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Bible

Unseen Realm Video Series — Introduction to Spiritual Beings

By divinecouncil February 15, 2019

This is the first of a video series by The Bible Project illustrating material from biblical scholar Dr. Michael S. Heiser’s Unseen Realm.

In the first pages of the Bible, we’re introduced to God and humans as the main characters. But there’s also a whole cast of spiritual beings who play an important role throughout the Bible, though they’re often in the background. In this video, we begin to explore these beings and how they fit into the unified storyline of the Bible.

Spiritual Beings

If you’ve ever been puzzled about angels, demons, and other spiritual beings in the Bible, you’re not alone! Our modern depictions of these creatures are mostly based on misunderstandings of who they are and how they fit into the overall storyline of the Bible. In this first installment of our Spiritual Beings video series, we’ll introduce the biblical concept of spiritual beings and rediscover their role in the biblical story that leads to Jesus.

Here’s the link to the series Exploring Spiritual Beings.

Apologetics

Textual Criticism and the Authority of Scripture

By Guest Post February 13, 2019

Textual criticism is an often misunderstood practice. If the Bible is supposed to be the inspired Word of God, how could discrepancies in the text exist? This excerpt from Textual Criticism of the Bible tackles this concern head-on. A properly aligned doctrine of Scripture recognizes the authority of the Bible while also acknowledging the human imperfections introduced over thousands of years of transmission.

A longtime Christian and student of the Bible posted the following comment about Romans 8:1:

“View the difference in versions here! You may want to add this to your NIV. I have an NIV Bible, but when I study, I always compare it to the KJV:

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1 NIV).

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit” (Rom 8:1 KJV).

Big difference, huh?”

This comment concerns an issue that surfaces throughout the Bible: differences in Bible versions that may affect the meaning. While some Bibles include footnotes to indicate when such differences exist, these notes are not always helpful for readers with no background knowledge of the preservation and transmission of the Bible from its original authors to the current day.

What should we think when we find disagreement between English versions? Which translations are right? Why would translators “change” the biblical text? How can readers make good decisions about these discrepancies between versions?

These questions are important for every student of the Bible, and textual criticism contributes part of the answer.

Many people are uncomfortable with the idea that discrepancies exist in the biblical text. Why wouldn’t God have preserved his Word with greater care? How can we really know what God has said when there are variations in the wording? These are important questions for people who believe the Bible to be God’s inspired, authoritative Word. To answer them, we must consider what Christians believe and have believed about the nature of the Bible—our doctrine of Scripture.

The doctrine of Scripture has developed over time, as have all theological doctrines. Early on, the church fathers recognized variants among their biblical manuscripts. However, they did not seem to view these variants as damaging to Scripture’s authority. Differences in texts became more problematic after the advent of the printing press. For the first time, Christians were able to have a fixed text—but which text should be fixed? Later, as European scholars in the eighteenth century sifted through a plethora of newly discovered biblical manuscripts, they began to understand how the biblical text had developed over time.

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Biblelit Curated

How the Father of Modern Hebrew Helped Fulfill Bible Prophecy

By Guest Post February 7, 2019

by Shira Sorka-Ram

I had the great privilege of knowing Ehud Ben Yehuda as a dear friend when I lived in Jerusalem in the early 1970s. I also knew his younger sister, Dola. Both were in their 70s. They were two of the three living children of Eliezer and his second wife, Hemda. The story of their father’s work and mission in life against unthinkable odds is both heartbreaking and heartwarming, and many books have been written about his accomplishments.

My purpose is to describe the struggle this family underwent to raise the Hebrew language from the dead. Their story is a huge life lesson for those called to accomplish something extraordinary. I will present this incredible story in a series over the next few months.

What kind of person does it take to single-handedly resurrect a language which had been dead since the second century A.D.?

It is true that in the 19th century, there were a great many Jews who knew how to read the Torah and rabbinical books in Hebrew, or at least mouth the letters in the prayer book—especially in Eastern Europe. The ancient texts were chanted by religious Jews, but for the most part, barely understood. In Jerusalem there were a few Sephardic Jews (from Arab countries) who could even speak some Hebrew, but with a limited ancient vocabulary lacking all modern concepts. No one even considered that Hebrew could be a living language. Not one Jew spoke it as his mother tongue. For all practical purposes, the language was dead.

In the 1880s, there was a babble of many foreign tongues spoken by a grand total of some 30,000 Jews, who had come to the Holy Land from the four corners of the earth. Simply put, without Eliezer, it is doubtful there would have ever been a revival, literally, a resurrection of spoken Hebrew. Therefore, Eliezer Ben Yehuda bears the title of “The Father of Modern Hebrew” throughout the Jewish world.

