Archive for the 'apologetics' Category

Ending 2020 and Ringing in 2021

Published December 29, 2020 apologetics , Preparedness Leave a Comment
Tags:

We’ve been busy with a lot of studying and classes these past few months.  In addition, I felt the urge to take a personal inventory on unforgiveness and unloveliness in myself and I’ve heard a word to cleanse myself in order to enter the new year pure and whole emotionally, physically, and spiritually.  I think it’s a good idea for everyone! So, do take some time to go back through your life and forgive and pray for blessings for anyone that comes to your mind.  Clean out the garbage of unnecessary unforgiveness and notice how light and joyful you feel!

Lately I’ve been following Joshua Giles Ministries, a prophet on Facebook, who releases new words every Monday and you can find him at (1) Joshua Giles Ministries | Facebook.  His messages are on point for where we are in 2020 and where we are headed in the coming year. By the way, he’s definitely not one of those political prophets you’ve heard about – you know, the ones who spent most of their time talking about politics and elections, even going so far as to tell people that God told them this or that about the recent election. Joshua has actually called those “prophets” out.

I’ve mixed in reading a couple of great books, too. One is called, “Satan Unmasked,” by Dr. James B Richards, and it talks about our misconceptions of who satan (yes, I use lower case for him on purpose) really is and his lack of power and authority over us.  This is an easy read, and really good for reminding us that we’re complete in Christ and that satan has NO authority to mess with us.  The other one is, “The Rise of the Micaiah Prophet,” by Joshua Giles, which provides insight into recognizing the true prophets of God and the false prophets that we are seeing emerge in the world as well as discussing the prophetic gifting.

While I’m doing that, my husband, Tim, is working his way through William Lane Craig’s Defenders series Number Three! You can find it here: Reasonable Faith.

Dr. Craig is likely the most well-known and influential Christian apologist (meaning defender of the faith) in the world. He’s the man atheists fear – the one they refuse to debate, and the one that can cause them to convert through simple logic. And yet, he’s likely the kindest man Tim has ever seen teach.

The Bible tells us always to be ready to give an answer to those who ask for a reason for the hope within us. (1 Peter 3:15) So, for those of you who want to get stronger in defending why you are a Christian – whether to articulate your reasons to others or just to become more comfortable with your own theology, start working your way though these classes. The are seminary-level discussions surrounding each big category of Christian doctrine. He teaches one class per week, so it takes him roughly four years for each series. But you can listen to three or four per day and get the whole thing done in just a few months. When you get to the point where you’re caught up with today in the third series, just skip back to series two and finish it up.

The link is to the podcasts, but here’s a tip. If you Google each class, you can usually find it on YouTube as well. Then you can see him as well as whatever he writes on the board.

We both hope you had a wonderful Christmas season, and may God bring you great blessings in the New Year!

Denise and Tim

Advertisement

What’s Up — Your Library

Published June 2, 2020 apologetics , General Information , Purpose , spiritual gifts , Supernatural , Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Over the weekend, Tim read an obituary in which the writer said, “Every time a person dies, it’s like a library burns down.” The gist of that statement was that each person, at any particular time in their life, has a huge amount of knowledge, skills, talents, gifts, and revelations – provided to them by God – that don’t necessarily get experienced by anyone in this world after the person’s death. Think about yourself. You have this huge amount of knowledge – true gifts that nobody else has – that we would lose if you were to die tomorrow. This struck me as an even bigger tragedy based on the high cost of our losing over 100,000 people to Covid-19, seeing innocent persons murdered by police, and noticing the unnecessary loss of life for any other reason on any particular day.

The good news is that as followers of Christ, this information – these skills, talents, gifts, and revelations – are not lost when we die, but continue on as we get to live in eternity with Christ. Nevertheless, I’m interested in seeing the things in your library in this life. And to make sure I walk the walk, I’m going to start putting more information on this blog (like shorter pieces) just to let you see a bit of what’s in my library. I’ll probably just title these things “What’s Up,” like I did above.

So, over the weekend, I started watching free online classes from Dallas Theological Seminary, which you can find here. There are about 16 of them so far, but I’m going through the one on Revelation while I also press into a bunch of my more, shall I say, “spirit filled” materials. One thing this pandemic has done is open my eyes to all the resources out there from which you can press into God. Lots of seminaries are doing lots of great things, so check it out. I asked Tim what he watched yesterday, and he said he “went off on a tangent” by watching one of his favorite apologists – William Lane Craig – in a fascinating interview about all manner of things by a guy named Matt Frad on a show called “Pints With Aquinas,” which you can find here.

What was interesting about the two things was that we had a short discussion on miracles, modern-day prophets, and healings, and realized that we came up with the same answers on various theological issues despite our different paths.

Keep pressing into God, Saints!

Genius?

Published June 2, 2016 apologetics , Science Leave a Comment
Tags: ,

imagesM6NXCRL7

“Darwin Speak” Casual Quote of the Day:

“If the conditions are right, molecules can just spring out of nowhere.”

(Stephen Hawking, on Genius by Stephen Hawking, after summarizing Stanley Miller’s “remarkable discovery” ostensibly creating amino acids in an apparatus in 1952).

And On the Other Side:

“The Oparin-Miller Model is probably evolution’s most widely accepted theory of origins, but it faces a number of problems . . . [and, after listing 8 of its biggest problems and discussing the odds not only of amino acids forming by chance, but also proteins, which would also be necessary to make cells, and thus life, possible] . . . In short, chance could not produce even one protein. And a “simple” single-celled bacterium contains thousands of different proteins. What then, are the odds of assembling all the proteins necessary for life? You probably don’t want to know. Coffin noted:

‘Morowitz has determined the probability for the origin of the organic precursors for the smallest likely living entity by random processes. He based his calculations on reaction probabilities, a somewhat different and more accurate approach than most other such computations. The chances for producing the necessary molecules, amino acids, proteins, et cetera, for a cell one tenth the size of the smallest known to man (Mycoplasm hominis H.39) is less than one in 10 to the 340,000,000 or 10 with 340 million zeroes after it.'”

 (James Perloff, Tornado in a Junkyard, quoting Harold G. Coffin, Origin by Design)

And This:

 “I’m an Atheist.”

 (Stephen Hawking, found at http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/im-atheist-stephen-hawking-god-space-travel-n210076)

And a Word of Caution:

One of the most despicable things we do in the natural world is to paint people who believe in God as stupid, something a show like Genius by Stephen Hawking does. By presenting only the evolutionary theory, and by titling such a portrayal as “Genius,” the show attempts (in a not-so-subtle fashion) to chip away at our faith by making us feel dumb. Don’t let them do it. The truth is that there are lots of problems with Darwinian Evolution, and knowing the truth – or the Truth with a capital “T” – is what makes you a genius.

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

%d bloggers like this: