Bill Pratt | May 8, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt The story, in Genesis 22, of God commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac has always been perplexing to readers. However, this story takes on special significance to Christians, for it foreshadows the sacrifice of God’s Son for mankind. David Baggett and Jerry Walls, in Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality, bring this significance to light. [...]
Bill Pratt | February 18, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt Critics of Christianity sometimes point to passages in the Bible where God takes human life, and they ask, “Isn’t God breaking his own commandment to not kill?” If God can ignore the sixth commandment, then isn’t it hypocritical for him to expect us to obey it? Does this argument really work, though? No. [...]
Bill Pratt | December 28, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt If you are worried, then it’s likely that you have not committed the unpardonable sin. This sin is first mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew in chapter 12, verses 31-32, in the context of Jesus’s healing of a demon-possessed man. As always, when reading the Bible, we need to look at [...]
Bill Pratt | August 31, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt Many passages in Scripture are relatively straight-forward to understand. A person of even minimal intelligence can read and understand much of the Bible. The greatest obstacle that faces readers of the Bible – the fact it was written in ancient Hebrew and Greek – is largely mitigated by the hard work [...]
Bill Pratt | February 29, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt In part 1 of this post, we learned what exactly the unpardonable sin is – attributing to Satan what is accomplished by the Spirit of God. But what caused Jesus to give this stern warning to this particular group of people? It is important to understand so that we can know how [...]
Bill Pratt | December 23, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt The biblical injunction to take a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth – called lex talionis - is repeated several times (e.g., Ex. 21:23-25; Lev. 24:17-22; Deut. 19:16-21). Some people have read this punishment to literally mean that bodily mutilation is prescribed. Is [...]
Bill Pratt | November 30, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt I’ve mentioned Paul Copan’s book Is God a Moral Monster? before, but I ran across this video clip where historical Jesus scholar Mike Licona interviews Copan about alleged genocide in the Old Testament. Copan summarizes some very key arguments from his book during this informative clip.
Bill Pratt | November 18, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt Patti, a reader of Tough Questions Answered, asked the other day if Jesus lied to his brothers in John 7:8-10. She claims that an atheist pointed these verses out to her. So, what’s going on here? Must we read these verses in John 7 as Jesus purposely deceiving his brothers? First, [...]
Bill Pratt | August 8, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt As I’ve corresponded with skeptics of Christianity over the years, I have been amazed at what I call hyper-skeptics. These are people who throw the word “contradiction” around when they should really use the word “difference.” A contradiction occurs between two statements when one statement is “A is B” and the [...]
Bill Pratt | March 31, 2011
Post Author: Bill Pratt Many Christians, as they read the book of Joshua, are uncomfortable with the accounts of conquest that are recorded there. The conquest of Jericho is the first in Canaan for the Israelites. The biblical writer describes the battle of Jericho this way in Josh. 6:20-21: When the trumpets sounded, the army [...]
