The Milwaukee Chapter of Reasonable Faith will hold its next meeting on Thursday, November 8, 2012 at 7:00pm at Southbrook Church in Franklin, WI.  Southbrook is located at 11010 W. Saint Martins Road, Franklin, WI 53132.

At the meeting we will discuss the upcoming EPS Apologetics Conference at Spring Creek Church and our chapter's participation.  Plans for the future of the chapter will be also discussed.

We will also show the debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox entitled "The God Delusion" Debate which is based on Richard Dawkins book of the same title. 

Any questions or comments, please contact me at markelstad@hotmail.com.

Today we moralize politics and politicize morality.  When we talk politics we talk values.  No matter what political party is speaking, they clothe their words in flowery language that speaks to a higher ethic.  Funny thing though, they never define what that higher ethic is. From where does it come?  When we talk values, ethics, and morality we politicize it.  We say they have to be kept separate.  We look right and left but never up or down! The problem occurs, however, when the two are kept separate because our ethics, our morality is intimately linked to our politics.  If it isn’t, it ought to be. 

Take the example of our Founding Fathers.  Their morality, their ethics were deeply woven into the politics of their day.  Their politics were based on their morality.  The ideas expressed in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution came more from the Bible than any other source.

Today we claim that our morality is relative and therefore personal.  That it has no place in our politics because everyone has their own sense of what is right and wrong.  Nothing is absolute; there is no “truth”.

If you are not honestly searching for something, chances are you will not find it.  The same is true of “truth”.  Truth is important and worth searching for.  Winston Churchill once said, “Truth is the most precious thing there is.  It is so precious it is often safeguarded by a body full of lies.”

I am teaching two Apologetics classes this fall at Southbrook Church.  They are Sunday mornings and Wednesday evening.  The next meeting of the Milwaukee Chapter of Reasonable Faith will be held during my first Wednesday evening class on September 12, 2012.  The class is from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm.  The meeting will be at 6:30 pm before the class to discuss future plans for the chapter.  Anyone attending the meeting is welcome to stay for the class and participate in the discussion.

I normally do not get political on my blog.  There is plenty of that out there.  I tend to want to stick to defending Christianity and explaining many of the arguments for it.

There is a political issue, however, that really cries out for some comment.  The "death of common sense" is evident throughout our society.  It has never been more evident than in Wisconsin today regarding the Voter ID law.  This law, which passed the legislature and was signed into law by Governor Walker, has been stalled by a Madison judge.  The injunction against the law prohibits the law from being in force.  When you look at what happened in Racine during the recall election, the necessity for this law being in effect is paramount.  Opponents of the law say that it disenfranchises voters.  Yet how many voters are disenfranchised when an illegal vote cancels their vote? Think about it.

The idea that someone can go vote without properly identifying who they are and where they live is inviting voter fraud. 
If the voter ID law is stuck in the Madison court of this left-wing judge past the November election, an offense of greater magnitude cannot be imagined.



I have been thinking about death a lot lately.  The death of people close to me has brought this reality to the forefront of my consciousness.  I heard Ravi Zacharias share a short poem the other day that summarizes the truth beautifully.

"My knowledge of this life is small,
the eye of faith is dim.
But tis enough that Christ knows all,
and I will be with Him."

It puts it all in proper perspective.
 

Today I want to post a "Slice of Infinity" from Ravi Zacharias.  Ravi has a unique way of nailing truth.  The Slice is called "Point of Exclusion".   It talks about the argument that Christianity claims exclusivity.  All religions do this.  Here is the article.


Point of Exclusion

With the numerous religions in the world, how can Christians claim exclusivity? I am often asked this question in different settings. But I've always been fascinated by the fact that the Christian faith is the only one that seems to have this question posed. The truth is that every major religion in the world claims exclusivity, and every major religion in the world has a point of exclusion.

Hinduism, for example, is often represented as being the most tolerant and accepting of other faiths. That is just not true. All Hindus believe in two fundamental, uncompromising doctrines—the Law of Karma, and the belief in reincarnation. These will not be surrendered. In fact, Buddhism was born out of the rejection of two other very dogmatic claims of Hinduism. Buddha rejected the authority of the vedas and the caste system of Hinduism. The issue here is not who was right or wrong. The truth is that they were systemically different—both claiming rightness.

Islam, as you know, is very clearly an exclusive claim to God. A Muslim will never tell you that it doesn't matter what you believe or that all religions are true.

But before we get upset with such claims, let us remember that it is the very nature of truth that presents us with this reality. Truth by definition is exclusive. Everything cannot be true. If everything is true, then nothing is false. And if nothing is false then it would also be true to say everything is false. We cannot have it both ways. One should not be surprised at the claims of exclusivity. The reality is that even those who deny truth's exclusivity, in effect, exclude those who do not deny it. The truth quickly emerges. The law of non-contradiction does apply to reality: Two contradictory statements cannot both be true in the same sense. Thus, to deny the law of non-contradiction is to affirm it at the same time. You may as well talk about a one-ended stick as talk about truth being all-inclusive.

So where does that leave us? We must not be surprised at truth claims but we must test them before we believe them. If the test demonstrates truth then we are morally compelled to believe it. And this is precisely the point from which many are trying to run. As G.K. Chesterton said, the problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult and left untried.

Christ is either the immeasurable God or one dreadfully lost. Apply the tests of truth to the person and the message of Jesus Christ. You see not only his exclusivity, but also his uniqueness. 

