Baked On Grease

/in , , /by

Oswald Chambers once said that one of the greatest strains in life is waiting on God.

It’s true.

You pray, you work, you hope, you pray some more and the thing that you’re wanting to happen continues to lie dormant and you wonder if you’re wasting your time.

You even start to doubt God and question whether or not He’s listening or if He’s telling you, “No.” And while you’re willing to accept the fact that maybe He’s got you on a different course than the one you’ve mapped out, the desire in your heart doesn’t fade and you find yourself stuck between defeat and despair – not sure how to proceed and not certain if you even want to try anymore.

Baked on grease can be a real challenge to clean up. But one thing that works really well is to let it soak. Some of the most stubborn messes can be easily wiped clean by simply letting that pan soak in some soapy water for a little bit and what a moment ago was virtually impossible to remove, not comes off easily and completely.

Regardless of how our situation looks, there are innumerable variables that only God can fully know. Sometimes what we’re asking requires the removal of some baked on grease. There’s things that have to be addressed in order for our request to be answered in a way that’s complete and structured in a way where He gets the glory. And in order for that to occur, we have to “soak.”

That doesn’t mean we do nothing, nor does it mean that we have to struggle with a negative or an exasperated disposition. Rather, we move forward with confidence and a perspective based, not on our circumstance, but the One Who’s in charge of our circumstances.

In other words, don’t give up…

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. (Gal 6:9)

God is always doing something (Jn 5:17) and there’s always a Purpose behind whatever it is that we’re contending with – a portion of that being the development of our spiritual biceps in order that we might become more like Christ (Rom 12:2; 2 Cor 3:18 [Is 40:29-31; Hab 3:19]). And while that doesn’t always resonate as a real priority compared to what we’re striving for, it’s only when we’re processing our triumphs in the context of true wisdom that our victories move us in a genuinely positive direction (Dt 8:10-18).

So keep at it and trust that, regardless of what might appear to be a gauge that doesn’t move or a situation that doesn’t change, God is listening and He is working. You might be having to “soak” for a little bit, but that is progress in and of itself and, like it says in Galatians 6:9, you will reap a harvest if you don’t give up.

Go get ’em!

Ten Questions for Atheists

/in , , , /by

Here’s my thought:

You remove God from the equation and the questions that are otherwise answered according to a biblically based dynamic are now responded to with horrendous probability values, concepts that bend the laws of Nature rather than explain them, and philosophical arguments that do not match what we know about the human experience. In short, you’ve got to do a lot of intellectual scrambling to make up for the lack of substance that characterizes an atheist’s perspective on life.

Take a look at the following questions and you tell me…

1) Where did you get your gravity from?

The origin of the cosmos, from the standpoint of the atheist, comes about as a result of a lucky collision of random elements. Then, thanks to the properties of gravity, physics, chemistry and so on, the elegant intricacies of life begin to surface. But where did you get your gravity from? Everything about your explanation is predicated on the preexistence of ordered systems within which your raw materials can combine and form into more complicated life forms. But you never attempt to explain who or what put the science in place that produces your end result.

2) How does a vacuum cleaner become a drummer?

If the starting point for life was something basic that then evolved into a thinking organism with a unique personality and capable of artistic expression, then at some point your “matter” is no longer a mere collection of molecules. It has somehow become both material and non-material and you’ve redefined the essential composition of what matter is. “Panpsychism” is not a new theory, but it borders on the absurd given the lack of evidence there is to support it.

3) Where is your fossil record?

When Darwin first published his theory of evolution, he admitted that the fossil record that was needed in order to substantiate his theory was sorely lacking. Chapter Nine of his book “Origin of Species” is dedicated to what constitutes the most glaring discrepancy of his theory. He says “Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.”1

He goes on to explain that it’s not his theory that is flawed, rather it’s the geological record. “Origin of Species” was published in 1859. The fossil record is no more conclusive now as it was 150 years ago. “Java Man,” the iconic image of man’s supposed distant ancestor, is a creative extrapolation based on three teeth, a skull cap and a femur.2 It is not even remotely close to a complete skeleton, nor are the other hypothetical half man / half ape intermediaries that fill the textbooks of biology classes throughout the nation.

The archaeopteryx (ar-key-OPT-er-icks), the fossil remains of a bizarre looking bird discovered in 1861, is unreservedly embraced by many proponents of Darwin’s theories as a conclusive example of a transitional life form, bridging the gap between reptiles and birds. The problem, however, is that birds are very different from reptiles in terms of their breeding system, their bone structure, their lungs and their distribution of weight and muscles. The fact that you have a reptilian look bird doesn’t qualify it as a reptile when it is fundamentally a bird.3

Michael Denton, in his book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, sums it up by saying:

…[T]he universal experience of paleontology…[is that] while the rocks have continually yielded new and exciting and even bizarre life forms of life…what they have never yielded is any of Darwin’s myriads of transitional forms. Despite the tremendous increase in geological activity in every corner of the globe and despite the discovery of many strange and hitherto unknown forms, the infinitude of connecting links has still not been discovered and the fossil record is about as discontinuous as it was when Darwin was writing the Origin. The intermediaries have remained as elusive as ever and their absence remains, a century later, one of the most striking characteristics of the fossil record.4

4) What’s the point of your existence?

That may sound kind of abrupt, but think about it: If the fact that you have a pulse is due to nothing more than a fortuitous and altogether random pileup of chemical materials, then you have no real role to play. Your presence in the cosmos is entirely inconsequential – you don’t matter to the storyline because there is no storyline and you’re just an insignificant bump in the road.

You might respond with a noble sentiment that says you’re here to do as much “good” as you can do, or you might feel liberated to be as self serving as you can possibly be. But, again, if there’s nothing intentional behind the structure of the universe, then even the very definition of what’s “good” becomes subjective.

In the absence of a definitive standard, what resonates as a positive to one person is perceived as a problem to another. In short, it’s all pointless. There’s nothing truly worthwhile that endures and you are nothing more than dust on a windy street.

5) How would you defend Darwin’s regard for Africans?

This is a little awkward:

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.5

Darwin saw Africans as being inferior to Caucasians. In his mind, from a scientific standpoint, Negroes were similar to gorillas in that they were an evolutionary precursor to Europeans. Given Darwin’s prestige as the iconic champion of Evolutionary Theory, no doubt this is something you agree with.

6) What makes your definition of “moral behavior” superior to mine?

While Hitler’s approach to the Jewish people today is regarded as unconscionable, in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s many perceived it as scientifically sound.

Germany’s “Society for Racial Hygiene” was Darwinian as far as its philosophical foundation and the ruthless acts committed in the context of the Holocaust were endorsed by some of the greatest German minds of that time as being a reasonable compliment to the forces of Natural Selection.6

Hitler’s approach worked for him and those who were like minded because they weren’t Jewish. But what if Adolf Hitler had been born a Jew? Would he have been as passionate in his belief that his race was inferior to those with blond hair and blue eyes?

Probably not.

But how would he have pleaded his case? If he was on the short end of Darwin’s evolutionary stick, how would he have convinced Germany’s scientific think tank that his brand of “moral behavior” was superior to their clinical justification for murder?

In the absence of an Absolute moral standard, the basis for one’s behavior is now more about what’s preferred as opposed to what’s right, and the code of ethics that is established for the community is established by those who are more persuasive rather than those who are more wise.

7) At what point do you admit that your theories are based on impossible scenarios?

Scientists have concluded that the chances of a single protein molecule coming together by chance is 1 in 10450 power. These are the sort of probability values upon which you build your entire approach to life, morality and all the intangibles that constitute the human experience. Is that your idea of a credible philosophical foundation?7

8) What makes your explanation of the origin of the cosmos any less “faith based” than mine?

You believe that something can come from nothing, that order can proceed from chaos and, given enough time, a plant can develop a personality. In other words, you subscribe to a doctrine that transcends the natural world as we know it, which is the essence of the term “supernatural.”

In the absence of the concrete evidence required to substantiate your theories, like Darwin, you have “faith” that science will one day vindicate your convictions. Regardless of how you attempt to veil your paradigm in academic sounding verbiage, your arguments are ultimately founded on a metaphysical platform and not an empirical one.

When it comes to the origin of the cosmos, you believe in processes and forces that don’t exist. If your aversion to including a Judeo-Christian perspective in the conversation pertaining to the creation of the universe is due to the fact that one must have “faith” in order to subscribe to such a thing, then what prevents you from disqualifying yourself given the fact that your approach is no less subjective?

9) Why does the tone of the conversation change anytime the name “Jesus Christ” is mentioned?

You can talk about any religious figure that has ever graced the world stage and the tone of the conversation remains comfortably academic. But mention the name Jesus Christ and something changes. People start getting a little uncomfortable.

Why?

If Christ is nothing more than either a ridiculous fairy tale or a self-serving promotion designed to advance the fortunes of charlatans posing as pastors, then why does the very mention of Jesus’ Name reverberate in a manner that makes people look down and take a sudden in interest in their shoes?

10) If the Bible is nothing more than a massive PR campaign, then why make Peter a coward, Moses a murderer and Jacob a liar?

Why include all of the flaws and shortcomings belonging to the principal characters of Scripture?

If Christianity is nothing more than a massive PR campaign, then how do you explain what is obviously a nonsensical decision as far as discrediting the heroes of the Bible by detailing their weaknesses and bad decisions? Peter denied that He even knew Christ while talking to a servant girl. He wasn’t even conversing with someone of stature. He caved in the face of talking with a girl that was probably young enough to be his daughter (Matt 26:69-70). Moses was guilty of murder (Ex 2:11-12) and Jacob was a liar (Gen 27:19). Compare that to the way even Muhammad’s fingernail clippings and hairs were fought over by his followers.8

Scripture presents human beings as they are and not the way in which an intentionally misleading commercial would attempt to play down the undesirable characteristics of its main characters. Furthermore, the Bible invites questions and acknowledges its absurdity should its central theme prove false (Is 1:18, 1 Cor 15:19, 2 Pet 1:16).

In short, this is hardly the verbiage of a text attempting to mislead its reader.

Conclusion

No doubt, there will always be those that simply refuse to believe. At the end of the day, it’s a spiritual dynamic that’s being engaged, which doesn’t always fit neatly within the confines of a box defined by purely empirical parameters.

But…

The existence of God can be recognized (Rom 1:20), the Reality of Christ can be observed (Acts 26:25-27) and His Gospel can be understood (Jn 6:65; 1 Cor 2:12; Jas 1:5). The only thing that’s illogical about the Bible is why God would go to the lengths that He does for the sake of humanity.

To dismiss the Bible and Christianity in general based on the notion that it has no basis in fact is not an assessment founded on evidence, rather it’s a choice inspired by preferences. What is it that possesses a human being to look at the stars – to consider the elegant intricacies of the created order – and respond with an explanation that contemptuously dismisses God and replaces Him with horrendous probability values, questionable time frames and theoretical processes that mock the boundaries of legitimate science? Moreover, what drives an individual to spit upon the notion of a sinless Savior who lays aside His right to condemn and sacrifices Himself in order to redeem?

Typically, atheists proudly promote themselves as enlightened thinkers that tolerate followers of Christ as fools that refuse to accept the obvious and instead cling to antiquated myths that are ultimately revealed as limiting and intolerant.

Here’s my thought: I see you at the foot of the cross either sneering at your God as He dies for you or dismissing it as a pointless fiction. I hear you dismiss the depths of the ocean, the expanse of space and the exquisite complexity of our planet as crossword puzzles that can be solved, it’s just a matter of time. And finally, I watch you passionately cling to a terminal existence where significance and happiness are built upon a foundation comprised entirely of things that are destined to die, quit or change at any given moment.

Christ brings a lot to the table – more than what you might’ve been lead to conclude based on whatever bad experiences you’ve had with “religion” in the past. Don’t evaluate a system according to the way that it’s abused and don’t dismiss your King according to the way He’s been distorted.

