When all those Islamic towel-heads destroy the "great Satan" that is Western culture, the fruits of prosperity will cease and the world will fall into civil decay and revert back to barbarianism.
You see, that colored race which roams the desert looking for ways to destroy us does not realize that we are the only source of progress in philosophy, science, and art. Without America and its good, wholesome Christian values, this world would have nothing. There will be no one left to drive the human race towards perfection.
Once we've been destroyed by these short-sighted individuals, humanity will slowly fall into its doom. Afterall, the arabic peoples won't stop until everyone else is destroyed, then, like animals (I don't even think they're people), they will destroy themselves.
How can a violent race like that ever spawn social progress? They're quite literally like monkeys, running around like crazy, flinging feces at each other. Without Truth (the Word of God), they've gone quite insane with the devil whispering in their ears. Unlike monkeys flinging feces at each other, they fling bombs at each other (and us).
Personally, I'm glad that a good Christian man (women really can't be Good, because they cannot be like God as they lack the proper equipment), like George Walker Bush, has the guts to stand up and say "we won't let these inferior people destroy America". Now we're taking steps to exterminate them and take their resources for the advancement of America. Good show, Bush!
When all those Islamic towel-heads destroy the "great Satan" that is Western culture, the fruits of prosperity will cease and the world will fall into civil decay and revert back to barbarianism.
You see, that colored race which roams the desert looking for ways to destroy us does not realize that we are the only source of progress in philosophy, science, and art. Without America and its good, wholesome Christian values, this world would have nothing. There will be no one left to drive the human race towards perfection.
Once we've been destroyed by these short-sighted individuals, humanity will slowly fall into its doom. Afterall, the arabic peoples won't stop until everyone else is destroyed, then, like animals (I don't even think they're people), they will destroy themselves.
How can a violent race like that ever spawn social progress? They're quite literally like monkeys, running around like crazy, flinging feces at each other. Without Truth (the Word of God), they've gone quite insane with the devil whispering in their ears. Unlike monkeys flinging feces at each other, they fling bombs at each other (and us).
Personally, I'm glad that a good Christian man (women really can't be Good, because they cannot be like God as they lack the proper equipment), like George Walker Bush, has the guts to stand up and say "we won't let these inferior people destroy America". Now we're taking steps to exterminate them and take their resources for the advancement of America. Good show, Bush!
Witchcraft is known as the "Old Religion" and is an ancient practice dating back to biblical times. Witchcraft can be defined as the performance of magic forbidden by God for non-biblical ends. The word witchcraft is related to the old English word (wiccian), "practice of magical arts."
It was during the Middle Ages that witchcraft experienced a great revival. It was an age where everyone believed in the supernatural and superstition abounded.
If someone wanted to become a witch, there was an initiation process. Some of the techniques were simple and some were complicated, but there were usually two requirements. The first requirement was that the would-be witch must join of his or her own free will. The second requirement was that the prospective witch must be willing to worship the devil.
One writer decsribed a witch in the following manner:
Witches are those who, because of the magnitude of their crimes, are commonly called (malefici) or evil doers. These Witches, by the permission of God, agitate the elements, and disturb the minds of men less trusting in God. Without administering any poison, they kill by the great potency of their charms....For they summon devils and dare to rouse them so that everyone kills his enemies by evil stratagems. For these witches make use of the blood of victims, and often defile the corpses of the dead....For the devils are said to love blood, and so when the witches practice the black arts, they mingle blood with water, so that by the color of blood they can more easily conjure up the devils (Gratian, Decretum).
WITCHCRAFT TODAY
The modern witch does not fit the stereotype of the old hag, for many people who are practicing this art are in the mainstream of society. The question is why? Why a renewed interest in this ancient art among both the educated and the ignorant? Daniel Cohen list a couple of possible reasons:
First, there is the eternal appeal of magic, the promise, however muted, that there are secrets available that will give a person power, money, love, and all those things he or she desires but cannot seem to obtain. Second, witchcraft is a put-down and a revolt against some of the establishment beliefs in organized religion, science, and rational thinking. The historic connection between witchcraft and drugs and sex also has undoubted appeal. Here is a set of beliefs that claim to be part of an extremely ancient religion. Yet this is a religion in which drugs and free sexuality are not condemned, but might be encouraged. (Daniel Cohen, A Natural History of Unnatural Things, New York; McCall Pub. Co., 1971, pp. 31,32).