Born in Lithuania in 1858, Ben Yehuda, the youngest in his family, learned the Hebrew Scriptures on his father’s knee. He loved spending time with his father, and with a phenomenal mind, at the age of 4, he already knew significant portions of the Torah, the Talmud and commentaries by heart.

But his father had tuberculosis, and one day as he was studying the Torah with his 4-year-old, he suddenly coughed up a huge amount of blood, which covered the Torah page. His last words were, “Eliezer, my son, clean the Torah! Don’t bring dishonor to our sacred book.”

From that time on, the young child was sent to one religious boarding institution after another. He was always the best student wherever he studied. At one academy, his favorite rabbi slipped him a rare book that was not religious, but translated into Hebrew—Robinson Crusoe. It was that book that ignited his belief that Hebrew could be a living language once again.

In his memoirs, he wrote: “I fell in love with the Hebrew tongue as a living language. This love was a great and all-consuming fire that the torrent of life could not extinguish—and it was the love of Hebrew that saved me from the danger which awaited me on the next step of my new life.”

That next step came when he was slipped a short volume of Hebrew grammar by his favorite rabbi, who had dared to taste of non-religious books. Of course, his ultra-religious uncle with whom he lived was horrified that his nephew was straying into areas outside rabbinical literature, and in a rage, threw the 14-year-old boy out of his house, telling him never to return.

A Chance Meeting That Would Change History

Devastated, Eliezer wandered through the night to a nearby town, went into the local synagogue and fell asleep. A Jewish businessman, Solomon Jonas—more secular than traditional—approached him and invited him to his home. Eliezer was immediately drawn to his library, but found he could not understand a single word. The only alphabet he knew was Hebrew. Even his mother tongue, Yiddish, was written with the Hebrew alphabet.

Jonas took him in as a son. Recognizing his brilliant mind, the whole family participated in preparing him for an entrance examination to a state (secular) school, and after that, a university. Jonas’ daughter, Devora, was enlisted to teach him Russian and French—required for the state school. He taught himself mathematics and biology by reading books in his newfound languages. He excelled in school and made plans to attend university. Eliezer and Devora kept in touch by mail. Devora saw him as her prince.

Eliezer became very much a secularist, loving the great literary giants in Russian and French. No longer was he interested in Jewish things—except there was one thing he could not let go. He wrote, “That string was my love of the Hebrew language. Even after all things Jewish became foreign to me I could not keep away from the Hebrew tongue.”

A New Movement: ‘Nationalism’

Among the important events that lit a fire in this visionary was a rising “nationalist” movement among different peoples who wanted their own country. Eliezer saw how the Bulgarians were rebelling against their rulers, the Turkish Ottoman Empire, and he thought, If the Bulgarians, who are not an ancient, classical people can demand and obtain a state of their own, then the Jews, the “people of the Book” and the heirs of historic Jerusalem, deserve the same.

In the middle of the night, as he was reading newspapers, he said, “Suddenly, as if lightning struck, an incandescent light radiated before my eyes … and I heard a strange inner voice calling to me: ‘The revival of Israel and its language on the land of the forefathers!’ This was the dream.”

He then read a unique and controversial book by the famous author George Eliot in 1876, calling for a homeland for the Jewish people. That was the deciding factor that crystallized his mission for life.

He would go to Paris to study medicine and become a doctor. With that career, he would have a profession to earn a living for himself and his family. He planned to marry Devora, and they would go to live in Jerusalem.

His Catholic Confidant

Thus in 1878, Eliezer began his medical studies at the Sorbonne. He was penniless, but found an attic to rent and ate one meal a day. He spent his days studying in libraries across Paris. Visiting a Russian library, he met a new friend, a Russian/Polish Catholic journalist, Tchatchnikof, who promptly adopted him and opened for him the door to French literary society, introducing him to such literary giants as Victor Hugo.

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Supernatural

How a Move of God in Northern Ireland Provides the Blueprint for Reclaiming Cities

By Guest Post February 7, 2019

by Joshua Olson

Pastor Alan Scott says the key to seeing revival break out in a city is for ordinary believers to partner with God in both the supernatural and the supernarrative—to operate in the gifts of the Spirit and to understand how their everyday life fits into God’s grand story. He saw both these things happen at his former church—Causeway Coast Vineyard in Coleraine, Northern Ireland—and as a result witnessed a move of God break out in a historically divided and secular city. When that happens, even a Starbucks can become a site for the supernatural.

During that move of God, one of Scott’s friends was at a coffee shop when he met a young man whose partner had just come to faith. He told the young man, “Hey, here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to pray in a moment. A wind is going to come into this coffee shop. It’s going to swirl around you. Then you’re going to know that God is real, and you’re going to give your life to him.”

The young man, skeptical, shrugged and said, “OK.”

The two bowed their heads to pray together, and the moment Scott’s friend began to pray, a mighty wind came into the coffee shop and swirled around the young skeptic. Immediately, he gave his life to Christ.

“It’s kind of easy bringing people to Jesus when that kind of stuff is breaking out,” Scott says. “But that kind of stuff is a product not of a sudden movement of God but of a gradual movement of His people going after the city, changing the atmosphere of the city. When that kind of climate takes root, it makes everything a little bit easier.”

Scott knows from personal experience. He first came to Christ through an awakening in his community, helped usher in a move of God at his first church and is now eagerly contending for the Spirit to work through his new church in Anaheim, California.

It’s not going unnoticed. Pete Greig, the founder of the 24-7 Prayer Movement, says: “When Alan Scott speaks, I try to listen. Where he leads, I try to follow.”

For Scott, community-shifting transformation won’t be accomplished by scheduled revivals or frenzied church meetings but rather by years of diligently sowing seed into a city.

“Every church thinks their city is hard to reach, and every city is hard to reach—when we stay in the building,” Scott says. “But it’s amazing how open people are when we actually move beyond the services into our communities. People are desperately open. They’re desperately looking for life change. [Christians] can start there. They can start with the people around them whom God is moving in.”

Scott spoke to Charisma about his experience with moves of God, his journey from Northern Ireland to Southern California and how believers can be the catalysts for spiritual renewal in their cities.

Moves of God

Scott wasn’t raised a Christian. In fact, he says, he was a teenager before he ever met a Christian. But that all changed after his brother became a follower of Jesus. And his brother wasn’t the only one coming to Christ in his city.

“Suddenly, there was—a ‘move of God’ would be too strong, but definitely something stirring in our community—where some skinheads and some punks became believers,” Scott says. “One of them happened to be my brother, so I watched the transformation of his life, slightly intrigued and slightly afraid.”

At the same time, one of Scott’s friends began attending a Christian youth organization and invited him to join. Scott began attending, until one night he got saved during a screening of the 1977 miniseries Jesus of Nazareth. He says he was “absolutely arrested” by what he saw on screen and—despite not knowing any of the sinner’s prayer etiquette—decided to follow God because “what I saw on the screen is real and I need that in my life.”

By the time he was 27, Scott and his wife, Kathryn, were co-founding and pastoring the Causeway Coast Vineyard in Coleraine, Northern Ireland. They learned a lot during those early years of ministry.

“I think it’s the same for any pastor,” Scott says. “We always think it’s about building the church, and then you realize, Actually, Jesus was forming me. I am the project, and all these things that are happening around me are designed to create something within me.”

Coleraine, a coastal town of approximately 25,000, enjoys influence belying its small size thanks to 3 million tourists who annually visit the famous Causeway Coast. When the church was founded, Scott says the town’s Protestant and Catholic communities were sharply divided, a situation which was only growing more tense with time. Though Scott’s initial focus was on growing and developing his small church community, his entire paradigm shifted during a church leadership retreat.

During that time, Scott felt God impress upon his heart, “If you’ll go after the lost, I will look after the church.”

“As church planters, we’d been trying to build the church, and it really isn’t our job to do that,” Scott says. “Jesus said, ‘I will build my church.’ … That was the seminal moment for our church, because we began cultivating an outward focus: to go out and engage the lost, to get churchgoers to think beyond the building and develop ministries—[from] healings on the street to compassion ministries. To desire to pursue the Father as He was pursuing the lost.”

Causeway Coast’s first step was to bring peace to its polarized community. Scott says parades were an area of significant tension in Northern Ireland, stoking division and escalating violence within a region. That year, before a key parade, police asked Scott if his church would come attend the event. When Scott asked why, the police officers told him, “We can see that when you show up, there happens to be a change in the atmosphere.”

From there, the church began serving wherever God gave them favor—eventually ministering everywhere from hospitals to public schools to branches of government.

One key initiative that paved the way for revival was the church’s healing ministry.

“We really invented a simple model in the community,” Scott says. “We erected a banner that says, ‘Healing.’ We got out four or six chairs, and we literally waited for people to take a seat, [even] in the rain or in the freezing cold. As we did that, God had this beautiful way of showing up and transforming lives.”

People began getting healed. In a small town like Coleraine, news travels quickly—and thanks to its tourist traffic, news travels far. Healed people brought their friends to be healed too. Scott recalls that once a busload of soccer players pulled up to the healing banner, ready to see the team injuries healed.

“I had people from all over Ireland and even beyond Ireland come,” Scott says. “I saw every conceivable cancer healed—sometimes really dramatically, most of the time really slowly over a period of time. But it never gets old. It’s just an amazing thing to watch God do what no one else can do.”