Ravi Zacharias is founder and chairman of the board of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries

As I have said many times before on this blog, have an open mind and check it out for yourself.  Look at the evidence for all religions.  Test them and see if they provide coherent, logical answers to the fundamental questions of life.  Make it a front burner issue in your life to find out the "truth".  It is important.

The New Atheist Problem

It has become clear to me that Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists have a problem.  They continually re-define the word “faith”.  They characterize faith as the belief in something without any evidence and belief in something even in the teeth of evidence to the contrary.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Faith is more a sense of trust based on evidence and reasons to accept.  What the New Atheists are referring to is “blind faith”, which is indeed a reprehensible and indefensible position.

But if we look more closely at what these critics are saying, we find the illogical nature of it.  The humanist/naturalist believes in nature and science.  They claim all things can be explained by science.  Yet that statement is a philosophical statement without any evidence!!  What are the reasons for accepting such a claim?  I can give numerous examples of things that science cannot explain.  Take for example the periodical cicadas.  Every seventeen years this insect comes back to life from the ground in numbers so great is astounds us all.  The sound of them rubbing their wings is at times deafening.  How is it that these insects know to come up out of the ground, lay their eggs, live for a few weeks, die, and then return in 17 years?  How do they know that?  How is it that their sense of time is so accurate?  Science can’t explain it.  They speculate, but have no solid evidence for the phenomenon.

What about the constants of nature in the universe?  The positive and negative force of the proton and electron in the atom, the force of gravity, the entropy in the universe all are examples of phenomenon that science has no answer for.  Are we then to conclude that they don’t exist?

You see, in order to accept the humanist/naturalist/evolutionist position, one must take a ‘leap of faith’ that has less evidence for it than does the reasonable and rational decision to accept Christ, as Frank Turek and Norm Geisler so appropriately said in their book of the same title, “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist”.   The “brights” like to make it seem as though their position is better thought out, more rational, reasonable, and with more evidence.  But the opposite is actually the truth.  Philosophers, scientists, and thinkers for centuries have sought after God.  The depth of their discoveries has been the basis of science in the modern age.  Yet only recently do we come to think that science has all the answers.  What hogwash!  It is as though we simply can dismiss the thinkers of the past as being misguided, uninformed, and simplistic.  The arrogance of the “brights” to think that way is beyond measure.  They like to cite the many examples of the past where the prevailing thought was later shown to be wrong.  Well, is it not possible that their prevailing thoughts today are wrong about the supernatural?

It seems to me the best course of action is to investigate from all angles and to look at history, philosophy, and science to find the evidence with which to base a logical and supported hypothesis.  One must keep an open mind and not venture into the investigation with a decision that the supernatural cannot exist already made, which is what they do.

The search for God and Truth has been the single most important and significant endeavor of man’s existence.  It is because life on this planet has no meaning, no value, and no purpose without God and immortality.  If we are all just molecules in motion in a baseless and irrelevant universe, then I wish to no longer be a part of it.  Ecclesiastes says it well, “So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me.  All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.  I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me.”  Think about it, without God and immortality, what are we here for?  Where do we come from?  Where are we going?  Is this all there is?

If you want to answer the fundamental existential questions of life about origin, meaning, purpose, and destiny, there is only one place you can find answers that are coherent, logical, and reflect reality.  That place is in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Fantastic meeting yesterday of the Milwaukee Chapter of Reasonable Faith.  Great discussion on whether or not the supernatural exists. 

We will suspend meetings now for the summer and resume in September in the new Southbrook Church.  Since we are acquiring a facility for the chuch, the chapter will now have a convenient location for future meetings.  We discussed the possibility of organizing a conference to be held at the new Southbrook, maybe next Spring.

The excitement level is high.  Praise God for His blessing on our efforts to move forward with the chapter and spread the idea of reasonable faith.

The next meeting of the Milwaukee Chapter of Reasonable Faith will be held at Southbrook Church on Sunday, June 17th @ 9:00am. 

Tolerant of the “Intolerance of Tolerance”

 I am becoming intolerant of those who claim that I am intolerant of those who say they are tolerant.  This is not just a play on words.  Allow me to explain.

A new book has been released with the title, “The Intolerance of Tolerance”.  The basic premise of the book it that the new tolerance is actually very intolerant.  Tolerance as a word has seen its definition change in the past few years.  It has gone from being respectful of different statements or ideas to accepting those different statements or ideas.  You might say it has gone from just acceptance to endorsing and even celebrating those different ideas.  Measuring a statement or an idea against the truth is no more.  Truth is in the eye of the beholder.  It is a relativist endeavor that has meaning only to the one holding it.  Truth really doesn’t exist in our society today.  Truth has been neutered.  But you cannot find the truth unless you have the freedom to explore differing and competing ideas.  If everyone’s feeling is true, then how can you ever discover that which really is true?

Everyone has a right to believe in whatever they want to believe in, but that does not mean that what they believe is right!  I recently met a man on the golf course who was very eager to tell me the many things he believed in.  Some of the points he made were valid and reflected a very healthy view.  Others, however, were very suspect and on the fringe of common sense.  So I said to him that you can believe anything you want, but at some point, you need to ask yourself if what you believe is true; does it reflect reality? 

To find coherent answers, the ideas or beliefs you hold must pass the tests of logical consistency and empirical adequacy and relevance.  What do I mean by this?  First, a belief or worldview must be logical.  It must pass the test of simple logic.  It cannot be inherently contradictory.  Any statement that is inherently contradictory cannot be true! 

