Jesus tells us in Rev 4:11: "THOU hast created ALL things and for thy pleasure they are and were created". The purpose of this special creation of angels by God is explained by the Apostle Paul: "Are thy not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation". Are demons/fallen angels ministering spirits in the sense of this verse...?

It is not realistic to assume that He created one bad angel and one good one, and so on. He created perfect immortal spiritual beings, the like of which we hope to be when the Lord Jesus rewards those who have loved and served Him. IF it was possible for angels to sin then what is the value of being made like unto the angels? Why resist sin in this life supposedly secure in the hope that we will be made LIKE UNTO THE ANGELS (Luke 20:35), if we are merely exchanging one sinful nature for another? This is not the case at all, for God created these pure spiritual beings to be in His presence and we are told by Habakuk "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil and canst not look on iniquity." (Hab.1:13).

Thus there could never have been angels thrown out of heaven for rebelling against the Father. It's nothing short of an impossibility.

The Bible – Prophecy, History, Angels and Hell

2006-12-28T13:59:00.001-05:00

A continuation of a discussion regarding the validity of the Bible

A Conversation With Michael

2006-12-14T09:57:00.000-05:00

A friendly conversation revolving around the topic of Mary quickly reached new lows with the following comment by a concerned Christian:

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...I need to know what exactly you've been smoking... because I need some of that!

First and foremost, I believe that you are the one that grossly misunderstands who Christ is and who is Mother is. How dare you attack your heavenly mother in such a way, would you dare to say something about your earthly mother like that?

From the beggining of time Christ was already created, he is in fact if you understand the trinity, he is the second person in one GOD, therefore when he was born to a VIRGIN, that is Mother Mary, he became man, but he was still God. What you are spouting is a Heresy that has already been crushed by the 4th lateran Council.

Do you honestly think that God would be born of an unclean person? Can you really think that, that he would come in a dirty vessel? NO, Christ was born to a VIRGIN that was sin-free as we are told in the bible. Also Christ was Mary's only child, meaning that she had no others nor did she have relations with Joseph.

All throughout the bible we are told about Mother mary, Heck God the father prophecies her coming in Genesis, when he says to the serpent that a woman will come and crush your head. What did he mean by that? He meant that a woman would bear the savior that the world was waiting on, and by her answer yes to Gabriel the arch-angel, and by giving birth she was going to crush the head of Satan, and then when Christ was crucified, he finished that and the gates of Heaven were opened.

Oh and just in case you forgot, you left out one of the most important passages of the bible... maybe it slipped your memory.. Remember when Christ was dying on the Cross, he said to John his faithful apostle who stayed there with him... He looked at his Mother and said" Woman behold thy son, and then looking at John, he said, Son behold thy mother. Why is this important? Because Christ was telling her to take care of his apostles and all the Christian people while he was gone, and he was telling the apostles and all the Christian people to love and revere his mother.

Oh and you also seem to think that Jesus was a sinner like the rest of us... that is heresy as well. Jesus was without sin, after all he was the son of GOD. AND more importantly he was tempted by the devil ect... and each time he resisted him and never fail like frail humans like ourselves.. when he says come and follow me, he is saying live by my example, sin no more.

So jason, put aside your heretical beliefs that you were raised in and that you've obviously been brainwashed in. Mother Mary isn't just Jesus's mother or the Mother of the Catholic church, she is yours as well, and the sooner you realize this, the sooner you'll learn to love her as I do.

Pax Christi,

St_Michael
---

This was soon followed by "I will unleash the verses and ect that will prove against your arguments... That is if you have the eyes left to see them!"

Michael will now present verse after verse after verse proving the exalted nature of Mary and why Christians around the world should be following in her footsteps instead of Christ's.

The Great Christian Scam: Tithing

2006-12-11T12:33:00.000-05:00

A few quick stats: Annually, tithing brings the Seventh Day Adventist Church US $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion. In 1991, Catholic giving totaled $5.48 billion. A study looking at 30 mainline Protestant and evangelical denominations with 29.3 million members representing 100,000 U.S. congregations found that the denominations received $17.2 billion in contributions in 1998, compared with $2.7 billion in 1968.

A recent report titled "The State of Church Giving" was published by a Christian research group, empty tomb, inc. After reviewing the giving of 10 mainline protestant churches, and the Southern Baptist Convention it was found that the average church member donated just 2.6% of their income. This percentage is lower than the 1933 percentage, during the darkest hour of the depression. The report states that if a full tithe of after-tax income were given, the churches would have had at their disposal an additional $131 billion dollars for 1998 alone.

The report further states that "...$30-$50 billion would impact the worst of world poverty and $2.5 billion could end most of the 11 million under-5, global, annual child deaths."

The obvious question is: How can churches be wealther today then they've ever been before and still complain they don't have enough to shell out? The Catholic church alone is sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars, enough to make a significant impact in the global hunger problem but like every other mainstream Christian group, greed doesn't like sharing and so the wealth goes undistributed. (Imagine for a second if the top five churches in N.A. dolled out a billion dollars to fight the homeless problem in the five largest N.A. cities instead of spending it on constructing new churches...)

Another funny statement I found: "If U.S. church members had been giving an average of 10% of after-tax income in 1998, another $131 billion would have flowed into church coffers to meet the needs of the poor. Those funds would go far in a world where 30,000 children die each day." (LA TImes, Jan 2001) Apparently it's the fault of church members for not saving more children... If church leaders can't find the money to do half of the charity service they claim to want to do, then someone needs to take a good hard look at church spending practices because if a few billions dollars can't be scrounged up to solve some serious social problems, the question must be asked: where is all this money GOING???

Without a doubt, tithing is undoubtably the biggest scam in modern-day Christianity. Tithing is NOT a 21st century commandment.

Here's why.

A careful examination of Numbers and Deuteronomy will show there were a total of three tithes.

1st Tithe - Numbers 18:21-26
• The 'classic definiton' of tithing - The Israelities gave a tenth to the Levites (the priestly tribe) as a "reward for service" (vs. 31)
• The Levites would then give Aaron the high priest the best tenth of everything they received (see also Neh 10:38)
• The tithe which Aaron the high priest and his sons received was thento be eaten in the most holy place (vs. 10)
• 2 Chron 31:10 – the whole tithe wasn’t expected to be consumed, but enough to completely satisfy the appetite. The remainder would be then be used as food until the next tithe.

2nd Tithe - Deut 14:22-29
• Tithes eaten before God (in the city where the temple dwelt) by the individual, his family and his servants
• This is the only time money is mentioned in conjunction with tithing – goods were to be converted into cash and then spent on food and drink if the length of the journey was too long to carry produce, etc.

3rd Tithe - Deut 26:12-15
• 3rd year is the ‘Year of Tithing’
• Preceded by a journey to the Temple where a basket of the first of every fruit was given to the priest and an acknowledgement of their deliverance from Egypt (:5 - :10)
• Tithes were left at home (“within the gates”) for the poor, etc.
• After the tithes had been distributed, they were required to announce to God they had observed all the required laws, ending with a prayer for God’s continued blessing.

Going through these tithes, it's obvious why the Israelites were required to give:
1. Lev 27:30 And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the LORD'S: it is holy unto the LORD;
2. People tithed so they would "fear God" (Deut 14:23) and understand all of their blessings were provided by Him.

Now, if anything, going by the letter of the law, only 1/3 of the tithes should be going to "priests" (pastors, church, etc.). The other 2/3 should be divided up equally between ourselves and the less fortunate. So if we've got $10 in our pocket on a Sunday morning, according to OT law, we should be dishing out $3 for the church, keeping $3 for ourselves and using it to celebrate God's blessings in our lives, and then giving $3 to a recently widowed friend, for example.

But churches don't tell you this because they want the WHOLE $10 for themselves.

Therefore, using Scripture as our guide and evidence, we know tithing WAS NOT
...a means to provide financially for priests
...a time to give money
...only for priests
...intended for anyone other then the recipients listed (Levites, Levitcal priests, fatherless, poor, widows, etc.)

By extension, tithing WAS:
...a means to provide sustenance for those who couldn’t or weren’t supposed to provide for themselves
...an opportunity to celebrate the blessings of God

So should tithes be collected today? Most definitely not.

1. First and foremost, the old law is of no effect, having been done away with by Christ;
2. The Temple doesn’t exist today. Therefore, the commandment to eat the tithe in the presence of God is impossible to follow;
3. The lineage of the Levites has been lost. Therefore, tithing to provide for the Levites and priests is impossible;
4. Only the increase of the field was tithable. Tithing with money is a foreign concept in Scripture, even in the NT.
5. Much like circumcision, keeping the Sabbath, fasting, etc. tithing was an OT commandment never repeated by Christ or the apostles in the NT.

Instead, our commandment today is to give freely what we're able. Whether this is 10%, 4%, $20 once a month or through the giving of clothing, food, time, energy, etc., it's entirely up to the individual. The mentality behind 21st century giving is this: 2 Corinthians 9:7 "Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver."

