Life in light of the resurrection

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is both one of the best-attested and most contested events of ancient history. But for those of us who place our faith in Jesus for salvation, the resurrection is far more than a historical event—it is a crucial basis for our future hope which should affect how we live our lives.

Our hope is not in this life

One encouraging lesson from the resurrection is that we do not have to look for perfect happiness, justice, or love in this life. In fact, those who do are inevitably disappointed. Rather, we can look forward to the New Heavens and Earth where all those longings will be perfectly fulfilled.

This is a crucial part of the answer to one of the most-asked questions—why does a good God allow bad things? God did not create the world to be full of suffering and death—that came about through Adam's sin (Romans 5:12). Christ died so that sinners can be saved when they believe. If we did not believe that one day He will put all things right, an important part of the message of redemption would be missing.

​Click to read​

What the Creation Museum is Really About

​

Answers in Genesis opened its much-anticipated, 27-million dollar Creation Museum in rural Northern Kentucky at the end of May 2007, drawing more than half a million people in the first sixteen months and more than three million in the first ten years. Those are impressive numbers. By comparison, the nearby Cincinnati Museum Center, located in the heart of a major Midwestern city, covering a much larger range of subjects in three separate museums, boasting an OMNIMAX theater, and targeting a much broader demographic than just conservative Protestants, had about 1.45 million visitors in 2015. With 20% as much traffic as its much larger secular neighbor, AiG's museum has proved to be a commercial success. Like the YEC ideas that it embodies, the Creation Museum shows no signs of going away anytime soon.

One reason for this is the high production values evident throughout. I saw this for myself, when I visited the Museum scarcely more than three months after it opened. Terry Mortenson of AiG kindly gave me a tour of the operation behind the scenes afterwards, but mostly I walked through the exhibits unaccompanied, attended a well-organized presentation by astronomer Jason Lisle in the technically impressive planetarium, and formed my own conclusions about the methods and the message of the Creation Museum. A few months ago, I commented on the one thing that struck me most, namely, the way in which visitors are shown the YEC view and evolution as separate but equal sets of assumptions, with the scientific evidence impotent to determine which approach actually provides a better explanation. That is best seen in the Dinosaur Dig Site (above), a huge sand box in which two paleontologists, one secular and one a creationist, uncover the same bones with the same techniques but draw very different conclusions about their implications.

​Click to read​

Virus-free. www.avg.com

A Beautiful Mind Seminar 2 Sept 10 am BMICH

​

Every Book of the Bible in One Word

God reveals himself through his Word. When he speaks, he teaches us what he is like, how he acts, and how he desires us to respond. As a whole, the Bible is about God. It's about God the Father …

http://flip.it/cTBoeL

New Books You Should Know (July 2017)

Editors' note: On average, we publish around 150 book reviews a year at The Gospel Coalition. Ecclesiastes 12:12 rings true: "Of making many books there is no end." It's impossible to read, let alone …

http://flip.it/f6epw9

Sent via Flipboard, your personal magazine.

Scientific Pantheism and the God of the Physicists

For the theist the large categories of being are God followed by Creation. God is eternal, while Creation began in time and is ontologically separate from God. Creation includes life in all its wonderful and myriad forms. Humans are a special category of life, bearing the imago Dei (Genesis 1:26-27) and uniquely able to worship God and contemplate the meaning of existence. God is transcendent, existing now, existing before the universe and existing forever. God is the "Alpha and Omega ... which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty" (Revelation 1:8 KJV). At the same time, the God of the Bible is personal and immanent in Creation and human affairs. For the scientific naturalist there is no personal God, so the most significant category of being is the cosmos—or, for some, the multiverse. As humans are part of the cosmos and its history, the cosmos for theists is not "Wholly Other" with respect to humans, to borrow the famous language of the German theologian Rudolf Otto in his book, The Idea of the Holy (1917).

But what about the scientific naturalist, for whom the Cosmos is the supreme entity or being? Sometimes language used by scientific naturalists suggests that the cosmos has a certain numinous quality, at least at the metaphorical level, but perhaps occasionally at a much deeper level. This is the case, for example, when Carl Sagan begins his 1980 book and documentary television series Cosmos with the powerful words, "The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be" (p. 4). Sagan continues:

​Click to read​

World's Top New Testament Scholar - Christians Need To Read The Gospels Through Ancient Jewish Eyes

I've written here about New Testament scholar N.T. Wright and his most recent book, The Day the Revolution Began. The book was published recently and is now being made available in an online course format. The book (and the course) will bring insights to even the most seasoned student of the Scri...

http://flip.it/5oc4Yo

Meet St. Paul as he Writes to the Romans; A Brief Study to Make it Easy

I love St. Paul and love to write about him and his epistles. I also enjoyed traveling through six countries filming his life story and theology. St. Paul Dictating his Epistle to the Romans to TertiusSt. Paul's Letter to the Romans is often seen as impossible to understand except by theologians ...

http://flip.it/g7ILgh

How the King James Bible Came to Be

Precisely 451 years after the June 19, 1566, birth of King James I of England, one achievement of his reign still stands above the rest: the 1611 English translation of the Old and New Testaments that bears his name. The King James Bible, one of the …

http://flip.it/ApXSJf

The Simple Questions to Ask Every Time You Open Your Bible

I recently sat down with New Testament professor Matthew Harmon to ask him some questions about his new book, Asking the Right Questions: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Applying the Bible …

http://flip.it/HejgF2

What Was Jesus Writing on the Ground?