The supernatural started but didn’t stop with healing. In October 2013, a prophetic voice told Causeway Coast, “This month you have seen on average three people a day come to faith. It has astounded you, but I tell you that from this day you are going to see between five and 10 people a day coming to faith.” The following week, 35 people came to faith. By 2014, Scott says “a significant move of God” took hold in Coleraine, and thousands of people came to faith. Scott says for a time, 56 to 70 people started a relationship with Christ each day. During that time, Scott says the Holy Spirit gave ordinary people prophetic words, words of knowledge and dream interpretation. He believes this move of God is at least somewhat duplicable and the result of reaping a long-sown harvest.

“When you sow a seed in the community over a period of time—the long haul, spending every week on the streets … it actually begins to alter the calling of the city,” Scott says. “It begins to change and blooms this beautiful receptivity to the community, where it’s just easier for people to come to faith.”

Called to California

Alan and Kathryn Scott never imagined they’d leave the Causeway Coast Vineyard. After all, their years of work were finally shifting the atmosphere of the entire community, and they loved their brothers and sisters in the church there. But the Lord had other plans for the Scott family.

“For a long time, Kathryn had sensed God speaking about us living in the U.S. at some point,” Scott says. “I thought it’d be maybe after our kids had gone to college and all that. But then we were in the gathering, and very clearly the Holy Spirit began to speak and say, ‘I want you to build an altar again. It’s time to pioneer again.’ Honestly, you tend to tuck those kinds of things away, but from then on, it was like prophecy central. Everywhere I went, people prophesied over us. Initially, I didn’t want to hear it—we were loving the community there and loving what God was doing. Who would want to leave something like that? It’s what we dreamed of and desired for years. But the Lord kept speaking into it.”

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Christianity

Christian Missionary Reports on Persecution in Nepal

By Theo Theo February 5, 2019

Persecution is increasing in Nepal. In the latter third of 2018, the Nepal government has deported and expelled at least 78 missionaries representing some 21 nations of the world. This in response to new legislation passed in October 2017 and put into effect in the summer of 2018.

For a personal overview of current conditions in Nepal, listen to my interview with Dr. Michael S. Heiser.

Also, please remember the native Nepalese believers “in chains” arrested by the same legislation (as we’re exhorted to do in Hebrews 13:3.) They face a hefty fine up to 50,000 rupees and five years in prisons (not up to Western standards) and often need total support from their families to survive (akin to the parable in Matthew 25:31-46.)

Biblical Era Powers

Nepali conditions are more akin to that of the world of the Bible than those in the west might imagine. We are surrounded by powers that would rather their influence or King (earthly or heavenly) not be impinged upon by any new kingdom; especially after the overthrow of their former monarchy.

Misleading Census Data

The 2011 census report in Wikipedia for Religions in Nepal is probably not accurate:

Hindu 81.3%
Buddhist 9.0%
Muslim 4.4%
Folk 3.0%
Christian 1.42%
Other 0.9%

The census is probably not accurate because the powers that be don’t want to report on the increase of Christianity resulting from the wave of Christian aid after the 2015 earthquakes.

Current Nepali Government

The current government is elected but is led by a communist faction with an overwhelming 2/3 majority for a five-year term. Nevertheless, it’s the first stable government since the bloody ravaged filled uprising in 2006. That uprising was focused on Christians as one of their primary necessities and partnered with the governments of both India and China in a unified effort.

Here is the Chinese media reporting on its pact with India and Nepal to drive out the West and Christianity in particular and an interview from this past summer as the legislation began to be enforced. The interviewee is a Christian political leader in Nepal and one of the principals at a college where I teach. He travels across Nepal with a book he’s written to address abuses of members of congregations who are being mistreated and deceived into giving up their rights so hard fought for in the newly established constitution.

Recent Persecution Events

Recent events in Nepal’s history concerning the rise in persecution is documented in the following articles:

Also, a school was shut down and children forced out because outsiders believed the children were being forcibly converted.

Preservation Law

The Anti-Conversion Law was followed up by a similar Preservation Law to protect the Hindu religion and religious tourists’ sites from the spread of Christianity. Such sites are at the heart of their economy. The Preservation Law can be used against anyone with a beef against believers for any reason to bring harassment through trumped-up charges.

Christian Moonies?

A recent summit was held and the focus was on the need to curtail Christianity. The “Moonies” and their “daughter of Jesus” represented Christianity and gave USD 100,000.

Tons of criticism ensued that this was even allowed among the Hindu/Buddhist majority currently ruling.

On the docket was a discussion of the role of faith-based organizations/initiatives in Asia. As a result, certain powers that be were ready to restore Nepal to a Hindu kingdom and drive out Christianity entirely.

Violent Swings

Much that happens in the new political environ of Nepal is in the wake of violent swings from one extreme to another. Those poised use the momentum to achieve their goals. Each one waits for their “moment” to strike while the iron is hot!

