Archaeology, Church History

Christians on Cyprus Strive to Keep Jesus’ Language Alive

1 Comment

Post Author: Bill Pratt

I ran across a fascinating article about a small group of Christians who have preserved the Aramaic language that Jesus spoke.

Here is a an excerpt:

The Aramaic language of the earliest Christians lives on in the church services of a tiny village on the Turkish Cypriot side of the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, where a hybrid dialect of Aramaic is commonly spoken by just 1,000 people who are striving to keep it alive.

The language is dying out, but the Maronites in Cyprus are trying to prevent it from being completely lost.  I’m certainly rooting them on, as it would be a tragic loss if they failed.

Cults

Ex-Scientologist Reveals Details in New Book

2 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Ever since I first read about Scientology in Time magazine back in the early 1990’s, I’ve been mystified about why anyone would join up.  The reports in the media about mind control, brainwashing, abuse, and intimidation are legion.  Ex-members and those publicly critical of Scientology are routinely harassed by armies of lawyers and private investigators, according to many sources.

Now there is a new book out by a former high level staffer who was a member of the group for 27 years, Amy Scobee.  Scobee did an interview recently and here are a few excerpts:

You were a member for 27 years. What was the spark plug for your departure?

I became less and less tolerant of the abuse that I witnessed as it got more and more harsh. People were very unhappy, family members were being separated, David Miscavige [the current “leader” of Scientology] committed assault and battery on my friends on numerous occasions.

What are some of the worst things [about Scientology]?

Family disconnection and their manipulation, blackmail and control through the threat of being cut off from family, which has devastating effects, and being denied your “only road to salvation as a spiritual being.”

The way Scientology goes after critics. It’s their policy to utterly annihilate the credibility of anyone speaking out against the “church.” They have done brutal things in the past along these lines and are still pulling these stunts currently.

Another key thing is INFORMATION CONTROL. This is a form of mind control. If one controls what you can and can not see or hear, one is unable to make a rational decision about that matter. Scientology specializes in information control — one is banned from upper levels of “spiritual enlightenment’ if it is discovered that you read anything negative about Scientology or talked to someone about it.

Germany recently declared Scientology a cult. Do you think that’s an accurate definition?

Yes — I believe Scientology is actually a dangerous cult. By definition, a “destructive cult” is a religion or other group which has caused or has a high probability of causing harm to its own members or to others. Some researchers define “harm” in this case with a narrow focus, specifically groups which have deliberately physically injured or killed other individuals, while others define the term more broadly and include emotional abuse among the types of harm inflicted. Both physical and spiritual/mental abuse has occurred, and from what I understand is continuing to occur, within Scientology — at its highest ranks. I observed quite a bit of such destructive action and this is detailed in my new book.

Read the full article for more on this dangerous organization.

Archaeology

Archaeologist Claims to Have Found King David’s Palace

Leave a comment

Post Author: Bill Pratt

We have featured the findings of archaeologist Eilat Mazar in previous blog posts (here and here).  She has been digging in Jerusalem since 2005 and continues to make amazing discoveries.  Her claims, however, are not universally accepted by other archaeologists.  In a recent article in Biblical Archaeological Review, she lays out the evidence for her claim that she has dug up parts of King David’s Palace.

In Mazar’s words:

The Biblical narrative, I submit, better explains the archaeology we have uncovered than any other hypothesis that has been put forward. Indeed, the archaeological remains square perfectly with the Biblical description that tells us David went down from there to the citadel. So you decide whether or not we have found King David’s palace.

Please read the full article to see if you are convinced.  Mazar has already said that she has found portions of Nehemiah’s Wall and a city wall built by King Solomon.  Her findings are truly extraordinary, if proven true.

Evil, Pain, and Suffering, Existence of God, Religion

What Do God and Can Openers Have to Do with Each Other?

1 Comment

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Woody Allen has never been one to shy away from tackling big issues in his movies.  In the movie Hannah and Her Sisters there is a classic scene that depicts Woody Allen’s character first talking to a Catholic priest about converting to Catholicism and then announcing to his Jewish parents his decision.  His mother and father react negatively to his announcement, to say the least.