Any church or church leader who requires its members to tithe is a money-hungry, greedy power-monger. In looking at Scripture, there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever why anyone should be required to give a portion of their income to "help their church". It's disgusting behaviour in the worst sense possible because it's being done by people who know better in the name of God.

Christmas: Much Ado About Nothing

2006-11-23T12:33:00.000-05:00

It's getting close to that wonderful time of year again when Christians around the world gather together for merriment and festivities in honour of the birth of Christ. It's a shame these same people are absolutely ignorant as to the real history of Christmas. There's no proof whatsoever that Jesus was born on December 25th so let's just all relax, forget the mangers and wise men statues and simply enjoy the day for what it is: time off from work.

Food for thought from Wikipedia:

Pre-Christian origins of holiday
Christmas has its origins in several pagan holidays. The celebration known as Saturnalia included the making and giving of small presents (saturnalia et sigillaricia). This holiday was observed over a series of days beginning on December 17 (the birthday of Saturn) and ending on December 25 (the birthday of Sol Invictus, the "unconquered sun"). The combined festivals resulted in an extended winter holiday season. Business was postponed and even slaves feasted. There was drinking, gambling, and singing, and nudity was relatively common. It was the "best of days," according to the poet Catullus.
During the time in which Christianity was spreading throughout the Roman Empire, another similar religion known as Mithraism was also gaining widespread acceptance. The followers of Mithraism worshipped Mithras, a god of Persian origin, who was identified with Sol Invictus. [citation needed] The followers of Mithraism, consequently, adopted the birthday of Sol Invictus as the birthday of Mithras. In 274 AD, due to the popularity of Mithraism, Emperor Aurelian designated December 25 as the festival of Sol Invictus.

Christian origins of holiday
Around 220 AD, the theologian Tertullian declared that Jesus died on March 25, 29, but was resurrected three days later. Although this is not a plausible date for the crucifixion, it does suggest that March 25, nine months before December 25th, had significance for the church even before it was used as a basis to calculate Christmas. Modern scholars favor a crucifixion date of April 3, 33, which was also the date of a partial lunar eclipse. By 240 AD, a list of significant events was being assigned to March 25, partly because it was believed to be the date of the vernal equinox. These events include creation, The Fall of Adam and Eve, and, most relevantly, the Incarnation. The view that the Incarnation occurred on the same date as crucifixion is consistent with a Jewish belief that prophets died at an "integral age," either an anniversary of their birth or of their conception.

The idea that December 25 is Jesus' birthday was popularized by Sextus Julius Africanus in Chronographiai (221 AD), an early reference book for Christians. This identification did not at first inspire feasting or celebration. In 245 AD, the theologian Origen denounced the idea of celebrating the birthday of Jesus "as if he were a king pharaoh." Only sinners, not saints, celebrate their birthdays, Origen contended.

As Constantine ended the Christian persecution and began the persecution of non-Christians, Christians began to debate the nature of Christ. The Alexandrian school argued that he was the divine word made flesh (see John 1:14), while the Antioch school held that he was born human and infused with the Holy Spirit at the time of his baptism (see Mark 1:9-11). A feast celebrating Christ's birth gave the church an opportunity to promote the intermediate view that Christ was divine from the time of his incarnation. Mary, a minor figure for early Christians, gained prominence as the theotokos, or god-bearer. There were Christmas celebrations in Rome as early as 336 AD. December 25 was added to the calendar as a feast day in 350 AD.

Food for thought from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church. Irenaeus and Tertullian omit it from their lists of feasts; Origen, glancing perhaps at the discreditable imperial Natalitia, asserts (in Lev. Hom. viii in Migne, P.G., XII, 495) that in the Scriptures sinners alone, not saints, celebrate their birthday; Arnobius (VII, 32 in P.L., V, 1264) can still ridicule the "birthdays" of the gods.

Alexandria. The first evidence of the feast is from Egypt. About A.D. 200, Clement of Alexandria (Strom., I, xxi in P.G., VIII, 888) says that certain Egyptian theologians "over curiously" assign, not the year alone, but the day of Christ's birth, placing it on 25 Pachon (20 May) in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus. [Ideler (Chron., II, 397, n.) thought they did this believing that the ninth month, in which Christ was born, was the ninth of their own calendar.] Others reached the date of 24 or 25 Pharmuthi (19 or 20 April). With Clement's evidence may be mentioned the "De paschæ computus", written in 243 and falsely ascribed to Cyprian (P.L., IV, 963 sqq.), which places Christ's birth on 28 March, because on that day the material sun was created. But Lupi has shown (Zaccaria, Dissertazioni ecc. del p. A.M. Lupi, Faenza, 1785, p. 219) that there is no month in the year to which respectable authorities have not assigned Christ's birth.

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There's no religious significance attached to December 25th. How about using Christmas a time to be thankful for what God has given us instead of honouring a birth that didn't even happen on that day?

Christianity and Politics

2006-11-08T12:56:00.000-05:00

With every Christian cheering and booing the latest election results in the U.S., it's as good a time as any to step back and really think about whether or not we should be involved in politics.

The first and most obvious point to make is this: We don't know the big picture. God sets governments up and He takes governments down. The obvious danger in voting is we could very well be voting against the will of God. For example, John Smith is running for President of the U.S.. John Smith, though, is pro-abortion. Every Christian in the country puts aside their religious differences, bands together and votes for the other guy on the grounds that John Smith is anti-God. What we don't know however is that three years down the road, God will move John Smith to delare war on North Korea which in turn sends hostile armies into Israel, thus fulfilling prophecy. By voting against John Smith, we're proudly telling God that we know best.

The implications are worrisome to say the least.

Here is the plain teaching of the Bible:
"...he removeth kings and setteth up kings" (Daniel 2:20,21)
"The most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men" (Daniel 4:17).

So, quickly then:

Q. Should a Christian help others to gain political positions by voting in elections?
A. No. By voting a man shows that he is interested in politics, and a Christian should not be interested in politics. A Christian should accept whatever rulers God allows to be appointed, and pray that God will help them rule wisely.
See Daniel 4:25; Proverbs 21:1; 1 Timothy 2:1,2.

Q. Should a Christian take an active part in politics in order to help improve his country?
A. No. The Lord Jesus made no attempt to help rule his country. He resisted attempts to make him a ruler, and refused any position of power over others. The Lord knew that his Kingdom was "not of this world", and that his first duty was to preach the gospel. A Christian should carefully avoid becoming mixed up with the affairs of the world. Sometimes governments may do things that Christians cannot support - for example, going to war, or promoting gambling. As far as possible, a Christian should keep himself out of public affairs, and devote his energy to preaching the gospel and doing good to those in need; this was the example given by the Lord Jesus.
See John 6:15; Luke 12:14; John 18:36; 2 Timothy 2:4.

Anything else?

Matthew 26:52. "Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."

Romans 12:2. "And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."

II Timothy 2:4. "No man that warreth, entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier."

God is in Control
We might have assumed that the only way in which things can be put right is by political or social means, or even by believing that good morals will finally conquer the bad. But such is not Bible teaching. There is a much more far-reaching principle revealed in the pages of Scripture. Despite appearances, God is in control and is active in the affairs of men and nations.

The governments and rulers of men are appointed by God, whether these prove to be good or bad. God is working out His righteous and ultimate purpose using the materials to hand among sinful men. Nothing is beyond or out of His control. It might be objected that this is Old Testament teaching and is purely Jewish and altogether out-moded. It is certainly Old Testament teaching but it is repeated even more emphatically in the New.

"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation" (Romans 13:1,2).

These words were written to believers in the city of Rome in a pagan empire. The Christian was not to seek to change the government. Protest, agitation and subversion were out of the question. To resist the government is to resist God's appointment. Let it be noted that it is not a question of whether the government is good or bad. Because God is in control, we should not resist His ordinance.

This is even more telling when we remember that it is almost certain that the apostle Paul was executed by the Roman emperor Nero. He lived and died believing that human governments are in God's hand. This is the only note of hope in our violent and perplexed world. If God is not in control, then man is: if man is in control there is no hope.

Mary and Math

2006-11-06T08:49:00.000-05:00

Amongst the many false beliefs regarding the divinity of Mary is one that still continues to baffle. I have yet to find a solution to the problem and worst of all, millions of Christians continue to blindly follow the teachings of their Church without giving any regard to common sense.

Mary's Assumption and her Immaculate Conception cannot be found in Scripture. About the former, the Catholic Encyclopdia says "Regarding the day, year, and manner of Our Lady's death, nothing certain is known." About the latter, "No direct or categorical and stringent proof of the dogma can be brought forward from Scripture..." In other words, no evidence of either is found in Scripture. The discussion inevitably then turns to the authority of the Church and her traditions. Sub-Scripture written after the fact. Revelation 2:2 seems rather fitting: "I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars:"

But I digress.

Wrong as they may be, at least there's wiggle room for discussion. Not so though when we come to examining the concept of Mary 'the Mediatrix', a belief that defies all God-given sense of logic and common sense and flies in the face of simple Scriptural evidence.