Secondly, the worldview or idea must pass the test of empirical adequacy and relevance.  Does it pass the test of your own experience?  People can say to me they believe in the man in the moon, but it doesn’t pass the test of my experience.  I have never seen the man in the moon nor have I ever personally experienced the man in the moon.  If I go to search for evidence of the man in the moon, I would probably find it severely lacking.  Therefore, my experience tells me that this belief is probably misguided or false.

All ideas must pass the test of truth.  What is truth?  Truth is the same for all persons, at all times, and in all places.  It never changes.  Truth does not have versions.  It is what it is.  How do we find truth?  How do we know if we have found truth?  The reliable old tools of research, logic, and experiential relevance apply.  Find the evidence for the statement or idea.  As in a court of law, prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt, then you have a foundation for the worldview or belief.  Anything without a sound foundation falls.  Be open to the truth and the evidence when you search for it.  Let the evidence take you wherever it takes you.  Be open minded and unlike those who say they are tolerant today, because in reality, they are intolerant and unwilling to search for and accept the truth.

The first meeting of the Milwaukee Chapter of Reasonable Faith was fantastic!  I am grateful and pleased with all who attended.  The Chapter is off to a great start and much more will develop.

One of the attendees is a professor of Chemistry and Medicine at UW.  His contributions were enormous as he has extensive apologetics experience as well as the scientific background and knowledge to blow away the atheist's arguments that science answers everything. 

One idea I failed to bring up is the idea that it is a false choice between religion and science.  Science is, indeed, its own religion.

The next meeting will hopefully be in June.  Location to be determined.

The First Meeting of the Milwaukee Chapter of Reasonable Faith will be held on Sunday, May 13th. at 9:00am and 11:45am, at Southbrook Church in Franklin, WI.  See the following announcement in the Southbrook bulletin:


 Milwaukee Chapter of Reasonable Faith Meeting:
The Milwaukee Chapter of Reasonable Faith aims to provide, in the public arena, an intelligent, articulate, and uncompromising, yet gracious, Christian perspective on the most important issues concerning the truth of the Christian faith today.  We will have our first meeting on Sunday, May 13, at 9am, at Southbrook before service and at 11:45am after service, to discuss the chapter and future plans.  If you cannot make either meeting, please contact Mark Elstad, Director of the Milwaukee Chapter of Reasonable Faith, at home (262) 764-4291, cell (262) 515-0624, or email him at: markelstad@hotmail.com
  .

In Ravi Zacharias’s latest book he states, “The New Spirituality encourages a unified theory of God, which is actually a nondefined entity, a made-to-measure religion for each and every person”.  What this means is that through intuition or introspection we can come in touch with our inner self, our spiritual self, which is in effect our own god.  How convenient it is to be able to discover our own god and define it to our liking.  Our accountability is, therefore, only to ourselves.  And in this era of relativism, each individual is able to define spirituality and therefore god in their own way to suit whatever they deem necessary.  Absolute truth is abandoned and does not exist.  Logic and reasoning are tossed to the garbage heap, as feelings and self-worth and self-acceptance are trumpeted as the most worthy of all pursuits. 

There are many different proponents of these ideas with varying degrees of success and appeal.  It is a type of pantheistic approach that combines a little from several different worldviews with slight variations depending upon which version one aspires.  As Ravi says, “It is truly a case of each one with his or her personal brand of spirituality, grabbing the newest ancient source to appear more esoteric than the next.  What is lost, in the end, is any distinction between God, humanity, and the animal world”.  This is why I often refer to the environmental movement, or the animal rights movement, as a new religion.  It is a worldview that incorporates all the aspects of a religion, from its deity to its rituals to its beliefs.  In environmentalism, the earth is the deity and earth day, which is coming up on April 22, its major religious holiday.

The problem with all of this new spirituality is that truth is abandoned.  Any attempt to logically, and with evidence, search for the truth is compromised for what feels right.  The apostle Paul, in his letter to the church in Rome, warned of exactly the kind of thinking we see today.  Nearly 2,000 years ago he wrote, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.  For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God, nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles”.  We have given ourselves over to worshipping things we have created rather than the Creator.

When you look at a newborn, what is it you think?  Do you marvel at the beauty of this new life?  Do you contemplate the enormous and incredible complexity of the human being you hold in your arms?  What do you think when you see a person with a debilitating disease or enormous weight problem that may be caused by disease?  Are you looking at that person wondering what the problem is?  Should we not be looking in each of these cases through the individual to the majesty and glory of the God who created them?  For everyone has worth endowed by their creator. 

A good analogy is a telescope.  Do you look at the telescope and see the marvelous design and intricate workings of the machine; or do you look through it to see the wonder that it helps you to see beyond the immediate?  Without looking through the telescope all you see is what your eye can see, but when you look through it, you can see much more.  The same is true of people you see and meet.  You can look at them and see only what you see, or you can look through that to the person inside, created by God for a purpose, and attempt to discover what that might be.  How do we do this?  The answer is relationship.  We are creatures designed for relationship, and relationships are only meaningful if and when they get past the surface.  This is what Jesus meant by “love thy neighbor as thyself”.  We shouldn’t accept people only for what they look like or what they do.  We should go beyond that to what we find is inside them.  That is why the New Spirituality is appealing.  It attempts to get us to seek the spirituality that is in all of us, placed there by God.  But we get sidetracked and lose sight of the truth.  God is the one in control and the one who deserves our worship.

It has been said that everyone has a “god-sized hole” in their heart that only god can fill.  Everyone throughout time has sought to understand the spiritual realm.  Most people recognize that there is a spiritual side to our existence and they attempt to contact it.  That is, in part, what the New Spirituality tries to do and it is not a new thing!