Modern witchcraft bears little resemblance to the witchcraft of the Middle Ages or to witchcraft in still primitive, preliterate societies. Modern witchcraft is a relatively recent development (the last 200 years), embraces hundreds of beliefs and practices and has hundreds of thousands of adherents. The one common theme running through modern witchcraft is the practice of and belief in things forbidden by God in the Bible as occultic.
Today, in a massive spin-off from the culture-wide interest in the occult, this has changed. Tens of thousands across America - some of them with university degrees - are dabbling in witchcraft, Satanism, voodoo, and other forms of black and white magic. Witches sppear openly on television. Every high school is said to have its own witch. In Cleveland you can rent a witch to liven up a party. There are some 80,000 persons practicing white magic in the United States, with 6,000 in Chicago alone. (George Vandeman, Psychic Roulette, Nashville TN}}}, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1973, pp. 99, 100).
Witchcraft is not dead today as can be observed by an article appearing in the Los Angeles Times concerning the goddess movement:.....Eerie monotones...reverberated on the UC Santa Cruz camous.
Cheers and whoops went up for the goddesses of yore - Isis, Astara, Demeter, Artemis, etc....The event wa
If you think evolutionists have all the answers, try a few of the following questions on 'em!
Creation Science Evangelism -
The test of any theory is whether or not it provides answers to basic questions? Some well-meaning but misguided people think evolution is a reasonable theory to explain mans questions about the universe. Evolution is not a good theory it is just a pagan religion masquerading as science.
1. Where did the space for the universe come from? 2. Where did matter come from? 3. Where did the laws of the universe come from (gravity, inertia, etc.)? 4. How did matter get so perfectly organized? 5. Where did the energy come from to do all the organizing? 6. When, where, why, and how did life come from dead matter? 7. When, where, why, and how did life learn to reproduce itself? 8. With what did the first cell capable of sexual reproduction reproduce? 9. Why would any plant or animal want to reproduce more of its kind since this would only make more mouths to feed and decrease the chances of survival? (Does the individual have a drive to survive, or the species? How do you explain this?)
10. How can mutations (recombining of the genetic code) create any new, improved varieties? (Recombining English letters will never produce Chinese books.) 11. Is it possible that similarities in design between different animals prove a common Creator instead of a common ancestor? 12. Natural selection only works with the genetic information available and tends only to keep a species stable. How would you explain the increasing complexity in the genetic code that must have occurred if evolution were true? 13. When, where, why, and how did a. Single-celled plants become multi-celled? (Where are the two and three-celled intermediates?) b. Single-celled animals evolve? c. Fish change to amphibians? d. Amphibians change to reptiles? e. Reptiles change to birds? (The lungs, bones, eyes, reproductive organs, heart, method of locomotion, body covering, etc., are all very different!) f. How did the intermediate forms live? 14. When, where, why, how, and from what did: a. Whales evolve? b. Sea horses evolve? c. Bats evolve? d. Eyes evolve? e. Ears evolve? f. Hair, skin, feathers, scales, nails, claws, etc., evolve?
15. Which evolved first (how, and how long, did it work without the others)? a. The digestive system, the food to be digested, the appetite, the ability to find and eat the food, the digestive juices, or the bodys resistance to its own digestive juice (stomach, intestines, etc.)? b. The drive to reproduce or the ability to reproduce? c. The lungs, the mucus lining to protect them, the throat, or the perfect mixture of gases to be breathed into the lungs? d. DNA or RNA to carry the DNA message to cell parts? e. The termite or the flagella in its intestines that actually digest the cellulose? f. The plants or the insects that live on and pollinate the plants? g. The bones, ligaments, tendons, blood supply, or muscles to move the bones? h. The nervous system, repair system, or hormone system? i. The immune system or the need for it? 16. There are many thousands of examples of symbiosis that defy an evolutionary explanation. Why must we teach students that evolution is the only explanation for these relationships? 17. How would evolution explain mimicry? Did the plants and animals develop mimicry by chance, by their intelligent choice, or by design? 18. When, where, why, and how did man evolve feelings? Love, mercy, guilt, etc. would never evolve in the theory of evolution.
