Doctrinal Matters

The message of the Gospel is amazing.  It is like no other religious message in the world.  It is a message of hope, of freedom, of peace with God, of justification, of salvation from sin.  And it is a message in which God gets all the glory. Rejoice with me at the testimonies of these precious people who have been rescued from the domain of darkness and transferred to Christ's kingdom of light through faith in Him (Col. 1:13-14). For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.  Romans 1:16 (NASB)

photo courtesy of www.freeimages.com Many modern Christian leaders, pastors, and theologians seem to struggle with understanding the first chapter of Genesis.  They offer various possible interpretations of the text.  Among the many interpretations of the creation story are the following suggestions: the day-age theory, the gap-theory, the progressive creation theory, the framework hypothesis, the cosmic temple theory, the theistic evolution theory, etc. Oddly, it seems the only interpretation of the creation account that is not taken seriously by many Christian leaders is the straightforward, plain understanding of the text.  What I mean is that all options seem to be on the table except for taking the text at face-value as speaking of six literal, twenty-four hour days of creation. Why does there seem to be so much confusion about what the Bible has to say about creation in Genesis? Is it because the text is ambiguous? Hardly.  Many of those who espouse int...

© Pictures of Rome courtesy of   www.rome.info Torture is a pretty serious charge.  Do you remember how the left, during the George W. Bush presidency, slandered our military and CIA by accusing them of torturing captives?  Well, they're at it again.  This time the charge is leveled against the Catholic church, and her supposed victims are abortion-seeking women. One may ask, By what heinous methods are these women being tortured?  Water-boarding?  Loud music blared in their eardrums?  Iron maidens or other medieval torture machinery?  The answer is none of the above.  Instead, the Vatican is guilty of employing a torture device so wicked, so sinister, so diabolically sadistic that none other than the United Nations Committee Against Torture has involved itself in a valiant effort to stop the Vatican from using it against future victims. Apparently, the UN won't sleep until it reaches its goal; a universal ban of the Catholic tort...

Matt Walsh has written another great post.  I encourage you to read it before you finish my post. You can access it if you click here .  In this post he answers an email that was sent to him by a pro-choice advocate named Rachel.  Rachel argues that abortion is a right for every woman because of something she calls "body autonomy".  Her argument is that humans have the complete and autonomous decision making authority over their own bodies.  Therefore, if a woman, acting as an autonomous unit, decides to withdraw life-sustaining support from a fetus in her womb, she has the right to do so.  After all, the fetus is no more than a parasite if the woman has not consented to the fetus being in her womb in the first place. According to the dictionary, autonomous means "self-governing; independent; subject to its own laws only". [1]  Rachel holds to the idea that humans have no one to answer to but themselves when it comes to choice. A woman is subject onl...

I recently came across an article that was written a couple of years ago by someone whom I greatly respect. The author of the article believes in a young earth because he thinks the Scripture indicates such.  So do I. While I appreciated his article, I do have to disagree with one statement he made.  He said that he unhesitatingly believes the world looks old. So, while he is a young earth creationist, he believes that the earth looks older than the 6,000-10,000 years indicated by Scripture. photo courtesy of www.freeimages.com Why do I disagree with this statement?  Doesn't the world look really old?  Below is a portion of an email I wrote to him concerning his article.  It gives some reasons why I disagree with this brother's statement. I would argue that "looking old" is subjective.  As a child, I thought everyone over 13 years of age looked old.  Now, I have an entirely different perspective.  I know a woman who will celebrate her 1...

Most believers in God have been challenged by those who don't believe in Him by this statement: "You can't prove God exists, therefore your beliefs are built on blind faith."  This is meant to put the burden of proof on the believer, who then has to admit that he cannot really prove that there is a God.  This implies that it is foolishness to believe in God when you cannot prove His existence. I think that this type of statement is really nothing more than a smokescreen atheists use in an attempt to free themselves from responsibility to God.  I have known a few atheists and have found that, at least with the ones I have known, they are really not unbelievers.  I theorize that the issue with my atheist acquaintances is not really that they don't believe in God (as they claim) but rather that they are mad at God.  They really do believe in God but are mad at Him because He doesn't meet their expectations.  They in turn ignore Him or deny that He eve...

The recent debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham has certainly drawn its share of attention.  If you didn't watch it I encourage you to do so.  As of today, the debate is still available online for free. See the Answers in Genesis website for more information. The topic of the debate was, "Is creation a viable model of origins in today's modern scientific era?"  My intention is to not rehash all the points of the debate.  Instead, I want to talk about the most important point of the debate... the question of authority. If you watch the debate in its entirety, you will come to the understanding that the real debate between evolution and creation is not about science, but rather the real issue being debated was the issue of authority. The battle was between the naturalistic worldview and the biblical worldview. The line that divided the two men on the stage was not science .  Both men love science.  The dividing line was not evidence , both men share the s...