Below is a 2 minute clip.  Make sure you watch all the way to the end of the clip for a hilarious punchline.  I couldn’t stop laughing.

Caution:  The clip contains one use of the “H” word, so consider yourself warned.

Meaning of Life, Philosophy

The Meaning of Life According to Malcolm Muggeridge

1 Comment

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Below is another great quote from Malcolm Muggeridge, a man who in many ways was extremely successful.  Every day I see people who think that just a little more money, or a little more pleasure, is all they need to be content.  How sad and how foolish.  Money, fame, and pleasure will never fill you up.  Just go ask the rich and famous whether they’re content with their lives.

The philosopher Peter Kreeft once remarked that suicide rates are much higher in wealthy nations than poor nations.  Think about that for a good long minute.  If money and pleasure are truly what life is about, then suicide rates should be lower in wealthy nations, not higher.  Something is askew!

In any case, please enjoy the quote below from Malcolm Muggeridge:

I may, I suppose, regard myself, or pass for being, as a relatively successful man. People occasionally stare at me in the streets–that’s fame. I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for admission to the higher slopes of the Internal Revenue–that’s success. Furnished with money and a little fame even the elderly, if they care to, may partake of trendy diversions– that’s pleasure. It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote was sufficiently heeded for me to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact on our time–that’s fulfillment. Yet I say to you — and I beg you to believe me–multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing–less than nothing, a positive impediment–measured against one draught of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what they are.

Eschatology, Jesus Christ

Who Is the Real Superman?

1 Comment

Post Author: Bill Pratt

If you’ve ever listened to Ravi Zacharias, you’ve noticed he likes to quote from English journalist Malcolm Muggeridge.  One of my favorite quotes from Muggeridge has to do with his description of the frailty of nations and empires, with particular attention to those of the 20th century.  In a gripping message, he contrasts the temporality of the world’s powers with the eternality of one person.  Please enjoy the quote below!

We look back upon history and what do we see?  Empires rising and falling, revolutions and counter-revolutions, wealth accumulating and wealth dispersed, one nation dominant and then another.  Shakespeare speaks of ‘the rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon.’

I look back on my own fellow countrymen ruling over a quarter of the world, the great majority of them convinced, in the words of what is still a favorite song, that, ‘God who’s made the mighty would make them mightier yet.’  I’ve heard a crazed, cracked Austrian announce to the world the establishment of a German Reich that would last a thousand years; an Italian clown announce that he would restart the calendar to begin his own ascension to power.  I’ve heard a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as a wiser than Solomon, more humane than Marcus Aurelius, more enlightened than Ashoka.  I’ve seen America wealthier and in terms of weaponry, more powerful than the rest of the world put together, so that had the American people desired, they could have outdone an Alexander or a Julius Caesar in the range and scale of their conquests.

All in one lifetime.  All in one lifetime.  All gone with the wind.

England part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe, threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy.  Hitler and Mussolini dead, remembered only in infamy.  Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped found and dominate for some three decades.  America haunted by fears of running out of those precious fluids that keep her motorways roaring, and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam, and the victories of the Don Quixotes of the media as they charged the windmills of Watergate.

All in one lifetime, all gone.  Gone with the wind.

Behind the debris of these self-styled, sullen supermen and imperial diplomatists, there stands the gigantic figure of one person, because of whom, by whom, in whom, and through whom alone mankind might still have hope.  The person of Jesus Christ.

Evil, Pain, and Suffering

A Christian Scholar Talks Frankly about His Serious Bout with Depression

Leave a comment

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Michael Patton, over at the Parchment and Pen blog, recently wrote a powerful  post about his struggle with depression.  I was deeply moved when I read his post, as he described what it has been like for him over the last couple months.  In the past, I may have dismissed people’s struggles with depression somewhat, thinking they could just will themselves out of it.  After hearing Michael describe his experience, I need to rethink that position.

Make sure you also read the many comments under his post, as they are truly insightful and encouraging to all those who suffer from this debilitating  condition.  Please pray for Michael.

Free Will

Does Free Will Mean that You Can Choose Not to Be Harmed?

