A Postmillennial quote by John Calvin

"We are therefore bidden to desire that, just as in heaven nothing is done apart from God’s good pleasure, and the angels dwell together in all peace and uprightness, the earth be in like manner subject to such rule, with all arrogance and wickedness brought to an end."

- John Calvin

"You can't push your beliefs about abortion on someone else!"

The following is a comment on one of my YouTube Vlogs on the pro-life issue and my response.

This shows you how confused is our postmodernist generation of the 21st century. When someone says, " I can't push my beliefs on someone else," they are actually stating a belief.

Not pushing your beliefs on someone is pushing your beliefs.

As Nietzsche (who was right sometimes) said: "Not to decide is to decide."

Or as Cornelius Van Til argued, there is no such thing as a statement of belief that contains moral neutrality.

_________________

missmelpol: I don't believe in having an abortion, but that is MY BELIEF. I can't push my beliefs on someone else. I thought that was why we had a freedom of religion or speech and all that good stuff.


jcr4runner: The question is: "Why do you think abortion is wrong?" Is it because:

1. You don't like abortion?

- or -

2. Abortion is murder?

If it is simple a question of likes and dislikes, then no you don't have the right to enforce a mere opinion. But if abortion is murder, it is a moral law that transcends personal opinion. It can't be "murder" for one person and "not murder" for another depending on how one feels at the moment.

The Party Is Over

Rusty Thomas is one of the few people I trust who has true prophetic insight into what is happening in America. A while back I posted his imprecatory prayer proclamation to the state of California. I post this as well. It is not a predictive prophecy in the biblical sense, but it applies scripture to the current situation America is facing. I endorse it fully.

- Jay Rogers

A Message from Elijah Ministries

"To make ready a people prepared for the Lord." (Luke 1:17)

Dear Champion of the Lord and the Preborn,

The Lord richly bless you! Based upon our earlier message, I decided to send out a national press statement called "THE PARTY IS OVER." Please keep this in prayer. It is scheduled to be released tomorrow morning. If you find any merit, please pass it on.

- Rusty Thomas

THE PARTY IS OVER

"The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God (Psalm 9:17) ."

For the last twenty years, courageous men of God have warned our nation of these days. Our nation has sowed to the wind and we are reaping the whirlwind. America stands on the verge of possible economic collapse, where the bail out cure may be worse than the financial disease. Meanwhile Russia, China, and the Islamic nations smell our vulnerabilities. Added to these dangers is the increase of natural disasters. What can our beleaguered country do in such a time as this? Repent and bring forth fruit meet for repentance.

Legalized evil has flourished under our watch and stands as God's indictment against America. We can run, but not hide. America will never escape God's accountability for shedding innocent blood through the crime of abortion and parading our sin like Sodom through the godless, homosexual agenda.

The message and mandate are clear, either abortion and the homosexual agenda ends or America as we know it will end. Until now, America has refused to connect the dots between our spiritual and moral condition and the litany of woe challenging our nation. We pretend this party with death and perversion will continue with our homes, churches, institutions, and economic security remaining intact. Thomas Jefferson stated, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

Due to the seriousness of the hour, the call is twofold. First, every Church needs to immediately form a pro-life and pro-family missions program to address and defeat the abortion industry and the homosexual agenda, while at the same time opening our hearts to those enslaved by Satan's lies to see them liberated by the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If, however, the Church continues to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to these sins that have reached heaven, our survival as a nation will continue down the primrose path to destruction. The Church's silence and inaction is partially responsible for the corruption of our nation to continue unabated.

Secondly, we call upon all branches of government to recant of calling good, evil and evil, good by codifying the abominable practices of abortion and homosexuality into law. For far too long, they have defended the indefensible. They cannot make straight what Almighty God has called crooked and expect America to thrive as a nation.

If we summon the moral will to do these necessary changes, we may avert going the way of every other nation that shook its puny fist in the face of a Holy God. Otherwise, America prepare to reap what you have sown!

Why does the universe exist? - An answer to atheism

When I was a freshman in high school, I encountered the following argument for the existence of God. The argument was a lengthy quote in a book I was reading by Dr. Henry M. Morris, founder of the Creation Research institute. I have found this argument to be air tight and irrefutable. It became the basis for accepting many tenets of Christian orthodoxy that many intellectuals and "free-thinkers" of my generation have dismissed out of hand.

Case in point: Atheists charge that Christians need to resort to "special pleading" in explaining the supernatural accounts of the Bible. Special pleading in this case is the introduction of unprovable causes to explain unproven effects. That is, given a biblical history that includes miraculous events that are, by definition, "impossible" according to natural scientific laws, the only way to rationalize these "supernatural" occurrences is to postulate the existence of an all-powerful Creator God. The atheist argues that miracles do not occur in the observable universe for the simple reason that natural laws prohibit supernatural occurrences. Therefore, the lack of the "necessity" for a supernatural Creator Being leads the atheist to a firm lack of belief.

I would respond to the charge of "special pleading" by stating that atheism requires special pleading, but Christian theism does not.

Theism just proposes a logical solution to the primary existential paradox.

What is the Existential Paradox?

I will here explain the existential paradox -- the problem of existence -- in the rational terms of physical science. I have quoted and paraphrased Dr. Henry M. Morris' argument in several places.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics proves that the universe had a beginning in that the universe could never have existed in a time prior to being in a state of total available energy.

Why?

Simply because the First Law of Thermodynamics shows that the universe could not have begun itself. The First Law states that the total quantity of energy in the universe is a constant and neither matter nor energy can be created nor destroyed.

Science cannot explain why matter cannot be created or destroyed. We just know that this is impossible in a purely natural system governed by physical laws. Matter and energy may be converted one into another, but beyond that, energy simply has "no place to go."

The Second Law states that the quantity of available energy is decreasing.

Therefore, as we go backward in time, the available energy is progressively greater until, finally, we reach the beginning point, where available energy equals total energy.

Time could go back no further than this. At this point, both energy and time must have come into existence in our known universe.

One might hypothesize that the universe was simply "still" at this point and had no beginning. However, this is impossible, since movement is always taking place wherever there is matter even if it is the movement of kinetic energy at the molecular level.

One might also hypothesize that it is meaningless to talk about a "before" in time when the universe was compressed into state of total energy because at this point in time, as time and matter are relative to each other, eternity existed in a moment.

While this is true, it doesn't solve the problem of there being a system with all the available energy in the universe being compressed into a single point and space in time.

The scientific conundrum from a purely metaphysical naturalistic point of view is that energy cannot create itself, or come into existence from non-existence by itself.

Something else besides the known universe must exist in order for the known universe to exist.

The most scientific and logical conclusion we could possibly state is that:

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

The atheist will not accept this conclusion, however.

He instead hypothesizes that either:

1. Some natural law canceling out the Second Law prevailed far back in time.

2. Some natural law canceling out the Second Law prevails far out in space.

3. Some force more powerful that all the energy in the known universe brought our universe into being.

When he makes the first two assumptions, however, he is denying his own metaphysical naturalism, which says that all things can be explained in terms of presently observable laws and processes.

