Fear and Trembling

New Attitude’s blog has posted links to Al Mohler’s recent writings on homosexuality. You can find the links here . Part of New Attitude’s posted excerpt: Christians must resist the temptation to speak the truth in a manner that falls short of the good, the beautiful, and the true. We betray the truth when we speak of it with an ugly spirit, or attach it to base arguments or mean-spirited impulses. We must reunite what the secular world has divided and present Christian truth in all of its power, its beauty, and its goodness. – Al Mohler

The Intelligent Design (ID) movement makes much of the argument from irreducible complexity. Dr. Michael Behe has become famous for a simple example, the mousetrap. He points out that the mousetrap will not perform its function without all of its parts. The wooden base, the metal hammer, a spring, a catch and a metal bar to hold back the hammer are all necessary parts. One component by itself will not catch a mouse. Mainstream evolutionary science has a counter-argument. To paraphrase Dr. Kenneth Miller, if you disassemble the mousetrap, each component can serve as something useful on its own. If we take away the catch and metal bar, we have something left that can serve as a paper clip. The spring could make a simple two-section key chain. The wooden base makes a paperweight. Evolutionary processes like random mutation and natural selection can combine and retain the useful parts as the complicated evolves to perform the complex function. The useful parts are combined into the mousetr...

Bad news for the Southern Baptist Church. One leading research group is officially declaring the denomination in decline. Read details here . An excerpt: “This report is truly disheartening," said [Tom] Rainer. "Total membership showed a slight decline. Baptisms have now declined for three consecutive years and for seven of the last eight years, and are at their lowest level since 1987. Indeed, the total baptisms are among the lowest reported since 1970. We are a denomination that, for the most part, has lost its evangelistic passion."

I had the opportunity last night to see the new movie “Expelled” with Ben Stein (see here for information). I did not enjoy the movie. The documentary is not meant to be enjoyed. This movie outlines a problem facing scientists who speak up for the set of theories referred to as “Intelligent Design” (ID). The interviews tell several scientists’ stories, and their stories were devastating to me. I have always thought of science as the unbiased search for truth based on observation and deduction. (For an article on ID that shows some evidence of the treatment the movement gets from mainstream scientists, go here .) I knew that some of the books I have read by leading atheists showed considerable bias against theism (see the search labels Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins on the sidebar), but it seems even the mainstream scientific establishment is not immune. If the ID theory is wrong, why is it attacked in this fashion? It can’t be the only theory out there that is disagre...

“Justification may be defined as that act by which unjust sinners are made right in the sight of a just and holy God. The supreme need of unjust persons is righteousness. It is this lack of righteousness that is supplied by Christ on behalf of the believing sinner. Justification by faith alone means justification by the righteousness or merit of Christ alone, not by our goodness or good deeds.” – R. C. Sproul in Essential Truths of the Christian Faith , p. 188. I am not feeling very well tonight. Not in the sense of illness, more in the sense of depression. I am less than pleased with my own recent performance. Just when I think I’m getting better, along comes another opportunity to indulge the flesh, and I give in to temptation. It’s not that it was a matter that would be considered particularly bad by most. I just became very angry, and I lashed out at some friends. I apologized, but that doesn’t seem to help me much. I just fell into an old, self-destructive habit. What does a Chris...

One thing that seems to come up quite a bit in online discussions is the supposed lack of evidence of the Israelites exodus from Egypt. Justin Taylor comments here , with an excerpt from the upcoming ESV Study Bible . It’s another reason to want a copy of the ESV Study Bible on its release. Some more information is found here .

Written accounts, such as The Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, The Gospel of Judas and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, do not give us accurate information not contained in the Gospels we have in our Bibles. We know this, in part, because unreliable authors wrote these gospels long after Christ’s life, long after the lifetimes of eyewitnesses to that life. It is interesting that several of the alternative gospels put forth as historical show dependence on Matthew, Mark, Luke and / or John. “…the Gnostic Gospel of Truth (A. D. 140-150, doubtlessly known at Rome when Maricon taught there) cites a body of authoritative books that is [nearly identical with the four gospels.]” This means a body of written Scripture had to have existed before any secret Gnostic Gospels appeared since one of the earliest of these “secret gospels” had to recognize the orthodox Canon in its very attempt to redefine the Christian faith. [1] One of the gospels, dated in the early 100s, is ...

The New Testament gospels accurately reflect the original writings. We have several reasons to say this. First, even with the passage of almost 2,000 years, the words were preserved through history by multiple manuscripts. “Manuscripts” refer to hand-written copies of the gospels. That was the only way to do it in a world without the printing press or the computer. Many New Testament manuscripts were written on papyrus, a crude, fragile form of paper made from reeds that grew along lakeshores and riverbanks. [1] Of course, hand copying was difficult work, and the scribes sometimes made mistakes. But this hand copying was a reliable process in the ancient world, and we have many reasons to trust this reliability. The original text can be reconstructed by comparing the individual manuscripts with each other. [2] Thankfully, for the New Testament we have a wealth of manuscripts. In fact, we have over 5,600 manuscript copies of the New Testament available for comparison. We have fragments ...

Dan Brown’s book, The Da Vinci Code has confused many people about the life of Christ and the reliability of the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Many other writings, internet posts, films and documentaries have added to the confusion. Sadly, these things have even confused some Christians. However, much of what is communicated about the Gospels contained in our Bibles is simply not true. Ditto the other ‘gospels’ offered as alternatives. This is the beginning of a series of posts that will give evidence for the Bible’s trustworthiness. We will find that the facts of Christ’s life and teachings can be know and relied upon. The set of books that we have in our Bible is called the “canon.” This word comes “from the Greek, and it originally meant “a measuring rod” or, as we might say, “a ruler.”” It was the standard to see if something was straight. [1] Books were admitted into The New Testament canon based on: Apostolic authority—their association with Christ’s Apostles or those c...

