Criticism is both good and necessary, though it is often designed to be neither – that is a criticism of criticism! However, when properly offered, that is, gently, lovingly, cautiously and sparingly, criticism can be very valuable for both the one who gives it, the one who receives it and those who are affected by both those parties. Paul emphasized that those who are spiritual are to engage in a kind of loving criticism when he wrote, “Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted” (Galatians 6:1). One can hardly talk with a friend or brother, especially about sin in his life, without being somewhat critical. However, we should all notice the qualifiers that Paul attached to such in this passage: “spirit of gentleness, considering yourself.” Hence, the necessity of both giving and receiving criticism is understood by all. However, there are certain kinds of criticism and certain conditions under which it should never be offered. In order for criticism to be just and profitable, the one doing it should make sure of certain truths. (1) He should be certain of all the facts involved. The presumption of knowing all that is going on in the hearts, minds and lives of others is an extraordinarily dangerous thing. Therefore, it is wise to ask questions and to make inquiries before offering any criticism at all. (2) He should make sure that what he is

Since we are about to begin a new year, it may be appropriate to think of challenges that will present themselves to us as a people in the coming year. Of course, it is not possible to think of all, and even if that were possible, there is neither the time nor the inclination even to list them. Nevertheless, to look at a few will, it is hoped, do some good. The word “challenge” is defined as a call or summons to engage in any contest. The contest may be physical, such as sports or carnal warfare; mental, such as learning more truth from the Word of God so the faith of Christ does not become tiresome; emotional such as keeping on an even keel by refusing to go beyond reason. When confronted with spiritual challenges, such as remaining faithful to the teachings of Christ, our Lord’s apostles and evangelists remained vigilant for the Christian faith, about which one can read in the New Testament, which was once for all delivered. There are other spiritual challenges such as the temptation to sin or to give up when the trials of life come along. Perhaps, there are more spiritual confrontations than any other because Satan does not intend to make life easy for the Christian. Everyone will have Goliaths to conquer. Furthermore, having to face up to all the Goliaths is not always pleasant. For this cause, effort is sometimes made not to pick up the sling and go to battle. Yet, the Bible itself

Have you ever heard of some trouble or hard times falling on one’s foe, then felt a sense of glee and responded with, “He got what he deserves”? It is a safe assumption that all who have been hurt by another have done so. Rejoicing over hardship that comes on an offending person is, unfortunately, a part of our “human nature.” As a matter of fact, it is so much a part of human nature that even those striving to live righteous lives will engage in such, never realizing the seriousness of it. We fail to grasp that such rejoicing is the same emotion one feels when he is finally able to take forbidden vengeance on an old enemy (Romans 12:19-20). Revenge has been accomplished, though it is just that someone or something else has acted in our stead. Christians do this too often, and they soothe their consciences by saying that they did not take vengeance on the offending person, but nevertheless, “he got what he deserves.” After all, everyone knows “what goes around comes around,” right? The plain fact of the matter is that such an attitude is sinful — displeasing in the sight of our Father. Rather than rejoicing at the tragedy of an enemy, one should mourn. Genuine grief is a part of loving our enemies as Jesus commanded when in Matthew 6:44-45 He said, “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and

Before 1921, the most feared and dreaded disease in the world, one that was taking thousands of lives all over the earth, was called simply, “sugar in the blood.” Researchers into the nature of this disease called it “sugar diabetes.” There was no known cure or treatment except extreme dieting. Many people, in an attempt to keep from dying of sugar in their blood dieted so severely that they died of malnutrition or starvation. Imagine starving yourself to death in a vain attempt to keep from dying from some other disease! In 1920, Dr. Frederick Banting and a medical student, Charles Best, were conducting research into diabetes at the University of Toronto in Canada. In 1921, they discovered the hormone that they called isletin; we call it insulin. It was the first step taken to help control this horrible disease that still takes thousands upon thousands of lives in the most advanced countries in the world, including the US. Researchers say there are more than twenty million diagnosed and undiagnosed diabetics in our nation. Today, one advance after another is made in the care and handling of this disease, but eventually all must return to the use of insulin to “control” diabetes, and today the best we can hope for is control, for as yet, there is no cure. Take just a minute to stop and consider what Banting and Best did for untold generations of diabetics, many of whom have never yet been born. How can one calculate the

A very prominent religious cult in America that is in no sense of the word Christian teaches an infinite regression of God, but no explanation for the existence of the first God. This group teaches that God, our heavenly Father, was once a human like ourselves, and that we, if we join this religious cult, can also “progress” until we become gods. Hence, in the universe there are multiplied thousands of gods according to their view, rather than the one true God about whom we read in the Bible. A man who is considered to be a great prophet in this particular church, said on this very theme: The Lord created you and me for the purpose of becoming Gods like Himself; when we have proved our present capacity, and been faithful with all things He puts into our possession. We are created, we are born for the express purpose of growing up from the low estate of manhood, to become Gods like unto our Father in heaven. That is the truth about it, just as it is. The Lord has organized mankind for the express purpose of increasing in that intelligence and truth, which is with God, until he is capable of creating worlds on worlds, and becoming Gods, even the sons of God. So, here we have, according to this greatly esteemed prophet among these people, a clear and understandable statement that God created us to become gods like himself. For those of us who are clearheaded Christians,

The basis for all that claims to be Christian is that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, lived a perfect life and died a perfect death, arose to bring redemption to all who would call upon God through Him. Yet, one cult teaches that Jesus attained His perfection after His resurrection from the dead. That, of course, means that He was not perfect before He arose from the new tomb of Joseph of Arimathaea. Lest the readers think these folk are being misrepresented, we quote from their leading dignitaries. A contemporary of the founder of this religion wrote: That Jesus attained perfection following his resurrection is confirmed in the… It records the visit of the resurrected Lord to the people of ancient America. There he repeated the important injunction previously cited, but with one very significant addition. He said, “I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect” (3 Nephi 12:48). This time he listed himself along with his Father as a perfect personage. Previously, he had not (See Matt. 5:48). Let it first be noted that the Matthew 5:48 text is used out of context. Look at the theme of our Lord’s statement. He was speaking to His disciples regarding love, and He told them to be perfect in love as our Father is perfect in love. He did not, even remotely, imply that the Father only is perfect, and that He was not. If He had not been perfect before His resurrection, He

Not only do American cults attempt to destroy confidence in the Bible, but they also seek to destroy confidence in Jesus Christ as to His place in the Godhead. For example, one very special translation of the Bible renders John 1:1 in these words, “In [the] beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.” While to the best of our knowledge, there is not one Bible manuscript that would permit such a translation, these words are designed to prove this cult’s view that Jesus is somehow an inferior being to God. This cult, however, is not the only one in this country to teach that Jesus is some kind of inferior being to God the Father. There is another one, larger we would suspect, that teaches Jesus was a spirit child born by procreation, the offspring of heavenly parents. In a book entitled Gospel Principles (1986 p. 9), this idea is set forth as an explanation of Psalm 2:7, in which David wrote, “I will declare the decree: The LORD has said to Me, You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.” Their teaching is that God said He had begotten Jesus, and they cannot imagine “begotten” being connected with anything other than a sex act, so heavenly parents begot a spirit child known as Jesus. When one looks at the verse and the context in which it is found, he quickly learns that the birth of a child, anywhere, is not under

At this particular time of year we hear a great deal said about “peace.” It seems that during the holiday season we bemoan a lack of peace in the world more than do we at any other time of the year. During the spring season when the religious world celebrates the holiday they call Easter, one rarely hears or reads sermons on this subject; however, during the season that is rapidly becoming known as the season of epiphany, we hear and read homily after homily on the subject of peace. Please do not misunderstand; we are not opposed to preaching on the subject of peace. We are not opposed to preachers telling the world that it should learn to live in peace and harmony on this earth. That is certainly true, and it is an ideal toward which all will strive so long as men live on the earth, but that will never be attained because men have been killing one another since Cain slew his brother Abel thousands of years ago. Political peace forced upon people will last only so long as the force is strong enough to cause it to last, and when that force weakens, war will return once again. We cite the middle east as an example of this. However, there is another kind of peace that can, when truly and sufficiently spread to all the world, bring the world peace because there will be no desire for vengeance, war or domination of others through political

The word “ashamed” must have great significance for it is found in our English Bibles one hundred and twenty-two times with some twenty-six occurrences in the New Testament. The word is used by Jesus and the apostle Paul more than any other speaker or writer in the New Testament. In this brief article only two of those instances will be noted in a superficial way. In Romans 1:16 Paul, by the Spirit’s inspiration wrote: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek” (Romans 1:16). Used here in the negative, the great and loving apostle declared that he was not ashamed of the glorious Gospel – God’s power to save mankind. The word “ashamed” comes from epaischunŏmai and means, as Strong pointed out, “a feeling of shame arising from something that was done.” It is a self-humiliation resulting from something done. For example, a Christian, meaning no harm, may repeat something he has heard about a brother or sister without investigating to see if the “gossip” is true. He may say, “Oh, I feel so ashamed for taking part in the spreading of such a rumor.” Paul emphasized that he preached with no sense of humiliation or embarrassment because what he preached was the Gospel of Christ. What he was repeating was not gossip; it was the soul-saving Gospel. It was not some tale that might hurt someone or their reputation.

Almost any standard dictionary will define the word “worthy” as, “that which is of commendable excellence; deserving.” The definition is arresting. If we can trust the definition, there are few people in the world worthy of what they receive in life. Even great people bring little to the world that it has not known and appreciated, or known and discarded before. Who among us would assert that he or she is worthy of all the blessings received from the hand of a gracious God? Some arrogant persons might, but those who are truly in touch with themselves and with the Bible would never dare to take such an unworthy stand. Among the greatest people who have ever lived on the earth were the apostles of Christ. To these great men, to whom even we owe our salvation, Jesus said, “So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do” (Luke 17:10). This Jesus said after telling a parable of a slave plowing or tending sheep. When that servant returned to the residence of his master, he did not find that the master had all the preparations made to see that the slave had a good meal waiting for him. On the contrary, it was his duty to prepare the meal for the master after having labored all day. When we serve Christ to the best of our feeble abilities, we have done

Since the first predictive prophecy was made by God Himself and recorded by Moses in Genesis 3:15, man has been enthralled with prophecy, especially that which is both promissory and predictive. It would appear that one of the greatest apologetic tools at our disposal is that of prophetic promise. For if a promise is made centuries, years or even months before an event transpires, God must be responsible, since no man can see into the future. The Bible is replete with prophetic promises; consequently, it must be true that there is a God who has revealed Himself through inspired writings. In Isaiah 65:23-24, we find one of the most magnificent, heart-warming and winsome prophetic promises ever recorded. The inspired prophet wrote, “They shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth children for trouble; for they shall be the descendants of the blessed of the LORD, and their offspring with them. It shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear.” Here, in a section of remarkable prophecy concerning the coming of the kingdom (church) and the nature of it, Isaiah wrote a further description of the peaceable kingdom in which he included the promises of God for those who would enter it. Christians need to review these promises from time to time. Working very hard at something and failing brings great disappointment and heartache to the laborer. Hence, the promise that citizens of the kingdom of Christ will not

There is something winsome and beautiful about the word “faithful”! “Faithfulness,” also known as dependability or reliability, is one of the most sought after and admired characteristics known to man. All desire it in their mates, their teachers, their friends and other relationships. Treason is nothing more than unfaithfulness to one’s country. Failure in faithfulness brings all kinds of disappointment, hurt and sorrow to people every day. However, there is a Being in our universe that will never be unfaithful to His people. Even if people become unfaithful to Him, He is still always faithful to them, and He is there awaiting their return to His love and protection – that Being is, of course, our God. God is faithful in calling people to Himself through His Son, Jesus the Christ. In 1 Corinthians 1:9 Paul wrote, “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”  From the Day of Pentecost to the present, God has continually called men to Himself by the telling of the rich story of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. Paul told these same people that the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus make up the fundamentals of the Gospel of Christ. The old, old story of salvation from sin and the giving of a hope of heaven will continue to be told as long as the world stands, for the Lord commissioned it (Matthew 28:18-19). This calling will never cease as long as time exists. God

