Communication – Divine Council

Communication

“Wikipedia is…broken,” controlled by special interests and bad actors, says co-founder

By Guest Post June 4, 2019

by Sharyl Attkisson

I’ve done quite a bit of reporting about how Wikipedia is definitely not “the encyclopedia anyone can edit.” It’s become a vehicle for special interests to control information. Agenda editors are able to prevent or revert edits and sourcing on selected issues and people in order to control the narrative.

Watch Sharyl Attkisson’s TedX talk on Wikipedia and other Astroturf tools

My own battle with Wikipedia included being unable to correct provably false facts such as incorrect job history, incorrect birth place and incorrect birth date.

What’s worse is that agenda editors related to pharmaceutical interests and the partisan blog Media Matters control my Wikipedia biographical page, making sure that slanted or false information stays on it. For example, they falsely refer to my reporting as “anti-vaccine,” and imply my reporting on the topic has been discredited. In fact, my vaccine and medical reporting has been recognized by top national journalism awards organizations, and has even been cited as a source in a peer-reviewed scientific publication. However, anyone who tries to edit this factual context and footnotes onto my page finds it is quickly removed.

What persists on my page, however, are sources that are supposedly disallowed by Wikipedia’s policies. They include citations by Media Matters, with no disclosure that it’s a partisan blog.

Another entity quoted on my Wikipedia biographical page to disparage my work is the vaccine industry’s Dr. Paul Offit. But there’s no mention of the lawsuits filed against Offit for libel (one prompted him to apologize and correct his book), or the fact that he provided false information about his work and my reporting to the Orange County Register, which later corrected its article. Obviously, these facts would normally make Offit an unreliable source, but for Wikipedia, he’s presented as if an unconflicted expert. In fact, Wikipedia doesn’t even mention that’s Offit is a vaccine industry insider who’s made millions of dollars off of vaccines.

Meantime, turn to Dr. Offit’s own Wikipedia biography and– at last look– it also omitted all mention of his countless controversies. Instead, it’s written like a promotional resume– in violation of Wikipedia’s supposed politics on neutrality.

Watch Sharyl Attkisson’s TedX talk on Fake News

These biographies are just two examples of ones that blatantly violate Wikipedia’s strict rules, yet they are set in stone. The powerful interests that “watch” and control the pages make sure Offit’s background is whitewashed and that mine is subtly tarnished. They will revert or change any edits that attempt to correct the record.

This, in a nutshell, exemplifies Wikipedia’s problems across the platform as described by its co-founder Larry Sanger.

Watch “Wikipedia: The Dark Side,” a Full Measure investigation

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Apologetics

6 Things You Can Tell Your Kids to Explain Pain and Suffering in Our World

By Guest Post April 30, 2019

by J. Warner Wallace

Devastating storms, killer earthquakes, record-setting fires and horrific acts of evil dominate recent news headlines. Why would an all-loving, all-powerful God allow these things to happen? Is God just unable to stop this kind of evil? If so, why call Him all-powerful? Is God unwilling to stop this kind of evil? Then why call Him all-loving? Some non-believers offer the existence of evil as proof that God doesn’t exist. What should we tell our kids when they observe (or even experience) evil?

Our conversations will certainly look (and sound) differently depending on the age and maturity of our kids, but in all the years that I have been discussing the “problem of evil” with students (either at conferences or as a youth pastor), several key issues continue to dominate my discussions. When explaining why an all-loving, all-powerful God would allow natural disasters (or human evil), consider incorporating the following truths:

Remind Your Kids That Eternity Can Helps Us Cope with Evil
All of us hope to live a long life without free from pain or hardship. What if we knew, in advance, we were going to live forever and experience a pain-free existence for all eternity? Would we view pain and suffering in our temporal life differently (even if it lasted for many years) if we knew we would eventually experience bliss forever? Remind your kids that God offers us life beyond the limits of our short, material existence; we are eternal creatures. All experiences of evil must be considered in light of eternity.

Remind Your Kids That God Loves Us Enough to Allow Us Free-Agency
A loving God would create a world in which love is possible, right? Love requires each of us to act freely, because true love cannot be coerced. God didn’t create us as robots; instead, He gave us free will so our expressions of love would be genuine. But, this also means we have the freedom to ignore God’s commandments and behave badly. Remind your kids that much of the evil we experience in the world is the result of humans who freely choose to disobey. God may allow some evil because free agency is required for love to exist in our world.

Remind Your Kids That Some Suffering Can Actually Develop Our Character
As a parent, you’re probably more concerned with your kids’ character than their comfort, and character is far more likely to be developed through adversity than advantage. Hard times can bring out the best in all of us, providing us with opportunities to help those in need, rise to the occasion, and come to the rescue. Remind your kids that God may allow us to suffer discomfort because He knows it will develop our character, especially since we are eternal creatures. God cares more about our eternal character than current comfort.

Remind Your Kids That God Can Use Some Evil to Call Us to Himself
Many of us ignore God until something happens to get our attention. Tragedy has a way of redirecting our thoughts and pointing us to a life beyond our current struggle. If God has designed us to be with Him in eternity, He might use hardship to refocus those of us who haven’t been paying attention. Remind your kids that some forms of evil may simply be part of God’s loving effort to point us in the right direction.

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Church

Half of Pastors Afraid of Speaking on Controversial Issues

By Guest Post April 15, 2019

by Caleb Parke, Fox News

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Apologetics

6 Non-Awkward Questions That You Can Use to Start a Spiritual Conversation With Anyone

By Guest Post February 5, 2019

by Erik Manning

Most Christians know that they ought to be sharing their faith. I mean, there is the whole “make disciples of all nations” thing that Jesus said. (Matthew 28:19) But knowing and doing end up being two different things for many believers. When Christians hear the word evangelism, there’s a sense of anxiety that springs up for many.

Asking a friend “hey buddy, do you know Jesus?” can be an awkward thing. It’s only more awkward to spring that question on a total stranger. There’s a certain yuck factor, as you don’t want to come across overly salesy or be lumped in with some cult.

Our society is growing increasingly secular. We have to be aware of the cultural background in which we’re preaching. I’m sure in some cases that if you ask if someone knows Jesus, you might get the reply that they used to play soccer with him. We may want to consider backing up a little bit. Instead of going right for the “do you know Jesus?” we should ask some worldview questions.

A worldview is how one interprets the world around them, like their philosophical lenses. In other words, how they answer some of the big questions in life – origins, morality, meaning and the like. The nice thing about worldview questions is it helps us to locate someone. It gives you a starting point that becomes a more natural transition to the gospel. You’ll see as I provide some examples.

Without further adieu, here are some of my favorite “launch pads” into gospel conversations. I’ve included short videos with more in-depth explanations if this is new to you:

1. Are there moral facts? Does real right and wrong exist?

Everyone – and I mean everyone – has a moral opinion about something. Just sign into Twitter for like 2 seconds to see this in action. You’ll see what I mean. We live in an age of moral outrage. The words homophobe, misogynist, racist and bigot are thrown around like confetti. Tolerance and acceptance are the highest virtues according to many in our society.

These are often the same people who say that no culture is better than another. But if a culture practices terrible things – say female circumcision – then I think we recognize that we’re right to condemn such practices. No one is a consistent moral relativist. Certain things, like female genital mutilation, are wrong.

The heart of the gospel is that we’ve sinned and come short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23) That we recognize there are moral facts and we all fall short of them cries out for an explanation.

2. Is everything ultimately material in nature?

I like this question because if they say no, they’re at least open to spiritual things. If they answer with a yes, now you can follow up with some questions that should make them think.

We already talked about morality. Moral facts aren’t physical facts, because if all that exists is unintended nature, then there’s no way things should be. People hurt, main and torture each other. It is that way. But there is no way things should be. But surely that’s counterintuitive. Why should we doubt our moral experience any more than we doubt our other sense-experiences?

