All my life I’ve been told by my Sunday School Teachers, Bible Teachers and Pastors that the only way to receive God’s forgiveness is to repent of my sins, confess my sins to God, and plead for forgiveness. Even then, that forgiveness expires the moment I commit the next sin, which according to them is in about thirty seconds after I’ve prayed and asked for forgiveness. So, obtaining, and maintaining, God’s forgiveness is essentially an endless merry-go-round of sinning, repenting,... Read more
Here, time turns into space…and if time could turn into space, can space turn into time? – [VALIS, Philip K. Dick, pg. 32] As I pondered this, I realized something: Whenever I slow down and pause, and stop moving, then I become aware of the Universe, and of the Christ who fills all of space. Space is the expanse and Time is sequential. In other words, to experience Time we must be aware of motion [one thing after another], but... Read more
Here are six things you need to start a traditional church in America today: 1) Money – Lots of it. One church-planter suggested it would take as much as $100,00 to get started. Another pastor I know emptied his savings account and spent $50,000 of his own money to start his church, but some have suggested it could be as high as $8 Million if you want to do it right. Of course, depending on the size of your church,... Read more
I have a confession to make: I want to put the Church out of business. Here’s why: It was never intended to be a business in the first place. A family? Yes. An organism? Totally. A community. Without a doubt. But, an incorporated entity with a CEO, Board of Directors, Marketing Team and a logo? Absolutely not. See, what Jesus inspired was not only a movement, it was intentionally not a top-down, hierarchy. And how do we know this? Because... Read more
It’s one of the weirdest things in the book of Acts. One minute you’re reading about how love filled the community of Christ; how everyone shared what they had in common with people who only days before were total strangers; selling land and property to buy food for their hungry brothers and sisters in Christ, meeting daily in homes, breaking bread together; they “ate together with glad and sincere hearts,” and devoted themselves to the fellowship of the Saints and... Read more
Whenever we point out that God is love, it’s not uncommon to hear at least one person chime in and say: “But God is also a god of wrath!” Is that true? I mean, we do have one verse in the Bible that tells us that God actually is love: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 John 4:8) I think it’s worth noting that, while we do find verses that speak about... Read more
This article is in response to something published by Brett McCracken a few days ago on the Gospel Coalition website. His post, “Heresy Often Begins With Boredom“, had many good points that I agreed with, although I disagreed quite strongly with most of his conclusions. In good faith, I responded to him directly on Twitter and pointed out a few of these issues, but he declined to respond to those comments. So, I wanted to publish my thoughts here and... Read more
I can’t believe I need to post something on this topic again. A few years ago, pastor and author John Hagee, and also author Mark Blitz, published books that both created a Blood Moon Prophecy frenzy and at the same time cashed in on the frenzy, selling millions of books that capitalized on the End Times hoopla. That was back in 2014. Nothing happened, other than Hagee and Blitz generating a lot of moola on the hype they had... Read more
As a young man, I was challenged to read the world’s best-selling book from cover to cover. At a young age I had fallen in love with books. In Junior High I would ride my bike to the Library and check out six or seven books at a time and read them all before the due date so I could return them and check out another six or seven books and devour them as well. I read mysteries, thrillers, spy... Read more
The more I study the Bible, the more concerned I am with how translators have altered the texts to serve their own agendas. Most Christians are unaware of the fact that this has gone on for centuries, and that some of these intentional mistranslations are intended to prevent people from knowing what the Scriptures actually teach on certain topics. For example: For several hundred years Bible translators obscured the true identity of Junia in the New Testament because Paul... Read more
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