"Is There Really New Evidence on Life after Death?”
It is clear that many people are given to “faddism.” It seems that almost any kind of an absurd idea, viewpoint, or practice can gain a following if it is widely presented. Sometimes, it seems that the farther a position is from the truth the larger will be the sales of the books which advocate it (e.g., consider Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth and similar books on premillennialism with its human speculation and Bible-denying doctrines.”
Recently, I have been hearing a great many claims of various people to the effect that they have experienced (1) death—the leaving of their physical bodies, (2) various experiences subsequent to death, (3) coming back to life, and (4) living again (back in their physical bodies) and going about their usual human pursuits here on Earth. These claims are advanced, its advocate say, to confirm that there is life after death.
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Soldiers of Christ Arise
John Bright, in his book, The Authority of the Old Testament, offers a somber warning to those who profess to follow Jesus. He writes: “We are parade-ground troops, reluctant to dirty our uniforms; we are soldiers who refuse orders, sleep on duty, serve when convenient, and often enough traitors to the cause . . . We do not like to think of the church as militant at all, but rather caught up in a stream of fraternal progress. We are men of tolerance and goodwill who find it hard to believe that the God of the Bible (though infinitely more loving) is not necessarily as tolerant as we. Feeling no animus towards the enemies of God, we fraternize with them until we no longer recognize them as enemies, and are ready to make almost any compromise with them in the interest of peace.”
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Can Christianity Survive Our Culture?
Christianity requires its followers to leave all secular worldviews. We live in an age where God is denied and militant atheists attack any vintage of the sacred. With the increase of unbelief and other secular worldviews and the diminishing of the exclusiveness of Christianity, we often wonder if Christianity will survive our culture. The answer is YES. Christianity is the work of God therefore divine and the divine cannot be overpowered. We may have fewer adherents to Christianity, but none the less Christianity will survive our present and future cultures. It has done so many times in previous centuries. Christianity is truth and truth is absolute. Truth does not cease being truth.
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Education as a Battleground
If you want to see the problem with American education, look at a chart illustrating the comparative growth in the number of students, teachers, and district administrators in our public schools in the period between 2000 and 2019. (See the chart below.) The number of district administrators grew by a whopping 87.6 percent during these years, far outstripping the growth in the number of students (7.6 percent) and teachers (8.7 percent).
In illustrating the difference in these rates of growth, the chart also illustrates a fundamental change that has come over our nation as a whole during this period—a change in how we govern ourselves and how we live. To say a change is fundamental means that it concerns the foundation of things. If the foundation changes, then the things built on it are changed. Education is fundamental, and it has changed radically. This has changed everything else.
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Apocalyptic Politics: Christianity and the New World Order
Apocalyptic language is enjoying something of a vogue. We are constantly being told that we face an environmental apocalypse or that the polarization of our politics represents a cultural apocalypse. During the time of Covid, such language was common. We were living, so we were told, in an apocalyptic moment for the world at large.
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New Year's Day
We have just passed the threshold of another year. We are enjoying the light of its first day; and it is meet that we should turn aside from the gay and thoughtless crowd, to spend an hour in calm reflection—to survey the past, and repent of its follies—to look forward to the future, and resolve to spend it to the honor and glory of God.
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You Make the Call
Earlier this year, my family and I had the great blessing of attending a Reds baseball game in Cincinnati. The Reds are struggling, but we had lots of fun. The St. Louis Cardinals were in town and we were able to witness history as Albert Pujols became the first player ever to hit a home run of off 450 different pitchers.
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Crazy Speak
Many of us are somewhat familiar with the term “doublespeak.” Some, like me, may assume that we read that word in George Orwell’s book 1984, but, according to some material I recently read, we did not. According to that material, the following words are in 1984: “double thin,” newspeak,” and “oldspeak.” (I’m relying on the material I consulted. I did not take the time to reread 1984!) Somehow, over the years, all of that has sort of morphed into the term “doublespeak.”
According to Miriam-Webster.com, doublespeak is defined as, “language used to deceive usually through concealment or misrepresentation of truth.” On a related subject, another website had the following information that I thought was interesting:
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The Family and the Future of America
This is a grave time in the history of our nation. Changes are taking place in our way of life and in our national character which have lowered, and will continue to lower, the vitality of our people, the quality of our institutions, and our basic values. The inevitable result is that we will undergo a progressive disintegration and possibly the eventual collapse of our democracy. When sufficiently disintegrated, forces either within our borders of a revolutionary nature or external forces will overwhelm what is left of America. The American Dream will be over.
People tend to believe that America, the invincible, will always be, that generous and stalwart Americans will always exist, that our way of life is forever safe. This is an illusion, a self-deception. An internal process is at work which poses a far greater danger to us than our dwindling natural resources, the energy crisis, our huge national debt, or the trade deficit.