In the third assumption, the atheist is only denying the inevitable, that someone or something created the known universe.

In all three cases, the atheist is really resorting to creationism, but just refuses to acknowledge a personal Creator God.

If the atheist would be epistemologically honest in admitting this, Christian theists could have some respect for their position and meaningful dialog would result.

But since this is not the case, all the atheist can do is attack belief in God as something he lacks. He can never defend his on position without resorting to the convoluted and contradictory argument that attacks the supernatural as something that is not naturally possible.

He is correct. Natural laws cannot explain or describe supernatural events adequately. However, the universe itself according to its own self-contained physical laws requires a supernatural cause.

What is Imprecatory Prayer?

Imprecatory prayer is essentially praying the Psalms of the Bible and specifically naming the enemies of God who refuse to repent. In scripture, imprecations are prayed for political leaders or powerful people who threaten the peace of God's people.

However, imprecatory prayer is directed primarily at God's covenant people, not the unconverted or those who are not part of the covenant. The imprecatory prayer asks the blessings of God on His people if we obey the Law, and curses of God if we disobey. Throughout the Bible the blessings and curses of God are delineated as part of God's covenant. Deuteronomy 28 and 29 contain lists of blessings and curses for God's people. Many of the Psalms of David also contain imprecations.

The Beatitudes of Luke 6:20-26 contain the curses of God (in the form of "woes") as well as the blessings:

Blessed are you when men hate you,
And when they exclude you,
And revile you, and cast out your name as evil,
For the Son of Man’s sake.

Woe to you when all men speak well of you,
For so did their fathers to the false prophets.

- Luke 6:22,26

Paul commands us to pray and sing the Psalms (Eph. 5:19) – all of them, especially the imprecatory Psalms that call down both God’s destruction and conversion of the wicked (Psalms 74, 83, etc.). In fact, imprecatory prayer has been part of the liturgy of various church denominations for centuries – especially in funeral services.

One of the most famous examples of this is the Requiem by Mozart.

Confutatis maledictis
Flammis acribus addictis,
Voca me cum benedictis.

When the accursed have been confounded
And given over to the bitter flames,
Call me with the blessed.

A vital feature of imprecatory prayer is repentance in order to receive God's blessing. But another feature is rejoicing over God's judgment of sinners. In the 1990s, I published a series of articles in The Forerunner about imprecatory prayer and applied it to the abortion issue and pro-life activism.

Author Ray Sutton calls this the "Covenantal Lawsuit:

One of the greatest concerns is the “wicked people” – abortionists, pornographers, statist politicians, etc. – who stand in the way of the visible reign of Christ (Heb. 2:8ff.). How should they be dealt with? Because the Biblical covenant commands Christians to be lawful, they are not allowed to use violence, except in the event of self-defense and a legally declared war by proper civil magistrates. Are they, therefore, left only with what some Christian activists call “a smile and a ‘God loves you’”?

No. The Bible specifies a special kind of lawsuit that can be filed with God against the wicked called a covenantal lawsuit. This Biblical concept is consistently used by the prophets. In a covenantal lawsuit, the blessings and curses found in Deuteronomy 28 are turned into accusations against lawless covenant-breakers and enemies of the Church, calling down God’s sanctions on them. Yes, a covenant lawsuit asks God to remove the wicked. God removes the wicked one of two ways: by conversion or destruction. So, a covenantal lawsuit is not “unloving.” But it is a Biblical method for taking dominion when opposition is met! A Christian’s greatest weapon in the face of opposition is not a “carnal” weapon but a spiritual one (2 Cor. 10:4), the covenant itself turned into a lawsuit before God (That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant)

The imprecatory prayer can take the form of a proclamation signed by church ministers and members calling political leaders to repentance. In the 1990s, many Christians became interested in how this could apply to the president because of his avid pro-abortion agenda. Bill Clinton was a member of a confessional church, which made him, at least confessionally, a Christian subject to sanctions of the church.

To be consistent, we ought to pray for all our leaders in this manner, not just the ones we don't like. For instance, if John McCain were to be elected and continued to support embryonic stem cell research, homosexual rights and so on, then the church would be responsible to call the president to repentance.

This could take the form of praying specific imprecations (curses) found in scripture if the president does not uphold God's law. The prayer would be published and the president would be warned and implored to obey God's covenant.

An example

Psalm 109:8 is a prayer of King David when Saul was persecuting him.

"Let his days be few,
And let another take his office."

This is essentially what I believe we should pray when John McCain (who is a church member and claims Jesus as his Savior) is elected. If he were not to be proactive on the pro-life issue as promised, then he would be under God's judgment. The church's responsibility is to proclaim this publicly through imprecatory prayer.

An explanation

The above is intended as an explanation to the many who have responded to an earlier blog post in which I referred to imprecations in passing. This can be wrenched out of context and framed in terms of "praying for so-and-so's death."

That is technically correct, but if taken out of context, it is a misleading way of phrasing it.

It is important not to take imprecatory Psalms and prayers out of context. I advocate praying imprecations precisely as stated in scripture. Of course, the reaction to church leaders who advocate imprecatory prayer is always going to be negative, especially when understood in the context of a liberal or atheistic worldview.

I may also be presumptive in thinking that most Christians understand the following:

1. That Christians understand election and reprobation -- I am afraid that most think that all may repent if we just give them the benefit of the doubt and pray for them long enough. But it is possible that John McCain is not one of the elect and no amount of time and prayer will change this. If so, then it is better that he be removed from office and a Christian that upholds God's law would take his place.
   
2. That most Christians understand that no one can really pray effectively for God to "kill" anyone. God is sovereign and He isn't moved by prayer. It is just the opposite. God moves us to pray according to His will. That is why it is important to pray both blessings and curses of the covenant when we pray for our leaders (and especially for ourselves). If you read David's Psalms (especially Psalm 7) David prays that God would judge him if he is disobedient or has sin in his heart.
3. That people understand that John McCain is not pro-life. A lot of people think he is. I'd just recommend researching his record. Some say he's pro-life about 75 to 80 percent of the time.

So let me know really what you think.

Is John McCain pro-life?

Is imprecatory prayer hateful?

Does the church have the responsibility to pray both the blesings and curses of God for our leaders?

The Atheist Syndrome

Dr. George Grant sat for a video interview a back and he talked about the book, The Atheist Syndrome. The author, John Koster, profiles the lives and personalities of four of most well-known atheists and their followers. In the most extreme cases, atheism is not just a healthy skepticism, such as agnosticism (the admission of "not knowing" if there is a God) or "free thinking" that eschews supernatural theology in favor of naturalist explanations. The atheist claims to speak as infallibly as God in claiming there is no God. In its extreme form, atheism is a mental disorder.

