Christian Questions Bible Podcast

Several weeks ago we looked into the life and times of Noah, the righteous man of God who built the Ark upon dry ground in obedience to the will and direction of God. The flood came and destroyed a world that had not only become a society without God, it had become a society that destroyed God. Spirit and human being alike took the goodness of God’s creation, mixed it into a forbidden hybrid formula of intelligence and form that may have resembled God’s intentions on the outside, but on the inside was a force that rebelled against all that God stood for. The Bible tells us that the resulting destruction was a preview of future destruction to come…has the full length feature of that preview arrived?

Thanksgiving has come and gone. All that remains are leftovers from a great meal, the memories of family and friends, excitement or disappointment at the result of a football game or two and the results of Black Friday shopping… Was it fun? Yes! Was it worthwhile? Of course! Did our holiday really focus on the true intention of “Thanksgiving?” Hmmm… Thanksgiving is one thing – “Thanks-Living” – well, that is an entirely different story!

Our world is in great need of many things. We need to learn to listen to those with whom we disagree, we need to be merciful and understanding, yet we also need to be firm and just. We also need to find light. Not just any light, we need to find the purest life-giving and revealing light of truth that is available… As Christians we know that the light of the world is Jesus, but what we need to learn is how to use that light, how to be clear reflections of that light and how to be worthy vessels of that light.

The Ebola virus. War between the Palestinians and Israel. Iraq being plundered by ISIS. Christians in the middle east being persecuted and killed. Worldwide anti-Semitism on the rise. The tenuous problems with Russia and Ukraine. In our country – lawlessness on the southern border, Government scandals over the IRS, the Health Care system and Benghazi, a skyrocketing National Debt… Shall I go on? It certainly seems that chaos and unrest are spreading faster than ever before. What should we be doing? Should we be afraid?

God is Almighty. He is all knowing and all seeing. We believe He is the very embodiment of wisdom, justice, love and power. As our Creator, we believe He has a plan - a detailed plan - that He will see accomplished for the good of all mankind. How do we think we know these things? The Bible. We believe that His Plan and its details are revealed in the Bible. Now, depending upon our brand of Christianity, we will come up with several contradictory interpretations of that plan unless we are willing to subject our understanding to a rigorous series of tests that will point us to Truth and not tradition. There are five rigorous tests, five ways of finding the mind of God in Scripture! Are you ready?

Resurrection. It is synonymous with the most basic tenets of Christian belief, no matter what denomination, sect or group one may come from. For most of us, we think about Jesus and the fact of his resurrection and we think about the prospect of our own resurrection. On the surface it sounds pretty simple – be faithful, die and then go to heaven – but – what if the doctrine of resurrection entailed more than that? What if what we normally envision with our “resurrection eyes” was only the beginning of something much bigger and even more amazing? Stay with us!

In just a few days the costumes will come out, the candy will be distributed, the parties will roar on! The ghosts, the goblins, the skeletons – the superheroes, the princesses, the ballerinas – all will engage in a happy celebration of Halloween – ironically the night where pagan tradition says the veil between the spirit world and our world is thinnest and therefore can be crossed by evil spirits…great! Halloween is based on paganism – Wicca - white witchcraft - is an outgrowth of paganism. So, is Wicca something that we should be afraid of?

Religion is a powerful thing. It wields a sword of conviction with which humanity will go to face great challenges. Depending on its purity, the results of this conviction can be very good or very bad. Religion can also wield a spear of bigotry that can be passionately thrown at a perceived enemy who is far away…unfortunately, Christianity and Islam both carry such weapons and have both been known to use them for harm. Is it possible that God is behind both of these religions?