First off, what does the Church say.
Catechism: 969 This motherhood of Mary in the order of grace continues uninterruptedly from the consent which she loyally gave at the Annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the cross, until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect. Taken up to heaven she did not lay aside this saving office but by her manifold intercession continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation .... Therefore the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the titles of Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix."

What does the dictionary say.
Mediatress \Me`di*a"tress\, Mediatrix \Me`di*a*"trix\, n. [L.
mediatrix, f. of mediator: cf. F. m['e]diatrice.]
A female mediator.

(Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913)

Therefore, according to the Church and millions of Christians worldwide, Mary is a mediator. At first glance, ignoring the host of problems and contradictions that go along with elevating Mary to such a status, there isn't a problem. And this is exactly why Christianity is rife with false doctrine, no one bothers taking a second glance. Absolute blind faith in the Church and an unwillingness to stomach the notion that church leaders could be wrong, the good Christian doesn't stand a chance.

However, there is a solution. The Bible. Any claim that Mary is a mediator should naturally take one to Scripture, God's written Word. Ignoring that Christ is referred to as our "high priest", ignoring that the role of high priests in the OT were to make intercession for the people, ignoring that high priests were always men, the answer is one most clear:

1 Timothy 2:5-6 “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus:"

The only way for Mary to be a mediator between God and man is to ignore one of the most basic, simplistic mathametical formulas ever known to mankind:

1 = 1

In other words:

1 mediator = 1 Jesus Christ

Unless the Church has managed, through divine instruction of course, to alter mathmatical logic, it is impossible, literally impossible, for Mary to be our mediator. No need for an exegesis, no need for hundred-page discourses, no need for long-winded exposés: One mediator does not allow for the existence of two mediators. To argue otherwise is to argue the sum of 1.

What the Bible says about "Purgatory"

2006-10-21T13:18:00.000-04:00

Purgatory
The Roman Catholic church teaches that the souls of God's people may go to a place called 'purgatory' after death, which is a half-way house between 'heaven' and 'hell'. They teach that it is a place of purging, in which the soul will suffer for a while before being fit to gain salvation in heaven. The prayers, candle-burning and financial gifts to the church of a person and his friends is supposed to shorten the length of time that the soul suffers in 'purgatory'. The gross error of such ideas should be established from the following:

• The Bible is silent concerning the existence of such a place.

• The soul refers to our body, rather than to some immortal element within us.

• 'Hell' is the grave rather than a place of punishment.

• The righteous are never promised salvation in heaven. The granting of salvation will be at the judgment seat at Christ's return, rather than at some time after death when we supposedly leave 'purgatory' (Matt. 25:31-34; Rev. 22:12).

• All the righteous receive their rewards at the same time, rather than each person gaining salvation at different times (Heb. 11:39,40; 2 Tim. 4:8).

• Death is followed by complete unconsciousness, rather than the activities suggested by the doctrine of purgatory.

• We are purged from our sins through baptism into Christ and developing a firm faith in his work during our present life, rather than through some period of suffering after death. We are told to "purge out therefore the old leaven" of sin in our lives (1 Cor. 5:7); to purge ourselves from the works of sin (2 Tim. 2:21; Heb. 9:14). Our time of purging is therefore now, in this life, rather than in a place of purging ('purgatory') which we enter after death. "Now is the day of salvation...now is the accepted time" (2 Cor. 6:2). Our obedience to God in baptism and development of a spiritual character in this life, will lead to our salvation (Gal. 6:8) - not to the spending of a period in 'purgatory'.

• The efforts of others to save us through candle-burning and other donations to the Catholic church, will not affect our salvation at all. "They that trust in their wealth...none of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him...that he should still live for ever" (Ps. 49:6-9).

False Doctrine Words of the Day - "Mary, Mother of God"

2006-10-18T12:42:00.000-04:00

As taken from a number of sources:

The Immaculate Conception: The formal active essence of original sin was not removed from her soul, as it is removed from others by baptism; it was excluded, it never was in her soul. Simultaneously with the exclusion of sin. In other words, Mary wasn't born into sin and she never committed sin for the duration of her life. She was perfect.

Co-Redemptrix: Mary is not only a special person in God’s eyes but also a faithful servant that is a “co-worker” in winning us our salvation and the salvation of the entire world. Pope Pius XII dedicated the entire human race to Mary in 1944.

Hail Mary: Each time that we say the Hail Mary we are repeating the very same words with which St. Gabriel the Archangel saluted Mary on the day of the Annunciation, when she was made Mother of the Son of God. Many graces and joys filled the soul of Mary at that moment. Now when we say the Hail Mary we offer anew all these graces and joys to Our Lady and she accepts them with Immense delight. In return she gives us a share in these joys.

Ever-virgin: Mary never had sexual relations with her husband, before or after the birth of Christ.

Mother of the Church: This title was given to Mary by Jesus when he was hanging on the cross.

Mediatrix: By definition, "a woman who mediates". Another title of Mary. She is our guide and intercessor.

Assumption of Mary: Having completed the course of her earthly life, Mary was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory. This means that Mary was transported into Heaven with her body and soul united.

I'll be honest, when I think of the millions of deluded people out there who worship Mary (although they'll say they don't worship her, they only pray to her), I feel ill. Why anyone, in their right mind, would elevate Mary to be virtually equal with Christ simply defies logic. And that's just ignoring that fact that every single one of these beliefs listed above isn't found, or hinted at in Scripture (something which the Catholic Church openly agrees with).

We shouldn't be praying to Mary, we shouldn't be worshipping Mary. It's overwhelming in its simplicity.

The Political Might of Catholicism

2006-10-09T11:09:00.000-04:00

Extremely interesting news regarding the rise and influence of the Catholic church's political might:

By ANNA CLARIDG
05 October 2006

Catholicism will become the most practised denomination in New Zealand within five years – and the Catholic Church is already wielding political power, an expert says.

Peter Lineham, head of Massey University's School of Social and Cultural Studies, says current trends show Catholics will overtake Anglicans as New Zealand's most dominant religious group by 2011, with total numbers reaching 489,000.

The prediction, based on a 20-year trend in census figures, shows the Catholic Church has survived a Christianity crisis that has seen other religions bleeding adherents at a rate of almost 12,000 worshippers a year.

"The number of Catholics isn't really increasing much at all, it's just that the number of Anglicans and Presbyterians is dropping so dramatically," Lineham said.

"(The Catholic) religion instils a social identity.

In Catholicism you live it through schools and social networks. It is very strong and it is almost like once a Catholic, always a Catholic. You always identify with it."

Based on Lineham's predictions, Anglican numbers would have dropped to 452,000 by 2011 and Presbyterians to 357,000. The number of Anglicans has dropped by an average of 66,000 between each census, while the number of Presbyterians has dropped by 30,000 every five years.

Lineham said assuming the position of the most dominant religious order meant the church would naturally become a powerful political force – something that was already being felt.

"It does mean that the Catholic Church will have to be clear about its views because from now on people, politicians and media, will begin approaching them and asking them to speak on issues.

"And the church will have to be careful because its dominant position may mean that they end up speaking on behalf of not just Catholics, but Christianity as a whole."

Lineham said Cardinal Tom Williams, the Archbishop Emeritus of Wellington, was already heavily involved in Government processes and the church would continue to be a significant political force..."

The prophecies in Revelation and the symbolism of Daniel's image (iron & clay) are becoming more and more of a "this is actually happening in our lifetime" reality, especially when one considers the recent Catholic-Lutheran initiatives at developing stronger ties and general decline of other mainstream Christian groups. The Roman Catholic church is swallowing up Christians fast and furious.

A State of Limbo For Limbo

2006-10-06T10:03:00.000-04:00

From BBC Online:

The Pope may be about to abolish the notion of limbo, the halfway house between heaven and hell, inhabited by unbaptised infants. Is it really that simple?

Pope Benedict XVI's anticipated pronouncement on limbo will have been informed by the International Theological Commission - a group of leading Roman Catholic theologians who have been meeting to consider the issue.

The Pope, himself, has been quoted in the past as saying that he would let the idea of limbo "drop, since it has always been only a theological hypothesis".

He was quoted as saying that limbo has never been a "definitive truth of the faith".
---

No kidding!!!! Mainstream Christianity take note: Doctrines founded on tradition instead of Biblical truths is an unsubstantiated belief system (see purgatory, infant baptism, immortal soul, etc.). All those religions who reject limbo, including Christadelphians, suddenly don't seem quite as bizarre and far-fetched, do they?

The Worship of Angels

2006-10-02T14:33:00.000-04:00

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou,
O Prince of the heavenly hosts,
by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan,
and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.

So goes a prayer posted online by a Catholic priest. How this isn't angel worship is beyond me. Not only this type of worship unfound in the Bible, we're also never instructed to pray to angels. Where do people get this stuff from? I'm amazed at how these false doctrines are so easily passed off as truth by the hundreds and hundreds of Church 'authorities'. Col 2:18 makes it abundantly clear: "Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind." The NIV is even more direct: "Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions."