So if relationship and spirituality are key ingredients to meaning in life, then love has to be the supreme ethic.  It is necessary for sense to be made out of life.  It is necessary for sense to be made out of God and Jesus.  It is not guaranteed in life, nor is it always easy to find.  Sometimes it can be a very difficult and elusive thing to capture.  We all seek it and desire it.  Yet it is there for all of us in the One who never changes and is always by our side.

Some people will say this all a bunch of hooey.  My answer is for that person to search for the truth.  As Lee Strobel so appropriately stated in his book and DVD, “A Case for Christ”, that we should do three things.  First, make it a front burner issue in our life to seek out the evidence and search for the truth.  Secondly, to enter the search with an open mind and let the evidence take you wherever it takes you.  Thirdly, to be willing to make a decision regarding the evidence and be willing to make a change in your life based on the evidence.

I spoke to someone the other day who was most concerned about telling me what he “believed”.  That is fine.  You can believe anything you want to, but I have only one question.  Is it true?  Does it reflect reality?  Do you have substantial historical and logically congruent evidence to support that belief?  I can believe in little green men from Mars, but do I have enough evidence to create a plausible, logical, and compelling case for the reality of that belief?  It may make me feel good to believe it, but that doesn’t make it true!

I urge everyone to open their minds and seek the truth in all things.  Be willing to seek the evidence and look for the truth.  Be willing to listen to and explore both sides to see which is more logical and has the supportive evidence.  Don’t be persuaded by what sounds good or feels good to do or believe.  Ask yourself if it is true and can I find evidence for it?  That is the beauty of the Christian worldview.  It is testable.  You can search for and find the evidence because it is not based on just theory; it is based on a person, the person of Jesus.  Just like Paul said in Romans, the evidence is all around us.  It is there if you will look for it.

Bubba Watson is a solid Christian who just won the Masters!  It is great to see Christian men with their prioities straight have success in their chosen field. 
Bubba helps to conduct weekly bible studies for players on the PGA tour.

After 55 years of playing golf, maybe I should consider playing from the other side; left-handed.  When you consider five of the last ten Masters champions are left-handed players, maybe I should try it.  Some would say I can't do a lot worse than I do now.  I would disagree with that assessment.  I think I will stick with what I know.  Besides, golf is just a game.  A worthwhile and legitimate recreational pursuit but not the center of Bubba's life nor mine.

Today is the day that we celebrate the most significant event in history.  It is the peg upon which the cloak of Christianity hangs.  May God bless all those whom I love and are a part of my life.

March 26, 2012  

Sunday Sermon at True Life Community Church

I had the opportunity yesterday to speak to True Life Community Church on the historical evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus.  It was an extraordinary opportunity to share with fellow believers and one atheist.  Although the atheist did not identify himself, I was told a woman was bringing her atheist husband to the service.  Maybe he felt, after hearing the talk, that he didn’t have enough evidence to confront me.  I just don’t know.

The talk centered on what are five historical facts about Jesus and His resurrection; the first being that Jesus died from Roman crucifixion.  The Romans were experts at death and when one considers that Jesus was scourged before crucifixion it makes the process even more certain of its desired outcome.  Scourging was called “half-way death” by the Romans.  Josephus once called it like “filleting a man to the bone”.  It is widely accepted by historical scholars that Jesus died at the hands of the Romans.  The thought that He may have survived the process is without a medical, scientific, historical, or reasonable basis.

The second historical fact was that Jesus was prepared for burial and placed in a tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea.  There are several independent attestations of this fact.  The fact that there are numerous independent attestations of the burial of Jesus makes the fact of His death even more certain.  Why would there be so many accounts of Joseph going to Pilate to request Jesus’ body if Jesus were not dead?

It is also worth mentioning that knowledge of who buried Jesus and where the tomb was located, is also, therefore, multiply confirmed.

The third historical fact is that the tomb was found empty on the first day of the week following Jesus’ death.  This fact also has multiple attestations in the four gospels as well as in other New Testament writings.   The testimony that women were the discoverers of the empty tomb is the most compelling aspect of this fact.  Embarrassing details in historical accounts has for a long time been a significant indicator of historical accuracy.  One does not include embarrassing details about an event or a person if it isn’t true.  If the story were fiction, you would expect a much different story.  For example, one would expect that men found the tomb empty or that the disciples found the tomb empty.  But this has never been the case and it never developed in the early years of the church either.  The story has always been that women discovered the empty tomb.  The embarrassing detail is that women in first century Palestine were second class citizens whose testimony about anything was given no credibility.  Indeed, women’s testimony was not even accepted in a court of law at that time.  So for the story to be that women discovered the tomb empty in four separate gospels, the logical, reasonable assumption is that it actually happened that way.

The fourth fact is that Jesus’ disciples came to believe, against all odds, that they saw Jesus alive after His death.  Indeed we can verify that Jesus not only appeared to his disciples, but that he had additional appearances after his death to over 500 people, some of whom were skeptics and opposed to him.  When you consider the emotional state of the disciples after Jesus’ death, it is compelling that they saw something that caused them to have the dramatic behavior change that is documented.  Virtually all historians admit that the disciples preached of Jesus’ resurrection in Jerusalem, the very city in which he was executed, weeks after the event.  In the face of severe threats of death, they stuck to their beliefs.  Not one of them varied in their conviction that Jesus was the Messiah and that God had raised Jesus from the dead.  I like to ask, would you die for a belief you knew was a lie?

