Tag: Bible Project

Exploration 82 – Ruth

Elimelech, his wife, Naomi, and their two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, went to Moab to escape the famine in Bethlehem. There Mahlon married Ruth (Ruth 4:10) and Chilion married Orpah. There also Elimelech died as well as his sons Mahlon and Chilion. Naomi told her daughters-in-law to stay with their families in Moab, but Ruth would not leave her.

16 And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:
17 Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.

Ruth 1:16-17 King James Version

Ruth went with Naomi back to Bethlehem. She gleaned in the fields of Boaz, a kinsman of Naomi’s husband Elimelech (Ruth 2:1). He married Ruth and she bore Obed, an heir for Mahlon, the son of Elimelech. After Obed came Jesse the father of David in whose line was born Yeshua HaMashiach (Jesus) of a virgin named Miriam (Mary) (Matthew 1).

17 And the women her neighbours gave it a name, saying, There is a son born to Naomi; and they called his name Obed: he is the father of Jesse, the father of David.

Ruth 4:17 King James Version

Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Pecudei 2 Adar II, 5782 – March 5, 2022
Torah: Exodus 38:21 – 40:38
Haftarah: Kings I 7:51 – 8:21
Brit Chadashah: Hebrews 1:1-14
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar

I am looking for a name to replace “Sunday Walk”. I am trying “Exploration”.

Bougainvillea

Sunday Walk 80 – Joy

It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we experience the joy of salvation and are enabled to rejoice even in the midst of trials.

Jerry Bridges, The Practice of Godliness, page 113

I sometimes forget the role of the Holy Spirit in Christian rebirth since many of the fruits of the Spirit I can fake for a short while with my own efforts. Trusting too much in my own efforts leads me to doubt that there even is a Holy Spirit.

Joy is a fruit that is difficult to fake. True, I can smile when events or emotions challenge me, but people looking closely see through it.

What this tells me is there is more going on to make joy possible than my own efforts. Although I might be tempted to refuse to participate in the working of the Holy Spirit, the more I let the Holy Spirit work in me the less I am persuaded to work against Him.

And yet there are many times when circumstances seem overwhelming. Imagine the despair the Israelites felt trapped between the Red Sea and the Egyptian army. And yet God was there for them. Or, imagine what Hagar felt in the desert before God spoke to her. But then He spoke.

Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Ki Tisa 18 Adar, 5782 – February 19, 2022
Torah: Exodus 30:11-34:35
Haftarah: Kings I 18:20-39
Brit Chadashah: 2 Corinthians 3:1-18
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar

Sunday Walk 79 – Thanksgiving

We pray for God’s intervention in our lives, then congratulate ourselves rather than God for the results.

Jerry Bridges, The Practice of Godliness, (page 101)

We pray to God for something to happen. It happens. However, since it is always possible to concoct some explanation for what happened that does not involve God, we forget about thanking Him. Do we think He wasn’t listening? Do we think He wasn’t involved in that event? If we do, why did we even bother praying?

Bridges adds, “Thanksgiving is a normal result of a vital union with Christ, and a direct measure of the extent to which we are experiencing the reality of that union in our lives.” (page 103)

If we are not thankful after something we explicitly prayed for, and we take Bridges seriously, does that mean we may not have a vital union with Christ?

Jerry Bridges, Godliness

Earlier I had no idea what to write for this post. I prayed. Afterwards much of what’s in this post came to mind as well as suggestions for revisions.

Now, finishing the post, I do not want to be thanking some sentimental imitation, some Greek muse, some forest faerie, some earth mother goddess, some pan-psychic cosmic consciousness for what happened. I hope none of them were involved. To the extent any were, I apologize for the results.

I prayed to God, Adonai, specifically, to Yehovah (the Father) through Yeshua (the Son, Jesus,) in Ruach HaKodesh (the Holy Spirit) (Ephesians 2:18). I thank God over and over again with joy.

Even if nothing had come to mind for this post, and none of it did in the ways I expected it would, I would still thank God, because I prayed, grateful that I can pray, accepting responsibility for any mistakes I made.

That’s my testimony of thanksgiving.

Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Tetzaveh 11 Adar, 5782 – February 12, 2022
Torah: Exodus 27:20 – 30:10
Haftarah: Ezekiel 43:10-27
Brit Chadashah: Hebrews 13:10-17
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar

Sunday Walk 78 – Autonomy

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6, New American Standard Bible

The opposite of trusting in the Lord and listening for the Shepherd’s voice is autonomy. Autonomy is trusting in my own understanding and goodness. The delusion that I am doing something good is what drives me down the road to hell powered by those good intentions.

As C.S. Lewis pointed out in The Great Divorce, a tale of deluded shades who preferred hell to heaven, either we say to God, “Thy will be done,” or God says that right back to us.

The following video from Answers in Genesis Canada shows how human autonomy pervades our culture, and perhaps even our own personal worldviews, in rejecting the Lord by following our own understanding justified by a belief in our own goodness.

Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Terumah 4 Adar, 5782 – February 5, 2022
Torah: Exodus 25:1-27:19
Haftarah: I Kings 5:26-6:13
Brit Chadashah: 2 Corinthians 9:1-15; Matthew 5:33-37
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar

Sunrise with clouds, boat, water, sun and departing darkness
Sunrise with clouds, boat, water, sun and departing darkness

Sunday Walk 77 – Owen Barfield and the Evolution of Consciousness

If the eighteenth-century botanist, looking for the first time through the old idols of Linneaus’ fixed and timeless classification into the new perspective of biological evolution, felt a sense of liberation and of light, it can have been but a candle-flame compared with the first glimpse we now get of the familiar world and human history lying together, bathed in the light of the evolution of consciousness.

Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry, Harcourt, Brace & World: 1965, page 72

Owen Barfield’s literary estate associates him with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. When I was trying to understand Saving the Appearances in the 1970s as an undergraduate in a Catholic college I wrongly lumped him with theistic existentialists such as Gabriel Marcel or Martin Buber and social critics such as Jacques Ellul or Ivan Illich. As I saw it they were the good guys offering guidance. I recently read the book again to try to see what went wrong in my own thinking at that time.

Barfield has this to say about Jesus, “If we accept at all the claims made by Christ Jesus concerning his own mission, we must accept that he came to make possible in the course of time the transition of all men from original to final participation; and we shall regard the institution of the Eucharist as a preparation – a preparation (we shall not forget) which has so far only been operant for the sidereally paltry period of nineteen hundred years or so.” (pages 170-171)

As a philosopher with a captive audience he did not have to bother trying to convince his readers with much evidence, whether biblical, logical or empirical, for why we “must accept” his assertions. I wonder today if he had a clue what the mission of Jesus was. By “paltry period” I suspect he thought we still had millions, or even billions, of years of consciousness evolution before us. What I realize today is when one takes the ancient myths of evolution seriously, in spite of the evidence of entropy going against them, one begins dismissing or distorting the Creation, the Fall, the Death, Burial and Resurrection of Jesus and the Last Days.

Why people find the myths of evolution believable, indeed why I used to believe them looking forward to some Age of Aquarius, is not clear to me. If one likes believing such things one might glibly talk about an evolution of this or that as Barfield does of consciousness. If one doesn’t, one could think of such beliefs as a centuries long buildup to the fulfillment of prophecy in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 where Paul predicted a rebellion preceding the day of the Lord.

Admittedly I did not understand Barfield as an undergraduate, but today I wonder just how much there was worth understanding. His stature as an authority made me think that reimagining his own beliefs was more important than reading the Bible. That helped lead me astray. I forgive him for that, knowing that I need forgiveness as well.