The response from the priest?
"A quick lesson in one very important aspect of Catholic theology.

Latria--the supreme worship, which may be offered to God alone.
Dulia--the veneration given to the saints as servants of God.
Hyperdulia--the veneration offered to Mary as the most exalted of creatures.

Catholics in general may not know the terms, but we do know the difference between worship, veneration, reverence, honor and respect, as experienced in our lives."

On closer inspection however, using Catholic resources, the only real difference between latria and dulia is the object of worship. From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

There are several degrees of...worship:
• If it is addressed directly to God, it is superior, absolute, supreme worship, or worship of adoration, or, according to the consecrated theological term, a worship of latria. This sovereign worship is due to God alone; addressed to a creature it would become idolatry.
• When worship is addressed only indirectly to God, that is, when its object is the veneration of martyrs, of angels, or of saints, it is a subordinate worship dependent on the first, and relative, in so far as it honours the creatures of God for their peculiar relations with Him; it is designated by theologians as the worship of dulia, a term denoting servitude, and implying, when used to signify our worship of distinguished servants of God, that their service to Him is their title to our veneration.

As is plainly seen from the above, the term "worship" is used for angels. This is downplayed by excusing it as simply "subordinate worship" but this little bit of trickery doesn't get around the problem: worshipping angels is inappropriate and wrong. I wonder, when praying to an angel, how the worship is made subordinate. Is it a feeling? Does it depend on the choice of words?

At any rate, this additional quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia doesn't help the Catholic cause: "Etymologically, however, there is no reason why latria should be preferred to designate supreme honour; and indeed the two words were often used indiscriminately."

The discussion was quickly put to bed with a blunt, but sadly amusing comment: "Sorry. Comments left by apostates, heretics, heathens, pagans, and unrepentant sinners must now be monitored."

A Defense of Baptism by Sprinkling

2006-09-28T23:58:00.000-04:00

What defense?

There are many people out there (i.e. billions) who argue that sprinkling is acceptable because a specific mode of baptism is never explicitly mentioned in Scripture. They go on to say that baptism is based on faith; the mode in which it's done is of no relevance. In an alternative universe void of divinely set rules and commandments, these would be perfectly acceptable platforms to preach from. Unfortunately, this isn't that universe.

I also recently had someone tell me that because I don't believe in the Trinity, a discussion on an appropriate mode of baptism is impossible. I once told my math teacher that because I thought his views on the death penalty were wrong, 2+2 would no longer = 4 and that I fully rejected his further teachings of basic arithmetic. The doctrine of the Trinity has no relevance in an examination of the existence, or lack thereof, of baptism by sprinkling in Scripture. Telling the world that oranges are green won't affect the colour of apples.

The discussion about which mode of baptism is acceptable starts and ends with the very definition of the word. It's an awfully simply solution to a problem hundreds and hundreds of years old:

English: Baptize
Greek: Baptizo
1) to dip repeatedly, to immerse, to submerge (of vessels sunk)
2) to cleanse by dipping or submerging, to wash, to make clean with water, to wash one's self, bathe
3) to overwhelm

Now, I don't claim any kind of mystical powers of deduction, but as far as I'm able to understand from the definition above, baptism means "submerge". Therefore, the logic goes something like this: Baptism is full immersion because baptism means to "submerge". Sprinkling doesn't "submerge". Therefore, sprinkling isn't baptizing because sprinkling doesn't "submerge".

In any normal situation containing any number of normal, logical conversations, this would be enough to end the debate. But with enough fighting spirit to make a football team blush, supporters of sprinkling trudge on. After exhausting all of their appeals to "faith" and "grace" and Tertullian quotes, they will claim a baptism conversation void by invoking the "You Don't Believe in the Trinity So We Can't Talk About Baptism" rule, all because the Trinitarian formula (Mat. 28:19) is a must for any baptism to be considered valid.

Note: I wonder why it's wrong to defend a single mode of baptism and yet make the formula a requirement.

Much like the definition of baptism, the embarrassing facts surrounding the required baptismal 'formula' aren't hard to miss. Every time the Bible records the name or formula associated with an actual baptism in the New Testament, it describes the name Jesus. All five such accounts occur in the Book of Acts (the history book of the early church):

The Jews - Acts 2:38
The Samaritans - Acts 8:16
The Gentiles - Acts 10:48
The disciples of John (rebaptized) - Acts 19:5
Saul/Paul - Acts 22:16

References or allusions to baptism in Jesus' name - Romans 6:3-4; I Corinthians 1:13; 6:11; Galatians 3:27 ; Colossians 2:12; James 2:7.

Houston...come in Houston...

Anyone fervently defending the use of the Trinitarian formula in baptisms would be left with no choice but to claim these baptisms in Acts null and void. (Gasp) Did anyone ever tell Paul his baptism wasn't legit?

The baptisms were obviously accepted by God, and for obvious reasons: "...it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has commissioned us; he has put his seal upon us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee." (2 Corinthians 1:21-22) "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied." (1 Peter 1:2) It's God the Father who has used Jesus Christ and his Spirit to work in the life of a believer. The so-called "formula" is surprisingly absent from the Bible given it's importance.

I don't know if Scripture could possibly be any clearer: Sprinkling isn't an acceptable mode of baptism because sprinkling doesn't submerge. The Trinitarian formula isn't necessary because there are numerous baptisms which occurred without the phrase ever being used.

There is no defense to baptism by sprinkling.

Infant Baptism - An Exchange With A Catholic Priest

2006-09-25T18:04:00.000-04:00

Curious: I'm curious as to the Catholic view on infant baptism. Where is this rite supported in Scripture?

Catholic: ...from the Douay-Rheims to "Bible Believing Christians": Acts Of Apostles 16:15 "And when she was baptized, and her household, she besought us, saying: If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. And she constrained us." 1 Corinthians 1:16 "And I baptized also the household of Stephanus; besides, I know not whether I baptized any other." I am certain these households had infants and children in the families of both the freemen and slaves.

Curious: The support for infant baptism in Scripture comes from two verses that mention "household" and an assumption that these same households contained children?

"He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." Mark 16:16

"And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." Acts 8:37

Both of these verses stress the need for knowledge (belief) before baptism can occur. Do infants believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?

"You are all sons of God through your faith in Jesus Christ, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ." Galatians 3:26 Here, Paul tells us that baptism is a result of faith. Do infants have faith?

"Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." Hebrews 11:6 Since infants don't have faith and don't believe He exists and don't earnestly seek him (from lack of understanding due to age), then it's impossible for them to please God. Since baptism is a result of faith, baptism pleases God. Baptizing an individual without faith is pointless.

Catholic: The parents, godparents, and community profess the faith in the name of the child. Our parents and guardians feed and nourish us physically and spiritually as well.

Paul says: "When I was a child, I spoke as a child..." Undoubtedly Pauls parents spoke for him at a young age.

Curious: I understand but that's not evidence of infant baptism in Scripture. A belief in God and Christ Jesus is unquestionably required before baptism, would you not agree? Even Christ himself wasn't baptised as a child. Following his example is undoubtably the safest bet.

Catholic: ...as a priest of the Roman Catholic Church, I defend her Holy Wisdom through the Deposit of Faith which is Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium, which is the teaching authority of the Church. For me and 1.4 billion Catholics it cannot be simply Sola Scriptura.

Thanks again.

Curious: Scripture seems silent then regarding infant baptism. Thank you for your time. Mat 22:14 For many are called, but few are chosen.

---

Infant baptism follows hard on the heels of purgatory, limbo and heaven & hell going. It's not Biblical and therefore not recognized by God. Infant baptism appeals to the emotion of mankind and this is why it's a common practice nowadays. As with most doctrinal discussions, inevitably a defense is sought in the authority of the Church (i.e. the Bible doesn't say it but the Church does) and numbers (e.g. billions of Catholics can't all be wrong).

The Jewish Economy

2006-09-15T13:20:00.000-04:00

Fascinating news out of Israel, cementing the idea of a nation blessed by God as laid out in Deu 7:6: "For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth." As a side note, there are those (many) critics who will argue that Israel has 'lost' it's right to these blessings and promises but it's an argument based on jealousy (why Israel and not me?) and a misunderstanding of the place "worldly nations" play in God's plan. The burden of proof rests with the critic to show where, in Scripture, God doesn't keep His promises and where we're told these promises have been 'moved' to another nation.

Nonetheless, with history has a guide, it's not difficult to see the amazing results of God portecting His chosen people. The rebirth of the nation of Israel, the regathering of the Jews, and their ability remain a nation whilst surrounded by millions of Jew-hating religious fantatics. God's protective hand cannot be denied.