I’ve got no further questions…

1. “Origin of Species”, Charles Darwin, Penguin Classics, New York, NY, 2006, p250
2. “The Case for a Creator”, Lee Strobel, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 2004, p61
3. Ibid, p57
4. Ibid p56
5. “On the Origin of Species – Sixth Edition”, Charles Darwin, https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/jksadegh/A%20Good%20Atheist%20Secularist%20Skeptical%20Book%20Collection/Charles%20Darwin%20-%20The%20Origin%20of%20Species%20-%206th%20Edition.pdf, accessed March 4, 2015
6. “Darwinism and the Nazi Race Holocaust”, Jerry Bergman, http://creation.com/darwinism-and-the-nazi-race-holocaust, accessed August 28, 2015
7.”Probability and Order Versus Evolution”, Henry Morris, PhD., Institute for Creation Research, http://www.icr.org/article/probability-order-versus-evolution/, accessed May 11, 2015 (see also http://www.icr.org/article/mathematical-impossibility-evolution/)
8. “Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction”, Jonathan A.C. Brown, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2011, https://books.google.com/books?id=9JafXLrLiwYC&pg=PT48&lpg=PT48&dq=Muhammads+fingernail+clippings+&source=bl&ots=9yZoCsiR2G&sig=SGuWORW8dxaD9P_gOeAc9MqB3U0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAGoVChMIvNesz_DVxwIVCjI-Ch0HRg3t#v=onepage&q=Muhammads%20fingernail%20clippings&f=false, accessed September 1, 2015

Ten Questions Christians Can’t Answer | Part III

/in , , /by

7) If you believe the creation account in Genesis is allegorical, they why don’t you treat Paul’s epistles in the same way since he references the creation account in Genesis as historical?

Paul uses the fact of creation throughout his epistles. Here are some examples:

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. (Heb 11:3)

Since the person posing the question in this instance isn’t specific about which verses he’s referencing, it’s difficult to know what exactly he’s referring to. Typically, however, the difficulty with the Creation account is whether or not God completed everything in six literal days. Did He create the heavens and the earth in less than a week, or is a “day” nothing more than a literary device describing a timeframe that may have been significantly longer than 24 hours?

Fact is, there’s a great deal of compelling evidence that suggests the earth is not as old as some in the scientific community would have you believe (click here for more reading on that topic). The bottom line is that carbon dating and other traditionally accepted methods of dating fossils etc. are based on the assumption that the observable conditions of the earth have remained unchanged since the very beginning of time.

Indeed, the atmospheric conditions were not necessarily the same, which means that carbon dating is not necessarily absolute. While some calibration can be made in order to accommodate the atmospheric anomalies that may have been present at the time, those kind of distinctions can only be identified by whatever may have been documented. In other words, outside the context of recorded history, you have a very subjective landscape to navigate when it comes to dating articles of antiquity beyond a certain point.

On the other hand, when you compare Genesis 1:27 which says that God created both Adam and Eve on the sixth day, to Genesis 2, it looks like the sixth day either had a great deal of activity packed into the daylight hours, or you have more time built into the term “day.”

Our culture is steeped in the notion that we inhabit a planet that is billions of years old. It’s a convenient thought in that you now have a theoretically comfortable timeframe to accommodate natural selection and the fortuitous evolution of life as we know it. While there is a fascinating amount of research that’s been done in terms of dating the earth according to a purely biblical model, which suggests that the earth is nowhere near as old as the champions of evolutionary theory would have our grade school classrooms believe, for the sake of this conversation the only pertinent Truth that needs to be affirmed is the fact that God did, in fact, create the universe. However one wants to interpret Genesis and the age of the earth, the priority here, as far as the way in which Paul refers to creation, is to simply reinforce the fact that God was the Creative Force behind the origin of the cosmos and that is not allegory, that is the literal Truth.

8) How many donkeys did Jesus ride in His triumphal entry in Jerusalem? Was it one like Mark, Luke and John say, or was it two donkeys like Matthew says?

Matthew 21:2 says:

saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me.

Mark 11:2, Luke 28:30 and John 12:14-15 only mention one donkey. Jesus wasn’t straddling two donkeys as much as it was Matthew simply mentioning what constituted a complete picture of the prophecy articulated in Zechariah 9:9:

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!  Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (Zec 9:9)

Chances are excellent since the foal had never been ridden before, let alone paraded around in front a large and noisy crowd, having the mother lead the foal for the sake of psychological support would’ve been a logical move. Dr. Gleason Archer says as much:

The Zechariah passage does not actually specify that the parent donkey would figure in the triumphal entrance; it simply describes the foal as “the son of a she-ass” by way of poetic parallelism. But Matthew contributes the eyewitness observation (and quite possibly neither Mark nor Luke were eyewitnesses as Matthew was) that the mother actually preceded Jesus in that procession that took Jesus into the Holy City. Here agin, then, there is no real contradiction between the synoptic account but only added detail on the part of Matthew as on who viewed the event while it was happening.1

So, the gospel writers do not conflict with one another as much as Matthew is simply providing more detail.

9) Based on the genealogies for Matthew and Luke, who was Joseph’s father?

Luke follows the genealogy of Mary whereas Matthew follows the genealogy of Joseph. Jesus was the legal descendant of Solomon (Matthew’s genealogy [Joseph]) and a blood relative of Nathan (Luke’s genealogy [Mary]). The confusion is clarified when you take the verbiage of Luke 3:23 into consideration.

Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli, (Lk 3:23)

Luke is qualifying the list he’s getting ready to enumerate by stating up front that, while it was customary to trace a person’s lineage through the line of the father, the virgin birth represents a special situation. Hence the emphasis on Mary. That fact is further reinforced when you consider the original Greek and notice how Luke doesn’t say that Heil “begat” Joseph. Rather, he was Joseph’s father in law.

Joseph was begotten by Jacob, and was his natural son (Matt 1:16). He could be the legal son of Heli, therefore, only by marriage with Heil’s daughter (Mary) and be reckoned so according to law. It does not say “begat” in the case of Heli.2

10) Was Jesus crucified on the first day of Passover, like the gospel of John says? Or the next day like the other three gospels say?

The confusion stems from John 19:14 where it says:

Now it was the day of preparation for the Passover; it was about the sixth hour. And he *said to the Jews, “Behold, your King!”  (Jn 19:14 [NASB][emphasis added]) 

Matthew 27:62-63 says:

The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. “Sir, ” they said, “we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ (Matt 27:62-63)

Mark 15:42-43 says:

It was Preparation Day (that is, the day before the Sabbath). So as evening approached, Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. (Mark 15:42-43)

Luke refers to the day that Jesus died in the 24th chapter when he says:

It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was about to begin. (Lk 23:54)

“Preparation Day” was the day before the Sabbath, which was a Saturday. The Feast of Unleavened Bread was often  referred to as “Passover” because of the way the Passover meal served as the opening ceremony for the Feast.3 So, when John uses the term “day of preparation for the Passover,” he’s not referring to the day before the Passover meal, he’s referring to the day before the Sabbath of Passover week (Feast of Unleavened Bread).

The NCV rendering of the verse makes that fact more evident:

14It was about noon on Preparation Day of Passover week. Pilate said to the crowd, “Here is your king!” (Jn 19:14 [NCV][emphasis added])

In addition, John uses the Greek word “paraskeue” to define the day, which by that point was a technical term that referred to the “day of preparation” for the Sabbath.4

Remember, the Sabbath for the Jew is Saturday and not Sunday. Sunday would later be embraced as the “Lord’s Day” in that it was the day Jesus rose from the grave. So, given everything we’ve now considered, John’s account is consistent with all of the other gospel writers. Jesus was crucified on a Friday and the Last Supper happened on the evening before which was Thursday.

Conclusion

G.K. Chesterton once said, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” Many of the critics that circulate their jabs at Christianity on the internet occupy a philosophical position that refuses to concede the Reality of a Power and an Intellect that they cannot understand and / or agree with.  Their attacks are necessary in order to maintain a distance between themselves and a worshipful demeanor which they refuse to buy into. They have found it “difficult” and decided to deny its substance.

It’s healthy to be able to respond to questions and attacks, but the nature of these kind of conversations goes beyond a mere intellectual exchange. It is a spiritual contest that has to be engaged in a way that’s consistent with Scripture:

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. (2 Cor 10:4)

Know what you believe and why you believe it. Pop the hood on the Word of God and be capable of defending it (1 Pet 3:15). And remember too, that oftentimes there’s a bigger picture that you want to expose.

Squabbling over the number and the identity of the women who were at the tomb on the morning of Christ’s resurrection is subordinate to the fact that the tomb was empty. Arguing over the amount of time it took for God to create the heavens and the earth is secondary to the fact that God did, in fact, create the heavens and the earth. Dismissing the whole of Scripture because Matthew references both the donkey and its foal, whereas the other gospel writers mention only the foal, is like arguing over whether or not someone paid a ten dollar invoice using exact change or a twenty dollar bill.

The fact is, the debt was paid.

The details of Scripture are important, but you don’t ever want to become so absorbed in the minutia of the gospel that you overlook the fact that there’s a tomb out there that was occupied at one point that is now empty. And that empty grave is the Signature of One Who didn’t claim to be a mere messenger of God, but God Incarnate.

There will always be a critic and there will always be a situation where, regardless of how sound your reasoning may be, the spiritual elements that are involved will always see to it that “revelation” will remain seemingly inconsistent with logic (1 Cor 2:12). That’s not a cue to be less than compelling with your argument. But it’s not an argument that will influence a soul, it’s only the Power and the grace of God that makes the difference (John 6:65; 1 Cor 1:18).

Again, you don’t want to hide behind a “faith based perspective” that comes across as a decision made despite the facts, but rather as a decision made in light of the facts. Be ready to either answer the question being posed, or be ready to direct them to the myriad of resources that provide the science and the literary tools that address their quandary. But be sensitive to the fact that the moment the Name of Jesus is spoken, you’re no longer contending with purely academic themes. The parameters have been expanded and the stakes have been dramatically increased. You can be as compelling and as accurate as you want and still be found wanting. Not because of the substance of your argument, but because of the implications represented by your argument.

Should God be perceived as credible, it’s no longer a debate. Now it’s a soul-altering encounter and the forces referenced in Ephesians 6:12 will do everything they can to prevent that kind of dynamic.

So, be ready, but be wise and not just smart. It’s the Power of God in you that makes the difference and ensures that the outcome of your exchange is not just a willingness to agree with what’s in the Bible, but a desire to submit to the One Who authored it.

1. “Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties”, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, MI 1982, p334
2. “The Companion Bible”, E.W. Bullinger, http://www.heavendwellers.com/38%20Luke%201427-1509.pdf, accessed on May 19, 2015
3. Feast of Unleavened Bread..Passover. “Passover” was used in two different different ways: (1) a specific meal begun at twilight on the 14th of Nisan (Lev 23:4-5), and (2) the week following the Passover meal (Eze 45:21), otherwise know as the Feast of Unleavened Bread, a week in which no leaven was allowed (Ex 12:15-20; 13:3-7). By NT times the two names for  the week-long festival were vitally interchangeable. (NIV Text Note: “NIV Study Bible”, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, MI, 1985, p1582)
4. “Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties”, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, MI 1982, p375

Ten Questions Christians Can’t Answer | Part II

/2 Comments/in , , /by

This is Part II of “Ten Questions Christians Can’t Answer” – a response to a video on youtube that suggests that the questions being posed can’t be adequately responded to by believers. This article demonstrates that such is not the case. To access Part I, click here.

6) When Jesus rose for the grave, how many women went to the tomb and which ones?

The gospel writers reference several women, both at the tomb as well as at the foot of the cross. Matthew 27:55 says that there were “many women” standing at a distance from the cross as Jesus was dying. Luke doesn’t ever name any of the women, he just refers to them as “the women” (Lk 23:49, 55). And with the exception of Mary Magdalene, Matthew, Mark and John reference either different women or use different descriptions to identify those who were there.

If Matthew’s “mother of James and Joses” is John’s “wife of Clopas” and the woman John describes as “Mary’s sister” is the woman Mark calls “Salome,” you’ve got a total of four women and it looks like this:

 The Women at the Cross (each color represents one particular woman that’s described differently by the gospel writers)
verse Mary (Jesus’ mother) Mary Magdalene Mary, wife of Clopas Mary, mother of James and Joses Mary’s sister mother of Zebedee’s sons Salome
Matt 27:56 ✔ ✔ ✔
Mk 15:40 ✔ ✔ ✔
Jn 19:25 ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

While you have four different accounts, at no time does Matthew or John state that the women they reference were the only ones present, they simply chose to acknowledge a particular person or persons. Same thing with Mark. He only lists three, but he doesn’t qualify his trio to the point where he rules out the possible presence of other women.

Bottom line is we don’t know for certain who all was there, all we can do is connect the dots as they appear in Scripture. We can be confident that Mary’s mother was there along with Mary Magdalene. As far as the other two Mary’s and Salome, all we do is speculate as to whether or not the wife of Clopas was the mother of James and Joses and Salome was Mary’s sister. You’ve got the same kind of dynamic at the empty tomb.

Again, Luke refers to them as “the women” (Lk 24:1). Matthew, Mark and John again highlight certain personalities that were present:

 The Women at the Empty Tomb
verse Mary Magdalene Mary, the mother of James the other Mary Salome
Matt 28:1 ✔ ✔
Mk 16:1 ✔ ✔ ✔
Jn 20:1 ✔

Thanks to having looked at the way the same writers referred to “the women” at the foot of the cross, it’s not unreasonable to speculate that Matthew’s “other Mary” is the woman he described as “Mary, the mother of James and Joses” in chapter 27. That means that he and Mark are probably referring to the same woman in their respective accounts, as far as the “other Mary.”

Matthew doesn’t mention Salome and John only references Mary Magdalene. So, of “the women” that were present, we know of three for certain, although there might’ve been others. Mary Magdalene is a definite as well as “the other Mary” and another woman named Salome.

Over the years, several great minds have tried to more specifically identify the players that were present. Again, we’re looking at a situation where the Bible doesn’t clarify things as well as we might like, but there are two things we want to avoid in these kinds of situations:

#1 – fail to appreciate the big picture

#2 – attempt to edit Scripture in order to manufacture a scenario that’s easier to process

Dr. James D Tabor does a great job of presenting a case for Mary, the wife of Clopas, to being the mother of Jesus based on the fact that Joseph, Jesus’ father, is conspicuously absent from the New Testament shortly after his having brought his young family back to Nazareth from Egypt (Matt 2:19-23). It would’ve been customary for the brother of the deceased husband to marry the widow based on Jewish law. When you couple that with the fact that Clopas was the father of James and Joses and Jesus had two brothers named James and Joses, it becomes fairly obvious that Mary, the mother of Jesus and Mary, the mother of James and Joses (wife of Clopas) are actually the same person.

Should that prove to be accurate, the women at the tomb, based on Dr. Tabor’s theory and a comprehensive snapshot of Scripture would be:

  • Mary Magdalene
  • Mary – the mother of Jesus, James and Joses
  • Salome

That sounds downright compelling right up to the point where he suggests that the book of John has been edited.1

Regardless of how “logical” a particular explanation may be, if it involves having to change the content of the Bible in order for it to work, at that point the Bible is no longer inerrant and you no longer have the Word of God, rather  you have a flawed text.

Granted, what we have with the gospel writers is not conclusive in terms of the women that were there at the empty tomb. It’s not that they contradict one another as much as their decision to reference certain women in lieu of others results in a list of characters that’s speculative.

But it’s not who was at the tomb, it was the fact that no one was in the tomb – that’s the point the gospel writers are making. It could very well be that there was a whole congregation of women at the tomb which would mean that neither Matthew nor Mark nor John chose to document everyone that was present. But that doesn’t mean that their respective accounts are contradictory, nor should it distract from the fact that Christ had risen from the grave.

So, the short answer to our critic’s question is three, based on what we have in Scripture coupled with some speculation. But in the end, the emphasis should not be on who was not AT the tomb, rather the issue is Who was not IN the tomb!

Click here to read Part III!

1. “Something seems to be going on here. John knows something that either he, or those who later edited his gospel, chose to veil.” This is a portion of the post made by Dr. James D. Tabor entitled “Sorting Out the Jesus Family: Mother, Fathers, Brothers and Sisters at http://jamestabor.com/2012/12/27/sorting-out-the-jesus-family-mother-fathers-brothers-sisters/, accessed May 31, 2015

Ten Questions Christians Can’t Answer | Part I

/2 Comments/in , , /by

I) Popping the Hood on Scripture

The critic bangs his hand on the desk and insists that unless he can break down the Word of God to the point where it can fit comfortably within the boundaries of his intellectual preferences, his skepticism will remain intact and the condescending tone he uses when he addresses believers in Christ will also remain decidedly sarcastic.

When confronted with a situation in Scripture that doesn’t make sense, the believer responds as a diligent student does when they are challenged by something in the classroom they don’t understand. They don’t accuse the professor as being flawed, nor do they doubt the integrity of the curriculum. Rather, they proceed as someone who needs to learn as opposed to someone who wants to critique. It’s the philosophical starting point that distinguishes the cynic from his Christian counterpart.

The atheist needs to keep the Reality of God at an arm’s distance and therefore keeps the curtains drawn in order to maintain the illusion that man’s ability to reason is subordinate to the One Who gave him that ability to begin with. The Christ-follower, on the other hand, recognizes the limitations of the human perspective and, in the face of something seemingly illogical, labors to understand in the light of God’s Identity and Authority.

Still, you can’t simply say “If the Bible says it, then I believe it” and not come across as academically anemic. The passages cited by critics as evidence that the Bible is less than credible, can be resolved, you just have to be willing to pop the hood on Scripture and do some digging.

Dr. Gleason Archer

The problems and questions dealt with in this volume have been directed to me during the past thirty years of teaching on the graduate seminary level in the field of biblical criticism.

As an undergraduate at Harvard, I was fascinated by apologetics and biblical evidences; so I labored to obtain a knowledge of the languages and cultures that have any bearing on biblical scholarship. As a classics major in college, I received training in Latin and Greek, also in French and German. At seminary I majored in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic; and in post-graduate years I became involved in Syriac and Akkadian, to the extent of teaching elective courses in each of these subjects.

Earlier, during my final two years of high school, I had acquired a special interest in Middle Kingdom Egyptian studies, which was furthered as I later taught courses in this field. At the Oriental Institute in Chicago, I did specialized study in Eighteenth Dynasty historical records and also studied Coptic and Sumuerian. Combined with this work in ancient languages was a full course of training at law school, after which I was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1939. This gave me a thorough grounding in the field of legal evidences. Additionally, I spent three years in Beruit, Lebanon, in specialized study of modern literary Arabic. This was followed by a month in the Holy Land, where I visited most of the important archaeological sites. 1

Dr. Gleason Archer (see callout to the right) says as much in the preface to his book “Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties.”

As I have dealt with one apparent discrepancy after another and have studied the alleged contradictions between the biblical record and the evidence of linguistics, archaeology, or science, my confidence in the trustworthiness of Scripture has been repeatedly verified and strengthened by the discovery that almost every problem in Scripture that has ever been discovered by man, from ancient times until now, has been dealt with in a completely satisfactory manner by the biblical text itself – or else by objective archaeological information.2

And when it comes to one’s approach to apparent discrepancies in Scripture, he says:

Be fully prepared in your own mind that an adequate explanation exists, even though you have not yet found it. The aerodynamic engineer may not understand how a bumble bee can fly; yet he trusts that there must be an adequate explanation for its fine performance since, as a matter of fact, it does fly! Even so we may have complete confidence that the divine Author preserved the human author of each book of the Bible from error or mistake as he wrote down the original manuscript of the sacred text.3

At the end of the day, it’s not just what the Bible says, it’s what the Bible is. That’s what makes this exchange both significant and distinctive. We’re not merely gauging the authenticity of an ancient text. The question on the table is whether or not God exists and is the Word of God, in fact, His Message to us? Or, is it merely a religious comic book without the pictures?

The critic needs it to be the latter in order for their worldview to remain intact. But however fortified their defenses may be – regardless of the rapid abundance that characterizes their rhetoric – their stance needs to be countered with something compelling and in a way that points them to the Truth (Jn 14:6).

The following ten questions are posed in a video on youtube entitled “Ten Questions Christians Can’t Answer.” The questions are not the sort that break new ground as far as Bible difficulties are concerned and like the objections that have been raised in the past, there are rebuttals and explanations, it’s just a matter of referencing books like Dr Gleason’s “Encyclopedia” or any one of a number of other similar resources, not to mention Scripture itself.

The final frame of the video states that the “silence is deafening.” We want to make sure we can break that silence with something that not only addresses the questions, but more importantly provides an approach to God and the Message of that gospel that’s intellectually sound – unobstructed by questions that seemingly have no answer. In that way, it’s not only their intellect that’s satisfied, it’s their soul as well.

Here we go…

1) When Noah’s ark landed, how did the Kangaroos make it back to Australia?

There’s an article you can access by clicking here that elaborates on a time when the continents as we know them today were actually one solid land mass. That would give both animals and people the ability to migrate without having to contend with the insurmountable obstacle of an ocean between them and where they would ultimately make their home.

2) If the ark was covered in pitch, it also made it air tight. How did they survive for 40 days and 40 nights since Noah couldn’t open the window?

Probably because the areas that were covered in pitch were those that came in direct contact with the water as opposed to the airtight coffin you interpret the ark to be.

3) Why were Adam and Eve punished for eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil when they didn’t / couldn’t understand what they were doing?

They did understand what they were doing in that they had been told not to eat from that particular tree (Gen 2:17).

4) Why would God place the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil so close to His innocent creation, then allow Satan to tempt them and all the while stand back and do nothing?

Love and obedience go hand in hand (Jn 14:21) and love isn’t love unless its voluntary. In the absence of a choice, you don’t have love as much as you have a calculated reaction. Dr Ravi Zacharias explains it this way:

What would it take to create a loving world void of evil? A world in which love is capable of meaningful expression and experience would also imply a world in which there is choice. If someone tells you that they love you, those words mean something because they are freely given. If you learned that someone had told you they loved you but that they had been forced to say it, their words would not mean very much. Thus, if we want to speak of a loving world, we must also speak of a world in which choices are exercised. And in such a world, there is also the possibility of choosing a course of action that is not loving, i.e. evil.

5) When the women went to Jesus’ empty tomb, was the stone already rolled away, or did an angel roll it away after the women got there?

When looking at the four gospel accounts, Matthew 28:2 is worded in a way that’s distinct from Mark 16:1-5, Luke 24:1-2 and John 20:1. Matthew reports the scene of the empty tomb in a mannerthat makes it sound as though the stone was rolled away upon the arrival of the women that had come to care for Jesus’ body as opposed to it happening prior to their arrival. The NIV Text Note elaborates on the Greek verbiage used in the text as being past tense so there’s no inconsistency between the four accounts, even though there might appear to be.4 See also James 1:13. To continue on to Part II, click here.

1. “Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties”, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, MI 1982, p11
2. Ibid, p12
3. Ibid, p14
4 .There was. The sense is “Now there had been.” It is clear from the parallel accounts (Mk 16:2-6; Lk 24:1-7; Jn 20:1) that the events of vv. 2-4 occurred before the women actually arrived at the tomb (NIV Text Note on Matthew 28:2) NIV Study Bible, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, MI 1985. p1489

Maundy Thursday

/in , , /by

I) Intro

“The Last Supper” is one of the world’s most famous paintings. Leonardo da Vinci was commissioned by Lodovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan in 1495 to create, what is now considered, a legendary work of art. Today, the painting resides in the dining hall at the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. At the time, however, it was Sforza’s family mausoleum.1  

The painting measures 28 feet long and is 15 feet high. While it took three years to complete, it has been admired and studied for centuries.  Da Vinci chose to depict the apostles’ reaction to Christ’s statement that one of them would betray Him. He does an amazing job of portraying a number of emotional reactions which can be seen in the faces of every one of the disciples, all of whom are grouped in threes. While there are obviously no captions on the painting to reveal which disciple is which. Notes penned by Da Vinci himself have been discovered that reveal who’s who.2

If you take a look at the restored version of Davinci’s work crafted by Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli below, you can better decipher which disciple is which by using the key to the left.

 

1. Bartholomew
2. James, son of Alphaeus
3. Andrew
4. Judas Iscariot (Notice how he’s clutching what appears to be a money bag. He is also tipping over the salt cellar. This may be related to the near-Eastern expression to “betray the salt” meaning to betray one’s Master. He is the only person to have his elbow on the table and his head is also horizontally the lowest of anyone in the painting.)3
5 Peter
6. John
7. Thomas
8. James the Greater
9. Philip
10. Matthew
11. Jude Thaddeus
12. Simon the Zealot

When you pull back and pop the hood on all that happened that night, it’s evident that Jesus had a lot on His plate. There wasn’t anything haphazard about all that occurred, however. Ever since God’s initial conversation with Moses, where He laid out all that needed to be done for the Passover Meal, it was this particular evening that God had in His mind where everything would be brought together in a way that pointed to His Solution for man’s sin.

In a way, you could say that Jesus had a Divine script before Him that outlined everything that needed to be done in order for His death and resurrection to resonate the way that it needed to. It wasn’t just about positioning Himself as a martyr, it was doing so in a way that was consistent with the Truth and the prophecies that gave context to what was about to happen.

II) Divine Documentation

It’s nothing short of phenomenal when you really study God’s Word and see all of the symbolism and the manner in which all of these Scriptural “threads” are woven together in a way that results in something profoundly supernatural.

Ravi Zacharias is Founder and President of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM), which celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in 2014. Dr. Zacharias has spoken all over the world for 42 years in scores of universities, notably Harvard, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, and Oxford University. He has addressed writers of the peace accord in South Africa, the president’s cabinet and parliament in Peru, and military officers at the Lenin Military Academy and the Center for Geopolitical Strategy in Moscow.

At the invitation of the President of Nigeria, he addressed delegates at the First Annual Prayer Breakfast for African Leaders held in Mozambique.4 On a podcast entitled “Created for Significance, Part 2,” he explains how the existentialist lives for the moment, the utopian is always looking to the future and the Hebrew focuses on the events and the traditions of the past.

Given those dynamics, look at how Jesus addresses the present, past and future in the space of two sentences:

25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Cor 11:25)

  •  “For whenever you drink this cup” – present
  • “…the Lord’s death” – past
  • “…until he comes” – future

When you really study the Bible as Divine documentation, it’s amazing what you discover in terms of 66 books all culminating into a rich, cohesive whole. 66 books written over 1,500 years all pointing to one central theme: the redemption of man.

Professor M. Montiero-Williams, former Boden professor of Sanskrit, spent 42 years studying Eastern books and said in comparing them with the Bible: “Pile them, if you will on the left side of your study table; but place your own Holy Bible on the right side – all by itself, all alone – and with a wide gap between them. For,…there is a gulf between it and the so-called sacred books of the East which severs the one from the other utterly, hopelessly, and forever…a veritable gulf which cannot be bridged over by any science of religious thought.”5

III) Spiritual Propaganda –  Doubting the Credibility of Scripture

Some want to doubt the credibility of Scripture. Generally speaking, the hesitancy comes from one of two ideas that the Bible was compiled by strategically collecting a series of antique texts that happened to corroborate with the spiritual propaganda they wanted to promote. The other statement that you hear fairly often is that the Bible is “filled with errors” and is thus unreliable.     

The number of extant Old Testament MSS is fairly limited. That’s not to say what we have isn’t sufficient enough to be certain that what we have in our hands today is an accurate rendering of the original text, but it’s the fact that we don’t have thousands of original copies that made the Dead Sea Scrolls such a significant find. When you’re able to take a document that was originally written in 900 A.D. and compare it to another rendering of the same text that was done 1,025 years beforehand (Dead Sea Scrolls were dated 125 B.C.) and determine that the texts are virtually identical, you have more than adequate justification to feel confident that your Bible is, in fact, the Word of God!
A) The Old Testament

Here are some things to consider: First of all, the Old Testament is a series of carefully guarded texts, most of which come from people who had direct contact with God. Their credentials, as far as having had contact with God, coupled with the accuracy of their prophecies, make it very difficult, even for the most aggressive cynic, to doubt their integrity.

For example, the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Old Testament authored by Moses. These books document the activity of God, the Law of God and the words of God all written by someone who had direct contact with God.  Joshua, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Jonah – while they didn’t converse as frequently with God face to face, they nevertheless interacted directly with their King. Most of the minor prophets present their content in the context of visions and oracles. In other words, God dictated to them what they were to proclaim through an experience similar to a dream. Though that may seem somewhat subjective, again, the accuracy of their visions from a historical perspective certifies their content as more than credible.

1) Dead Sea Scrolls

While the notion that the OT should be perceived as reliable due to the supernatural conversations / interactions the writers had with God may resonate as logical, that doesn’t address the possibility that the original writings may have been changed and corrupted over the centuries. The Dead Sea Scrolls was an archeological find that effectively puts those fears to rest. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a series of some 40,000 inscribed fragments from which over 500 books have been reconstructed, Among these reconstructed books is the majority of the Old Testament.6 What made the find so significant is prior to their discovery, the oldest surviving manuscripts of the Old Testament that was available at the time was from 900 AD on. The Dead Sea Scrolls, specifically the book of Isaiah, was dated 125 AD making it over 1,000 years older than any manuscript we had previously possessed.

When comparing the manuscripts from 900 AD to the scrolls date 125 AD, the accuracy and consistency was nothing short of stunning. For example…

Of the 166 words in Isaiah 53, there are only seventeen letters in question. Ten of these letters are simply a matter of spelling, which does not affect the sense. Four more letters are minor stylistic changes, such as conjunctions. The remaining three letters comprise the word “light,” which is added in verse 11, and does not affect the meaning greatly. Furthermore, this word is supported by the LXX and IQ Is. Thus, in one chapter of 166 words, there is only one word (three letters) in question after a thousand years of transmission – and this word does not significantly change the meaning of the passage (LXX refers to the Septuagint and IQ Is is the Isaiah scroll found in the first cave at Qumran, the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found). 7

Given the consistency of the texts, to doubt the overall credibility of the Bible is to adopt a prospective based on a nonsensical cynicism more so than an objective analysis.     

B) The New Testament – the Bibliographical Test

The New Testament is just as solid. In this case, you’re not having to reach back as far in order to examine the accuracy of the original manuscripts and the number of original MSS is significantly more. When seeking to verify the integrity of an ancient manuscript, two things are considered:

  • how many original copies do we have
  • how many years have lapsed the original document and the first copy

These two dynamics combine to form what is referred to as the “Bibliographic Test” and is used to evaluate the authenticity of  ancient texts. Compared to the New Testament, Homer’s Iliad is the most credible, based on the above criteria. Take a look at how the two compare:

Bibliographical Test – New Testament Compared to Homer’s Iliad
work when written earliest copy time span number of copies
Home (Iliad) 900 B.C. 400 B.C. 500 years 643
New Testament 40 – 100 A.D. 125 A.D. 25 years over 24,000

The strength of the New Testament is nothing short of substantial. When comparing one copy to another, the variations that exist are minimal. Josh McDowell, in his book “Evidence That Demands a Verdict” writes:

That textual variations do not endanger doctrine is emphatically stated by Sir Frederic Kenyon (one of the great authorities in the field of New Testament textual criticism): “One word of warning already referred to, must be emphasized in conclusion. No fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith rests on a disputed reading…

It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain: Especially in this the case with the New Testament. The number of manuscripts of the New Testament, of early translations from it, and of quotations from it in the oldest writers of the Church, is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one of other of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world.

Scholars are satisfied that they possess substantially the true text of the principal Greek and Roman writers whose works have come down to us, of Sophocles, of Thucydides, of Cicero, of Virgil; yet our knowledge of their writings depends on a mere handful of manuscripts, whereas the manuscripts of the New Testament are counted by hundreds, and even thousands.8

So, from the standpoint of consistency, as far the copy of the Bible that we have in our possession today being the same as what was originally dictated by God and documented by the writers He spoke through, we have an intellectually solid justification for concluding that we have an accurate copy of the original.      

C) The Canon

So, we’ve got an authentic collection of antique texts. But how were those texts assembled and was there conflicting literature that was strategically omitted in order to preserve a line of thought that was more of a human campaign than it was a Divine revelation? Bottom line: No. The “canon” of Scripture was not assembled according to a template that accommodated preferences as much as it insisted on authenticity.      

1) The Old Testament

The manner in which the Old Testament was compiled is best explained by simply considering the Jewish people. As God worked in their midst through events and specific personalities, His Activity and Counsel was documented. The resulting literature was not a collection of commentaries as much as it was a record of what God said and what God did. It was not a subjective account manufactured by a panel of like minded spectators. It was an exclusive collection of individuals, each of whom had been specifically tasked to lead, speak and teach with the Authority that had been given to them by God.

Anyone that qualified as a “man of God” was not perceived as such because of their charisma or academic credentials. They were recognized as prophets because of the way in which they presented their platform under the heading of “thus saith the Lord.”

You could conceivably pose as a prophet, but the consequences of falsely presenting yourself as a messenger of God were lethal (Dt 13:15). Only an obvious fulfillment of the prophecies you proclaimed could validate you as authentic (Dt 18:21-22). Hence, true prophets were easily identified and the content they disseminated as being Divinely Inspired was readily accepted.

In A.D. 70, a council of Jewish religious leaders congregated in Jamnia to discuss the canonization of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon and the book of Esther. Some want to point to this conference as an example of a subjective human element being used to establish the content of Scripture. Thing is, these books hardly constitute the bulk of the Old Testament. Furthermore, these books weren’t disputed as much as they merited discussion for a variety of reasons – one of which is the book of Esther doesn’t mention the Name of God even once. This quartet of unique texts would be recognized as canonical and the discussions that took place were documented, thus providing evidence for future generations that not only were these books recognized as Scripture, but the majority of the Old Testament at the time of Christ and before had been established and embraced unreservedly.          

2) The New Testament

The criteria used to define a particular New Testament book as worthy of being included in the Canon was similar to the attributes that were considered where the Old Testament was concerned. Namely, apostolic authority. Did the writer interact with Jesus himself, or did the writer have the approval of one who did? Given that kind of filter, the field is narrowed considerably.

The early church was staffed by the apostles. This was not due to a lack of qualified personnel or a knee jerk reaction to the departure of Jesus. This is the way Christ had set it up. For three years, Jesus had taught and led these men so they could accurately and effectively promulgate the gospel.

In John 16:13, He explains how the Holy Spirit would guide them and you see that Authoritative Guidance in Acts 2:42 where it says that the early believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, the breaking of bread and to prayer. Matthew, John and Peter were both apostles, having walked with Christ during His three year ministry. Paul was commissioned as an apostle by Jesus on the road to Damascus in the ninth chapter of Acts. Between those four individuals, you have the majority of the New Testament (Matthew, John, Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1-2 Thessalonians, 1-2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, 1-2 Peter,  1-3 John and Revelation).

In addition, you have the brothers of Jesus; James and Jude (the books that bear their names). These men do not promote themselves as apostles, but in  1 Cor 9:5 they are referenced alongside the apostles which implies an apostolic dynamic. The fact that Jesus appeared specifically to James (1 cor 15:7), along with the way in which Paul sought him out when he visited Jerusalem in the immediate aftermath of his conversion (Gal 1:19), makes it obvious that James possessed credentials that were recognized as apostolic (see also Gal 2:9).

