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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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:
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.
Does God command Christians not to vote for Trump? I know that this is a very controversial question, but let's consider what the Bible says in I Corinthians 5:11. "But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat." (1 Cor. 5:11)
Those given to Jesus by the Father were not the Calvinist elect, but rather they were the ones who had already believed the Old Testament and thus were followers of the Father before they met the Son. The Calvinist that I was debating introduced John 10:26 as an argument against my view of John 6, and I’d like to share my response with you as well.
The content of the third lesson in this series begins on page 53 of Dean Burgon's The Revision Revised, and covers two examples of errors in the critical text. The first comes from Acts 18:7. It is very difficult to convey Burgon's explanation of this verse through a mere outline, so I will just let him speak for himself before proceeding to the next verse. Here is Burgon's explanation of the error contained in the critical text rendition of Acts 18:7: Without fail, anytime that I bring up my preference for the Textus Receptus and the King James Version, I receive responses from people who assume that my position is based solely on a philosophical argument. I suppose that they are somewhat justified in coming to that conclusion, for most defenders of the TR and the KJV deal only with the philosophical arguments and seem to forget that their position has some very strong evidential support. The thing that I enjoy about Burgon's work is that he does not make this mistake. Burgon presents the philosophical arguments as a means of revealing the premises of both sides' arguments, and then he focuses most of his effort on testing those premises against the available evidence. In part 2 of my series, I presented Burgon's evidential analysis of Luke 2:14. My outline of Burgon's argument is provided below, and you can read his full statement beginning on page 41 of The Revision Revised. I recently taught a five part series on textual criticism based on the works of Dean John Burgon and comparing the KJV with the ESV. In my opinion, Burgon represents the best arguments against the modern critical text, and the ESV represents the best translation of that text into English. Granted, Burgon's work is a bit dated, but many of his arguments are just as relevant today as they were when he first presented them more than 100 years ago. This is apparent by the accuracy of Burgon's arguments when compared with the ESV and the most recent editions of the critical text. So, without any further ado, here is the outline from part 1 of my series on textual criticism. The first point of the BIBLE answer to the TULIP is that of Basic Ability. According to the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity, every individual is born in a condition so completely enslaved to sin that he cannot even repent and seek forgiveness unless God first regenerates his soul and causes him to be born again. Most of those who reject this doctrine do so by claiming that God has given every man a measure of prevenient grace which enables all men to freely choose to accept salvation, but I would like to take a different approach. |
Bill Fortenberry is a Christian philosopher and historian in Birmingham, AL. Bill's work has been cited in several legal journals, and he has appeared as a guest on shows including The Dr. Gina Show, The Michael Hart Show, and Real Science Radio.
Contact Us if you would like to schedule Bill to speak to your church, group, or club. "Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser: teach a just man, and he will increase in learning." (Proverbs 9:9)
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