The fifth, and maybe most significant, are the conversions of James, Jesus’ half-brother, and Paul.  Here are two skeptics whose remarkable transformation to active followers of Jesus and ardent proclaimers of his resurrection is difficult to explain in any other context than that which is provided in the gospels, particularly that God raised Jesus from the dead.  James and Paul had to have seen the risen Lord to make that kind of dramatic behavioral change that we know occurred.

Considering this historical evidence, it is reasonable and logical to conclude that God raised Jesus from the dead.  The question then becomes, ‘So what?’.  This is where the discussion turned to one’s own decision and how that might be made.  It is important to have faith in Jesus, but it is just as important to examine the facts and the evidence that supports that faith.  We do this in our lives all the time, or at least we should.  When making an important decision we should base that decision on the facts and the evidence.  Is the decision right?  Does the decision reflect reality?  We may not always be able to be 100% certain that the decision we make is the best one, but if we enter into the decision making process with an open and clear mind, the chances of arriving at the best possible decision is increased.  Letting our emotions and feelings dictate our decisions without any reason involved, can, and often does, lead to disaster.

So it was a wonderful morning and, I hope, a productive one for the lone atheist in the crowd.  Maybe I planted a seed that the Holy Spirit will feed and develop.

Dr. John Lennox, professor at Oxford University and author of "God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?", is one of my favorite scholars.  Please follow the link to watch about a 45 minute lecture with questions that Dr. Lennox gave at Duke University recently.  Wait for the questions at the end, because the answers are worth the wait. The discussion was about answering the question, "Is God Rendered Irrelevant?".

I hope the link works for you. 

http://vimeo.com/37670839

 

New evidence has come to light recently that confirms that there were people believing in the resurrection of Jesus within two or three decades of his death.  This is much too soon for it to have become a legend, but instead must have been based on empirical evidence such as personal witness or from someone who was a personal witness. 

A group of scientists discovered and explored a first century Jewish tomb in East Talpiot, Jerusalem with a robotic arm and highly sensitive specialized camera with light. The preliminary report of the robotic camera exploration of the sealed 1st  century tomb was written up by James D. Tabor, of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.  What they found is conclusive evidence that people of the late 1st century believed in the resurrection of Jesus. They found Greek inscriptions on the tombs that refer to “raising up” and drawing of a fish with a stick figure coming from the fish in an obvious reference to Jonah and the whale which was used by Jesus himself to describe his resurrection from the dead.

Quoting from the report, “In both the case of the Greek inscription and the Jonah image context is everything.  Both are unprecedented in a Jewish tomb of this period.  We are dealing here with a family that is bold enough to write out the holy name of God in a tomb, with a declaration about “raising up” or resurrection – something totally unparalleled in any of the 900 tombs from the period known in Jerusalem.  And further, this is a family that is willing to put an image of a fish and a human, both eschewed by pious Jews as “graven images”, on the most prominent ossuary in this wealthy tomb.”

“We are convinced that the best explanation for these unusual epigraphic features in the Talpiot “patio” tomb is its proximity to the Jesus family tomb less than 45 meters away.  What we apparently have is a family connected to the Jesus movement who reaches beyond the standard burial norms of the Jewish culture of the period to express itself individually in these unique ways.”

This is truly a remarkable development.  Not only are the markings in direct opposition to normal Jewish custom, but these people were committed enough to place these markings in their family tomb to declare their Christian allegiance.

Now this alone is incredibly strong evidence that early Christians had belief in the resurrection of Jesus.  That it was not a legend that developed over time and was written down in later copies of the gospels.  There was no Jewish precedent for resurrection before Jesus.  The Jewish belief in resurrection and a Messiah was to come at the end times.  In Reasonable Faith, Dr. William Lane Craig states; “For a Jew, the resurrection always occurred after the end of history.  He had no conception of a resurrection within history.”  So for 1st century Jewish family to engrave inscriptions and drawings on a family tomb clearly indicating belief in resurrection within history is extraordinary and demands an explanation.  Dr. Craig continues this idea about 1st century Jewish belief; “For there existed no belief in Messiah’s prior resurrection at all.  That is why we find no instances of claims comparable to those of the disciples for Jesus”.

Ask yourself why the people buried in this 1st century Jewish tomb would engrave a clear reference to the resurrection and Jonah on several of the most prominent places in the tomb?  What are they trying to say? 

Now this evidence is not to be looked at in a vacuum.  This is just one more of many evidences and historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth and his resurrection from the dead.  There is the fact of his existence and sentencing to death by Roman crucifixion.  There is the knowledge of where Jesus was buried, the tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea, the appearances of Jesus to his disciples and over 500 other witnesses.  The development of the firm belief in the disciples of Jesus’ resurrection despite all the reasons not to come to that conclusion.  The conversion of James, Jesus’ half-brother, and Paul, both of whom were initially not accepting of Jesus’ resurrection and who later changed their minds to the point of persecution and death.  Finally, the development of the early Christian church in the face of enormous persecution.  The only plausible and reasonable explanation of all the evidence is that God raised Jesus from the dead.

The question everyone should ask themselves is so what?  What should I do about that?  Should I do anything about it?  I can’t answer those questions for you, but I do know what my answer has been.  The evidence is so compelling, so overwhelming, so defining, that I believe Jesus is who he said he was and is indeed the revelation of God sent to earth to atone for our sins and provide us the opportunity to receive the grace of God and righteousness in God’s eyes through accepting Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.