While there isn’t a specific biblical account of Jude having been visited by the risen Christ, 1 Cor 15:3-7 references a group of people referred to as “apostles” that are listed independently of the “Twelve.” Jude may have been a part of that group. The bottom line, however, is that both James and Jude had a unique relationship with Christ given the fact that they were all a part of the household of Joseph and Mary. They were both initially skeptical as to the Divine Identity of Christ (John 7:5), but were committed champions of His gospel after the resurrection. So while Jude is not mentioned as prominently as James, given the aforementioned realities and the content of his epistle, his book was embraced as canonical and was referenced as such by Clement of Rome in A.D. 96 and Clement of Alexandria in A.D. 200.9

Generally speaking, when the term “Apocrypha” surfaces, it’s usually in reference to the Old Testament additions that were made in 1546. In some instances, however, you’ll hear about the “New Testament Apocrypha” which applies to the literature that was being circulated between 65 and 170 A.D.. Books such as the Epistle of Pseudo-Barnabas (A.D. 70-79), the Shepherd of Hermas (A.D. 115-140) and the Acts of Paul and Thecla (A.D. 170) – these were some of the writings that concerned the Synod of Hippo. But as was the case in the past, when it came to clarifying what was biblical and what was not, there was no need to engage in lengthy, subjective discussions. Dismissing the notion that they were worthy of being considered inspired was an easy conclusion to make given their obvious lack of apostolic authority and subsequent want of Divine substance.

They Synod of Hippo in A.D. 393 was a gathering of religious authorities whose purpose was, in part, to confirm the 27 books that comprised the New Testament as canonical. There wasn’t any doubt as to which books belonged and which did not, but it was nevertheless an appropriate step to take in order to reinforce the fact that in order for a book to qualify as Scripture, it had to be penned by an apostle or someone who represented an authenticated extension of that ministry.

Some had attempted to sidestep that test of authenticity thus making it needful to clearly define the books of the New Testament. The thing that’s crucial about this meeting is that nothing new was established. They simply stated what was already understood as far as what books in the New Testament qualified as Scripture.

There’s a group of texts called the Apocrypha that were added to the Old Testament in 1546.10. The books in question had been in circulation for a while, having been written over a period of centuries dating as far back as 200 years before Christ (Judith) and 100 A.D. (Baruch). But while the books, in some cases, deal with biblical themes, they are sorely lacking when compared to their Scriptural counterparts in terms of authority and accuracy.

Many Catholic scholars throughout the Reformation period, as well as Luther and like minded reformers, rejected the Apocrypha. It was only at the Counter Reformation Council of Trent in 1546 that the Apocrypha was awarded canonicity by the Catholic leadership. Thing is, the Council of Trent was more about protecting the Catholic paradigm that it was upholding the Truth. The Reformation had brought to the surface inconsistencies that existed between what the pope was advocating and what Scripture proclaimed. Martin Luther lead the charge under the heading of “sola Scriptura, ” which means “Scripture alone.” He said “a simple layman armed with Scripture is greater than the mightiest pope without it.”11

Catholicism would not yield without a fight, however, and the Council of Trent was , in some ways, an attempt to reclaim the people and the reputation it had lost. But the Council appealed to tradition more so than Truth when attempting to defend its various practices. Thus, the adoption of the Apocrypha fails to resonate as an Inspired decision and is not included in the Protestant canon.    

D) The Bible is Full of Errors

Skeptics will sometimes justify their refusal to take the Bible seriously by insisting that it’s “full of errors.” The reason for their skepticism, however, is not based on a careful study of Scripture. Rather, it’s more often than not,  the perspective of a cynic that’s resolved to keep the Word of God at a distance in order to avoid having to perceive themselves in the light of its Truth.

That’s not to say there aren’t passages that are difficult to process and understand. The gospel writers sometimes describe the same scene differently to the point where critics insist that they contradict one another thus disqualifying the whole of Scripture as credible. But “differences” don’t necessarily equate to “contradictions” provided the elements that give each account an air of distinction don’t conflict with one another.

For example, when describing Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem in the context of his “triumphal entry,” Mark, Luke and John mention one donkey (Mark 11:2, Luke 28:30 and John 12:14-15). Matthew 21:2 mentions two.

Take a look:

saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. (Matt 21:2)

Jesus wasn’t straddling two donkeys as much as it was Matthew simply mentioning what constituted a complete picture of the prophecy articulated in Zechariah 9:9:

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!  Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (Zec 9:9)

Chances are excellent since the foal had never been ridden before, let alone paraded around in front a large and noisy crowd, having the mother lead the foal for the sake of psychological support would’ve been a logical move. The “Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties,” says as much:

The Zechariah passage does not actually specify that the parent donkey would figure in the triumphal entrance; it simply describes the foal as “the son of a she-ass” by way of poetic parallelism. But Matthew contributes the eyewitness observation (and quite possibly neither Mark nor Luke were eyewitnesses as Matthew was) that the mother actually preceded Jesus in that procession that took Jesus into the Holy City. Here agin, then, there is no real contradiction between the synoptic account but only added detail on the part of Matthew as on who viewed the event while it was happening.12

So, the gospel writers do not conflict with one another as much as Matthew is simply providing more detail.

You can read about more examples of “difficult to understand” passages in another “Muscular Christianity” post entitled “Ten Questions Christians Can’t Answer.” The bottom line, however, is that the Bible is not flawed. Passages that are difficult to understand do not constitute reasons to doubt the accuracy of the text as much as they are cues to pop the hood on said passage and actually study it. Look at the original languages, consider the culture of the time, ponder the audience that’s being addressed. Deploy the approach of an investigative reporter, and do so in the context of a disposition that seeks to understand what happened, as opposed to a prejudiced perspective that questions whether it happened at all.

It’s interesting to watch the amount of academic dust that gets kicked up when educated critics of the Bible unleash the full fury of their sarcasm into the marketplace. Their credentials and the dogmatic tone of their rhetoric can come across as quite compelling as they dismiss the Authority of Scripture.

Yet, on the other side of the aisle stands a formidable constituency of learned individuals who, while they don’t get the same amount of press, are nevertheless just as educated and just as forceful in their defense of God’s Word and the Christian perspective. From a layman’s standpoint, it’s not always easy to sort out the weeds from the grass, but those who defend the integrity of Scripture inevitably win out because their defense is founded on a comprehensive analysis of the facts as opposed to their adversaries whose platform is characterized by a disposition that dismisses everything save that which is consistent with their intellectual preferences.

In other words, of the information that exists to either verify or explain a particular passage of Scripture, the only facts they’re willing to admit into the dialogue are those that match their definition of what’s reasonable. The resulting exchange isn’t so much an objective evaluation of a biblical text as much as it’s an attempt of the part of the skeptic to overwhelm substance with sarcasm.

Dr. Gleason Archer is the author of the “Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties.” In the preface, he describes his inspiration for writhing the book and the experiences he draws from as he sets out to resolve the intellectual tension that some verses can create.

The problems and questions dealt with in this volume have been directed to me during the past thirty years of teaching on the graduate seminary level in the field of biblical criticism. As an undergraduate at Harvard, I was fascinated by apologetics and biblical evidences; so I labored to obtain a knowledge of the languages and cultures that have any bearing on biblical scholarship. As a classics major in college, I received training in Latin and Greek, also in French and German. At seminary I majored in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic; and in post-graduate years I became involved in Syriac and Akkadian, to the extent of teaching elective courses in each of these subjects. Earlier, during my final two years of high school, I had acquired a special interest in Middle Kingdom Egyptian studies, which was furthered as I later taught courses in this field. At the Oriental Institute in Chicago, I did specialized study in Eighteenth Dynasty historical records and also studied Coptic and Sumuerian. Combined with this work in ancient languages was a full course of training at law school, after which I was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1939. This gave me a thorough grounding in the field of legal evidences. Additionally, I spent three years in Beruit, Lebanon, in specialized study of modern literary Arabic. This was followed by a month in the Holy Land, where I visited most of the important archaeological sites. 13

He goes on to say that his faith has been validated and strengthened, rather than challenged and weakened as he’s tackled some of the more difficult- to-understand passages:

As I have dealt with one apparent discrepancy after another and have studied the alleged contradictions between the biblical record and the evidence of linguistics, archaeology, or science, my confidence in the trustworthiness of Scripture has been repeatedly verified and strengthened by the discovery that almost every problem in Scripture that has ever been discovered by man, from ancient times until now, has been dealt with in a completely satisfactory manner by the biblical text itself – or else by objective archaeological information.14

When you step back and consider the intellectual strength of the man who is speaking, coupled with the hands on experience he’s had with a variety of archaeological  and literary artifacts, it’s virtually impossible to dismiss his content as a desperate attempt to protect a set of flawed convictions. What he brings to the table resonates as more than a mere “response.” Rather, it’s an objective platform as compelling as it is substantial – to the point where the criticisms leveled against the Word of God are quickly revealed as pathetic shadows that are effortlessly dispelled by the Light of God’s formidable Truth.

IV) Conclusion

George MacDonald was a Scottish minister as well as a prolific writer. He’s been cited as a major influence by authors such as C.S. Lewis (“The Chronicles of Narnia) and J.R. R. Tolkein (The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring). He once said, “To try and explain the truth to him who loves it not, is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation.”15

Some want to say that the Bible represents the quintessential example of circular reasoning. In other words, some will defend the Truth of Scripture by citing the Bible as its own witness. But Scripture is validated by history, archaeology, literature as well as the multitudes of changed lives over the centuries. It is not lacking for evidence, uniqueness, consistency or accuracy. As Professor Williams stated, there is a gulf between the Bible and every other book that’s ever been authored. It is, quite simply, the “words” of God.

The substance of Christ’s comments to His disciples at the Last Supper is but one example of the richness of Scripture. It says in 2 Timothy 3:16 that the entire Bible is God-breathed. It truly is. And the benefits that accompany obedience to God’s Word are as abundant as they are advantageous.

It’s true. It’s God. …and it’s only Thursday. Wait till you see what happens this weekend!

1. “The Last Supper”, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_(Leonardo_da_Vinci), accessed May 12, 2015
2. Ibid
3. Ibid
4. Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, http://rzim.org/about/ravi-zacharias, accessed June 2, 2015
5. “Evidence That Demands a Verdict”, Josh McDowell, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, TN, 1972, p 15
6. “The Levon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library”, http://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/featured-scrolls, accessed June 17, 2015
7. “Evidence That Demands a Verdict”, Josh McDowell, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, TN, 1972, p 58
8. Ibid, p45
9. Although Jude had earlier rejected Jesus as Messiah (John 7:1-9), he, along with other half brothers of our Lord, was converted after Christ’s resurrection (Acts 1:14). Because of his relation to Jesus, his eyewitness knowledge of the resurrected Christ, and the content of his epistle, it was included in the Muratorian Canon (A.D. 170). The early questions about its canonicity also tend to support that it was written after 2 Peter. If Peter had quoted Jude, there would have been no question about canonicity, since Peter would thereby have given Jude apostolic confirmation. Clement of Rome (c. A.D. 96) plus Clement of Alexandria (c. A.D. 200) also alluded to the authenticity of Jude. Its diminutive size and Jude’s quotations from uninspired writings account for any misplaced questions about its canonicity. (notes on the book of Jude [“The MacArthur Study Bible”, Crossway, Wheaton, IL, 2010, p1922])
10. “Evidence That Demands a Verdict”, Josh McDowell, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, TN, 1972, p 36
11. “Sola scriptura”, “Wikipedia”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_scriptura, accessed July 23, 2015
12. “Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties”, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, MI 1982, p334
13. Ibid, p12
14. Ibid, p15
15. George Macdonald, quoted by Ravi Zacharias

Speaking Up When It Matters

/in , , , /by

It amazes me how some want to believe that you can separate church and state. Our Founding Fathers put the First Amendment in place, not to restrict Christianity’s influence on government, but to prevent the government from influencing Christianity. That was the culture back then and that was the foundation upon which our country was built. Don’t forget that every reference to “Providence” and “Creator” and the “Supreme Judge of the Universe” in the Declaration of Independence was addressed to King George who was, not only King of England, he was also the head of the Anglican Church. He didn’t process those titles as references to a generic “higher power.” He heard them as references to God as He’s revealed in Scripture.