According the Israeli sources, this was, by far, the best year in the country's economic history:
• The surplus for the first half of 2006 reached 5 percent of GDP - historically unprecedented, globally rare and with huge positive implications for the future of the country.
• To compare, Canada's 2006 surplus is forecast to 'only' hit 0.6% of GDP. Canada was the only G7 country to record a surplus in 2005.
• Incredibly enough, Israel's surplus occurred against a background of a sharp rise in oil prices which traditionally creates a significant negative impact on the economy.
• Israel has the highest average living standards in the Middle East.
• Agriculture in Israel is very effective, as is able to covering about 75% of domestic needs, despite the limited land available.

An opinion piece in the Jerusalem Post reads as follows: "Let's interrupt at this point to note that the foregoing can be simply rephrased: The Israeli economy as it existed in the first 50 years of the state...is no more. This is a rich country, getting rapidly richer. The government budget has also been in surplus, government debt has been declining and the government's role in the economy has been steadily shrinking. The labor force is growing, employment is rising and inflation is not an issue for anyone except professional economists."

One could argue that God doesn't dable in 'trivial' issues like a nation's economy but the fact of the matter is that ever since God promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob their descendants would be blessed above all people", the Israelites have enjoyed unparalled success and good fortune, in everything ranging from wars to economy to individual personal wealth to sustainable argiculture in a rather small area. This theme can be traced back to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt to their time in Promised land to today. But this isn't the interesting point. What's really worth remembering is the inevitable reaction of the Israelites after they had enjoyed periods of incredible blessings: they turned away from God, often put their trust in themselves, and invariably they were punished, often severely, because of their behaviour. It's always been a rollercoaster of faith and dedication for the Jews and it's quite apparent that the Jews are on a personal high, especially with the way their economy is booming and the power of their military. This misplaced trust has set the scene perfectly for the invasion of the land as prophesied in Scripture. This is to be the punishment of the Jews. And exactly as in times past, once the Jews realize they've neglected their God and it's only through Him can they be saved, they will cry to him, and He will listen.

"And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God. Zec 13:9

Muslims vs. The Pope

2006-09-15T10:32:00.000-04:00

This is going to be something worth watching. I wonder how it's going to play out on the big stage?

--
Muslim anger grows at Pope speech

A statement from the Vatican has failed to quell criticism of Pope Benedict XVI from Muslim leaders, after he made a speech about the concept of holy war. Speaking in Germany, the Pope quoted a 14th Century Christian emperor who said the Prophet Muhammad had brought the world only "evil and inhuman" things.

Pakistan's parliament passed a resolution on Friday criticising the Pope for making "derogatory" comments.

The Vatican said the Pope had not intended to offend Muslims. "It is clear that the Holy Father's intention is to cultivate a position of respect and dialogue towards other religions and cultures, and that clearly includes Islam," said chief Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi in a statement. But in spite of the statement, the pontiff returned to Rome to face a barrage of criticism, reports the BBC's David Willey in Rome.

The head of the Muslim Brotherhood said the Pope's remarks "aroused the anger of the whole Islamic world".
--
BBC.co.uk

The Everlasting Covenant

2006-09-04T22:18:00.000-04:00

Down through the ages, many Churches have deliberately taught millions of people that the Jews and Israel, were permanently excluded from God's favour, something completely opposite to Bible teaching.

An Everlasting Covenant.
The promises to the ancients were eternal promises described in Gen.17:7-8 "I will establish my covenant between me and thee and they seed after thee in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee...and to they seed after thee...And I will give unto thee and thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger...all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession."

There are three important things to note in this Scripture:
1. The Father made an everlasting covenant with Abraham which has NEVER been revoked
2. Under that Covenant, Abraham and his seed after him, the Jewish nation, was promised everlasting possession of the Land of Canaan, which stretches (under promise) from the River of Egypt to the Euphrates River
3. The covenant and the possession promised to Abraham demands the resurrection and eternal life of Abraham, to whom the promises were made.

To all those critics of the Jews, I challenge anyone, anywhere, to show from the Scriptures where the covenant promises to Abraham were revoked. The Psalmist of Psalm 89:34, assures us of the certainty of the Father's promises by writing "MY COVENANT WILL I NOT BREAK, NOR ALTER THE THING THAT IS GONE OUT OF MY LIPS."

The claim by many Churches that the 'promises' of the Father now only apply to the 'church', falls down badly in the face of plain Scripture. Luke was moved to warn that there would be "weeping and gnashing of teeth" when some see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom and "yourselves thrust out". The promises of "the Gospel preached to Abraham", included "his seed", so it's improbable that Abraham , Isaac and Jacob would be in the Kingdom on their own, the more so as Jesus told the Disciples that in the Kingdom they would "judge" the twelve Tribes of Israel. (Matt 19:28) (See also Revelation 7:4)

Not only so, Moses told Israel before they entered the Promised Land for the first time that the time would come when they would be scattered to all parts of the earth, but also that He (God) will "have compassion on thee and will return and gather thee from all the nations whither the Lord hath scattered thee." (Deut 30:3) Amos, the Prophet to the ten Tribes, wrote of Israel "I (God) will bring again the captivity of my people Israel...and I will plant them upon their own land and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them." (Amos 9:14-15. Ezekiel adds to Amos' words of the future for Israel: "I have gathered them to their own land ....I have poured out my spirit upon the HOUSE OF ISRAEL." (Ez.39:28-29

The scattering of Israel was the Lord's doing. The regathering of Israel is also the Lord's doing and their possessing the Land for an everlasting possession will be the Lord's doing. And even though Israel did not do all the things expected of them, the promises of the Father were never rescinded and thus they are still to be fulfilled. Not only so, the promise that all nations should be blessed through the "seed", has also not been fulfilled.

FOUR THOUSAND YEARS HISTORY
We read in Deuteronomy 28:58-68 the steps the Father promised He would take if Israel did not "observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, THE LORD THY GOD". These verses are like a pre-written history of the Jewish race for the next 4,000 years, but no where, in any other part of the Bible, are we told that the Father would permanently cast aside those who were selected as His special and "peculiar people". (Deut.14:2)

CORRECT-PUNISH:
Twice in the prophecies by Jeremiah, the Father promised Israel, that white He undoubtedly was going to punish them for their waywardness and their refusal to obey His requirements of them, "yet will I not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure and will not leave thee altogether unpunished." (Jer.30:11). The reason was: "I will be sanctified in you before their (the heathen) eyes". (Ez.36:23) We must keep in mind that it was the Father's decision that His great Name was to be sanctified and vindicated to the whole world, through Israel, not through any other nation.

SCATTERED:
In Deuteronomy 28:58-68, there is listed all the things the Lord said He would do to Israel for their unfaithfulness and every word of it came true, particularly verse 64: " And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other:"

The simple reason why God scattered Israel was that they had turned their back on Him and because they had worshipped "other gods" of wood and stone. But was this to be the end of the promises to Israel? Absolutely not.

REGATHERED:
In Deuteronomy 30:3-9 we read of the final purpose of the Father: "That then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations, whither the LORD thy God hath scattered thee. If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the LORD thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee: And the LORD thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it; and he will do thee good, and multiply thee above thy fathers. And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. And the LORD thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them that hate thee, which persecuted thee. And thou shalt return and obey the voice of the LORD, and do all his commandments which I command thee this day. And the LORD thy God will make thee plenteous in every work of thine hand, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy land, for good: for the LORD will again rejoice over thee for good, as he rejoiced over thy fathers:"

NO MORE PULLED UP:
Again, no where in the Scriptures have any of these promises to the Jews of Israel, been rescinded, but rather Israel is fulfilling the promise of the return to the land, in this, our day.
• "And I will bring them and they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem." Zech. 8:8
• "I will settle you after your old estates..." Ezekiel 36:11
• "Like as I have watched over them to pluck up......so will I watch over them to build and plant." Jeremiah 31:28
• "Let them feed in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old." Micah 7:14
• "I will plant them upon their Land and they shall no more be pulled up." Amos 9:15
• "They shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of my planting , the work of my hands..." Isaiah 60:21

NOT CAST OFF PERMANENTLY:
The Apostle Paul, writing in the letter to the Romans, explains very carefully to the New Covenant Church "GOD HATH NOT CAST AWAY HIS PEOPLE which He foreknew" (11:2) In Romans 11:24-28, Paul prophecies that the natural branches of the Olive tree (the Jews of Israel) would be "graffed into THEIR OWN Olive tree" and he warns Gentiles and Gentile Churches "For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the gentiles be come in. And so ALL ISRAEL SHALL BE SAVED. For this is my covenant unto them, WHEN I SHALL TAKE AWAY THEIR SINS..."

The Israel Paul is referring to is not the "Israel of the Churches", but the nation of Israel, with whom the Father made the Covenant in the first place.

Jews in Society

2006-09-01T13:20:00.000-04:00

Very interesting words from an editorial in the Jerusalem Post:

"History has proven that no society can flourish in which the Jew feels unease."

While no facts or figures were presented, in light of Biblical prophecy and the powerful verse in Genesis "And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee..." (Gen 12:3), the force of this statement cannot be ignored. The Jews are God's chosen people. 4000BC to 2006AD, they are still His. And we would do very well to remember this in even our mundane day-to-day dealings with the modern day Children of Israel.

(the full article can be read here.)

Too Many Questions

2006-08-24T10:08:00.000-04:00

Now hear this: The use of concordances, lexicons and the asking of too many questions are hereby considered forbidden Christian acts.

------
"A Rant Against Jason Grant"

Perhaps you know of or have come across a “Jason Grant”.

Jason is a person who will tell you that, like you, he’s just “trying to understand” but before he even completes the sentence will tell you what it all means. He is a self professed “expert” in Greek, Hebrew and Babylonian lexicon that will help you to “understand” the “true” context of scripture hidden to all but him. He will reply to your thoughts with “Hmmm, that’s really interesting” and proceed to explain the “real” meaning of the bible by demonstrating he hasn’t heard a word you’ve said. He will respond to your thoughts with 25 questions so extreme and bizarre that only God himself could have the patience to endure it. If you chose to respond to any single one of them, a new list of 25 questions will emerge, growing exponentially to reveal his real motive isn’t to educate but to exhaust. He will manipulate your musings to the ridiculous. He believes that anyone who stops responding to his inane onslaught has done so because he was right all along fueling his belief in his own inerrant understanding. He speaks as if he were a prophet of God who alone was given true understanding and wisdom, a true keeper of the faith, in reality he is a fog. He must always have the last word.

I am done enduring him. I shake off the dust of my feet as a testimony to Jason Grant.

posted by Rink Rat at 10:15 AM on Aug 15 2006
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The backbiting condemer becomes a righteous judge of person.

Psa 31:18 "Let the lying lips be put to silence; which speak grievous things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous."

Jesus Forgiving Sins?

2006-08-14T22:42:00.000-04:00

The question is often floated around in various Christian debate circles: If Jesus is not God, how can he forgive sins? It's a question surprisingly easy to answer:

Matthew 9:2-8. "And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee. And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth. And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. And he arose, and departed to his house. But when the multitudes saw it, they marveled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men."

The multitudes understood this situation perfectly. They understood that God had given this authority to man.

That same authority - the power to forgive sins - was also granted to the apostles.

John 20:21-23. Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit: Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained."

Clearly, it is not necessary to be God in order to forgive sins.

Which Kingdom Are You Looking For?

2006-08-08T20:12:00.000-04:00

THE KINGDOM OF MEN
1 Samuel 8:11-18

• He will take your sons
• And he will take your daughters
• And he will take your fields
• And he will take the tenth of your seed
• And he will take your menservants, maidservants, and goodliest young men
• He will take the tenth of your sheep
• And ye shall be his servants.

And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and Yahweh will not hear you in that day.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD
Psalm 72:1-17

• He shall judge thy people with righteousness
• He shall judge the poor of the people
• He shall save the children of the needy
• He shall deliver the needy when he crieth
• He shall spare the poor and needy
• He shall save the souls of the needy
• He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence

Prayer also shall be made for him continually; and daily shall he be praised - all nations shall call him blessed

You choose.

Preterism

2006-08-08T19:52:00.000-04:00

Preterism is a Christian belief that some or all of the biblical prophecies concerning the Last Days (or End Times) refer to events which actually happened in the first century after Christ's birth. The term "preterism" comes from the Latin 'praeter', meaning "past". Adherents of Preterism are known as Preterists. Full preterism states that all prophecies about the Kingdom were fulfilled in the first century and the Kingdom of God was set up in or around AD70 when Jerusalem fell to the Romans. Many preterists cling to "time statements" that are used in the NT which suggest that the Kingdom of God was about to come when Jesus was on the earth.

How does the preterist look at Nebuchadnezzar’s image in Daniel 2? Can there be any interpretation that finds its fulfillment in AD70?

The image consists of five elements:

• Head of gold
• Breast and arms of silver
• Belly and thighs of bronze
• Legs of iron
• Feet of iron and clay

We are told that the golden head represents Nebuchadnezzar (Babylon) and the other elements represent “kingdoms” that would follow on after. The book of Daniel itself tells us what the second and third kingdoms are: Daniel 5 tells us that Medo-Persia followed Babylon and then in Daniel 8 we find that Greece followed Medo-Persia. We can be fairly sure that this is a solid interpretation based on two other facts:

1. The parallel prophecy in Daniel 7 where there are four beasts. The lion is a good representation of Babylon, the bear of Medo-Persia, raised up on one side (the Persian part was the stronger) and leopard represents Greece with its four heads corresponding to the division of the empire into four parts (also mentioned in Daniel 8 about Greece).
2. History confirms that these were empires that held sway over the people and land of Israel, in that order.

The fourth kingdom of iron is not mentioned in Daniel, nor anywhere in the Old Testament. This is because it only had its beginnings after the Old Testament had been finished. But we can be fairly certain that Rome is the 4th empire. In the days of the Lord Jesus Christ it was Rome that held sway over God’s people.

The feet and toes are not a fifth kingdom. We know this for three reasons:

1. They are not introduced, as the second, third and fourth are, with words to the effect “and a fifth kingdom” or “another kingdom”. It simply says “and the kingdom shall be…” This suggests it is a continuation of the fourth kingdom of iron but with the introduction of clay.
2. There are only 4 kingdoms in Daniel 7.
3. Rome has held sway over God’s people and nothing has replaced it. This 3rd point is significant in the light of the book of Revelation, which takes up the picture and presents a story of the apostasy (Roman Catholic Church) in opposition to the saints.

We are told that a stone came and smote the image on the feet, destroying not only the feet but the whole image. The kingdom of men was replaced by the kingdom of God in the vision, and it filled the whole earth.

In what sense can these things be slotted into AD 70? The preterist is forced to say that the stone smiting the image represents Christ coming in AD 70 against Jerusalem. Unfortunately this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever:

1. The image is antagonistic to Israel. The image is destroyed in the vision, not Israel. Unless things can be twisted to the effect that Israel becomes the image (which would be a valiant feat of interpretation) AD 70 simply cannot be the fulfillment of the prophecy.
2. The kingdom of iron, Rome, was not destroyed in AD 70. In fact it was the victor and it continues until this day.
3. When Jesus came in judgment through the agency of the Roman armies in AD 70 the kingdom of men was not utterly destroyed. It still continues.

One of the mistakes of preterism is their use of the various “time statements” in the New Testament. This post will briefly examine time statements that, if taken at face value without looking into what they actually mean, suggest the kingdom of God was about to be set up in the generation of the apostles.

The problem comes with not understanding what the word “kingdom” denotes in the Greek. The word is “basileia”, and the English “kingdom” is not necessarily a good translation in all contexts, or rather it is not a full translation of the word. When we, as English speaking people, think of a “kingdom” we generally picture a territory ruled over by a sovereign. However, consider one lexicon’s definition of the word “basileia”:

1. royal power, kingship, dominion, rule
1a) not to be confused with an actual kingdom but rather the right or authority to rule over a kingdom
1b) of the royal power of Jesus as the triumphant Messiah
1c) of the royal power and dignity conferred on Christians in the Messiah’s kingdom
2. a kingdom, the territory subject to the rule of a king
3. used in the N.T. to refer to the reign of the Messiah

Notice definition (1) above since this is how the word “basileia” is often used in the New Testament. The word does signify a kingdom or realm, i.e. a territory or country governed by a ruler, it also signifies the majesty, title and honour of a king. The things of a king are thus expressed by “basileia”. To illustrate this consider one of the favourite verses of the preterist:

“Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom” (Matt 16:28).

The preterist will say that this means the apostles would see the coming of Christ and the establishment of the (spiritual) kingdom of God in their own generation. They are only half right. The juxtaposition of this verse and the vision on the mount of transfiguration is not to be lost sight of. Note Peter’s comments on his experience:

“For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount” (2 Pet 1:16-18).

The word for “coming” in this passage is “parousia”. It comes from the word “pareimi” which means “to be present” or “to have come”. Therefore Peter and the other disciples saw Jesus in his parousia, in his actual presence. He had “come” already. But note what they saw – “power”, “majesty”, “honour and glory”. What Jesus was telling the disciples in Matthew 16 was that they were about to see the “basileia”, the majesty of the exalted king in glory and that is exactly what they saw.

John the Baptist said “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt 3:2). The word for “is at hand “ in the Greek is “eggizo” and is in the perfect tense. This tells us that John was not saying “the kingdom is about to come in the near future” but “the kingdom of heaven has come to hand”. i.e. it is present and in your midst. So John is saying that the one whose way he came to prepare, the king, was standing among them!

Just as in the Old Testament where kings and kingdoms are used synonymously (e.g. Dan 2:44) so we can read “basileia” as either “king” or “kingdom” depending on the context. The king was there, at hand, in their midst. But they refused his rulership and the kingdom did not come, and is still future.