At the same time, though, in India, some elections of interest “just happened” to be going on. Their election process there have separate states voting each according to its designs. The current prime minister, Narendra Modi, recently lost his super majority and his influence has been gradually reduced to more like a fifty-fifty split at present it would seem.

Modi’s Upsurge

As the champion in Asian politics of Hinduism, Modi’s upsurge has been the driving force behind much persecution since in both India and subsequently Nepal. Those opposed to Christianity have ridden his “wave” of popularity to bring about their own agendas and as Nero of Rome did centuries ago take it out on Christians. Asia is much more akin to Biblical times in so many ways.

Now that he is not so strong, many feared what would happen if this slide/trend continues. Traditionally, the Congress party in India has stood up for the rights of Christians. Due to much political corruption, they lost to Modi when he and his party initially rose to power in 2014. Now the opposition to Modi has been able to cobble back a 50% stake apparently in the legislature and who will be the next prime minister in the wake of India’s 2019 General election.

Facebook Nonsense in Nepal

You wouldn’t believe what goes on Facebook here. A while back, they had Navy Seals in Syria slitting children’s throats! That was tough for some people to process albeit many knew the US is not like that!

The Empire Strikes Back

Teach Nepal (a Christian only entity) was being threatened because they don’t hire non-Christians. As a result, Teach Nepal shut down altogether and remain aloof.

Current Sentiment

The last paragraph of this article represents much the current sentiment in Nepal.

Here’s a new update coming out of China. and an update from India. and one on Christmas in Nepal.

Here’s an important ongoing story to help one understand where the persecution is trending amid the swirling powers of Nepal. A school in a remote district was closed and several Christians arrested. Afterward, the update on their “triumphant” release.

Not Looking Good for Christians

The Christians here see through the Hindus more influenced by the current Hindu party in power in India which is very opposed to Christians. The effect of a recent election in India shifted the thinking of the Hindus here is a case in point.

Either way, for Christians in Asia, it is not looking good. From what I am seeing on the ground Hindus respond more to Hindus in India than the communist in China presently while both factors do play significant roles.

God’s Hand on Elections!

Thus, on the very day, the contentions in Nepal swelled as many were hoping to take advantage and act, the news of the results in India’s provisional elections in three nearby states caused them to cool their jets and think more carefully.

With so many facets of political intrigue in competition for their piece of the pie, it is often tough to know where things may turn at any given moment. Many agendas get set aside as new interests prevail.

With Nepal so small in the world nestled between two of the largest people groups in the world, only God knows where things may end up.

This reminds me of the peripeties in the book of Esther! We just trust the Lord to lead and guide despite what “in the world” may transpire.

There is still more to the story as the General elections have yet to take place due in April, but if these recent state elections are any indication, things at least are being held in check at the moment. All sides look cautiously as the largest democracy in the world is set to vote.

America

Why is ‘separation of church and state’ so misquoted?

By Guest Post February 5, 2019

After King Henry VIII broke from Rome in 1534, England began enforcing Anglican religious uniformity. Some wanted to purify the Anglican Church from the inside, being given the name “Puritans.” Others separated themselves completely from the Anglican Church as dissenters. Of those were Thomas Helwys, John Murton and John Smyth, who founded the Baptist faith in England.

Thomas Helwys wrote “A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity,” 1612, considered the first English book defending the principle of religious liberty: “Queen Mary … had no power over her subjects consciences … neither hath our Lord the King … power over his subjects consciences. … The King is a mortal man, and not God, therefore he hath no power over the mortal soul of his subjects to make laws and ordinances for them and to set spiritual Lords over them. …”

He continued: “If the King’s people be obedient and true subjects, obeying all humane laws made by the King, our Lord the King can require no more: for men’s religion to God is betwixt God and themselves; the King shall not answer for it, neither may the King be judge between God and man.”

Thomas Helwys was arrested and thrown into London’s notorious Newgate Prison, where he died in 1616.

Another Baptist dissenter, John Murton, was locked in Newgate Prison as punishment for spreading politically incorrect religious views. Prisoners were not fed, but instead relied on charity of friends to bring them food, such as bread or bottles of milk.

Roger Williams referred to John Murton in his work, “The Bloody Tenet (Practice) of Persecution for the Cause of Conscience,” 1644: “The author of these arguments against persecution … being committed (a) prisoner to Newgate for the witness of some truths of Jesus … and having not use of pen and ink, wrote these arguments in milk, in sheets of paper brought to him by the woman, his keeper, from a friend in London as the stopples (corks) of his milk bottle. … In such paper, written with milk, nothing will appear; but the way of reading by fire being known to this friend who received the papers, he transcribed and kept together the papers, although the author himself could not correct nor view what himself had written. … It was in milk, tending to soul nourishment, even for babes and sucklings in Christ … the word of truth … testify against … slaughtering each other for their several respective religions and consciences.”