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The Origins of Memorial Day
Three years after the Civil War ended, on May 5, 1868, the head of an organization of Union veterans — the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) — established Decoration Day as a time for the nation to decorate the graves of the war dead with flowers. Maj. Gen. John A. Logan declared it should be May 30. It is believed the date was chosen because flowers would be in bloom all over the country.
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Experiencing the Old and the New in Apologetics
In his essay, “On the Reading of Old Books,” C. S. Lewis wrote, “If you join at eleven o’clock a conversation which began at eight o’clock you will often not see the real bearing of what is said. . . . It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.” (Note: the preceding words from Lewis were written in 1944).
It has been nearly fifty years since I was introduced to some old apologetics books, which were among the earliest volumes of the Bampton Lectures that began in 1780 in Oxford, England. The Bampton Lectures were founded at the bequest of John Bampton to be a series delivered annually by a qualified lecturer addressing a theological issue.
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The Meaning of the Journey
There are numerous traditions that surround the dawning of the New Year. For example, there is the southern belief that eating black-eyed peas, seasoned with pork, will bring good luck in the year ahead. Another more familiar tradition rests simply in the greeting often spoken and heard: “Happy New Year!” Although the Bible does not explicitly contain the greeting, “Happy New Year,” it does contain various statements appropriate to a new year. One of these is the desire manifested in the statement of the elder to the beloved Gaius when he wrote, “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John 2).
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Philosophical Foundations of Critical Race Theory (5)
When we set out to test the philosophical foundations of Critical Race Theory (CRT), we subjected the theory to a number of important tests. The purpose of such tests was to determine whether or not the theory is rational, and whether or not the theory could stand up to the tests. No matter how many people favor CRT, and no matter how many people have convinced others that they should accept CRT, the real test is whether the philosophical foundations of the theory are sound. We have discovered that they are not. Let us look at the results of our tests.
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Philosophical Foundations of Critical Race Theory (4)
Ethics is a theoretical study of moral right and wrong. Morality is the practice of what a person believes is right or wrong. Ethics is based upon some sort of standard that one accepts as a starting place. It could be an absolute standard, meaning that it is the same for all persons in all places at all times. It could be relative to persons, places, or times. An absolute standard is unchanging, whereas a relative standard is changeable. Absolute and relative are opposites.
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Let's Fight the Main War
As members of the Lord’s church we are to “suffer hardship—as a good soldier of Christ” (2 Timothy 2:3). We are to “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3). We are always to be ready “to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason concerning the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). There can be no doubt in the mind of the serious, careful student of the New Testament that Christ expects His church to be militant. Every member of the church should view himself as a soldier . . .
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Philosophical Foundations of Critical Race Theory (2)
Critical Race Theory (hereafter as CRT) is on the lips of thousands of proponents and, apparently, an equally committed number of opponents. This series of articles explores a critical look at the philosophical foundations of CRT. The truth is that CRT is closely related to a number of disturbing cultural trends that seem to have gained incredible influence among our political organizations at the local, state, and national level, and also in our various places of employment, national teachers’ unions, social media outlets, and even the military. Briefly put, there are few places where this influence is not being felt.
The American Experiment (sometimes called the American “Creed”) is beautifully expressed in the Declaration of Independence which states:
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The Impressiveness of the Horse
I have from early days been passionate about horses. My father, Roy C. Deaver, had loved horses before me. I guess we can say that they were “in his blood.” He had planned on going to another college when he was very young and had finished High School in Longview, Texas. But when he learned that brother N. B. Hardeman in Henderson, TN, liked horses, my father changed his mind, and went to Freed-Hardeman College. I think that must have been a providential matter in the light of what all transpired in his life later, and in mine. After leaving Freed-Hardeman for more college work in Abilene, TX, my father kept on working with horses, and broke them while attending school.
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Philosophical Foundations of Critical Race Theory (1)
he decade of the 1960s was a very turbulent period. We have not fully recovered from all of the things that resulted from that decade: There were four major political figures who were assassinated (Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy)—the Vietnam War—Cuban Missile Crisis—and at the end of the decade, we landed the first man on the moon and the Woodstock Festival occurred! During this time, there were the anti-war protests and the civil rights protests. By this time, the Postmodernist movement, having begun in the 1950s, began to take root in academic circles, and a first wave of those who would be influenced by this position were taught to reject “modernity.” Modernism roughly corresponds with the Enlightenment which occurred around 1650 and lasted at least through 1950. The primary focus during this time was epistemology—that is, how do we know, what are the conditions of knowledge, and what are the limits of knowledge? In the 1950s, first in Europe before the United States, all those things gained in the Enlightenment were rejected. It started in the arts, but quickly spread to all other disciplines, including science. Naturally, those committed to the scientific process were not simply going to ignore the challenge. To the postmodernist all knowledge and, therefore, truth itself, was seen as subjective, and rooted in each person’s experience. There is some objectivity in science, but postmodernists have given up any hope of rising above the subjective knowing of their own truths. Nancy Pearcey refers to this expansion of the postmodernists beyond the arts in the following:
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