There are many people in the western world, the part of the world most influenced by the Bible, who would immediately answer, “No,” to the question making up our title. We refer not only to atheists who reject the very idea of a book coming from God, since they do not believe there is a God, but to others, some of whom claim to be Christians, who would agree with the atheists that the Bible is not a revelation from God. Many refer to the Bible as “the good book,” and to them that is all it is! However, the Bible is the most unique book in all the world, and it is either what it claims to be or it is not. If it is, all people everywhere are amenable to it and subject to its precious teachings. If it is not, it is the most remarkable hoax that has ever been foisted on the minds of unsuspecting humanity. There is no compromise position on this important issue, for the Bible either is, or is not, not only a revelation from God, but the final and complete one. Firstly, let it be pointed out that the Bible itself claims to be the revelation of the mind of God to man. Paul made this claim in 1 Corinthians 2:1-14. To this statement of the revelation and inspiration of the Sacred Volume, the apostle Peter added these words, “And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to

Today, we hear a great deal of hair-raising talk about a coming great tribulation in which the world, but not the raptured church, is going to suffer unimaginable and excruciating misery and pain before they finally convert to Christ to enjoy a literal thousand year reign of peace on this earth. We are quite puzzled as to why anyone would take an interest in a religious doctrine that predicts this kind of terrible suffering at the hands of enemies before they are finally relieved by Christ. To say the Bible knows nothing of such a teaching as this is probably a great understatement, but the fact of the matter is, it does not! When we make statements like this, someone will almost immediately object by saying, “Oh, yes, this great tribulation is going to come to pass because Jesus talked about it. While it is true that Jesus spoke of “great tribulation,” it is not true that He spoke of such in the context in which it is being spoken of today. It is true that Jesus spoke of “great tribulation” when in Matthew 24:21 he said, “For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matthew 24:21 NKJV). However, this tribulation is not something that is future to us. It has been asserted that because Jesus used the future tense when he said, “there will be great tribulation.” Certainly, that of which

When men have attacked the veracity of the Bible, they have done so on every level. They have claimed that it is replete with misinformation historically, scientifically, geographically, geologically and every other way known to us. Yet, when its histories are investigated, it is found to be historically correct; when its scientific utterances, though it is not a textbook on science, are investigated, again it is found to be scientifically correct. There is no true scientific discovery known to man, upon which the Bible speaks, that has been found to be false so far as the Bible is concerned. Someone will ask, “Well, what about evolution?” Friends, evolution is not science. It is guesswork based on some peculiarities in nature. It is more voodoo than science, but that is not the point under discussion today. The Bible has been attacked geographically also. It has been claimed that the Bible is not geographically correct when it makes statements dealing with geography. Again, it must be pointed out that the Bible is not a textbook on geography, but when it speaks regarding geography, especially of the middle-eastern world, it speaks correctly. There are those who mock the Bible because it speaks, for example, of going down from Jerusalem to such cities as Caesarea, Tyre or some other city to the north of Jerusalem (Matthew 20:18; Acts 8:1, 5; 9:26, 30; 12:19; 14:26 with 15:1-2; 21:4, 8, 10, 12; 25:9). They say, “We do not go down to the north, we go up!”

If one had a dollar for every time he had heard someone say, “I can’t trust the Bible because it is filled with contradictions,” he could do his part to stimulate the economy! Today, we wish to examine that charge, although we will not delve deeply into scientific or linguistic matters. At the outset, we wish to emphasize that if one does not care how he uses the Bible, he can make it say anything, including making it contradict itself. For example, we can prove, if we use Scripture out of context and dishonestly, that it teaches us to commit suicide by hanging. The Bible plainly says of Judas, “Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself” (Matthew 27:5). In Luke 10:37, Jesus said, “Go and do likewise,”and in John 13:27, Jesus commanded, “What you do, do quickly.” So, if one cares not how he uses the Word of God, he can make it teach whatever he likes, including that we should all quickly commit suicide by hanging. Someone will object, “That is ridiculous!” Yes, it is! However, it is no more ridiculous than the way many “prove” things from the Bible in other instances. Furthermore, it is no more ridiculous than the “evidences” some assert for the Bible’s contradicting itself! The point is that we must be honest in the way we use the Bible, or any other book, or we can make it prove anything we want it

One often hears the statement made, “Evolution is a fact, not a theory!” Nothing could be further from the truth! To be perfectly blunt, evolution is not even a theory, but a hypothesis – an educated (?) guess on the part of some people as to how things came to be as they are. Evolution is always spoken of in positive terms, that is, that men “came up” from lower animal forms that came from lower, etc., in a sort of infinite regression. In other words, according to the various hypotheses, and there are many of them, men are getting better and better all the time. We are evolving, not devolving! If that is true, would one not expect to observe it in some area of human life? Observation of empirical phenomenon is true science; guesses about how the phenomenon came to be are guesses. National Geographic Magazine is an interesting publication that touts organic evolution with all its might. However, their own reporting of phenomenon in history disproves their theory. For example, some months back we read of the discovery of some Egyptian mummies that were some 4,000 or 5,000 years old. They X-rayed the mummies and learned that many of them had advanced arthritis, a crippling disease that afflicts thousands of Americans 5,000 years later. Now, would you not think that in 5,000 years something in the human evolution process would have triggered a decrease in such a disease rather than an increase? If we are evolving, why

No one who has ever read, even casually, the history of “Christianity” down through the ages would be so bold as to attempt to justify everything that has been done in its name. Through apostasy, ignorance and plain old politics, many things have been done in the name of Christ that not only have nothing to do with Him, but have been absolutely contrary to His will and teachings. Should Christians be ashamed of our history? Yes and no! Since not all religious bodies claiming to be Christian have engaged in such activities as “witch hunting,” “crusades,” persecution of Jews and other nationalities, these have nothing for which to apologize; however, those who have engaged in such activities should not only apologize, but deeply repent and in as much as is humanly possible do what they can to right their wrongs. Yet, it is difficult for those living a thousand years after the fact to repent of the sins of their ancestors, or make them right, for they are not the sins of this generation. Therefore, handling these things must be left up to the justice of God. However, such atheists as Richard Dawkins and his cohorts Harris and Hitchens have pronounced Christianity as being a curse to the world. They have not pronounced this sentence on Christianity alone, but on all religion in general, including the idolatry of India and other nations. No thinking person would attempt to excuse the evils of idolatry either modern or ancient, for God

In Galatians 1:6-9, the apostle Paul chastised the brethren among the Galatian churches for having accepted the teaching of the Judaizing teachers, who taught that unless the Gentile converts to Christ, accepted circumcision and kept the Law of Moses they could not be saved. In other words, these former Pharisees turned Christian were teaching falsely that the Gentile converts had to be first Jews in order to enjoy the salvation that is in Christ Jesus. Nothing could have been further from the truth, and in the verses mentioned above Paul verbally chastised the Galatian Christians for allowing this perverted gospel to be preached among them. In addition, he also pointed out that some of them had accepted the perverted gospel of the false teachers, and unless they repented, it would not be well with their souls. As a matter of fact, in 5:4 of this Epistle, Paul very plainly told them if they accepted the circumcision of the Law of Moses, they had fallen from grace. The Mormons seize on this passage of Scripture, and from it, they teach what is not found therein. They say the church went into a complete apostasy because they accepted this false gospel. The church, according to their theology, went totally out of existence for the better part of 1800 years, and that God, through his angel Moroni (an angel never mentioned in Scripture) commanded Joseph Smith to restore the church. However, the Mormons have some flies in their apothecary jars, which is to

The Constitution of the United States is the greatest uninspired document that has ever been written by mere human beings. For two and a half centuries it has guided the American people very well and has been amended fewer than thirty times. This document has made us the most unique nation on the face of the earth, with our people enjoying more freedoms than the people of any other nation on God’s footstool. Every political officer of any import at all, swears to uphold the Constitution of the US. That is one reason why in 2003, many Americans were shocked to hear one of the justices of the United States Supreme Court, the court whose duty it is to interpret the Constitution as well as to uphold it, make the statement that the Court had begun to look to international law to guide their decisions. Speaking of the court, as well as most other liberal politicians in America, she said, “Our island or one-ranger mentality is beginning to change,” then added that justices “are becoming more open to comparative and international law perspectives.” Again, we emphasize that this came from a woman who has sworn before Almighty God to uphold the Constitution of the United States! Where does that great document give these justices permission to make decisions on behalf of the American people based on international law perspectives? The reason we are seeing so many out and out crazy decisions come out of Federal courts at every level is

In the 23rd chapter of Matthew, we have recorded the scathing denunciation of the Pharisees that Jesus delivered to their faces just hours before He was taken by wicked hands, crucified and slain. Near the end of this denunciation, Jesus made a prophecy regarding what the Pharisees, and other Jews, were going to do to His disciples in the future. He said, “Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city…”(Matthew 23:34 NKJV). Jesus intended to send not only the apostles out to preach the Gospel to the disobedient Jews, but He would send them prophets, wise men and scribes as well. As we read the New Testament, we find men who had the gift of prophecy, that of wisdom and those who wrote to the followers of Jesus. These men, along with women and perhaps even young people, were sacrificed on the altars of martyrdom all over Palestine and other areas of the world. There are those who deny that the persecution of the Christians by the Jews was intense and place great emphasis on that of the Romans. While it is true that the Romans did persecute the Christians with great intensity, especially during the reign of Nero, we must not forget that the persecution of Christians by the Jews, which is mentioned some thirty-three times in the New Testament, was the first,

It is often true that the ethics of God and man clash. Man, being the arrogant kind of being he is, has the temerity to reflect on the ethics of God. God is righteous. He has never made a mistake, nor will He ever. When Abraham was bargaining with God to spare the evil cities of Sodom, Gomorrah, and the others cities of the plain, he asked, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”(Genesis 18:25b). Before we reflect on God, we need to understand as much as we can about His nature. If we learn all we can about the nature of God from the Bible, we may reconsider our charges. Down through the ages, God has had one abiding principle by which He has guided Himself, when it comes to bringing punishment on men. The principle is that men are judged according to their deeds. If the deeds have been evil, sinful, in the sight of God, then the punishment will be evil. If the deeds have been good and righteous, God rewards with blessings. Again and again, this principle of judgment was expressed by such prophets as Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and it is even expressed in the New Testament in 2 Corinthians 5:10. Nevertheless, men have accused God of being harsh and unethical in His judgments. One of the cases to which they point is found in 1 Samuel 15:2-3, in which we find the following commands that God gave to King Saul of Israel

The 12th President of the large and wealthy cult wrote, “Long before you were born a program was developed by your creators. …The principal personalities in this great drama were a Father Elohim, perfect in wisdom, judgment, and person, and two sons, Lucifer and Jehovah.” A contemporary of this man wrote, “The appointment of Jesus to be the Savior of the world was contested by one of the other sons of God. He was called Lucifer …this spirit-brother of Jesus desperately tried to become the Savior of mankind.” Finally, one of the modern educators of this cult said, “On first hearing, the doctrine that Lucifer and our Lord, Jesus Christ, are brothers may seem surprising to some, especially to those acquainted with latter-day revelations. But both the scriptures and the prophets affirm that Jesus Christ and Lucifer are indeed offspring of our Heavenly Father and, therefore, spirit brothers. …Both Jesus and Lucifer were strong leaders with great knowledge and influence. But as the First-born of the Father, Jesus was Lucifer’s older brother.” Before going further, we want to ask, “Have you noticed how often these writers affirm the Scriptures teach something, but they never cite the passage?” In the above passage, the writer said both the Scriptures and the Prophets affirm that Jesus Christ and Lucifer are the offspring of God. We ask, “Where is this concept affirmed by either the Scriptures or the Prophets?” We fear these men, like the Sadducees who often challenged Jesus, err not knowing the Scriptures.