Reading Ravi Zacharias’s “Slice of Infinity” today was truly inspiring.  Ravi has a way of summarizing and nailing the essence of what it means to be a Christian in ways I marvel at all the time.  In today’s Slice, Ravi speaks of the hunger we all have for God.  Even people who never experienced God, have within their hearts a God-sized hole that only God can fill.  Whether it is in the darkest hour for us and the deepest pain we can experience, or in the times when we think we have achieved the ultimate pleasure, we seek God.  As Ravi said, we seek God in pain for an answer and a reason for our suffering, and we seek God in our pleasure for a purpose.  I encourage everyone to read this Slice of Infinity. 

The link is:  http://www.rzim.org/resources/read/asliceofinfinity/todaysslice.aspx?aid=11105

 I was watching, this morning, a debate that took place last April at Notre Dame University between Dr. William Lane Craig and Sam Harris.  The topic for the debate was, “Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural?”.  Dr. Craig laid out a compelling case that, if God exists, there are strong foundations for objective moral values and duties.  Secondly, he affirmed that if God does not exist then there are no foundations upon which objective moral values and duties could exist.  I encourage anyone to view the debate on www.reasonablefaith.org .  Part of Sam Harris’s argument, which was more a lesson in semantics than in logic and philosophy, was that the purpose of the Christian life is to avoid hell and make it to heaven for a pleasurable eternal existence.  Although I would agree that going to heaven is better than going to hell, I do not think that this is the goal or purpose Jesus had in mind for his followers.  Heaven is not a reward for our actions here on earth.  Eternity with our Creator is a gift freely given to us by God and paid for through the cross.  In order for us to achieve righteousness and justification in God’s eyes we must accept the gift of Christ’s sacrifice for us.  Actions here on this earth, although not insignificant, are not what earn us the eternal pleasure of communion with God. 

However, I do think that our life here on earth is significant and does have meaning and purpose for God.  It is indeed through Him that we discover this purpose.  C.S. Lewis stated, “To have faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says.  There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice.  Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him, but trying in a new way, a less worried way.  Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already.  Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”

Think about it.  When someone comes to Christ and He becomes the center of their life, a transformation begins.  Paul talks about it in Romans 12:2 when he says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  This renewing of the mind is the essence of followership of Jesus.  As I referred to in my last posting about Ravi’s talk at Trinity, the foundations of our life are what are important and those are what change in this transformation.  We see things differently and I think we see things more clearly.  We develop an answer for the fundamental questions of  existence.  What is our origin, where does morality come from, what is our purpose, and where are we going?  Without the Christian worldview, the answers to these questions are incoherent and in conflict with reality.  That is why we hunger for an answer.  Unfortunately, many look for the answer in all the wrong places.

Ravi and Os at Trinity

I had the honor and distinct pleasure to go see and hear Ravi Zacharias speak at the Trinity International University this week.  Ravi is an alumni and honorary professor at large for the school.  Trinity is partnering with Ravi’s ministry, RZIM, to train young apologists to defend the truth of the Christian faith.  Trinity is one of the first theological institutions to offer a course in apologetics.  The message is getting across that apologetics is a useful tool in the arsenal for defending the faith.

Ravi spoke for about an hour and he was as compelling as usual.  He spoke about foundations.  He said he was at a university recently that had just opened this new building for the arts.  It was a state of the art facility that had no particular purpose in mind when it was built.  There are stairways that go nowhere and oddly shaped rooms that seem to serve no purpose.  The man showing Ravi the building was somewhat proud of the accomplishment, as it was to be the first post-modern building.  Ravi said he had just one question for him.  Is the building built on a foundation?  For without a foundation, and a good one at that, the building will crumble and fall down.

The same thing is true in our lives.  We need a strong foundation for what we believe and how we view reality.  Ravi stated there are four foundations that we personally should build upon.  If these are destroyed, then we are in a sad and difficult position.

The first of these is the dimension of eternity.  Build your life on eternal principles with an eternal perspective.  Ravi spoke of the time the astronauts were going to orbit the moon.  They were going to go around the dark side of the moon and lose all contact with earth.  No one was really sure what was going to happen as they came back into view.  Where they to lose the gravitational pull and float out into deep space never to be seen or heard from again?  But as we know, the astronauts did come back into view, and communication with earth and the control center in Houston.  As these men came around the moon, they saw the earth rise in front of them, this beautiful blue and white ball floating against the backdrop of black space.  The very first words out of the astronauts’ mouths as they came into contact with earth, was, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”.  The sight was so magnificent and awe inspiring that the only thing appropriate to say was to refer to the eternal creator of the universe.

When you understand eternity, you define reality.  Dr. William Lane Craig points out that life is meaningless without God and immortality.  The basic questions of life cannot be answered without each of them.  Why are we here?  What is our purpose?  Where are we going?  According to the naturalistic view, this is all there is and it all came into being through a combination of time and random activity.  Are we really just a random collocation of atoms?  Is this life all there is?  Without God and, for me, Christianity, life has no meaning, no purpose, and certainly no future.

The second foundation is morality.  Without God there is no moral law upon which to base one’s life.  The Ten Commandments are sacred, and they tell us that life is sacred, our work is sacred, our time is sacred, and our relationships are sacred.  It the moral law that provides the framework within which we can function as individuals and as part of a society.

The third foundation Ravi stated is accountability or conscience.  As Paul said in Romans, no one is without sin.  Everyone is broken and needs forgiveness.  We must take the responsibility and seek Jesus as the answer.  We must never forget the cross and the sacrifice made for us.  Why did Jesus go through such a horrific and humiliating death, to be some sort of self-styled charlatan?  He suffered for you and for me, and we can never end a defense of the faith without talking about the cross.

