God Bless America! Song by Famous British Singer
Friday, June 29, 2012
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Wow Transmission! Ken Ham
Wow! by Ken Ham
Posted: 27 Jun 2012 08:48 AM PDT
I couldn’t help but say “Wow!” when I read about the “Wow!” signal as reported on a Fox News article yesterday. The report stated the following:
If there’s something you’d like to say to aliens, now’s your chance. The Wow! signal, a mysterious radio transmission detected in 1977 that may or may not have come from extraterrestrials, is finally getting a response from humanity. Anyone can contribute his or her two cents — or 140 characters, to be exact — to the cosmic reply via Twitter.
All tweets composed between 8 p.m. EDT Friday (June 29) and 3 a.m. EDT Saturday (June 30) tagged with the hashtag #ChasingUFOs will be rolled into a single message, according to the National Geographic Channel, which is timing the Twitter event to coincide with the premiere of the channel’s new series, “Chasing UFOs.” Then on Aug. 15, exactly 35 years after the Wow! signal was detected, humanity’s crowdsourced message will be beamed into space in the direction from which the perplexing signal originated.
Now look at the scan of the original computer printout from 1977 showing the supposed evidence of aliens in outer space:
Image from the Ohio State University Radio Observatory and the North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO).
I must admit, when I saw this, I said, “Wow!” myself. But my “Wow!” was for a different reason. Let me put it this way:
Wow! Certain people look at these few numbers and letters, and they see it as evidence of an alien intelligence. However, those same people would look at the most complicated information system and language system on earth—the DNA molecules—and they immediately think of how it arose by chance! These people look at a few letters and numbers and think of an alien intelligence, yet they look at the Bible with its detailed record of origins and scoff at any suggestion of an intelligence behind the Bible! These people would rather believe in unseen aliens because of a few letters and numbers, but they refuse to believe in a Creator God when it is obvious from what is observed in life and the universe that there is a Creator. They would rather believe in aliens and scoff at a Creator God when the laws of logic, laws of nature, and uniformity of nature cry out there is a God!
I could only think of this verse: “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, They have done abominable works, There is none who does good” (Psalm 14:1; emphasis added).
Read more from the Fox News article at this link.
Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken Ham Around the World with Ken Ham
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
The Future of the Web!
The Future of the Web (and what you can do about it)
by James Corbett
BoilingFrogsPost.com June 26, 2012
In mid-2012, in the wake of the ratification of ACTA and the proposal in the US of bills like SOPA and PIPA, in an age where the war on terror is gradually morphing into a cyberwar and database hacks, password leaks and identity thefts are reported on breathlessly, it is difficult to imagine the promise that the very idea of the Internet once aroused in the public. Just 20 years ago, in the age of the much-vaunted “Information Superhighway,” people could pontificate with a straight face on the potential for online communities to give rise to a Jeffersonian revolution and spawn a new flowering of civic participation.
Quaint as such optimism might seem to a jaundiced modern eye, to some extent that promised revolution has arrived in the birth of an alternative media that has already begun to eclipse outdated forms of information distribution. Once confined to the information accessible from local libraries, daily newspapers, and what was commonly known as “the idiot box,” the general public is now able to instantaneously access vast amounts of information on even the most obscure topics with merely a few keystrokes and clicks of the mouse. From the yearly proceedings of the Bilderberg Group to the hidden history of the establishment of the Federal Reserve, subjects that once would have been virtually impossible to research are now readily available to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection…or even just a smartphone.
But given the increasingly draconian measures that are being proposed to block, track, control,monitor and censor communications on the Internet, it is almost impossible to be as optimistic about the future of this technology as we once were.
This is not to say, of course, that the future of the Internet painted by these scenarios is set in stone. As always, we the people can and will be the deciding factor in how this future unfolds, and whether it becomes an Orwellian nightmare or a new flowering of human potential.
On the most basic level, there is an argument to be made that the technology of the police state itself is unworkable, a bunch of pipe dreams and hocus pocus designed to get the public to fear the government, but which is, ultimately, like the Wizard of Oz, nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
After all, biometric technology is notoriously unreliable.
Domain-name censorship is bothersome to work around, but by no means impossible.
Internet filtering schemes that have been tested in Australia and elsewhere have been dismal failures.
And it is not at all certain how an “Internet ID” can be constructed in any way that will not make identity theft more likely, and more damaging.
But the argument against the technology itself, as compelling as it is, is not the issue. One day, perhaps reliable biometric technology will be developed. Perhaps some evil genius government-funded scientist will figure out how to make Internet filtering work, or will overcome Internet ID challenges. The point is not that these systems are unworkable, but that the idea itself of monitoring, censorship and restriction goes against the potential for that Jeffersonian revolution that we once saw in the technology itself, the ability for people to become informed, motivated and active in likeminded communities without the need of the New York Times or Harper Collins or ABC.