The cry often goes up from Islam and other false religions that the Bible is unreliable because it has been translated so many times. It seems that unthinking persons accept that sort of propaganda, which is all it is, without ever doing any research, or even giving the Bible the benefit of the doubt. One would think that the fact that parts of the book have been here for the greater part of eight thousand years, and nothing, even in the oldest parts have proved to be untrue, would give people cause to pause and think about what they are hearing. Alas, it seems that it does not! What we need to do is investigate the accusations to see if they are true, and if they are, then we may give some of these people an ear, at least for a while. However, if after investigation we find their charges to be wholly false, then good judgment demands that we ignore both the accusations and those who make them. If the Bible, down through the centuries, had been translated from one language to another, which was then translated to another, and then to another, perhaps these people would have a point, albeit a weak one. For example, if our Old Testament, originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic had been translated into Arabian and that translation had been translated into Greek, and then that one into Egyptian, followed by one into Latin, and that one into English, one might grant the

According to the ACLU and other similar anti-American and anti-Christian organizations, those people who claim to be Christians are the bad guys. We are, according to their warped view, trying to force our religion on everyone by erecting symbols, such as sculptures of the Ten Commandments, in public places such as in school yards, courthouse lawns, etc. Everyone is free to wear, or otherwise present, in schools, courtrooms and elsewhere, the symbols of their religion except those who claim to be Christians. According to such atheistic and communistic organizations as the ACLU, Christianity has caused the downfall of civilization, and every vestige of any kind of belief called Christian should be removed from all public eyes. It is only a matter of time until such columns as this one will be attacked by such organizations as those mentioned above in an effort to remove our right to free speech in this country. It is already being done in this country. There are certain foreign and idolatrous religions in this country that were not here fifty years ago that are joining with the anti-Christian movement. If those who claim to be Christians in any way criticize these heathen faiths, we immediately become the bad guys, and the demand is made that we not be allowed to do this. These people because of the weakness of their religions, whether heathen or atheist, attempt to destroy the fundamental rights of the people of this nation so that they can practice their faith, or

When it comes to ancient manuscripts, there are no works of the ancient world that can equal the number of manuscripts extant of the New Testament. There are only 643 manuscripts of Homer=s Iliad, one of the most famous books of ancient Greece. We have only 10 manuscripts of Caesar=s Gallic Wars, and the oldest of these was made a full 1,000 years after the original book was written. However, there are 5,366 manuscripts of the New Testament, some of which date back to within 150 years after the New Testament was completed. No other ancient work has so many manuscripts for comparison as does the New Testament. We have many scholars who do little but compare these ancient manuscripts with one another in order to determine what is the most accurate way of expressing the words of the New Testament. These men slave over these manuscripts, examining every particle of difference in them to determine what best expresses the truth. For example, based on the premise that the earliest of the manuscripts would be the best, inasmuch as they were made closer to the time of the original writings, these scholars compare every sentence of each manuscript with the others to determine such things as the correct word order, as well as the correct words. If there is great unanimity regarding a word, a sentence, or a paragraph in the very early manuscripts, and a variant is found in another that is three centuries later than the early ones, they work

None of us were amazed a few weeks ago when the United States Supreme Court ruled that a municipality does not have the right to force members of a religious body, or those who are campaigning for political office, to register with the municipality before going door to door to spread their faith and/or politics. Every thinking person knew that such demands were unconstitutional and violated the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The little Caesars in various municipalities throughout the country, in the name of protecting citizens, like to pontificate regarding the freedoms of others. The court struck all such activity down, and rightly so. As Americans, we have the right to say what we want to say, so long as we are not being slanderous or libelous in our speech. In the opinion of this writer, Americans owe the members of the cult who went to court to protect their right of freedom of speech a debt of gratitude. Anything that relates to what most Americans would call proselytizing, is looked upon with great disdain today. If one attempts to convert another to his way of thinking, according to the liberal mind set, that person has committed an immensely arrogant sin. Very often, the person who is attempting to persuade another of the rightfulness of his position is inundated with such questions as: “What right do you have to attempt to convert others to your views?” This question can be answered very simply by saying

From time to time one will see an advertisement on TV in which a certain religious body will offer to give you a free copy of the King James Version of the Bible, and in this advert they proclaim their allegiance to Jesus Christ and family virtues. However, those who pay for these advertisements do not believe in the Christ of the Scriptures. As a matter of fact, a man who is called an “apostle” by this group of people made this statement, “And virtually all the millions of apostate Christendom have abased themselves before the mythical throne of a mythical Christ.” What this man means by “millions of apostate Christendom” is every person in the world who believes in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, but does not believe in the Christ these folk accept. These people believe and teach that all human beings lived prior to this life in what is called “the preexistence.” The same “apostle,” from whom we quoted above, teaches that Jesus attained the status of a god in the preexistence. His exact words are these, “He [Jesus] is the Firstborn of the Father. By obedience and devotion to the truth he attained that pinnacle of intelligence which ranked him as a God, as the Lord Omnipotent, while yet in his pre-existent state… Inasmuch, however, as Christ attained Godhood while yet in pre-existence, he too stood as a God to other spirits.” Notice the words “a God,” which implies along with another group of

The word “inerrancy means,” “incapable of making mistakes, or containing no mistakes.” Men for hundreds of years have sought to find errors or mistakes within the pages of the Sacred Volume, but none have been found. Several books have been written alleging that there are errors, mistakes and contradictions in the Bible, but these books have been found to be in error because the authors did not carefully read their Bibles before beginning their critical work. In this brief article, we propose to look at one or two of these so-called mistakes of the Bible and demonstrate that if men had only read their Bibles more carefully, they would not have found themselves in the foolish position of affirming the existence of something that does not exist. In 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, the amicable apostle Paul was urging the Corinthian church to greater faithfulness in its service to Christ, by reminding Christians of the mistakes of the Jewish people in the past. One incident to which he made reference is recorded in Numbers 25, and speaks of a plague that came on the Israelites because they committed harlotry with the people of Moab. The plague came to an end when Phinehas, grandson to Aaron, and son of Eleazar, followed an Israelite man and a Moabite woman into a tent and killed them both with a javelin. The number of people who died in that plague, according to the Book of Numbers was twenty-four thousand (25:9). When Paul made reference to this

A few years ago, there was a discussion going on about whether or not the Scriptures condemn the practice of homosexuality. One of the members of the discussion panel made this statement: “Scripture contains no timeless, normative, moral truths.” In other words, what was wrong in the days of Abraham, Paul or other characters of both the Old and New testaments may have been wrong for them, but that means nothing to us. A preacher stood up in the audience and said to the panel, “Wait a minute, I’m rather confused.” “…people are constantly coming to me and asking if something they have done is wrong and if they need forgiveness. For example, isn’t it always wrong to abuse a child?” A female member of the panel answered, “What counts as abuse differs from society to society; so we can’t really use the word ‘abuse’ without tying it to a historical context.” Wow! In some societies a woman making such a statement as that would be taken out, tied to a post and publicly flogged. Or, she might even be repeatedly raped by a dozen or more men, but if that was tied to the historical context of that society, then no wrong would have been done according to this female relativist! If it is acceptable in some societies, or even in some micro-societies, for children to be molested sexually before the age of consent, and if that is tied to that particular historical context, it is not abuse! Friends,

We recently heard the story of a Gospel preacher who had in his youth memorized the genealogy of our Lord as it appears in the Book of Matthew, Chapter One. This it would seem to most preachers to be a formidable task and one which, if one did not memorize the history that goes with each name, would not appear to serve any great purpose. Most of us are content to know where the genealogies of our Lord are found to make easy reference to them when we need them. However, this brother, who obviously had great faculties of memory, memorized the one appearing on the pages of Matthew’s record of the life of Christ. One day, he found himself within easy hearing distance of two men who were discussing whether or not Jesus Christ had ever lived on the earth, and if so, did he do the things that are attributed to Him in the records of His life. They came to the conclusion that no such person as Jesus ever lived, and consequently, the stories told about Him in the records of the Gospel could not be true. One man concluded this conversation by saying, Jesus is very much like Santa Claus, and He is just the figment of a very fertile imagination. At that point the preacher, whose name has been forgotten to protect the innocent, stepped up to the two men and casually recited the entire genealogy of our Lord from Matthew. Then, he laid out

Down through the ages there have been many strange ideas regarding Elohim whom we worship. For more than two thousand years now, Christians have believed that He is the one true and living God in whom we live and move and have our being. We believe because the Bible so teaches that God has been our God from all eternity even as the Psalmist declared when he wrote, “Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, Or ever You had formed the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God” (Psalms 90:1‑2). From all eternity God has been God, and there is not another like Him in all the universe. However, not all people believe that. A man who claimed to be a prophet of God said, during a funeral sermon back in the mid 1800s, “We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you might see.” Hence, we have the declaration of a self-proclaimed prophet that God was not God from all eternity. According to the theology of these people, our Heavenly Father lived on another planet similar to the earth. Where did He come from and how did He get to that planet? Well, a man who claimed to be an apostle of, we know not whom, said, “We were begotten by our Father in heaven; the person of the Father in Heaven was

Anytime one begins to teach that there is a true and living God who created our universe and all things therein, he will immediately be inundated with questions from those who do not believe in the existence of a Creator God (Romans 1:18-32) to whom man is accountable. One of the first questions one will hear is, “If everything that exists needs a cause, what caused God?” This question is heard frequently, and those who ask it suppose they have proposed the question that cannot be answered. Actually, they ask this question, as well as many others, because they have not listened carefully to what has been said about cause and effect. No one has ever claimed that everything must have a cause; rather we have claimed that everything that has a beginning must have a cause. Only things that are both finite and contingent need a cause. God is neither finite nor contingent and as such had no beginning, so there was/is no cause for His existence. God is both infinite and necessary; the uncaused Cause of all things finite or limited. If God needed a cause, we would have to search through an infinite regress of causes, and we would never arrive at His beginning. God is the first Cause; one cannot go back further than the first. A second question often heard is, “If God created all things, then how did He create himself?” Again, we point out that only finite, contingent beings need a cause. A necessary, infinite Being does

One of the things that modern students of the New Testament have overlooked is the depth and intensity of the struggle that went on between our Lord and His Jewish enemies during His public ministry. If one reads the New Testament without some, at least superficial, knowledge of the prophecies dealing with the coming of Christ and His struggles to bring His kingdom into existence, he is very likely to overlook the stressful relationship that existed between Christ and His countrymen. This is one of the things that Christians need to understand to interpret properly the New Testament with regard to the great sacrifice that Christ made on the cross for the redemption of mankind. Glossing over the struggles between Christ and His enemies causes us to fail to stop and consider all the suffering that Christ endured at their hands from the time He was baptized by John in the wilderness of Jordan until He was finally nailed to the cross of Calvary. While it would be greatly beneficial to consider all these struggles, a number of which are dealt with in some detail in the Book of John, in a space as limited as ours, we cannot do that. Therefore, we wish to give a cursory glance to just one instance. In Mark 3:20-30, after Jesus had performed several of His mighty miracles, the scribes who had come from Jerusalem made a serious accusation against our Lord. They did not deny that He performed miracles, but they said, “He has Beelzebub,

One of the greatest mistakes that students of the Bible in modern times can make is to interpret the Bible as if it were written to men living in the 21st century. Though the Bible is a timeless book, it was not written to any of us living beyond the 1st century. Interpreting the Bible as if it were written to us will cause no end of trouble. If you think that is an overstatement, just give some attention to the foolishness that is being palmed off on the American people by the Premillennialists. Consequently, we must always remember that the New Testament was written to the people and churches to whom the various books are directed. Some will immediately criticize that we are saying the Bible does not apply to us. Nothing even remotely like that has been said — nor will it be! While the perfect Book containing all that pertains to life and godliness was not written to us, it was most assuredly written for us. Every book of the Bible was written to fit the historical context existing when it was written. Sometimes we recognize that, but often we do not. In all probability, we do not because of our effort to get back to the Bible in all things spiritual, as nearly as humanly possible, doing things as they were done in apostolic times. We also recognize that not all that was done in apostolic times affects us in any way today. For example, we all very willingly admit that Paul traveled by ship and

When we were children, we would often tell some fantastic story, perhaps one we had heard from some older person, since storytelling was a form of entertainment in that time, and a schoolmate or some other playmate would incredulously say, “Prove it!” Usually saying that grandpa said it was not sufficient evidence for the challenger. Most of the time the matter was dropped with one child believing and the other not believing. A lack of evidence lay at the heart of the matter. Looking back on that time, one sees the value in the challenge to “Prove it!” Later in life, matters of great significance were also thus challenged and the proof was given from an undisputed source. When the proof was given, truth had been found, and while one might learn a great deal more about that particular truth, he did not abandon what had been learned initially — what had been proven. In historical matters, proof can be obtained from history books; in matters of science and math, the sources were generally textbooks on those subjects. However, to what or whom does one appeal to find proof on religious matters? What does one do when, in the realm of faith, he is challenged to “Prove it?” Does he say, “Well, all truth is relative; there is no such thing as orthodoxy, so whatever you think about it is as acceptable as what I or any other person may think.” If that is the response — remember, nothing has

Most books get old and pass out of existence. That is true of thousands of volumes that have been produced since the days of the invention of the printing press. We have websites on which we can search for old, out of print and rare books. We consider any book still in existence since the late 1700s a real find, and people often pay enormous prices for such volumes, whether they ever intend to read them or not. For those of us who read English, books we find dating to the mid or late 1700s are very difficult for us to read due to the changes in the style of writing, and even the shapes of the letters that make up our alphabet. It is the nature of books to go out of existence unless they are carefully cared for in such places as the Library of Congress or the British Library. How, then, does one explain that a book that was completed more than two thousand years ago, and was for thousands of years carefully copied letter by letter by hand still exists? How do we explain that almost annually fragments and portions of manuscripts of this great book are discovered until now we have more than five thousand of them? It would seem this book is indestructible! Indeed it is, though, down through the centuries enemies of this book all over the world have made effort after effort to eradicate it. From the time of Nero Caesar, men

One reason many people become confused, even to the point of teaching false doctrine, is because they fail to understand the language of the Bible. For example, Dispensational Premillennialists misunderstand the Sermon Jesus preached to His disciples on Mount Olive because they do not understand that words can be used in different ways. For example, after giving many signs of the fall of Jerusalem in Luke 21, he told His disciples, “Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.” Because they always think of “redemption” in terms of being bought back to God spiritually through the sacrifice of Christ, they mistakenly believe that is what the word redemption refers to in Luke 21:28. However, a moment’s reflection will demonstrate that this is not what Jesus was speaking about when He made the statement recorded above. Why? Because the spiritual redemption of these disciples had already taken place when the Lord made this statement to them. One of them would later “fall” from his state of redemption by selling the Lord for thirty pieces of silver, but these men were the servants of Christ and were cleansed by the same blood by which all the rest of the Old Testament faithful were cleansed, according to the statement made by the Hebrews author in 9:15 of his book. The redemption that was to come to these disciples at the fall of Jerusalem was not spiritual redemption, for they already had that!

