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Let it be a rule with us, in the reading of our Bibles, to study the types and ordinances of the Mosaic law with prayerful attention. They are all full of Christ. The altar--the scape-goat--the daily burnt-offering--the day of atonement, are all so many sign-posts pointing to the great sacrifice offered by our Lord on Calvary. Those who neglect to study the Jewish ordinances, as dark, dull, and uninteresting parts of the Bible, only show their own ignorance, and miss great advantages. Those who examine them with Christ as the key to their meaning, will find them full of Gospel...

5 This is what the LORD says: "Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD. 6 He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. 7 "But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. 8 He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the...

Catholic Biblical Apologetics Apologetics without apology! What does the Roman Catholic Church teach about ...? ... and why? This website surveys the origin and development of Roman Catholic Christianity from the period of the apostolic church, through the post-apostolic church and into the conciliar movement. Principal attention is paid to the biblical basis of both doctrine and dogma as well as the role of paradosis (i.e. handing on the truth) in the history of the Church. Particular attention is also paid to the hierarchical founding and succession of leadership throughout the centuries. This is a set of lecture notes...

CNN correspondent Max Foster’s short report about Richard Dawkins on Tuesday’s Situation Room played more like a commercial which promoted the militant atheist’s new book. Despite Dawkins’s past inflammatory statements about Christianity, Foster only labeled him “an outspoken critic of creationism....[whose] atheist views have put him at the center of controversy” [audio clip available here]. Anchor Suzanne Malveaux’s introduction for the correspondent’s report highlighted the 150th anniversary of the printing of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species,” and how Dawkins was a “controversial successor [to Darwin] carrying the torch for evolution.” Foster gave a very basic description of Dawkins’s...

5 Myths about 7 Books  MARK SHEA Here are the answers to five common arguments Protestants give for rejecting the Deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament. People don't talk much about the deuterocanon these days. The folks who do are mostly Christians, and they usually fall into two general groupings: Catholics — who usually don't know their Bibles very well and, therefore, don't know much about the deuterocanonical books, and Protestants — who may know their Bibles a bit better, though their Bibles don't have the deuterocanonical books in them anyway, so they don't know anything about them either....

A man who performed an amateur circumcision on his four-year-old son on the floor of the family kitchen has been found guilty of criminal negligence. The man, identified only as D.J.W. in a written B.C. Supreme Court ruling released this week, was found not guilty of aggravated assault and assault with a weapon. Justice Marion Allan said D.J.W. ought to have known better, partly because a circumcision he earlier performed on himself led to bleeding, sutures and infection. “The fact that the accused had previously ineptly circumcised himself exacerbates, rather than minimizes, his awareness of the risks of home circumcision...

PHOENIX (AP) - An Arizona pastor has triggered protests after preaching a sermon last month titled "Why I Hate Barack Obama." Dozens of demonstrators gathered Sunday outside Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe to protest the message preached by the Rev. Steven Anderson.

“There is far more violence in the Bible than in the Qur’an; the idea that Islam imposed itself by the sword is a Western fiction, fabricated during the time of the Crusades when, in fact, it was Western Christians who were fighting brutal holy wars against Islam.” So announces former nun and self-professed “freelance monotheist,” Karen Armstrong. This quote sums up the single most influential argument currently serving to deflect the accusation that Islam is inherently violent and intolerant: All monotheistic religions, proponents of such an argument say, and not just Islam, have their fair share of violent and intolerant...

Old Testament Difficulties 140. How could God harden Pharaoh's heart and then punish him for not letting the Jews go? The sense is that God permitted Pharaoh to harden his own heart. It is but a Jewish mode of speaking. Exod. VIII., 15, says, "And Pharaoh hardened his own heart." God sent Moses to ask Pharaoh to let the Jews go, and that means that He meant Pharaoh to do so. God would not, therefore, have deliberately prevented Pharaoh from doing so. God permitted Pharaoh to harden his own heart, just as He permits men to sin even in...

Old Testament Difficulties 116. I believe in the New Testament, but not in the Old Testament. There are things in the New Testament just as hard to believe as many things in the Old Testament, and on your principle you should reject much of the New Testament itself. Yet let us act on your admission that you do accept the New Testament. Christ and the Apostles had the same Old Testament as we have today. They treat it always as the inspired Word of God in its totality. Christ, the Son of God, would have been the first to...

Old Testament Difficulties 128. That Ark surely is a fable or symbol. Even on the measurements given it could never have contained all said to be in it. It is not a fable, although it does symbolize the Catholic Church in which souls are saved from the moral flood of sin. It was over 400 feet long, 70 wide, and 40 deep. The flood was most probably local, and the animals were of various types from the region only of its occurrence. We are not obliged to believe that all living animals were represented, nor that all animals outside...

This is a great reference source for Bible study and general online reading. Links to all Books and Chapters are on one page which makes this very helpful. Also there are audios of a number of translations. Here are links to some of the more popular and reliable English language translations. 1. New International Version - http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/?action=getVersionInfo&vid=31 2. New American Standard Bible - http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/?action=getVersionInfo&vid=49#books 3. New King James - http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/?action=getVersionInfo&vid=50 4. Amplified Bible - http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/?action=getVersionInfo&vid=45 5. Holman Christian Standard Bible - http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/?action=getVersionInfo&vid=77 6. King James Version - http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/?action=getVersionInfo&vid=9

Abortion is not new. The act of murdering unwanted infants dates back to ancient times. In the Old Testament book of Ezekiel, we find a record of an abortion and God's reaction to it. Read Ezekiel Chapter 16:1-14 1 The word of the LORD came to me: 2 "Son of man, confront Jerusalem with her detestable practices 3 and say, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says to Jerusalem: Your ancestry and birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. 4 On the day you were born your cord was...

Christmas is quite simply the most significant holiday in the world. It would be difficult to come up with a single day or event that is more celebrated globally than Christmas. And, in a way, every single human being celebrates Christmas every single day whether they like it or not, as our very calender is a recognition of that day when Christ came to the world: Anno Domini Nostri Iesu (Jesu) Christi ("In the Year of Our Lord Jesus Christ"). But what is it about this day? Why do people all over the world give gifts to one another? Is...

IN a discovery straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, archeologists believe they have uncovered one of the lost mines of King Solomon. The vast copper mine lies in an arid valley in modern-day Jordan and was created in the 10th century BC - around the time Solomon is believed to have ruled over the ancient Hebrews. The mines are enormous and would have generated a huge income for the king, who is famed for bringing extraordinary wealth and stability to the newly united kingdom of Israel and Judah. The announcement will reopen the debate about how much of the...

The religious left of this country seems to delight in mocking the laws of the Old Testament and in making fun of anyone who thinks that these laws should be regarded as part of the inspired word of God. It's amazing how often their sneering attempts at humor simply ignore long-established Christian ideas on how to study the Old Testament and how to apply it to our lives. Jesus and the apostles themselves emphasized the importance of the Hebrew scriptures. Jesus told his followers that he hadn't come to destroy the law or the prophets but to fulfill them. The...

OTC – Old Testament Challenge Sources: Old Testament Challenge 1 – Creating a New Community Discussion Guide By John Ortberg with Kevin & Sherry Harney On line links: Northwoods Community Church http://www.nwoods.org/storyWithChart.asp?storyid=393 Willow Creek Church http://www.willowcreek.com/resources/courses/otc/ Charlie Dean’s Blog http://charliedean.wordpress.com/ Part 1 – Genesis through Deuteronomy – Life-Changing Stories From the Pentateuch This series is being covered by Northwoods Community Church in Peoria Illinois. I’ll transcribe the messages and add material from the small group discussion guide. Message 1 – 9/5/2007 – Charlie Dean “God’s Greatest Dream” See the links for resources, the Reading Guide and the Discussion Guide ....

At a time when some voters are asking how the religious views of candidates will shape their policies, a professor’s discovery of how little tax the biggest landowners in her state paid to finance the government has prompted some other legal scholars to scour religious texts to explore the moral basis of tax and spending policies. The professor, Susan Pace Hamill, is an expert at tax avoidance for small businesses and teaches at the University of Alabama Law School. She also holds a degree in divinity from a conservative evangelical seminary, where her master’s thesis explored how Alabama’s tax-and-spend policies...

A few weeks ago I attended the annual dinner of the National Bible Association, which admirably seeks to promote the reading of the Bible across the United States. I was seated at a table with other Orthodox rabbis, one of whom had kindly invited me. Things did not go smoothly. One of the honorees was a Jewish-born Christian chaplain from the armed forces who spoke of his conversion away from Judaism and how he had chosen Jesus as his personal Messiah. Fair enough. People are free to believe what they want and, sadly, there are Jews who, sometimes out of...

The time period between the Old and New Testaments is a blank in our scriptures, yet those 400 years were a very significant period in the Holy Land. In many respects the Holy Land in that era resembled a military chessboard on which two important Greek dynasties, the Seleucids of Syria and the Ptolemies of Egypt, fought for control after the death of Alexander the Great. When the dust settled around 200 B.C., the Seleucids, under the leadership of Antiochus III, were the victors. The fundamental cultural and religious differences between these Greeks and their Jewish subjects eventually led to...