Category: Bible

Laws on Selling Women in the Book of Exodus

4/30/2018

I have often been asked to explain how Exodus 21:7-11 can be reconciled with the goodness of God.

And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do. If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her. And if he have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters. If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish. And if he do not these three unto her, then shall she go out free without money.

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What are the Pillars of the Earth Mentioned in the Bible?

2/5/2018

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Yesterday, a facebook acquaintance asked me for help understanding a common misconception about the Bible. He said that one of his friends wanted to know how anyone could believe the Bible when it contains such outrageous claims like the claim that the earth is resting on pillars instead of being a globe suspended in space. Here is the answer that I gave:

The Bible does not say that the earth rests on pillars. There are only three verses which speak of the pillars of the earth, and all three are using figurative language to refer to leaders among men. This is the same figure of speech that Paul used in Galatians 2:9 where he spoke of Peter, James and John being pillars in the church.

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Thou Shalt not Oppress the Stranger: A Review of "The Immigration Crisis" by James Hoffmeier

9/16/2017

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The Purpose of the Book

The purpose of this book was to prove that the commands regarding Israel’s treatment of strangers were only intended to apply to legally resident aliens. In order to prove this point, Hoffmeier put forward the claim that

“In the Hebrew Bible the alien (ger) was a person who entered Israel and followed legal procedures to obtain recognized standing as a resident alien.”

In contrast, Hoffmeier described the foreigner (nekhar) as

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The Problem with Finding Problems with Standards

4/15/2017

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This past Thursday, April 13th, evangelist Dave Young published a very thought provoking article on standards. He explained that there are five categories of standards in the life of a Christian: (1) standards that are pure obedience to the Bible, (2) standards that are applications of biblical principles, (3) standards that protect us from our own weaknesses, (4) standards in response to the culture, and (5) standards that help a weaker brother.

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James, Paul, and Abraham: What Does it Mean to be Justified?

12/14/2016

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I recently spent several days engaged in a facebook debate with a Catholic, and in the process, I was challenged to re-think my view of the relationship between faith and works in James chapter two. Catholic theologians claim that James 2 teaches the necessity of adding good works to our faith in order to obtain final salvation. The typical response to this claim is to argue that James is only speaking of good works as an evidence of our salvation and not as the means of our salvation. The greatest challenge to this argument is found in the use of the word “justified” in verses 21 and 24. Here is my solution to this challenge:

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A Response to Dr. Grudem on Third Party Voting

11/1/2016

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Recently, a friend of mine asked me for my thoughts on Dr. Wayne Grudem's article answering objections to voting for Donald Trump. Dr. Grudem responded to 11 objections and then wrote a lengthy comparison of the proposed policies of Trump and Hillary followed by an appeal for Christians to "seek what is best for the nation." I read Dr. Grudem's article and jotted down the following thoughts in response to his answers:

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A Lesson on Strategy from the Second Temple

10/23/2016

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The fourth chapter of Ezra tells us how the enemies of God forced God's people to stop building the Temple. According to verses 4 and 5, the enemy made life difficult for the Jews and pestered them with actions intended to frustrate the plan to build the Temple. This slowed down the work so that it was not completed during the reign of Cyrus or that of his successor, Ahasuerus, or even of his successor, Artaxerxes.

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A “Brief” Response to Matthew Vines

10/19/2016

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A few years ago, a young man by the name of Matthew Vines released a viral video in which he claimed to refute the traditional interpretation of the Bible’s teachings regarding homosexuality. Vines claimed to take the traditional view head on and to prove that the verses used to support it do not actually mean what traditionalists claim that they mean. There are several responses to Vines’ claim, but I was recently asked to write a brief analysis of his claim in light of the view

expressed in my video “What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality.” Well, I tried to be brief, but I also wanted to be thorough, so here is my relatively brief response to the claims of Matthew Vines:

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The Bible and The Donald: Immigration

9/28/2016

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I have heard many Christians say that they are voting for Donald Trump because they like his immigration policy, and I've just dismissed these claims as examples of ignorance in the church. More recently, however, I've heard several Christian leaders claim that Trump's immigration plan is biblical, and this really caught my attention. This is not some generic assertion of favor toward vague goals. This is a specific claim that the written policy of Donald Trump can be measured against the written Word of God and proven to be good. With that in mind, let's take a few moments to compare what Donald Trump has written about immigration with what God has written about immigration.

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