Archive for the ‘Theology’ Category

John MacArthur is one of my favorite Bible teachers, and the topic of this book is something that Wolf and I feel very strongly about, so I was really looking forward to reading it.

Meek and mild. Politically correct. A great teacher. These are the popular depictions of Jesus. But they aren’t the complete picture. Maybe because it’s uncomfortable, or maybe because it’s inconvenient, Christians and non-Christians alike are overlooking the fierceness of the Savior, His passionate mission to make the Gospel clear and bring people into the Kingdom of God. A mission that required he sometimes raise his voice and sometimes raise a whip.

My favorite point, summing it all up:

Truth doesn’t defeat error (or lies) by waging a public relations campaign.

The reality of the book, though, was somewhat disappointing.

I think part of the explanation may be found in the Acknowledgements – MacArthur thanks all the staff who have recorded, stored, and organized his sermons over the past forty-plus years. He gives special notice to his assistant who, “compiled, combined, adridged, and edited the material in this book, translating it from those hundreds of sermons to about 250 pages of prose.” Sounds like he should have a joint author credit!

My first issue is obviously not unique, as I found it eloquently spelled out over at token lines suggesting rhythm:

However, he explicitly addresses much of his biblical interpretation and personal criticism to a narrow group – those emergents and postmoderns who have hijacked or misinterpreted the Jesus of the gospels or who have selectively emphasized the “nice” side of Jesus. While these are not bad to criticize, and MacArthur does a good job of showing the fuller picture of Jesus’ hard teachings, his frequent jabs and applications to postmoderns grows tiring. More general application would have been beneficial.

I think my bigger problem, though, is that this book seems to lack a “voice” – and again, I think this may have to do with the fact that it is (or at least started life as) a compilation of MacAthur’s sermons edited by someone else.

* For a layperson or casual reader, the book is probably quite dense and boring. If you’re looking for Max Lucado, forget it. But for someone interested in a serious in-depth study, the book also falls short.

* Many areas seem repetitive and/or redundant, while other times he mentions something tantalizing then says “of course we don’t have the space in a book like this for an exhaustive study of that, but let me just point out…”

* The book is very impersonal. The title says that “I” can’t ignore Him; the subhead tells me that the books tells, “What [I] must learn from the bold confrontations of Chirst”; the back cover text carries a message about how our view of Christ colors our whole life… But the book did not speak to me. In part because it was largely slanted against the Emergent and Postmodern Evangelicals (as discussed above), but I think also in part just because of an overall lack of focus and direction.

Is it a good book, with tons of good information? Absolutely.

Is it compelling, life altering, or profound? Sorry, no.

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(By Nick)

Let me start off my long road of Evolution vs. Creation by refuting one of the theories that I have frequently heard.

God did not have use the Big Bang to create the universe. The way Evolutionists say the Big Bang happened does not fit with the Bible’s version.

First of all, the Big Bang seems highly improbable. There was infinite energy in zero volume, which was therefore infinitely hot and dense. At some random point it randomly blew up, and one second later, the temperature had gone from infinity to 10 billion. Furthermore, it does not explain why this energy existed.

Second, the order things happened in. Evolutionists say that there was this big nebula of gas and particles which gradually condensed on itself, making stars, which where followed by planets, followed by water, followed by life. God says, first there was light, not from anything, just light, and a planet of water. Then, he made an atmosphere, grew plants, and then created the sun, moon and stars and distinguished night from day.

There is also an inherent flaw to the Evolutionist model. Physics tells us that when matter is created from energy, an equal amount of antimatter is also created. In reality, there are only trace amounts of antimatter compared to matter.

Finally, the Big Bang can only account for the lightest three elements known, leaving ninety percent of the periodic table to be explained. According to Evolutionist science, the other elements came from supernovae of stars that only had these three elements. These stars’ life spans were calculated to be much longer than has passed since the Big Bang. Yet, they can find none of these hypothetical stars. Gosh, I wonder why?

So, they are willing to put aside rationality to believe something that can be disproven, but criticize us when we put faith in something that cannot be disproven. The logic here is…?