All who espouse Christianity live in hope of eternal life. Together with God’s promise of eternal life for the faithful (cf. John 3:16; 1 John 2:17; 5:13; John 4:14; 17:3; 2 Corinthians 4:17; 2 Timothy 2:10; Matthew 25:34, 46; Titus 1:2; et al.) is a corresponding promise of eternal destruction and punishment for the rebellious sinner and unfaithful Christian ...
Read MoreThe claim is often made that the Founders intended to banish God from the public square. They say Christianity and reason are in conflict. These claims are ironic, since the Founders said our rights come from the Creator. ..
Read MoreOn the morning of September 11, 2001, the worst single act of terrorism occurred at the World Trade Center in New York City, at the U. S. Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and in the skies over Pennsylvania. A total of 2,977 people were killed. It is likely the case that every person reading these words remembers where he or she was when the news came that morning that drastically changed America in these times...
Read MoreG. Campbell Morgan called Job 38-41 the “matchless part of the book” of Job (Unfolding 222). And it is “matchless” because of the matchless questions that compose these chapters. ..
Read MoreWhen we reflect on the faithful Christian’s reward, we are made to wonder what is meant by the expression eternal life? Another way to say the same thing biblically are terms like everlasting life, et al. Does this just mean a life that is unending from the time of our physical death, or is it truly eternal life? Are we to think that time extends, and is present, even in the spiritual realm? If so, is God bound by time, or is the spiritual realm timeless? Was time created (in order to give us a history—a no more, not yet, and now) along with the physical universe, or does the physical creation act independently of time?
Read MoreIn her book, Why Me? ADoctor Looks at the Book of Job, Yale University Pediatrics Oncologist, Dr. Diane Komp, relates an experience of Rebecca Pippert. As a student in a college biology class, Pippert heard her professor, on the first day of the semester, say that humans are “merely a fortuitous concourse of atoms, a meaningless piece of protoplasm in an absurd world” (108)...
Read MoreThe issue of “origin” as a concept has to begin somewhere. From whence did everything that is arrive? What is the source of all that we experience on earth? Ultimately, we are going to have to face two theoretical possibilities. Either there was a point at which there was “nothing,” or there has never been a point at which there was “nothing.” But before we go further, let us make sure that we are all on the same page regarding what nothing “is.” Look at those last quotation marks. They indicate that the very concept of “is” is opposed to the very concept of “nothing.” If we say that nothing is so and so, we are trying to give nothing some sort of ontological or “being” status, which by definition it simply cannot have. Nothing is not something. Nothing has no characteristics or qualities. Nothing is void of everything. It is the absence of anything and everything. It is the negation of all being. And by “being,” we mean existence at its most fundamental ontological level. If “nothing” were to be the absolute ultimate ontological condition at a given point, then we as men could not “think” it. As humans we cannot live with nothing and our minds are not equipped to even clearly grasp the meaning of the term we choose to describe as the absolute ontological contradiction to “being.” We have to think of “nothing” as a “something” even to bring it forward as a concept for discussion. Isn’t that amazing? And isn’t that insightful?
Read MoreHis name was Wernher von Braun. He was the German-born rocket scientist who, along with his German V-2 missile team of more than four hundred scientists, research and development specialists, was taken into custody by the U.S. Army in 1945...
Read MoreIt is hard to say where it started. With Guttenberg? Galileo? The industrial revolution? Darwinism? Somewhere along the way, Western man began to lose his belief in God as a personal force, as decider of his fate, as ultimate judge of his actions. The idea that God created man became old-fashioned; we evolved. The notion of Hell was picturesque, but no longer compelling. Life began to be seen as more or less accidental; sin became a relative, sociological matter, and to many a pure fiction. After millenniums of living under gods, man came to regard such belief as archaic and superstitious. Like a son who decides he need not depend upon his father any longer, he set forth to make his own way in the world.
Read MoreThe 1976 Warren-Flew debate on the existence of God has been called “The Debate of the Century.” Given the four night debate attendance that averaged several thousand, the masterful logical argumentation of Thomas B. Warren, and last but not least, the announcement by Dr. Antony Flew 29 years after the debate that he was no longer an atheist but had come to believe that God exists, it would be difficult to argue against the claim that this indeed was “The Debate of the Century.” In fact, the Warren-Flew debate may very well be the most devastating defeat experienced by atheism during the last several hundred years.
