By Louis Markos
God created us to be adjectives; we insisted on being nouns.
Louis Markos talks about the 15th chapter of his recently released book “From A to Z in Narnia with CS Lewis”, in which he relates an idea or aspect of CS Lewis’ writing to a unique letter in the alphabet.
Click ‘play’ on the video below to watch.
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By John D. Gibbon
The release of the new Star Wars movie “The Force Awakens”, after its premier in LA on December 14th, has evoked a predictable media frenzy. For years, friends of my own generation — devout Star Wars fans from the beginning — have half-jokingly signed their emails “May the force be with you …” The ‘Force’ is now invoked almost everywhere. However, it is strange that in a society which has largely rejected conventional ideas of religion, the sci-fi literature of the age and its associated movies still uses pseudo-religious language and costume. The movie-sets look like intergalactic versions of Downton Abbey with the actors dressed in priestly costume. One has to concede that much of this is highly entertaining; e.g. stories about the nature and existence of alien beings in higher dimensions, UFOs, and strange forms of time travel. Such ideas are a convenient security-blanket for members of a generation who feel more comfortable with the concept of an impersonal force yet yearn for the mysticism that many other religions provide. There are now large numbers of people who take this type of material seriously and give it far more credence than the views expressed by Scripture about the nature of God and humanity. The Bible says that God is a Person, not an impersonal force; that he has a Name, and in His Son Jesus Christ, he came to this earth as a man to redeem His people and show us how to live. There is nothing impersonal about our universe. Moreover, He cannot be used as a tool for our own ends, nor can He be coaxed, bribed or manipulated as people attempted to do with the idol gods of the Old Testament. The prophet Jeremiah (14:22) once pleaded “Are there any among the false gods of the nations that can bring rain? Or can the heavens give showers?” For those who look down upon Christianity as a passing and intellectually flawed historical anomaly the Apostle Paul had the perfect answer (1 Corinthians 2:6-10):
Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” — these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.
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Check out Science and the Knowledge of God here.
By Louis Markos
Christ’s goal is to transform us into saints, not improve our personality.
Louis Markos talks about the 14th chapter of his recently released book “From A to Z in Narnia with CS Lewis”, in which he relates an idea or aspect of CS Lewis’ writing to a unique letter in the alphabet.
Click ‘play’ on the video below to watch.
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I went recently to a meeting of the Council of Dispensational Hermeneutics at Baptist Bible Seminary in Clark Summit, Pennsylvania, a small community near Scranton in northeastern Pennsylvania. I attended at the invitation of Dr. Michael Stallard, Academic Dean of the seminary. The focus of the talks was the Israel and the Church.
The meeting this year was important to Lampion Press because we are interested in the issues relating to the theology of the church and Israel in the Bible. I had opportunity to talk with several persons about possible books and also to sell a good number of William Watson’s recent book Dispensationalism before Darby published by Lampion Press. It has been argued for many decades that the teaching regarding the rapture and the return of Israel to their land was a view created by John Nelson Darby, an English lawyer and theologian, in the 1830s. Watson, a 17th and 18th century historian, has irrefutably demonstrated that many Christians and theologians held to a pre-tribulation rapture of believers and the return of Israel to their land before the second coming of Christ at least two hundred years before Darby.
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By John D. Gibbon
My wife (Sheila) and I are at sea on a Christmas cruise to the Canaries. Long, long ago I spent a year at sea, even serving as an unofficial deckhand for six months – unofficial in the sense I didn’t do a watch. I learned to love this dangerous environment but it can be truly frightening. Six days hove-to in a Force 11 (verging on 12) in a Biscay storm concentrates the mind wonderfully. If I recall the Beaufort scale correctly, 12 is hurricane force. When wind speeds reach 80-100mph the smaller surface waves are ripped away leaving the huge, deep rollers into whose troughs a ship can disappear like a cork. No clear air/water interface exists and the world seems full of what looks like grey-white shaving foam which claws and tears at your face. I suffered no sea-sickness but I had a terrible headache. Sailors have traditionally had a respect for the sea bordering on the superstitious because they know that however mild the weather, something nasty and dangerous may be lurking just over the horizon.