It is also imperative, in today’s world, that people begin to take responsibility for themselves.  We all have a choice to make.  As C.S. Lewis so clearly said, “There are two types of people in this world; those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done’, and those to whom God says, ‘Thy will be done’.

The fourth foundation is charity.  We all must demonstrate in our lives the love of Christ.  The act of follower-ship of Christ is demanding.  It requires that we show love to one another in ways that are not always comfortable or easy.  From an evangelical point of view, we can only influence people for Christ by showing the love of Christ to them.  As a friend of mine once so appropriately said, ‘You may be the only bible someone ever reads’. 

The day was climaxed by a talk by Os Guinness in the afternoon.  Os talked about the “fast life”; living in today’s fast-paced world of instant communication and information against the backdrop of Christianity.  It was an interesting talk.  We are all caught up in a world that is changing so fast.  Yet truth doesn’t change.  Truth is absolute and true for all persons, in all times, and in all places.  So no matter how fast we live, we must keep it all in perspective and under control.  I asked Os a question during the question and answer time after his talk, and I stated that when I was growing up, you had to wait a few seconds for the ‘tv’ to warm up before you could see the picture.  Our house had only one telephone.  You had to actually get up to answer the phone, or to change the channel on the ‘tv’.  Technology races on, but we can and must stay firmly grounded in the truth of our faith.

It was truly a wonderful day for my wife, Susan, and I.  We are blessed in so many ways, and we truly enjoyed the experience.

Science and Religion

When one boils it down to fundamentals, there is a war of worldviews being waged in American society today.  One view is that of the naturalist or materialist that says the natural or material world is all there is.  If science cannot demonstrate it or prove it then is doesn't exist.  That there is nothing outside of or transcendent to the natural world.

The theist and Christian worldview says that there is a personal creator who is transcendent of and separate from the natural world, indeed He created it.

Now what is interesting in this debate is that the naturalist tries to use science to show that belief in God is like believing in the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. That we either believe in the reality of science or we have faith in our religion.  This is really a false choice. 

Today science is becoming a huge part of the development of evidence for theism and the Christian worldview.  Whether you talk about the creation of the universe, the design of the universe, the specificity of design in life, the origin of life, or the historicity of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, science and scientific discovery are making enormous contributions.  The more we know, the more we are led to the worldview that God does exist and that Jesus was who he said he was.

The view that science can play no role in theology is simply wrong. 

It is true that whether it be naturalism or theism/Christianity that you choose there is a leap of faith that needs to occur. But what do you base that leap on? If one bases it on the evidence, much of it scientific evidence, it becomes a greater leap of faith to be a naturalist/atheist than to be a Christian.  As Norm Geisler and Frank Turek said in their book of the same title, "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be An Atheist".

Separation of Church and State

No phrase stimulates more argument than the phrase "separation of church and state".  If we take a close look at American history we find that in the last 50 years or so the phrase has been turned on its head. 

First look at the phrase incorporated in the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution; "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".  There are two distinct concepts elaborated in this clause.  First is that Congress cannot establish a state religion.  The idea coming from the Reformation in Europe a couple centuries before the constitution was written.  During the Reformation church leaders wanted the government out of the church and a return to the Bible instead of the state mandating religious practice.  Richard Hooker (1554 - 1600) was the first to use the phrase 'separation of church and state'.  In America, a minister by the name of Roger Williams (1603-1683) was the first to use the phrase.  Their purpose was to get the government to leave the churches alone to practice their religion as they saw fit and not be told by the state how to worship.  This was a fundamental concern of the Founding Fathers as it was one of the main reasons people came to America, to be able to worship freely.

In a response letter to a Baptist Church in 1802 who had written expressing the concern that the new nation not interfere with religious freedom, Thomas Jefferson used the term "a wall of separation between church and state".  He did so, if one reads the entire letter, to assure the Baptists that the new government would not interfere with the free exercise of their religion. 

You see there was a fundamental difference, understood by the Founding Fathers, between 'church' and 'religious expression'.  It is that 'church' describes an institution, not the religious expression.  Government was to stay out of the business of establishing a state church.  This is the intent of the first part of the clause, 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion'.  This is the establishment clause.  The second part is the part that refers to religious expression and there too the government is to stay out.  It does not say that the government has to be totally secular or that we are to be completely free from religion in our public places.

Indeed, in 1853, nearly a century after the Constitution was written, the Supreme Court held in a decision, "had the people, during the revolution, had a suspicion of any attempt to war against Christianity, that Revolution would have been strangled in the cradle.  At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and its amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged, but not any one sect.  In this age, there is no substitute for Christianity.  That was the religion of the Founders of the Republic and they expected it to remain the religion of their decendents."  Two months later the House Judiciary Committee said, "The great vital and conservative element in our system is the belief of our people in the pure doctrines and the divine truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ."  Go ahead, look these up.  They are in the Congressional Record.

It is clear that the intent of the framers of our republican form of government were solidly steeped in biblical principles, particularly the New Testament.  These men were Christians who saw the necessity of Christian and Biblical principles to be the foundation of our government and our society.  The idea of a separation of powers came from the Bible.  The idea of representative government is biblical. America is truly a Christian nation.

Let me be clear.  This does not mean, in any way, that America should not allow other forms of religious expression.  Indeed the principle is that all forms of religious expression should be allowed.  During the founding of our nation there were Jews, Muslims, and Confucions involved in the revolution.  But the vast majority of the Founding Fathers saw the Bible and Christianity as being the source of the principles upon which the country should be founded and by which the country should operate forever.