The Rapture

2006-07-31T23:15:00.000-04:00

I heard the most incredible thing on the news tonight. A commentator was discussing the relevance of current world events with prophecies from the book of Revelation. The news person outlined the main beliefs and went into a brief monlogue describing each of the terms mentioned (Armageddon, Revelation, etc.). When it came time to describe what the Rapture was, the commentator opened with these words: "Even though it's not found in Scripture..." and continued to explain who believed in the Rapture and why.

This leads to one of the most glaring questions in recent memory: If it isn't in Scripture, how on earth can it even be entertained as doctrine?

Making a Meal of Things

2006-07-30T16:35:00.000-04:00

For someone who's taken on the lofty role of God's earthly representative, the Pope should really know better than to offer his voice on matters pertaining to in the Middle East.

Toronto Star - Pope Benedict XVI appealed Sunday for an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East, hours after the deadliest attack in nearly three weeks of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas. "In the name of God, I appeal to all those responsible for this spiral of violence, so that they immediately put down their arms on all sides,"
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The Pope "appeals to all those responsible". Hm. Isn't God the one responsible? In the grand scheme of things, the Israel-Lebanon conflict could very well be the tip of a much larger scenario, setting in motion events vital to the completion of prophecy. There are so many what-ifs. What if God doesn't intend for the conflict to end? What if the UN is supposed to have a military presence in Lebanon? What if Iran and Syria are supposed to get involved?

Instead, our role in matters should come in the form of fervant prayer, not taking sides one way or another, asking God to give us the strength and courage to recognize the signs of Christ's return, in whatever shape or form they may come in and that we may act accordingly should it be required.

Unwalled Villages

2006-07-17T14:51:00.000-04:00

It's going to be very interesting to see how the events in the Middle East will turn out. Keeping in mind Ezekiel 38 and the idea that Christ will return "like a thief in the night" (1 Thes. 5:2), in that people won't be looking for his return, I'm wondering if peace, albeit a temporary one, will be one of the prerequisites to prophecy being fulfilled. Ezekiel 38 talks about an invading nation coming into a land of "unwalled villages" (Eze. 38:11). As this land can't be any other than Israel, it appears that Israel is living in a state of safety (hence the unwalled villages) immediately prior to being attacked. Secondly, if things in the Middle East were SO bad, wouldn't every Christian out there be looking for Christ's return (and defeating the idea of him returning unexpected)? Although perhaps because of the mainstream idea one's hope ultimately rests in heaven with God and not on earth with Christ in the Kingdom, prophecy and events in the Middle East and therefore the coming of Christ will ultimately be ignored until it's too late.

It's also worth noting 1 Thes 5:3 "For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape." The word "say" can also be translated "call" so that this verse can either mean people are living in peace and safety OR people are calling desperately for peace and safety (in that that have neither). Regardless, what better time for Christ to return then when there's relative saftey in the Middle East? Who would be expecting his return then...?

It's been said that "unwalled villages" can also refer to an agarian society as outlined in Leviticus 25:24-31 but I'm not entirely convinced that Israel will be a nation of which the main economy is farming immidiately prior to Christ's return. The second half of verse 11 wouldn't make sense otherwise. "...I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates." The emphasis here is on a perceived safety, not agriculture. It's worth noting that agriculture currently employs less than 5% of Israel's working population and contributes only 6% of the national income.

Finally, Israel has been building the controversial "Separation Barrier" for the past year or so, made up of large concrete walls and a series of barriers, erected between the West Bank and Israel. As of January 2006, approximately 31% has been constructed; another 16.5% is under construction; 43% has been approved and the remaining 9.5% requires final approval.

So, does this wall need to come down if Israel is to be the land of "unwalled villages"?
Is "safety" in Israel going to happen one way or another before Christ returns?
If not, how would Christ return like a "thief in the night" if people are expecting him due to the extreme violence and unrest in the area?

Israel, Gaza and now Lebanon

2006-07-12T12:10:00.000-04:00

The news that Israel is attacking targets in Lebanon in response to the deaths and kidnappings of Israeli soldiers has been surprisingly subdued. Outside of Israel, I know of few other places on the earth where a country can bomb a neighbouring country and move tanks and troops in and out as it pleases all without it turning into an event demanding global intervention. "[The Israeli PM] called the latest hostage-taking "an act of war" and said he held the Lebanese government responsible, vowing that the Israeli response would be "restrained, but very, very, very painful". An act of war!!! Hello? Is this thing on??

"Israel sends tanks into Lebanon" is the CNN headline. This is a major world event and yet no one seems to be payng attention!! With tanks in Gaza and now in Lebanon and with daily growing resentment from Arab nations in the Middle East, there seems only the need for a single spark and the whole thing will go up in flames. Whether or not these events will play an integral part in Bible prophecy has yet to be seen of course but nonetheless, they should cause us all to pause and reflect and wonder if Christ's return is closer then we might have previously imagined...

Canada rejects UN council's censure of Israel

2006-07-07T13:17:00.000-04:00

This one almost slipped under the wire...

"Canada rejects UN council's censure of Israel" (CBC News)

Canada voted against a United Nations Human Rights Council resolution Thursday that condemns Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip and dispatches a fact-finding team to the region. The resolution, which passed by a 29-11 vote, condemns Israel's military attacks against Palestinian ministries, power plants and bridges. The resolution, put forward to the council by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, demands that Israel end its military operations in Gaza...Terry Cormier, Canada's representative on the 47-member council, said Canada voted against the resolution because it did not provide a balanced perspective on events in Gaza. "This draft resolution focuses almost entirely on Israel while ignoring that party's legitimate security concerns," Cormier said. "It also fails to acknowledge that the Palestinian Authority has a responsibility to prevent the constant firing of rockets into Israel, to resolve the present hostage-taking crisis and to prevent the recurrence of such criminal acts."...Also Thursday, Arab states presented a draft resolution to the UN Security Council demanding Israel "immediately cease its aggression against the Palestinian civilian population." The draft also condemns the military operation and demands Israel release members of the Hamas-led government who were detained last week. The United States and France said the resolution was not balanced and would not be voted on any time soon."

Very interesting considering prophecy and signs of the coming of Christ as we know that Scriptuyre tells us there will be a small group of nations who ally themselves with Israel around the time the "king of the north" invades Israel (Eze. 38, Daniel 11). It isn't so interesting that Canada (along with the US and France) is mentioned in this article as it is that there are some nations vocally supporting Israel in the face of Islamic/Arab criticism. We read constantly of nations condemning Israel for this action or that action and individuals calling for the destruction of the Jewish race but rarely do we read about nations and people actually defending Israel.

Perhaps this is something we'll see more of as that great day approaches.

Signs of the Times

2006-06-30T08:30:00.000-04:00

What an incredible turn of events in the Middle East. In less than 12 hours, Israel troops rolled into Gaza while Arab nations drew together to condemn the attack. Ominous words from the powerful Muslim community followed shortly after:

"The leader of the Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood blasted Arab governments."We haven't heard even a whisper from you," Mohammed Mahdi Akef said in a statement Thursday. "You can't provide medicine and milk and the necessities of life to our besieged people in Palestine ... You take a hesitant stance toward their freely elected government, fearing the spread of the virus of freedom to your own fertile pastures. If that's your situation, then what hope is there in supporting you?" he said. "Your nations, which have long been patient and swallowed their anger over your oppression, won't be patient forever." (CNN)

Surely if events such as this can occur in less than half a day, how much warning will Israel be given when their enemies move against them one final time, having finally lost patience?

Ezekiel 38:11-16: "And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates, To take a spoil, and to take a prey; to turn thine hand upon the desolate places [that are now] inhabited, and upon the people [that are] gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land. Sheba, and Dedan, and the merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions thereof, shall say unto thee, Art thou come to take a spoil? hast thou gathered thy company to take a prey? to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil? Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say unto Gog, Thus saith the Lord GOD; In that day when my people of Israel dwelleth safely, shalt thou not know [it]? And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts, thou, and many people with thee, all of them riding upon horses, a great company, and a mighty army: And thou shalt come up against my people of Israel, as a cloud to cover the land; it shall be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against my land, that the heathen may know me, when I shall be sanctified in thee, O Gog, before their eyes."

Ghana Vs. Palestine

2006-06-19T12:32:00.000-04:00

From CNN.com:
"Ghana officials apologized on Monday after defender John Paintsil waved an Israeli flag to celebrate their 2-0 World Cup win against the Czech Republic. Team spokesman Randy Abbey said it was important to point out that the Ghanaian FA was not trying to take sides in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Paintsil plays for Hapoel Tel Aviv and had wanted to acknowledge the Israeli fans who had travelled to Germany to support him, Abbey said. "He is obviously unaware of the implications of what he did. He's unaware of international politics. We apologise to anybody who was offended and we promise that it will never happen again. "He did not act out of malice for the Arab people or in support of Israel. He was naive... we don't need to punish him.""

Ignoring for a moment the obvious fact that he's playing for an Israeli team, waving an Israeli flag apparently means one is taking sides in the Paletine/Israel conflict? Showing any kind of affection or patriotism towards Israel is construed as being anti-Palestine? How ridiculous is that??? I suppose it's just another indication of how volitile the situation is and how quickly other nations can be pulled into the fight. A sign of the time perhaps...?

