BEFORE YOU LEAVE
LIFE HAS ONE CERTAINTYWe used to say that there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. But life has only one certainty – we will all die. The death-rate is still 100%! Yet faced with this absolute certainty, too few people think about it and even...
10 EVIDENCES FOR THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS
Christianity stands or falls on one major claim – Jesus the Christ physically died and physically rose from the dead. If this claim is false, Christianity is false. If this claim is true, it has profound implications for you and me!
All other religions are founded on private revelations. Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha, claimed to have had a very private revelation of the four noble truths. Muhammed ibn ʿAbdullāh, known to Muslims as the Prophet, claimed to have had a private encounter with the Angel Gabriel and a private revelation that God (‘Allah’ in Arabic) was one and that the Qur’an was his final revelation to mankind. Joseph Smith also claimed to have had a private encounter with an angel called Moroni who privately revealed to him golden tablets inscribed with hieroglyphics revealing a fantastic story of the ancient Hebrews migration to the Americas. But Christianity is public. The miracles surrounding the birth of Jesus (the first Christmas, were public). Christ’s demonstration of miracles, which included – instantly healing leprosy, blindness, lameness, palsy, and raising people back to life, were done publicly. His second greatest miracle, the raising of Lazarus from being dead having been dead for 4 days, was witnessed by scores of people with many of them being sceptics! His encounter with angels and dead saints were seen publicly. His post-mortem appearances were witnessed by those who had seen Him executed by the Romans. At one time, up to 500 people saw the resurrected Jesus – very publicly!
That Doesn’t Sound Like Jesus
I love technology. Sort of. But I don’t love everything it has done to us. Far from always making our lives better, the evidence seems to show that it has in many instances made us lazy. Its negative physical effects are well known, even its intellectual effects have been noted (largely by those who have cause to criticise bloggers for their unsubstantiated claims). But what is not talked about as much is its increasingly negative spiritual effect. This should specifically concern Christ followers.
YOU MAY HATE US, BUT YOU NEED US
The Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest Census results this week. It’s interesting how these results were presented by the mainstream media. There were reports of Christianity’s decline; the dramatic rise in the number of people selecting “No Religion”; and the radical reformation of what now constitutes “a family” – with an 81% increase in those families constituted as being a “same-sex couple family”. Numbers, particularly statistics, can be difficult things to understand, especially when presented as percentages. Here’s a different analysis of the data from what you heard reported in the mainstream media…