We should not kid ourselves about the challenges that we face in the coming years. It was a small oligarchical faction that by and large shaped the public’s understanding of the world in the previous information paradigm, one in which a handful of centralized corporate entities controlled almost all of the information that the average person read, heard or watched on any given day. That faction’s constituency congregates at the CFR, or Chatham House, or Bilderberg, and they are still economically powerful. The media moguls, corporate chieftains, and corrupt politicians who have the most to lose in this information revolution know which side their bread is buttered on and know that in order to maintain the control over society that they once enjoyed, they will have to restrict the freedom we presently enjoy online. Whether that is through “Internet ID” or domain-level censorship or something else entirely, we know that our ability to exchange information freely online is a freedom that we cannot take lightly.
That is why, for instance, the support of websites like this one is so crucial in this day and age. Without people supporting the websites, authors, bloggers, and alternative media entities that they love, the system will cease to function on its own, without even the threat of censorship from above.
Even more importantly, for this information revolution to mean anything at all people will have to take responsibility for how they use their time online, and where they invest their dollars. Every time we give in to a new scheme, even something as innocuous as a “login with Facebook” feature on a website, we are freely volunteering to give up our own online freedom and anonymity for the sake of convenience. By using Google and Facebook and YouTube and Twitter, we acquiesce in the creation of a highly centralized system that is in reality a mirror image of the corporate media spiderweb that used to confine us. And when we have given our time, money and attention to make those sites into what they are, they can turn around and give our data to the government agencies that have always lusted after it, even as theycensor or block any information that the governments find troublesome, all via classified agreements that the public never gets to see and only seldom know exist.
For ultimately, it is our actions now, today, on the Internet that will decide the future of the web. Either we understand the responsibility that comes with our online freedom, a responsibility to seek out alternatives to centralized control, a responsibility to avoid default settings or standardized procedures that are meant to control our actions or limit our choices, a responsibility to refuse to give in to government-mandated censorship or media-hyped cyberterror boogeymen, and to make the Internet into the Jeffersonian revolution we once believed it was or we accept the fate of a controlled, hobbled version of the Internet that we can already see laid out before us.
This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now
by James Corbett
BoilingFrogsPost.com June 26, 2012
In mid-2012, in the wake of the ratification of ACTA and the proposal in the US of bills like SOPA and PIPA, in an age where the war on terror is gradually morphing into a cyberwar and database hacks, password leaks and identity thefts are reported on breathlessly, it is difficult to imagine the promise that the very idea of the Internet once aroused in the public. Just 20 years ago, in the age of the much-vaunted “Information Superhighway,” people could pontificate with a straight face on the potential for online communities to give rise to a Jeffersonian revolution and spawn a new flowering of civic participation.
Quaint as such optimism might seem to a jaundiced modern eye, to some extent that promised revolution has arrived in the birth of an alternative media that has already begun to eclipse outdated forms of information distribution. Once confined to the information accessible from local libraries, daily newspapers, and what was commonly known as “the idiot box,” the general public is now able to instantaneously access vast amounts of information on even the most obscure topics with merely a few keystrokes and clicks of the mouse. From the yearly proceedings of the Bilderberg Group to the hidden history of the establishment of the Federal Reserve, subjects that once would have been virtually impossible to research are now readily available to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection…or even just a smartphone.
But given the increasingly draconian measures that are being proposed to block, track, control,monitor and censor communications on the Internet, it is almost impossible to be as optimistic about the future of this technology as we once were.
This is not to say, of course, that the future of the Internet painted by these scenarios is set in stone. As always, we the people can and will be the deciding factor in how this future unfolds, and whether it becomes an Orwellian nightmare or a new flowering of human potential.
On the most basic level, there is an argument to be made that the technology of the police state itself is unworkable, a bunch of pipe dreams and hocus pocus designed to get the public to fear the government, but which is, ultimately, like the Wizard of Oz, nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
After all, biometric technology is notoriously unreliable.
Domain-name censorship is bothersome to work around, but by no means impossible.
Internet filtering schemes that have been tested in Australia and elsewhere have been dismal failures.
And it is not at all certain how an “Internet ID” can be constructed in any way that will not make identity theft more likely, and more damaging.
But the argument against the technology itself, as compelling as it is, is not the issue. One day, perhaps reliable biometric technology will be developed. Perhaps some evil genius government-funded scientist will figure out how to make Internet filtering work, or will overcome Internet ID challenges. The point is not that these systems are unworkable, but that the idea itself of monitoring, censorship and restriction goes against the potential for that Jeffersonian revolution that we once saw in the technology itself, the ability for people to become informed, motivated and active in likeminded communities without the need of the New York Times or Harper Collins or ABC.
We should not kid ourselves about the challenges that we face in the coming years. It was a small oligarchical faction that by and large shaped the public’s understanding of the world in the previous information paradigm, one in which a handful of centralized corporate entities controlled almost all of the information that the average person read, heard or watched on any given day. That faction’s constituency congregates at the CFR, or Chatham House, or Bilderberg, and they are still economically powerful. The media moguls, corporate chieftains, and corrupt politicians who have the most to lose in this information revolution know which side their bread is buttered on and know that in order to maintain the control over society that they once enjoyed, they will have to restrict the freedom we presently enjoy online. Whether that is through “Internet ID” or domain-level censorship or something else entirely, we know that our ability to exchange information freely online is a freedom that we cannot take lightly.
