Saturday, July 29, 2017

Canaanite DNA disproves the Bible?

Lately, I've seen several posts about the discovery, apparently by someone named "Science," of Canaanite DNA, which "disproves" the Bible.


I'm seeing this a LOT.  Several times a day.

Why?

The Bible does not say the Canaanites were wiped out.

Joshua 17:12-13 (ESV) reads:
12 Yet the people of Manasseh could not take possession of those cities, but the Canaanites persisted in dwelling in that land. 13 Now when the people of Israel grew strong, they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but did not utterly drive them out. 

See also: Judges 1:27-33

So where does the Bible say that all the Canaanites were destroyed?

Deuteronomy 20:16-17 (ESV), which comes well before the above reference, reads:

16 But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, 17 but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded,


So God commands the Hebrews to wipe out the Canaanites.  Ok.  But does that mean they did?  Like most of God's commandments, the Hebrews failed to keep this one as well.  What does that show us about the Hebrews? That they're just like the rest of us, who also fail to keep God's commandments.

What does this show us about what "Science" has said?

That those who say the Bible is disproven haven't read the Bible. They don't know what it says, and therefore cannot disprove it.

As Dr. Frank Turek is fond of saying, "Science doesn't say anything.  Scientists do."


For further reading, click HERE and HERE.

Thursday, July 20, 2017

The Cosmological Argument for God's Existence

Response to the claim:  "Creation science begins with God, and thus invalidates itself by making a priori assumptions which it fails to substantiate."


Image result for stone
We don't start with the assumption that God did it and then work forward from there, we start with the assumption that something, anything, now exists and ask where it came from.


So this rock (R1), for instance.  This rock exists.  Science loves rocks.  Where did this rock come from?  It had a cause(Cr)... whatever that cause may have been... but where did that cause (Cr) come from?  From whatever caused it (C1).  And where did C1 come from?  from C-1, of course.  And C-1 comes from C-2, and so forth.

But this cannot go on forever.  You cannot postulate an infinite regression of causes because it is logically impossible to traverse an actual infinite.  That is, if each iteration of C requires only a single second in the history of time to both become and to cause the next iteration, but there are an infinite number of causes, then there are an infinite number of seconds prior to this one.

We could never arrive at this second right now, then, because there would always be an infinite amount of seconds prior to it.

Thus, an initial cause is philosophically necessary.

Image result for big bangThis cause CANNOT be the Big Bang.  Why?  Because matter, space, and time all came into existence at the same moment.  Since the Big Bang is a physical event, it cannot cause itself.

Therefore, whatever caused time, space, and matter to come into existence must itself be timeless, spaceless, and immaterial.  It must also be immensely powerful to cause time, space, and matter to come into being, and further, it must be personal, because it makes the choice to begin the act of causing these things to come into being.

That is, it is philosophically necessary for there to BE an initial cause, which itself needed not to be caused.

Now, why can't that initial cause be the universe itself?  Because of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, which states that everything is winding down, like a clock.  If the universe itself were infinitely old, we would already have experienced the eventual heat death that science predicts, on top of the logical impossibility of an infinite regression of causes.

So if the uncaused initial cause is timeless, spaceless, immaterial, powerful, and personal, what would we call that?

We'd call it God.


NOTE:  Many thanks to Drs. Gerald Schroeder, Frank Turek, Ravi Zacharias, and William Lane Craig, among others, for their work on the Cosmological Argument.

Saturday, July 15, 2017

Why the Qur'an argues against the corruption of the Bible

Links provided, so these verses can be verified.  I have not changed any of them.

Sura 29:46 (LINK)
And do not argue with the People of the Scripture except in a way that is best, except for those who commit injustice among them, and say, "We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you. And our God and your God is one; and we are Muslims [in submission] to Him."

Sura 3:3-4 (LINK)
He has sent down upon you, [O Muhammad], the Book in truth, confirming what was before it. And He revealed the Torah and the Gospel.
Before, as guidance for the people. And He revealed the Qur'an. Indeed, those who disbelieve in the verses of Allah will have a severe punishment, and Allah is exalted in Might, the Owner of Retribution.

Sura 18:27 (LINK)
And recite, [O Muhammad], what has been revealed to you of the Book of your Lord. There is no changer of His words, and never will you find in other than Him a refuge.


Premise 1: Allah revealed the Torah and the Gospel.
Premise 2: No one can change Allah's words.
Premise 3: Therefore, the Torah and the Gospel are not corrupt.

Monday, July 10, 2017

Trinity Sunday 2016 Sermon Notes

Trinity Sunday 2016 Sermon Notes

Primary Text

John 16:12-15


12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.


1 John 4:7-9

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.  (agape, divine, perfect love) 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.


John 3:16

16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.


The Greatest Commandment

Matthew 22:35-40


35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”



Here again, the word "Love" is a conjugation of the Greek word "Agape."


"Love" in the Bible

The New Testament uses two primary words for "love."


The word "Love" appears 286 times in the English Standard Version,


258 times, it uses a form of the Greek word "Agapeo," which means "to love, to show love, or to take pleasure in."  This is a selfless love, and this is how God loves us, but also how He commands us to love one another.


25 times, it uses a form of the Greek word "Phileo."  This is a kind of brotherly love, between people, and is used less than 10% of the time.


Likewise, the Old Testament uses two primary words for "love."
Love occurs 458 times in the ESV translation of the Old Testament:

247 times, the word "Love" translates the Hebrew word "Ahav." It means: "To like, to love, to endear, to flirt, lovable, love.