George Grant explains:



If you think this is pure polemics, I'll go as far as to agree that on the surface it seems that this profile is too naïve. To say that all atheists are bed-wetters, sexual deviants, victims of abusive fathers and promiscuous mothers is at best an over-generalization based on four of the most well-known atheists and some of their followers. I'd never go to this extreme to say all atheists are like that.

But there is a syndrome that is very real and more endemic to atheists than any other group.

Since 1987, my passion for ministry has focused on media projects, eschatology, theonomy, evangelism, foreign missions, political action and pro-life activism. Therefore, most of the criticism I get from our web presence has been from liberals, witches, pagans, and pro-abortion advocates. It is completely understandable and expected. The liberals (both theological and political) fear that a growing Christian movement represents a throwback to the fear and prejudice of the so-called "Dark Ages." Witches and pagans fear that biblical law will lead to a return to the "burning times." Pro-aborts oppose pro-life activism out of their desire for selfish autonomy and a license for irresponsible behavior.

Most of the emails and comments I have received from these groups have taken the form of hysterical screeds. In effect, they say: "You Christians want to kill and repress us all!"

Of this group, King Solomon lamented when he wrote:

"The wicked flee when no one is pursuing" (Proverbs 28:1).

When faced with left-wing paranoia, I usually try to explain in a rational and calm tone that there is always great freedom in a Christian society for people to hold other views and practice their religion in private just as long just as they do not break the civil laws of the society. Of course, Christians want these laws based – if not wholly, then at least in principle – on biblical law.

As a person who was converted to Christ as an adult, I realize that everyone is in a different place in their journey toward God. We can offer a great deal of tolerance when dealing with groups who do not share our worldview. It took me 23 years to see the truth. I try to keep that in mind and that I should bear with people who don't see it my way.

My vision for a Christian America is the Puritanism of Oliver Cromwell – a ruler who invited Jews to return to England 100 years after being banished by King Henry VIII. Cromwell also protected the rights of Roman Catholics to worship publicly in Protestant England – although he was adamantly opposed to their theology on a personal level. He strengthened a republican form of government in England and fought the idea of the "divine right of kings."

Recently, due to some side comments I made on a blog post regarding imprecatory prayer, I've flushed out droves of new antagonists – the militant atheists. Except for a few notable champions, most prefer to remain anonymous while sniping at Christians and all theists in general from the bushes. Their most effective field of battle is the blogosphere of course.

They are even more hysterical than the usual suspects – the liberals, pagans and pro-aborts – but they are different in that they share in common several pathological characteristics. While I don't necessarily think that Koster's thesis is entirely correct, I've noticed several common denominators among atheists – or at least the these anonymous atheist flamers on the Internet. These include:

1. Decrying the supposed stupidity and lack of intelligence on the part of Christians without ever condescending to a focused debate on worldview issues.
2. The use of invective, profanity and ad hominem attacks when refuting Christians, ironically acting extremely insulted when the tables are turned.
3. Focusing on the supposed hypocrisies of Christianity, while never owning their own behavior or the inhuman criminal history of recent atheistic societies.
4. An obsession with sexually demeaning comments bordering on harassment in an attempt to assault the moral sensibilities and sexual ethics of the Bible.
5. An obsession with irrelevant details.
6. Frequent accusations of lying and dishonesty even while purposefully interpreting Christian writings and biblical theology in a skewed and satirical manner.
7. An irrational insistence that experimental science is the only form of rational thought. In other words, a belief in metaphysical naturalism (the idea that all truth is knowable through naturalistic experimentation and observation) rather than traditional scientific rationalism (the idea that science can only observe, reproduce and describe natural events according to an imperfect paradigm.)

I didn't need to do case studies or conduct a scientific study to discover this syndrome. I have enough data in my mail box over the years. (I am sure that I'll get many more of these now as a result of P.Z. Myers free advertisement of my website.)

No atheist's response is complete without the "bearing false witness" charge. Although mountains of materials defending Christianity have been written and collected over the centuries, the charge is always that it is a "lie" to say so. On the contrary, if a religious opinion can be proven demonstrably wrong, it is only an opinion, not a lie.

Another ploy is to portray Christians as "hateful." The idea that Christianity promotes a "love you neighbor" ethic is freely admitted by atheists when they berate us for our alleged "hatred hypocrisy." They need to borrow from Christianity's moral code of the "law of love" even while they mock us!

I sometimes use sarcasm in my responses to non-believers. Jesus and the Apostle Paul used sarcasm, so it's not wrong to use it in a measured way. But usually I try to answer rationally – not with my answers, but with a theological consensus based on years of study on the matter. I don't get into arguments over things I know nothing about. In this case, silence is usually treated as an admission of surrender.

It is supposed to be hypocrisy for Christians to treat biblical morality as binding on non-believers. It's hypocritical for us hold a black and white view of morality. Who are we to say what is "good" and "evil"? But that's not to stop the pot from calling the kettle black. Atheists have their own version of morality that they seek to impose on society.

Neutrality is a myth. Every civil law is an imposition of someone's morality on another person. No culture can exist for long as an amalgamation of diverse "moralities." Eventually one worldview is going to win out. And that is really what this debate is about. It's a battle for our culture. The militant atheists are worthy adversaries in this battle because they understand that theirs is a battle for cultural dominion far better than most Christians. Although atheists are a small minority, they understand that they can win by holding forth in the battle of ideas. No matter how vacuous they may sound at first, many of their core ideas are already the ruling presuppositions of the media, entertainment industry and liberal politics.

That is why the Sarah Palin nomination has them hysterical. Win or lose, she is a bright, young, articulate defender of the Christian political worldview who will be around for years to come.

So get ready. The culture wars are back.

Why I support Chuck Baldwin for President

"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost."

- John Quincy Adams

Have you considered voting for the Constitution Party candidate in the last few election cycles, Howard Phillips or Mike Peroutka or Chuck Baldwin, but were discouraged by the following argument?

“A vote for Chuck Baldwin is a vote for Barack Obama!”

or …

“You are throwing away your vote on a candidate that can’t win!”

There is a fundamental problem with this statement in that it assumes that the Republican choice is acceptable. I had this argument with Ron Paul supporters in the Republican primaries. I argued that Mike Huckabee was an acceptable candidate and actually had a chance of winning. If only the Romney and Paul supporters would unite behind the frontrunner we could have beaten McCain.

The problem with my thinking was that the Paul supporters – even though they could not win – thought Huckabee was an unacceptable choice. While I disagree with them, I respect them for their uncompromising stance.

Likewise, I would vote for Sarah Palin without any hesitation she were running for president. She's not perfect, but acceptable. I am willing to make a mistake on a relative unknown who has done all the right things so far and stands for all the right things (at least in word). However, Sarah Palin isn't running for president, John McCain is. It is the "known" quantity of McCain that I can't support. I simply can't bring myself in good conscience to support a liberal Republican.