19. How did photosynthesis evolve? 20.How did thought evolve? 21. How did flowering plants evolve, and from what? 22. What kind of evolutionist are you? Why are you not one of the other eight or ten kinds? 23. What would you have said fifty years ago if I told you I had a living coelacanth in my aquarium? 24. Is there one clear predictio
Only a God who could form the universe out of nothing at all could transform my broken life.
Science Ministries -
As I sat for the prescribed 20 minutes in my at-home-cervical-traction device to decompress what the doctor diagnosed as a C7 or possibly C9 bulging disc, I closed my eyes and allowed my mind to drift.
In a few moments, I was meditating on the opening verses of my morning devotion - Hebrews 11:1-3. "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made of what was visible."
In my musings two things struck me. First, that this is a well-known chapter on faith in which Old Testament pillars such as Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob are set out as the best examples for generations to follow in their walk with the Lord. Yet it begins with a faith requirement that we believe God formed the universe at His command. This clearly points to the importance of taking God at His word literally and from the beginning both of time and the Bible. Second, there is such a striking parallel between the Hebrews 11:3 account of Creation and the Big Bang Theory when it is coupled with the creation of visible matter from what scientists call anti-matter.
It is this second point, however, that takes us to yet another parallel. It is that secular scientists require people to have "faith" in the "matter from anti-matter" theory in the same way that God requires that Christians have faith in His Biblical account of Creation.
Truth is scientists will never prove the earth and all its contents are the creation or result of matter from anti-matter. It is a logical impossibility if not a physical one. God, praised be His holy Name, clearly Created the universe out of nothing.
With that my mind began to drift back to the growing discomfort of the chin strap to my 20th century traction device that looks as though it evolved from a 17th century torture chamber. But before disengaging myself from its grip, I was reminded of the words to a song from years ago and it made me smile. (You men may want to stop reading at this point.)
The words to the song were sung by the duo Air Supply who seemed capable of tapping directly into the heart felt dreams of every lovesick teenage girl who had the privilege to dream of romance. Of course, I've forgotten all the words. Still I struggled to place them into the melody as it played in my mind. As I did I became fixated on the words "making something out of nothing at all" in essence the theme of this love song.
Maybe I smiled because some neurochemical firing of a synapse long lay dormant fired off a round of endorphins along with my schoolgirl memory. Or just maybe I smiled because the thought of God forming the universe at His command reminded me of something more personal: the idea that only a God who could form the universe out of nothing at all, really held the power to transform my broken life into one worth living. Today, I am a new creation in Christ. And to that end there really can be no doubt that He made something beautiful out of my brokenness and strife. In the not so immortal words of my hopeless teenage heart, He really did "make love out of nothing at all."
How dare you little man! Simply because God's Chosen People did not have cameras in the time of Jesus Christ, Praised be His Name, does not mean He did not exist or perform His great works! I think your logic is quite flawed.
"Don't talk to me about the authority of the Bible," one of my neighbors told me flatly. "Now, if other ancient writers could document the life of Jesus, then I might believe it. But you can't expect me to believe a bunch of stories written by his friends."
What this man wanted was corroborating evidence, and I can understand why people ask for that. Most of us, when we hear something unusual, are a bit skeptical. We withhold judgment until the story is confirmed by a source we trust.
In the gospels, we have many eyewitness accounts of the life of Christ. But as former journalist Lee Strobel asks in his book, The Case for Christ, "Are there writings outside the gospels that affirm or support any of the essentials about Jesus?"
For the answer, Strobel went to Edwin Yamauchi, former president of the Institute for Biblical Research. Let's be honest, Strobel told him. Is there really much corroboration of the events in Jesus's life outside the Bible?
Absolutely, Yamauchi replied. "We do have very, very important references to Jesus in Josephus and Tacitus. Josephus was a first-century Jewish historian who, because of his collaboration with the Romans, was hated by his fellow Jews. In the Testimonium Flavianum, Josephus writes of Jesus' life, miracles, death, and resurrection. Josephus wrote, "On the third day [after his crucifixion] he appeared to them restored to life."
As Yamauchi explained, "Josephus corroborates important information about Jesus: that he was the martyred leader of the church in Jerusalem . . . who had established a wide and lasting following, despite the fact that he had been crucified."
Tacitus, the most important Roman historian of the first century, was an unsympathetic witness to the spread of Christianity. So, his testimony is especially credible. Tacitus wrote that an "immense multitude" held so strongly to their beliefs that they were willing to die rather than recant.
And the Jewish Talmud, Yamauchi notes, finished in AD 500, also mentions Jesus. Although it calls him a "false messiah," the fact that it mentions him at all is a corroboration of his life in ancient Israel.
Finally, we have the writings of the apostolic fathers," the earliest Christian writers after the New Testament. Among them was Ignatius, who went to his execution claiming that Jesus rose from the dead, and that those who believe in him would be raised, too, Yamauchi said.
Put together the writings of Josephus, the Roman historians, Jewish writings, and the apostolic fathers, "and you've got persuasive evidence that corroborates all the essentials found in the biographies of Jesus." And, he added, "Even if you were to throw away every last copy of the gospels, you'd still have a picture of Jesus that's extremely compelling--in fact, it's a portrait of the unique Son of God."
In the Information Age, it's hard sometimes to separate truth from falsehood. So it's not surprising that people like my neighbor are skeptical.
We need to make sure people like this understand that there's plenty of corroborating evidence of what the gospels have to say. Evidence that points to the fact that Jesus is exactly who he said he is: the Son of God--and our Savior.
Slashdot Mirror
When all those Islamic towel-heads destroy the "great Satan" that is Western culture, the fruits of prosperity will cease and the world will fall into civil decay and revert back to barbarianism.
You see, that colored race which roams the desert looking for ways to destroy us does not realize that we are the only source of progress in philosophy, science, and art. Without America and its good, wholesome Christian values, this world would have nothing. There will be no one left to drive the human race towards perfection.
Once we've been destroyed by these short-sighted individuals, humanity will slowly fall into its doom. Afterall, the arabic peoples won't stop until everyone else is destroyed, then, like animals (I don't even think they're people), they will destroy themselves.
How can a violent race like that ever spawn social progress? They're quite literally like monkeys, running around like crazy, flinging feces at each other. Without Truth (the Word of God), they've gone quite insane with the devil whispering in their ears. Unlike monkeys flinging feces at each other, they fling bombs at each other (and us).
Personally, I'm glad that a good Christian man (women really can't be Good, because they cannot be like God as they lack the proper equipment), like George Walker Bush, has the guts to stand up and say "we won't let these inferior people destroy America". Now we're taking steps to exterminate them and take their resources for the advancement of America. Good show, Bush!
When all those Islamic towel-heads destroy the "great Satan" that is Western culture, the fruits of prosperity will cease and the world will fall into civil decay and revert back to barbarianism.
You see, that colored race which roams the desert looking for ways to destroy us does not realize that we are the only source of progress in philosophy, science, and art. Without America and its good, wholesome Christian values, this world would have nothing. There will be no one left to drive the human race towards perfection.
Once we've been destroyed by these short-sighted individuals, humanity will slowly fall into its doom. Afterall, the arabic peoples won't stop until everyone else is destroyed, then, like animals (I don't even think they're people), they will destroy themselves.
How can a violent race like that ever spawn social progress? They're quite literally like monkeys, running around like crazy, flinging feces at each other. Without Truth (the Word of God), they've gone quite insane with the devil whispering in their ears. Unlike monkeys flinging feces at each other, they fling bombs at each other (and us).
