Yesterday was Darren Wilson’s “Finger of God” and today is his “Furious Love”. WP Films is making their films watchable for free during Easter week!
I’m half-way through Furious Love and can now recommend it. Here’s the trailer:
I don’t know what movies will be shown, tomorrow, so tune in to find out!
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.
First off, thank you to the 42 believers who responded to the question posed in the last email, “Would you take advantage of free access to ALL the courses in the Mobile Ed catalog?”
Now that FaithLife has agreed to reinstate our subscription from last year, it’s truly heartening to hear how these courses would bring scholarly insight into God’s Word all over the globe.
We even had five subscribers donate $95 towards this mission which is more helpful than you might imagine.
I’m excited to share the news that we now have a product sponsor who will put 100% of the proceeds of sales of “First Words” towards DivineCouncil.org’s Logos Mobile Ed yearly subscription!
Yes! Until we reach our goal for this mission, 100% of the proceeds will be donated to DC to help get us there. So, even if you don’t happen to be in the market, you can still help by forwarding “First Words” to family, friends, or anyone you know who might be interested. For example, do you know anyone in the mission field in Latin America who might want to get a jumpstart on their Spanish?
“First Words” is a father’s quest to present (via digital flashcards) the 1000 most optimal “First Words” to begin teaching his children Spanish, French, Latin, & Greek.
These are not just any words; they are 1000 of the most frequently used words in each language (though only Spanish is currently available.) All the words on the 1000 Optimal First Words list are in the top 5000 most frequently used words in Spanish. And 787 of them are in the top 3000! That makes them pure gold for the student first learning Spanish.
You can read the story of “First Words” discovery here and how the quest began. The Sales Page explains in detail precisely why learning these words first is the optimal way to jumpstart your way into practical usage and language mastery overnight.
This transcript is of John Lennox presenting his case for the existence of God at the Oxford Union in 2012.
Copyright © 2012 Oxford Media Associates
The excerpts, below, are a sample of the transcript.
And as we look at the rise of science in the 16th and 17th centuries, Alfred North Whitehead and many others commented, that men became scientific because they expected law in nature and they expected law in nature because they believed in a lawgiver.
So, ladies and gentlemen, I’m not ashamed of being both a scientist and a Christian because, arguably, Christianity gave me my subject.
What I am amazed at is that serious thinkers today continue to ask us to choose between God and science. That’s like asking people to choose between Henry Ford and engineering as an explanation of the motor car.
When Newton discovered his law of gravity he didn’t say I’ve got a law, I don’t need God. No, he wrote the Principia Mathematica, arguably the greatest work in the whole history of science, because he saw that God is not the same kind of explanation as a scientific explanation. God doesn’t Compete. Agency does not compete with mechanism and law.
It reminds me a little bit of GK Chesterton who said, “It is absurd to complain that it is unthinkable for an unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing and then to pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.”
Leading philosopher Alvin Plantinga of Notre Dame says, “If atheists are right that we are the product of mindless, unguided natural processes then they have given a strong reason to doubt the reliability of human cognitive faculties, and therefore inevitably to doubt the validity of any belief that they produce including their atheism.” Their biology and their belief in naturalism would, therefore, appear to be at war with each other in a conflict that has nothing at all to do with God.
As modern science sprang from Judeo-Christian sources, so did the concept of human equality. Listen to atheist Jurgen Habermas, arguably one of Germany’s leading intellectuals. He said that “Universalistic egalitarianism from which sprang the ideals of freedom and collective life and solidarity, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love.”
This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day there is no alternative to it. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.
Adam Ford, the man behind The Babylon Bee, has started a Christian “Drudge Report” called the “Christian Daily Reporter.” If you enjoy Adam’s comics and humor on “The Bee,” you might be interested in the daily news articles Adam finds important enough to share with other believers.
At the bottom of the Christian Daily Reporter page, Adam links to a manifesto where he explains the motivation and purpose of his new website. His two headers say it all:
Stop letting Facebook and Google dictate which news and opinions you are allowed to see.
The Christian Daily Reporter is a source for the most important news and content from a Christian perspective — and it lives outside the tech-giant information choke hold.
(Photo credit: SNL screen capture)
I’ve spent the past two weeks coming up with a format to create and disseminate transcripts of video and audio materials I find important enough to have in text format.
With the proliferation of videos and podcasts, transcripts have become more useful in my work. As a writer and teacher, transcripts enable me to:
I use DevonThink to store, scan, and search thousands of documents. Transcripts make videos, podcasts, & lectures available to that research workflow.
As each transcript is completed, I’ll make them freely available on either DivineCouncil.org (Spiritual) or McGillespie.com (Business, Family, Legal, Government, Health, Personal.)
Note: Each transcript (pdf) will be digitally signed by yours truly for web security. If you see my digital signature, you’ll know the document has not been altered from the signed original.
If you have children in elementary school, you may be interested in a series of articles I’m writing on homeschooling, on my personal website, Mcgillespie.com.
The education of our boys (ages 9 and 5) has been unfolding wonderfully, so far. However, dark clouds are forming on the horizon, and it’s time to do a little reconnaissance on our options.
As other homeschooling parents have done for my wife and me, I hope others may benefit as we share our findings and experiences.
Intro to Part 1, “The Adventures of a Homeschooling Dad”
“Though satisfied with our children’s private school, three factors are motivating my wife and me to start looking into homeschooling, again. The Christian school our boys attend is having financial problems, their high-school is aiming towards the new common core SATs for college admissions, and SB-277 will soon involve our non-vaccinated boys.
None of these factors affect us, right now, making it the perfect time to do some reconnaissance. Even if the financial problems get resolved, and we find a way around SB-277, the intrusion of common core into the high-school is enough motivation, by itself, to start vetting alternatives.”