When Jesus finished His explanation of the Parable of the Tares and had given His disciples three more parables, the last of which was the Parable of the Dragnet, the Bible records in the 13th chapter of Matthew that He asked His disciples the important question, “Have you understood all these things”? The disciples answered in the affirmative! Matthew recorded, “Then He said to them, Therefore every scribe instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old”(Matthew 13:52). In this statement Jesus talked about two important classes of people, scribes and householders. These two classes of people could possibly be the same person, but a scribe by strict definition, was a man who made his living making copies of the Law of Moses. However, Jesus is using the term in a more general sense in this passage and refers to those who taught as scribes, because that is another thing scribes often did. Hence, He has reference there to His own apostles, prophets and evangelists who would be teaching His Gospel to the world. We know this because He referred to them as being “instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven.” Hence, Christ spoke of something that would be expected of His “scribes” when they went out to preach His Gospel to the Jews and Gentiles. Then, He likened every “scribe” to a householder. His reference here is to one who was an owner and manager of property, as well

Almost any time a person uses the word “tribulation” with reference to the Bible, those people known as Dispensational Premillennialists go into fits of ecstasy telling all about the great tribulation that is going to come on the earth before the end of time. They tell of the horrible, agonizing, indescribable suffering of the people of the earth before Christ comes again. They even go so far as to predict that the sun will refuse to shine, the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from heaven, and there will be great earthquakes. They find, they think, verification for this in Matthew 24:29 in which our Lord said, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.”They almost proudly proclaim, “See what Jesus said would happen during the great tribulation.” This theory of the “end of time” needs a bit of a critique, does it not? The first thing to be pointed out is that the Lord never said anything about the sun not shining, the moon not shining, the stars falling from heaven and great earthquakes during the great tribulation. If one will even casually reread the verse, the Lord said that the sun’s being darkened, the moon’s refusing to give its light, the stars falling and the powers of heaven being shaken would take place immediately after the tribulation of those days. Therefore, my friends,

At the stroke of midnight tonight, we shall enter a period of time the world has never seen before. Parts of our globe will enter that time period before we do and other parts will enter after; nonetheless, the whole earth will soon experience a time we have never seen before. When one thinks of this, he cannot help but be fascinated and filled with wonder. The thought of entering a new year is exciting, though many of us have done that seventy, eighty or even ninety times. On rare occasions, it has been done more than a hundred times, but these are rare indeed. There is an old proverb that says, “Time and tempest wait for no man.” That is true. Time relentlessly moves on no matter how much we would wish for it to stand still. God designed it that way, and we should rejoice that it is. For the Christian, the coming of the New Year will move all of us one more year closer to heaven and all its glories. It will also move us closer to death, for that is the door through which we must pass in order to obtain that heavenly summer land. As we look back over the past year, our hearts think of those saints who have gone before us, and while we wish we could enjoy their company for but one hour, we do not wish to call them back from the peace and serenity they enjoy in that beautiful

In what seems to be less than a good full month, the year has gone by and we have come once more to the holiday season. Although no one knows when Jesus Christ was born, the world seems to want to stop once a year and celebrate that great event. In a very real sense those of us who are Christians in the New Testament sense celebrate the birth of Christ every time we center our minds on Him in the moments of sweet communion every Lord’s Day. In churches of Christ, we take no special notice of what purports to be the “birthday” of Jesus on or near December 25th.  To us that day is no more sacred than any other, and it seems that the teachings of Romans 14-15:13 gives us that right. Of course, living in a free country we are at liberty as individuals to do or not to do whatever we like regarding this holiday, or any other for that matter. However, there are foreign influences being upheld by such un-American groups as the American Civil Liberties Union, which have convinced the courts of the land to refuse those of us who make up the vast majority in this country, the right to put decorations in public places such as courthouse lawns, etc. The American Criminal Liberties Union has stolen more American rights from American people in the last fifty years than we will ever regain, though people who claimed to be Christians founded this

The Bible is a book of such historical accuracy that those with a liberal agenda will, often with extreme dishonesty, engage in what is called historical revisionism. In other words, when they find uninspired accounts of historical events that harmonize with the Bible, they will rewrite—revise—history to make it appear to contradict what the Bible says. Doctrinally, men have been doing this for hundreds of years. They have simply written commentaries on the Bible to explain away its plain statements in areas where they disagree with the Bible. In more recent times they have become “brave” enough to develop some new “translations” of the Bible with their revisions found in the English text. A prime example is the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures—with John 1:1 being one of the most outstanding revisions. This same kind of revisionism is found among historical theologians, and they often base whole revisions on what they consider to be obscure words of the Bible. An example is the crossing of the Red Sea by the Hebrews when they came out of Egypt. Liberals do not believe in miracles, so they will not admit that such was involved in the crossing of the Red Sea. They claim the Hebrew word is obscure and can be translated with “Red” or “Reed.” The Reed Sea is a marsh—swamp across which the Israelites could have waded on their way to the southern border of Canaan. Rather than admit the possibility of a miracle, they picture the Hebrews slogging

From Matthew 16:18-19, we read these wonderful words from the lips of Jesus, “And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” This passage is often used to support the religious dogma that Peter was the first earthly head of the church. Our question today is: Does this passage support that dogma? It is insisted that because our Lord said to the apostle Peter, “upon this rock I will build my church,” and because the word “Peter” in the Greek means a rock or a stone, it must be the case that Peter is the rock upon which Christ built His church. This of course, creates a direct contradiction with Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 3:11. Here the apostle wrote, “For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” Here Paul plainly declared that the foundation upon which the church rests is our Lord Himself. If there is a contradiction in the Bible, one of two things must be true. Either the Bible is wrong, or someone’s interpretation of it is wrong. Both Peter and Christ cannot be the foundation upon which the church is built at the same

In the magnificent Book of Acts (5:33-42), we read of the apostles of Jesus Christ being brought before the Jewish Sanhedrin to be tried for the violation of the law of the Jews, and that they were not to preach in the name of Jesus Christ in the City of Jerusalem again. Peter told the chief priests and other members of the council that he and the other apostles must obey God rather than man. The great apostle further testified to this very disgruntled group that God had raised up Jesus, whom they had murdered, from the dead and exalted Him at His own right hand, making Him both Prince and Savior. Luke recorded that when the Sanhedrin heard these things they were furious and began to advise one another on how to kill the apostles, Peter and John. There was on that council a man by the name of Gamaliel who was a doctor of the Law of Moses. This man arose, and after making some preliminary remarks, he gave some very serious advice to the Sanhedrin saying, “And now I say to you, keep away from these men and let them alone; for if this plan or this work is of men, it will come to nothing; but if it is of God, you cannot overthrow it—lest you even be found to fight against God”(Acts 5:38-39). In this eloquent passage, Gamaliel unconsciously declared the religion of Jesus Christ to be the religion of the ages. Christianity, as revealed

One of the great needs of man is, and always has been, to attempt to bring Divinity down to his level. We have never quite understood why so many people want to drag God and the Lord Jesus Christ down to our level rather than our attempting to rise to Theirs. Nonetheless, that seems to be the case, and though it sounds a bit pessimistic, we suppose that it always will be. While that is unfortunate, it is not shocking! In the last thirty years or so there has been a great deal of discussion among the so-called scholars of the religious world regarding whether Jesus was heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual. That is, no doubt, because we cannot grasp the idea of living in a world where there is no sexual activity of some kind. The concept that Jesus set forth in Matthew 19 of one=s being an eunuch for the kingdom of heaven=s sake is not something that comes easily to the minds of moderns. When one adds to this the fact that there are those who are profiting immensely from Afictional@ works in which Jesus is portrayed as having been married to Mary of Magdala and producing offspring, one is impressed with the fact that men want to totally humanize our Lord. However, these are not the first, nor the only people to have had such ideas as that. There is a rather large American cult who teaches that Jesus took a Jewish bride and that the Bible proves this

In Matthew 13, Jesus spoke His famous Parable of the Sower. Thousands of sermons have been preached on this august text. After the Lord taught the parable, the disciples came to Him asking Him why He taught the people in parables rather than with plain language. Jesus explained that He spoke to them in parables because they were too defiant to see and understand the truth, just as Isaiah the prophet said they would be. Then to his apostles the Lord said, “But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear; for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it” (Matthew 13:16-17). The part of the statement in which we are interested is really v. 17, where He told the apostles that many of the prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see and did not see it, and they desired to hear what the apostles were hearing and did not hear it. Since Jesus had just quoted the Old Testament prophet, Isaiah, we are sure that it was to this great group of men He referred. This statement of Jesus coincides perfectly with the statement Peter later by inspiration made concerning the Old Testament prophets. He wrote, “Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you,

Frequently, the question comes, especially from those who are not members of the church, “What does the church of Christ teach regarding marriage, divorce and remarriage, church membership, church government, baptism or cremation?” Such questions are asked because people expect the church to have some kind of official stance on all these questions and many more. These people often innocently assume that churches of Christ are like denominations that have some special statement of faith, creed, manual or catechism that contains all we stand for religiously. They assume that churches of Christ have an official voice and an official creed because churches generally do. If they were to ask these questions of other religious bodies, they could turn without hesitation to some creed, manual, confession or catechism and answer. This would be true of all the “mainline denominations” in our land as well as dozens of other independent denominational bodies. We reckon that in some ways that would be a very handy way of answering quickly almost any question put to these bodies. However, when that question is proposed to a member of churches of Christ, he or she must inform the inquirer that there is no organization in churches of Christ that can answer such questions. No one has ever formulated an official statement of faith, church manual, creed, confession of faith or catechism that contains even the most fundamental matters about what we believe. The reason this is true is because there is no assembly of delegates, council,

There are all kinds of strange ideas about life here and hereafter. Several cultic groups, including those who are commonly called New Agers, believe in a thing called “reincarnation.” This rather fantastic idea, which comes into western thought by way of certain heathen philosophies from the east, holds that the way one lives eternally is through endless rounds of births and deaths. These, according to some of the cults, go on forever, while others hold that they go on until a certain stage of perfection is reached, and then one goes into nirvana, which is a form of nothingness, if nothingness has form! In an attempt to give these fantastic and pagan ideas some sort of credence, many who belong to various New Age movements teach that Jesus taught reincarnation, when in John 3:3, He said to Nicodemus, one of the members of the Jewish Sanhedrin, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” However, if our Lord had been teaching reincarnation, he should have said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again and again and again and again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”Look at the passage carefully and ask yourself this question, where did Jesus say anything that is remotely like this idea? It was never said! Rather, than rebirth after rebirth, after rebirth and death after death, after death, the Bible teaches that we only die once. If we only die once, we