Personally, I'm glad that a good Christian man (women really can't be Good, because they cannot be like God as they lack the proper equipment), like George Walker Bush, has the guts to stand up and say "we won't let these inferior people destroy America". Now we're taking steps to exterminate them and take their resources for the advancement of America. Good show, Bush!
INTRODUCTION
.....Eerie monotones...reverberated on the UC Santa Cruz camous.
...The event wa
Witchcraft is known as the "Old Religion" and is an ancient practice dating back to biblical times. Witchcraft can be defined as the performance of magic forbidden by God for non-biblical ends. The word witchcraft is related to the old English word (wiccian), "practice of magical arts."
It was during the Middle Ages that witchcraft experienced a great revival. It was an age where everyone believed in the supernatural and superstition abounded.
If someone wanted to become a witch, there was an initiation process. Some of the techniques were simple and some were complicated, but there were usually two requirements. The first requirement was that the would-be witch must join of his or her own free will. The second requirement was that the prospective witch must be willing to worship the devil.
One writer decsribed a witch in the following manner:
Witches are those who, because of the magnitude of their crimes, are commonly called (malefici) or evil doers. These Witches, by the permission of God, agitate the elements, and disturb the minds of men less trusting in God. Without administering any poison, they kill by the great potency of their charms....For they summon devils and dare to rouse them so that everyone kills his enemies by evil stratagems. For these witches make use of the blood of victims, and often defile the corpses of the dead....For the devils are said to love blood, and so when the witches practice the black arts, they mingle blood with water, so that by the color of blood they can more easily conjure up the devils (Gratian, Decretum).
WITCHCRAFT TODAY
The modern witch does not fit the stereotype of the old hag, for many people who are practicing this art are in the mainstream of society. The question is why? Why a renewed interest in this ancient art among both the educated and the ignorant? Daniel Cohen list a couple of possible reasons:
First, there is the eternal appeal of magic, the promise, however muted, that there are secrets available that will give a person power, money, love, and all those things he or she desires but cannot seem to obtain. Second, witchcraft is a put-down and a revolt against some of the establishment beliefs in organized religion, science, and rational thinking. The historic connection between witchcraft and drugs and sex also has undoubted appeal. Here is a set of beliefs that claim to be part of an extremely ancient religion. Yet this is a religion in which drugs and free sexuality are not condemned, but might be encouraged. (Daniel Cohen, A Natural History of Unnatural Things, New York; McCall Pub. Co., 1971, pp. 31,32).
Modern witchcraft bears little resemblance to the witchcraft of the Middle Ages or to witchcraft in still primitive, preliterate societies. Modern witchcraft is a relatively recent development (the last 200 years), embraces hundreds of beliefs and practices and has hundreds of thousands of adherents. The one common theme running through modern witchcraft is the practice of and belief in things forbidden by God in the Bible as occultic.
Today, in a massive spin-off from the culture-wide interest in the occult, this has changed. Tens of thousands across America - some of them with university degrees - are dabbling in witchcraft, Satanism, voodoo, and other forms of black and white magic. Witches sppear openly on television. Every high school is said to have its own witch. In Cleveland you can rent a witch to liven up a party. There are some 80,000 persons practicing white magic in the United States, with 6,000 in Chicago alone. (George Vandeman, Psychic Roulette, Nashville TN}}}, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1973, pp. 99, 100).
Witchcraft is not dead today as can be observed by an article appearing in the Los Angeles Times concerning the goddess movement:
Cheers and whoops went up for the goddesses of yore - Isis, Astara, Demeter, Artemis, etc.
If you think evolutionists have all the answers, try a few of the following questions on 'em!
Creation Science Evangelism -
The test of any theory is whether or not it provides answers to basic questions? Some well-meaning but misguided people think evolution is a reasonable theory to explain mans questions about the universe. Evolution is not a good theory it is just a pagan religion masquerading as science.
