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Spiritual or Religious?  Challenge: I consider myself spiritual rather than religious. Why isn’t that enough?  Defense: Because God loves you and wants even better things for you.  When people say they are spiritual rather than religious, they frequently mean that, although they don’t practice a specific religion, they recognize there is more to the world than matter, that it has a spiritual dimension. This is good! But it doesn’t go very far. Wouldn’t it …

The Nature of Faith: Trust in Relationships In general, faith can be understood as the acceptance of something as true based on the trustworthiness of the one revealing it. Any kind of deep friendship requires a trust between friends. Otherwise, the relationship will remain superficial, without any deep intimacy and communication of what is most important to both. In true friendship, each person speaks from the heart, revealing what is of deep significance. To accept as true what a frien …

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 …

The Leadership Roles in the Old Covenant In establishing his covenant with the Israelites, God also established three different leadership roles: priests, prophets, and kings. The role of the Israelite priests was to offer sacrifices as God described to Moses and his brother Aaron; Aaron and his descendants were to be the priests. The prophets were God’s spokesmen; he commissioned them to proclaim his laws and to warn the Israelites of the consequences when they violated these laws Beginn …

The Resurrection: A Historical Examination The Bible says that if Jesus did not rise from the dead then the Christian faith is worthless (1 Cor. 15:17). However, if Jesus did rise from the dead then we know Jesus can keep his promise to give everyone who follows him eternal life (1 John 2:25). But how can we know that Jesus really rose from the dead and that the Bible’s description of this miracle wasn’t just a story someone made up? One way is by showing that the Resurrection is …