Every form of government is ultimately based on the way that system defines a human being. You are either sorted according to a human convention or you are created in the image of your Heavenly Father.

There’s only two options.

And if you want to argue that there is more than one religion, again, you’ve only got two religions in that every religious school of thought empowers the individual with the ability to facilitate their own salvation. You can do something to merit the favor of your preferred deity (Gen 3:5). Christianity, on the other hand, says that the only thing you contribute to your salvation is the sin that makes it necessary.

Ephesians 6:12 says that the “struggle” is always spiritual. When you look at the Democrat talking points, you see things that are contrary to God’s Word and, as a believer, you have a responsibility to point that out (Eph 5:11). You want to do it right (Eph 4:15). No one wants to listen to a jerk. But to remain silent, or to be hesitant, or to be less than substantial in the way you communicate is not piety.

It’s cowardice.

Here’s what I’m thinking…

When Nehemiah was in charge of building the wall, at one point he had the Israelites work with a tool in one hand and a weapon in the other (Neh 4:17-19). They weren’t doubting God for His Protection. Rather, they were being wise in the way they were prepared to defend what God had entrusted to them.

As far as “division” or “differences” are concerned, Paul talks about that in 1 Corinthians 11:19. He mentions how those differences reveal who has God’s approval. In other words, those disparities reveal who it is that’s championing the Truth as opposed to their own preferences.

1 Chron 12:32 describes the men of Issachar as those who, “…understood the times and knew what Israel should do.” Defending the practical and economical wisdom of tariffs, promoting the morality of preventing males from competing in women’s sports, and pointing out how homosexuality represents a lifestyle that is contrary to the way the human species is designed, is not a defense of the gospel, nor does it change the heart of the one who’s determined to be their own bottom line (Jer 17:8-10; Eph 6:12).

But God hates dishonest scales (Prov 11:1), there’s only two genders (Gen 1:27), homosexuality is a pointless perversion (Lev 18:22; Rom 1:27), and Socialism inevitably translates to a violation of 2 Thess 3:10.

People who say, “You can’t force your beliefs on me” are indirectly forcing their beliefs on everyone else because they don’t want to be evaluated, they just want to be accommodated (2 Cor 4:4). They’re not interested in determining if what you’re saying is True, they just want to get their own way by demonizing you.

Ephesians 4:15 says to, “…speak the truth in love.” If anyone is going to notice that the tomb is empty, you witness needs to be evident in everything you say, think, and do (Col 3:17) and that includes being politically astute and speaking up when it matters.

A Time to Speak

/in , , , /by

I’m seeing several posts coming from well meaning people saying that we need to just love everybody and avoid any kind of confrontation.

Last year, President Trump narrowly missed being assassinated. This after several years of his opponents calling him a Nazi, a fascist, and a threat to democracy.

We need to just pray and not argue…

Where in Scripture does God tell us to be quiet and remain in our prayer closet while everyone else is voting, debating, knocking on doors, and basically pushing back against the narrative that says there is no absolute save the person who stares back at you in the mirror every morning?

This is the time to speak!

Here’s what I see:

First of all, to process Christ’s approach to the cross as our template for the way we confront evil is to forget that Jesus at one point said,

Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour—when darkness reigns. (Lk 22:53).

Jesus’ willingness to be crucified was not meant to be an example for the way we resist evil and fight back against corruption. He had to go to the cross in order for the Scriptures to be fulfilled and to pay our debt (Matt 26:54). While there may be a time when Christ asks you to sacrifice yourself, simply laying down and doing nothing in the face of being attacked or not standing up for what’s right, believing that you’re an example of piety, is not an accurate interpretation of the whole of God’s Word.

John the Baptist wound up in prison for rightfully confronting the current administration and calling out Herod as being an immoral dirtbag. Jesus said that no human being was greater than John (Matt 11:9-11; Lk 3:19-20).

How many times in the Old Testament did a prophet confront a king or an entire nation and tell them that they were godless and offensive in the sight of God? Was Nathan vague in the way he spoke to David (2 Sam 12:7)? Did Elisha mince words when he told the king of Israel what was going to happen to him and his wife as a result of doing evil in the sight of God (1 Kings 21:21-24)?

Did David give Goliath a brochure? Did Paul try to be extra sensitive when he spoke to King Agrippa (Acts 26:24-29)?

There’s a difference between righteous indignation and the kind of rage that springs from thinking of no one other than yourself. Ephesians 4:26 says to not let your anger provoke you to the point where you do something wrong. That’s obviously something you want to avoid. Simply exchanging insults on social media is not accomplishing anything.

But at one point, David said…

Do I not hate those who hate you, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you? I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies. (Ps 139:21)

What David is saying is that he hates the work of sinners, and for good reason. Nothing good comes from those who intentionally try to do the wrong thing. And when you consider the pain and the problems that come from doing the wrong thing, you have every reason to detest that kind of mindset.

But, how do you respond to the “wrong thing?”

Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. (Eph 5:11)

Expose them!

The person who doesn’t want to be “exposed” is not going to want to listen to you, nor do they want others to listen to you. They will be antagonistic and that kind of reaction is difficult to endure, which is why it’s so important to know what you believe and why you believe it so when it’s time to “expose them,” you sound like you have a point.

It also takes courage. For those who cringe at the thought of being criticized, it’s easy and convenient to retreat behind a biblical sounding excuse to not say or do anything.

That’s not discipleship, that’s cowardice.

What would’ve happened had our founding fathers not stood up to King George?

On one hand, they could’ve referred to Christ’s command to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s as well as the biblical admonishment to obey those in authority (Matt 22:21; Rom 13:1).

But rather than base their perspective on a mere portion of Scripture, they looked at God’s Word as a whole and were able to justify separating from England due to the fact that we are to obey God rather than man (Acts 5:29).

They stood up and they spoke out.

Your witness means very little if you smile at the things that send a person to hell and endorse the things that put Christ on the cross.

David didn’t just sing, Paul didn’t just write, and Jesus didn’t just pray.

There’s a time to be silent and there’s a time to speak.

This is the time to speak.

A Difficult Truth or a Convenient Lie?

/in , , , /by

 

When you’re talking with someone who sees themselves as their own absolute, they’re living in a manufactured reality where there’s no such thing as truth, only personal opinions. Truth only exists in the context of what they’re comfortable with – a preference that’s unique to every individual as opposed to an Absolute that applies to all individuals. That’s why when you try to tell them that they’re wrong, you’re heard as someone who’s just trying to force your beliefs on them.

All the boundaries represented by logic, common sense, morality, and even rational thought are now nonexistent because there’s no fixed point of reference. There are no Divine Absolutes, those are “your beliefs.” That isn’t irrevocable evidence, that’s just your perspective. Those aren’t indisputable facts, those are just your personal preferences. Truth is defined exclusively according to whether or not a person wants to believe it – there’s no kind of accuracy that exists independently of the way a person thinks or feels. If they’re not comfortable with what’s being said, it is automatically untrue. There are no principles, only preferences.

That is the key difference between a Conservative and a Liberal. The Liberal gauges everything according to whatever best reinforces their core assumption that they are the standard by which all things are measured. Every resource, be it a news outlet, a personality, a poll, a statistic, a picture, or a study – however credible they may be – none of it is considered as admissible evidence if it resonates as a threat to the way they want to see themselves and the world around them.

The Conservative, on the other hand, believes in something greater than themselves which means that they are focused on a Standard that doesn’t change and is coming from a Source that is morally and intellectually flawless (“In God We Trust”). That doesn’t mean that the Conservative is never beyond reproach. What it does mean is that they see themselves as being accountable to someone other than the one who stares back at them in the mirror every morning. The Liberal, on the other hand, because they see themselves as their own bottom line, they are never responsible for their actions as much as their oppressed by a system that is corrupt. They may be different, perhaps they’re damaged, but they’re never wrong.

What can make this exhausting is that when you accuse a Liberal of basing their convictions on preferences rather than principles, they will insist that you’re doing the same thing. They cannot process the concept of a transcendent reality that prevails over an individual’s desires and appetites. In fact, they see it as unhealthy distraction.

Katherine Maher, the CEO of NPR, captures that mentality in a presentation she made entitled, “What Wikipedia Teaches Us About Balancing Truth and Beliefs” featured on ted.com. At one point she says:

We all have different truths. They’re based on where we come from, how we were raised and how other people perceive us.

That perhaps for our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth and seeking to convince others of the truth might not be the right place to start. In fact, our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.1

The problem with Maher’s approach, and the Liberal perspective in general, is that it contradicts the very definition of what truth is. The dictionary definition of truth is, “…the body of real things, events, and facts.”2. Truth is an objective absolute and is not something that can be established simply by speaking it into reality anymore than you can change your gender simply by changing your pronouns.

To insist that truth is relative is a self-defeating statement because if truth is relative than even declaring it as such is relative and is therefore meaningless.

Yet, this is a necessary premise in order for the Liberal mentality to function. Once you introduce the idea that truth is nothing more than a word that’s used to elevate your personal disposition to the level of a universal given, then everything from your testimony in court to the way you evaluate the behavior and the credibility of other people depends solely on how that scenario either weakens or strengthens your ability to maintain the illusion that your definition of the human experience is the only definition that matters.

This is why the immorality of a particular individual is labeled as heinous and the same behavior in another individual doesn’t even justify a headline. It’s not a “double standard.” To the Liberal, there are no standards, only situations. The Liberal isn’t as concerned with the behavior as much as they are in demonizing anyone who represents a philosophy that promotes the practical existence of objective truth.

This is why they can lie in court because, again, there is no truth apart from whatever is preferred in that moment. You can’t be lying if you have eliminated the standard by which your statement would otherwise by measured.

Inevitably, this is more than just a self-serving philosophy. This is a spiritual condition.

There are only two religions in the world: Either God is God or you are. Every religion on the planet empowers the individual with the ability to facilitate their own salvation. You can do something or abstain from something to the point where you can merit the favor of your preferred deity. This is the lie that satan fed Eve in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3:5:

“For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Gen 3:5)

Christianity, on the other hand, says you’re a spiritual corpse. The only thing you contribute to your salvation is the sin that makes it necessary. The gospel is the only religious doctrine that positions mankind as absolutely subordinate to his God.

That doesn’t work in the mind of a Liberal.

You can’t be your own absolute and be subordinate to a holy God at the same time. It’s one or the other and that’s why the separation of church and state is such a volatile issue.

It’s not just American History, nor is it a Sunday morning tradition. It is toxic in the mind of the person who is determined to be their own bottom line.

However unsustainable or nonsensical that approach may be, it can nevertheless be championed very effectively by insisting that, as Katherine Maher said, “We all have different truths,” and that it is ultimately a “distraction.”

But it’s not distracting, it’s stabilizing. And when that stability is in place, it’s liberating.

The death and resurrection of Christ aren’t certified as actual calendar events simply because I find the notion of a loving and forgiving God appealing. It either happened or it didn’t. However I “feel” about the empty tomb doesn’t validate its authenticity one way or the other.

The question isn’t, “How do you feel?” Rather, you need to ask, “Is it real?”

The question isn’t whether or not I can force my beliefs on you. The question should be, “Is what I’m saying…”

…true?

The word “truth” is used frequently in our society. Even in the context of swearing to, “…tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God.”

But when truth is nothing more than one’s personal version of reality as opposed to that which is genuinely real, then you are attempting to function in a manner that is not only completely inconsistent with the way the universe operates, but you have cast off every reliable metric that would otherwise guide you in your pursuit of happiness, and redefined rights, not as gifts given to you by God to guard your way, but as weapons you use to get your way.