1. Where did the space for the universe come from?
2. Where did matter come from?
3. Where did the laws of the universe come from (gravity, inertia, etc.)?
4. How did matter get so perfectly organized?
5. Where did the energy come from to do all the organizing?
6. When, where, why, and how did life come from dead matter?
7. When, where, why, and how did life learn to reproduce itself?
8. With what did the first cell capable of sexual reproduction reproduce?
9. Why would any plant or animal want to reproduce more of its kind since this would only make more mouths to feed and decrease the chances of survival? (Does the individual have a drive to survive, or the species? How do you explain this?)
10. How can mutations (recombining of the genetic code) create any new, improved varieties? (Recombining English letters will never produce Chinese books.)
11. Is it possible that similarities in design between different animals prove a common Creator instead of a common ancestor?
12. Natural selection only works with the genetic information available and tends only to keep a species stable. How would you explain the increasing complexity in the genetic code that must have occurred if evolution were true?
13. When, where, why, and how did
a. Single-celled plants become multi-celled? (Where are the two and three-celled intermediates?)
b. Single-celled animals evolve?
c. Fish change to amphibians?
d. Amphibians change to reptiles?
e. Reptiles change to birds? (The lungs, bones, eyes, reproductive organs, heart, method of locomotion, body covering, etc., are all very different!)
f. How did the intermediate forms live?
14. When, where, why, how, and from what did:
a. Whales evolve?
b. Sea horses evolve?
c. Bats evolve?
d. Eyes evolve?
e. Ears evolve?
f. Hair, skin, feathers, scales, nails, claws, etc., evolve?
15. Which evolved first (how, and how long, did it work without the others)?
a. The digestive system, the food to be digested, the appetite, the ability to find and eat the food, the digestive juices, or the bodys resistance to its own digestive juice (stomach, intestines, etc.)?
b. The drive to reproduce or the ability to reproduce?
c. The lungs, the mucus lining to protect them, the throat, or the perfect mixture of gases to be breathed into the lungs?
d. DNA or RNA to carry the DNA message to cell parts?
e. The termite or the flagella in its intestines that actually digest the cellulose?
f. The plants or the insects that live on and pollinate the plants?
g. The bones, ligaments, tendons, blood supply, or muscles to move the bones?
h. The nervous system, repair system, or hormone system?
i. The immune system or the need for it?
16. There are many thousands of examples of symbiosis that defy an evolutionary explanation. Why must we teach students that evolution is the only explanation for these relationships?
17. How would evolution explain mimicry? Did the plants and animals develop mimicry by chance, by their intelligent choice, or by design?
18. When, where, why, and how did man evolve feelings? Love, mercy, guilt, etc. would never evolve in the theory of evolution.
19. How did photosynthesis evolve?
20.How did thought evolve?
21. How did flowering plants evolve, and from what?
22. What kind of evolutionist are you? Why are you not one of the other eight or ten kinds?
23. What would you have said fifty years ago if I told you I had a living coelacanth in my aquarium?
24. Is there one clear predictio
Only a God who could form the universe out of nothing at all could transform my broken life.
Science Ministries -
As I sat for the prescribed 20 minutes in my at-home-cervical-traction device to decompress what the doctor diagnosed as a C7 or possibly C9 bulging disc, I closed my eyes and allowed my mind to drift.
In a few moments, I was meditating on the opening verses of my morning devotion - Hebrews 11:1-3. "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made of what was visible."
In my musings two things struck me. First, that this is a well-known chapter on faith in which Old Testament pillars such as Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob are set out as the best examples for generations to follow in their walk with the Lord. Yet it begins with a faith requirement that we believe God formed the universe at His command. This clearly points to the importance of taking God at His word literally and from the beginning both of time and the Bible. Second, there is such a striking parallel between the Hebrews 11:3 account of Creation and the Big Bang Theory when it is coupled with the creation of visible matter from what scientists call anti-matter.
It is this second point, however, that takes us to yet another parallel. It is that secular scientists require people to have "faith" in the "matter from anti-matter" theory in the same way that God requires that Christians have faith in His Biblical account of Creation.
Truth is scientists will never prove the earth and all its contents are the creation or result of matter from anti-matter. It is a logical impossibility if not a physical one. God, praised be His holy Name, clearly Created the universe out of nothing.