Many Christians think of danger as a personal thing, such as temptation, violence or suffering, but there is a different type of danger that could, for example, come from the pressures on the church exerted from an increasingly secular society. Those who attempt to argue the case for a biblical world-view often face intolerant opponents who consider that all past ideas and values are worthless. Some believe that what is human and what is intelligent needs to be re-defined. This idea suggests that humanity is no more than a blank page on which we can write our own script. On a very different tack, Martin Rees, the Royal Astronomer, has written several articles in the FT making it plain that in his view humanity is just in one stage on a long cosmic road of evolving intelligence. This isn’t the place to discuss these ideas in detail but it illustrates the type of serious issues with which Christian apologists have to deal. Last week I remarked on the generational change to the public mind where people think differently than their ancestors. The criticism that met the publication of Thomas Nagel’s book “Mind and Cosmos” in 2012 encapsulates many of the controversies and contradictions that appear to be inherent in modern attitudes to scientific discovery. Nagel is well known for his critique of reductionist accounts of the mind, and specifically the neo-Darwinian view of the emergence of consciousness. In “Mind and Cosmos”, as a rationalist philosopher, he argues that the standard physico-chemical reductionist account of the emergence of life — that it emerged from a series of accidents, acted upon by the mechanism of natural selection — flies in the face of common sense. Nagel is not the only modern philosopher to believe that the rise of science has permanently changed how people think of the world and our place in it and that there is too much emphasis placed on a mathematized understanding represented by modern physics.
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Check out Science and the Knowledge of God here.
Wayne Braudrick is the pastor of the Frisco Bible Church, in Frisco, Texas. My first meeting with him dispelled my expectations of a successful pastor, and graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, where I was taught, whose focus was largely on teaching the Bible and leading a large Dallas area church. Certainly he is all that, but he is so much more. Since I have had considerable interest in the Greco-Roman world for most of my life, I was taken back when I discovered his knowledge of the Roman world. This had been part of his early training, and though I had been to Rome several times, I found out a lot of interesting places that I had never seen, of which he had considerable knowledge. I can hardly wait to go back to see the early Christian church near the Coliseum and visit the Irish priest who watches over it.
Wayne Braudrick is a well-educated man (Th.M. from Dallas Seminary, and Ph.D. from XYZ), who has a great sense of humor and a heart for God and his people. Lampion Press had published his Whatever Happened to Manhood?, a down-to-earth presentation of the needs of men to “step up to the plate” and fulfill their God-given roles. Lampion has recently published the Study Guide to accompany the original book, which will make it ideal for a men’s study group, or use in Sunday School classes. I met with Wayne (I like that name) to encourage him to write, or have someone else of his choosing to write, a companion volume Whatever Happened to Womanhood?, which he is now in the process of doing. His Bible based and practical teaching also caused me to talk to him about other similar works, which we look forward to publishing. Look also for Wayne Braudrick’s Christmas volume, called Luke’s Curious Christmas, was released recently in light of the Christmas season.
View Wayne Braudrick’s work here
By R.M. Huffman
It’s almost Christmas! The genealogy of Jesus is of great Biblical significance. His descent from Adam is a fulfillment of God’s promise to the Serpent in Genesis 3, and His lineage from David confirms the truth of prophetic Scripture. Of less theological importance is this: through Noah, the direct ancestor of every human alive today, we all actually share a bloodline, no matter how remote, with a God who loved His creation so much that He became human so He could die for it. Pretty neat.
By Louis Markos
Christ is the myth made fact; he fulfilled the deepest yearnings of the pagans.
Louis Markos talks about the 13th chapter of his recently released book “From A to Z in Narnia with CS Lewis”, in which he relates an idea or aspect of CS Lewis’ writing to a unique letter in the alphabet.
Click ‘play’ on the video below to watch.
Check out the Lampion Press Store
Check out the Lampion Press Store
View more “All The Difference” posts
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