Thursday Roundup (12/15/16)

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I’m pleased to announce another free webinar scheduled for next month: “Understanding the Old Testament Law Today,” from 7:30-8:30pm EST on Monday, January 9, with a recording available if you can’t make the live event. We’ll look at the three types of Old Testament Law and what each type has to say to today’s Christians. You can watch this frustratingly ill-informed scene from The West Wing to get in the mood for the webinar… Both Christians and unbelievers alike often misunderstand how the Old Testament applies today, but it’s a topic with much relevance to our daily lives and to modern debates over morality. Details and registration here. As always, please share this with any friends or family who might be interested!

Today’s video looks at a second-century heretic and what his list of books he accepted as Scripture can tell us about our modern Bibles. The Answers for Ambassadors podcast considers Richard Dawkins’ attempt to explain “the roots of religion.” I’m afraid the theme of this week’s links ended up being civilizational collapse (Merry Christmas!), but it’s not all doom and gloom, as several good articles remind us why Christians can always live with hope.

(If you receive these posts by email and aren’t seeing the video and podcast, just click the “Thursday Roundup” title to view the original post on my site.)

“If you are hopeless, there may be many contributors, but two are certain: 1. You have placed your hope in something other than God… and it has let you down. 2. You may understand that Jesus conquered death, but you live as though He is still in the grave. All hopelessness is ultimately a denial of the resurrection.”
~ Edward Welch

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Answering Objections to the Christmas Story, Part 1

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Nativity scene

The account of Jesus’ birth is one of the most famous and best-loved stories in the Bible. The pathetic little group in a Bethlehem stable would have made an unimpressive scene, but with the hindsight of history we know the instant of Jesus’ birth marked the thunderclap moment when God stepped into a dying world to beat death at its own game. And what an invasion! The Creator of the universe, born as a human infant, dependent on a young mother’s care to survive. On both a cosmic and a personal scale, it is hard to beat the story—and it has the added merit of being true.

Or so we believe. As we head into the season when we particularly celebrate the birth of the Savior of the world, you are likely to hear attacks on the Christmas story, as skeptics argue that parts of it are implausible or contradictory. I hope my articles this week and next week will prepare you with good answers for the most common objections to the historical accounts of Jesus’ birth.

Of the four Gospels, only Matthew and Luke describe the birth of the Savior in Bethlehem. That in itself is an interesting window into the way in which God divinely orchestrated the testimony of four different writers to create a fuller and richer picture than any one author provides. Four parallel birth narratives would have done us little good. In fact, it would have been hard to avoid the suspicion that they were simply copying from one another. Instead, each Gospel’s introduction of Jesus offers a little window into its author’s particular passions and focuses.

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Thursday Roundup (12/8/16)

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I got into the Christmas spirit with today’s video looking at the deeper significance of the magi’s gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The Answers for Ambassadors podcast considers Dawkins’ response to the argument for God’s existence based on the design of the universe, and the links of the week have a bit of a family theme, looking at parenting, monogamy, Jesus’ marital status, and abortion, along with a few other odds and ends.

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“We can stand affliction better than we can stand prosperity, for in prosperity we forget God.”
~ D.L. Moody

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Oversampling the Darkness

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Game of Thrones iron throne

A week ago, an 18-year-old Somali immigrant named Abdul Razak Ali Artan rammed his car into a crowd at Ohio State University, then attacked bystanders with a knife before being shot dead by campus police. As investigators dig into his motivates, it is clear that Artan’s understanding of his faith helped to motivate the attack, as he left behind a Facebook post praising the al Qaeda-aligned cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and warning that lone-wolf attacks by Muslims would continue unless the US made peace with ISIS. But it appears that Artan was motivated by more than allegiance to the Islamic State.

Artan believed that his attack was justified because he and his fellow Muslims were persecuted and oppressed by Americans. He wrote, “I am sick and tired of seeing my fellow Muslim Brothers and Sisters being killed and tortured EVERYWHERE.” Bizarrely, the only example he cited was Burma, where persecution of Muslims is real and appalling, but also somewhat more directly linked to the nation’s Buddhist majority than to anyone associated with Ohio State University. However, Artan appeared to feel persecuted at his school as well. He was quoted in the OSU campus newspaper in August saying he was afraid to pray in public because, “If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don’t know what they’re going to think, what’s going to happen.”

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Thursday Roundup (12/1/16)

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As I mentioned last week, I’m teaching “Are the Gospels Trustworthy?” on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday of next week from 7:30 – 8:30pm EST. If you’re interested, you’ll want to register now for free. And if you know anyone else who might be interested, be sure to tell them about it!

This week’s video answers a surprisingly common objection from unbelievers: How can God answer prayers if different Christians pray for opposing things? The Answers for Ambassadors podcast wraps up Chapter 3 of The God Delusion, considering Pascal’s Wager and the religious preferences of scientists. And the links of the week discuss the importance of mercy ministry, how Christianity changes our perspective on death, the ethics of homosexuality, idolatry of youth athletics, and more!

