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Happy Resurrection Day – Jesus Lives!

April 4th, 2010 by Ty Wallace posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26) We can be assured that these words are true because Jesus Himself rose from the dead!

May you reflect on this day all that God has done for us in Jesus Christ and be ever thankful for his riches in grace and mercy. Happy Resurrection Day!

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Eternal Punishment vs. Finite Crime

March 31st, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Christian Living | 8 Comments »

In Old Testament times, people would take revenge against one another in ways that were absolutely shocking. There was no balance. It was not uncommon to kill someone for being disrepectful or for some petty crime. Then God stepped in with the whole “eye for an eye” thing to keep things a bit more fair when it came to punishment and justice.

Later, in the New Testament, Jesus raises the bar even more. It was no longer good enough to “let the punishment fit the crime” so to speak. Now, you’re supposed to “turn the other cheek!” You’re supposed to respond with grace and love. Ok, we got the whole punishment fitting the crime thing (for the most part), but we’re still a long way away from turning those cheeks.

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Take My Word for It

March 23rd, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Evangelism | Comments Off

Several months ago, I had written about the idea of non-believers not accepting the books of the New Testament as evidence of actual events. What they are looking for is “extra-biblical texts” to corroborate what the Bible says.

In like fashion, I recently heard one atheist mention (several times, actually) that a person’s personal testimony of an experience with God would not be sufficient evidence to make a claim of His existence. Now, to a degree, I would have to agree with him. However, there are some inconsistencies with this idea.

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Why We Still Sin

March 16th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Christian Living | 2 Comments »

Last week, I posted my thoughts on the subsitutionary atonement of Christ. At the end of that post, I posed a question that I promised to address this week. It’s “next week” now, so I suppose I should keep my promise and address this issue.

Interestingly enough, to a large degree my perspective given in last week’s post is actually quite heavily rooted in the concepts I’m sharing this week. In other words, the question of why we continue to sin after accepting Christ was a major factor in my understanding regarding exactly what Christ’s sacrifice actually covered on our behalf.

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Substitutionary Atonement

March 9th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Sin | Comments Off

Recently I was listening to some atheists discussing their concerns regarding the idea of the substitutionary atonement of Christ. Basically, that’s just a big, fancy term for the fact that Jesus died for our sins. Nothing more complicated than that.

Here is the misunderstanding that I heard based on how the conversation went. They don’t get how someone else can be punished in our place. If we are the ones who have sinned, then someone else should not be punished. The analogy that they used was a big brother getting punished for the fact that the little brother did something wrong.

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Omniscience vs. Free Will

March 2nd, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in God's Character | 2 Comments »

In a recent atheist podcast that I subscribe to, the hosts were discussing the idea of the omniscience of God and how this somehow contradicts the idea of free will. Their argument was basically that, if God already knows what you’re going to do and the things you or I will choose before you do so, then you and I have not choice but to make that choice.

Normally, I am quite pleased and even pleasantly surprised at the fact that these hosts are very intellectually careful about what they say and how they present arguments. Granted, I obviously don’t always agree with their conclusions, but I respect their diligence for truth. In this case, however, I was quite surprised at this argument and the conclusion they came to. Not because of a simple disagreement, but because the argument simply wasn’t sound to begin with.

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Extraordinary Events

February 24th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Miracles | Comments Off

If I had a nickel for every time I heard a non-believer claim that “extraordinary events require extraordinary evidence” I would be independently wealthy. The irony of this is that usually it’s the people who claim to be the most intellectually honest. In fact, these are the group who are quick to cast dispersions on Christians (or other theists) for committing the very crime for which they themselves are guilty.

The man credited for this idea of extraordinary events requiring extraordinary evidence is 18th century philosopher, David Hume. Hume was a materialist. His worldview was such that miracles were completely impossible on the basis that they would have to have a cause which was not materialistic. Since he did not believe in the existence of anything other than the material world, any evidence of anything which could even potentially be miraculous was dismissed out of hand.

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Who Designed the Designer?

February 16th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Evangelism | Comments Off

Originally, I had wanted to write something about a quote that I had read from Richard Dawkins where he said something to the effect that, by all outward appearances, if we didn’t know any better, it looks like life is the product of design. I couldn’t find that quote, however, but instead found a large number of hits for a different quote from Dawkins.

Over and over again, I found countless hits (and now, here is one more) where Dawkins was quoted as asking some variation of the question, “Who designed the designer?” This is his refutation of the Intelligent Design theory (ID). In some sense, I find this quote almost as absurd as the one that I was looking for in the first place.

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Atheist or Agnostic?

February 10th, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Christian Living | Comments Off

In the past, I had often thought a certain way regarding the difference between someone who claims to be an atheist versus someone claiming to be agnostic. My understanding had been that atheism was a very arrogant claim. My understanding was that to be an atheist, one was claiming that there was certainly no God. It seemed to me that this was an impossible claim unless one knew first-hand of the existence of every single thing in the entire universe.

My thinking, therefore, was that one could never legitamately be less than agnostic. In actuality, I still actually think this is true with one exception. I don’t actually think that this understanding of “atheist” is accurate. Coming tot his understanding is a result of, ironically, my studies in apologetics. One main thing that I learned in my studies has been that absolute certainty is not necessary to claim a belief about something.

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Oral Tradition and the Telephone Game

February 3rd, 2010 by Dan Carrington posted in Evangelism | Comments Off

Today, I heard what was most likely the most laughable argument against the historicity of the gospels that I have ever heard. It was a comparison of the oral tradition which passed down the accounts of Jesus of Nazareth until they were written down against the game of “Telephone.”

Basically, the idea here was based on the idea that most scholars put the first written gospels at between 20 and 25  years after Christ’s death, burial and resurrection. (Yes, I know that most scholars only agree on the first two.) Therefore, for the first 20 to 25 years, the events later recorded in the gospels were passed down via oral tradition, or the telling of stories from one generation to the next.

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