Bill Sardi reports . . .
In the process of introducing a new theory on how life began, two notable evolutionary biologists have just dismissed the reigning theory of Darwinian evolution, maintaining it would take many billions of years to accomplish and would extend beyond the very age of the universe, making the current understanding of evolution impossible.
The study of Darwinian evolution, the gradual assemblage of molecules that somehow were constructed and then began replicating themselves out of some imaginary “primordial soup” or “warm pond” as Charles Darwin once described it, has just taken a U-turn.
Today the vast majority of biologists maintain what they call RNA World existed on Earth before modern cells arose. For the past few decades the consensus of molecular biologists is that life originated from RNA — ribonucleic acid, which is a single strand of nucleotides (adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine) unlike DNA which is double-stranded, and is bonded with ribose sugars rather than deoxyribose sugars that comprise DNA.
However RNA is more unstable and prone to degradation than DNA and makes a less plausible platform for the origin of life say two eminent researchers. For the very reason of RNAs inherent instability, two researchers now say RNA couldn’t have endured the time it would have taken for evolutionary life forms to appear.
Scientific U-turn
The scientific U-turn is this. According to astrobiologist and (Honorary) professor Brig Klyce, “Virtually all biologists now agree bacterial cells cannot form from nonliving chemical in one step. If life arises from non-living chemicals, there must be intermediate forms. Among the various theories on the origin of life, biologists have reached consensus on the RNA theory (called RNA WORLD), which serves as a messenger to carry out instructions from DNA and initiate and control the synthesis of proteins. But now evolutionary thinkers say life’s first molecule was protein, not RNA.”
“Only one fact concerning the RNA World hypothesis can be established by direct observation: if it ever existed, it ended without leaving any unambiguous trace of itself,” say Peter R Wills and Charles W Carter Jr., authors of the new theory writing in the BioRxIV Beta journal.
Carter and Wills argue that RNA could not kick-start this process alone because it lacks a property they call “reflexivity.” It cannot enforce the rules by which it is made. RNA needed peptides to form the reflexive feedback loop necessary to eventually lead to life forms.
I received a call from FaithLife, yesterday, notifying customers that the eligibility requirements for a FaithLife Church Group subscription have been changed. They are now limiting access to legally recognized churches only.
Back in June of this year, when we purchased our subscription, it was open to all church groups regardless of legal status. As of today, this is no longer the case. Indeed, the sales page on FaithLife has been updated with this new restriction.
For DC to maintain our FaithLifeTV & Logos Moblie Ed subscription, we would have to reorganize as a legally recognized church. Though not impossible, it’s not something we can do quickly. It’s also not something we’ve even contemplated, until today.
Over the past two months, I’ve been in contact with multiple levels of FaithLife sales asking for guidance on how to expand the reach of our group. Based on their lack of direction I came to understand that FaithLife’s church subscription was a “pilot” sales program for the company. Their approach was to make the subscription available to see where it would lead. They were discovering things as they went along and, unfortunately, this has led to the new legal restrictions on access.
The good news is that hundreds of us on DivineCouncil.org were able to view some of the best Biblical courses in the world for almost five months. The bad news is that Faithife is now limiting access to legally recognized churches only.
Since DC is not currently a legally recognized church, please reach out to your local church to extend your access.
In the meantime, I’ll be in contact with FaithLife to see if there’s another option for small groups (and the ever-growing number of believers who have no affiliation with a formal church).
Update: After a day of thinking and discussing this with others the impetus behind this new policy became clear: the storage and streaming costs make it cost-prohibitive for FaithLife to handle organizations with members scattered around the world. In our case, we had almost 100 people from China, Korea, and Japan subscribe in the past month! Fantastic, from our point-of-view, as part of our aim is to penetrate the 10/40 window with the best Biblical materials in the world. However, if your business model or pricing structure does not account for such streaming costs, it could become impossible to break even while delivering hundreds of gigabytes of video courses.
I speculate that FaithLife’s new policy of “Legally recognized churches only” is their way of saying “Local Only”. Therefore, even if DC had met every criterion of a legally recognized church our subscription would still have been terminated due to streaming costs.
For the latest updates and discussion on this see this thread on our private forum.
The following post is by Dr. Dale Brueggemann, Contributing Editor at Faithlife Corporation.
Do we know for certain that Jesus can be found in the OT? In our efforts to “read backward,” are we finding Christ where perhaps he should not be found? Or do we have license as Spirit-led interpreters of Scripture to allegorize as we see fit, and as it benefits our listeners?
In this post, I’m going to address these questions by discussing the biblical mandate for a method of interpretation called “Christotelic” hermeneutics. Look with me first at the evidence from the NT directing the church to engage in Christ-centered exegesis of the OT.
Paul aimed to “preach the gospel,” to “preach Christ” (Rom 15:20; 1 Cor 1:17, 23; 2 Cor 2:12; Eph 3:8; Phil 1:15). But he directed Timothy to “preach the word” (2 Tim 3:16; 4:2), which meant the OT. For the early church, that meant preaching the gospel of Christ from the OT.
On the Emmaus road, Jesus modeled an approach to expositing the OT Christologically: “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:25-27).
Jesus’ key statement was this: “everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44, italics added).
Two questions come to mind: 1) did the church continue to follow Jesus’ example? and 2) what example did they follow, if we don’t have the actual transcript of his exposition to the unnamed disciples?
I’m going to show you how the church historically attempted to follow Jesus method of interpretation, and argue for one in particular as especially valuable today.
Historically, the church has employed three methods to discern “everything written about [Jesus] in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms.”