The Constitution Party is by far a better choice. I am supporting Chuck Baldwin because he's the best man running. If you doubt this, I ask you to visit his website and make your decision based on his positions.

http://www.baldwin08.com/

The Constitution Party is the only political party that recognizes Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of humanity in its platform. Up and down, every issue that Christians care about is advocated – not without flaws – but in a far better way than what I have seen in any other political party.

http://www.constitutionparty.com/party_platform.php

Now some will object:

“What if millions of Christians support Baldwin, but we get only 10 percent of the vote and throw the election to the Democrats?”

It’s possible.

Many people blame Ross Perot for Clinton’s election to office with 43 percent of the vote in 1992 and then 49 percent of the vote in 1996. But there is a flip side to the argument.

First, the Republican Party needs Christian conservatives in order to win. If we “throw” an election or two, the damage is short term. Then we may get the candidate we want in the next cycle, or else the Constitution Party is an option again. It’s the age-old political strategy of purposefully taking one step backwards in order to take two steps forward. If we continue the way we are going now with the Republican Party, we are surely going backwards. Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 spawned the “Contract with America” – a conservative movement that didn’t go far enough and yet brought the greatest era of economic growth our nation has ever seen. A loss is not a loss when the better of the two frontrunners is a disaster.

Second, there are probably just as many disaffected leftists who would vote Green Party, Libertarian Party or some other third party instead of voting for a Democrat from a congressional session that has a 17 percent approval rating. When they see many of us leaving the Republican Party, fewer of them will be afraid to leave the Democrats.

Third, we will win eventually. I believe strongly in the “Puritan Hope” – that one day the whole earth will be filled with the glory of God. Supporting the Constitution Party is supporting the winning side. It is the only self-consciously Christian party. It can be our vehicle until something even better comes along. America will be a Christian nation, or another Christian nation will take its place. If we succeed in restoring America to the vision of our Puritan and Christian Patriot forefathers, our support of the Constitution Party in the darkest days before the fall of western humanism will be a source of joy and pride for our children and grandchildren.

On the other hand, I am afraid that future generations might look back and see that I supported “the lesser of two evils” – and hid my talents in the ground, while our country’s destiny weighed in the balance.

I realize an Obama presidency would be a disaster. I hope and pray that if it is truly a choice between Obama and McCain that somehow McCain wins and he either repents of his weak views on the sanctity of life, marriage and big government – or that he dies soon after his election and Palin gets the executive office.

And yet God holds us accountable for our actions as individuals. If we have the choice between two sinful actions and a morally correct decision, and yet the morally correct decision would cause us to suffer a personal setback, then it is still wrong to pick the lesser of two evils. We only win when we obey God.

Is Baldwin God’s Candidate?

I am not claiming that Baldwin is “God’s candidate.” Every Christian needs to follow his own conscience on this matter. If you can vote for McCain with a clear conscience, then by all means do it, but remember, “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23).

But if you think your only option is a vote for McCain, consider this. Twenty years ago it would have been unthinkable for evangelical Christian to support a candidate who said in 2005:

The constitutional amendment [banning gay marriage] strikes me as antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans.... It usurps from the states a fundamental authority they have always possessed and imposes a federal remedy for a problem that most states do not believe confronts them.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/14/mccain.marriage/

Since that statement McCain has equivocated all over the place on the issue of gay marriage vs. civil unions – he's for fetal tissue research, but he's "pro-life" – and so on.

If McCain was acceptable or even near the threshold of acceptability I'd vote for him. However, a vote for a lesser evil is still a vote for evil.

Now most of my friends are supporting this man simply because he suddenly talks the right talk. We are no longer governed by the rule of law and we Christians need to do what our conscience tells us to do in order to resist lawlessness.

If we support this candidate, how far will we be willing to compromise 20 years down the road?

God does miracles and it's possible that some weird national crisis could catapult a third party candidate into national prominence. It has happened a few times in our history, Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860 being the most notable example. However, God does not usually perform "miracles" without a human agent acting according to natural means. God sets up providential circumstances and then requires His people to act in the right way to receive the blessing.

Most people don't want to admit it, but we are living in the first stages of a tyrannical state. I don't think it is as bad as some conspiracy theorists would have us think, but it is headed in that direction. What was unthinkable 20 years ago is reality today and God only knows what lies down the road if the slide is not reversed.

Can the slide be reversed? Can we restore our nation as a beacon of righteousness? Will God do such a miracle and bring a spiritual awakening to our land?

Yes, under one condition.

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. – 2 Chronicles 7:14

Samuel Adams said referring to the overthrow of George III’s tyranny in America:

He who sets up and pulls down, confines or extends empires at his pleasure, generally, if not always, carries on his work with instruments apparently unfit for the great purpose, but which in his hands are always effectual ... God does the work, but not without instruments, and they who are employed are denominated as his servants; no king, nor kingdom was ever destroyed by a miracle which effectually excluded the agency of second causes ... We may affect humility in refusing to be made the instruments of Divine vengeance, but the good servant will execute the will of his master. Samuel will slay Agag; Moses, Aaron, and Hur will pray in the mountain, and Joshua will defeat the Canaanites.

Yes, God does the work, if His people are willing to obey His commandments. I pray that enough would be willing.

The Todd Bentley "revival" fall-out

"I insisted much on the necessity of a new birth, as also on the necessity of a minister's being converted before he could preach aright. Unconverted ministers are the bane of the Christian Church. I think that great and good man, Mr. Stoddard, is much to be blamed for endeavoring to prove that unconverted men might be admitted to the ministry. A sermon lately published by Gilbert Tennent, entitled 'The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry' I think unanswerable."

- George Whitefield, Journal, 1741

If you are a person who was affected by the "revival" meetings conducted by Todd Bentley in Lakeland, Florida this past year, you might be confused or asking questions in regard to the fallout surrounding his ministry.

I hope you will read what I have to say here and consider it.

Prior to August 3rd, I had an internet conversation with a friend whose church is experiencing a similar "revival" movement. I had heard a message on CD from the pastor of this church and I thought it was very sound. At the time, I spoke my mind that what I had seen of Bentley on GodTV looked "vacuous" in comparison. A few days later, Bentley was forced to step down from public ministry. I wrote to tell my friend that I blame those people responsible for endorsing this as much as Todd Bentley.

How can it be a "revival" if the leader is preaching heresy and engaging in immoral behavior?

My friend wrote back to say that it is really too bad that people have shut out Bentley's message just because he faltered.

I then explained that I shut out Bentley's message even before I knew about his moral failings. It was the message that made me shut out the message! And in the end, we know a tree by its fruit.

My friend then suggested that to be consistent I should not receive the message of God's grace carried through prophets such as King David, King Solomon or the Apostle Paul, since they too sinned. Yet they were used of God to write scripture. I might as well in effect "shut out" what they have to say about God too.

So the reasoning goes.

I've heard the "David" argument many times before.

I have one word for that idea: antinomianism.

This is the heresy that faith is divorced from works or that faith does not produce obedience to the law of God. If these men are preaching the Gospel yet living in gross unrepentant sin, then they may not even be converted.

Here is what I believe God is leading me to say about all of this.

