Category: Bible

  • Why Should I Bother With Church?

    I’ve been asked often, “Why should I bother with church?” With dozens of religious TV stations, many feel that they can get their Bible teaching without attending church. This is a great question that deserves an answer. I’ll start with an admission. Church is a bother. You don’t get many days of the week when…

  • God thinks it is funny

    Psalm 2:4 is an interesting passage. In the passage it says that God laughs. Exactly what is God laughing at? The previous verse says that he laughs at the efforts of men to kill the Messiah. They think that by binding the Messiah to the cross with fetters and bands they can be free from…

  • Old Earth/Young Earth?

    I do think that there is a knock down falsification argument against the most common young earth argument. Let me give it a shot on you and see what you think. Young earthers often say that Adam was created to look a particular age, say 21 for the sake of argument. This makes sense. Further,…

  • Free Bible software

    There are a couple of good sources of free Bible software for Windows. The price really is right. One of these is On Line Bible. It has some pretty good reviews. I haven’t tried it in a long time so I can’t comment on how good it might be (comments appreciated). Note it has a…

  • Two Things are Needful

    Who is my Christian Brother? There are two criteria for what makes a person a Christian. One is belief that Jesus is the Messiah. The other is belief that Jesus is the Son of God. What this all means is where the rub comes in.

  • Going from Specific to General

    It can be problematic going from a specific Bible passage to a generality. One obvious example is: Exo 4:20 And Moses took his wife and his sons, and set them upon an ass, and he returned to the land of Egypt: and Moses took the rod of God in his hand. Taking this passage as…

  • Unity at What Cost?

    I am thinking today a bit more about Acts 2:42 and the order of the passage. In the passage, Luke lists the four basic things that the early church was doing. This is an important passage since it is the first glance of what the earliest church was doing. These four things were devoting themselves…

  • Are we doing the right things?

    Ever wonder if we are doing the right things as a church? Acts 2:42 gives us a snapshot of the first moments of the new church. It is shortly after the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came on the disciples. Three thousand people were saved that day. Acts 2:42 tells us that “they…

  • N. T. Wright on the Resurrection

    Resurrection:(1) Current Questions and the Contemporary Setting Resurrection:(2) The Evidence of the Early Church Resurrection:(3) Paul and the Gospels

  • Christian Food for the Mind

    This is a great book on loving God with our mind by one of my favorite authors, Dr. J. P. Moreland. Dr. Moreland is a professor of Christian Philosophy at Talbot Seminary in Southern California. Dr. Moreland is an excellent speaker on subjects related to the Christian faith and Christian apologetics. He also served as…

  • What is Church?

    It has become common language to talk about the the building where Christians gather as the church. In response, it is sometimes said that the church is not the building, the church is the people. There is some value in this distinction but for several reasons it should not be overplayed. It is an ordinary…

  • The Atonement and Atonement Models

    This blog is in response to a question about my views on the atonement. I have to confess at the offset that I am not terribly sophisticated in my theology on this subject but as a good theologian I will not let that keep from commenting. Just do not expect my comments to be all…

  • The Sin of Man and the Justice of God

    The Augsburg Confession rightly says that God is not the cause of man’s sin: Of the Cause of Sin they teach that, although God does create and preserve nature, yet the cause of sin is the will of the wicked, that is, of the devil and ungodly men; which will, unaided of God, turns itself…

  • The Problem of Evil

    Dallas Willard is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California. Dallas is a Christian philosopher and thinker. He has written a lot of articles and books including The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God and The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives. Here is an article Dallas…

  • Matthew as Anti-Gentile

    The Gospel of Matthew contains some blanket condemnations of Gentiles. This article considers those condemnations. This is interesting in light of the charges that The Passion of the Christ is Anti-Semitic. Food for thought.

  • A Letter to Our Church

    Can you imagine getting a letter from Jesus to your church? That’s the situation that seven churches in Asia Minor found themselves in when the Apostle John penned the book of Revelation. The book starts out with the statement: Revelation 1:1-2 – The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His…

  • The Heavens Declare….

    The Psalmist wrote, “The Heavens declare the glory of God.” Sometimes we forget that. Today we got another reminder. Check out the pictures of Saturn from the lastest JPL mission to the ringed planet. It is certainly spectacular. And yes, the Heavens do declare God’s glory. Amen.

  • Freedom or Bondage of the Will?

    I am thinking today about libertarianism (Free Will) and determinism (Bondage of the Will). In particular, I am thinking about compatibilism. Under compatibilism there is an assertion that man is both free to choose and determined. The example of Saddam Hussein in prison comes to mind. In some very limited sense of the word free,…

  • Clay Prism of Sennacherib

    This is a neat piece of physical evidence for the historicity of the Old Testament. This clay prism describes the siege of Jerusalem by King Sennacherib. The text says “I shut up Hezekiah like a bird in a cage.” This matches the Biblical account of the siege where Sennacherib surrounded the city, but did not…

  • Heritage of Machen

    Machen fought the forces of liberalism in his day. His spiritual children ended up fighting each other. This article details the areas of battle.

  • Punting to Mystery

    Biblically, what is a true mystery? When are we justified in calling something a mystery? If there is a contradiction in our theology can we say that it is all rectified by recourse to mystery? There are things in Scripture that are called mysteries. The calling of the Gentiles was only hinted at in the…

  • Solving Alleged Bible Contradictions

    There are a number of passages in Scripture which are cited by critics of the Bible as showing the the Bible has contradictions. As an example, the infidels.org website has a long list of alleged contradictions in the Bible. They do this in an attempt to deny the Divine authorship of God’s Word. If there…

  • Walking on Water

    Why Walk on Water? The Gospels tell us that Jesus walked on water (Mat 14:23-32). At first glance this might seem like something that is too showy for Jesus. Why walk on water? Does this miracle story play a crucial part in the Gospel? Would it still be the Gospel without the story? The story…

  • Twenty Centuries Later – Locating the Nexus

    How Do We Understand the Bible? N. T. Wright, in his book, “The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is” addresses the question of how we are to understand the Bible in our modern world. Wright starts with an carefully developed historical view of first century Palestine. He puts his scholarly focus on…