But there are further problems for the materialist worldview. If everything is matter, then our beliefs are all the product of natural processes that are beyond our control. Thinking that matter is all there is then is a just a product of a deterministic system. If the thorough-going materialist is right, it’s only by accident, not some intellectual virtue. In other words, materialism destroys knowledge.

But if thoughts, knowledge, and reason aren’t material things, then the idea of the spirit or soul comes into play.

3. What would you do if you had a week to live? And what do you think happens to us after we die?

OK, so the last two questions were super-philosophical. This one shoots straight for the heart. I like asking what they’d do if they found out that they had a week to live because now you’re going to see what’s important to them.

So many of us would put the smartphone down, spend time with our families, mend any fences that need mending and do something meaningful with our short time left. Life is fleeting. Blaise Pascal said:

“Imagine a number of men in chains, all under sentence of death, some of whom are each day butchered in the sight of others those remaining see their own condition in that of their fellows and looking at each other with grief and despair await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.”

In our modern world, everything is so sanitized. We live in denial of death and waste our time on the trivial. Once we’ve asked this question, maybe they’ll be open to sharing their thoughts on life after death. This can turn into a golden opportunity to share the gospel with them.

4. Is there any single ‘true’ religion?

It’s a popular thing to say that there is no one true religion, that they’re all basically saying the same thing. This is called religious pluralism. It the tolerant thing to say in our politically correct world. It’s also what makes Christianity not so PC.

But various religions aren’t teaching the same thing. Christianity says Jesus was God. Islam says he’s a prophet. Judaism says he was badly mistaken or a deceiver. Many Buddhists say there’s no god at all. Hinduism says there are many gods. Clearly, they’re not all teaching the same things!

The other knock on this view is that it’s just as dogmatic as the dogma it opposes. The pluralist implicitly suggests that their view is privileged, that they can see what others are blind to – namely, there is no one true religion! This is the kind of person that needs to hear the uniqueness of Christian truth claims. That leads me to my next question:

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Communication

How Important Am I?

By divinecouncil February 1, 2019

by Dallas Willard

(photo: Angel Isaiah McCann)

Don’t you know that you
yourselves are God’s temple and
that God’s Spirit lives in you?

1 Corinthians 3:16

In the movie Gandhi, the young Indian lawyer and a white clergyman are walking together on a boardwalk in South Africa, contrary to its laws at the time. Some brutish-looking young white men threaten to harm them, but the ringleader’s mother calls from a window and commands him to go about his business.

When the clergyman exclaims over their good luck, Gandhi comments, “I thought you were a man of God.” The clergyman replies, “I am, but I don’t believe he plans his day around me!”
A cute point, but beneath it lie beliefs that make it difficult to take seriously the possibility of divine guidance. One of those beliefs is that we are not important to God. But we were important enough for God to give his Son’s life for us and to choose to inhabit us as living temples. Obviously, then, we are important enough for God to guide us and speak to us whenever it’s appropriate.

Pray: Consider what sort of God would create you, sacrifice enormously for you, choose to inhabit you, but refuse to speak to you? Pray, thanking God for being such a relational God, who chooses to sacrifice for you, inhabit you and have an interactive life with you.
¹

Dallas Willard and Jan Johnson, Hearing God through the Year: A 365-Day Devotional (Westmont, IL: IVP Books, 2015). ↩

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Bible

The Difference Between Textual Criticism and Translation

By Guest Post January 30, 2019

In an analogy from the world of education, teachers are translators. Using textbooks and other resources, they try to find the best possible way to translate the information to their students. The teachers’ primary concern is not verifying the validity of the material in their resources; their concern is presenting the material in a clear way. On the other hand, scientists, linguists, mathematicians, and historians are continually adjusting and updating the information in textbooks as better information becomes available: Their primary concern is the text. This analogy breaks down quickly since such scholars are dealing with broad fields of research and not one sacred preserved book. However, by way of general comparison, teachers are translators, and scholars are text critics.*

*This excerpt is adapted from Textual Criticism of the Bible by Amy Anderson and Wendy Widder.

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Bible

Does the Lack of Original Autographs Make Biblical Inerrancy Irrelevant?

By Guest Post January 25, 2019

By Aaron Brake

Biblical inerrancy may be defined as follows:

[W]hen all the facts are known, the Scriptures in their original autographs and properly interpreted will be shown to be wholly true in everything that they affirm, whether that has to do with doctrine or morality or with the social, physical, or life sciences.¹

One important element of this definition is that inerrancy only applies to the original autographs. But since we no longer have possession of the original autographs, the question is often raised, “Of what use or importance is the doctrine of biblical inerrancy? Is biblical inerrancy even relevant?” Some conclude that inerrancy is altogether ir_relevant. In his book _Misquoting Jesus, Bart Ehrman states,

I kept reverting to my basic question: how does it help us to say that the Bible is the inerrant word of God if in fact we don’t have the words that God inerrantly inspired, but only the words copied by the scribes—sometimes correctly but sometimes (many times!) incorrectly? What good is it to say that the autographs (i.e., the originals) were inspired? We don’t have the originals! We have only error-ridden copies….”²

This objection, left unanswered, may undermine our confidence and trust in Scripture, leading some to reject the doctrine of biblical inerrancy and others to conclude it is wholly irrelevant.

Let’s Get Metaphysical

But I believe our confidence in Scripture is not misplaced and biblical inerrancy is relevant. To help explain why this is so, let us consider the distinction commonly made by metaphysicians between word tokens and word types.³ Consider the following words:

RED BLUE RED

Now ask yourself this question: “How many words are there?” The question is ambiguous because there is a sense in which it looks like there are two words (RED and BLUE), and another sense in which it looks like there are three words (RED, BLUE, and RED). The question receives clarification when we distinguish between word tokens and word types and specify which of the two we are interested in.

If we are asking how many word tokens _there are, then we have three: two tokens of the word RED and one token of the word BLUE. A _token is an individual, particular kind of thing. It is a specific thing that can only exist in one place at one time. If, on the other hand, we are asking how many word types there are, then we have two: the word type RED and the word type BLUE. A type in this case is a universal. It is repeatable and can be in more than one place at one time. It is the same word, which carries with it the _same_meaning.

Back to Biblical Inerrancy

What does this have to do with biblical inerrancy? When it is asserted that biblical inerrancy is irrelevant because we do not possess the original autographs, there is a failure to distinguish between the text tokens and the text type. We do have the original text type, even though we may not possess the original text tokens.

To help think about this further, consider that it is the word as a type that conveys meaning, not the word as a token. When we think of the word as a token we are thinking of it as a material object (i.e., black ink scribbled on a parchment). But when we think of the word as a type, we are thinking of it as a bearer of meaning. It becomes a shareable thing that we can have, for example, both in our mind and in a book in front of us at the same time.

Now, this is where textual criticism comes into play. When it comes to the text of the New Testament, even though we do not have the original text tokens(the original autographs as material scribbling on parchment), we are able to reconstruct with great confidence the original text type. Without going into a full-length treatment on the topic of textual criticism, Daniel Wallace notes the following concerning the New Testament text:

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Paul D. Feinberg, “The Meaning of Inerrancy,” in Inerrancy, ed. Norman L. Geisler (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980), 294. ↩
Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (New York: HarperOne, 2007), 7, emphasis his. ↩
I am indebted to J.P. Moreland for much of the following insight and commentary (used with his permission), with some additions of my own. Any mistakes are mine. ↩

Church

Where Did All This Pentecostalism Come From?

By Guest Post January 25, 2019

By Tim Challies

It is impossible to consider the modern history or contemporary state of Christianity without accounting for the sudden rise, the explosive spread, and the worldwide impact of Pentecostalism. To that end, I’ve been reading several books on the subject, focused especially on the Azusa Street Revival, which most historians consider the setting in which Pentecostalism began. Here are a few key points I’ve learned about the Azusa Street Revival and the Azusa Street Mission that housed it.

Its roots were in the Holiness Movement. The roots of the Azusa Street Revival and the Pentecostalism it birthed are entwined with the Holiness Movement of the late nineteenth century. This was a renewing movement within the Wesleyan tradition that emphasized complete sanctification and taught that moral perfection is available to Christians. It was marked by a heavy emphasis on personal holiness, most often displayed through a close adherence to the law as a means of drawing near to God. In general, early Pentecostal theology took Wesleyan theology as its starting place, then added to it certain new elements.

It was led by William Seymour. The Azusa Street Mission was led by William J. Seymour, an African American son of former slaves who was born and raised in Louisiana. In his early twenties he traveled to Indianapolis where he had a conversion experience at a Methodist Episcopal church. He left that tradition, though, after becoming convinced of premillennialism and special revelation. He likely migrated to a group called Evening Light Saints where he was exposed to their policies of non-sectarianism, non-creedalism, and equality between races and genders, all of which he adopted and promoted. Though he felt the call to ministry, he battled it until he contracted smallpox and came to believe this was God’s chastisement for his disobedience.

It built upon a previous movement. Though it’s fair to say that the Azusa Street Mission marked the beginning of Pentecostalism, William Seymour had based much of his doctrine and certain of his practices on Charles Parham. Parham had become convinced that Christians needed to rediscover the miraculous spiritual gifts, especially that of tongues. These tongues would allow mission work to advance in foreign lands and help usher in the Lord’s return. Parham founded a Bible school in Topeka, Kansas, where in 1901 one of his students received the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. Though Parham was an unabashed racist and unorthodox in many key doctrines, Seymour studied at his college for a short time—enough to absorb his view of the ongoing spiritual gifts. Seymour was soon called to a church in Los Angeles and left Parham, whom he was soon to eclipse as the father of Pentecostalism. Parham seems never to have forgiven Seymour for this.

It began near Azusa Street. The Azusa Street Revival actually began in a small house on nearby Bonnie Brae Street. On April 9, 1906, Seymour was three days into a ten-day fast with several other people (all of whom were African American), when he laid hands on one participant and prayed he would receive the Holy Spirit. That man fell to the floor, then began to speak in tongues. They hurried to the house of Richard and Ruth Asberry on Bonnie Brae Street where others were waiting. Soon many of them had a similar experience of Spirit baptism and also spoke and sang in tongues. This drew the interest of neighbors and within days the house became so packed that they were forced to move to the nearby vacant building at 312 Azusa Street. (That building has since been torn down, but the house on Bonnie Brae Street remains as a museum.)

It was distinctly egalitarian. From its very beginning, the Azusa Street Mission permitted both men and women to fill all positions of leadership, including preaching. The revival was also racially egalitarian, so that whites and minorities worshipped together in a way that many at the time considered scandalous. Some of the early critiques of the movement ooze with malicious racism as onlookers express their revulsion with black men worshipping alongside white women. The multi-ethnicity of the earliest Pentecostals contributed to what would become Pentecostal worship, which absorbed elements of various cultural traditions. (Seymour would later amend his views to allow only men to hold certain leadership positions.)

It was a revival of a particular view of sanctification

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Art

How to Read the Prophets

By Guest Post January 20, 2019

A transcript of “How te Read the Prophets” by The Bible Project.

Ezekiel, Obadiah, Habakkuk What do these names have in common? Well, they are three of the 15 prophets that have their own books in the Bible.

And if you have tried to read these books, odds are you got lost in their dense poetry and strange imagery. But these books are super important for understanding the overall biblical story.

So, let’s talk about “How to Read the Prophets“.

When I hear the word “prophet”, I think of a fortune teller, someone who predicts the future.

That is what being a prophet means in many cultures, but not in the Bible.

While the biblical prophets sometimes speak about the future, they are way more than fortune tellers.

How should I think about them?

Well, they were Israelites who had a radical encounter with God’s presence and then were commissioned to go and speak on God’s behalf.

Like a representative.

Right! And the thing that they cared about the most. It is the mutual partnership that existed between God and the Israelites.

Right! the partnership. God rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt and invited them to become a nation of justice and generosity, that would represent his character to the nations.

So, this partnership required all Israelites to give their trust and allegiance to their God alone. In the Bible, this partnership is called the “Covenant”.

