Virtually all scholars believe, for various reasons, that Jesus was crucified in the spring of either a.d. 30 or a.d. 33, with the majority opting for the former. (The evidence from astronomy narrows the possibilities to a.d. 27, 30, 33, or 34). However, we want to set forth our case for the date of Friday, April 3, a.d. 33 as the exact day that Christ died for our sins. http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/04/april-3-ad-33 Read more

Same-sex marriage “fundamentally changes” the definition of the institution and only a few homosexual “protesters” even wanted the change, two gay commentators have said. http://www.christian.org.uk/news/same-sex-marriage-slammed-by-gay-critics/?e040414 Read more

Mark Tooley I was only 10 years old but I remember that day very well, with the giant newspaper headline “Saigon Falls” and television footage of desperate Vietnamese crowds pleading at the U.S. embassy gates for escape. Thousands would later be executed by their new Communist masters. Weeks before, Cambodia had also fallen to the monstrous Khmer Rouge, who would murder nearly 2 million, with similar scenes of anguish at the U.S. Embassy there, as well as in Laos, where... Read more

Evangelicals have “become very wonderful friends, probably the best friends we have in the world today,” pronounced Rabbi Shlomo Riskin at this evening’s session on “Christians, Jews, and the State of Israel” at the Tikvah Fund in New York. They have “shown important empathy” and have a “very real sense of camaraderie with the Jews and Jewish theology,” Riskin said of Evangelicals. But he noted they are “more and more targeted” by Palestinian advocacy and the “great lie” that Israel... Read more

Christian girls in Egypt are being kidnapped, raped, made to convert and forced into marriages due to the “twin-headed cultural hydra” of “deep-seeded Muslim and male supremacism,” warns a 2012 study that is getting renewed attention. http://juicyecumenism.com/2014/03/29/christian-girls-in-egypt-kidnapped-raped-converted/?utm_source=flocknote&utm_medium=email&utm_term=5&utm_content=article&utm_campaign=Weekly%20Wrap%20Up%204-3-14 Read more

Campus egalitarians doth protest too much. They seek not equality but the superiority conferred by victimhood. They yearn to be oppressed—or rather, to be perceived as sufferers—so as to take command of the university, the state, and through them, of you. Radical campus egalitarians are the new elect, the chosen, the saved. They are, in short, the new religious, however much, in conventional terms, they may appear to be unchurched. This applies not simply to victimization’s usual suspects—certain approved minorities—but... Read more

Study suggests Nabataean architecture was influenced by the sun http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/news/casting-new-light-on-petra/ Read more

Charles Murray Why the American spirit of innovation is in trouble, and what culture has to do with it. http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2014/04/does-america-still-have-what-it-takes/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=caa75f6679-2014_4_2&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-caa75f6679-41159925 Read more

Orthodox Judaism believes in the importance of engaging reality, not a world we wish existed. http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2014/04/male-and-female-created-he-them/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=29d187ca02-2014_4_1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-29d187ca02-41159925 Read more

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will shortly publish the second part of its latest report, on the likely impact of climate change. Government representatives are meeting with scientists in Japan to sex up—sorry, rewrite—a summary of the scientists’ accounts of storms, droughts and diseases to come. But the actual report, known as AR5-WGII, is less frightening than its predecessor seven years ago. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303725404579460973643962840?mod=trending_now_4 Read more