With that my mind began to drift back to the growing discomfort of the chin strap to my 20th century traction device that looks as though it evolved from a 17th century torture chamber. But before disengaging myself from its grip, I was reminded of the words to a song from years ago and it made me smile. (You men may want to stop reading at this point.)
The words to the song were sung by the duo Air Supply who seemed capable of tapping directly into the heart felt dreams of every lovesick teenage girl who had the privilege to dream of romance. Of course, I've forgotten all the words. Still I struggled to place them into the melody as it played in my mind. As I did I became fixated on the words "making something out of nothing at all" in essence the theme of this love song.
Maybe I smiled because some neurochemical firing of a synapse long lay dormant fired off a round of endorphins along with my schoolgirl memory. Or just maybe I smiled because the thought of God forming the universe at His command reminded me of something more personal: the idea that only a God who could form the universe out of nothing at all, really held the power to transform my broken life into one worth living. Today, I am a new creation in Christ. And to that end there really can be no doubt that He made something beautiful out of my brokenness and strife. In the not so immortal words of my hopeless teenage heart, He really did "make love out of nothing at all."
I think I'll take a trip to the music store.
How dare you little man! Simply because God's Chosen People did not have cameras in the time of Jesus Christ, Praised be His Name, does not mean He did not exist or perform His great works! I think your logic is quite flawed.
"Don't talk to me about the authority of the Bible," one of my neighbors told me flatly. "Now, if other ancient writers could document the life of Jesus, then I might believe it. But you can't expect me to believe a bunch of stories written by his friends."
What this man wanted was corroborating evidence, and I can understand why people ask for that. Most of us, when we hear something unusual, are a bit skeptical. We withhold judgment until the story is confirmed by a source we trust.
In the gospels, we have many eyewitness accounts of the life of Christ. But as former journalist Lee Strobel asks in his book, The Case for Christ, "Are there writings outside the gospels that affirm or support any of the essentials about Jesus?"
For the answer, Strobel went to Edwin Yamauchi, former president of the Institute for Biblical Research. Let's be honest, Strobel told him. Is there really much corroboration of the events in Jesus's life outside the Bible?
Absolutely, Yamauchi replied. "We do have very, very important references to Jesus in Josephus and Tacitus. Josephus was a first-century Jewish historian who, because of his collaboration with the Romans, was hated by his fellow Jews. In the Testimonium Flavianum, Josephus writes of Jesus' life, miracles, death, and resurrection. Josephus wrote, "On the third day [after his crucifixion] he appeared to them restored to life."
As Yamauchi explained, "Josephus corroborates important information about Jesus: that he was the martyred leader of the church in Jerusalem . . . who had established a wide and lasting following, despite the fact that he had been crucified."
Tacitus, the most important Roman historian of the first century, was an unsympathetic witness to the spread of Christianity. So, his testimony is especially credible. Tacitus wrote that an "immense multitude" held so strongly to their beliefs that they were willing to die rather than recant.
And the Jewish Talmud, Yamauchi notes, finished in AD 500, also mentions Jesus. Although it calls him a "false messiah," the fact that it mentions him at all is a corroboration of his life in ancient Israel.
Finally, we have the writings of the apostolic fathers," the earliest Christian writers after the New Testament. Among them was Ignatius, who went to his execution claiming that Jesus rose from the dead, and that those who believe in him would be raised, too, Yamauchi said.
Put together the writings of Josephus, the Roman historians, Jewish writings, and the apostolic fathers, "and you've got persuasive evidence that corroborates all the essentials found in the biographies of Jesus." And, he added, "Even if you were to throw away every last copy of the gospels, you'd still have a picture of Jesus that's extremely compelling--in fact, it's a portrait of the unique Son of God."
In the Information Age, it's hard sometimes to separate truth from falsehood. So it's not surprising that people like my neighbor are skeptical.
We need to make sure people like this understand that there's plenty of corroborating evidence of what the gospels have to say. Evidence that points to the fact that Jesus is exactly who he said he is: the Son of God--and our Savior.