In some recent discussions, mostly related to my Seventh-day Adventist background (for those who may not know, I’m now a member of a United Methodist congregation but was raised SDA), I have encountered quite a number of questions regarding who various elements of scripture are for. For example, many Christians will say that the law…
Sometimes choosing a pew Bible is a kind of afterthought. I grew up in churches that didn’t even have pew Bibles. It was expected that all the church members would have their own and would bring them to church. But for many churches the pew Bible can have a major impact both on worship and…
I’m back to my discussion of inspiration, dealing with the issue of how one determines whether someone can speak for God. In this entry I’m going to look at the last two items on my list, divine widom, and the gift of discernment, which are closely related. As a preliminary, let me comment that I…
Note: I wrote the following two days ago for my wife’s devotional list. I thought it might be of interest to the blog. 10And God saw their actions, that they turned from their evil way, and God repented of the evil that he said he would do to them, and he didn’t do it. –…
I missed posting yesterday because I was suffering from the flu. In fact, I’m not all that energetic today either, but I did want to post something about Martin Luther King day. Many people seem not to have become comfortable with Martin Luther King day as a holiday. This was brought home to me as…
Wayne Leman on his Better Bibles blog, created an exceptional entry on the need for having translations that put the Bible into comprehensible, current English. Too often in the church we assume that people know things. We assume they know how to find the church, when services are, what is appropriate for them or for…
I wrote this from my wife’s devotional list today and thought I’d share it with the blog as well. Now the young man Samuel was serving the LORD under Eli’s supervision. The Word of the LORD was rare in those days, vision was not widespread. 1 Samuel 3:1 This passage of scripture is both wonderful…
In my initial entry on testing prophets I listed five approaches to determining whether a word someone claims comes from God is actually from God. The third of those items was “Access to inside information, or is in GodÂ’s councils.” You may be wondering, and rightfully so, how I distinguish this from other approaches. Surely…
In my previous entry on this topic I listed several proposed method of testing prophets, specifically how does one respond when someone claims to speak for God? This assumes, of course, that one believes anyone can speak for God in any way. The second test I listed as “godliness,” but this is just a shorthand…
A couple of days ago I wrote a blog entry about the campaign to get NBC affiliate stations to refuse to air the new NBC program, The Book of Daniel. At the time, I said that stations should air the program, and that I would decide whether I like the program after I had seen…