There are revivals all over the world today. They aren't in the spotlight or on GodTV every night. But they are genuine. I am not saying we should not seek God or that there isn't something wonderful going on in churches who are promoting "revival." I am just against the idea of treating these men differently when they sin and preach heresy because they supposedly have the "anointing."

The Emperor's New Clothes

The strategy of preachers in these revival meetings -- Lakeland, Toronto, Pensacola, etc. -- is to tell people who see their nakedness, that they just aren't "spiritual" enough to receive all the wonderful things God is doing, that they are "blocking" the anointing, and so on. It's a heresy in and of itself -- elitist Gnosticism.

Beyond the issue of personal character, I don't believe that meetings emphasizing gifts, miracles and the "presence" of God are necessarily "revivals" at all. Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone. Once we are saved, we do not become sanctified through spiritual experiences. We become sanctified by obeying God day by day as we are enabled by grace. In other words, there is no "fast track" to sanctification.

Therefore, we cannot "miss the anointing" simply because our hearts are not "open to receive" an experience. There are no higher levels of anointing you can attain in a revival meeting. It's complete nonsense. It's manipulative and it's totally contrary to the message of historic revival -- the message of the Gospel.

In 1994, I decided that experiences with God are a good thing, but you can have them in your living room -- or anywhere God chooses to move. Four years ago, God healed me of a ten day bout with atrial fibrillation in a hospital room. I was simply praying by myself. I rebuked the enemy and my heart converted to a normal rhythm. A coincidence? Maybe. I believe it was a providential healing through prayer. But this experience didn't bring me any closer to God than I was a minute before. Even though I certainly felt closer to God due to that experience, it didn't change my standing in God. Our position with God is a judicial standing, not an experience.

People feel the rush they get in a room of thousands of people worshiping God, and they assume this is the "presence" of God. It's not a bad thing to feel this, but it's totally contrary to scripture to claim that our standing with God is gained through a good feeling or an experience.

My Eyewitness Account

1. I was living in Orlando during Rodney Howard Browne's "laughing revival" in Lakeland, Florida in 1993. I visited several times and wasn't overly impressed. There was not any "supernatural presence" of God there that I could not find through personal devotion or in any church service or prayer group.
   
2. I moved to Melbourne, Florida soon after that and was disturbed by the worldly carnality of Michael W. Thompson and the antinomian teachings of Randy Clark. I wrote a position paper on that in 1994 called Revival: It's No Laughing Matter. I won't repeat the content of it here, but I tried to explain what historic revival is and why this was not it. This was several years before the leaders of that renewal movement were exposed in sin.
3. I lived in Pensacola during the Brownsville Revival. I had a friend who came all the way from Russia to sit in those meetings. He claimed it was the strongest anointing he had ever experienced. I sat there with an open mind and an open heart. I just couldn't bring myself to fake being slain in the spirit or to lie and say I experienced something amazing when all I saw was a religious meeting with a lot people seeking an experience.
4. Todd Bentley was more vacuous than all the others, but I expected the usual crowd to go along with it and claim, "This was the greatest revival since The Great Awakening!" as they always say. Even though I live in nearby Kissimmee, I did not visit the Bentley meetings.
   

How many times can people be fooled by the Emperor's new clothes?

I am nothing special. I don't have a "super-anointing" or a special gift of discernment. If it were not for the grace of God, I could be fooled too.

In fact, you may think I am fooled by a "hard heart."

So I will leave you with this.

George Whitefield preached that one of the signs of God beginning to judge a nation is that He will give the church over to unconverted ministers -- even those who do not behave as sinners -- and God will turn the people over to blindness so that they will receive them as angels of light.

How was the New Testament canon assembled?

Here's a question that I've wrestled with for about 15 years. I've changed my mind on the issue in the last two years after reading what the New Testament itself and the church fathers of the first and second centuries have to say on the issue of canonicity.

Protestants teach sola scriptura -- that all the Christian needs to know about matters pertaining to salvation is contained in scripture. And since the Bible contains no “table of contents” this presents a problem when there are challenges to the canonicity of specific books.

Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believe in the authority of church councils, creeds and canons (or the "rule of faith") not only to determine matters pertaining to saving faith, but to determine the canon of Scripture itself. Here is the way one Eastern Orthodox writer put it: "The church preceded the Bible; the Bible did not precede the church." Of course, the writer was using this argument to validate the continued authority of the church to determine matters of faith and doctrine infallibly.

What I am most concerned about is how to counter the arguments of modern liberals and Neo-Gnostics who have popularized the idea that the late second century fathers, such as Irenaeus and Tertullian, began to assemble the books of the New Testament --and even to revise and edit them -- only when the Gnostics and other heretics became a threat to their authority.

Was the New Testament received as a whole or was it assembled? Most evangelicals concede that New Testament canonization was a process that took a century or more.

I posed this question to a well-known theologian once: "If we believe in sola scriptura, that the Bible alone is inerrant, how can we be sure that we have all the correct books in the Bible -- especially so-called disputed books, such as James, 2 and 3 John, 2 Peter, Revelation. If scripture alone is inerrant, how can we infallibly know that Peter wrote 2 Peter? How do we treat disputed passages such as John 8 and Mark 16?"

He surprisingly came back with the answer that we cannot know for certain, but that he personally believes that there is enough information in the books themselves and in their history for us to today to make the correct decision.

At that time, his answer was unacceptable to me. The question has huge implications for the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. His answer cannot counter the skeptics. I then made the decision to accept the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic view that it was the church itself that was given the authority to decide the canon infallibility.

Then in the last two years, I've come across another idea that is more plausible:

The New Testament canonizes itself through internal evidence

If we begin with the writings of Peter, John and Matthew as genuine apostolic writings, we can quickly find a "pedigree" for all the books of the New Testament with the exception of Hebrews, James and Jude. And I believe even these are not a problem if we look at other internal evidences within those books and some external evidence from the book of 1 Clement that was written between 68 to 96 AD.

In fact, Peter, prior to his martyrdom in Rome, knew the writings of Paul (2 Peter 3:14-16) and therefore must have known most of the other writings of the Apostles. The majority of apostolic writings (Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, Paul's Epistles, Peter's Epistles) were available to Peter in Rome by the mid 60s. According to 2 Timothy 4:9-12, Luke, Mark and Timothy were in Rome at the time of the martyrdom of Paul and Peter around 67 A.D.

In fact, I look at the following passage as a key to when most of the books of the New Testament could have been assembled in one place.

“Be diligent to come to me quickly; for Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world, and has departed for Thessalonica -- Crescens for Galatia, Titus for Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for ministry. And Tychicus I have sent to Ephesus. Bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas when you come—and the books, especially the parchments” (2 Timothy 4:9-12).

The questions we should ask here are: “Which books?” and “Which parchments?”

Parchments are blank pieces of papyrus or animal skins used for preparing manuscripts. We don’t know what “books” Paul is referring to here. Some have suggested that Paul is referring to scrolls of the Old Testament. However, it is unlikely that toward the end of his life, Paul is asking two important bishops in the early church to take a dangerous journey to Rome before winter in order to prepare an edition of the Hebrew Scriptures. It's also improbable that Paul needed the Scriptures for some other purpose. Rome had Jewish synagogues with these writings and Paul, as a rabbi, would have also committed huge portions of scripture to memory.

Paul almost certainly meant his own writings and perhaps other Apostolic writings that Timothy and Mark had assembled. It is thought that the “cloak” he refers to here is a large piece of waterproof leather used to wrap scrolls and parchments – sort of a first century book case that was used to protect parchment and papyrus when traveling.

But what is significant about this passage is that it puts five important New Testament figures in Rome around 66 or 67 AD. We know that Mark was an associate of Peter (1 Peter 5:13). The second century Church Father, Papias of Hierapolis, relates that Mark was Peter’s interpreter and wrote his Gospel as a record of what Peter preached at Rome. We know that that Timothy was Paul’s scribe (1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Corinthians 1:1; Colossians 1:1; Philemon 1:1; Philippians 1:1). Timothy is even mentioned as being present at the writing of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 13:23). Thus I personally believe the most likely explanation for the authorship of Hebrews was that it was composed during this time as one of the final letters of Paul. The Epistle to the Hebrews was probably then redacted after Paul’s death either by either Luke, Mark or Timothy -- or perhaps by an elder or a scribe from the Church at Rome, such as Clement.

We have an interesting early testimony from Clement of Rome (c. 68-96 AD) on the whereabouts of Peter and Paul at the end of the reign of the Emperor Nero (67 AD).

“But not to dwell upon ancient examples, let us come to the most recent spiritual heroes. Let us take the noble examples furnished in our own generation. Through envy and jealousy, the greatest and most righteous pillars [of the Church] have been persecuted and put to death. Let us set before our eyes the illustrious apostles. Peter, through unrighteous envy, endured not one or two, but numerous labors and when he had at length suffered martyrdom, departed to the place of glory due to him. Owing to envy, Paul also obtained the reward of patient endurance, after being seven times thrown into captivity, compelled to flee, and stoned. After preaching both in the east and west, he gained the illustrious reputation due to his faith, having taught righteousness to the whole world, and come to the extreme limit of the west, and suffered martyrdom under the prefects. Thus was he removed from the world, and went into the holy place, having proved himself a striking example of patience” (1 Clement 5).

If we accept 1 Clement as a reliable history (although not authoritative as Scripture) then we also have to put Peter in Rome along with Paul, Luke, Mark and Timothy -- writers to whom are attributed 19 out of the 27 books of the New Testament. Thus we have these 19 books of the New Testament in Rome in about 67 AD.

This body of work was then collated passed on to the last remaining Apostle, John, in Ephesus who assembled the canon together with his own writings and passed it on to his disciples. The remaining books, the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistles of James and Jude are associated with the Jerusalem church and would have come to through Antioch to Ephesus after the destruction of Jerusalem.

This is why Clement of Rome, Polycarp of Smyrna and Ignatius of Antioch are able to quote freely from so many New Testament books as though they were already accepted as authoritativeury and by the late first century and early second century. It is significant that these bishops represent the furthest eastern and western centers of Christianity at the end of the Apostolic era in 70 AD -- Antioch, Asia Minor and Rome. For there to be such continuity in the New Testament texts they quote, the canon must have been circulated in some type of systematic way in order for it to have reached such a wide audience.

The testimony from the late first and second century Church Fathers (Papias of Hierapolis, Irenaeus of Lyons and Clement of Alexandria) is that each of the books received its authority directly from the Apostles Peter, John and James the brother of Jesus.

1. The Gospel of Matthew originated in Jerusalem or Antioch and received its authority from the Apostle Matthew and the other 12 Apostles;
2. Mark received its authority from the Apostle Peter;
3. Luke from the Apostle Paul (and the 12 Apostles);
4. John from the Apostle John;
5. Acts from the Apostle Paul (and the 12 Apostles);
6. All the letters of Paul from the Apostle Peter (see: 2 Peter 3:14-16);
7. The letters of Peter from the Apostle Peter;
8. The letters of John from the Apostle John;
9. Revelation from the Apostle John;

10. Hebrews gets its earliest mention by Clement of Rome (c. 68-96 AD);

(This is the only Epistle of disputed authorship that most modern evangelical scholars think has no clear link to Paul. However, Hebrews is quoted extensively in the earliest writings, such as 1 Clement, and all the earliest church fathers believed it was of Paul.)

11. James from James the brother of Jesus (and from the 12 Apostles);
12. Jude from James (and from the 12 Apostles).

These two letters have enough internal testimony to place the authors as brothers named James and Jude in the church at Jerusalem. It's a small step of process of elimination to identify them as the brothers of Jesus.

Early Codices

Another key to confirming this view is the fact that the earliest New Testament papyri (fragments from the 2nd and 3rd centuries) were bound in codices of five books:

1. The four Gospels;
2. Paul's nine Epistles to the seven churches plus Hebrews;
3. Paul's five Pastoral Epistles;
4. The seven Catholic Epistles;
5. Revelation.

In fact, the earliest fragments from the mid-second century appear right around the time that "books" came into use of rather than scrolls. It is then not too much of a stretch to say that the early Christians scribes either popularized or invented the codex in order to collate the books of the New Testament and distribute them over a wide geographical area. This would eliminate the problem of having a separate scroll for each book that might be lost or damaged.

We should then examine the earliest testimony of the Church fathers, especially Papias, Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria to confirm the apostolic authority and authentic authorship of the New Testament books. Irenaeus is arguing to defend the canon against heretics who would make the number of Gospels more or less. He is writing as if this is already established, not as one who is arguing to establish a canon. Irenaeus, a student of Polycarp, received the canon from the generation of Christians who were taught by the Apostles themselves. The term that evangelicals should use is “receive as canonical,” rather than “determine” or “choose” which books were canonical. Thus the canon was not assembled over a long period of time, but was known by the second and third generation of Christians who defended its authority against the claims of heretics.

Another important key is the Muratorian Canon (170 AD) is the earliest list of the New Testament books. It names all of the New Testament books in our canon today with the exception of James –- which could have been overlooked or mentioned in a missing portion of the fragment.

From this, I draw the conclusion that a New Testament canon existed at the very latest by the early-second century, and there is strong evidence that all 27 books of the New Testament were known as Scripture at the end of the first century by bishops such as Clement of Rome, Papias of Hierapolis, Polycarp of Smyrna and Ignatius of Antioch.

My response to a cynic on the chronology of Jesus' life

John Armstrong -- Jesus' doubter, cynic and Deist -- posted a video response to The Real Jesus. Above is his video and here is my written response to him. I may do a video response if I have time.

I've written on most of the points you bring up in your video on my blog and on my YouTube V-logs. I think maybe that's why you linked to my v-log in the first place.

I don't see any new objections here.

That being said, biblical chronology is interesting to me and I've come to the conclusion in the past two years that it's a key issue in solving a lot of theological debates within the church as well as apologetic battles with skeptics and seekers.