Weekly Bible Reading: Romans, 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians
David Pawson, Romans, Part 10, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Part 11
Bible Project, Romans 1-4, Romans 5-16, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians

Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Mishpatim 27 Shevat, 5782 – January 29, 2022
Torah: Exodus 21:1-24:18
Haftarah: Jeremiah 34:8-34:22
Brit Chadashah: Matthew 5:38-42; 17:1-11
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar

Dam 1 Forest Preserve River
Dam 1 Forest Preserve River

Sunday Walk 76 – Uniformitarianism

3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, 4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

2 Peter 3:3-4 King James Version

Belief in millions or even billions of years of deep time, rather than thousands, rests on assumptions of uniformitarianism. These assumptions include asserting that no global catastrophes occurred in the past such as a high-energy global flood that would have accelerated change, that only low-energy processes built the mountains and carved out the canyons, and that currently measured rates of low-energy change were constant throughout time.

Assuming no global catastrophes and constant rates of change would allow these low-energy processes to be used like clocks extrapolating billions of years of deep time into the past. However, this extrapolation works just as well into the future. The rates of change coming from erosion and entropy give us a maximum age of how long current structures would survive. That means the age of the present structures cannot be older than the amount of time it would take to erode them away.

For example, if the entire fossil record would be eroded away in 10 or even 50 million years, the fossil record could not be older than that. It might be younger, but not older. If someone claimed that a fossil was over 100 million years old, the first question should be how did that fossil survive the effects of day-by-day, low-energy, uniformitarian erosion?

Although low-energy processes can effect a lot of change over millions of years they do not explain how the structures we see today, the mountains and canyons, got there in the first place. To explain them one needs high-energy catastrophes working faster than the low-energy erosion that would wash them all away.

Deep time uniformitarianism attempts to discredit Biblical events that explain why the earth is as it is and where it is going: Creation, Fall, Noah’s Flood, Babel, the Resurrection of Jesus and His Second Coming. When one begins to see that the present state of the earth confirms the view that it is young then a creation and global flood account as described in Genesis becomes plausible. When that becomes plausible the rest of the narrative does as well. When one realizes that all of this is more than plausible one’s whole life renews.

37 But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

Matthew 24:37-39 King James Version

Weekly Bible Reading: Acts and Romans
Commentaries: 
David Pawson, Acts, Part 8, Romans, Part 9, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Acts 1-12, Acts 13-28, Romans 1-4, Romans 5-16
Weekly Torah Readings
20 Shevat, 5782, Yitro: Parashat Exodus 18:1-20:23; Haftarat Isaiah 6:1-7:6; 9:5-9:6

Snowy
Snowy

Sunday Walk 75 – Amoral Sexual Behavior As A Strong Delusion

Of men aged 18 to 49, 67 percent say pornography is morally acceptable. And of all Americans who say religion is not very important, more than two-thirds (76 percent) find pornography morally acceptable.

Joe Carter, Fact Checker: Do Christian Men Watch More Pornography?, June 8, 2020

But I want to argue that the sexual revolution is not actually about expanding the bounds of sexual behavior. It’s about fundamentally challenging the notion that there is such a thing as wrong or right sexual behavior. It’s about blowing apart the whole notion of sexual morality.

Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Lecture 1, starting about 21:55, May 1, 2021

Paul wrote in Romans 1:28 that God gives the disobedient over to a depraved mind. He wrote in 2 Thessalonians 2:11 that God sends a strong delusion so the disobedient will believe the lie.

What lie might that be? Perhaps the lie is that there is nothing morally right or wrong with our sexual behavior nor how we deal with the consequences of it such as abortion or divorce. That means we don’t think we have to repent. That suggests that we don’t believe that there is any God to Whom we owe repentance. And all of that makes us forget about the “pursuit of holiness” that Jerry Bridges rightly pointed out is not an option.

The lie confuses us about repentance, God and holiness. The lie affects our beliefs and our beliefs affect our behavior.

If you don’t behave as you believe, you will end by believing as you behave.

Ven. Archbishop Fulton Sheen, quoted by revivedwriter

I am grateful to Michael Wilson for the link to the statistics source on moral attitudes towards pornography. I am grateful to Jim Lee and Mandy Sweigart-Quinn for calling my attention to Carl R. Trueman and Jerry Bridges. I am grateful to Jenna at revivedwriter for the quote from Fulton Sheen.

Weekly Bible Reading: John and Acts
Commentaries: 
David Pawson, John, Part 6, Acts, Part 7, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, John 1-12, John 13-21, Acts 1-12, Acts 13-28
Weekly Torah Readings
13 Shevat, 5782, Beshalach: Parashat Exodus 13:17-17:16; Haftarat Judges 4:4-5:3

Lake Bluff
Lake Bluff

Sunday Walk 74 – Carbon-14

The half-life of carbon-14 is under 6,000 years. No carbon-14 should be detectable in fossils claimed to be over 100,000 years old. But that is what has been found. Carbon-14 has been found in both dinosaur soft tissue and also in diamonds claimed to be many millions of years old.

Ian Juby shows how the presence of carbon-14 undermines the reliability of dating methods in the video below.

Weekly Bible Reading: Luke and John
Commentaries: 
David Pawson, Luke, Part 4, John, Part 5 Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Luke 1-9, Luke 10-24, John 1-12, John 13-21
Weekly Torah Readings
6 Shevat, 5782, Bo: Parashat Exodus 10:1-13:16; Haftarat Jeremiah 46:13-46:28

Sunday Walk 73 – Contested Bones

The evolutionary view claims that some transition from animal to man occurred over millions of years. There are four general objections to this view: (1) the small amount of fossil evidence allegedly confirming the transition is contested even by evolutionists, (2) radioactive dating of the age of those fossils exaggerates the amount of time between fossil layers, (3) genetic evidence shows we have less in common with animals than previously suspected, and (4) genetic entropy shows that random mutations filtered through natural selection, the supposed mechanism of evolution, leads to extinction, not evolution.

The following video is a presentation by Christopher Rupe, co-author with John Sanford of Contested Bones discussing the contested fossils.

Chris Rupe, New Book Shows That Fossil Record Supports Biblical View Of Human Origins

The other author, John Sanford, added genetic entropy as evidence showing that there could have been no evolutionary path from animal to man through random mutations. Genetically we are too different from animals. Furthermore, random mutations are deleterious. What they lead to is mutational meltdown which precedes extinction.

Only from a Christian perspective is there any hope out of this mutational meltdown scenario for life on earth. We look forward to the second coming of Jesus, the new heaven, the new earth and our resurrection bodies.

John Sanford, Down – Not Up

After rereading this I wondered: Aren’t we already “animals”, even if evolution is false? To make sure I have a biblical worldview let me check what Genesis 1 says about creation order.

There I read that we were a separate created kind made in the image of God and specifically made as male and female on day six. We (adam אָדָם) have the same Creator as animals (behemah בְּהֵמָה) and we were made to live on the same earth where plants are food for both animals and us. This accounts for the similarities we have with them, but we are not animals anymore than we are birds or fish.

Weekly Bible Reading: Matthew and Mark
Commentaries: 
David Pawson, Matthew, Part 2, Mark, Part 3, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Matthew and Mark
Weekly Torah Readings
28 Tevet, 5782, Va’eira: Parashat Exodus 6:2-9:35

Ryerson Conservation Area
Ryerson Conservation Area

Sunday Walk 71 – Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth

The Institute for Creation Research finished an eight year project some years ago countering claims that the Earth is billions of years old based on radioisotope dating. Articles by John Baumgardner on carbon-14 dating and Andrew Snelling on radioisotope dating of the Grand Canyon and radiohalos provide an introduction to what they discovered.

Ian Juby’s recent video linked below also summarizes some of this.

For over a hundred years naturalists have attempted to undermine Genesis as history. Christians who accept the naturalist’s worldview think they can add God to deep time, abiogenesis or evolution leaving their Christianity unharmed. What they do, however, is undermine Christianity from within making a similar mistake the Trojans did when they accepted that horse given to them by the Greeks.

Weekly Bible Reading: Zechariah and Malachi
Commentaries: 
David Pawson, Zechariah, Part 58 and Malachi, Part 59, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Zechariah and Malachi
Weekly Torah Readings
14 Tevet, 5782, Vayechi: Parashat Exodus 47:28-50:26; Haftarat I Kings 2:1-12

Snowy
Snowy
%d bloggers like this: