He is Risen: Historical Evidence that Jesus Rose from the Dead

Did Jesus really rise from the dead? Is there any evidence that this actually happened, or is this just a product of myth, legend, or religious wishful thinking? As it turns out, the resurrection of Jesus is well supported by historical evidence and serves as the best explanation for the facts surrounding his life, death, and the emergence of early Christianity.

In this article we shall focus on New Testament Scholar Gary Habermas’ minimal facts approach (MFA). The MFA, explains Habermas, “considers only those data that are so strongly attested historically that they are granted by nearly every scholar who studies the subject, even the rather skeptical ones”.

This comes after Habermas has sifted through some 3000 peer reviewed academic articles penned in several languages. Having done so Habermas identifies 12 such facts but we shall focus only on four that are needed to make the case for Christ:

• Jesus’ crucifixion.
• Jesus’ burial.
• Jesus’ empty tomb.

Jesus’ post mortem appearances that convinced Paul, James and the disciples that he had been raised from the dead.

What is the best explanation for these facts surrounding the life and death of Jesus? How can we account for the impact of Jesus ministry, his miracle working, his empty tomb, his post-mortem appearances, and the radical conversion of the early disciples?

The explanation with the most explanatory scope (which simply means to say explains the most facts) is that God really had raised Jesus Christ from the dead.

Examine the evidences here.

Has the Great Falling Away from the Faith Begun? – Part 1

There have always been passionate preachers who warned of the approaching apocalypse and denounced the corruption of society. What is different today?

The Bible speaks repeatedly of “falling away.” Sometimes the word “apostasy” is used, meaning rebellion or turning away from something that you had believed in.

In the Old Testament, terms such as “backsliding” appear (Jer 2:19; 5:6; 8:5; 14:7; Hos 11:7). When it came to apostasy in Israel, it was a turning away from the Word of God, from His will, and from His presence. This has always been associated with idolatry, immorality, social injustice, egoism, and sooner or later the judgment of God. Among other things, Daniel uses this word for the time of the Antichrist: 

“With flattery he will corrupt those who have violated the covenant (apostatized), but the people who know their God will firmly resist him” (Dan. 11:32 [NIV]).

In the New Testament, we find various passages that speak of apostasy from divine truths.

The first to speak of apostasy in the end times was the Lord Jesus Himself. He prophesied that in a coming time of tribulation this would be seen in a particular way, 

“At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people” (Matt 24:10-11). 

The same word is used in the parable of the sower and the four soils. From the seed that falls in stony places, it says: 

“But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away” (Matt 13:21). 

Although the Word of God has had some effect on them, they fall away as soon as there are problems.

The Lord Jesus called deception one of the most important end-time signs before His coming in glory. It is the only sign that is repeated three times in Matthew 24 (verses 4-5, 11, 23-26). And, although the culmination of the seduction will come in the last great tribulation period, we already see the harbingers of it.

Continue reading here.

Watchdog Groups Decry 'Innate Bias' of Media towards Israel

Coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been a sore spot for Israel and its supporters. For years, the pro-Israel community has accused the media of bias in their reporting, especially during times of near-war skirmishes.

The most recent clashes in Gaza were no exception, with some media watchdog groups claiming that coverage of the flare-up, which saw more than 450 rockets fired towards Israel in less than 48 hours, failed to take into account the months-long attacks by Palestinian rioters, prompted by Hamas, upon southern Israel leading up to the rocket attacks.

"Journalists never cover the Gaza situation fairly. Never," Dan Gainor, vice president of business and culture at the Media Research Center, a media watchdog group, told JNS.

"Hamas has been trying to tear down the border fence, has sent terrorists across the border, and has launched rockets and fire kites into Israel, but the media have almost completely ignored every attack," he said.

"They won't call them 'terrorists,' even though the U.S. considers Hamas a terror organization, and they claim 'dozens' of rockets," said Gainor. "There have been hundreds and hundreds. That's not journalism. It's public relations."

An example of such bias occurred at a State Department briefing last week.

Continue reading here.

The Argument from the Empty Tomb

“It is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions” — D.H. van Daalen.

The empty tomb of Jesus is the best-attested fact of ancient history. (Sure, there have always been some liberal “scholars” who denied this despite evidence, but people seek out this tiny minority to support their preconceptions.) The tomb was empty. What happened? There must be an explanation. In fact, several explanations have been attempted, but most fail with even a cursory examination. The rest fail when examined in light of historical context. Here are a few examples of how fundamentally flawed these “explanations” can be.