LP Cruz at Extra Nos has a great short post here . Here’s part of it: When I see the effects of my sin to myself and to others and I see their sin's effects on me, I do want to recall what we have...at the resurrection, sin will be no more. When life here is not the way it should be, it is amazing how the heart hopes and becomes eager for that day, when tears and sorrows he will wipe away. Sin is the cause of these sad days, I mean in the ultimate sense. But what a day will it be when it is no more...one day, it will be no more. As a sinner saved by grace I can relate very clearly with the longing for the day when my sin nature will be eradicated, when sin in me will die its last death. I am in the process of undergoing God’s discipline for sin in my life. Discipline is not a bad thing ( Hebrews 12:3-17 ). This is a time to help me grow. But oh for the day when sin will be no more.

Colson’s Breakpoint Commentary is interesting today. Here’s a sample: …Popular author and atheist, Richard Dawkins tells Ben Stein in [the movie Expelled] that there could have been a designer of life on earth, but it would have had to have been “a higher intelligence” that had itself evolved “to a very high level . . . and seeded some form of life on this planet.” …. He really did say it -- striking admission, though it is.

About 1.2 million people in America identify themselves as homosexual (see here on the difficulties and assumptions for this estimation). Those in the Christian church have written much about the homosexual agenda. However, many of these writings do not show any evidence of an honest desire to show Christ’s love to those struggling with this form of sin (see and inciteful article here ). I wanted to make a small effort at outreach, and I hope that the reader would hear me out. I was raised in a small-town Southern-Baptist church. Was the church a little backward? Yes. Was the pastor a fundamentalist? Yes. Did he clearly preach the Bible’s main message? Yes, thank God. One part of the Bible he preached was the condemnation of homosexuality in Romans, Chapter 1. I became a Christian because of a particular sermon on Romans 1:18-32 . I heard the sermon when I was seven years old. There are many things in that passage that a seven-year-old in a small town in 1976 did not under...

Thanks to Cranach: The Blog of Veith for the link to the article here . Here’s an excerpt from an article written by a Chinese who was willing to go to prison as a consequence of the article. Please be aware that the Olympic Games will be held in a country where there are no elections, no freedom of religion, no independent courts, no independent trade unions; where demonstrations and strikes are prohibited; where torture and discrimination are supported by a sophisticated system of secret police; where the government encourages the violation of human rights and dignity, and is not willing to undertake any of its international obligations. Please consider whether the Olympic Games should coexist with religious persecution[,] labor camps, modern slavery, identity discrimination, secret police and crimes against humanity. As the Beijing Olympics slogan says, we live in "one world" with "one dream." We hope that one day the Chinese people will be able to share univers...

Theology is a worthy pursuit because its goal is simply for the individual to know God. But concepts, theories, and abstractions do not excite or ultimately satisfy me. I must know the God who is alive, who is real, who relates to me in my life. – R. C. Sproul in The Character of God p. 16. I love to think about abstract concepts. I spend much of my time inside my head pondering concepts and theories. I am comfortable there. It’s not that I am uninterested in the ‘real world;’ I find that the theoretical often has obvious implications for life in the real world. These implications seem to be more obvious to me that they are to others. I can ponder God’s attributes, the concepts that define God’s being and essence, and I often do so. But the hard work of applying these concepts to my life is where I get the most benefit. I find that God’s love for me helps me to cast all of my cares on Him. God’s justice leads me to turn to Christ for mercy. God’s wrath makes me run to Christ...

ACFAR , mentioned in the last post, also gives a link to a great apologetics resource on the web called Classic Works of Apologetics here . I will link to this site often in the future. Some great books found through the links on this site: Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis , the classic book on the moral argument for God’s existence Bibl ical Inerrancy by John H. Gerstner , a straightforward case (could Gerstner give anything else but a straightforward case) for a Bible without error "Greenleaf’s Harmony of the Gospel Accounts" based on work by Simeon Greenleaf, a great authority on legal evidences The Bible and Modern Scholarship by Sir Fredrick Kenyon , a noted work by a famous archeologist The site also includes topical links to: Christians against slavery (wish I’d have been able to link to this a long time ago) David Hume Thomas Paine Classic Works of Apologetics is well worth a surf. It shows that Christians have had good answers to skeptical questions for a long...

The ACFAR blog pointed me at an article by R. C. Sproul on the role of Scripture and creeds here . Sproul does a much better job of telling the truth than I did here .

“…if you simply address the God-shaped blank that people think they’ve got, the God you end up with is the God shaped by the blank. The real God specializes in taking the blanks in people’s lives and pulling and tugging and turning them into a new shape.” – N. T. Wright as quoted in “Mere Mission” in Christianity Today , January 2007, Volume 51, Number 1, p. 38-41. N. T. Wright is right about this one. Trends toward seeker-sensitive and seeker-sensible preaching stress meeting the non-Christian at the point of his “felt need.” The felt need is the thing that the non-Christian thinks is practical for his life. The felt need is useful advice to make his life easier. The problem is that all too often the preacher ends up using the Bible’s moral requirements as practical advice for living. This is not entirely wrong-headed, but the preacher forgets that what he is preaching is God’s law. These are God’s requirements. Man’s duty. And it is a duty that we cannot fulfill ( Matthew 5:4...