Read MoreSome people, including some members of the Lord’s church, have denied that moral law is in any sense innate. And by “innate” I mean something within a person’s mind from his conception rather than something within a person’s mind exclusively by experience/learning/development. Some have argued that moral law is something that has to be learned and that no one knows the difference between right and wrong without having to be taught. But there are enormous implications that follow such a position. The position that one is born without some innate ability to discern the difference between right and wrong is itself without reasonable and, certainly, without Scriptural support.
Read MoreI want to express my appreciation to the elders here and to school of Preaching for the invitation to speak on this lectureship. The theme, Christian Evidences, is one near and dear to my heart as it was the major field of my study in graduate school.
The particular assignment given to me is: Answering Atheism's Argument (the answer to the atheistic argument of evil and suffering). Perhaps no argument from atheism has been used with greater frequency and force than this one argument...
Read MoreSeptember 20, 2016, will mark the 40th anniversary of a monumental event that serves as one of the foundational underpinnings of the apologetics legacy and approach of the Warren Center. The Warren-Flew debate on the existence of God held on the campus of North Texas State University (now The University of North Texas) attracted audiences ranging from five to seven thousand nightly September 20-23, 1976. Some estimates of the size of the audience go as high as nine thousand. It was an amazing event. I am deeply grateful to God for allowing me to experience that “once in a lifetime” event forty years ago...
Read More“O Lord, what is man that you regard him, or the son of man that you think of him?” (Psalm 144:3, ESV). How we define ourselves—the human race—is tied to worldview and greatly affects how we live now, not to mention what we believe about the future. Notice the question is not seeking a definition as much as it is asking God why He cares so much for us. To the Psalmist, it was a given that God made man. Sadly, to many now, it is not.
Read MoreFormer Time magazine correspondent, David Aikman, tells a powerful story involving eighteen American tourists who visited China in 2002. At the end of a busy day of visiting Beijing, the group’s activities for that particular day concluded with an evening lecture. The speaker was a young Chinese scholar who represented China’s premier academic research institute, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). What the group of American tourists heard from this young member of China’s academic elite was astonishing! Instead of the official old Communist dogma about religion being the opium of the people and missionaries being tools of Western society’s imperialism, the Chinese speaker said...
Read More...It is necessary when handling a textual study that we deal with its entire context. The immediate context of our study begins with 1:18 and carries its thought to completion at 3:20 (cf. Grubbs; Reese).
Universality (1:1-17). In order to introduce the Roman Christians to his thesis, the prolific Paul first declared the universality of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, "...to the Jew first and also to the Greek" (1:17).
Read MoreIn their book, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, Brand and Yancey cite the Greek poet Sophocles who said that none of the wonders of the world is more wondrous than the human body. Dr. Warren wrote, “When one considers his body he is aware of the fact that it is a marvelous mechanism—a single system which is comprised of sub-systems, all of which must work together in concert if one is to live or even to be very healthy” (We Can Know that God Is 4).
Read MoreMay is the month when we in America honor mothers and motherhood with our observance of Mother’s Day. I well remember from graduate study days how the late Dr. Thomas B. Warren, the apologist for whom Warren Apologetics Center is named, would say, “Fellows, the world will never be the same when you awake one morning and realize your mother is no longer a part of it.” The absolute value of a mother!
Read MoreHenry Morris, in his book The Heavens Declare the Glory of God, suggests “. . . [A]pril 1 would be a good holiday for atheists . . .” (93). The Bible says, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1; 53:1). Paul stated that those “who do not like to retain God in their knowledge” (Romans 1:28) are futile in their thoughts (Romans 1:21). Futile here means “unintelligent, without insight” (Rogers and Rogers 317). Sometimes it is the case that atheists boast of their philosophy as being “intellectual” and “scientific.” However, the Bible labels anti-God philosophy as foolish (cf. Romans 1:21). The Bible identifies those who reject the evidence for God (Romans 1:20-21) as “professing to be wise,” but in actuality, they have become fools (Romans 1:22). All of this reminds me of the story by G. K. Chesterton, entitled “The Oracle of the Dog,” from The Incredulity of Father Brown, in which we find the observation: “It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense” (qtd. in Rees 158).
Read MoreThe editor’s foreword of Man Without God said that this book “breaks out of the smugness and condescension of traditional theism to ask why it is possible for admirable men to live their lives not only without admitting the presence of God but in denying it ... a widespread Christian conviction that only theistic belief (preferably of an orthodox variety) can restrain the beast in man from taking over. The exemplary lives of many of our believing contemporaries are a refutation of that conviction–a refutation with which theology must somehow come to terms.”
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