10 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

In the past when I’ve discussed free will in the context of the problem of evil, I have had skeptics come along and deny that God has granted humans free will because children who choose not to be molested are sometimes molested, or women who choose not to be raped are sometimes raped.  In other words, if a person wills to not be attacked, but they are attacked, then somehow free will does not exist.

This complaint confuses the definition of free will, though.  None other than John Calvin, himself, dealt with this same complaint over 400 years ago.  Below is his response, from Book 2 of Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Here let the reader remember, that the ability of the human will is not to be estimated from the [outcome] of things, as some ignorant men are preposterously accustomed to do. For they conceive themselves fully and ingeniously to establish the servitude of the human will, because even the most exalted monarchs have not all their desires fulfilled. But this ability, of which we speak, is to be considered within man, and not to be measured by external success. For in the dispute concerning free will the question is not, whether a man, notwithstanding external impediments, can perform and execute whatever he may have resolved in his mind, but whether in every case his judgment exerts freedom of choice, and his will freedom of inclination. If men possess both these, then Attilius Regulus, when confined to the small extent of a cask stuck round with nails, will possess as much free will as Augustus Cæsar when governing a great part of the world with his nod.

Free will is the ability to choose in your mind, not the ability to make every thing you choose happen.  Once you understand this, the complaint falls apart.  It is attacking a faulty definition of free will.

Pantheism, Religion

Do Eckhart Tolle’s Teachings Contradict Christianity?

90 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Recently I learned that a local church was hosting “Bible studies” based on Eckhart Tolle’s teachings.  So, does Tolle agree with the teachings of Christianity?  Is it appropriate to promote his beliefs in a Christian church?

First, let me admit that I have not read his books personally, but I have certainly read about them (if anyone would like to correct any errors I make in the following analysis, please do so by commenting).  According to Dr. James A. Beverley, in  a 2008 article written for Christianity Today, Tolle definitely does not adhere to the essential beliefs of Christianity.

Here is a brief list of anti-Christian beliefs promoted by Tolle:

1.  God and man are one (pantheism).  Christianity teaches that God is distinct from man, that He created man.

2.  The human self is an illusion (Buddhism).  Christianity affirms the existence of the human self, but laments its corruption by sin.

3.  Death and the human body are illusions (Buddhism).  Christianity affirms that both are real.

4.  Jesus is not uniquely God, since everyone is God. Christianity denies that everyone is God, and claims that Jesus is the unique human manifestation of God.

All of these teachings directly contradict Christian beliefs.  I’m sure Tolle’s teachings contain some wisdom, but his overall worldview is obviously not Christian in any meaningful way.  The fact that we have a local church promoting Tolle’s beliefs is another clear indication that Christian education is woefully inadequate (I’m assuming that the persons leading these studies are ignorant, not purposefully trying to undermine Christianity).

If you know of any other links that discuss Tolle’s beliefs in comparison to Christianity, feel free to post them in the comments section of this post.

Church History, Essential Beliefs, Jesus as God, Theology, Trinity

What Were They Arguing About at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325?

3 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

In A.D. 325, an ecumenical council of Christian bishops gathered to discuss a theological issue that was tearing apart the unity of the church. A common misconception about this council was that the argument was over whether Jesus was God or man. In fact, this idea has become so popular that one of my skeptical friends, who usually knows his stuff, made this mistake recently in a discussion we were having.

He said, in effect, that the church was arguing about whether Jesus was a man or God all the way up to and including the Council of Nicaea. This view, however, is completely false.

The two major positions presented at the council were proposed by Arius and Athanasius. Arius believed that Jesus was created by God the Father in eternity, but that he did not share eternality with the Father. Athanasius believed that Jesus and the Father both existed from eternity, that one never existed without the other.

Please note that the issue was not about whether Jesus was merely a man or God, but what kind of God Jesus was. Both parties agreed he was divine, that he was much more than a mere man, but they disagreed about how he was divine.

The council sided with Athanasius against Arius, declaring that Jesus always existed along with the Father. The debate about Arianism, however, did not subside until the Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381 provided further clarification of the terms used at Nicaea and united the church around its understanding of the nature of Christ.

A Christian Apologetics Blog