Read the details of each argument and their refutation in the article here.

'Jesus was a Palestinian' - Islam's Plot to Rewrite World History

Rep. Ilhan Omar's (D-Minn.) history of egregious antisemitic remarks and dismissal of the Islamist 9-11 attacks as "some people who did something" pale in comparison to her most recent comment which, in a subtle but horrific manner, threatens all of Judeo-Christian Western society.

Omar retweeted a New York Times op-ed by Eric V. Copage, which claimed that "Jesus, born in Bethlehem, was most likely a Palestinian man with dark skin."

"As I grew older, I learned that the fair-skinned, blue-eyed depiction of Jesus has for centuries adorned stained glass windows and altars in churches throughout the United States and Europe," Copage, who is Black, wrote. "But Jesus, born in Bethlehem, was most likely a Palestinian man with dark skin."

Although the article was about the historical accuracy of Jesus' depicted ethnicity (particularly in relation to Church art), white versus person-of-color, this one reference to Jesus' national allegiance became the focus of media debate. At face value, the claim that Jesus was a Palestinian is anachronistic. Palestinian, as a national identity, has never existed. And Jesus was, by all accounts, a Judean who worshipped the God of Israel.

The claim that Jesus was a person of color is not necessarily accurate. According to Christian tradition, Jesus was descended from the House of David who was the offspring of Ruth the Moabite. Moabites, as the descendants of the crimson Esau, were reportedly red-haired and light-skinned..

Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a senior lecturer in the Department of Arabic at Bar-Ilan University, unpacked Omar's motives, explaining that they had even greater implications than a simple disagreement over Jesus' identity.

Dr. Kedar called this perception "re-engineered history," a technique he claims is inherent in Islam and the Arab world.

Read the details here.

Why and When was the Myth of al-Aqsa Created?

How did Jerusalem become so important to Muslims?

The importance of Jerusalem for Jews and Christians is beyond dispute, since the connection of this city to Judaism and Christianity is part of universal concepts about history and theology. However, when it comes to modern politics, we hear over and over that Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims demand that Jerusalem become the capital of the future Palestinian state, owing to its holiness to Islam. The question is how and when this city became holy to Muslims.

Muhammad's abandonment of Jerusalem explains the fact that this city is not mentioned even once in the Koran. After Palestine was occupied by the Muslims, its capital was Ramle, 30 miles to the west of Jerusalem, signifying that Jerusalem meant nothing to them.

Islam rediscovered Jerusalem 50 years after Muhammad's death. In 682 CE, 'Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr rebelled against the Islamic rulers in Damascus, conquered Mecca and prevented pilgrims from reaching Mecca for the Hajj. 'Abd al-Malik, the Umayyad Calif, needed an alternative site for the pilgrimage and settled on Jerusalem which was then under his control.

Since the holiness of Jerusalem to Islam has always been, and still is no more than a politically motivated holiness, any Palestinian Arab politician would be putting his political head on the block should he give it up. Must Judaism and Christianity defer to myths related in Islamic texts or allegedly envisioned in Muhammad's dreams, long after Jerusalem was established as the ancient, real center of these two religions which preceded Islam?

Read the full article here.

What We Know

There is much we don't know about God's timing for end-time events simply because we won't know until they happen. We have what the Bible says and we take that information and use that as a lens by which we view current events through, which is known as exegesis. The reverse of this tries to fit current events into the pages of the Bible, which is known as eisegesis. In other words, they are assuming a correlation and implying that xyz must mean this passage, because of abc. That is what we should avoid at all cost from doing. What we do know, is that God's word is sure, and it will come to pass on God's time.

Long ago, pastors, priests, teachers, and theologians realized a convenient trick that if you don't understand something, or it doesn't fit your agenda, you can simply make it allegorical, or spiritual, and relegate it to the "pie in the sky" section of their mental filing cabinets. Out of sight, out of mind right?

We have to go with what we know, and then, use Scripture to interpret what we see in the here and now...not the other way around. My intent here is to simply go with what we actually know and what we can know with a high degree of certainty. Some of these events are yet future, but we can simply look around today and see things are unfolding exactly, as God's word said it would and follow those to their logical and scriptural conclusions.

Read the list of what we know here.