As long as you’re determined to ignore principles in favor of your preferences, you are missing the life and freedom afforded to you by what is, at times, a difficult truth, and exchanged it for the frustrated existence supplied by a convenient lie.

 

 

1. “What Wikipedia teaches us about balancing truth and beliefs”, ted.com, https://www.ted.com/talks/katherine_maher_what_wikipedia_teaches_us_about_balancing_truth_and_beliefs, accessed March 30, 2025

2. “truth”, “Merriam Webster Dictionary”, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/truth, accessed March 30, 2025

Is Homosexuality Sinful? | Part V

/in , , /by

This is the fifth and final installment of “Is Homosexuality Sinful?” Framed around a graphic that proposes a line of logic that supposedly reveals the conservative Christian disposition towards same sex marriage as being antiquated and foolish, this series of articles looks at the verses that are referenced in the graphic and shows how the conclusions being drawn by those that sneer at Christianity are neither biblically based nor are they logical.

A conquered nation

The advocates of same sex marriage want to point to the way in which female prisoners of war were betrothed to the soldiers who had conquered their nation. You see an example of this in Numbers 31, but again, when you take the time to study what was going on, you walk away with a much different conclusion then what you would have if you had simply glossed over the text.

The Midianites were a nation that had sought to destroy Israel’s by aligning themselves with Moab in Numbers 22:1-7. These two nations had agreed that, in light of what Israel has accomplished by so completely devastating their Amorite foes in Numbers 21, they were a serious threat. Though Israel had no plans to attack Moab or Midian, the combined forces of Moab and Midian launched an aggressive campaign designed to eliminate God’s people. It began by the hiring of Balaam, a pagan priest, who was employed for the sake of cursing Israel.

While military action might seem more effective, bear in mind that these two nations were convinced that the use of force would only be met with failure in light of Israel having already proved herself so capable in destroying her enemies. Hence a spiritual strategy was chosen. Balaam, however, was astute enough to realize that you cannot hope to curse who God has chosen to bless and after four attempts that backfired, Balaam then recommended that Moab and Midian attempt to compromise Israel by enticing the Hebrew males to worship Baal in the context of engaging in Canaanite fertility rites. Thought that might seem like a weak plan, it proved very effective in that many men did have sex with the Moabite women and subsequently engaged in idolatry.

Idolatry is more than it might appear to be on the surface, given the casual regard our culture has for, “religion.” The fact of the matter is that what you worship determines the way in which you process yourself and the world around you. While the word, “worship” isn’t used a great deal outside faith-based circles, it nevertheless describes the very practical and universal approach that people use in the way they engage life.

One of the definitions of worship is, “an extravagant respect or admiration.” What you perceive as important shapes the way you prioritize your time and your resources. In other words, what you worship dictates your ambitions, your priorities, your values – everything that figures into the way you approach your existence. This is why God was, and is, so adamant in the way in which He instructs His people to worship Him. It’s not because He’s starving for validation as much as He knows that by focusing on Him, His Word and His Direction, the resulting existence is characterized by significance, fulfillment and purpose. Otherwise, it’s a collection of distractions that prevent true success and inevitably reduces the individual to a self-serving destiny characterized by a perpetual feeling of frustration in that they can’t possess what they desire and / or they’re dissatisfied by the hollow brand of contentment provided by what they do have. And it’s more than just dissatisfaction or disillusion, it’s death. Ignoring God and placing yourself on the throne of your life has eternal consequences because you can’t hope to rate being admitted into Heaven apart from being morally blameless (see Matt 5:48; Romans 6:23; Titus 3:5; 1 Pet 1:16).

Moral perfection, while impossible for a human standpoint, is nevertheless the spiritual status you and I are awarded when we accept that Christ’s sacrifice was for us and not some noble act that was accomplished in a general sense. It’s when we accept Him as our personal Savior that the blameless dynamic of God becomes ours by virtue of Christ’s Spirit living in us. Still tainted and distracted by sin, yes, but rather than being slaves to our sinful nature, now we have the power to choose, and our failures are atoned for wherever we fall short.

It’s an amazing exchange – to hand over our weakness and be given strength in return. To surrender our inability and receive the Power and Identity of God – that goes beyond generous. That’s why they call it, “amazing grace.” The life we live in this world is illustrated either by wandering in the dark or walking in the light. One scenario is searching, the other is advancing. One of those situations is fulfilled and confident, the other is forever exasperated by a cup that can never be filled, and a sense of self that can never be completely validated. It’s in Christ where you’re able to, not only understand that you were created to make a difference and not just an appearance, it’s through Him that you’re able to live out that purpose using the gifts and abilities He’s given in the context of the situations you recognize as instances He has orchestrated.

Molech was the god of Ammonites and it was common to sacrifice your children to this god in order to win his favor. God looked at that practice as being absolutely wrong and categorized it as something worthy of the death penalty. In so doing, He protected the innocent children that would’ve otherwise been murdered, and He put in place a dynamic that would inspire some second thoughts before engaging in that kind of behavior.

But it’s all for naught if the person who stands to receive this gift chooses to worship something or someone other than God, and that’s why God is so understandably aggressive when He says to worship Him only because it’s only by focusing your attention on Him that you’re able to avoid those things that would otherwise result in your demise.

God puts up guardrails in your life to prevent you from wandering over into the median. In some cases, He puts up a fence. You cross that line and there will be consequences. In other situations, He puts up a concrete barrier. You insist on driving over that kind of obstacle and you have life altering consequences to contend with. In some cases, you lose your life. Anything that God has defined as a capital offense is one of those concrete barriers He has established as a way to say that on the other side of this line is a world of hurt that is substantial enough to justify this kind of guardrail.

If you lie, you have sinned and God has put up a metal guardrail to identify that kind of behavior as wrong (see Proverbs 12:22 [The Message]). When you look at God’s moral law where adultery, murder and homosexuality is concerned, you’ve got concrete to consider. While Christ’s death and resurrection provide a way around the death penalty, the fact that those infractions have been categorized as those that justify concrete guardrails indicate the potential damage that those kind of behaviors produce.

Worship is another example of a concrete guardrail in that God decreed that if you were to engage in some of the more heinous types of idol worship, you were to be put to death. For example, Israel was commanded to put all witches to death when He said in Exodus 22:18, “Do not allow a sorceress to live.” If you were foolish enough to engage in the worship of Molech, the god of the Ammonites, which included the sacrifice of your children, that was another instance where you to be put to death (see Leviticus 20:1-5 and sidebar). But look at this:

58 If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name—the Lord your God— 59 the Lord will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses. 60 He will bring upon you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will cling to you. 61 The Lord will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed. (Dt 28:58-61)

Did you see that in verse 61? Israel as a nation would be destroyed if it insisted on maintaining a lifestyle characterized by idolatry and rebellion. Mind you, this wasn’t missing church on Sunday or failing to do your quiet time that morning where you were running behind. This is a pattern of rebelliousness where you’re enthusiastically embracing everything that is contrary to God, and God doesn’t play that game.

For those that are thinking: “You’re telling me that if I don’t worship God, He’s going to put me to death? That doesn’t sound like a loving God!” There are two things that need to be considered when you’re questioning God’s apparent disposition in Deuteronomy 28: Divine Direction and Practical Reverence. God delivers you from Egypt, He accomplishes phenomenal military victories through you by allowing you to defeat enemies that are infinitely more powerful and capable than you, He sets up a system of laws and guidelines that allow you to live and prosper in a way that far exceeds even the grandest aspirations of your pagan counterparts and all you need to do in return is stay focused on Him.

Why is it so important to obey Him and worship Him? Because it’s through the counsel you receive from Him that you’re able to avoid all of those things that would otherwise limit and ultimately destroy you. It’s the Divine Direction that He provides that while it doesn’t always make sense, is nevertheless completely accurate. Israel was surrounded by alluring influences that were, in fact, lethal compromises. From a human standpoint, what can appear logical and even healthy, is actually the exact opposite when viewed from a perspective that can see into the future as well as view the inner workings of a man’s heart.

All of those things that we contend with on a day to day basis that cannot be accurately forecasted or controlled are known and subject to God’s Authority. We lament the way in which the random winds of life sometimes do us harm and all the while God stands at the ready to either calm the storm or provide the strength we need in order to endure. But we have to be willing to accept His Help and the wisdom He would impart to us. We have to be willing to obey and that’s what God was communicating to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 28. If you want the Direction that is guaranteed to accurately direct and deliver you, then you’ve got to listen and obey what it is that God’s telling you.

That’s the Divine Direction piece.

As far as the Practical Reverence dynamic is concerned, here’s what you’ve got to bear in mind: You were created by God. Whether or not you believe that is irrelevant in that it is true. You had a beginning prior to your birth in that God knew you before you made your entrance into this world (Ps 139:14-16; Jer 1:5). God made you because He loved you. You see that in 1 John 4:19.

Take a look at Matthew Henry’s Commentary on that verse:

His love is the incentive, the motive, and moral cause of ours. We cannot but love so good a God, who was first in the act and work of love, who loved us when we were both unloving and unlovely, who loved us at so great a rate, who has been seeking and soliciting our love at the expense of his Son’s blood; and has condescended to beseech us to be reconciled unto him. Let heaven and earth stand amazed at such love! (Matthew Henry Commentary on 1 John 4:19)

As part of the way in which He loves us, He gave us specific gifts and skills that manifest themselves in actions and accomplishments that we are uniquely qualified to execute. Ephesians 2:10 talks about how we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which He prepared in advance for us to do. He’s your King, your Creator and your Redeemer. To respond to those Truths by not only ignoring Him, but to spit in His face by running after every act and disposition that opposes Him is the height of arrogance. And that indignant dynamic is further compounded by the way in which many will insist that God has no claim or right to who they are. They don’t see themselves as created or in need of being redeemed. Rather they perceive themselves as a self-sufficient enterprise whose only purpose is to gratify every whim, desire and appetite that they can come up with.

Midian and Moab

Midian was the son of Abraham born to him through Keturah, a concubine who bore him several children (see Gen 25:1-6; 1 Chron 1:32). It was to the land of Midian that Moses fled after he had killed the Egyptian in Exodus 1:11-12 and Moses’ father-in-law was a Midianite priest (see Ex 2:16-21).

It must’ve been difficult for Moses to engage in so brutal an action against his in laws in Numbers 31, but then again the actions of his in laws which had so provoked the Lord to destroy the Midianites were unconscionable.

Bear in mind, it wasn’t just what the Midianites had done in partnership with the Moabites as far as seducing Israel, it was also the belligerent act of Cozbi, the Midianite woman who sneered at God’s Authority by having sex with an Israelite in the plain sight of the assembly in Numbers 25:16-17.

Think about it!

While Israel was weeping, begging for God to relent and lift the plague that had been unleashed as a disciplinary act for the recent plunge into idolatry and decadence, this woman, along with an idiotic Israelite, engaged in the very thing that had provoked God in the first place. Her act, while done in partnership with a Hebrew, was indicative of the complete lack of regard the Midianites had for God and how steeped they were in the worship of Baal. And it’s for that reason that God commanded the Israelites to regard the Midianites as enemies.

This is the person that Paul describes in Romans 3:10-18. It’s a prideful and irreverent brat that’s being described and what’s disconcerting is that every one of us fits that description.

To say that we’re, “not that bad” is to overlook the fact that sin, while there are varying depths of depravity, when you’re comparing yourself to the Perfection of God, the absence of scandalous transgressions doesn’t change the fact that you are still sinful. And that sin incurs a debt that must be paid and exerts an influence that cannot be overcome (see Rom 6:6, 23).

Apart from Christ, you’re ultimately restricted to a temporary existence that never truly satisfies and an eternal residence characterized by pain and despair (Ecc 5:10; 6:7; Lk 13:27-28).

That’s why worship is so important.

