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How We View God Matters

Lord, I want to know You.  I want to know what You are like.  I want to live in You, but I can’t live in You if I know nothing about You.  Reveal to me the glory of Yourself.  Then will I be able to live  right. A man wanted to talk to me about a book he had read. In the book, the author, a well-known lawyer, claims that God has learned over time how to handle the human race. This lawyer apparently states that in the early days of Genesis, God did not know how to deal well…

Knowing the Unknowable

Now we see but a poor reflection, as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. (I Cor 13:12) You can know God. That is the whole point of the Bible. Yet you will never really know God, for He is God. I do not contradict myself, and I believe that life gives ample examples for why I don’t. Consider. Imagine a neurologist talking about her knowledge of the brain — neurons firing, the functions for different parts, how it will behave to certain medications, etc. Imagine then that same neurologist saying that we really do not understand the…

Mystery and Doctrine Must Kiss

Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty? It is higher than heaven — what can you do? Deeper than Sheol — what can you know? (Job 11:7-8)  But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. (Titus 2:1) We have spent a number of blogs telling the Christian story. The discussion has been necessary because everything else about Christianity flows out of that story. The story is the foundation. Now we can start building. We will begin building by talking about Christian beliefs — also called Christian theology. These discussions will…

When Earth Ends

Sometimes people talk as if the Christian story ends in the first century. It does not. In fact, if you read what Jesus said, you quickly discover that He often spoke of His future return. So then, the Resurrection is not the end of the story.   Indeed, the end of the story has yet to occur. Christianity is a religion that is in the middle of its story. As far as time on Earth is concerned, the Bible talks as if we are now in the last days. Peter spoke this way at Pentecost (Acts 2:16ff). So if history were…

From the Manger to the World

In the days of the Roman Empire, during the reign of Augustus Caesar, when King Herod was tetrarch in Judea, a child was born to peasant parents in the town of Bethlehem.  They were Jews.  The mother’s name was Mariam.  God had told Mariam that He was giving her a child even though she had slept with no man.  God had said that the boy she was carrying would be great and would be called Son of the Most High, that this boy would sit on the throne of his father David and would “reign over the house of Jacob…