Williams wrote: “Persecution for cause of conscience is most contrary to the doctrine of Christ Jesus the Prince of Peace. … Enforced uniformity is the greatest occasion of civil war, ravishing of conscience, persecution of Christ Jesus in his servants.”

Roger Williams was a contemporary of John Bunyan, who wrote “Pilgrim’s Progress” while in prison for conscience sake. When the government sought to arrest Roger Williams for preaching religious liberty, he fled to Boston, Massachusetts, on Feb. 5, 1631.

To his dismay, Puritans in Massachusetts had begun enforcing Puritan religious uniformity. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote in Engel v. Vitale, 1962: “When some of the very groups which had most strenuously opposed the established Church of England found themselves sufficiently in control of colonial governments … they passed laws making their own religion the official religion of their respective colonies.”

A controversy raged among inhabitants of Massachusetts, between “a covenant of grace” versus “a covenant of works.” The “covenant of grace” leaders were Sir Henry Vane, Rev. John Cotton, Rev. John Wheelwright, and his sister-in-law, Anne Hutchinson.

Rev. John Wheelwright fled Puritan uniformity in Massachusetts in 1637 and founded Exeter, New Hampshire. Roger Williams was briefly the pastor a church till “notorious disagreements” caused the Massachusetts General Court to censor his religious speech. Upon hearing the sheriff was on his way to arrest him and send him back to England, Williams fled again, in freezing weather, January of 1636. For weeks he traveled alone till he was befriended by the Indians of Narragansett. He founded Providence Plantation, Rhode Island – the first place where the church was not controlled by state.

Roger Williams wrote in 1661: “I having made covenant of peaceable neighborhood with all the Sachems (Chiefs) and natives round about us, and having in a sense of God’s merciful providence unto me in my distress called the place Providence … a shelter for persons distressed of conscience.”

A historical plaque reads: “To the memory of Roger Williams, the Apostle of Soul Liberty, Founder of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation.”

The reverse of the plaque reads: “Below this spot then at the water’s edge stood the rock on which according to tradition Roger Williams, an exile for the devotion to the freedom of conscience, landed. 1636.”

In 1638, Roger Williams organized the first Baptist Church in America.

A plaque reads: “The First Baptist Church, Founded by Roger Williams, AD 1638, The Oldest Baptist Church in America, The Oldest Church in this State.”

Physician John Clarke came to Rhode Island and founded another Baptist Church in Newport. Other dissenters arrived in Williams’ Rhode Island Colony, such as William Coddington, Philip Sherman, and Anne Hutchinson. Anne soon left again to settle in the Dutch settlement of the Bronx in New York City, where all her family was scalped and beheaded by raiding Indians in 1643. There was only one survivor, Anne’s nine-year-old daughter Susanna, who was taken captive. After several years, she escaped and married an innkeeper, Samuel Cole. Their descendants included three U.S. presidents.

The Governor of Massachusetts from 1636 to 1637 was Sir Henry Vane, who helped found Harvard. He supported the efforts of Roger Williams. Due to the “covenant of grace” versus “covenant of works” controversy, Governor Sir Henry Vane was not reelected, being replaced by John Winthrop.

In 1639, Sir Henry Vane returned to England where he backed the Puritan Revolution, led by Oliver Cromwell, though he did not support the Rump Parliament which beheaded Charles I.

During the brief English Commonwealth, Vane helped draft for Roger Williams the Patent for Providence Plantation, which was unique in that it did not acknowledge a king, and it guaranteed freedom of religion and conscience. Vane later defended the Patent on behalf of Roger Williams against a competing charter.

Roger William wrote of Vane in April of 1664: “Under God, the great anchor of our ship is Sir Henry Vane … an instrument in the hand of God for procuring this island.”

A statue of Sir Henry Vane is in the Boston Public Library with a plaque that reads: “Sir Henry Vane … An ardent defender of civil liberty and advocate of free thought in religion. He maintained that God, Law, and Parliament were superior to the King.”

The Plantation Agreement at Providence, Sept. 6, 1640, stated: “We agree, as formerly hath been the liberties of the town, so still, to hold forth liberty of conscience.”

The Government of Rhode Island, March 19, 1641, stated: “The Government … in this Island … is a Democracy, or Popular Government; that is to say, It is in the Power of the Body of Freemen orderly assembled.”

Roger Williams responded to Puritan leader John Cotton’s accusations by publishing “The Bloody Tenet (Practice) of Persecution for the Cause of Conscience and Mr. Cotton’s Letter Lately Printed, Examined and Answered in 1644.” In this, Williams first mentioned his now famous phrase, “wall of separation”: “Mr. Cotton … hath not duly considered these following particulars. First, the faithful labors of many witnesses of Jesus Christ, existing in the world, abundantly proving, that the Church of the Jews under the Old Testament in the type and the Church of the Christians under the New Testament in the anti-type, were both separate from the world; and that when they have opened a gap in the hedge, or wall of separation, between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broken down the wall itself, removed the candlestick, &c. and made his garden a wilderness, as at this day. And that therefore if He will ever please to restore His garden and paradise again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto Himself from the world, and that all that shall be saved out of the world are to be transplanted out of the wilderness of the world and added unto His Church or garden … a separation of Holy from unHoly, penitent from impenitent, Godly from unGodly.”

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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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Atheism

Former Atheist & Philosophy Professor Edward Feser On How Studying Philosophy Convinced Him of God’s Existence

By Guest Post January 30, 2019

By James Bishop

Philosopher Edward Feser perhaps has one of the most well articulated and detailed testimonies I recall having read (which at this point is quite a few). Feser is a professional philosopher after all, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Nonetheless, in this short post I have attempted to summarize Feser’s journey while also attempting to outline some of the key moments that had taken place within it. I am confident that this summarized testimony will be helpful to those who don’t necessarily have the time to read through the 7000 word testimony on Feser’s own website. However, I do encourage reading the full testimony for there is much in the details not included here.

As a way of biography, Feser is a well-known philosopher in the profession having penned numerous academic articles on several subjects ranging from the philosophy of mind to metaphysics. He is the Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College, previously a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University, and a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center. He has authored numerous books including Aquinas, Five Proofs of the Existence of God, Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction, and The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism. Feser was also once an atheist naturalist until he converted to Christianity.

Feser explains that he was a convinced atheist naturalist for a period of 10 years in the 1990s and that his transition away from it “was no single event, but a gradual transformation.” He was brought up Catholic but ultimately lost his faith while a teenager around the age of 13 or 14. His atheism stayed with him well into his university years as a passionate philosophy student. While at university he discovered a new interest in existentialism and existentialist philosophers, particularly Soren Kierkegaard. This interest led him to discover other existentialists such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Kaufmann of whom he both appreciated but especially Kaufmann in particular. In the more modern philosophical climate, the atheist analytic philosopher J. L. Mackie proved appealing to Feser, and he considered Mackie’s book The Miracle of Theism to be a solid piece of philosophical work. Feser remarks that Mackie’s book was “intellectually serious, which is more than can be said for anything written by a “New Atheist.”” Philosopher Kai Nielsen would also appeal on issues of morality and religion. According to Feser,

What really impressed me was the evidentialist challenge to religious belief. If God really exists there should be solid arguments to that effect, and there just aren’t, or so I then supposed… Atheism was like belief in a spherical earth — something everyone in possession of the relevant facts knows to be true, and therefore not worth getting too worked up over or devoting too much philosophical attention to.

However, when he examined analytic philosophy in some more detail during the course of his studies it would, before long, bring his “youthful atheism down to earth.” The genesis of Feser’s transition away from atheism came about when he first began to look into the philosophy of language and logic. Over the several following years, during which he weighed information and arguments presented in his course materials, he reasoned that the existing naturalistic accounts of language and meaning failed to satisfy,

I already knew from the lay of the land in the philosophy of language and philosophy of mind that the standard naturalist approaches had no solid intellectual foundation, and themselves rested as much on fashion as on anything else.

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Catholic

Why Thomas Aquinas Stands the Test of Time

By Guest Post January 29, 2019

by Casey Chalk

The 2016 data breach of the personal Gmail account of John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, garnered much attention from Catholics. They took umbrage at an email exchange discussing the possibility of a “Catholic Spring” aimed at fundamentally changing their identity and beliefs. In that conversation, John Halpin, a Catholic and fellow at the Center for American Progress, noted that many “powerful elements” in conservatism are Catholic. He speculated that “they must be attracted to the systematic thought,” and added, “they can throw around ‘Thomistic’ thought and ‘subsidiarity’ and sound sophisticated because no one knows what the hell they’re talking about.”

I’m not sure Halpin knows “what the hell” Thomistic thought is, but I certainly wish he—and all Americans—did. Thomism, 745 years since the great theologian’s death, remains perhaps the best philosophical system available to the West.

As I’ve argued elsewhere at TAC, we are all philosophers in the sense that we all develop, either consciously or subconsciously, a system of thought for evaluating ourselves, the world around us, and what counts as truth. We make choices, form opinions, and offer arguments, all based on philosophical presuppositions. When we go with “what works,” we channel the pragmatism of William James and John Dewey. When we seek to maximize sensual pleasure and minimize pain, we are drinking from the well of John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism. When we act off of scientifically verifiable data, we are the intellectual heirs of empiricist David Hume. Those who believe morality can be changed by will honor the memory of Friedrich Nietzsche. And those who reduce human persons to their economic output have embraced the thinking of Karl Marx.

