In this video we look at the idea that the story of Jesus rising from the dead was just a hoax. A deception cooked up by his followers.
This series, along with the last two, are available on DVD from Focus. If you’d like a free copy you can get one by writing a review on your blog. For full details and to continue the conversation, take a look at the Facebook page - details on the 27th September.
I started this series a couple of weeks ago, but then life and work happened and knocked me off course. So back to the films for a bit, this time on the assertion that Jesus didn’t really die on the cross. Which really is quite central because if he didn’t die he didn’t come back to life, and if he didn’t come back to life then he’s not really God.
This series, along with the last two, are available on DVD from Focus. If you’d like a free copy you can get one by writing a review on your blog. For full details and to continue the conversation, take a look at the Facebook page - details on the 27th September.
This video looks at the claims that Christianity borrowed the story of Jesus rising from the dead from pagan myths.
If you’d like to follow up with any of the videos in this series, you can through the God: new evidence Facebook page.
This short film looks at the suggestion that the resurrection of Jesus was a legend made up at a later date.
If you’d like to follow up with any of the videos in this series, you can through the God: new evidence Facebook page.
Can we be sure that the central claim of Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus, is historically accurate? The third video in this series looks at the historical case for the account.
If you’d like to follow up with any of the videos in this series, you can through the God: new evidence Facebook page.
My friend Mark was blogging this week on the challenges of communicating the message of grace to Christians in Tanzania – not as strange as it may sound when you consider that Mark (and his wife Laura) are involved in Bible translation in that part of the world.
Anyway, Mark was blogging on the fact that in Tanzania, many Christians go to church to hear how they should live to please God in order to inherit eternal life, rather than understanding that we are saved through grace, not through works. It’s a good blog post, you should must read it.
However, I don’t think Mark’s conclusion just works for churches in Africa. I think it’s something we could all do with thinking through in the UK.
Maybe if we moved on from the question “How can I have eternal life?”, we might take a step back and ask instead “How is God making himself known in the world, and how am I part of that?” With this perspective, maybe our answer would then be that God’s grace and our good deeds are not two opposing answers to the question of how we are saved, but two perfectly complementary and vital parts of they way God is reaching out to and saving his world.
You see, sometimes there can be two answers to the same question.
Some quick reflections on things from this weekend.
In a post, A Minor Miracle, from Bible Translator Foibles, the anonymous author writes…
Gradually it sunk into my thick skull that being at church is a statement of solidarity with the community of believers. You would think that would be a given for a missionary translator who studied theology. Even if I get nothing out of the church service, I contribute by my presence.
Speaking of miracles. Friends of ours are experiencing their own miracle as Jessica, their seven month old baby, makes it through another heart operation. Maybe best described in their own words…
Our beautiful daughter Jessica was born in September 2011 with a severe heart defect called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. This was diagnosed at her 20 week scan and we were initially told that she was unlikely to be suitable for surgery. However, a pioneering in-utero operation at 28 weeks to enlarge a hole in her atrial septum was carried out and she was able to make it to term and get through her first open-heart surgery at just eight hours old. Since birth, she has had three operations and will need more as she gets bigger.
You can read about Jessica’s story at jessica-thejourney.blogspot.co.uk. and the latest updates as she comes out of yet another operation.
On a completely different topic. The Sentralized blog has published a top 40 Missional Reading List. HT: to both Mike Frost and Tim Davey for pointing to it on Facebook. Although, Mike gets more out of it having authored, or co-authored, four of the books on the list.
And finally…
Taking some exercise this weekend, I was catching up on the series of sermons from Mosaic in LA called Artisan – yes, I run and listen to Bible talks, maybe not so rock and roll! Anyway, I was struck by the observation by Erwin McManus, that Mary only makes one commandment in the whole of the Bible, John 2:5,
His mother told the servants, “Whatever he tells you, do it.”
Wise words!
A few days ago I posted about the research I had done into the authority of the Bible. But, yesterday I was challenged about the reasonableness of always looking for the logical answer.
The big-name Christian apologists are, basically, modernists. Their method of apologetics is to show that belief in the God of Christianity is entirely compatible with human rationality. In other words, they are accepting the proposition that human rationality is the standard against which God is judged. This may not be particularly glorifying to God but it certainly glorifies human rationality.
They might say that they are accepting this proposition as a starting point because it is the mindset of those that they are going up against, and hey, we’re into contextualization and starting from where the other person is coming from, but you can’t be a Christian and leave that starting point unchallenged. The Christian starting point is that God is the standard against which everything, up to and including human rationality, is judged.
This is why I have no interest in debates between prominent atheists and prominent apologists. They both place their ultimate faith and authority in the human capacity for reason and logic and in the need to make rationally defensible choices. In that sense, they’re both arguing the same side.
Worse, if you do go down that road, what kind of a God can you end up with? A God who is rationally defensible may be the clockwork god of the Deists but not the surprising, challenging and sometimes confusing God of the Bible.
From the blog of Simon Cozens
HT Kouya
For a moment I questioned whether I was barking up the wrong tree and whether the research I had done was relevant to a generation that questions truth and authority anyway. Well,
1) Knowing that there is accurate and reliable evidence for God, creation through intelligent design, Jesus and his death and resurrection is important for me, even if it has no real bearing on my conversations with others.
2) My belief in the rationality of the evidence for God does not necessarily mean I believe that God is rational. In fact, I think I believe God to be totally irrational. Rationality would probably have put paid to the world at the point of the flood, even if it had been allowed to continue that far. I wonder even, if a rational God would have given us free will.
3) It’s too easy to assume that times have changed and that we now need to adapt our communications to a postmodern audience. The problem is that audiences are very rarely made up of just postmoderns, and even when they are, there’s a sliding scale with some postmoderns looking very like modernists. Although, I agree that debates aren’t the most effective form of communication. Were they ever?
Premier Christian Radio have started their Christmas campaign today. On their website they say,
This Christmas we’re using our National Digital Platform to reach the maximum number of people possible with a message of faith AND hope, the REAL Christmas message. Your gift today will not only support our National Christmas Starts With Christ Campaign .. but will help us keep broadcasting into 2012.
Considering I work for Wycliffe Bible Translators, it would be really easy to take a shot at PCR by pointing out that maybe those that are really unreached are the 300+ million people who live without a single word of Scripture in their own language. But, that isn’t quite right.
You see God loves us all equally, both listeners of PCR and remote communities without access to the Bible in their own language. Sometimes that’s hard to imagine, especially when we can all think of people that are hard to love – but God loves them too. And, he wants us all to know him and love him back. So God does things to get our attention:
God is in it all, and if we take the time to look for him we will see him.
What does that have to do with PCR’s fundraising campaign?
Well, some people in the UK will find God through PCR and what they broadcast and it would be wrong of me to think that a small community living in isolation in the mountains of Papua New Guinea deserve God more than the people of Warrington, Widnes, Walton-on-Thames or Walthamstow. Really, we all need God, and we shouldn’t assume that we are all going to find him in the same place. PCR can reach people that Bible translators won’t.
So, if you’d like to give to support Premier Christian Radio, please go ahead. Their giving page can be found here.
But there are unreached in this world who can’t even hear about God in their own language. They may know he’s there through what they see around them, but they don’t have the means to get to know him because his words to them are still tied up in foreign languages. God loves them all the same.
If you’d like to give to Wycliffe Bible Translators you can do so online.
So here I am on a Saturday morning sitting at the back of a Christians in Science event in central London.
OK, it’s not a usual event for Wycliffe but it’s an interesting experience.
