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By its nature, prophecy can be difficult to interpret. It uses many symbols, and these can be taken in more than one way.The key to understanding biblical prophecy is to determine itsliteralsense—that is, what it meant in itsoriginalcontext, what the prophet was trying to communicate to his audience for their benefit. Normally Old Testament prophecies have their primary fulfillment within the generation to which they were given or within a few generations. However, they can have additional fulfi …

The Skeptics’ Claims So Jacob arose, and set his sons and his wives on camels.—Genesis 31:17 Many biblical skeptics have claimed that camels in the Bible are anachronistic and portrayed in ways that are historically inaccurate. For example, a transcript of a National Public Radio show proclaims: "Camels as a means of transportation abound in the Old Testament. When Abraham sends a servant to look for a bride for his son Isaac, that servant chooses Rebecca. And why? Because of her kind …

Stay in the Catholic Church? After I became a Christian I struggled with whether I should keep attending a Catholic Church. As I sat in church and watched incense rise up from the altar, I felt an urge to stay and be part of what felt like a sacred mystery.On the other hand, there were a lot of Catholic beliefs that I could not find in the Bible, which made me think they were just man-made  traditions. I eventually decided that it didn’t matter which church I joined so long as I only be …

One evening I had the sad duty of attending my neighbor’s funeral. The assistant pastor from the church stood up and after a few remarks about the deceased began to give a sermon. The first ten minutes was dedicated to how he knew that my neighbor believed in Jesus and was in heaven, so there was no need to pray for her or offer Masses or anything like that. The next thirty minutes or so (it’s difficult to tell since it seemed like eternity) was dedicated to explaining why it doesn’t matter whic …

We recently sat down with Catholic Answers Senior Apologist Jimmy Akin, to talk about why the Bible is a Catholic book. Q. Our Protestant friends often speak of “the word of God” as if it was limited to just the Bible. Is that true? Jimmy: No. The Bible speaks of the “word of God” as being several different things. It certainly includes the Bible, but it also includes the word of God communicated to people orally—in the form of Tradition, as when the apostles preached the word to …