That is why, for instance, the support of websites like this one is so crucial in this day and age. Without people supporting the websites, authors, bloggers, and alternative media entities that they love, the system will cease to function on its own, without even the threat of censorship from above.
Even more importantly, for this information revolution to mean anything at all people will have to take responsibility for how they use their time online, and where they invest their dollars. Every time we give in to a new scheme, even something as innocuous as a “login with Facebook” feature on a website, we are freely volunteering to give up our own online freedom and anonymity for the sake of convenience. By using Google and Facebook and YouTube and Twitter, we acquiesce in the creation of a highly centralized system that is in reality a mirror image of the corporate media spiderweb that used to confine us. And when we have given our time, money and attention to make those sites into what they are, they can turn around and give our data to the government agencies that have always lusted after it, even as theycensor or block any information that the governments find troublesome, all via classified agreements that the public never gets to see and only seldom know exist.
For ultimately, it is our actions now, today, on the Internet that will decide the future of the web. Either we understand the responsibility that comes with our online freedom, a responsibility to seek out alternatives to centralized control, a responsibility to avoid default settings or standardized procedures that are meant to control our actions or limit our choices, a responsibility to refuse to give in to government-mandated censorship or media-hyped cyberterror boogeymen, and to make the Internet into the Jeffersonian revolution we once believed it was or we accept the fate of a controlled, hobbled version of the Internet that we can already see laid out before us.
This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now
Are the Gospels True?
http://y-jesus.com/wwrj/4-are-gospels-true.php/10/
Are the New Testament gospels the true eyewitness history of Jesus Christ, or could the story have been changed through the years? Must we simply take the New Testament accounts of Jesus by faith, or is there evidence for their reliability?
The late ABC News anchor Peter Jennings was in Israel broadcasting a television special on Jesus Christ. His program, “The Search for Jesus,” explored the question of whether the Jesus of the New Testament was historically accurate.
Jennings featured opinions on the Gospel accounts from DePaul professor John Dominic Crossan, three of Crossan’s colleagues from the Jesus Seminar, and two other Bible scholars. (The JesusSeminar is a group of scholars who debate Jesus’ recorded words and actions and then use red, pink, gray, or black beads to cast votes indicating how trustworthy they believe statements in the Gospels are.)[1]
Some of the comments were stunning. There on national TV Dr. Crossan not only cast doubt on more than 80 percent of Jesus’ sayings but also denied Jesus’ claims to divinity, his miracles, and his resurrection. Jennings clearly was intrigued by the image of Jesus presented by Crossan.
Searching for true Bible history is always news, which is why every year Time and Newsweek go on a cover story quest for Mary, Jesus, Moses, or Abraham. Or—who knows?—maybe this year it will be “Bob: The Untold Story of the Missing 13th Disciple.”
This is entertainment, and so the investigation will never end nor yield answers, as that would eliminate future programming. Instead, those with radically different views are thrown together like an episode of Survivor, hopelessly convoluting the issue rather than bringing clarity.
But Jennings’s report did focus on one issue that ought to be given some serious thought. Crossan implied that the original accounts of Jesus were embellished by oral tradition and were not written down until after the apostles were dead. Thus they are largely unreliable and fail to give us an accurate picture of the real Jesus. How are we to know if this is really true?
Lost In Translation?
So, what does the evidence show? We begin with two simple questions: When were the original documents of the New Testament written? And who wrote them?
The importance of these questions should be obvious. If the accounts of Jesus were written after the eyewitnesses were dead, no one could verify their accuracy. But if the New Testament accounts were written while the original apostles were still alive, then their authenticity could be established. Peter could say of a forgery in his name, “Hey, I didn’t write that.” And Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John could respond to questions or challenges aimed at their accounts of Jesus.
The New Testament writers claimed to be rendering eyewitness accounts of Jesus. The apostle Peter stated it this way in one letter: “We were not making up clever stories when we told you about the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and his coming again. We have seen his majestic splendor with our own eyes” (2 Peter 1:16NLT).
A major part of the New Testament is the apostle Paul’s 13 letters to young churches and individuals. Paul’s letters, dated between the mid 40s and the mid 60s (12 to 33 years after Christ), constitute the earliest witnesses to Jesus’ life and teaching. Will Durant wrote of the historical importance of Paul’s letters, “The Christian evidence for Christ begins with the letters ascribed to Saint Paul. … No one has questioned the existence of Paul, or his repeated meetings with Peter, James, and John; and Paul enviously admits that these men had known Christ in the flesh.”
But Is It True?
