Category Archives: Biblical Apologetics — Positive

“The Da Vinci Code” Critique – Part 2

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(I continue the critique form Part 1)

This brings us to the primary contention by Dan Brown taken from Holy Blood, Holy Grail – that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene.  According to Brown’s character Teabing, “the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is part of the historic record.”[i]  His proof of this is two-fold.  One, because Jesus was a Jew, the obligation was that he should be married and the Bible’s gospels should have offered some explanation for his unnatural state of bachelorhood.  Second, the earliest Christian records in the Dead Sea scrolls and Gnostic Gospels record this union.  Teabing claims, “One particularly troubling theme kept recurring in the [Gnostic] gospels.  Mary Magdalene…More specifically her marriage to Jesus Christ.”[ii]  Teabing refers specifically to the Gnostic Gospel of Phillip verse 55b, “The companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene.  Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth.  The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval.  They said to him, ‘Why do you love her more than all of us?’”  Teabing subsequently concludes that “any Aramaic scholar will tell you, the word companion, in those days, literally meant spouse.”[iii]  Continue reading →

Who is Your Daddy And What Does He Do? Part 4

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Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

This passage in 1 John 5:1 brings us to a name God probably wants us to know Him by most and that name is Father. God is our Father and we are His children. 1 John 5:1 says that if we believe that Jesus is the Christ then we are born of God. By definition being born of God would make us sons and daughters of God. Romans 8:15, “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.” The importance of “Abba, Father” should be understood. Abba, Father is a very personal title for God which in the old Aramaic meant “my father.” Children in the Aramaic world would use “Abba” like we use the term “Daddy.”

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An Unlikely Apologetic

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Friday night is movie night in our home. After a week of work,the exorcist school, and trying to stay on our diets, I get a movie for my daughters and myself, we pile into our theater room with it and loads of junk food, and enjoy while my wife does whatever she wants.

I usually use Redbox for our movies and recently I noticed something that may have been there for a long time, but it’s escaped my attention until now: the occult has an impressive presence in today’s recently-released movie selections. Row after row had at least one if not two supernatural titles for the choosing.

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“The Da Vinci Code” Critique – Part 1

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Note: Although I don’t hear as much about “The Da Vinci Code” since its release several years ago, I do hear assertions derived from the gnostic gospels… this critique addresses both the book and gnostic sources, so I believe it is still relevant.

Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code begins with the murder of the curator of the Louvre museum in Paris, Jacques Sauniere.  As he is dying, Saniere determines that he is the sole holder of a secret that must be passed on.  Robert Langdon, the protagonist, is a Harvard University professor who studies symbology and is visiting Paris at the time.  Sauniere is found naked with his arms and legs outstretched and Langdon ascertains that he is positioned like “The Vitruvian Man,” Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous sketch.  More clues lead Langdon to uncover hidden messages in da Vinci’s works, such as “Mona Lisa,” “Madonna of the Rocks,” and “The Last Supper.”  Langdon recalls that da Vinci was leader of a brotherhood that guarded an ancient secret regarding the quest for the Holy Grail and the story of Jesus Christ.  Later, Langdon discovers that Sauniere was da Vinci’s modern-day counterpart in this organization.  Continue reading →

Who Is Your Daddy And What Does He Do? Part 3

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Part 1Part 2

The proof of whether God knows the future or not is further illustrated by the number of very specific prophecies God laid down in the Old Testament in the years preceding Christ’s birth. Daniel is chock full of these specific. Daniel 2 tells us a story about one of the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, and the interpretation of the dream given by Daniel. This particular dream contained a vision of a great statue with a head of gold, arms and chest of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet made of a mixture of clay and iron. After this image manifested, a huge stone crushed the feet and all the metals in the statue fell to the ground and were disintegrated to the point of nothingness. Then the stone became a huge mountain. God gave Daniel the interpretation of this dream starting in verse 36: Continue reading →

Who Is Your Daddy and What Does He Do? Part 2

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Part 1

Another important fact and name of God is that of Creator. Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” God is the creator of all things and this is a very important concept to understand about God as it comes to the world today. Many people believe that God has not had a hand in our beginning. However, this idea is off base based on the very first verse of the Word. 2 Peter 3:1-9 highlights this argument: Continue reading →

Who is the One True God? A Look at Prophecy as a Verification Test

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Introduction

The skeptical issue in our culture mostly enters into the religious dialogue in the following way: “In the case of God, who isn’t some physical object but a divine being, what kind of evidence should we expect to find? [1] There is a tendency to forget that the Bible stresses that sin can dampen the cognitive faculties that God has given us to find Him. Therefore, sin has damaging consequences on the knowing process (Is. 6:9-10; Zech. 7:11-12; Matt. 13:10-13). Thus, people are dead, blinded, and bound to sin.

Christianity stresses that the God of the Bible is capable of giving a revelation to mankind through a specific medium. Revelation is a disclosure of something that has been hidden – an “uncovering,” or “unveiling.” Christianity, Judaism, Islam, are all theistic faiths in contrast to pantheism (all is God), polytheism (many gods), and atheism (without God). The study of world religions involves a commitment to understand the issue of divine revelation. Furthermore, most religions think that there is a God who took the initiative to reveal himself to an individual or a group of people who later recorded it in a group of writings or sacred texts. Continue reading →

Who Is Your Daddy And What Does He Do? Part 1

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Who do you imagine God Almighty to be? The common view of God is that He is an old man with a long, flowing white beard in long robes; and if you thought of that, congratulations, you just thought of Zeus from Greek mythology. The modern-day version of God in the public consciousness is a representation given to us by the Greeks and their influence on Christian iconography in antiquity. The first truth we must know about the Almighty is that He is not a man. Numbers 23:19, “God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?” He is not bound by the same inadequacies that we are bound by. He is not bound by any human limit. Mark 10:27, “But Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With men it is impossible, but not with God; for with God all things are possible.” God is above human ability in every way. 1 Corinthians 1:25, “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” This concept is something we must understand if we are to be able to stand against men who would confound us and ultimately against the devil. Now we see God’s power in reference to men and women. Now, we must ask who and of what is God? Continue reading →