The Temple Harp Project: Another Step to Rebuilding the Temple

The Temple of Solomon was filled with the music of 4,000 harps and a remarkable couple have been on a lifelong journey to return that music in time for the Third Temple. Praise Hashem with the lyre; with the ten-stringed harp sing to Him (Psalms 33:2).

They recently released a video depicting the long-awaited fulfillment of the Psalm; a Jewish child returning to Israel removing a harp from a willow where her forefathers had hung it upon going out into exile.

The story of Micah and Shoshanna Harrari is a microcosm of the Jewish exile. As a young couple in the early '70's, they wandered the U.S., living in shacks, teepees, tents and sometimes sleeping outside.

"We were looking for the perfect place," Shoshanna told Breaking Israel News. "For us, that meant someplace beautiful. We lived in some beautiful places but we were always restless. If anyone said, 'you should check this place out,' we would pull up roots and go live there."

At one point in their wanderings, they were living in a shack in a forest in Colorado. With no electricity or running water, their entertainment was limited to reading to each other by candlelight. In the winter, a massive snowstorm buried their cabin, trapping them inside. 

They had a plentiful supply of firewood and enough food and water, but they had read all their books. After three days of being trapped, cabin fever began to set in. In desperation, they began to read the bible they carried along their journey but had never read.

"There we were with Avraham and Sarah, our relatives, in the cabin," Shoshanna said. "It was great. This became our main reading material and we were immediately captivated by Hashem's words. When we got to the prophets, one message kept being repeated; that Hashem will call back the Jews so we can settle our land and never be uprooted."

"This blew us away. Every time we read this, we knew it was an invitation to go to the land of our ancestors and help build up our homeland. We knew nothing about Israel but it sounded like our kind of place. We thought we could get a donkey and cart and wander around like Avraham and Sarah."

Continue reading here.

The Coming Literal, Visible and Physical Thousand Year Reign of Jesus Christ on this Earth from Jerusalem

By Geoffrey Grider

Now The End Begins

“And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD’S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, 'Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD'” (Isaiah 2:2-5 [KJV]).

All through the Old Testament, the prophets speak of the Day when Jesus Christ will sit on the throne of David, and rule the world in righteousness. It is called the Day of the Lord, a time period which starts with the Rapture of the Church, then into the time of Jacob’s trouble, Jesus returns at the Battle of Armageddon, and a one thousand year reign of Jesus Christ will commence on this Earth. For all you Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Preterists, and every other sect that spiritualizes actual, literal and physical events in Bible prophecy, this will be quite an eye-opener for you.

Continue reading here.

“Ye shall Hear of Wars and Rumors of Wars”

“But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day” (Proverbs 4:18).

What light is Solomon speaking of? Obviously, this is a prophecy of Israel’s Messiah, who later testifies: 

“I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12). 

What if we neglect to walk in His light? Here Solomon answers: 

“The way of the wicked is as darkness: they know not at what they stumble” (Proverbs 4:19). 

Note the words “…they know not at what they stumble.”

This is interesting, because it shows all of humanity. The natural man, when something goes wrong, in most cases blames someone or something else: be it circumstances, objects, family, relatives, neighbors, etc. Why does he blame others? Because that person is in darkness and does not realize why he has stumbled.

This can be applied to the nations of the world. Think of all the wars they have fought. While the nations proudly present their soldiers as heroes, erect great monuments, and exhibit their pride in military parades or special holidays, the real reason behind it all is: darkness. It is the work of the god of this world, who translates himself into light, but it is fake light. 

“And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).

Wikipedia has a daily column titled “On this day…”, where it lists several events that took place during that particular day. We notice that in most cases it is war.

Why war? Because one nation is being indoctrinated to such an extent that they wholeheartedly believe the other nation is wrong, and to solve the problem there must be war.

Not surprisingly, Jesus in His prophetic speech made this statement: 

“…ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars...”

Continue reading here.

The Truth behind Hamas and the Gaza Protests

Hamas was proud to take responsibility this week for unleashing a barrage of 199 rockets and mortars directed at southern Israel; on houses, towns, villages, kindergartens and schools. For such is the nature of this dangerous Islamist movement which has controlled Gaza for 11 years and for whom the only aim is the publicly-avowed destruction of the Jewish state.

Hamas has dedicated almost the entirety of its resources to that single aim. The public relations campaign disseminated by its apologists brazenly blames the poverty of ordinary Gazans on Israel.