In Matthew 10:40, Jesus spoke these words to those disciples who were being sent out on what we call the Limited Commission: “He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.” We are sure Jesus had direct reference to the Jews who would receive the disciples into their midst and hear what they had to say about the Messianic kingdom and the Messiahship of Jesus. The Lord had previously warned these men that they were going to be persecuted and abused by those to whom they were to preach, and for that reason He sounded the warning, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). Consequently, the Jews who accepted these disciples into their towns and villages and patiently heard the message they were to deliver would be the very ones who would receive Him as Messiah and Lord, and those who did that would also receive God in the sense that they would submit to His will and find their way into the everlasting kingdom of Christ. Today, there is no way we can literally receive those messengers whom the Lord sent on that commission, for they are long since deceased and gone on to their eternal reward. At the same time, there is a sense in which we can either receive them or reject them. We can do

One of the things that modern students of the New Testament have overlooked is the depth and intensity of the struggle that went on between our Lord and His Jewish enemies during His public ministry. If one reads the New Testament without some, at least superficial, knowledge of the prophecies dealing with the coming of Christ and His struggles to bring His kingdom into existence, he is very likely to overlook the stressful relationship that existed between Christ and His countrymen. This is one of the things that Christians need to understand in order to interpret properly the New Testament with regard to the great sacrifice that Christ made on the cross for the redemption of mankind. Glossing over the struggles between Christ and His enemies causes us to fail to stop and consider all the suffering that Christ endured at their hands from the time He was baptized by John in the wilderness of Jordan until He was finally nailed to the cross of Calvary. While it would be greatly beneficial to consider all these struggles, a number of which are dealt with in some detail in the Book of John, in a space as limited as ours, we cannot do that. Therefore, we wish to give a cursory glance to just one instance. In Mark 3:20-30, after Jesus had performed several of His mighty miracles, the scribes who had come from Jerusalem made a serious accusation against our Lord. They did not deny that He performed miracles, but they said,

From time immemorial every time someone has wanted to ignore the teachings of Scripture, substitute another book for the Bible or begin writing some religious dogma that cannot be found on the pages of sacred Scripture, he has begun an unashamed attack on the Word of God. Almost always this attack begins with the accusation that we need the book they want as a bible, or that we cannot trust the Bible because it is full of contradictions. Almost every false religion in the world from Islam right down to some of the cults that came into existence in our country in the last two hundred fifty years, we have heard the cry go up, “You can=t trust your Bible, it is full of contradictions.” The next most frequently heard cry is: “You can=t trust your Bible; it has been translated so many times that it is no longer reliable.” To all these people we issue one simple challenge—show them to us! Friends, it is a show of very poor grace on the part of people who are a cult, but are wanting to be recognized as an important American denomination to advertise about family values and some other such subject, offer to send you a King James Version of the Bible if you will send your name and address to them, when in reality they want to send you another book that contradicts the Bible. This book was written by a mere man, whose morals are highly suspect, to

On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, The emblem of suffering and shame; And I love that Old cross where the dearest and best For a world of lost sinners was slain The hymn from which the above lines are taken brings the reader to the image of the cross on Golgotha and the personal, precious gift of life offered that day. In our minds there must be an ever fixed image of the Lord at the cross—not as a morbid fascination with suffering or a macabre specter of human loss, but as an event whose significance has shaped the destiny of humanity. The Book tells us that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was there, and one can imagine the tremendous emotions washing through her as she helplessly watched her Son die. Were we to be transported back as silent observers of that scene, what would we witness that would etch itself into our memories and deepen both our appreciation for and sadness at such a moment? We would see: One Lord. Everything that day centered upon the one Lord and His treatment at the hands of His enemies. Their efforts to remove Him as an influence by His execution failed, for posterity knows that only one Master exists, and He offered Himself on that day (Acts 4:12). Two Thieves.There were two crucified alongside Jesus, and they, by self-admission, deserved this penalty. At first, they cast insults and aspersions to Christ (Mark 15:32), but apparently as time passed, one of

The Bible makes several extraordinary claims for itself. For example, in 2 Timothy 3:14-17, it claims to be the complete guide for man with the ability to thoroughly equip him for every good work. If the Bible has the ability to thoroughly equip a person for every good work, what good is it unable to equip him to do? The answer can only be, none! Not only so, but the Bible claims to be eternal, or everlasting in its nature. Peter said “the Word of God…lives and abides forever.”Furthermore, he quoted from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah (40:6-8) to prove it. So, whether one speaks of the Old Testament or the New, he is still speaking of the Word of God, which lives and abides forever. In addition to these things, from Hebrews 4:12, we learn that the Word of God is both living and powerful. Finally, Jesus said that He knew God=s command is everlasting life (John 12:50). These are some very big claims, and they are claims that have never been disproved. However, the Book of Mormon does not see the Bible in this light. In 2 Nephi 29:3, we read the words of Joseph Smith, or someone, “And because my words shall hiss forthBmany of the Gentiles shall say: A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible.” Then in verse 10,of the same book and chapter, these words are found, “Wherefore, because that ye have a Bible ye need not suppose that it contains all my words; neither need

Anytime one begins to teach that there is a true and living God who created our universe and all things therein, he will immediately be inundated with questions from those who do not believe in the existence of a Creator God to whom man is accountable. One of the first questions one will hear is: “If everything that exists needs a cause, what caused God?” This question is heard frequently, and those who ask it suppose they have proposed the question that cannot be answered. Actually, they ask this question, as well as many others, because they have not listened carefully to what has been said about cause and effect. No one has ever claimed that everything must have a cause; rather we have claimed that everything that has a beginning must have a cause. Only things that are both finite and contingent need a cause. God is neither finite nor contingent and as such had no beginning, so there was/is no cause for His existence. God is both infinite and necessary; the uncaused Cause of all things finite, or limited. If God needed a cause, we would have to search through an infinite regress of causes, and we would never arrive at His beginning. God is the first Cause; one cannot go back further than the first. A second question often heard is: “If God created all things, then how did he create Himself?” Again, we point out that only finite, contingent beings need a cause. Necessary infinite Being does not. It has

When God gives a command, even in very specific terms, it entails some generic authority when it comes to the execution of His commands. Consider the unassailable example of God’s commanding Noah to build the Ark, giving very specific commands as to the type of wood, the dimensions for it, the number of doors and windows, where these were to be located, etc. However, God said absolutely nothing about the tools that Noah would use in the building of this ark. He specified none, but when He gave the command “build” He authorized any tool necessary to the carrying out that command. In the New Testament, we have a similar situation. In the Great Commission our gracious and loving Lord said, “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature…” (Mark 16:15). The specifics in this command are that the apostles were to: (1) go; (2) into all the world; (3) they were to preach; (4) the Gospel; (5) to every creature. Does this command leave anything open to the decisions of men? Absolutely, it does! They were told to go, but not how. The method of transportation was left up to those who were going. That is the reason today we can use any conveyance we please from the automobile to the airplane to carry out this command. The word “go” authorizes the method of going. We can even go by means of radio and television. The word “preach” comes from a Greek word which means to

In Genesis 1:26-27, we read these words from the pen of Moses, “Then God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” It is insisted by one large cult in America today that because man was made in God=s image, as is set forth by the use of the plural pronoun “our” in these verses, it must be true that is God made of flesh and bones as well. If God must be a mere physical creation because man is, we have some real problems, do we not? There is a fundamental rule of biblical interpretation which says that we are most likely to interpret correctly when we allow the Scriptures to interpret themselves. If Genesis 1:26-27 teaches that God is a flesh, blood and bones creature because man is, then we have a real contradiction in Scripture for Jesus said in John 4:24, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” Jesus unequivocally said, “God is Spirit…” He did not say that God has a Spirit, but“God is Spirit.” Spirits do not have flesh and bones. How do we know this? Again, we will allow Jesus to answer. In Luke 24:36-43 Jesus,

We are in receipt of a very interesting question on the subject of baptism, which we will attempt to answer. “Dear Sir, Why does the Church of Christ place so much emphasis on baptism when other religious bodies do not?” Let us begin by saying that those of us who are members of churches of Christ really do not emphasize anything except that which is found in the Bible. Basing this answer on the assumption that the questioner refers to baptism in water for the remission of sins, we point out a couple of interesting points. (1) The word “baptize” and all its cognates are not English words, but anglicized Greek words. The translators of the many English Bibles, rather than translate the word with an English word, decided to remove the Greek ending and add an English ending. This caused the Greek word to be brought into our language without it ever being translated. (2) This word and its cognates, referring only to water baptism, are frequently found in our Bibles. The word “baptize” is found 9 times; “baptized” 61 times; “baptism” 22 times and “baptizing” is found 4 times. We can see from this that we are certainly dealing with a biblical subject. Since those of us in churches of Christ are very keen to teach that which is found in the Bible, it is only natural that a subject mentioned that frequently would be taught very thoroughly. A second reason that we teach what the Bible teaches on this subject is

From time to time, both the printed media and the television come up with news clips on the practice of polygamy in such places as Utah, Nevada and other western states that come under the influence of a large cult that, until it was outlawed by the Federal Government in 1890, practiced polygamy openly according to the teaching of their Prophet. This prophet himself practiced polygamy, as did his successors, until the law passed by the U. S. Congress outlawed it. That it is still practiced today cannot be doubted in light of what we see documented on TV and other places. However, members of this large American cult are not the only people in the world to practice these “plural marriages.” It is practiced commonly among those who embrace Islam, as well as other so-called world religions. However, usually in Islam there is a limit placed on the number of wives a man may have—that limit being four at a time.     However, all this is beside the point if God endorses polygamy. If God commanded, or even authorized, plural marriages, then we should be permitted to engage in that kind of behavior with no penalty whatsoever, because those of us who practice monogamy (one wife at a time) are wrong in our practice and the others are correct.     Marriage, like every other aspect of life, is well regulated by the Word of God, that book we call the Bible. Jesus taught in Matthew 19:1-12 that God’s original plan for

In Romans 5:20b, the apostle Paul, by inspiration, wrote to the saints at Rome, “But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more…” We sing of this abounding grace when we rightly sing that the grace of God is greater than all our sin. Today, we wish to look at the words that are translated in this text by our English word “abounded.” In the first portion of the sentence in which the Holy Spirit caused Paul to write that “sin abounded,” he used a word, which according to Perschbacher, in this text means “to come into wider action, to be more widely spread” (331). Consequently, when Paul spoke of the sin abounding, he was simply saying that it had become so widely spread that it would seem there was no remedy for it whatsoever. However, then, he added that in this case “grace abounded much more.” Literally, the words “abounded much more”come from one Greek word, which would perhaps be better translated “super-abounded.” Nevertheless, the idea is that where sin had become so widespread that no one could see its parameters and man could see no way of ever controlling it, the grace of God had become much more widespread. That makes the grace of God the only solution to sin!     If the words here translated “abounded” and “abounded much more” are interesting to study, and they are, the word “grace” draws an even greater interest. The word “grace”in this passage comes from a Greek word that in English is spelled “charis.” This word is

Frequently, the question comes, especially from those who are not members of the church, “What does the church of Christ teach regarding marriage, divorce and remarriage, church membership, church government, baptism or cremation?” Such questions are asked because people expect the church to have some kind of official stance on all these questions and many more. These people often innocently assume that churches of Christ are like denominations that have some special statement of faith, creed, manual or catechism that contains all we stand for religiously. They assume that churches of Christ have an official voice and an official creed because churches generally do.   If they were to ask these questions of other religious bodies, they could turn without hesitation to some creed, manual, confession or catechism and answer. This would be true of all the “mainline denominations” in our land as well as dozens of other independent denominational bodies. We reckon that in some ways that would be a very handy way of answering quickly almost any question put to these bodies.   However, when that question is proposed to members of churches of Christ, they must inform the querist that there is no organization in churches of Christ that can answer such questions. No one has ever formulated an official statement of faith, church manual, creed, confession of faith or catechism that contains even the most fundamental matters about what we believe. The reason this is true is because there is no assembly of delegates, council, convention or conference

