Did Elijah ride up to heaven in a flaming chariot, ending his life on earth?
Don’t you hate it when you’ve got a favourite Bible story and then someone who takes the Bible just as seriously as you comes along and ruins it for you? The story of Elijah and the flaming chariot is well-known. It comes from the book of 2 Kings, chapter 2. Here’s the passage, from verse 9 to verse 12:
I’m an occasional contributor to Afterlife, a New Zealand Website exploring the questions of life, death and eternity, from an Evangelical Christian perspective. My latest article there, Can These Bones Live? The Resurrection of the Body is now available.
Is it really clear that the first Christians believed in the empty tomb of Jesus and in the resurrection of our bodies, leaving all the graves empty?
Check out the rest of the article, in which I explain that the earliest Christian community maintained that in the resurrection of Jesus, his body came back to life, setting the precedent for the resurrection of all the dead.
A LOT of people fancy themselves as life coaches – especially in the age of the internet where they have access to an audience. If only people followed their advice, their lives would be so much better. People should look to you, you might think, as a dispenser of wisdom about what is best for people’s family, health and finances. Or maybe the reality is that you’re an insular, out-of-touch, privileged and frankly callous know-it-all who doesn’t even realise it and whose advice genuinely hurts people and is as painfully naïve as you are. But that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it now, does it?
Yes, this blog post is a vent. Fair warning.
Are you a humanist? A lot of Evangelical Christians might hear that question and immediately say no, as though the idea is just unthinkable. Have another look.
This is the first of what may be many short videos, comparable to the “Nuts and Bolts” blogs. I’m interested in seeing how they are received.
Is the internet really a benevolent playground of truth about religion?
Some people read conspiracy theory websites and magazines. In fact, I’d wager that more people than ever before read them. As a result, more people than ever before believe ridiculous conspiracy theories. Although I have no desire to see people forced to stop reading such trash, I really wish they would. The fact that more such theories are available now than ever before does not increase the likelihood that people who read this material are going to stumble onto a true theory. It just means that there is more nonsense to choose from, leading to paranoid, sometimes hysterically funny, and often sad, unscientific and damaging beliefs and practices. I have little sympathy for anyone who would reply by saying something like “Dude, you’re just threatened. The truth is out there and now that it’s out there, you can’t stop people finding out.”
I suspect that my perspective on the proliferation of conspiracy theory websites and magazines is shared by most people. At least I hope it is. Such material gives a platform to views that frankly do not deserve it.
Josh McDowell is concerned about the proliferation of comments of a different sort on the internet.
If the doctrine of divine timelessness is true, then it turns out – perhaps surprisingly to some people – that materialist Christology – and in particular what it has to say about the death of Jesus – is given a helping hand.
In mid-2014 I will be speaking at the first ever conference of Rethinking Hell, which will be in Texas.
When: 11th and 12th of July, 2014
Where: Lanier Theological Library, Houston, Texas
Video of the conference will be available once it’s over.
Is Christian physicalism really the child of naturalism that gives essentialism the heave-ho?
I really wish that evangelical institutions would pick the right fights to get into. A couple of days ago I got an email advertisement from that great bastion of substance dualism (or more importantly, that good and faithful opponent of Christian physicalism) in the modern Evangelical world, Biola University. The advertisement reads as follows:
Reformers may, in addition to being reformers, also be innovators. However, the essence of Reform is not innovation.
I say this thinking especially of the 14th-16th century movements in European Christianity (which were the fruit of centuries of momentum building within the Church). Reform is a call to put things right, not to start something new. There have been many reformers whose call to reform was accepted by the Catholic Church, and there have been reformers whose call to reform was not accepted. But Christian reformers, those who are now called The Reformers, were thoroughly conscious of their actions as part of an organic unity with the church catholic, and a desire to reform it.
Those Christian movements that have arisen professedly wanting to do a new thing, whatever their virtues may be, cannot be considered heirs of the Reformation. It was precisely because of the concern that the Church was doing far too many new things that Reform was called for.
Glenn Peoples
Did you know that I’m an Apostle? It’s true! My ex sent me packing, and the word “apostle” in the Bible comes from a Greek word that means “sent one.” Don’t argue with the Bible, this is what the Greek means!
You probably haven’t heard anyone make an argument quite like this, because to do so would expose just how absurd this sort of reasoning is. This instalment of the “nuts and bolts” series is all about the root fallacy, one of the most common mistakes that a lot of sincere, well-meaning people make when interpreting the Bible. The root fallacy is committed where a person assumes that the meaning of a word must be bound to the meaning of its etymological root.
Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén