Christians too often ignore questions related to national allegiance, or they get mad when people raise them. Try blowing up your next Bible study by asking the question: Should Christians stand for the national anthem or recite the Pledge of Allegiance? You might just start a brawl.
But religious people have been covering up obscene language in the Bible for years. Jewish scribes in the middle ages, who copied the Hebrew Old Testament used as the base for all English translations, edited out some vulgar words and replaced them with nicer ones. For instance, God originally prophesied through Zechariah that women in Israel would be raped by wicked, invading armies. The word God inspired is shagel, and according to Hebrew linguists, shagel is an obscene word that describes a sexual act.
Americans have many earthly freedoms. Freedom to vote, freedom not to vote. We are free to marry, have children, own property, travel across the country and into most countries in the world. We can bear arms or not bear arms; we can even hunt bears if they’re in season. America is, as the saying goes, the land of the free.
Christian subcultures are an entertaining phenomenon. Multiple brands of Christianity claim the same Lord and read the same Bible, and yet they promote a set of values sometimes as different as apples and orangutans.
Jerry Shepherd offers his second rebuttal to Chris Date's argument for the annihilation view of hell. Jerry focuses on the apocalyptic language of the book of Revelation and the statements that refer to the wicked being tormented forever.
We continue our discussion on the duration of hell. Here's Jerry Shepherd's response to Chris Date's initial essay. My thanks to Chris for his well-articulated initial essay. I will, however, now attempt to “destroy” his arguments, though, of course,
As many of you know, I’ve been wrestling with the concept of hell for quite some time. It started back in 2011, when Francis Chan and I wrote Erasing Hell, which explored and defended the traditional view that hell is irreversible.
I’m one of those guys who has an extra sensitive Christian cliché antenna. Some call it a BS meter. It picks up on all kinds of chatter through the church airwaves and demands a concrete explanation
There’s no dispute. There are no conflicting reports. They all independently show—and anecdotal evidence confirms—that millennials who grew up in the church are leaving the church in droves According to Rainer Research, 70% of youth, who were active in youth group, leave the church by the time they’re 22 years old.
*The following post is by a friend of mine who wishes to remain anonymous. He's a conservative Christian who experiences same-sex attraction.
The following post is part 7 of 10 in the debate between Jeff and me about homosexuality. In this post, I respond to Jeff's response to my opening blog on Monday.
The following post is by Jeff Cook, where he responds to my opening argument about the Bible and same-sex relations. This post is part 6 of 10 in the debate between Jeff and me about homosexuality.
I’ve tried my best to show that there are good, compelling, biblical arguments in favor of terminal punishment and that the eternal conscious torment view of hell, while possessing some biblical merit, is not the only clear way to interpret the biblical text.
In my previous post, I said that while I am not an “Annihilationist,” I do see enough biblical support for this position to qualify it as an Evangelical option. I have not yet had the time to clear my desk to engage in prayerful, thorough, painstaking exegesis to have landed on this position. But from what I have seen, there’s a good deal of sound, biblical arguments for it. Before we examine these, we need to know what it is we’re even talking about.
Moralism controls our reading of Scripture, especially the Old Testament. When we dust off the first 2/3 of the Bible and seek to find some spiritual wisdom, we often scurry around to find examples of morally upright people to show us how to live.
In my previous post I argued—or rather, observed—that from Genesis to Revelation, the Bible unambiguously presents the Christian faith as one which welcomes the foreigner. Christianity is an immigrant-oriented religion.
I want to follow up with another more general point regarding my article for Relevant Magazine on alcohol in the Bible. Over all, it’s been well received. I’ve had numerous comments, messages, emails, and texts from people saying that they found the article helpful.
