Victory Blog

Prayer

 

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“Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise:  Mary was with child of the Holy Spirit.”¹

Five pastors contributed devotionals to a local newspaper of ways to put Christ back into Christmas, which appeared in a special spread just prior to the holiday.  The first one at the top began, “Regardless of your view of the parentage of Jesus…”  What a strange way to begin, I thought.  What would such various “views” have to do with the observance of Christmas?  What different views might the writer have in mind?

I could come up with two views I have heard of in the past.  One surmises that Joseph was the father and the infant was conceived prior to their marriage.  The other guesses that someone may have raped Mary or in some way impregnated her.  These views would be in keeping with the charge suggested by the Jews that Jesus was “born of fornication” (John 8:41).  They went even further, “and said unto Him, Say we not well that You are a Samaritan and have a devil?” (John 8:48).  Before long, “they took up stones to cast at Him” (John 8:59).

Both of these views are clearly wrong Read the rest of this post »

1. Matt 1:18 [↩]

Audio Sermon: Remember Your Future, 2 Cor 5:1-10

 

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“Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and He was buried, and He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.”¹

It seems like a “new” idea to me, and has stirred my cogitations. I suppose it was in my past training but it just didn’t strike me as so significant in the past.  All other religious systems are developments of ideas or fables;  Judaism and Christianity are built on actual historical events, many of which were supernaturally predicted in advance.  Ideas cannot be proven.  They can be favored, advanced, criticized, or whatever, but they are always inner, subjective.  Recorded prophesies and historical happenings can be demonstrated to be factual.  They were not dreams and imaginations.  They were real.  They took place.   God tied His message to mankind into the warp and woof of ongoing history.

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1. 1 Cor 15:3-4 [↩]

The most basic test for the reliability of ancient literature is bibliographical. How many copies of an ancient manuscript are known? How reliable are the copies we have and how much time has passed between writing the original and copying later surviving manuscripts?

The total count of all ancient New Testament manuscripts is over 24,970 partial or complete copies. By comparison, the next most copied text is the Iliad, of which there are only 643 ancient copies surviving. Further, over 400 years passed between the writing of the Iliad and the oldest surviving fragment, while roughly 50 years passed between writing the first known New Testament text and the oldest known fragment of it. The oldest complete Iliad dates from the 13th century, over 2000 years later while the oldest complete New Testament dates from A.D. 325, only 225 years later. What of other ancient texts? Read the rest of this post »

A recent Barna Research Group survey on what Americans believe confirms what this brief scenario illustrates: we are in danger of becoming a nation of relativists. The Barna survey asked, “Is there absolute truth?” Amazingly, 66 percent of American adults responded that they believe that “there is no such thing as absolute truth; different people can define truth in conflicting ways and still be correct.” The figure rises to 72 percent when it comes to those between the ages of 18 and 25.¹

1. Christianity Today, October 26, 1992, p. 30 [↩]