If your focus is on anything or Anyone other than Christ, then you’re missing the very thing that defines life and fulfillment. Everything else is a goal post that never stops moving and a grave that never stops devouring. It’s true today and it was true back when Moab and Midan conspired against Israel by enticing her to worship other gods.

In so doing, they declared war on God and His people. Israel could have stood up to their attacks but chose not to and that resulted in being severely disciplined by God when He said in Numbers 25:4-5 that all of the leaders in the community who engaged in worshipping Baal were to be put to death and their corpses were to be put on display.

Pretty stiff penalty, yes?

And it didn’t stop there.

In Numbers 25:6, we read about some guy who decided to thumb his nose at God and the recent display of His wrath by taking a Midianite woman into his tent to have sex with her and he did this right in front of Moses, and the whole assembly of Israel.

Pause here for a moment and realize just how belligerent you would have to be in order to flaunt your complete disregard for your God by engaging in the very thing that was currently being punished via a plague and a public execution of those leaders who were guilty of idol worship.

Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron, took a spear and pierced the arrogant Hebrew and his Midianite partner simultaneously. At that point, the plague that God had sent into the Israelite community was stopped. 24,000 Hebrews had died and more would’ve passed away had it not been for the zeal of Phinehas (see Psalm 106:30).

But that gives you an idea as to the severity of Israel’s crime before the Lord by aligning themselves with another god. Hosea 1:2 describes idolatry as spiritual adultery and Israel was up to her neck in it. Given the way in which Israel is punished, you can imagine God’s disposition towards those who led Israel in their wrongdoing. Moab and Midian had declared war on God and they were subsequently dealt with. Midian is destroyed in Numbers 31. Moab wouldn’t be destroyed because the Moabites and the Israelites were related through Lot. Abraham was Lot’s uncle and in Deuteronomy 2:9 you read how God had resolved to set aside some land for his descendants and although the Moabites and the Israelites would quarrel often and sometime violently, they were never the object of God’s wrath like what you see with the Edomites or the Amalekites who were both completely wiped out (1 Sam 15:3; Jer 49:17-18).

However, as a result of their having led Israel into idolatry, Moab was prohibited from ever being a part of congregational worship (Dt 23:3). The Midianites were not so fortunate. Those that lived in the region were completely destroyed in Numbers 31 with the exception of those women who had never engaged in the idolatrous sexual practices that had been the reason for Israel getting disciplined back in Numbers 25.

It’s important to note that when Israel attacked the Midianites, they were not inspired by a lust for power, as much as they were specifically instructed by God to destroy them for what they had done in terms of leading Israel into idolatry. In other words, Midian was not a military target as much as it was the object of a holy war and that is why every man, boy and woman was executed.

From a human perspective, we can see it as being potentially reasonable that every man be killed because of the possible threat they represent as one who take military action against you. It’s difficult, however, to see why you would put a woman to death. At least it’s hard until you read in Numbers 31:15 that the women were guilty before the Lord because it was they who had led Israel into sin. It was their actions and not their gender that warranted the death penalty and that is why they were slated for destruction.

Numbers 31:17 has Moses commanding that all the boys be killed. As a father of an eight-year-old boy, that bothers me. Why would you put a boy to death? Surely, they are innocent. The dilemma is present because of the way in which I see a child. I see a youngster and the last thing I see is a threat. But that’s because I don’t see what that child will become, I simply see them for what they are at the moment. God, on the other hand, sees what a human being cannot. The fact of the matter is, a child has within them the scaffolding of that which will shape their view of themselves and the world around them at a very young age.

Consider the words of Adolph Hitler:

“These boys and girls enter our organizations [at] ten years of age, and often for the first time get a little fresh air; after four years of the Young Folk they go on to the Hitler Youth, where we have them for another four years . . . And even if they are still not complete National Socialists, they go to Labor Service and are smoothed out there for another six, seven months . . . And whatever class consciousness or social status might still be left . . . the Wehrmacht [German armed forces] will take care of that.”5

Saint Francis Xavier, a prominent Catholic missionary in the sixteenth century, once said, “Give me the children until they are seven and anyone may have them afterward.”6 Both the tyrant and the saint understood that, even at a very young age, you have the infrastructure in place that will shape the way in which that young person will process and approach life.

The fact is, the Midianites were not the only ones whose children were destroyed alongside the adults. The flood waters that carried Noah’s ark to Mount Ararat were not selective in all that was destroyed. Every living thing was wiped out according to Genesis 7:21-23. Joshua 6:21 chronicles how everyone in the city of Jericho– men and women, young and old – were put to the sword. Sodom and Gomorrah were both completely destroyed in Genesis 19.

Sodom and Gomorrah

Sodom and Gomorrah were located at the easternmost part of the land of Canaan, according to Genesis 10:19. That means that inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah were descendants of Canaan.

Canaan was a grandson of Noah and a son of Ham, who was identified in Genesis 9 as being cursed because of the foul behavior that would characterize his posterity. And you see that in a big way when the men in Sodom surrounded Lot’s house wanting to have sex with the angels that had visited the city to inspect whether or not its sin was as bad as it seemed.

The Sodomites behavior left no room for doubt that the decadence of the city was everything it appeared to be. The thing is: the punishment that Sodom and Gomorrah received was not some knee jerk reaction on the part of God. Their ancestry was decadent and their lifestyle was perverse. Given their current belligerence as well as their ancestral history, the judgement they received the day that the Lord rained fire on their cities was not only well deserved, but it was also a long time in coming.

As an aside, the complete extermination of a nation or a community was not typical. In Deuteronomy 20:14, the Israelites are given, “Rules for Warfare” for those nations outside the boundaries of the Promised Land.

• When you march up against a city, make an offer of peace
• If they agree, assimilate them into your community as forced labor
• If they don’t accept your offer of peace, put every man to the sword, but spare the women and children as plunder

Bear in mind that the Israelites were not marching on these cities the way we might envision an invading force descending on lands they wish to inhabit and claim as their own. The conquest of the Promised Land was first and foremost a judgement against the Canaanites who were living there at the time.

In Deuteronomy 9:5, God says as much to the Israelites in order to remind them that their ability to dislodge the Canaanites from their land was not due to Israel’s military superiority or even their being God’s chosen people. Rather, it was the idolatry and the over-the-top perversion that had been so enthusiastically embraced by the Canaanites that had made them ripe for judgement.

And it’s not like God enjoyed carrying out His Justice. God was grieved by man’s sin in Genesis leading up to the flood in Genesis 7. Sodom and Gomorrah’s perversion is defined by God as, “grievous” in Genesis 18:20. You see the same kind of thing in Ephesians 4:29-32 where we’re admonished to not grieve the Holy Spirit by engaging in any kind of sin.

But while God didn’t enjoy it, He does not, nor will he ever, hesitate when it comes to dispatching Justice. Sodom and Gomorrah received their punishment at the Hands of a Just God. And while neither Moab nor Midian were slated to be destroyed as part of the campaign to secure the Promised Land, they too were justly punished because of the way they chose to flaunt their complete disregard for God.

That’s the thing: God was being Just! The Canaanite nations, along with Moab and Midian, were being justly punished by God and not merely attacked. Men, and those who would grow up to be men, received the death penalty from the One Who could see what they were and who they would become. Those women who had voluntarily participated in the religious rites that were not only idolatrous, but were also used as a way to bring about the destruction of Israel also received the death penalty.

That’s not ruthless, that’s Justice.

It’s tragic, but when you have a God Who is perpetually issuing a loving invitation to live and prosper in the context of honoring the One Who most deserves your allegiance and worship, and the response is arrogant, belligerent and even cruel – why be shocked or surprised by an act of Divine Discipline?

These folks deserved to be put to death. Those that were left alive were being treated mercifully. The only way a spectator could survey the landscape of these passages and walk away thinking that God is a brutal Deity that doesn’t deserve any real consideration due to the supposed lack of compassion and decency exhibited by His actions is to overlook two things:

First, He is the manifestation of Perfect Love (see 1 Jn 4:16). That is the starting point for the way in which you must define God. Provided you have that as your basis, you can then survey the judgement that God has dispensed throughout history as being just.

Secondly, He is more than worthy and deserving of your obedience and worship. His attributes are enough to support that statement. Perfect Power, Love, Strength, Wisdom – He is holy, which means total Perfection. Remember that not only was Moab a descendant of Lot – Abraham’s nephew – Midian was Abraham’s son born to him by Keturah. God was apparently willing to leave them be, yet they chose to attack Him both militarily and by violating any and every moral Absolute that God had authored. The result was a judgement that while it appeared harsh, upon closer inspection is revealed as fair and even gracious. Yes, children were put to death and that makes us squirm because from a human standpoint, children are incapable of the kind of evil that would justify that kind of punishment. But, again, God sees who they are as well as what they will become, hence His judgement can be better understood when perceived from that perspective.

The pro homosexual crew cites this whole situation outlined in Numbers 31 as being demonstrative of how God included marriages that coupled women belonging to conquered nations, such as the young Midianite ladies, with Israelite males as being acceptable. If such a union that compelled girls who had just witnessed the execution of their families and countrymen to wed and / or serve their captors was being Divinely endorsed, how then could homosexual unions be condemned?

In light of what’s been discussed as far as the severity of the attack the Midianites leveled against God and His people, the fact that everyone was to be put to death reveals the fact that anyone who was allowed to continue breathing was merciful and not ruthless. These young ladies who were given the opportunity to live were assimilated into everyday Hebrew life as domestic servants. Mind you, the age of many of these girls was such where they had to be cared for. They were pre-pubescent so that puts them between the ages of 0 and 11 with the average age being around 5. That’s not an age suitable for marriage, so to suggest that the Israelites were marrying all these girls is ridiculous. Furthermore, to assert that they were being used as sex slaves is to say that the Israelites were pedophiles which is not supported by the text and it also goes against the grain of God’s command in Leviticus 19:33 that says that you were to treat foreigners living with you kindly.

So while many might envision a parade of young Midianite women being led before a group of cheering Israelite soldiers, forced to smile as they’re being handed over to a sweaty Hebrew with blood on his hands and a twinkle in his eye, is a far cry from what actually occurred.

That being the case, the pro homosexual argument is revealed as less than compelling because the dynamic of how the Israelites assimilated captured women into their nation is something very different than then the abusive and cruel practice they wish to hold up as yet another reason to dismiss the Old Testament’s commands pertaining to homosexuality.

In Conclusion…

What reveals a particular behavior or lifestyle as being either noble or decadent is the way it aligns with the moral Absolutes that apply. Personal preferences and social norms change which is why you want to appeal to a Resource that you can know is as correct as it is permanent.

And the thing that makes it especially appealing is that there are a considerable number of benefits attached to being obedient to God’s commands. Just look at Joshua 1:8 and 2 Timothy 3:16-17. Yet, those that dismiss God’s Word as antiquated and irrelevant are missing out on something that goes beyond the advantages represented by godly living. When a person insists on separating themselves from God by living a life of indifference to His commands, they’re like a piece of paper in a tornado; no anchor, no direction and any sense of control is pure fiction. Solomon articulated that throughout Ecclesiastes.

On the other hand, Purpose, Peace and Power is what characterizes the person who’s handed over the keys to his Heavenly Father and allowed Him the access and the Authority that belongs to Him in the first place.

1. Wikipedia, Shatnez, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shatnez#cite_note-0, accessed August 16, 2012
2. MacArthur Study Bible, note on Leviticus 11:1-47
3. “LDS Scripture Citation Index”, “Journal of Discourses”, http://scriptures.byu.edu/jod/pdf/JoD05/JoD05_0022.pdf, accessed September 18, 2012
4. Wikipedia, “Fanny Alger”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Alger, accessed October 21, 2012
5. “Holocaust Encyclopedia”, “Indoctrinating Youth”, http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007820, accessed October 24, 2012
6. “Quotes”, “Famous Quotations That Start With G”, http://www.quotes.net/quotes/G/99999, accessed October 24, 2012