I am a partial preterist, so I think that the 70 A.D. mark is important to help Christians understand not only the book of Revelation and the Mount Olivet Discourse, but also why the NT was written when it was written and why these dates are non-negotiable.

I presuppose that the NT is correct. I admit my bias. I also reason backward in time from the 70 A.D. mark to get certain dates.

Here is one time marker for example: The Mount Olivet Discourse can't be correct unless it was given in or after 30 A.D. "This generation shall not pass away until all these things shall take place" -- speaking of the destruction of the Temple.

A Hebrew generation is 40 years, so that gives the EARLIEST year for the Mount Olivet Discourse and the crucifixion which took place that same time.

30 A.D. plus 40 years = 70 A.D.

Since Jews never entered the rabbinical ministry before their 30th year (which is actually age 29 in Hebrew reckoning) then Jesus entered the ministry at age 29 or 30. If three Passovers are recorded in the Gospels, then that would give a date of 26 or 27 A.D. when Jesus reached age 30.

So when was Jesus born?

If you subtract 30 from 27 A.D. The birth of Jesus occurred around 4 B.C.

John the Baptist was six months older than Jesus (Luke 1:36). He entered the ministry in the days of Pontius Pilate (26 A.D; Luke 3:1).

Here I think Luke is giving really specific dates. Jesus could not have been younger than 33-years-old in 30 A.D. and John the Baptist could not have entered the ministry prior to 26 A.D.

John the Baptist was conceived in the days of Herod (Luke 1:5; 2:1). Here, Luke refers to King Herod the Great of Judea and NOT Herod Antipas, who he later names as Herod Tetrarch of Galilee (Luke 3:1).

Herod the Great died in 4 B.C.

So from this much alone, Luke's account matches Matthew's. John the Baptist was born in 5 B.C. (Luke 1:5; 2:1) and Jesus was born no later than 4 B.C. during the last months of the reign of Herod (Matthew 2:1).

This chronology matches other dates such as the beginning of Pilate's administration coinciding with John the Baptist's ministry (26 A.D.) and the administration of Herod's sons (Luke 3:1).

Now let's deal with Quirinius.

Your entire argument rests on the idea that Quirinius had NO ADMINISTRATION WHATSOEVER over Syria during Herod the Great's reign. You don't prove that he did NOT. You say you have contrary evidence, but you do NOT cite it.

However, I have in Justin at least one historical record to corroborate this.

Justin, Apology, Chapt 34: "And hear what part of earth He was to be born in, as another prophet, Micah, foretold. He spoke thus: 'And thou, Bethlehem, the land of Judah, art not the least among the princes of Judah; for out of thee shall come forth a Governor, who shall feed My people.' Now there is a village in the land of the Jews, thirty-five stadia from Jerusalem, in which Jesus Christ was born, as you can ascertain also from the registers of the taxing made under Cyrenius, your first procurator in Judaea."

Quirinius was a ruler in the eastern Roman Empire from the time of 14 B.C. to 12 A.D. Quirinius, at the time of King Herod's death was doing military expeditions in the eastern provinces of the Roman empire (Tacitus, Annals 3:48; Florus, Roman History 2:31). Justin's "First Apology" indicaties that he either was a co-ruler with the governor of Syria (Quintilius Varus) over Judea or at least placed in charge of the census in Judea.

So Quirinius is hardly a problem if you believe Justin. He was not the "governor" of Syria, but simply a "procurator" in both Judea and Syria. In fact, the phrase "hegemoneuontos tes Syrias Kyreniou" (Luke 2:2) can be taken to mean ANY kind of ruler. The word "hegemonoi" in Greek can mean a variety of titles meaning ruler, governor, procurator, authority, etc.

For instance, Pilate is also called a "hegemonoi," in the New Testament, but Herod of Judea (another of Herod the Great's son) was the Tetrarch at the time of the crucifixion. Pilate was a prefect or a procurator, yet he had greater authority than Herod of Judea. It's no problem since "hegemonoi" is translated variously as governor, procurator, prefect, in the New Testament.

Furthermore, Roman rulers often held more than one title in a province and sometimes held titles over several provinces.

Justin records that Quirinius was a "procurator of Judea." Other histories record that this would have been while Varus and Saturnius served as governors.

Why would Luke then call him "governor of Syria" if he were simply a regional procurator? Why does he not name Varus or Saturnius? There is no contradiction here. He could have had MORE AUTHORITY than Varus or Saturnius, just as Pilate had more authority than Herod.

It's also interesting that Justin didn't simply copy Luke and call him "governor of Syria" -- he calls him "procurator of Judea." Sometimes historical accounts that don't match exactly just give MORE information not necessarily contradictory information. And more importantly, whether he was right or wrong, Justin obviously used another source than Luke -- one that puts Quirinius in the right place at the right time.

Tertullian also does the same thing in his fourth book Against All Heresies: "But there is historical proof that at this very time a census had been taken in Judaea by Sentius Saturninus, which might have satisfied their inquiry respecting the family and descent of Christ."

Note that Tertullian mentions Saturnius, and doesn't simply copy Luke. He can't be making it up because he states emphatically that proof of the census existed.

So if we try to reconcile the various sources, we have information that Jesus was born when Herod was governor of Judea, Saturnius had been governor of Syria and a ruler of Judea, and Varus had been governor of Syria, and Quirinus was procurator of both Syria and Judea.

If all the secular dates are correct that puts Jesus' birth in an 18 month window from late 6 B.C. to early 4 B.C.

A lot of these questions about overlapping administrations are understood better if you see a map of Palestine and realize how small the area is. We are talking about an area 100 miles in length to travel from Judea, through Samaria, Galilee, Iturea, then to Syria and Abilene. Then Asia Minor begins about 200 miles north of that area.

As you stated correctly, Quirinius was in Asia Minor overseeing campaigns against the Homonadensians from 5 to 3 B.C. This campaign was waged in Cilicia in the southeastern part of Asia Minor. He would have been on the border of Syria. So it's possible to place him in Syria sometime from 6 to 4 B.C. We know he was at the most 100 to 200 miles away.

I've given you a plausible time-line. But for the sake of argument, let's say you are right and that Tacitus contradicts Luke about Quirinius. At the very most, all you've proven is that Tacitus and Luke disagree and so at last one of them is wrong. You must admit that secular historians often make mistakes!

You raise several other points too, but I think those are much weaker and fairly easy to refute. These concern the arrangement of materials in the Gospels but it is well know that Matthew and John don't always arrange their materials chronologically, but are concerned with thematic arrangement. A good harmony of the Gospels is needed. I can point you to one if you want.

I think if the discussion were to be continued it ought to be on a forum such as TheologyWeb, or as a forum on our websites.

That being said, we are covering ground that has been covered thousands of times before.

Do you want to talk about the census next?

Skeptic doubts Jesus' words

Here's the most recent question posed by a viewer of The Real Jesus:

"The Real Jesus: Opening (1 of 10)."
Comment from archieabe
I have a comment for you on a related topic, if I may: The typical Christian believer today seems to think that he or she knows what Jesus said and what Jesus did over 19 centuries ago. In reality, no living mortal today knows (beyond a reasonable doubt) what Jesus said or did way back in the 1st century A.D. No one. Your thoughts?

It's on the same level as doubting that Abraham Lincoln really gave the Gettysburg Address.

This is a speech that many school children are taught to memorize. "Despite the speech's prominent place in the history and popular culture of the United States, the exact wording of the speech is disputed. The five known manuscripts of the Gettysburg Address differ in a number of details and also differ from contemporary newspaper reprints of the speech."

We don't have the original copy of the Gettysburg Address that Lincoln reputedly wrote on the back of a letter on a train on the way to the ceremony. So who is to say that the Gettysburg Address isn't the product of the imagination of a popular newspaper writer?

One might counter that the five newspaper reprints prove that a speech was given and from the similarities we can reconstruct what Lincoln said to a 98 percent or better probability. Given the nature of human language, the high degree of similarity is evidence that Lincoln did in fact give the speech and that is approximately what we have today with some small edits by newspaper writers.

But doubters and conspiracy theorists can say that the above photo isn't really Lincoln and point to a number of problems with the "obviously doctored photo."

When we compare this analogy to the Gospel accounts, we are basically dealing with the same issues, the same degree of similarity between variant manuscripts, and a larger body of manuscript evidence.

We must also take into account that the disciples preserved Jesus' teachings, not His exact words. A preacher who gives an early morning sermon and a late morning sermon varies his words and content, but might be said to have "preached the same sermon." That is what we have with the sayings of Jesus. The "Sermon on the Mount" contains roughly the same words as the "Sermon on the Plain." In other words, the recorded words of Jesus are teachings that were repeated by Jesus and committed to memory by His disciples.

Here I remind the skeptic that he can probably remember the words to popular songs he heard when he was a teenager. He can recall all but a few words (or perhaps a line) many years later. My elementary school teachers made us memorize poems that I can easily recall today (with some refreshing). This was essentially how the Gospel was preserved for about 15 to 20 years -- but by the time Paul began preaching in the 50s, we know that there had been a "Gospel" that various itinerant evangelists had committed to memory. This is the Gospel that later became Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

We have to take into account that the words of Jesus were probably given in Hebrew or a dialect of Hebrew such as Aramaic. The "Gospel" survived this way for about a decade or two before someone thought to record it in Hebrew or Aramaic and then later in Greek. So the four different Greek renderings of the same account are going to have some natural variations.

In fact, the testimony of the church fathers is that Matthew was a "Hebrew" Gospel later rendered into Greek around 63 or 64 A.D.

According to Papias, Mark was the "rendering" of Peter's Gospel told to Mark, Peter's interpreter at Rome. Mark's Gospel was originally Peter's Gospel in Aramaic, but the Greek version is Mark's rendering of what Peter preached.

Then Luke is Paul's Gospel. It has the core of the "proto-Gospel" preached by Matthew and Mark with the addtion of some carefully researched details told to Luke by disciples and family members of Jesus he had known in Jerusalem, Antioch and Ephesus.


The Gospel of John was written with the help of a committee of elders who helped John recall some of Jesus acts and words not preserved in the three so-called "Synoptic" Gospels.

This is the early historical record of how the four Gospels were written. This rings true if we understand anything about how all the Hebrew scriptures came into being. Usually being the record of the sayings of prophets told to scribes and later purposefully redacted in some small details.

We also have to remember that the accounts were not written in a vacuum, but were continually preserved by eyewitnesses who knew each other well and had the opportunity to correct details if someone introduced something novel or deviant from the original words or events.

There is also manuscript evidence as well as several historical accounts that testify to this process. The theories of the liberal critics on how the Gospels came into being are without any documentary evidence and rest on pure conjecture.

Here is an image of the Rylands fragment, which is a portion of the Gospel of John copied about 115 A.D. Critics variously claim a date of 67 to 96 A.D. for John's Gospel. The amazing thing about this fragment is that it matches exactly the words of documents that were copied centuries later which is the basis for the Gospel of John we have today.

Although it is a fragment, it contains a portion of John on both the front and the reverse. The text is approximately where it should be on the reverse if the words of today's accepted Gospel of John were the same.


In other words, this particular fragment is more reliable than the Gettysburg Address!

Was Moses tripping?

Professor Benny Shanon, professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, experienced a hallucinatory trip a few years ago when he participated in a tribal ceremony in the Amazon and drank a cocktail made from a plant called "ayahuasca."

This experience led him to believe that the miracles and visions Moses experienced in the Sinai desert, and presumably when Pharoah in Egypt witnessed miracles, were nothing more than delusions induced by acid trips.

"I have no direct proof of this interpretation," he says. "It seems logical that something was altered in people's consciousness. There are other stories in the Bible that mention the use of plants: for example, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden."

Of his own drug use, Shanon says, "I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations. Hypotheses have been around for 20 years connecting the beginning of religions with psychoactive materials."

The acacia tree also has psychedelic properties, according to Shanon. Acacia is mentioned frequently in the Bible. It was the type of wood from which the Ark of the Covenant was made.

Metaphysical Naturalism

Metaphysical naturalism is a worldview in which nature is all there is, and all things supernatural, such as spirits and souls, supernatural beings, miracles, and transcendent truth as taught by the Bible, do not exist.

This view is distinguished from methodological naturalism, which is a worldview that claims that the scientific method is limited to the study of the natural world, but unlike metaphysical naturalism does not deny the possibility of supernatural or paranormal phenomena.

In other words, a methodological naturalist who believes the Bible is God's inerrant Word may do so without violating the principles of science, because the scientific method cannot use natural means to study the supernatural. It is simply not the purpose of science to prove or disprove the supernatural. It's not a proper measuring tool any more than a yard stick can be used to measure barometric pressure. For instance, science can be used to tell us something about the world's geological history and it's possible origin, but it cannot ever negate the possibility of a Creation in six days.

Much of the western world has absorbed the philosophy of Enlightenment thinkers such as Hume, Kant and Hegel, who moved from a belief that the proper role of philosophy and science was to study only natural phenomena, to a presupposition that the supernatural simply does not exist.

The metaphysical naturalist rejects the supernatural from the outset and automatically discounts any belief system that includes God or a supernatural world as primitive superstition.

The common method of metaphysical naturalists when interpreting the Bible is to reject the miracles and doubt both the history and authenticity of the literature that would give any credence to eyewitness records of supernatural events. However, much of the Bible is supported by corroborating history and archaeology. It gives historical context and purports eyewitness testimony.

The metaphyscial naturalist, if he is to be consistent with a scientific trust in empirical records, has to accept that at least some of these phenomena have a basis in fact. He is left with the only option of reinterpreting the data in terms of a "scientific explanation." The Apostle John on Patmos saw visions because he ate wild mushrooms. The Ark of the Covenant shot bolts of li