This is why I say, the Founding Fathers believed in 'freedom OF religion' not 'freedom FROM religion'. 

One of the most established facts of the Resurrection of Jesus is the empty tomb.  Even the most ardent skeptic has to admit that the tomb of Joseph of Aramathea was found empty.  It would have been easy for anyone to dismiss the resurrection story by simply providing the body.  But no one ever has.  One has to ask themselves, what happened to the body of Jesus of Nazareth?  Where did he go?  The New Testament tells us, but of course that is the account the skeptics want to dismiss. 

In comparison to other world views, I find it fascinating that Buddha's tomb is occupied, Confucius's tomb is occupied, Mohammed's tomb is occupied, Jesus' tomb is empty.

An even more compelling aspect is that Jesus, while he was alive, predicted his rising from the dead.  If someone today were to make the claims that Jesus made in his day they would be labeled a fool or a nut case.  Jesus said to the doubters and skeptics of his day that he would give them a sign.  One sign that will demonstrate who I am and that I speak the truth.  That sign would be that he would rise from the dead after three days in the tomb. 

So with the empty tomb, what is the most plausible explanation?  Philosophers and theologians and skeptics have for centuries tried to answer that question.  I think it is important that we try to answer it ourselves.  In doing so, one should maintain logical consistency with the historical facts that we know and be open to the idea that a miracle may have occured here.

C.S. Lewis - The Great Sin

C.S. Lewis in his book "Mere Christianity" outlined what he called the Great Sin.  In today's world this is more true than ever.  It truly takes a measure of humility to realize that there is more to life than yourself and your earthly pursuits.  The following is a excerpt from C.S. Lewis's book and I think it well describes man's problem today. 

"I now come to that part of Christian morals where they differ most sharply from all other morals.  There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves.  I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards.  I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice.  And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others.  There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves.  And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.

The vice I am talking of is pride or self-conceit; and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called humility.
Pride leads to every other vice; it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

It is the comparison that makes you proud; the pleasure of being above the rest.  Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself.  Unless you know God as that — and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison — you do not know God at all.  As long as you are proud you cannot know God.  A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

We must not think Pride is something God forbids because He is offended at it, or that Humility is something He demands as due to His own dignity — as if God Himself was proud.  He is not in the least worried about His dignity.  The point is, He wants you to know Him: wants to give you Himself.  And He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble — delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life.  He is trying to make you humble in order to make this moment possible:  trying to take off a lot of silly, ugly, fancy dress in which we have all got ourselves up and are strutting about like the little idiots we are.  To get even near it, even for a moment, is like a drink of cold water to a man in a desert."

I urge everyone to get in touch with God and relieve the thirst inside of you. 

Pascal quote

Pascal, the famous French philosopher, once said, "God has given evidence sufficiently clear for those with an open heart, and sufficiently vague so as not to compel those whose hearts are closed".

America's heritage

Revisionist history is a serious problem in education today.  Revisionism by omission is the worst kind of revisionism.  It simply leaves out vital information so that people simply don't know about certain key truths.  This is especially true in regards to the founding fathers of our country.  American was founded on Biblical principles, by deeply religious Christian men, who, overwhelmingly, based their ideas of government on their understanding of the Bible.  The American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution express unique and new ideas of that time.  Never before had the ideas and principles outlined in these documents been written down as a basis for establishing a government.  Where did these ideas come from?  How did these men discover these concepts?  The Bible was overwhelmingly the main source for these ideas, as well as the writings of many preachers and theologians of the period.  All historians recognize the relevent contribution of John Locke's work, "Two Treatises of Government".  If one researches John Locke's life, you find him to be a what we now consider to be a renaissance man – an individual skilled in numerous areas and diverse subjects. He had been well-educated and received multiple degrees from some of the best institutions of his day, but he also pursued extensive self-education in the fields of religion, philosophy, education, law, and government – subjects on which he authored numerous substantial works, most of which still remain in print today more than three centuries after he published them.  Indeed, he wrote extensively on Christian apologetics.

This is another truth which is forgotten or ignored today.  America was founded as a Christian nation.  We are to have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

Truth

All Truth is Absolute – It is true for all people, in all times, and in all places.  You do not have to believe it for it to be true.  This simple concept seems to escape people today.  We are subject to the relativism of today where everyone's version is true.  There are no absolute truths, according to our culture.  WRONG!!!  There are abosolute truths.  They do exist!

This is step one in beginning to understand truth, acknowledging that it exists.

Arguments for the existence of God

There ars some very compelling arguments for God's existence. In order to understand or appreciate them one must be open to the idea. Common sense tells us that if oue mind is already made up, then change is extremely difficult. People abhore change. They are afraid of it. I ask, what is it that we are really afraid of? There are five really strong arguments for God's existence. As a disciple of Dr. William Craig, Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, Mike Licona, and Ravi Zacharias, I have much to share and see these five positions as compelling. 1. The Cosmological argument. 2. The argument from Design, or the Teleological argument. 3. The moral argument 4. The birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 5. The argument of personal experience I will have much to say on each of these. Expect a dose of common sense with each.

Welcome

As a student of history, the Bible, and culture, I will be commenting on all three. I have a wealth of info to share and I hope to generate civil discourse through this blog. I don't have a bunch of letters behind my name, although I am a college graduate. What I can offer are viewpoints sculpted through 62 years of a wide range of experiences. Many of them I will be sharing on this blog so that readers can get to know me better.

So here goes my first post.