A few nights before I wrote the original version of this article, I viewed a 2-part, 4-hour documentary on the History Channel covering the 1st through 3rd crusades of the 9th and 10th centuries. In viewing this, the perfidy and apostasy of Roman Catholicism continues to astound and appall me. Centuries of bloodshed were instigated based upon a… Read More »
A recent trend I’ve seen which greatly disturbs me — even angers me, at times — is a tendency for Christian believers to divide themselves from one other according to their pet doctrines. This is much like the old East-Indian parable of the blind men and the elephant: Five blind men heard an elephant had been brought into… Read More »
One of the major negative phenomena which has occurred since the inception of the World-Wide Web is that of the “Internet troll.” For those of you unfamiliar with this particular item of techno-jargon, a troll is a cyber-bully, a person who gleefully and/or angrily comments on various articles and discussions on all sorts of websites in the most… Read More »
Historically, one of the most destructive and divisive controversies within Protestantism has been between the followers of reformer John Calvin, a French theologian who lived from 1509-1564, and the adherents of Jacobus Arminius, a Dutch theologian who lived from 1560-1609. The name-calling and propagandizing against one another by these two groups has been damaging our unity of the… Read More »
Committed Christ-followers and pew-warming pietists alike have been reciting the Lord’s Prayer for literally over 2,000 years. Anyone who has hung around any church or organization calling itself “Christian” for even a few minutes has at least heard it and many have it memorized. Tragically, over those 2 millennia, the Lord’s Prayer has become, for many church-goers, a… Read More »
In my previous post in this series, we began discussing the gifts of the Spirit listed in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10 and led off with exploring the gifts of tongues and the interpretation of tongues. One of the statements I made towards the end of that article was tongues and interpretation are the functional equivalent of the gift of prophesy, which… Read More »
In this series, I’m about to answer two questions I believe to be crucial to our understanding of Christianity: What is the Bible? How do we correctly grasp what we read in it? Why Should This Topic Concern Us? Tragically, some so-called Christians misuse the Bible to preach hate against various groups: racial minorities, interracial marriages, homosexuals, and… Read More »
In my previous article in this series, we explored what the Bible is, where it came from, and what it has to say about itself. In this installment, we’ll tackle the question posed in this article’s title. The answers I’m about to provide here are the principles I use whenever I examine the Scriptures and am seeking God… Read More »