We affirm that the Bible is not a science textbook, yet every time the Bible speaks of that which is scientific, what it says is scientifically accurate. There are many who would have us believe that one cannot accept the truth of the Bible and the truth of science at the same time, because the two are in tension one with the other. Such is not only not the case, but it is ridiculous! There are so many evidences of the scientific accuracy of the Bible that in an article as brief as this one we can mention only two, at most.     In the 1930’s, American medical scientists learned that human blood is all the same when properly typed and cross-matched. They learned it is different from animal blood, and there can be no such thing as cross transfusion without death resulting for the recipient of animal blood, and vice versa. That was hailed as one of the great scientific discoveries of the 20th Century, and indeed it was! However, two-thousand years before this research was done and these important facts were known, the apostle Paul, speaking to a group of Athenian philosophers on Mars Hill in Athens said, “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth…”(Acts 17:26a NKJV). Since, in Paul’s day it was unknown that every nation of men has but one blood, how does one explain his mentioning this scientific fact? There can be only one reasonable explanation, and

The writing of the Sacred Volume called the Bible was a cooperative venture between God and man, with the Holy Spirit revealing and guiding every step of the way. However, lest someone get the idea that we believe the Bible is a mere dictation product of heaven, we wish to look into the human aspects of this great undertaking. The Bible was written in human languages. As a matter of fact, we know not that God ever attempted to communicate with man in any other way than through languages known to man. The Bible was written in at least three languages—Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek—all three of which are dead languages, and have been for thousands of years; hence, the meanings of their words have not changed in all these centuries. These languages exhibit their own peculiar linguistic forms, and this makes the job of translation a sticky wicket at times. The Bible, since it is in reality a library of books, was written by more than thirty-five writers over a period of some sixteen hundred years. It reflects grammatical changes, irregularities, and nuances of the authors and the times in which it was written. It also was written in different genres, such as poetry, prose, literal, figurative and symbolic languages. Therefore, if it is to be understood, poetry must be read as poetry, prose as prose, etc. Sometimes one finds both prose and poetry in the same chapter, especially when studying the prophets. Not only are there different types of

Not too long ago I ran across a book entitled, Harmful to Minors–The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex, written by the Brooklyn-based journalist Judith Levine. Levine founded the feminist organization, “No More Nice Girls.” The foreword to the book was written by Joycelyn Elders. The premise of the book is that pedophiles are usually harmless people. She urged that sex is a wonderful part of growing up and that teens and children can “enjoy the pleasures of the body” and at the same time be safe. Ms. Levine was interviewed, due to the book she had written, by a reporter from a Minneapolis newspaper just after the terrible controversy began to rage over sexual abuse by priests. She commented in the story that a sexual relationship between a priest and a boy could “conceivably, absolutely be a positive experience.” She went on to assert that a sexual relationship between an older person and a teenager could be “more like salvation than victimization.” You do not have to be a rocket scientist to know what values this woman has chosen! I certainly do not want her around my grandchildren! Is Ms. Levine a wicked and evil person? Not according to the moral relativist. She has simply chosen her own set of values and no one has the right to criticize that.     Just following WWII, there was a lengthy period of “war crime trials” in Germany in which the leaders of the Nazi regime, who did not commit suicide, were tried for their crimes against the

One reason many people become confused, even to the point of teaching false doctrine, is because they fail to understand the language of the Bible. For example, Dispensational Premillennialists misunderstand the Sermon Jesus preached to his disciples on Mount Olive because they do not understand that words can be used in different ways. For example, after giving many signs of the fall of Jerusalem in Luke 21, he told his disciples, “Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.” Because they always think of “redemption” in terms of being bought back to God spiritually through the sacrifice of Christ, they mistakenly believe that is what the word redemption refers to in Luke 21:28. However, a moment’s reflection will demonstrate that this is not what Jesus was speaking of when he made the statement recorded above. Why? Because the spiritual redemption of these disciples had already taken place when the Lord made this statement to them. One of them would later “fall” from his state of redemption by selling the Lord for thirty pieces of silver, but these men were the servants of Christ and were cleansed by the same blood with which all the rest of the Old Testament faithful were cleansed, according to the statement made by the Hebrews author in 9:15 of his book. The redemption that was to come to these disciples at the fall of Jerusalem was not spiritual redemption, for they already had that! They had accompanied Jesus all the time he had

There is a motto that came out of the restoration movement that says, “In Matters of Faith Unity, In Matters of Opinion Liberty, In All Things Charity.” We are not sure who coined the motto or popularized it, but as time goes by we hear it less and less in our Bible classes and sermons. It has virtually disappeared from the minds of modern members of the church. This motto has been much on our mind lately, due to the fact that we came across it not long ago in some book on the restoration movement. The author made the point that down through the two hundred years or so that we have been attempting both to attain unity in the religious world and restore the ancient order of things we have been great at making mottos, but very remiss in applying them to our religious life. Perhaps he is right. For when one looks back on the history of churches of Christ and notices the things that have divided various congregations at various times, such as the number of communion containers, Sunday school classes, ladies wearing hats or head covering to worship, Bible class literature and probably a half-dozen other things that have nothing to do with the salvation of our souls, we will have to admit we have not applied the motto as carefully as we should have, or could have.     The first time we heard this motto was more than fifty years ago. It was long

Some months ago, a lady jogger was captured by a group of rampaging youth in New York’s Central Park, and she was without mercy beaten, repeatedly raped and finally murdered. Her body was hidden in the bushes where it was later found by a passerby who was walking his dog. The nation was shocked. When we hear discussion of such horrendous crimes on the TV talk shows, we are given proof positive that many in our postmodern society have taken leave of their senses when they dress up such evil actions in all their psychobabble and language of victimology. These sophisticated relativists blame such horrific behavior on poverty, stress, boredom, rage, etc. When we ask them about evil in our world, they reply that the concept of evil is too simplistic, and that it is altogether outmoded. We are told that evil, especially as it is set forth in the Scriptures, does not exist and never really has! Friends, if such behavior is not evil, what is it? We simply do not buy the psychobabble about stress, poverty, boredom and all the rest of this senseless claptrap. As a boy in rural West Virginia, during squirrel season, we used to take out twenty gauge shot guns and hunt on the way to school. As we approached the school, we unloaded the single shot and put the shells in a box. At the old one room school, we “stacked arms” in the corner, put the shells on a shelf and spent the day studying.

In the 21st chapter of the marvelous Book of Acts, we read of Paul’s final arrival in the City of Jerusalem. If he ever visited again after this time, there is no record of the event. He was welcomed by the brethren (21:17). The following day, he paid a visit to James (no doubt the Lord’s half brother). Upon coming to James, he spoke in some detail of the wonderful things God had accomplished among the Gentiles through his energetic ministry. When James and the elders heard Paul’s report, Luke recorded that they glorified the Lord for Paul’s success. Luke recorded that they (James and the elders) made the following statement to Paul, “You see, brother, how many myriads of Jews there are who have believed, and they are all zealous for the law; but they have been informed about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children nor to walk according to the customs”(Acts 21:20b‑21). A thing that startles the modern Christian regarding this statement is that so many Jewish Christians were still zealous for the Law.     These people had been obedient to Christ, recognized him as the Messiah, had been baptized into the death of Christ, but were still zealous for the Law. The New Testament is as clear as a lighthouse beam on a dark, clear night that the Law of Moses had been taken out of the way and nailed to the cross

In Luke 19:28-44, we read of the Triumphant Entry into the city of Jerusalem. We all remember how, in fulfillment of prophecy, he rode on the colt of a donkey upon which no one had ever ridden; the people threw their clothing in his path and spread it with palm leaves according to Matthew’s account of the incident. The people broke forth in a loud anthem saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.”The Pharisees, who by this time were determined that he should not live long on this earth, insisted that he should rebuke the crowd for praising him as they were, but the Lord refused to do that and told them that if the people did not praise him the stones would immediately cry out in praise of him. As Jesus continued to make his entry into the holy city in which God’s Temple was found, the Bible tells us he began to weep over her. While weeping, he addressed the ancient city of Jerusalem as if she were a person, saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”Then he began to prophesy of the downfall of Jerusalem telling this great city that her enemies would throw up an embankment around her and surround her on every side. Not only so, but her enemies were going to “level you, and your children within you, to the

On the Day of Pentecost, the Christian Era was ushered in by the Holy Spirit descending on the apostles of Christ and by their preaching the Gospel of the crucified, buried and resurrected Christ for the first time in the history of the world. As these Spirit-inspired men spoke in other languages to Jews gathered from all over the world, the accusation was made that they were drunk! Peter, denying that he and the other preachers were drunk, quoted Joel 2:28-32 saying,“This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel.” There are those who believe that Peter did not accurately quote Joel, for he quoted things from the prophet that did not happen on the Day of Pentecost.     However, as in the case of most biblical difficulties, there is a simple solution to what seems to be a problem here. First, Peter was showing that the events that were transpiring before the eyes of the people on that occasion were the initial fulfillment of Joel 2:28-32. By that we simply mean this: The events of Pentecost fulfilled the first part of the prophecy by Joel, though the Holy Spirit moved Peter to quote the whole prophecy. We will see the reason for that a bit later. The prophet said that God told him, “And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh” (Joel 2:28a). God did exactly what he promised when the apostles were all filled with the Holy Spirit

 In Deuteronomy 6:4-5, Moses spoke these words to Israel on behalf of Yahweh, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” There is a word in this text that immediately catches our attention. The word is “love.” The command God gave the Israelites through his great spokesman Moses was, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” According to The Expository Dictionary of Bible Words, this is a Hebrew verb ‘ahab, which is found more than two hundred times in the Old Testament. This word, again according the above dictionary, did not specify the object of the love, the degree or the kind (609). Coming into the New Testament, we find Jesus and the writers of that Book using the Greek word for this Hebrew one more than three hundred twenty times in all its forms. Any word that is used that often has to be an important word. The noun form of the word is easily recognized by most Christians today; it is “agape.”     When Jesus was questioned by the lawyer in Matthew 22:36ff regarding which was the first and greatest commandment in the Law, he quoted Deuteronomy 6:5, using the Greek verb agapao. In so doing, he gave new meaning to the Hebrew word used in Deuteronomy 6:5. This is the word used to describe the love

In our column today we wish to briefly look at some of the traits that make up the nature of God with which we will in part answer the question, “What kind of God is the One whom we affirm exists?”     We wish to point out that he is the God of the Bible. If one were to desire to know all the traits that God has revealed concerning himself, he must go to the Bible and study those things. When one does so, he will find that a study of each of the characteristics contributes something to his total knowledge of Yahweh. To express this same truth in another way, one may say a study of all the Bible reveals about God forms a picture that will fit the only true and living God of our universe.     The first trait we wish to review is his power. Our God is all powerful; he is omnipotent! The argument for the existence of God based on the creation of our universe proves not only that God exists, but that he is all powerful. Only a God of incredible power could create and sustain the whole universe, as well as those that scientists claim exist beyond ours. His power and energy would have to be greater than all the energy that exists, or that is available in the whole of creation, for he not only caused all things to come into existence but he sustains them by the word of his power.