(If you receive these posts by email and aren’t seeing the video and podcast, just click the “Thursday Roundup” title to view the original post on my site.)

“Every practice and every game is an opportunity to lead our children. Often, as parents, we think we have fulfilled our duty by simply attending our children’s games and cheering. Not so! We are called to so much more. Informed by the gospel, we are called to lead our children wisely. Before the game, this [means] preparing them to keep biblical priorities in mind while they play. After the game, this [means] celebrating their expressions of godly character more than we celebrate their skill for the final score. Every moment our children spend in sports is a teaching moment.”
~ C.J. Mahaney

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Beyond Historical Apologetics: Reasons for Trusting the Bible

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Bible

In 1970, archaeologists discovered a collection of scrolls from the ancient Jewish community of Ein Gedi dating back to the first few centuries AD. Radiocarbon dating and handwriting analysis suggest that the manuscripts were written only a short time after the famous Dead Sea scrolls, making the fragments among the earliest examples of biblical text ever discovered. Unfortunately, a fire had turned the archaeological treasures into charcoal, leaving them illegible until this year, when scientists used sophisticated new techniques to scan and digitally “unroll” the scorched fragments to reveal what had been written inside.

What researchers uncovered were 35 lines of Hebrew from the beginning of Leviticus, offering a small window into the Scriptures of 1,700 years ago. And, remarkably, that snapshot from only a few hundred years after Christ was discovered to be identical with the medieval Masoretic Text from which modern translations of the Old Testament are derived. Not for the first time, a triumph of modern archaeology backed up the Christian conviction that God has supernaturally curated his Word, preserving it across the centuries from distortion and error.

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Thursday Roundup (11/17/16)

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A brief programming note: I’m going to be teaching a free three-evening online seminar in early December on reasons for trusting the Gospel accounts. We’ll look at whether the Gospels bear the marks of accurate history, how we have a clear picture of what the original manuscripts said, and why the early church chose the 27 books that make up our New Testament canon. Click here for more information or to register. If you think friends might be interested, I would greatly appreciate if you shared the link!

Today’s video takes a careful look at a perennial favorite question of skeptics: If God is all-powerful, can he create a rock too heavy for him to lift? The Answers for Ambassadors podcast continues my examination of Dawkins’ arguments that we cannot trust the Gospel accounts, and the links of the week range from joy to missions to, of course, Donald Trump.

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“He therefore is the devout man who lives no longer to his own will, or the way and spirit of the world, but to the sole will of God, who considers God in everything, who serves God in everything, who makes all the parts of his common life parts of piety by doing everything in the name of God and under such rules as are conformable to His glory.”
~ William Law

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Thanks for Nothing

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Praying woman

I spent the latter part of last week down with one of those nasty bugs which herald the changing of the seasons, so I decided to revisit an old post rather than writing a new article for today. I first published this piece almost exactly five years ago. –DV

It’s almost Thanksgiving, so you’ve probably been thinking more than usual about the things you have to be thankful for. Most of our lists will have roughly the same shape: gratitude for life and salvation, for friends and family, for work and leisure time, for troubles lifted and prayers answered. We’ll laugh and nod as we consider all the good that we and others have received, and we’ll feel a bit guilty for failing to be as grateful as we ought during the rest of the year when we don’t have a national holiday to help us remember, so we’ll resolve to be more aware of our blessings in the coming year. Even if some troubles weren’t lifted and some prayers went unanswered, we’ll try to focus on the good and give thanks for what we’ve been given. Yet in all this thanksgiving, we may well forget to give thanks for nothing.

Nothing is a gift we’ve all received at one time or another. It came to John the Baptist after he was arrested by Herod. The one about whom Jesus said, “among those born of women there is no one greater” lay in prison for months, stolen from his wilderness of river and desert to decay in a hole in the ground. He sent to the Messiah, the one of whom he’d prophesied, the one whom he’d baptized, and his only answer was “blessed is he who does not take offense at Me.” Nothing.

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Thursday Roundup (11/10/16)

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Today’s video engages with a popular atheist argument, considering whether God’s omnipotence is logically incompatible with omniscience. The Answers for Ambassadors podcast asks whether the Gospel authors wrote reliable history, and the links look at Trump’s victory, the debate over same-sex marriage, reasons to pray, and more.

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“The future is as bright as the promises of God.”
~ Adoniram Judson

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After the Election

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"Make America Great Again" yard sign

Tomorrow, Americans will decide whether they want to install a crook or a fool as the leader of the most powerful nation in the world. It will be a dispiriting day to cap a shameful election season.

And then the next day will come, and we’ll have a crook or a fool as the leader of the most powerful nation in the world and you and I will still have our family and our church and our job and our little place in the world, and things will go along very much as they were.

Everyone swears that this election is the most important in our lifetime (as they swore in 2012, and 2008, and 2004, and 2000, and most elections since roughly 1800). The contrarian in me wants to agree with David Harsanyi that this is the least important election in our lifetime, but the truth most likely lies somewhere in between. As with the rest of life, we will know the election’s true import only in hindsight and only partially.

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