There are fundamental problems with all of these philosophies. One error that unites them is a belief, either explicit or implicit, in materialism, or the idea that man (and reality) is reducible solely to what is material, what can be sensed, and what can be empirically studied. Even that which separates man from all other animals—his intellect and will—are explained away as physical properties. Yet without an intellect and will, appeals to an essential human dignity quickly collapse. We are all just a bunch of colliding atoms in a universe of colliding atoms. It’s just that our atoms are a bit more evolved and sophisticated than everything else.

Thus do all these philosophical systems tend to dehumanize man and overemphasize certain goods at the expense of others. For example, pace the pragmatists and utilitarians, of course we should prefer things that work over things that don’t work and pleasure over pain. But sometimes what “works” isn’t immediately perceptible to our senses. Additionally, the greatest pleasures in life sometimes require great sacrifice and suffering. Making decisions based on empirical data is a good, but not all things worthy of our attention can be empirically derived (e.g. the arts, human love, knowledge of eternal truth). There is something to Nietzsche’s argument that knowledge can be an instrument of power, but his claim that reality as we know it is simply an artificial creation of our minds unravels when one asks whether his own presuppositions are really real or just perspectives he has created and thus just as ephemeral as everything he attacks. Marx was right to recognize that man’s economic output contributes to his dignity and value—but it certainly isn’t the sum of his worth.

Who can save us amid this messiness? I would offer Aquinas. His philosophy doesn’t get as much attention as other philosophers, and certainly not as much as those of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment. When Americans think of Aquinas, if they ever do, they’re more inclined to think of his role in Christian theology, especially his contribution to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. Perhaps if they’ve taken introductory theology or philosophy courses, they’re aware of his famous “Five Ways,” or proofs of the existence of God, which prominent New Atheist Richard Dawkins sought to take to task (and failed) in his bestselling book The God Delusion.

Yet Aquinas is a philosopher par excellence who is worthy of our attention. He stands tall on his own merits as the one who “was able to provide the principles,” to quote French philosopher Pierre Manent, for political communities governed by reason and grace. Yet his value also lies in the larger intellectual project of which he is a part. By this I mean that Aquinas, in a way that was perhaps unprecedented in the 12th and 13th centuries, consolidates the wisdom of the Western tradition into a coherent whole. He draws upon an impressive variety of sources. Certainly Holy Scripture and earlier theologians like Augustine, John of Damascus, Dionysius the Areopagite, and Anselm loom large in his work, though he is also incredibly well-versed in the history of philosophy.

It was Thomas who “baptized” Aristotle by appropriating significant chunks of his philosophy, including such concepts as act and potency, hylemorphism, the four causes, essence and existence, transcendentals, and being. Even Aquinas’s proofs for God’s existence, as many Thomists have noted, are drawing upon Aristotelian premises. He also builds his philosophical system upon the shoulders of Plato, Cicero, Boethius, Avicenna, Averroes, Al-Ghazali, Maimonides, and John Scotus Eriugena. This enterprise reflects conservatism at its best: studying, honoring, and incorporating the very best of our intellectual forebears, while carefully and humbly critiquing where they went astray.

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Divine Council

When Angels Do Time

By Guest Post January 28, 2019

by Michael S. Heiser

Most Bible study resources describe fallen angels as demons who joined Lucifer in his rebellion against God. But what if I told you that the only place in the New Testament that describes angels sinning does not call them demons, has no connection to Lucifer, and has them in jail? Welcome to the world of 2 Peter and Jude.

For . . . God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment. (2 Peter 2:4)

And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. (Jude 6)

Second Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 are nearly identical in their description of angels doing time, but there are differences that help us figure out “what in the spiritual world is going on.”

Jude 6 defines what 2 Peter 2:4 means by the angelic sin. These sinning angels “left their proper dwelling.” Second Peter doesn’t say they were in cahoots with Satan, or that they did anything in Eden. It tells us they left their designated realm of existence and did something in another realm. But what did they do?

Both 2 Peter and Jude compare the sin of these angels with the Sodom and Gomorrah incident, where the sin involved sexual immorality (2 Pet 2:7; Jude 7). Second Peter also connects it to the time of Noah. There is only one sin involving a group of angelic beings in the entire Bible, and it coincides with Noah and is sexual in nature. That incident is Genesis 6:1–4, where the “sons of God” leave heaven, their normal abode, and come to earth and father children (the Nephilim giants) by human women.

Who are the “sons of God” who sinned?

Two features in these passages in 2 Peter and Jude point to Genesis 6:1–4.

First, “sons of God” is a specific phrase used elsewhere in the Old Testament of angelic beings (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7; Psa 89:6; Deut 32:8).*

Second, both 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 explicitly tell us that these angels are imprisoned in chains of gloomy darkness—in “hell” until judgment day.

*The ESV and NRSV properly adopt the manuscript reading in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint.

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