Indeed, Gazans are living in poverty but the reality should and could have been wildly different.

According to every serious international estimate, two-thirds of the income of Hamas ends up in the pocket of its military wing.

On this basis, Hamas has squandered at least 300 million dollars for the sole objective of attacking Israelis, rather than for improving the lives of the civilians it controls. Undoubtedly there is poverty in Gaza, undoubtedly the ordinary Gazan deserves a better life, yet undoubtedly too the prioritization of the killing of Israelis over the welfare of its own people is what this extremist organization is all about.

It was the Hamas leadership which actively encouraged and even paid the demonstrators to storm the border despite its complete understanding of the dire consequences. But most of all it was Hamas itself which openly boasted that well over 80% of the fatalities were its armed combatants and not innocent and peaceful demonstrators. All of this is widely documented, but conveniently ignored by so many.

There will be those who will react to this article with their usual skepticism and cynicism, but I state unequivocally – Israel bears no ill-will towards the people of Gaza and any casualty of an innocent person is truly tragic. At the same time, Israel bears much ill-will, and justifiably, towards Hamas and will defend itself vigorously against it.

Read the details here.

Why History still Matters: the 1967 Six-Day War

Mention history, and it can trigger a roll of the eyes.

Add the Middle East to the equation, and folks might start running for the hills, unwilling to get caught up in the seemingly bottomless pit of details and disputes.

But without an understanding of what happened in the past, it's impossible to grasp where we are today. And where we are has profound relevance for the region and the world.

Fifty-one years ago this week, the Six-Day War broke out.

While some wars fade into obscurity, this one remains as relevant today as in 1967. Many of its core issues remain unresolved.

Politicians, diplomats, and journalists continue to grapple with the consequences of that war, but rarely consider, or perhaps are even unaware of the context. Yet without context, some critically important things may not make sense.

First, in June 1967, there was no state of Palestine. It didn't exist and never had. Its creation, proposed by the UN in 1947, was rejected by the Arab world because it also meant the establishment of a Jewish state alongside it.

Second, the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem were in Jordanian hands. Violating solemn agreements, Jordan denied Jews access to their holiest places in eastern Jerusalem. To make matters still worse, they desecrated and destroyed many of those sites.

Meanwhile, the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian control, with harsh military rule imposed on local residents. And the Golan Heights, which were regularly used to shell Israeli communities far below, belonged to Syria.

Third, the Arab world could have created a Palestinian state in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip any day of the week. They didn't. There wasn't even a discussion about it. And Arab leaders, who today profess such attachment to eastern Jerusalem, rarely if ever visited it. It was viewed as an Arab backwater.

Fourth, the 1967 boundary at the time of the war, so much in the news these days, was nothing more than an armistice line dating back to 1949 - familiarly known as the Green Line. That boundary was established after five Arab armies attacked Israel in 1948 with the aim of destroying the embryonic Jewish state. They failed.

Armistice lines were drawn after that war, but they weren't formal borders. They couldn't be. The Arab world, even in defeat, refused to recognize Israel's very right to exist.

Continue reading here.

Turkey - a Prophetic Piece Aligned

"And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal: And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords: Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet: Gomer, and all his bands; the house of Togarmah of the north quarters, and all his bands: and many people with thee" (Ezekiel 38:3-6).

In the late 1980s, and again in the late 1990s I served two, two-year tours of duty in Izmir, Turkey and Ankara, Turkey, respectively. I loved living in the Republic of Turkey. It was a unique anomaly in the world; a truly secular nation with a 95 percent Muslim population.

However, the nation I once knew ... is no more, for since those times Turkey has dramatically changed to align itself into its prophetic end-time position.

... over the last decade the cancerous growth of fundamentalist Islam has crept into the government and a building tide of events has placed the radical Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdogan in near dictatorial power. 

We are now witnessing the spiritual darkness of what I call the "Koranic Curtain" closing down upon the people of Turkey in similar fashion to how the Iron Curtain fell and crushed the freedom of the peoples of Eastern Europe. But the darkness behind the Koranic Curtain is far, far worse.

The people of every nation imprisoned behind the Koranic Curtain are subject to a theocratic group of evil men guided by the writings of a flawed sinful, man whose religious tome tells them they are justified in violently controlling every aspect of people's lives.

Not a shock, but a prophetic fulfillment ...

That said, as students of biblical prophecy this development should come as no shock.

Decades ago as I roamed the country of Turkey, I knew the prophecy experts of the day said the Gog/Magog War of Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39 foretold that the peoples of these Turkish lands would accompany the Gog/Magog alliance in a war with the intention to exterminate Israel.

Read the details here.

Israeli Defense Minister Liberman Says that "Peace in the Middle East will Come with the Coming of the Messiah"

By Geoffrey Grider
Now The End Begins

“Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen” (Revelation 1:7 [KJV]).

EDITOR’S NOTE: It was stunning watching Iran attack Israel from Syria barely one day after President Trump announced that the United States was pulling out of the Iran Nuclear treaty negotiated by Barack Obama. It was electrifying watching Israel respond to Iran’s attack with the full shock-and-awe of the Israeli Air Force. But it was jaw-dropping reading this morning that Israeli Defense Minister, Avigdor Liberman, when asked about the prospects for peace in the Middle East firmly and resolutely stated that peace can only come with the coming of the promised Jewish Messiah. Pray for Israel and the Jewish people as they approach all the coming turmoil surrounding regathered Israel’s 70th anniversary on May 14th. Pray that God will do a mighty work there in the coming time of Jacob’s trouble that will take place immediately after the Pretribulation Rapture of the Church. 

“For thus saith the LORD, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place” (Jeremiah 29:10 [KJV]).

Read/watch the details here.

Is It Time for the Third Temple?

The current situation in Israel is one of constant tension and turmoil. Yet in the midst of Arab aggression and opposition, it appears that Jewish interest in rebuilding their Temple continues to grow. In the last few months there have been a number of events that have taken place that appears to be ratcheting up the interest level of the Temple movement in Israel among Jews. One of the more interesting developments has been the re-establishment of the Sanhedrin after 1600 years of absence.

The main problem facing those who would rebuild the Temple is political in nature. Israel recaptured the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount in the Six-Day War (1967) and then Moshe Dayan returned day-to-day control of the Temple Mount to the Muslims. Until Israel comes to the point where they are willing to exercise political control over the Temple Mount, they will not be able to restore the Temple. Increasingly, there are new organizations that arise among the orthodox Jews seeking to regain hegemony over their most holy place.

The point that needs to be made is that Israeli Jews are increasingly interested in rebuilding their Temple. It appears that the more the Islamic militants increase their terrorist pressure upon the Jewish nation, the more religious Jews step up their efforts to focus upon rebuilding the Third Temple.

I have often taught that the long-awaited permission for the Jews to rebuild their Temple will likely be part of the covenant between Antichrist and Israel that starts the seven-year tribulation after the rapture. It appears to me that the Temple will be rebuilt and supervised supernaturally by the two witnesses during the first half of the tribulation.

Regardless of how the Lord works out the details, His plan will be brought to pass. In the meantime, many of the current events now taking place in and around Jerusalem and the Temple Mount are setting the stage for what will be a string of events that will usher in the second coming of Christ. Meanwhile, the church is looking for the rapture, where Christ will take us in an instance to be with Himself for all eternity. Maranatha!

Read the article in its entirety here.

The Three Questions of Matthew 24

By Jack Kelley

As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” (Matt. 24:3)

One of the mistakes Christians make in reading the Bible is caused by our tendency to look at everything through “Church colored glasses.” By that I mean we read it as if it all applies directly to us without regard for the context or historical background. I know Paul said everything that was written in the past was written to teach us (Romans 15:4) but that doesn’t mean it was all written to us or about us. It means we’re supposed to learn from the experiences of those who came before us. A prime example of this kind of mistake can be found in our interpretation of the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24-25). 

I’ll show you what I mean.

Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”(Matt. 24:1-2)

These two verses set the tone for the entire discussion, yet in our rush to get to the meat of the passage they are often ignored. From Mark’s account we know that after Jesus said this, four of the disciples came to Him for clarification. They were Peter, James, John and Andrew (Mark 13:3), and they asked Him 3 questions; When will this happen? (When will these buildings be torn down? ) What will be the sign of your coming? What will be the sign of the End of the Age?

So let’s look at them individually to gain more of the background that prompted these questions. We’ll find that the first two are pretty simple, but the third one is a different matter altogether."

Read the details here.

President Trump's Recognition of Jerusalem Sparks New Talks on the Building of the Third Jewish Temple

By Geoffrey Grider

Now The End Begins

EDITOR’S NOTE: When I first started studying prophecy and heard people talk about the coming Third Temple in Jerusalem, it used to excite me to think we might be the generation that actually sees that happen. But the more I studied and learned how to rightly divide the Scriptures as Paul tells us to do, the more it became apparent that the next Jewish Temple will not house the Holy Spirit, but Antichrist. Jesus warns about that in Matthew 24, Daniel warns about that in chapter 9, and John in Revelation tells us that Jerusalem will be seen as “Sodom and Egypt” by God in the time of Jacob’s trouble. 

“What he did … was an enormous step in bringing the Temple,” said Asaf Fried, official spokesman for the United Temple Movement, an association of organizations working towards making the Third Temple a reality.

He added, “This necessarily had to come from a non-Jew in order to bring them into the process, so they will be able to take their part in the Temple.” Fried sees Trump’s role similar to the one played by Cyrus, the Persian king who ended the Babylonian exile and helped build the Second Jewish Temple.

Continue reading here.

How can We Tell when the Bible Condones what It Records?

The Bible does record some things that it doesn’t endorse. People doing and saying ungodly things is a sort of negative example - i.e. “Don’t be like Cain/Esau/Absalom.” There are a couple rules of thumb that you can use to discern whether the Bible condones a certain statement it records.

1. Who said it?

2. What’s the context?

3. When did it happen?

4. How does the description of the action line up with what the Bible commands us to do prescriptively?

5. Finally, God has given us a brain and a conscience, and in most cases those should be sufficient to discern whether the Bible condones or condemns the actions it records. When those are not sufficient, He has also given us local churches, pastors (Ephesians 4:11), and you can ask your pastor for guidance with a passage if it is confusing to you.

Read the details here.

Christ will Return

The old saying goes, that the eyes are of no use, if the mind is blind. So it is come to this then, that we who live in the most transformative, prophetically active time since the days of Christ, see so little interest in what the Bible has to say about what will come to pass in these last days. Tragically, the disinterest comes as equally from those who profess Christ, as from those who don't. The study today is over why this is.

The section of Bible Prophecy which speaks to the events of the last days, Eschatology, is not some fringe hobby that people dabble in with as the same seriousness as those who follow UFOs or Big Foot. Eschatology is a major doctrinal study that consumes around 30% of your Bible. John F. Walvoord, the late President of the Dallas Theological Seminary, dubbed it the 'capstone of Christian doctrine', because your eschatological view determines how you hold to every other major doctrine, such as Soteriology, Ecclesiology, etc.) If you think about it for a second, your entire Bible, either centers around Christ's first coming, or to His second. It only makes sense that in a book in which God is revealing Himself to mankind progressively, (i.e. not all at once), is a book that hinges around His own Incarnation and His return for His people.

Yet today more than ever, so-called Evangelicals are increasingly becoming dismissive of Bible Prophecy because they believe it is a fool's errand, that Christ may never return, or that it impedes their ability to enact cultural change through the social gospel. This is promulgated in the Reformed Theology groups as well as thru the Prosperity Gospel and Emergent Church movements. It's like it has become popular again in Christendom, to no longer care if or when Christ will return, as if it is some distraction we needn't concern ourselves with.

Satan and all of his demonic hosts then, HATE Bible Prophecy, because it foretells their sure doom. We know the things Satan hates most, because these are the things he has spent most of his time and energy, trying to destroy. Likewise, if the world is under the temporary control of Satan, it makes sense then that these are the same things the world hates. Satan has invested millennia in distorting, perverting, discrediting, dismissing, and silencing true, orthodox, and Scriptural Bible Prophecy.

Continue reading here.

Amnesty Report Claims Israel 'Kills', 'Tortures' Palestinian Children

The recent Amnesty International Report on the state of human rights in 159 countries and territories during 2017 claims Israel is “killing” and “torturing” Palestinian children with impunity. 

Its critique of Israel is more extensive and critical than those of known bastions of human rights violations, including Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

Daniel Laufer, head of foreign media relations for Monitor, said the annual report has long harbored egregious anti-Israel bias.

“Amnesty’s 2017 report is rife with distortions and maintains the group’s longstanding anti-Israel bias,” he said on Thursday. “That the Israel section is longer than those on Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, laughably suggests that there are greater human rights issues in Israel than in those countries.”

Examine the details of this report here.