Discovered in the ruins of a Pompeii house covered in the ash of Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 AD, this was found etched into the wall of a home: R O T A S O P E R A T E N E T A P E R O S A T O R This Sator/Rotas Square has also appeared in the catacombs of Rome where Christians used this palindrome to communicate their faith in creative ways. Included in this... Read more
My Father died a few days ago. It wasn’t something we expected to happen, although he had pneumonia and had been sent home after 10 days in the hospital. He was short of breath and on oxygen and antibiotics, but we all believed he would pull through and recover. On Monday of this week, he woke up around 6:20 a.m., put on his glasses, sat up and moved his legs over the side of his bed, took a sip of... Read more
“God is love, but he’s also a God of wrath“, they tell me. But, if this is so I have a few questions. Like, why doesn’t this wrathful God show us his anger when Adam and Eve disobey in the Garden? Where is this wrath when the first murder takes place? Perhaps He is saving it up for when Jesus comes to take the torturous beating we all deserve? But, if so, then why does Jesus forgive – without bloodshed... Read more
One thing we seem to misunderstand when it comes to Jesus is that he’s not really interested in being your co-pilot. In other words, if our lives are pretty much the same now as they would have been if we had never heard about Jesus then we’re doing it wrong. The entire point of what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount is that it is meant to be followed in one’s actual, everyday, ordinary life. Remember the part... Read more
Full disclosure: As a young boy I never went anywhere without a toy gun somewhere on my body. Either on my belt, in my boot or nestled inside the little satchel I carried around to hold my comics and my crayons. I loved The Wild Wild West with Robert Conrad and I watched every episode of Bonanza, Gunsmoke, High Chapperal and The Rifleman I could possibly find on television. Of course, there was no better version of cowboy heroism than... Read more
I received several comments on my post “7 Reasons Why Jesus Was NOT Sacrificed For Your Sins” but this one below was so specific and direct I really felt the need to respond. Ironically, the rebuttal included 7 scriptures that appear to disprove my thesis that Jesus was NOT sacrificed for your sins. So, here’s the comment: Keith says: “Jesus Was NOT Sacrificed For Your Sins” The New Testament says: “Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of... Read more
One of the lynchpins of Penal Substitutionary Atonement Theory [PSA] is that Jesus had to die on the cross to fulfill God’s requirement for a worthy sacrifice that could atone the sins of mankind once and for all. The problem with this theory is that there is almost zero scriptural support for such a claim. In fact, if we start to really investigate what the scriptures have to say about atonement, sacrifice and sins we find a shocking number of... Read more
We often think of sin as “missing the mark”, but I want to us to think about sin in this way for a moment. Or better yet, I think we need to re-think how we look at sin in this way. For example, we often say that sin is to “miss the mark” in the sense that the “mark” is total perfection. Since we all fail to be perfect or “sinless”, then we are all doomed. But I think that’s... Read more
If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you already know by now that a title like this one is probably answered by a resounding “No”, but just in case you’re new here, let me go ahead and make it abundantly clear: God was NOT pleased to crush His Son on the cross. Now, you probably wonder how I can say this since we all remember a very famous passage of scripture from Isaiah that seems to... Read more
I honestly believe that one of the most transformative truths that most Christians still haven’t fully embraced is this: God is not “up there.” The pervasive notion that God is in Heaven, and that Heaven is in some mystical realm far above and beyond this realm of physical reality is not only dangerous to our spiritual growth and development, it’s also dead wrong. Allow me to elaborate: *Jesus is “Immanuel” which is literally “God with us.” [Matt. 1:23] *Jesus promised... Read more
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