In books, magazines, and TV documentaries, the Jesus Seminar suggests the Gospels were written as late as a.d. 130 to 150 by unknown authors. If those later dates are correct, there would be a gap of approximately 100 years from Christ’s death (scholars put Jesus’ death between a.d. 30 and 33). And since all the eyewitnesses would have been dead, the Gospels could only have been written by unknown, fraudulent authors.
So, what evidence do we have concerning when the Gospel accounts of Jesus were really written? The consensus of most scholars is that the Gospels were written by the apostles during the first century. They cite several reasons that we will review later in this article. For now, however, note that three primary forms of evidence appear to build a solid case for their conclusions:
Early documents from heretics such as Marcion and the school of Valentinus citing New Testament books, themes, and passages (See “Mona Lisa’s Smirk”) numerous writings of early Christian sources, such as Clement of Rome, Ignatius, and Polycarp discovered copies of Gospel fragments carbon-dated as early as 117 A.D.
Biblical archaeologist William Albright concluded on the basis of his research that all the New Testament books were written while most of the apostles were still alive. He wrote, “We can already say emphatically that there is no longer any solid basis for dating any book after about 80 A.D., two full generations before the date of between 130 and 150 A.D.given by the more radical New Testament critics of today.”[4] Elsewhere Albright put the writing of the entire New Testament at “very probably sometime between about 50 A.D. and 75 A.D.”[5]
The notoriously skeptical scholar John A. T. Robinson dates the New Testament earlier than even most conservative scholars. In Redating the New Testament Robinson asserts that most of the New Testament was written between 40 A.D. and 65 A.D. That puts its writing as early as seven years after Christ lived.[6] If that is true, any historical errors would have been immediately exposed by both eyewitnesses and the enemies of Christianity.
So let’s look at the trail of clues that takes us from the original documents to our New Testament copies today.
Who Needs Kinko’s ?
The original writings of the apostles were revered. Churches studied them, shared them, carefully preserved them and stored them away like buried treasure.
But, alas, Roman confiscations, the passage of 2,000 years, and the second law of thermodynamics have taken their toll. So, today, what do we have of those original writings? Nothing. The original manuscripts are all gone (though each week Bible scholars, no doubt, tune in to Antiques Roadshow hoping one might emerge).
Yet the New Testament is not alone in this fate; no other comparable document from ancient history exists today either. Historians aren’t troubled by the lack of original manuscripts if they have reliable copies to examine. But are there ancient copies of the New Testament available, and if so, are they faithful to the originals?
As the number of churches multiplied, hundreds of copies were carefully made under the supervision of church leaders. Every letter was meticulously penned in ink on parchment or papyrus. And so, today, scholars can study the surviving copies (and the copies of copies, and the copies of copies of copies—you get it), to determine authenticity and arrive at a very close approximation of the original documents.
In fact, scholars studying ancient literature have devised the science of textual criticism to examine documents such as The Odyssey, comparing them with other ancient documents to determine their accuracy. More recently, military historian Charles Sanders augmented textual criticism by devising a three-part test that looks at not only the faithfulness of the copy but also the credibility of the authors. His tests are these:
The bibliographical test
The internal evidence test
The external evidence test[7]
Let’s see what happens when we apply these tests to the early New Testament manuscripts.
Bibliographical Test
This test compares a document with other ancient history from the same period. It asks:
How many copies of the original document are in existence?
How large of a time gap is there between the original writings and the earliest copies?
How well does a document compare with other ancient history?
Imagine if we had only two or three copies of the original New Testament manuscripts. The sampling would be so small that we couldn’t possibly verify accuracy. On the other hand, if we had hundreds or even thousands, we could easily weed out the errors of poorly transmitted documents.
So, how well does the New Testament compare with other ancient writings with regard to both the number of copies and the time gap from the originals? More than 5,000 manuscripts of the New Testament exist today in the original Greek language. Many of these manuscripts are merely fragments, while others are virtually complete books. When counting translations into other languages, the number is a staggering 24,000 – dating from the second to the fifteenth century.
Compare that with the second-best-documented ancient historical manuscript, Homer’s Iliad, with 643 copies.[8] And remember that most ancient historical works have far fewer existing manuscripts than that one does (usually fewer than 10). New Testament scholar Bruce Metzger remarked, “In contrast with these figures [of other ancient manuscripts], the textual critic of the New Testament is embarrassed by the wealth of his material.”[9]
Time Gap
Not only is the number of manuscripts significant, but so is the time gap between when the original was written and the date of the copy. Over the course of a thousand years of copying, there’s no telling what a text could evolve into—But over a hundred years, that’s a different story.
German critic Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860) once contended that John’s Gospel was not written until about a.d. 160; therefore, it could not have been written by John. This, if true, would have not only undermined John’s writings but cast suspicion on the entire New Testament as well. But then, when a cache of New Testament papyri fragments were discovered in Egypt, among them was a fragment of the Gospel of John (specifically, P52: John 18:31-33) dated to roughly 25 years after John wrote the original.
