Muslims who study the Quran carefully find themselves in a bit of an uncomfortable situation. As I will explain in this article, if the Bible is the Word of God, Islam is false, and if the Bible is not the Word of God, Islam is still false. How can this be? Let’s take a look at some of the claims about the Bible found in the Quran.
Read More[A]fter 25 years or so of pastoring in Advent Christian circles (I only have pastored two Advent Christian Churches in my 39 years of ministry) I began to question if what I had come to believe regarding conditional immortality was indeed Biblical. I left the shire and went on this “kind of scary” adventure and after some time found myself rejecting conditional immortality and embracing the traditional view of eternal conscious torment of the wicked….
Read MoreMany today, even some professing Christians, believe that Muslims worship the same God of Christianity. Is this true? Let’s look at what Islam really teaches about God and compare what we find to the teachings of Christianity.
Read MoreIn response to my last article on Mormonism, an old classmate of mine from high school messaged me with this question: “What makes you feel that Christianity is correct when many other religions share the same amount of evidence that they are true? (Almost none, if not none)”
Read MoreGrowing up in my home church I heard about these people called “Mormons,” and I was told hardly anything about them or what they believe and I even felt that I was being told that Mormons were born-again Christians, but they simply had some weird doctrines. As I got older, I met some Mormons and befriended several. Even they, however, struggled to tell me exactly what they believed as Latter Day Saints. If I were to summarize all of the answers I received, It would go something like, “It’s complicated.” Eventually, I decided to stop asking people about Mormonism and investigate it at the source.
Read MoreOne of the most common attacks on the Trinity focuses on the deity of Christ. The skeptic might say, “If Jesus was God, then why didn’t He just say, ‘By the way, I’m God’?” For emphasis, they might even grab your Bible, flip through the pages, and challenge you by saying, “Show me one verse where Jesus said that He was God. You can’t do it, because He never said it!”
Read MoreIn order to defend the doctrine of the Trinity, one must first know what the Trinity is, and what it is not. I add “and what it is not,” because often skeptics will try to attack this doctrine by setting up a “strawman” (A distorted version of an opponent’s position that is attacked rather than the real thing).
Read MoreA certain cultural attack on Christianity has been more commonly used in the last fifty or so years than it may have ever been. Believers nowadays are often blindsided with the following two questions:
“Oh you’re a Christian? Let me ask you something. Do you think homosexuality is wrong?”
*Christian answers, “Yes,” and perhaps even references a relevant Bible passage*
“Oh yeah? Well do you eat bacon? ‘Cause your Bible says that eating bacon is wrong too!”
Read MoreAlthough there are virtually no historical scholars today who doubt whether or not Jesus existed, there are still plenty of skeptic laymen (and women) who have only a pop-level understanding of the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth.
Read MoreI remember how tense the classroom felt that first day. I had chosen this class to help fill out my degree program in Ethics & Society at Gordon-Conwell. I had chosen it with a great deal of apprehension, knowing how uncomfortable it might make me. Nevertheless, I believed I should take it.
Read MoreIn his book The God Delusion , Richard Dawkins says the following: “If you tell me that God created the universe, then I have the right to ask you, ‘Who created God?’”
Read MoreA couple of years ago, a Christian man desired to make a compelling TV series based on the Gospels. His desire, as I understand it, was to write and produce a show that Christians would want to watch: clean, wholesome, and with good story telling. Fast forward to 2020 and that show is a reality.
Read MoreOver the past few months we have all had a lot to think about. Few people alive today had experienced a global pandemic prior to this year. This is a new experience across the board…
Read MoreSometimes I see something or hear something that makes me want to scream, “Hypocrite!” However, to make such a statement in person or online would in fact reveal my own hypocrisy. Usually it surrounds the things of Christian Liberty.
Read MoreWe never thought we would be here. More than a month has passed and our church buildings remain shuttered, the members of the Body of Christ scattered and isolated from one another. Yes, on the basis of our duty to love one another and our neighbors, it is has been justified. Yes, God has been at work in the Body, revealing our weaknesses and idols, forging us in the flames of hardship to acquire a strength heretofore unknown. Yes, this whole season has the makings of a fast, if we would but embrace that aspect.
Read MoreThese last three weeks have felt like a California tule fog. We are forced to drive blind without any sense of where we are, where we are going, and what the path ahead looks like. We are disoriented and unable to get our bearings. All around us we find sickness, death, job loss, and we wonder if we’re next. It is easy to wonder where God is in all of this.
Read MoreSeven days after I broke a man’s tractor, I mounted it to finish the job I told myself another would complete.
Strange how a moment might trigger at random a memory from the past. On a crisp September morning, I was sixteen again….
Read MoreEvery time an election rolls around, I wonder what Christian voters are expecting to receive from their preferred candidates…
Read MoreWithout belaboring the basics, I thought it would be interesting to consider what special contribution Adventism can make to the season of Lent. At first glance, the two might appear to be strange bedfellows. While Lent looks to our past and present condition, Adventism by its very nature looks forward to the future. To the uninformed, the essential message of Adventism is that the Christian’s hope should be fixed upon the day of Christ’s return, that day in which the reign of Christ will be fully revealed along with new heavens and a new earth. It is the message that God promises to set everything aright in the end, bringing all of Creation to the glorious end instituted by her Creator. It is the promise of a coming age far removed from our present condition, but which carries with it the assurance that we who have been joined to Jesus Christ shall live again to see all things made new.
The value this conviction brings to the season of Lent is that the hope of resurrection is necessarily preceded by the need for death.
Read MoreWhen you think of the Advent Christian Church, what is your conception of it?
Read More
