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The Argument for the Great Apostasy If the early Church was the Catholic Church, why can’t we say that Christians just lost their way early on? That’s the argument many Mormon and Protestant theologians make. In Mormon theology, this idea is expressed in terms of a Great Apostasy that followed the death of the apostles: Following the death of Jesus Christ, wicked people persecuted and killed many Church members. Other Church members drifted from the principles taught by Jesus Christ …

The Claims of Early Christian Beliefs You can find countless variations of the claim that early Christians believed Protestant things: Mormons who claim that the early Christians believed Mormon things Muslims who claim they believed Muslim things Non-religious people claiming that they didn’t originally consider Jesus divine And various other religious groups making similar claims about how their teachings were what the earliest Christians really believed. Almost all …

Cultural Resistance to Revelation The necessity of revelation and of knowing God on his terms is not accepted in our culture today. A story can help illustrate this tension. In our society, for decades bumper stickers have been used as a means of self-declaration. Beyond the popular Christian “fish” bumper sticker, and the reactionary Darwin one, we find all kinds of political, social, and religious statements on the bumpers of people’s cars. They were our original social media “walls” befor …

The Rise of Gender Fluidity and the Need for Truth At my son’s large public high school it is not uncommon to see kids in various states of  “gender fluidity,” but not simply in the sense of feminine boys and tomboy girls as I saw back in my own public high school in the 1980s. No, these kids are either formally “transitioning” or experimenting with opposite-sex alter-egos, both of which have become trendy and faddish. As parents, we are often lulled by a misguided compassion that ke …

Who Are the Saints? A saint is one who is holy. In most languages, the two terms are synonymous (sanctusin Latin,santoin Spanish, etc.). The New Testament refers to all living Christians as saints. That is so because the Spirit sanctifies every Christian at baptism in Christ’s blood, becoming sanctified after yielding his body to righteousness, by abstaining from unchastity and sin, fulfilling God’s call to be holy and blameless. So every Christian is a saint, due to his relationship wi …