I wonder, if he had pulled out a Canadian flag, would he be accused of supporting Canada in its softwood lumber dispute with the US?

State of the World

2006-06-14T11:06:00.000-04:00

From the London Telegraph (May 25, 2006)

"One of the country's most senior bishops has reignited the Church of England row over homosexuality by claiming that same-sex partnerships are supported by the Bible. The Rt Rev Richard Harries, the Bishop of Oxford, said that traditionalists in the Church needed to be "converted" to see that homosexual unions are confirmed by the scriptures.

He reaffirmed his controversial belief that an openly gay man should be allowed to be appointed a bishop.

..."For there to be change, evangelicals have to be convinced that a permanent, faithful same-sex partnership is congruous with biblical truth."

Harries goes on to say: "It's difficult to have gay partnerships fully accepted by the Church, a Church in which evangelicals are a valued part, if they are so strongly opposed to it. There has to be a conversion to a new way to see that gay partnerships are not contrary to biblical truth. They are congruous with the deepest biblical truths, about faithfulness and stability."

If anyone was left wondering what Sodom and Gomorrah were like during the time of Lot and why God destroyed them both, we only have to look around the corner. Surely Christ's return is near...

Hell Ponderings

2006-06-08T22:11:00.002-04:00

For anyone out there who is a believer in the existence of the devil and hell (or even if you're not but have some interesting tidbits to add), I'm curious how you might answer these (since I haven't been able to track down anyone who can offer up a half decent answer):

1. If hell is reserved for all those bad people out there, was there anyone being tortured and punished for eternity prior to Adam and Eve or was it just a great uninhabited pit of fire and lava?
2. If the devil is a fallen angel who now resides in hell with all his fallen angel friends, who was in hell before the fall? And if Satan is hell's ruler, who was taking care of things before his arrival?
3. If hell was created in Genesis 1, why would God call His creation "very good"? Hell is the domain of the ultra-wicked and the springboard from which demons and Satan enter our world. How is hell "very good" if God's sworn enemy calls it home?
4. 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 & 9 are traditionally considered stock evidence proving the existence of fallen angels. If this verse is correct in the sense it's actually referring to fallen angels, how can Satan and his bad angel friends continue to carry out their subtle trickery on mankind if they're being held in "everlasting chains" (Jude 6)? Why would God chain them if this didn't prevent them from committing evil acts? Seems like a pretty useless punishment. Why not just kill them?
5. 2 Peter and Jude both refer to the evil angels as being held until the day of "judgement". God sending a bad angel to hell was the initial judgment. Why re-judge an evil angel? What can an evil angel in hell do to make God reconsider the original sentence?
6. Who was Hell's first human resident?

The Fall Guy

2006-06-06T10:27:00.000-04:00

What's this day called? Devil's Day or something like that? 6.6.2006 (or 6.6.6. just to make it easy). It's a shame more people are going to be commenting on, and asusming the existence of the devil instead of examing Scripture to see what it has to say about this mythical, unholy, fire & brimstone creature of pure evil. The devil isn't a fallen angel. The devil isn't out to get us. The devil isn't evil incarnate living in the fiery nether regions of some molten abyss tempting unsuspecting souls through ruse and subtle speech.

The devil is a figmant of Christian imagination as the fall guy for sin to remove personal responsibility from those who would rather point a finger. The devil is a sham.

The Supposed Unfairness of a Silent God

2006-05-29T14:52:00.000-04:00

The words of Pope Benedict XVI on well-publicized visit to Auschwitz:
"To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man, is almost impossible - and it is particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a pope from Germany. In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can only be a dread silence - a silence which is itself a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"

What the pope, and so many other Christians fail to realize is that God's apparent 'inaction' is, in fact, God's plan being carried out. Could God have prevented the slaughter of so many Jews? Absolutely. Could God have prevented WWII from even occuring? Of course. However, God's plan and purpose has been in effect since the beginning of time and this plan is unquestionably good and perfect, and as difficult as it can be to grasp, it's perfect even when it involves the death and destruction of families, tribes, countries and even entire cultures. Whether or not we think this is "fair" really isn't our call to make. "Fair" is an emotional response, not a response based on faith (as a sidenote, I wonder how people consider it 'fair' that a person must suffer unspeakable agony in hell for eternity after leading a sinful life that lasts, at most, 80 years and yet it's unfair when a few unbelievers perish in a natural disaster...)

Nonetheless, I find the pope's comments incredibly ironic considering the history of the Catholic Church, specifically the Inquisition during which thousands of 'heretics' were tortured and killed. We never read of similar questioning regarding God's silence during this particularly dark period in Christian history...

Regardless, we should all take comfort in the words spken by Jesus: "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven"

Perhaps the lesson in all of this is that God's chosen people, the Jews, have experienced, and survived countless, and current, attempts of genocide. A basic understanding of prophecy shows that this has been done, and is being done for a reason, whether it's to isolate the nation of Israel against the armies of the world (Zec 12:3 "And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.") or to regather the Jews to their homeland (Isa 43:6 "I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth;") or to maintain a global mistrust and dislike for the Jews (Psa 44:14 "Thou makest us a byword among the heathen, a shaking of the head among the people." From the Jews being led captive to Babylon in the Old Testament to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 to the Spanish Inquisition to World War 1 & 2 to today, God is shaping the minds and powers of the world in a way that He sees fit in preparation for the coming of Christ.

Zec 14:2 "For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity..." No doubt there will be people in the last days who will wonder why God "remains silent" in the face of such horrific destruction of His people as described in Zechariah, but our instructions are to remain faithful, ever watchful. We would do well to remember the words written by Isaiah: "And I will wait upon the LORD, that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him." (Isa. 8:17)

A Little Less Da Vinci

2006-05-22T14:18:00.000-04:00

On his website, Dan Brown says the following about the Da Vinci Code: "The Da Vinci Code is a novel and therefore a work of fiction."

Other then stirring the pot, why is the novel being treated as historical fact by Christians around the world? How is fictional work even debatable??? How about we spend more time reading Scripture and using it as an accurate account of Christ and his ministry rather then wasting our breath telling the world about how we feel in response to a little bit of made-up religious drama.

The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction. The end.

Who Are The Deceivers?

2006-05-17T10:01:00.000-04:00

Throughout the history of Christianity, there have been men and women who have turned away the hearts and minds of otherwise good people searching out God and His instructions for believers. The New Testament refers many times to ‘false teachers’ and ‘false prophets’ and it was obviously a problem during Christ’s time as much as it is today. In Matthew 24:4, Jesus says “…take heed that no man deceive you.” (cp. 1 John 3:7) It’s an interesting statement because it implies that learning and coming to a knowledge of God can be accomplished solely by the individual without anyone else getting involved. With no one else involved, there’s no man to “deceive you”. 1 John also talks about deceivers as those who “went out from us”, suggesting that these deceivers were once part of the 1st century ecclesias but who had fallen away and were now trying to lead as many astray with false doctrines as possible (see also 2 Peter 2:1-3).

Jump back to Deuteronomy 13. This chapter tells us that false teachers and false prophets were very much alive and well even during the time of Moses. The deceivers in verse 1 are “prophets” and “dreamers”. The deceivers in verse 13 are listed as a “brother” or “son of your mother” or “your son or your daughter” or a “wife” and even a best friend. It’s obvious what the problem is: those people who leading others astray were the ones with whom the closest relationships were shared. Mothers, fathers, brothers, church leaders…Note that this isn’t a concept that’s confined to the Old Testament. The deceivers who “went out from us” are the very same people mentioned in Deuteronomy 13. Matthew 23:27: “…for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.”

Christians can’t afford to take any one person’s views or words as factual truth. Discovering what God would have His believers do can easily be found within the pages of Scripture. Using God and Scripture as a guide will ensure we aren’t lead astray by any number of deceivers, no matter how long we’ve known them or what role they play in our lives.

2 Timothy 3:1-7 “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

There's a New Bishop in Town

2006-05-12T10:35:00.000-04:00

For anyone following the news and for anyone who's given this story a moment of your time, the Episcopal Diocese of California recently elected a heterosexual bishop last week, Mark Andrus. The gay candidates received only a handful of votes. However, Andrus is a liberal homosexual-rights supporter. This turns out to actually be a great move by the Episcopal Church because now they've got themselves a spiritual leader who supports both sides of the fence. When you're trying to appease society, what better way to do it then by voting in someone who shifts with public opinion.

These days, defending basic Biblical institutions such as marriage, sexuality, and differing roles of men and women are grounds for public mockery because they're "out-dated" and "old-fashioned". However, commandments written thousands of years ago don’t make them wrong because of their age. If God tells us homosexuality is wrong, then it's quite obvious that homosexuality is wrong. What's there to argue?

Interestingly enough, according to news reports, Episcopalians differ over whether the Bible permits ordaining gays...