Disciples on Defense

  Want to give your eyes a break? Click the link to have the article read to you.   As a young boy growing up in Idaho Falls, I never could have conceived… Ahem, sorry… I never could have conceived of something now known as a pride event occurring and supported publicly (including on Christian radio). As I reflect and write this, many appear to be proceeding to or from the event. The website reveals that it’s not just a quick rally or parade; it’s a series of events. Right now, I’m not going to respond to whether such a thing is Christian or not. I'm not going to prove the waywardness of it from the Scriptures. In this event, it's not really about that. Most participants probably don’t care what Scripture says on the subject; if they do, there would still be no amount of biblical exegesis that would influence many of the pro-Pride crowd to change. These powerful feelings, along with a predisposition to having them affirmed, means that a series of Bible verses is un...

Want to give your eyes a break? Click the link to have this article read to you. Elijah, John the Baptist, and... Reincarnation? And the surprising mark of Gospel authenticity!   Nearly every American faith, and a striking number of world religions, want to affirm their faith through the teachings of the Bible. This means that they search the Scriptures, not to let them speak for themselves, but to confirm biases and concepts already ingrained into their thinking. Thus, Peter becomes the first pope, people baptize for the dead, nobody judges anybody about anything, Jesus is gay-affirming, Muhammad is foretold, Jesus in the Americas foretold, and the world ends a hundred years ago.  Among the most significant of these is the teaching that the Bible affirms the Hindu, Buddhist, and New Age teaching of reincarnation. Although there is some suggestion that people believe a type of guilt/ punishment for pre-life sins (John 9:2), the go-to place to confirm reincarnation is to the na...

  Want to give your eyes a break? Click the link to have the article read to you. Islam and Mormonism both began by launching from the teachings of the Bible. But they present two very different errors regarding the nature of God. This has translated into two different errors regarding the afterlife. According to Islamic teaching, Allah (Arabic for “God”) is so holy that nothing in creation shares any likeness with him. According to LDS teaching, God’s nature was once just like ours, and God’s current exalted nature is what every human has the opportunity to attain. In short, Islam emphasizes that God is a transcendent spirit, and Mormonism emphasizes that God is a physical human. Essentially, they are saying that God is like us, or God is not at all like us. Consider how these views of God impact their concept of the afterlife—heaven. In Islam, heaven is blissful, but it does not contain the intimate presence of God. Even if Allah chooses to have mercy on some people and give th...

  Want to give your eyes a break? Click the link to have this article read to you. Responding to the Global Center for Religious Research's Objection to the Resurrection   “To anyone who studies abduction—the method of reasoning known as “inference to the best explanation”—this shouldn’t be surprising. Supernatural explanations never fare well against their competitors because, by their very nature, they don’t meet the criteria of adequacy. They invoke inexplicable extra supernatural assumptions that are contrary to the laws of science and are thus, by definition, non-simple, unconservative, and have little scope. Indeed, Ted Schick has argued that (given what explanations must do) “God did it” can never be an adequate explanation of anything, and I have argued that the same is true for “a miracle occurred.” Since the resurrection would have been a miracle caused by God, it is no wonder that it fails so monumentally at being a good explanation. B...