I’m Up Before the Firing Squad Today!

Tomorrow Evening at 6:00 p.m. I will be taking the next step in my ministry and becoming ordained. Many have chosen to be ordained before entering college and their first “jobs” at a church but I chose to wait. I had never been approached with being ordained by any of the churches I had been a part of and I feel it is the duty of the church to recognize, nominate and ordain someone. I’ve always felt that if I was the one to bring it up or ask to be ordained it would be selfish.
Today is my ordination counsel here at church. I’ll be sharing with other pastors, deacons of the church, and others about my testimony, call to ministry, education goals, theological beliefs (which is the part I’m worried about answering…I know what I believe, but some of my views aren’t the traditional Southern Baptist’s), and whatever else they decide to hurl my way.
When someone gets ordained there is a orientation of praise, recognition of achievement, etc. and I don’t want that. Yes I will have the “REV.” before my name from now on, but it’s a prefix I don’t want to flaunt around like some in the media light do. Anyways…I hope I come out alive!

Can The Bible Be Trusted?

Last week I was the subject of a post on Alexander The Atheist blog about my comments on the Trinity. It seems that one of the biggest issues that non-believers have is that they feel the Bible can’t be trusted, be true, be inerrant, or be accurate. As soon as people discredit the Bible, they can believe whatever they want to, bash Christians for their faith, and hold themselves up to be more enlightened because they don’t have “blind faith” in God. My question today is why is it that the Bible is being discredited? Some would say it’s full of errors, typos, editing problems, etc. and that statement is somewhat true. There are some grammatical errors and such in the copies we have today! If you are a reader of the Bible you would know this because most Bibles will “warn” you of these issues when you come to them. For example look at Mark 16:9-20. This passage should be in [brackets] since it indicates that some early manuscripts do not contain these verses. Answer this before you start saying that people have added things to the Bible we have today…does this passage contradict anything in scripture? No! Is the subject, events, stories found in other parts of the Bible? Yes! The other Gospels contain accounts of the risen Lord, the Great Commission, and The Ascension. Need more proof?

Doubter’s Question: Hasn’t the Bible been copied and copied over and over again? How can we trust it to be accurate today?

Answers: Yes the Bible we have today is what it is, copies of copies of copies. I believe that the Word of God is inerrant in its “autographed” original copies. As mentioned above, most scholars will conclude that there are some minor textual problems with the copies we have today. Scholars like Ravi Zacharias, R.C. Sproul, Norman Geisler, and Bruce Metzger point out that no “error” contradicts any, yes ANY theology or doctrine! This shows the infallibilty of the Bible in that what we read today is still truth. Let’s get back to the whole copying issue. The Bible has more copies than any other literary work ever. There are over 5,600 early copies and manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. When compared to Homer’s Iliad there are only about 650 copies. Homer wrote the Iliad around 800 B.C. and the earliest copies we have date from the 2nd and 3rd century A.D. That’s a long time. How come there isn’t such a big stink over the copying of the Iliad? What’s the earliest manuscript we have of the Bible? We have parts of John’s Gospel that date from A.D. 100-150! This is not very long after the life of Christ! In addition to the Greek copies, there are about 8,000 Latin Vulgate translation, copies in Ethiopic, Slavic, and Armenian. The total amount of copies is about 24,000 in existence. This is overwhelming when you compare the Bible to other ancient writings. Since the Bible has more copies of copies than any other writing…what’s the problem? If anything else this helps support the Bible’s accuracy. For those who have made the claim that the Bible is inaccurate…please tell me which part. I’d be glad to discuss those parts here with you.

Idol Worship and Idle Worship

IDOL -vs- IDLE I raise this issue up because they are probably the two biggest problems in church today.

IDOL WORSHIP – was warned against in passages like Exodus 20 (10 Commandments), all throughout 1-2 Kings and so forth. God specifically said “you shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water. You shall not worship them or serve them, for I the Lord your God, am a jealous God…” (Ex. 20:4-5) With this in mind, what kind of idols are there in church? I can think of many “idols” that get more attention (which is worship in my opinion) than God does. Money, Power, Pews, Worship Styles, Technology, Food, Social Interaction, etc. are some idols we have made and placed in the church. Of course some things are not material but they are an idol nonetheless. I was walking with my lovely wife the other day and passed by a catholic church. we decided to walk around the church and see what it looked like. Beautiful! Catholic churches are some of the most elegant of all worship buildings. The problem is that it (the building and its contents) are being worshipped. in the parking lots were statues of different saints and people have placed wreaths and flowers by their feet as if something spiritual happens because of it. Idol Worship! Why place a flower at the feet of a handmade statue when you can place all your sins, worries, and cares down at the Jesus’ feet?

IDLE WORSHIP – “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot, I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot I will spit you out of my mouth…” (Rev. 3:15-16) This was written to the church in Laodicia in Revelation. It gives the illustration of the water supplies in Laodicia which came from other cities via channels. By the time the cold water reached the town it was lukewarm and disgusting, as was the hot water. God want our best, not our lukewarmness. Our corporate worship has become lukewarm in my opinion. We come to church, sing some songs (and only worship if the music plays with our emotions the right way) give some money if any at all, listen to a speech, and go home. Did that sequence of events describe your church? I hope not! So what’s worse…Idol or Idle worship?

A Little Rain or Global Destruction?

Was The Genesis Flood Universal?

Absolutely!!! How? Why?

Here are some points to consider why it wasn’t a local flood:
1. The Need for an Ark – If the flood was local, there would be no need for an ark at all. Noah could have just walked away from the area to be destroyed.
2. The Size of the Ark – Why was is so big if it would only need to withstand a localized flood?
3. Why bother with animals? – No need to save animals that would be living in another part of the world already! The Bible says that birds were collected also, showing the global flood proof.
4. Mountains – A local flood could not raise waters 20 feet above the mountains…the water would spread out not up! How is it that they have found marine fossils on Mt. Everest?
5. God promised no more floods to destroy earth- If this is so why do we have Katrina like floods, Mississippi River Floods a few years ago…The promise was that of a universal flood, not local flooding.

Just some points to ponder…coming up, some objections to the Global Flood belief.

Morgan Freeman Does A Good God

I watched the movie Evan Almighty the other day and really enjoyed it. Bruce Almighty was very funny too. For some reason I think they (holloywood) did a good job in picking Morgan Freeman as God. Evan Almighty had a few non-biblical additions to the story but that was expected. The reason I am writing about this is not to say that God looks like Freeman or that Christians should watch these movies for deep spiritual insight, but I want to get back into some theology\Apologetics postings about the creation and flood accounts in Genesis.

The Flood…How did Noah get all the animals of the world into an ark?

Doubters’ Question Mark:

1. Too many animals for one man and family to gather, take care of, and house on the ark.

An Answer:

1. Unlike Evan Almighty, the Bible did not say two of every animal in the world…it says two of each “kind” of animal, bird, creature that crawls on the earth (Genesis 6:19-20). This word “kind” refers to the classification system we use today to identify animals. It is possible that Noah only had to bring two dogs, two cats, two cows, tow hippos, etc. Noah didn’t have to bring two golden retrievers, two labs, two bulldogs, etc. because we know that through breeding these different “types” are made available. So, Noah did have a bunch of animals, but not as many as normally thought.

2. About the gathering of animals…Noah didn’t have to go and find them…God said He’d bring them to Noah! (Genesis 6:20). This was one thing the movie got right! It was rather comical to see all the animals follow Evan (Noah) to work!

Coming Up…Was the Flood Universal or Local?