In Matthew chapters twenty-four and twenty-five, we have recorded the great Olivet Sermon preached by Jesus just hours before he was taken into captivity, tried and crucified for the sins of the world. The likelihood is more than great that there is no passage of Scripture outside the great Book of Revelation that is as badly maligned, abused, misunderstood and misinterpreted as the words of our gracious Lord in these chapters. While we would like to look in great depth at a number of matters in the Olivet Discourse, space permits us only to look at one matter in one verse. When Jesus was predicting the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, he said, “Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place”(Matthew 24:34 NKJV). For dozens of generations men have been reading this passage of Scripture and applying it to the generation in which they were living rather than the one in which Jesus was living. As a result of this misapplication of language, they have over and over again predicted the destruction of the universe before the end of the generation in which they were living at the time the prediction was made. This blunder has been repeated by every generation of Premillennialists since this false doctrine was popularized by John Nelson Darby among the Plymouth Brethren in England in the early 1830s.     If people would simply allow their minds to go back to

The world is now and always has been full of “other gods.” Pretonius said of the city of Athens that it was easier to find a god than to find a man. And Zenophon called Athens, one great altar to the gods. The Bible is a very unique book in that it declares there is only one true and living God. Judaism, for hundreds upon hundreds of years claimed that there is only one true God who has revealed himself to mankind, and in that they have been correct. Christianity, likewise, declares to the world there is only one true God, although in recent months in this country, in the name of tolerance, some who claim to be Christians have voted to no longer say that salvation is found in Christ alone. From this and other sources we are learning that once again, in our world of so-called pluralism, men are beginning to deny that there is but one God. That is not surprising, but what is amazing is that there are some who wish to call themselves Christians who agree with that concept. While these people do not consider themselves polytheists (worshiper of more than one God), in reality they are because they recognize other so-called deities as being on a par with Yahweh when it comes to matters religious in nature. For some reason these folk find it “bigoted” to insist there is only one true God in our universe. When we turn to the 17th chapter of

As we approach this study of the Judgment, we wish to begin by asking the question: “Who will be the judge?” God is going to judge the world by the One who resurrected from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion—the Lord Jesus Christ. To the Corinthians Paul wrote, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). In this passage he made very clear that the Judge of all the earth, when the Final Judgment comes, is the very One who is now our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.      Judgment has passed upon people, nations and this earth in times past. Cain was judged for killing his righteous brother. Sodom, Gomorrah and the cities of the plain were judged for the evil that they lived daily. The whole world was judged in the days of Noah. Israel was judged and destroyed by Assyria. Judah was judged and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. Egypt, Nineveh, Babylon, Tyre, Sidon, Assyria, Edom and many others of whom we could speak came under judgment of heaven and no longer exist. In light of all the biblical examples, what would make us think that we too will not be judged? Why would we think that judgment is passed because of Jerusalem anymore than because of the judgment of the world in the days of Noah? This time, however, mankind

How do we know that the sixty-six books that make up our Bible are the only writings that should be included in Holy Scripture? Do the Apocrypha, the Gnostic Gospels, the Gospels of Thomas or  Barnabas belong in the canon? Why should these books not be included in the Bible? The answer to these questions lies in the concept of canonicity. The English word “canon” comes from Hebrew and Greek words both of which mean, “a measuring rod.” This signifies that there is a standard that must be met by all books which make up the Bible. There are several inadequate views of what the standard for canonicity should have been, such as the age of the writing, its agreement with the Torah, if written in Hebrew or its religious value. But each of these criterion is reached by making a common mistake, which is, they confuse God’s determination of what Scripture is with man’s recognition of what it is. In the final analysis, whatever the Holy Spirit moved a servant of God to write is inspired and belongs in the canon, and whatever is the mere writing of man does not! There are several crucial questions that have been asked by scholars in the church in determining which books are to be accepted as canonical. The first and most basic is, “Was the book(s) written by a recognized prophet of God?” Deuteronomy 18:18 tells us that only a prophet of God will speak the Word of God. And we know

The process by which the Bible came from the mind of God to the mind of man is called revelation. The process by which it was written is called inspiration. In 2 Timothy 3:16-17, Paul wrote, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work”(2 Timothy 3:16‑17 NKJV). The phrase “given by inspiration of God,” can also be accurately translated in these words, “is breathed out by God.” Paul taught the Corinthian brethren that the Holy Spirit searched the mind of Elohim and revealed his will to the writers of the Bible, and then helped them choose the appropriate words in which to express the ideas of God. (See: 1 Corinthians 2:1-14.) The searching of the mind of Elohim by the Holy Spirit and revealing the mind of God to the writers of the Bible was one part of the equation, the speaking, or writing, of those words in the words which the Holy Spirit taught was the second part of the equation, and it is his part that is called inspiration. The apostle Peter also spoke to this matter, especially regarding the work of the Old Testament prophets when he wrote, “And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts; knowing this first,

In former times, we did a considerable amount of marriage counseling. Now we just make referrals.     One of the things that would come up very frequently when a couple was having problems in their marriage was one would accuse the other of sending “mixed signals.” What seemed to be acceptable at one time, so far as such things as the expenditure of money, for example, would be totally unacceptable at another time. One mate, sometimes both, would make statements such as, “I never know what to do!” We understand the frustration that can develop from such confusion brought on, usually by inconsistency, or acting on whims.     Often as parents, we do the very same thing to our children. For example, if they lie to us about some matter we will become almost enraged, and breathe out threatening and slaughter against them. Then they will observe in our lives, we lie to others and feel no compunction of conscience whatsoever. Thus, little Johnny may come to be completely confused over why it is wrong to lie to Dad about where he had ridden his bike that day, but it is alright for Dad to lie to the IRS on his tax return. As a result of this confusion, he may come to believe that it is okay to lie to any authority except Dad. Hence, that child may grow to be a person of great responsibility who does not at all mind fleecing his customers, or fellows, or even

Since we live in a world of “you go to your church and I will go to mine,” and since we are so touchy about anyone’s judging anything we do, including which church we attend, we thought it important to ask the question that stands as title for this article. Many are not at all concerned with such things as finding Christ’s church in our world, but are deeply concerned with finding a church they like, or one that preaches what they want to hear, or conducts a worship after the style that they call worship. If they are partial to rock ‘n roll music, then they want a church that uses a rock band to entertain them as they carry on what they call worship. Such persons usually do not make any spiritual connection with the church and what is going on; it is a matter of finding one (if they are seeking one at all) that does or says something they like. Now, such attitudes are neither new nor novel inasmuch as they have been around for hundreds upon hundreds of years. However, for those who are deeply interested in the Bible and the things that pertain to it, for those who “hunger and thirst after righteousness,” there is an entirely different attitude regarding the question we have before us. It is to these people we dedicate our answer today.     Firstly, it is of vital importance that we identify the church for which Jesus gave his life

The religious philosophy that we refer to as “Calvinism,” which should more accurately be described as “Augustinianism,” for it was the product of the 6th century philosopher and theologian Augustine of Hippo, leaves the strong implication that God is not eager to save man. This philosophy also teaches that it takes a special work of the Holy Spirit in order to bring man to salvation, that he cannot come to be saved by reading and studying his Bible himself. They say without the “enabling grace” of the Holy Spirit one cannot even want to be saved.     Others who practice a “mourner’s bench” system of religion believe that they must agonize, beg and plead with God, sometimes for even months or years on end before he finally allows them “through,” which we take to mean he grants them salvation, at least as they look upon it. Hence, by implication they are saying that it is a hard thing to drag salvation out of God.     Sometimes when we preach on the horrors of hell and all that attends that, some get the idea that we are saying that God wants more people to go to hell than to heaven, and since they do not believe they can ever do enough to satisfy God’s demands, it is a difficult, if not impossible task, to be saved. It is true that the Bible warns of eternal punishment, and by using metaphors that we can understand, pictures it as being a horrific place (which it is).

For two hundred and five years churches of Christ in America have been engaged in the formidable effort to restore in our time the church of which we read in the New Testament. When this movement began with the work of Stone, Campbell, Scott, Smith and hundreds of others it was believed that the only way religious unity could be attained would be for people to do two things. (1) To return to the Bible for all that we do in matters of religion. Thomas Campbell coined, in his own unique way, the watchword of the early movement which was, “We speak where the Scriptures speak and we are silent where the Scriptures are silent.” (Someone has said we have no trouble in speaking where the Scriptures speak—our problem is deciding when they are silent. There may be some truth to that.) (2) We should attempt to restore the order and worship of the church to the same thing that it was in apostolic times. It would seem that the first of these would lead as naturally to the second as anything can. For example, if the Bible teaches the immersion of penitent believers for the remission of sins, and we do only that which is taught in the Bible regarding the manner in which one is saved, then we could not help but restore the ancient order of things to that degree. We further illustrate by pointing out that if the Scriptures teach that the apostolic church was set

Recently the question was proposed, “If we are authorized to sing in worship, would not generic authority also authorize us to play instruments while we do that?” The answer to that is a resounding, “No!” If we are authorized to sing; the authorization of that one act of worship authorizes all that is necessary to carry out that command, just as Noah’s authorization to build the ark authorized all that he needed to do that. For example, since most of us do not memorize a great number of hymns, and some of us are incapable of memorizing any, we are authorized to print those hymns in books that we call songbooks. These are authorized in the command to sing. Since in order to sing, we must have notes of music to guide us, notes are authorized in the songbooks. Since in order to sing, we need to have a pitch to do so correctly, we are authorized to use some appropriate device to obtain that pitch. Since we are to speak to one another in songs, hymns and spiritual songs, we need to be regulated in our singing, so the song leader is authorized. He can give us the pitch, begin singing slightly ahead of us and beat the time so that we can stay together, singing appropriately to God. There is nothing used in the song service that is not authorized under the command to sing, though some things like songbooks, pitch pipes, tuning forks, etc. are not specifically

One of the things causing so much confusion among our brethren today is a lack of understanding of generic and specific authority as these apply to our religious life. For example, one of the arguments used by those who are attempting to foist on us what even they call a “radical restoration,” by insisting that we should have “house churches” and worship only in our homes, eating the Lord’s Supper in the midst of a common meal is this: There is no authority for our having meetinghouses. They insist that in apostolic times there were none; the disciples always worshipped in their homes. One of the many flaws in their argument is that they could not prove it if their lives depended on it! While it is true that the early saints worshipped in their homes, there are hints that this was not always the case. For example, James, half-brother of our Lord, spoke of one coming “into your synagogue,” or “into your assembly” (2:2). That could have been in the home of a brother who had sufficient wealth to own a home, but it could also have been in another place—wherever the assembly was. Hence, it is not proper to say the early saints always met in homes, for the Book of Acts mentions their assembling on Solomon’s Porch of the Temple (3:11). Paul spoke to the Corinthians of the church “coming together in one place” (1 Corinthians 11:20). He even indicated that the place of their coming together was not

The Bible displays more wisdom than any other book in the world. It sets forth the wisest principles found in literature read by man. The laws of the Bible exalt justice and truth above all other laws on the face of the earth. No other book affords so much dignity to human beings and no other book sets them up as being as valuable as the Bible. If the Bible is nothing more than a mere human production, why do we not find thousands of other “human productions” vying with it for the distribution of wisdom? Not only is there no book comparable to it, but there is none that even approaches it when it comes to the wisdom set forth on its sacred pages. Nowhere else in the world does one find the wisdom that is set forth in the Old Testament in that panel of commands that we call the “Ten Commandments.” How often we have heard people say, people who were not even religious, “the world would be a much better place to live if only we would follow the Ten Commandments. In the New Testament there is no more profound wisdom found than that which is set forth in our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount. What would life be like, if in this country alone, we practiced the Golden Rule—and “whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you even also to them”?     In the Old Testament there is a book called “Proverbs.” In

When people begin to debate the existence of the absolutely pure, holy, true and living God, emotions often overtake reason and prejudice begins to speak in the name of reason. Men on both sides of the issue regarding the existence of God may be prone to do this and it usually signals frustration, or that one has felt the weakness of his own arguments. Some of these biased assertions have stood for years as supposed arguments against the existence of God. We desire to examine a few of these today It has often been asserted that if God is a necessary Being, then the world is too. This affirmation assumes that a necessary being must do all that it does necessarily. However, our definition is that he must be all that he is. All that is in the nature of God is necessary, but anything that he does extends beyond his nature and is done by his freewill. We illustrate in this way: the living human being must live, however whether he propagates and brings forth after his own kind is a matter of exercising his freewill. By the same token, it was not necessary for God to create. His love may have given him the desire to do so, but it did not demand that he do so. So, his acts of creation were acts of his own freewill. God must be as he is, but he can do what he pleases so long as it does not contradict his nature. He “pleased”

If there is no God in the universe in which we live, then it must be true that anything goes! Right? Without God and his communication to man, morality is completely arbitrary, is it not? One need not be a believer in God to recognize that this is true. However, there are few, if any people who claim that there is no God who want it to be this way. After all the laws of morality that are extant in the land are the only things that keep them from being overwhelmed by those of superior strength or intellect. If there is no God, no person should either be sought or prosecuted for the murder of an atheist, or anyone else, because if there is no God there is no power on earth who can by any means, arbitrary or otherwise, say that it is wrong, that is, a crime for any person to have been murdered. However, we have never seen a person whose religious belief is that there is no God who would agree to what we have just said. They all, for some strange reason, wish to take the position that there is a need for rules and regulations to govern the societies in which we live. But we must ask, “Why?” There is never a satisfactory answer given to the question except that it is necessary to have laws of morality in order for society to live in an orderly way. If, however, there is no

Today, we wish to look at proof for the existence of Yahweh as God of our universe, which also proves the divine origin of that book we call the Bible. That evidence is the standard of morality found within the holy Word of God. Nowhere else in the entire world does one find the high standard of morality that is set forth in the Bible. No other so-called Scripture demands of man the high standard of intellectual, emotional and physical morality that the Bible does. Man, on his own, could not have written a book with such a standard of morality, because it is far above what most men are able to attain, or even desire to attain. Man, on his own, would not have written a book with such high standards of morality because he does not like that which makes him feel guilty and demands that he repent and change his lifestyle for that of a higher and purer way of living. This within itself proves that the Bible is no mere human product and that it came from a much higher Source than the mind and mores of man. Let us look at an example or two that will illustrate that of which we speak. Let us look at the matter of murder. While the Bible plainly admits there are different kinds of murder depending on the intent of the person who takes the life of another, nowhere does it ever justify such activity. In the Old Testament, even in the case of

The word “sect” is found in the KJV of the Bible five times. Every instance is in the Book of Acts, where it is used three times to refer to what we might call “denominations” among the Jews, and twice to refer to the church of Christ. In both instances (Acts 24:5 and 28:22), it is in some way connected with the Jews, leaving us with the very definite impression that the church was looked upon by many, especially among the Jews, as a mere sect so common to the Jews in that time. In every instance of the use of the word in the Book of Acts, it comes from the same Greek word meaning, according to Thayer, “a body of men following their own tenets.” Tenets refers to teaching or doctrine; consequently, there were the tenets of the Sadducees, the Pharisees and those of the “sect of the Nazarenes” (Christians),  “spoken against everywhere.” For the body of Christ to be looked on, both in Palestine and in Rome, as a Jewish sect would have certain, very important disadvantages. The Jews would look on them as nothing more than one of the many sects among themselves and dismiss the teachings of Christ in that manner. Not only so, but they were looked on by both Jews and Gentiles as a troublesome sect, and as the Jews of Rome pointed out to Paul, they were spoken against all over the Roman world. The Gentiles would, no doubt, look on them

At the stroke of midnight last night, we began a year that none of us have ever seen before. The past year is like the snow that has fallen on the river, it was a moment white, now it is gone forever. We have no idea of what will come our way in this New Year, for we are not privileged to see even tomorrow. But while we do not know what the year holds, we do know him who holds the year, do we not? Some things will not change. There will be cold and heat, rain and shine, bursting of spring, the growth of summer, the retiring of fall to be followed by the sleep of winter, just as has been the case every year since the world began, and will be until it is no more. God promised in the long ago, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22). So far as the changing of the seasons are concerned, we can utterly depend on the Word of God, as we can in any other area of life. However, there are many other things about the next twelve months that we do not know. We do not know if we will be faced with bliss or tragedy, pleasure or pain. This very well could be the last year we will ever live on this earth. Consequently, we need to take the advice of the

Our English word “creed” comes into our language from the Latin word “credo” meaning, “I believe.” When we speak of one’s creed we are simply referring to what he believes religiously, politically, economically or in any other area of life. The “planks” making up a political party’s platform summarize its creed, or what the majority of its members  believe on certain political issues such as taxes, etc. No organized body of people can exist without some sort of a creed, either written or oral. Standard dictionaries define the word as a definite summary of what is believed. Churches of Christ are no exception to this rule. While we have no manmade creed  set forth by any kind of conference, council or synod, it must be freely admitted that we certainly have a creed–a statement of what we believe. The difference between churches of Christ and other religious bodies is that the church  had no part in writing her creed in any way, shape or form. We were not asked about it; we were not asked to contribute to it; we were not asked to either approve or disapprove of the things found in it. The creed was written by God, without counsel from man. God is not a man that he needs the approval of man regarding anything that he does, including the writing of his creed for the church. From time to time we read of various churches in what is commonly called “Christendom” revising their creeds. They meet

Recently, we received an inquiry which said in part, “Do demons really inhabit people today as they did in the days when Jesus lived on the earth?” The person asking the question explained that he had been in a discussion with a person who held that such illnesses as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, various psychoses and other life-threatening illnesses were nothing more than demons living within our bodies and when the demons were cast out by someone claiming to be a faith healer, the illnesses would go away. My first response was diabetes was not really a demon, it just seems that way! But we will do well to take a serious look at whether demons possess people today as they did in the days when our Lord was on the earth. Firstly, we would point out that if the Bible is true, and it is, demons did indeed inhabit human bodies in the days when Jesus lived on the earth. But to the best of our recollection they were never associated with physical illnesses such as leprosy, palsy, various paralyses and things of that nature. It is true that demons did give a person the appearance of being psychotic, and after at least one “casting out of demons,” the Bible described the recipient of this blessing as sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind (Luke 8:35). However, psychoses are today treated with various medications and there is no hint that there is a connection

I just finished reading a great old book entitled Gospel Lessons and Life History by the late renowned E.G. Sewell. He was probably not known to many in the Ohio Valley since he spent the most of his life in the middle and east Tennessee areas. For forty years or more, he was a close friend and confidant to brother David Lipscomb, as well as co-editor of the Gospel Advocate. Though brother Sewell did attend Burritt College in Spencer, TN for two and a half years and one ten month term at brother Tolbert Fanning’s Franklin College, he was for the most part a self-taught man. His courses in these two colleges were in mathematics, Greek and Hebrew, as well as a course in Latin  as I recall. He learned to read the Bible in what he called, “their native languages.” In that respect he was, even by today’s standards (he died in 1924), quite a scholar! Brother Sewell was preeminently a man of the Book. He pored over his Bible closely every day of his adult life, from age nineteen onward, and did his best to apply everything he learned to his own life first. Reading his own sketch of his life sent me to my meager library to learn more about him and I found other material in several books. Unfortunately, I did not find all that I would like to know about this great soldier of the cross, but I did find a comment made about his leadership as an

In his autobiography, Elias Smith, of restoration fame from Vermont, told of what was called the canker-rash striking the small community of Woodstock. He told of the death of several young people in their teen years and early twenties. He told of one family who within a period of four days lost all three of their young daughters. What the disease was, we do not know, but he described it as the persons breaking out in a very red rash, running a very high temperature and dying within thirty-six to forty-eight hours. The families hastened to bury their dead loved ones fearing that the disease could be spread, even from a corpse (52f). (The disease was, perhaps, some form of measles.) Smith told of one young man whom he watched die. At the time of his friend’s death, Smith was but a lad of sixteen years. He recounted the story this way, “Not long before he died, his father came into the room; his son said, ‘father what do you think of my situation?’  His father with tears replied, ‘my son, you are dying.’ He said, ‘do you think I am?’ ‘Yes,’ said his father. ‘Then (said he) if it is so, I am undone to all eternity; O, How can I die without Christ; I am undone! undone, forever!’ He uttered these words and died immediately” (53). After watching his young friend, as well as the three sisters earlier mentioned buried, Smith began to think on the words of his young

From the 2nd century after Christ there has been a great deal of discussion on the subject of baptism. Various debates took place down through the ages, regarding whether or not the action of baptism could be changed, and finally that body that we today know as the Roman Catholic Church substituted the use of sprinkling and pouring water, which they first referred to as “clinical baptism,” which was administered to dying people who were too ill to be taken to a baptistry or stream to be immersed into Christ. Several months ago this student was called upon to baptize a dying man in the therapy pool of a local Catholic medical center. When the penitent believer came up out of the water, a young man who was Catholic said, “That is the most awesome thing I have ever seen in my life.” A nun, a chaplain in the same medical center replied, “That is the way it was always done in the apostolic church.” The young man replied, “Why was it ever changed?” With a slight shrug of her shoulders the nun replied, “The church believes she has the right to make such changes.” Anecdotal evidence, so say logicians, is not evidence. Yet this anecdote shows clearly that there are those in 21century America who are perfectly aware that what they call the “mode” of baptism has been changed since the days of the apostles of Christ. With the coming of the great Reformation came other long and detailed

There is much discussion on this subject, especially between those who have characterized themselves as “change agents,” or “progressives” and those of us who, in their estimations, are neither. Some have gone so far as to insist that as long as a person being immersed is aware that he is doing that to please God, his immersion is acceptable in the sight of God. This is not a new discussion among us-it has gone on intermittently for nearly a hundred and fifty years. The question actually comes down to whether or not it is necessary for a person who wishes to be immersed to know why that action is being taken. The first question that comes to our minds is this: If one wishes to be immersed, but does not know why, and/or has no interest in knowing why, how can he submit to baptism as an act of faith? Can one do a thing by faith ignorantly, since faith comes by hearing the Word of God (Rom. 10:17)? If one has heard the Word of God sufficiently to desire immersion, we fail to see how he could possibly do that without knowing why. If he does not, is he ready for that beautiful step? One finds it difficult to understand how anyone could give the Book of Acts even a casual reading and not know the reason for baptism. Surely any person can understand the language of the incomparable apostle Peter who told the converts on Pentecost Day to

Since words are vehicles by which thoughts and ideas are conveyed from one mind to another, it is of vital importance that one understand the meaning of words. Written words do not mean what we want them to mean, rather they mean what the original writer intended for them to mean. One of the badly misunderstood words of our time, in the realm of religion, is the word Christian. Today we wish to examine the meaning of the word, and by doing so we can better understand what it means to be a Christian and to live the Christian life. The word “Christian” is found only three times in the Bible. All the instances of its occurrence are in the New Testament. The references at which one will find the words are: Acts 11:26; 26:28; 1 Peter 4:16. In Acts 11:26 we read, “And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. So it was that for a whole year they assembled with the church and taught a great many people. And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.” The first instance of the disciples of our Lord being called “Christians” was in the ancient city of Antioch of Syria. Their being called by this name was the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 62:2 in which the prophet quoted God as saying the Gentiles would see righteousness, that is, they would become followers of Jesus after which the followers of Christ would receive a new name which

In the minds of many Americans, there are two concepts which always go together. Those concepts constitute the title of our article today. The idea is that if someone is doing something that others consider to be wrong and those who consider that activity to be wrong say so, they are being both judgmental and intolerant. For example, if I were to say that it is an evil thing for adults to have sexual relationships with minor children, there are many people who would say that I am being both judgmental and intolerant. (Incidentally, there are many Americans who would say that and many books have been written extolling the so-called virtues of adults and children having sexual relationships. But that is a subject for later articles.) I would fully grant that if I made the judgment that it is an evil thing for adults to exploit children for sexual purposes that I would be “judgmental.” All of us are judgmental about something even if it is only being judgmental about others being judgmental. Where did we ever get the silly idea that it is wrong to be judgmental? Not from good thinking, we can be assured of that. While I would be being judgmental in the above case, would I be being intolerant? We often sling words around without ever even stopping to try and define what we are talking about! Popular thinking, or lack of it, likes to assert that if a person condemns a thing as being

If we want to know anything about the Old Testament manuscripts, we must look to their keepers, the Jews. The books of Genesis through Malachi were written to the Jews and primarily for the Jews, though we find many prophecies regarding the future salvation of the Gentiles. In the most ancient of times, during the period covered by the history of the book we call Genesis, men were not divided into Jews and Gentiles for the nation of Israel, later called Jews, did not come into existence until we come to the closing chapters of that great book. Here we read of the descendants of Jacob making their way into the Land of Goshen, a portion of Egypt. In this country they remained for slightly more than four hundred years, and in that period of time the seventy-four souls who went down to Egypt grew into a mighty nation. With the beginning of the Book of Exodus, we see God calling his people out of Egypt and forming them into that nation that would capture and occupy the Land of Canaan for the better part of fifteen hundred years. During that period of time, the Old Testament, by progressive revelation, was given to the Jews, who wrote it and became the protectors of it. Keeping manuscripts, most of which were written on velum (a writing material made from animal skins) in good condition is not an easy task, and would not be, even in our modern times. The Jews did

The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) is largely made up of a group of lawyers who have appointed themselves watchdogs over what they call American freedoms. However, every time these so-called watch dogs of freedom enter a court room, you and I end up losing far more freedoms than we have ever lost before. Thanks to the ACLU, we can no longer have replicas of the Ten Commandments on our Courthouse lawns, although those of us who believe in principles of the Decalogue pay more than 99 and 44/100% of the taxes in this nation. One atheist objects to their being where they are and the ACLU is only too happy to sue on his behalf to have them removed. Often jurors who call themselves Christians sit on the juries that take away the freedoms of citizens who wish to see replicas of the Ten Commandments, or some other religious symbol on publicly held property, that is, property which belongs to the people. If a child whose parents are atheists, or Islamic, or of some other faith objects to student-led prayer in the classroom, at a graduation, a sports event or some other school function, some lawyer will enter suit to stop such an activity although the rights of the vast majority of the students are being suppressed for the “comfort” of a few, or sometimes only one. This is all done under the guise of what these people call “the doctrine of the separation of church and state” in