Monthly Archives: December 2007
Great Year, Next Year Even Better!
It’s been a great past year. I really feel like the ministry has made some forward progress. My one prayer for this ministry is that my work is leading souls to Christ. I have no way to track that, but I do receive over 1,000 hits per month so I’m hoping that some of those are from honest seekers who the Holy Spirit convicts while they are here. Praise God for the wonderful work of all apologetics ministries, including this one!
Next year is going to get better! I plan to continue working on my responses to Marshall Brain over at the new God is NOT Imaginary site. I should hopefully be completely done with that site by mid to late January. I’m working on porting that site over to a free, no advertisements web host service so that I can tweak the appearance of the site better than I can in WordPress.
Starting in either February or March I will be adding a biweekly podcast to the site, which will be available every other Friday. I’m aiming for either February 1, 2008 or March 7, 2008 as the first show. The first show, inspired by a thread at RRS, will be on women in the Bible–how the Bible elevates them in the traditional Christian interpretations and it is unnecessary to try to find a more “politically correct” interpretation. More details on the podcast and that show in particular as they become available.
Sometime within the first quarter of 2008, I will be officially incorporating Josiah Concept Ministries as a 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization. Right now, I am officially asking you, dear readers, that if my writings have blessed you, please prayerfully consider a donation to this ministry to help make the incorporation possible. Please e-mail me and I will send you any information that you request about me, the ministry, or anything that will help you make a decision for either a one-time donation, or a commitment to donate monthly. Apologetics is an important cause, now more than ever. Christianity is under attack from all sides and from within. Apologetics ministries, like this one, can be used by God as the glue to hold His church together, and to defend His truth from the many attacks against it.
If you have no money or do not wish to donate money at this time, your prayers for financial support and in general support of the ministry activities would also be greatly appreciated. Drop me a line and let me know about your prayers for the ministry. I love knowing that I’m being prayed for.
Finally, I need a name for the podcast. If you have suggestions for that, include it in your e-mail.
Thank you for everyone who has remained a faithful reader, and I pray to God again that we gain many more over the coming year. Pray with me that we go from 1,000 hits per month to 2,000 (or even 3,000!).
There’s Literal, and There’s HYPER-Literal
VJack reacts to Christian reaction to his Bible thoughts:
When faced with an atheist who is actually reading their bible and still rejects it, the argument becomes one of interpreting things too literally. “You’re missing the point. Christians don’t read their bibles literally like you are doing.” In other words, I am attacking a straw man by unfairly criticizing Christians for believing things they don’t actually believe. (source)
I’ve never said that VJack was reading the Bible too literally, only that he’s not taking everything into consideration. To read anything–including the Bible–literally is to allow the writer to employ accepted literary devices, such as metaphors and hyperbole.
But, in the portions that VJack has posted so far, he is reading the Bible correctly. God demanded animal sacrifice. God declared certain things clean and other things unclean. Nothing symbolic about those statements.
But, as I’ve pointed out, God has, through Christ, made all things clean. Now, we are no longer bound to the Jewish ceremonial laws, which are the ones that include animal sacrifices. There is a better sacrifice, pure and innocent blood poured out for our sins. That blood was the blood of Christ, which we may use to enter the Holy of Holies pure and blameless before God.
The Old Testament is symbolic of the New Testament.
I should note that there is such a thing as HYPER-literal, but that is a different subject altogether. People reading the Bible hyper-literally do not allow for any sort of literary device. They will take obvious metaphors and read them literally.
For example, they take the Bible’s phrase “foundation of the world” (Ps 104:5) to mean that the Bible teaches a flat earth. Of course that’s ridiculous. Equally ridiculous is using the poetic phrase “circle of the earth” (Is 40:22) to prove that the Bible was forward thinking enough to teach a round earth. The Bible isn’t a science text book and is neutral on cosmology. The phrasing represents the author’s understanding of God’s revelation to him.
VJack is making an attempt–a half-hearted one, it seems–to understand the Bible. I commend him for that.
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