Metzger explained, “Just as Robinson Crusoe, seeing but a single footprint in the sand, concluded that another human being, with two feet, was present on the island with him, so P52 [the label of the fragment] proves the existence and use of the Fourth Gospel during the first half of the second century in a provincial town along the Nile far removed from its traditional place of composition (Ephesus in Asia Minor).”[10] Find after find, archaeology has unearthed copies of major portions of the New Testament dated to within 150 years of the originals.[11]
Most other ancient documents have time gaps of from 400 to 1,400 years. For example, Aristotle’s Poetics was written about 343 b.c., yet the earliest copy is dated a.d. 1100, with only five copies in existence. And yet no one is going in search of the historical Plato, claiming he was actually a fireman and not a philosopher.
In fact, there is a nearly complete copy of the Bible called, Codex Vaticanus, that was written only about 250 to 300 years after the apostles’ original writing. The oldest known complete copy of the New Testament in ancient uncial script is named, Codex Sinaiticus, now housed at the British Museum.
Like Codex Vaticanus, it is dated from the fourth century. Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, going back to early in Christian history, are like other early biblical manuscripts in that they differ minimally from each other and give us a very good picture of what the original documents must have said.
Even critical scholar John A. T. Robinson has admitted, “The wealth of manuscripts, and above all the narrow interval of time between the writing and the earliest extant copies, make it by far the best attested text of any ancient writing in the world.”[12] Professor of law John Warwick Montgomery affirmed, “To be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament.”[13]
The point is this: If the New Testament records were made and circulated so closely to the actual events, their portrayal of Jesus is most likely accurate. But external evidence is not the only way to answer the question of reliability; scholars also use internal evidence to answer this question.
The Discovery Of Codex Sinaiticus
In 1844 the German scholar Constantine Tischendorf was searching for New Testament manuscripts. By accident, he noticed a basket filled with old pages in the library of the monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai. The German scholar was both elated and shocked. He had never seen Greek manuscripts that old.
Tischendorf asked the librarian about them and was horrified to learn that the pages had been discarded to be used as fuel. Two basket-loads of such papers had already been burned!
Tischendorf’s enthusiasm made the monks wary, and they would not show him any more manuscripts. However, they did allow Tischendorf to take the 43 pages he had discovered.
Fifteen years later, Tischendorf returned to the Sinai monastery, this time with help from the Russian Tsar Alexander II. Once he was there, a monk took Tischendorf to his room and pulled down a cloth-wrapped manuscript that had been stored on a shelf with cups and dishes. Tischendorf immediately recognized the valuable remaining portions of the manuscripts he had seen earlier.
The monastery agreed to present the manuscript to the tsar of Russia as protector of the Greek Church. In 1933 the Soviet Union sold the manuscript to the British Museum for £100,000.
Codex Sinaiticus is one of the earliest complete manuscripts of the New Testament we have, and it is among the most important. Some speculate that it is one of the 50 Bibles the emperor Constantine commissioned Eusebius to prepare in the early fourth century. Codex Sinaiticus has been of enormous help to scholars in verifying the accuracy of the New Testament.
Internal Evidence Test
Like good detectives, historians verify reliability by looking at internal clues. Such clues reveal motives of the authors and their willingness to disclose details and other features that could be verified. The key internal clues these scholars use to test for reliability are the following:
consistency of eyewitness reports
details of names, places, and events
letters to individuals or small groups
features embarrassing to the authors
the presence of irrelevant or counterproductive material
lack of relevant material[14]
Let’s take as an example the movie Friday Night Lights. It purports to be based on historical events, but like so many movies loosely based on actual events, it leaves you constantly questioning, “Did things really happen that way?” So, how would you determine its historical reliability?
One clue would be the presence of irrelevant material. Let’s say that in the middle of the film the coach, for no apparent reason, gets a phone call informing him that his mother has brain cancer. The event has nothing to do with the plot and is never mentioned again. The only explanation for the presence of this irrelevant fact would be that it actually happened and that the director had a desire to be historically accurate.
Another example, same movie. Following the flow of the drama, we want the Permian Panthers to win the state championship. But they don’t. This feels counterproductive to the drama, and immediately we know it’s there because in real life Permian lost the game. The presence of counterproductive material is also a clue to historical accuracy.
Finally, the use of actual towns and familiar landmarks such as the Houston Astrodome leads us to take as history those elements of the story, because they’re too easy to corroborate or falsify.
These are but a few examples of how internal evidence leads either toward or away from the conclusion that a document is historically reliable. We’ll look briefly at the internal evidence for the historicity of the New Testament.
Several aspects of the New Testament help us determine its reliability based on its own content and qualities.
Consistency
Phony documents either leave out eyewitness reports or are inconsistent. So outright contradiction among the Gospels would prove that they contain errors. But at the same time, if each Gospel said exactly the same thing, it would raise suspicions of collusion. It would be like co-conspirators trying to agree on every detail of their scheme. Too much consistency is as doubtful as too little.
Eyewitnesses to a crime or an accident generally get the big events right but see it from different perspectives. Likewise, the four Gospels describe the events of Jesus’ life from different perspectives. Yet, regardless of these perspectives, Bible scholars are amazed at the consistency of their accounts and the clear picture of Jesus and his teaching they put together with their complementary reports.
Details
Historians love details in a document because they make it easy to verify reliability. Paul’s letters are filled with details. And the Gospels abound with them. For example, both Luke’s Gospel and his Book of Acts were written to a nobleman named Theophilus, who was undoubtedly a well-known individual at the time.
If these writings had been mere inventions of the apostles, phony names, places, and events would have quickly been spotted by their enemies, the Jewish and Roman leaders. This would have become the Watergate of the first century. Yet many of the New Testament details have been proved true by independent verification. Classical historian Colin Hemer, for example, “identifies 84 facts in the last 16 chapters of Acts that have been confirmed by Archaeological research.”[15]
In the previous few centuries, skeptical Bible scholars attacked both Luke’s authorship and its dating, asserting that it was written in the second century by an unknown author. Archaeologist Sir William Ramsey was convinced they were right, and he began to investigate. After extensive research, the archaeologist reversed his opinion. Ramsey conceded, “Luke is a historian of the first rank. … This author should be placed along with the very greatest historians. … Luke’s history is unsurpassed in respect of its trustworthiness.”[16]
Acts chronicles Paul’s missionary voyages, listing places he visited, people he saw, messages he delivered, and persecution he suffered. Could all these details have been faked? Roman historian A. N. Sherwin-White wrote, “For Acts the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming. … Any attempt to reject its basic historicity must now appear absurd. Roman historians have long taken it for granted.”[17]
From the Gospel accounts to Paul’s letters, the New Testament authors openly described details, even citing the names of individuals who were alive at the time. Historians have verified at least thirty of these names.[18]
Letters To Small Groups
Most forged texts are from documents both general and public in nature, like this magazine article (no doubt countless forgeries are already circulating on the black market). Historical expert Louis Gottschalk notes that personal letters intended for small audiences have a high probability of being reliable.[19] Which category do the New Testament documents fall into?
Well, some of them were clearly intended to be circulated widely. Yet large portions of the New Testament consist of personal letters written to small groups and individuals. These documents, at least, would not be considered prime candidates for falsification.
Embarrassing Features
Most writers don’t want to publicly embarrass themselves. Historians have therefore observed that documents containing embarrassing revelations about the authors are generally to be trusted. What did the New Testament authors say about themselves?
Surprisingly, the authors of the New Testament presented themselves as all too frequently dimwitted, cowardly, and faithless. For example, consider Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus or the disciples’ arguments over which of them was the greatest—both stories recorded in the Gospels. As respect for the apostles was crucial in the early church, inclusion of this kind of material doesn’t make sense unless the apostles were reporting truthfully.[20]
In The Story of Civilization, Will Durant wrote about the apostles, “These men were hardly of the type that one would have chosen to remold the world. The Gospels realistically differentiate their characters, and honestly expose their faults.”[21]
Counterproductive Or Irrelevant Material
The Gospels tell us that the empty tomb of Jesus was discovered by a woman, even though in Israel the testimony of women was considered to be virtually worthless and was not even admissible in court. Jesus’ mother and family are recorded as stating their belief that he had lost his mind. Some of Jesus’ final words on the cross are said to have been “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And so goes the list of incidents recorded in the New Testament that are counterproductive if the intent of the author were anything but the accurate transmission of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
Lack of Relevant Material
It is ironic (or perhaps logical) that few of the major issues facing the first-century church—the Gentile mission, spiritual gifts, baptism, leadership—were addressed directly in the recorded words of Jesus. If his followers were simply generating the material to encourage the growing church, it is inexplicable why they would not have made up instructions from Jesus on these issues. In one case, the apostle Paul flatly stated about a certain subject, “On this we have no teaching from the Lord.”
External Evidence Test
The third and final measure of a document’s reliability is the external evidence test, which asks, “Do historical records outside the New Testament confirm its reliability?” So, what did non-Christian historians say about Jesus Christ?
“Overall, at least seventeen non-Christian writings record more than fifty details concerning the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus, plus details concerning the early church.”[22] This is astounding, considering the lack of other history we possess from this time period. Jesus is mentioned by more sources than the conquests of Caesar during this same period. It is even more astounding since these confirmations of New Testament details date from 20 to 150 years after Christ, “quite early by the standards of ancient historiography.”[23]
The reliability of the New Testament is further substantiated by over 36,000 extra-biblical Christian documents (quotes from church leaders of the first three centuries) dating as early as ten years after the last writing of the New Testament).[24] If all the copies of the New Testament were lost, you could reproduce it from these other letters and documents with the exception of a few verses.[25]
Boston University professor emeritus Howard Clark Kee concludes, “The result of the examination of the sources outside the New Testament that bear … on our knowledge of Jesus is to confirm his historical existence, his unusual powers, the devotion of his followers, the continued existence of the movement after his death … and the penetration of Christianity … in Rome itself by the later first century.”[26]
The external evidence test thus builds on the evidence provided by other tests. In spite of the conjecture of a few radical skeptics, the New Testament portrait of the real Jesus Christ is virtually smudge-proof. Although there are a few dissenters such as the Jesus Seminar, the consensus of experts, regardless of their religious beliefs, confirms that the New Testament we read today faithfully represents both the words and events of Jesus’ life.
Clark Pinnock, professor of interpretations at McMaster Divinity College, summed it up well when he said, “There exists no document from the ancient world witnessed by so excellent a set of textual and historical testimonies. … An honest [person] cannot dismiss a source of this kind. Skepticism regarding the historical credentials of Christianity is based upon an irrational basis.”[27]
Did Jesus Really Rise From The Dead?
The greatest question of our time is “Who is the real Jesus Christ?” Was he just an exceptional man, or was he God in the flesh, as Paul, John, and his other disciples believed?
The eyewitnesses to Jesus Christ actually spoke and acted like they believed he physically rose from the dead after his crucifixion. If they were wrong then Christianity has been founded upon a lie. But if they were right, such a miracle would substantiate all Jesus said about God, himself, and us.
But must we take the resurrection of Jesus Christ by faith alone, or is there solid historical evidence? Several skeptics began investigations into the historical record to prove the resurrection account false. What did they discover?
Click here to take a look at the evidence for the most fantastic claim ever made—the resurrection of Jesus Christ!
The Nature & Character of God
Conclusion
When looking at God’s nature and character, we can see that God has many attributes, and these attributes are who He is. It’s not as if God is partly righteous and partly merciful, or that sometimes He’s patient and at other times He’s wrathful. God’s attributes are God’s essence. He’s not divided into parts. He is all of His attributes all of the time. What He is determines what He does, and His actions are based on His essence. He is infinitely whole and perfect in each of His attributes, and these perfect attributes are in complete harmony one with another. Everything God does is consistent with all of His attributes.
God’s Attributes: Equal and Consistent
There are times in Scripture when some attribute of God is emphasized more than another. Certainly God’s holiness, justice, and wrath are more prominently displayed in the Old Testament, though His love, mercy, patience, omniscience, and power are clearly evident as well. Love and grace are in the forefront throughout the New Testament, but there is no hiding the wrath that it also contains.
The God of the Old Testament and the New Testament is the same God—infinitely just, holy, loving, and merciful in both time periods, and all that He did is completely consistent with all of His attributes. Old Testament believers lived within the covenant that God made with Israel, in which the law, given through Moses, was predominant. New Testament believers live under a new covenant since the death and resurrection of Jesus and the giving of the Holy Spirit to believers. They are different covenants with the same God, and while certain aspects of God’s nature may have been emphasized in Scripture at different times, this doesn’t negate the other parts of His nature.
Both the old and new covenants, and God’s actions in both eras, were based on the fullness of God’s Being. Holiness, righteousness, love, mercy, grace, patience, wrath, aseity, eternity, immutability, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and all of God’s attributes are woven throughout both Testaments because God’s actions are based on God’s Being; and His Being, the essence of who God is, is found in His attributes.
There are some theologians who have argued that love is the most important, or dominant, attribute of God, and that all others are based on God’s love. Others have argued that His holiness, righteousness, or some other attribute is the most important part of God’s Being. These positions are not held by the majority of theologians. The implication of one attribute being more important or dominant leads to the possibility that some of God’s actions could be inconsistent with His divine nature.—That He would possibly set aside one attribute in favor of another, and would act contrary to one of His attributes. This would then mean that God could change in His nature, that He could act in an unrighteous manner, and could be unloving or unholy, which as we see from Scripture is not possible.
While the Bible specifically tells us that God is love, it doesn’t state that God is only love. Scripture also specifically states that God is spirit, is light, and is a consuming fire. Again, it does not state that God is only any of these things.
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.[1]
God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.[2]
This is the message we have heard from Him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.[3]
God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.[4]
Our God is a consuming fire.[5]
When God told Moses about Himself, He said He was merciful, gracious, patient, loving, faithful, forgiving, just, and righteous.
The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.”[6]
God’s being is a unity of all of His attributes. None are separate from another, or more important than another. They all make up the essence of God.
Learning, Understanding, Worshiping
Learning about God’s nature and character helps us to have a better understanding of God. It is of course not possible to know all there is about God, but we can know what He has revealed about Himself through Scripture. What He has revealed shows that He is worthy of all honor, respect, praise, and worship. He is the awesome God of Scripture.
Who is like You, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like You, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?[7]
Let them praise Your great and awesome name! Holy is He! The King in His might loves justice. You have established equity; You have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob. Exalt the Lord our God; worship at His footstool! Holy is He![8]
O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments.[9]
He sent redemption to His people; He has commanded His covenant forever. Holy and awesome is His name![10]
God’s Personal Care, and our Faith in Him
The Creator of all things, who has the power to speak creation into being, who knows all there is to know, who is from everlasting to everlasting, who is infinite in all of His Being, is not some faraway entity who pays no attention to the world and all that is in it. The opposite is true. God is personal. God being personal means that He enters relationships with us. He loves and interacts with us. He listens to us, cares for us, and answers our prayers. He entered our world and died for us so that we can live with Him forever.
He is concerned about His creatures, humans in particular. He made them in His image, He has entered into covenants with them, and He establishes relationships with them. He loves them and cares about them, does good for them, and finds pleasure in them. Though His image-bearing creations sinned by turning away from His will, God didn’t abandon them and cast them out. His self-giving love made a way for humans to be forgiven for their sins and to become reconciled to Him. Jesus suffered and died specifically for our sins. The personal, merciful, loving, and gracious God, in an act of deep love for those He created, brought forth the plan of redemption.
God’s holiness, righteousness, justice, and constancy are those attributes that give a foundation for our faith and trust in God. He is unchanging, the Rock, the strong tower in which we are safe. He is infinitely holy, so we can know that He will never do anything toward us which is unholy. He is infinitely righteous and just, so we can know He will always treat us fairly. Because He is constant in His nature and character, we know He will always act lovingly toward us, and will always be merciful and patient.
His omniscience and omnipotence help to engender faith that what God has said in His Word will happen, as He has the power to make it happen. When we pray for ourselves or others, when we lay hands on the sick, when we ask Him for anything, we can pray in faith, knowing that the all-powerful One can do all things which are according to His will and purpose.
Being aware of the unity of His attributes, the harmony between them, can help us to have a more trusting attitude when we can’t make sense of some of what happens in the world around us. Knowing that God is holy and just, that He hates evil, and that He will judge those who do evil, but that He is also patient, can help us to know that the injustice in the world will be dealt with, that vengeance belongs to God. When we consider His attributes in balance, it helps to guide us in our lives, decisions, and interactions with others. We too should hate evil, sin, and injustice, but we should also be loving, kind, merciful, and patient with others.
Knowing that God is non-created Spirit, that His Being is unique and different from all other being, that He made all things, knows all things, and can do all things, can help us to accept that there are some things about God that are beyond our knowledge and understanding. We don’t know all His thoughts and ways, and we can’t always have answers to every question we have about Him. We can, however, know that because God is true to His nature, we can trust that He will act in accordance with His nature. Even if we may not understand everything about Him or why He does what He does, He has revealed to us His essence, His nature and character, His attributes, His power and abilities, and we know that these are what God is and always will be. Knowing this can help us have faith to trust in Him, even if we don’t have complete understanding of Him or His actions.
Knowing more about God’s nature and character, about His awesomeness, can and should cause us to love, praise, and worship Him. He’s the One who created the universe, who made the beautiful world in which we live. He loves and cares about us, so much so that He wants us to live with Him for eternity—which He has made possible through His ultimate love gift, the free gift of salvation.
God is wonderful! He loves us so deeply. He cares about every person. He cares about you personally. It’s a wonderful thing to know that He has made it possible for us to be with Him for eternity and that He has commissioned us to help others to learn about Him, His love, and the wonderful salvation that is available to all.
Notes
Unless otherwise indicated, all scriptures are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Other versions cited are The New International Version (NIV), the New American Standard Bible (NASB), The New Revised Standard Version (NRS), The New King James Version (NKJV), and the King James Version (KJV).
General bibliography for all “Nature and Character of God” articles
Barth, Karl. The Doctrine of God, Vol. 2, Parts 1 and 2. Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2010.
Berkhof, Louis. Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996.
Cottrell, Jack. What the Bible Says About God the Creator. Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1983.
Craig, William Lane. The Doctrine of Christ, Defenders Series Lectures.
Garrett, Jr., James Leo. Systematic Theology, Biblical, Historical, and Evangelical, Vol. 1. N. Richland Hills: BIBAL Press, 2000.
Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology, An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Grand Rapids: InterVarsity Press, 2000.
Lewis, Gordon R., and Demarest, Bruce A. Integrative Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996.
Miley, John. Systematic Theology. New York: Hunt and Eaton, 1892.
Milne, Bruce. Know the Truth, A Handbook of Christian Belief. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009.
Mueller, John Theodore. Christian Dogmatics, A Handbook of Doctrinal Theology for Pastors, Teachers, and Laymen. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1934.
Ott, Ludwig. Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma. Rockford: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1960.
Packer, J. I. The Attributes of God 1 and 2. Lecture Series.
Williams, J. Rodman. Renewal Theology, Systematic Theology from a Charismatic Perspective. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996.
[1] 1 John 4:8.
[2] 1 John 4:16.
[3] 1 John 1:5.
[4] John 4:24.
[5] Hebrews 12:29.
[6] Exodus 34:6–7.
[7] Exodus 15:11.
[8] Psalm 99:3–5.
[9] Nehemiah 1:5.
[10] Psalm 111:9.
Copyright © 2012 The Family International.
