Thursday Roundups

Want to know more about Islam and how to reach out to Muslims? My popular “Islam: Understanding and Apologetics” online class is beginning next Thursday, March 30. The live class meets on three successive Thursdays at 7:30pm EST, but it’s also recorded. Click here for more info or to register!

Today’s video takes a look at the difficult topic of church discipline. It can seem more judgmental than loving, so why would Jesus command it? The Answers for Ambassadors podcast considers Part 4 of Your Best Life Now, in which Joel Osteen discusses how to deal with pain and disappointment. And I have an unusual number of excellent links this week, ranging across loneliness and celibacy, the Ten Commandments and the Apocrypha, Christian satire, The Benedict Option, and more!

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“[Prayer] turns ordinary mortals into men of power. It brings power. It brings fire. It brings rain. It brings life. It brings God.”
~ Samuel Chadwick

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Today’s video was inspired by my recent discussions of The Shack and Your Best Life Now. It considers when imperfect Christian books are still worth reading and when we ought to skip them. The weekly podcast looks at Joel Osteen’s view of the importance of our thoughts and words. And the links cover pleasing God and giving to the poor, singleness and happiness, secularization, the national epidemic of opiate addiction, and more!

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“It’s easier to avoid temptation then to resist it.”
~ Bill Shannon

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This week’s video asks what faith is and whether it’s rational. The podcast examines Part 2 of Your Best Life Now, where Joel Osteen talks about the importance of self-image. And the links of the week cover suffering and smiling, Victoria and Veggie Tales, why Christians need church, whether Jehovah is God’s true name, and more!

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“Christians who neglect corporate prayer are like soldiers who leave their front-line comrades in the lurch.”
~ Derek Prime

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This week’s new video considers Bart Ehrman’s argument that Jesus only “became” divine in John, the last Gospel written. The Answers for Ambassadors podcast picks up a new book: Your Best Life Now, by Joel Osteen. And the links of the week consider transgenderism, the power of story, prayer, and when things don’t go as planned.

I’ll be starting a live, online “Arguments for God’s Existence” apologetics class one week from today. The three-week class is held at 7:30pm EST, but it’s recorded as well. If you’re interested, click here and scroll down to the class listing!

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“Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.”
~ Martin Luther

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There’s no Answers for Ambassadors podcast this week (but check out the new book I’ll be talking about next week!), but I hope I made up for that with a long and interesting video discussion about slavery in the Bible with an atheist writer. The links of the week range across singleness, same-sex attraction, Milo and CPAC, liberal education, when silence is the best response to outrage, and more!

Also, don’t miss my new live, online Christian apologetics classes. I’m very excited to be offering these new trainings, intended for ages high school through adult and designed to be convenient and affordable. Each class will address some particular apologetic topic over the course of a few evenings. The first five classes are covering theistic arguments, Islam, Mormonism, homosexuality, and the Old Testament. Click the link above to learn more!

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The early Christians did not say “look what the world is coming to!” but “look what has come into the world!”
~ Carl F.H. Henry

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This week’s video addresses the Jehovah’s Witness argument that most Christian Bibles suppress the Old Testament name of God. The podcast wraps up our consideration of The God Delusion by taking up Dawkins’ categories of “explanation, exhortation, consolation, and inspiration” to compare the Christian and atheistic worldviews. And the links of the week cover the Holy Spirit and The Shack, marriage and parenting, the danger of allowing politics to kill our witness, and more!

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“Truth carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation: loving confrontation, but confrontation nevertheless. If our reflex action is always accommodation regardless of the centrality of the truth involved, there is something wrong.”
~ Francis Schaeffer

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Today’s video asks how God can command us to believe in him. What if you just don’t believe the claims of the Bible? The Answers for Ambassadors episode discusses The God Delusion‘s argument that religious faith is inherently harmful. And the links of the week consider preaching and community in the church, women in the Old Testament, what religion has to do with Tanzanian electricity shortages, and more!

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“Grace is indeed required to turn a man into a saint; and he who doubts this does not know what either a man or a saint is.”
~ Blaise Pascal

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This week’s video is a discussion with atheist writer Jim Wall about the Bible as a moral guide. The Answers for Ambassadors podcast considers how Dawkins’ theory of “the Moral Zeitgeist” helps explain political progressivism, and the links of the week range over smartphones, pastoral prayer, immigration, abortion, and more.

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“The Christian faith is not true because it works; it works because it is true.”
~ Os Guinness

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Today’s video asks why Jesus held his followers back from proclaiming that he was the Messiah, while the Answers for Ambassadors podcast considers Richard Dawkins’ claim that our morality is shaped by “the moral Zeitgeist” rather than divine revelation. The links of the week cover profanity and abortion, service and evangelism, Christians as “gullible skeptics,” Donald Trump as a postmodern antihero, and more!

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“The problem is that many people cling to the symbol but never understand the reality it is intended to represent. Most likely, tens of thousands of people have ‘invited Christ into [their] hearts,’ thinking that a mystical experience is what saves them. Then, they go on their merry way, living their lives as they did before. If you were to ask them, ‘How do you know that you are going to heaven?’ they would respond, ‘Because I invited Christ into my heart.’ But if you probe, there is nothing beneath the shallowness of that reply. They did what someone told them to do, but never really embraced the Savior.”
~ Daniel Wallace

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Today’s video tackles the thorny dilemma of human free will, divine sovereignty, and how they fit together. The Answers for Ambassadors episode is a rerun from a couple years ago, looking at evangelism in a culture which isn’t worried about its own sin. And the links of the week cover prayer and marriage, Christian persecution and Christians who act like Mormons, and lessons learned from lice…

If you use Google Plus, you might want to know that I’ve begun regular posts with my articles and other content on my Google+ page. Click over there to follow my posts!

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“To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination with the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, and to devote the will to the purpose of God.”
~ William Temple

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