245 times, the word "Love translates the Hebrew word "Chessed."  It means "Loyalty, joint obligation, faithfulness, goodness, graciousness, Godly action."


Example: Agapeo

Luke 11:42


42 “But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.


Example: Phileo

Matthew 6:5


5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.


Example: Ahav

Exodus 20:5b-6




for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.


Example: Chessed

Genesis 24:12


12 And he said, “O LORD, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham.


God is Love

So we said earlier, in 1 John 4:8, that "God is Love." And we mentioned that in that passage, John uses the word "Agapeo" to describe this essential nature of God.


This is a selfless love, and this is how God loves us, but also how He commands us to love one another.


But here is a question for us:  If this kind of selfless, giving love is an essential nature of God, that is, if God is defined by His ability to love selflessly, who did God love in this manner before He created us?


And while we ponder that...



The Atonement

Let us consider the Act of Atonement.


This question is often raised by those opposed to Christianity, and it goes something like this:

If God is Just, then that means that God is fair.  But God is presented with billions and billions of sinners.  If Jesus is truly going to pay for the sins of each one, wouldn't He have to live billions and billions of sinless lives, and then be sacrificed billions and billions of times?

How can one death, even the death of a perfect man, pay for more than one sinful life?

The Jews have adopted the position that each man's death pays for his own sins, but that is problematic as well.  In that instance, the lamb is spotted.  An imperfect lamb cannot be the sacrifice to cover sin, according to the Torah.


Yes, Jesus lived a perfect and sinless life, but is His one death enough to cover all sins?


A Third question

Since this is Trinity Sunday, and the message is about the nature of the Trinity, I'm going to stick with our theme here and ask a third question:


If, in the New Testament, Jesus does not speak directly to an issue, does that mean the issue is not important to us?

For instance, only once does Jesus come close to addressing the issue of homosexuality, when He says, in Matthew 19:3-6


3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”


Since we follow Jesus, shouldn't we only listen to His words?  Should we ignore what came before, in the Old Testament, and only focus on what the Master specifically addresses?


Trinity

The answer to all three of these objections is the Trinity.


Unless we have some understanding of the idea of the Trinity, we cannot reasonably answer these objections.


Before the creation, who did God love?  The Father loved the Son and the Spirit, the Son loved the Spirit and the Father, and the Spirit loved the Father and the Son.  Three persons in one Godhead, selflessly loving and being loved in eternity past.


And the death of one man to pay for all men?  They're right, it's insufficient.  But they don't understand the Trinity.  You see, Jesus wasn't JUST a man.  He was God, made flesh.  He was the earthly representation of the infinite.  It wasn't just a man who died that day, it was God, who loved selflessly and gave Himself for us.  An infinite payment for a finite debt.


And what about the words of Jesus in the New Testament?  Should we only listen to those, at the exclusion of the Old Testament?  Not if we believe in the Trinity.  What the Father has spoken in the Old Testament, the Son and the Spirit do not disagree with.  Indeed, since the Three exist in Trinity, Jesus spoke everything in the Old Testament too.


The Trinity

The Trinity is an essential doctrine of the Christian faith.  Without an understanding of it, we cannot understand the atonement, the scriptures, or the very nature of God.


So how do we define the Trinity?


My favorite definition is this:


The Trinity is a mystery which cannot be comprehended by human reason but is understood only through faith and is best confessed in the words of the Athanasian creed, which states that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance. That we are compelled by the Christian truth to confess that each distinct person is God and Lord, and that the deity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is One, Equal in Glory, co-equal in majesty.



Saturday, July 8, 2017

Don't Arabic-speaking Christians also use the word "Allah?"

NOTE: This is a re-post of this blog.  The earlier post, after being edited, suffered formatting problems which I could not, for some reason, correct.


I've been seeing this argument somewhat frequently, and I wanted to address it here:


 

While this is absolutely true, it is somewhat misleading.  The word "Allah" in the Arabic shares a linguistic origin with the Hebrew word "אֱל֫וֹהַּ" (eloah) That is the base word, "אֱלֹהִ֣ים" (elohim) is the plural of that. 

Eloah, and Elohim, are not names. They are the generic terms for "god" or "gods." For example, in Deuteronomy 6:14-15, we read

14 You shall not go after other gods (אֱלֹהִ֣ים), the gods (אֱלֹהִ֣ים) of the peoples who are around you— 15 for the LORD your God (אֱלֹהִ֣ים) in your midst is a jealous God (אֵ֥ל) —lest the anger of the LORD your God (אֱלֹהִ֣ים) be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth. 

The word "gods" in this passage is the Hebrew word "אֱלֹהִ֣ים" (Elohim), except in one instance where it is shortened to simply "אֵ֥ל". It's the generic term for "god." 

So yes, while Arabic-speaking Christians use the word "Allah" to mean "God," so do Arabic speaking Hindus and Arabic speaking pagans who worship Zeus or Thor or Loki.

If the argument, then, is that since both Muslims and Christians use the word "allah" to mean "god," that must mean they worship the same god, then the Muslims also need to accept the Hindus and Pagans as serving the same god they do. 

This is the logical conclusion of this argument. If you're fine declaring the Muslim god to be the same god as the Hindu gods and also the Pagan gods, feel free to continue making it.

CLARIFYING EDIT:
The argument is usually that since Christians also use the word, then Allah is also the God of the Christians. 

The problem with that argument is that Arabic speaking Hindus or Pagans would also use the word Allah. So if the linguistic similarity is the criterion by which we determine which god is which, we must also conclude that Hindus and Pagans worship the gods of both Muhammad and Abraham. 

Since no Muslim is willing to carry the argument that far, it falls flat.