As a Lawyer, my mind was scrutinizing what the Bible had said about these sins, type of witnesses needed and what really took place here. I was also curious about what Jesus was writing on the ground.

While I was listening to the exposition of John 8 with regard to the sin of adultery, courtroom scenario, the advocate and the conscience etc., as a Lawyer, my mind was scrutinizing what the Bible had said about these sins, type of witnesses needed and what really took place here. I was also curious about what Jesus was writing on the ground (some say sand).

​Click to read​

Reasons We Don’t Read the Bible Like We Should

1. The Bible is optional 2. Many church leaders don't expect us to read the Bible 3. All we hear is mission and vision 4. Google faith 5. Failure 6. Your parents don't read the Bible 7. Bible bullies 8.

http://flip.it/-a2cVw

The 4 C Model

Holy Communion – A Multi-Dimensional Perspective

I personally know of many who have got completely healed of their serious sicknesses such as cancer because of regular intake of Holy Communion. Not to forget the large number of Saints who lived long years only taking communion as their food. These could not have resulted if it were simply a symbolic ritual.

Over the years many have asked me to explain what exactly happens at Holy Communion because we have heard of so many varied explanations from diverse church backgrounds. Here I explain in a simplified article taken from a fuller main research available elsewhere from a multi-dimensional perspective where I believe it is a new state of consciousness caused by the living elements in of Holy Communion functioning in a separate dimension among the ten dimensions currently seen in string theory research.

Click to read

Divinity: Original Sin 2 Gets a Release Date

Divinity: Original Sin II will be coming out of early access and receiving a full release on September 14, 2017. In its 37th update video on developer Larian Studios' YouTube page, we now finally have the full release date of the sequel to 2014's Divinity: Original Sin. Original Sin II had a succ...

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/05/25/divinity-original-sin-2-gets-a-release-date

Selected Sayings

​

Most will misunderstand the Antichrist’s ‘mark’–will you?

Many wonder what 'mark' or marks may be associated with the final Antichrist. But few understand who the final Antichrist can be, let alone his mark. And relatively few will properly perceive it. The …

http://flip.it/hePMvl

The Holy Sepulcher: Archaeology says the Evangelists were right

​O​n October 20th, 2016, one of the most exciting events in centuries took place: the opening of the marble slab guarding the place tradition claims was the tomb of Jesus, inside the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

Underneath that slab there was a second slab, also of gray marble, containing a slit along its side and bearing a Lorraine Cross. Most likely, this is from the time of the Crusades, from the beginning of the 12th century.

Once the second slab was removed, the surprises began, according to testimonies gathered from different sources. Right below this slab, a fundamental piece of the site was discovered: an ordinary stone bench excavated in the rock that is directly connected with the vertical wall, also excavated in the rock behind it.

​Click to read​

Vatican astronomer: If you're afraid of science, you don't have faith

"Those of us that are religious, will recognize the presence of God, but you don't have to make a theological leap to search for the truth," Br. Consolmagno said. "There are many things we know we do not understand. We cannot be good religious people or scientists if we think that our work is done."

The summit is also taking place in recognition of Fr. Georges Lemaître, the Belgian physicist and mathematician who is widely credited with developing the "Big Bang" theory to explain the origin of the physical universe.

Addressing common misconceptions surrounding the Big Bang, such as the idea that it did away with the need for a creator, Br. Consolmagno said the solution isn't just to put God at the beginning of things and call that good, either.

Click to read

​

Denisovans, Humans and the Chromosome 2 Fusion

​

With that as background, we are now prepared to appreciate a new finding that comes from genomics work done on the Denisovan hominids, an archaic species that is more closely related to Neanderthals than to us, but that nonetheless interbred with some anatomically modern humans as they migrated out of Africa and populated the globe. (For those not familiar with the Denisovans, or the evidence for our interbreeding with them, both Darrel Falk and I have written on this previously, here and here). Recently, a more detailed understanding of the Denisovan genome was published, and nested in the new information is the discovery that the Denisovans share the 46 chromosome set with the same fusion that we have. This strongly supports the hypothesis that the fusion event predates the separation of our species. If we were to represent this on a phylogeny, we can now place this event with more accuracy than before ..

Click to read