But the leaders — the priests, the kings — led Israel astray and they broke the covenant.

So, this is where the prophets came in, to remind Israel of their role in the partnership. They did this in 3 ways.

First, they were constantly accusing Israel for violating the terms of the covenant. The charges usually include idolatry, alliances with other nations and their gods and allowing injustice towards the poor.

So, they are like covenant lawyers.

Right. So, second, the prophets called the Israelites to repent, which means simply, “to turn around”. They spoke of God’s mercy to forgive them if they would just confess and change their ways.

But, Israel and its leaders didn’t change. Things went from bad to worse.

And so that brings us to the third way that prophets emphasized the covenant. They announced the consequences for breaking it which they called, “The Day of the Lord”.

Oh, yeah! The apocalypse. Visions of the end of the world.

Well, sort of. The prophets were mostly interested in how God would bring his justice on Israel’s corruption and on the violent nations around them. And while explaining these local events, they often used cosmic imagery.

Cosmic imagery?

Yeah! like Jeremiah. He described the exile of the Israelites to Babylon as the undoing of creation itself. The land dissolves into chaos and disorder, no light, no animals or people. Or Isaiah described the downfall of Babylon as the disintegration of the cosmos. Stars falling from the sky, the sun going dark. For the prophets, when God acts in human history to bring justice, it is a “Day of the Lord”.

So, the prophets aren’t talking about the end of the world?

Well, hold on. They are doing many things at once. The cosmic imagery shows how these important events of their day fit into the bigger story of God’s mission to bring down every corrupt and violent nation once and for all. The prophets cared about the present and the future. And the cosmic imagery allowed them to talk about both at the same time.

Got it. So, no matter when you live, the Day of the Lord is bad news if you are part of Babylon.

But, it is good news if you are waiting for God’s kingdom. The Day of the Lord pointed to the return of the exiles to Jerusalem. And once again, the prophets use cosmic poetry to describe it. They see a New Jerusalem, like a new Garden of Eden, with all humanity living at peace with each other and with the animals. And, there is a new Messianic King who restores God’s kingdom in a renewed creation.

Beautiful! So, those are the three themes in the prophets. These prophets must have been very powerful, persuasive speakers.

Well, some were. But others lived on the margins. They would often perform strange, symbolic stunts in public to communicate their message. Like when Ezekiel lay in the dirt and built a model of Jerusalem being attacked by Babylon. Or when Isaiah walked around naked for 3 years as a symbol of the humiliation of exile.

So, did people pay attention to them?

Not really. The stories in these books show how the prophets were a minority group mostly shunned by Israel’s leaders. And their writings were a kind of resistance literature. Most people ignored them. That is, until their warnings came true in the Babylonian exile.

And after that, people began to take their word seriously.

Yes! The works of these earlier prophets were inherited later by unnamed prophets who studied these texts intensely. They’re the ones who arranged the Hebrew scriptures as we know them, including the books of the prophets.

Okay. And there are 15 books of the prophets. The big 3 are Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

Then, there is a collection of 12 smaller prophetic works unified on a single scroll. And in each of these books, you will read stories about the prophets and their poems and visions, all arranged to show the cosmic meaning of Israel’s history. How God will turn their tragic story of failure and exile…

…into a story of hope and restoration for all nations.

And it’s that twin message of prophetic warning and of hope that the prophets cared about so much. And, it is a message that we still need to hear today.

Community

Find Believers Near You Interested in The Divine Council with the New Miqlat Network!

By divinecouncil January 16, 2019

If you want to find believers near you interested in The Divine Council, the Naked Bible Podcast, and other Biblical material produced by Dr. Michael Heiser, check out the new MIQLAT Network!

The link to join the network is published inside each issue of Dr. Heiser’s newsletter so you must be subscribed to the Miqlat Newsletter to join.

It’s up to you to exchange contact info with those who contact you via the network. If you don’t want to give out your email address feel free to resume your conversation on the DivineCouncil.org forum via private thread, private message, or live chat.

I’ve already found four local people I would not have known about, otherwise!