For the past two months, American Vision has been trying to find someone from the dispensational position to debate the following topic: “The Olivet Discourse: Future or Fulfilled?” Some of the people we contacted had legitimate reasons for not being able to participate. Most did not. Thomas Ice, who I have debated eight times in the past 15 years, is almost always ready to debate. For this, he de [...]
“The story you are about to hear is true; the names have been changed to protect the innocent.” So began the prologue to the popular television series “Dragnet” (1952–1959), starring Jack Webb as Joe Friday who often used the phrase “All we want are the facts, ma’am” when questioning women in the course of a police investigation. But are the facts always enough when dealing with issues related to [...]
When my oldest son was about four, we were at the check-out line at a Blockbuster video store when he noticed a video-tape display promoting a new release of The Godfather. “Dad, is this about God?” he asked. Knowing that he would not care to hear a long retelling of the plot, I summed up the storyline by telling him that The Godfather saga was about an alternate form of government. [...]
Democracy is the “rule of the people,” and whatever the people rule is right. Vox populi, vox dei— “the voice of the people is the voice of god.” If the majority of people have a defective worldview, then their vote will also be defective. We’ve seen “democracy in action” when Palestinians voted the terrorist worldview of Hamas into power. According to the philosophical democracy, the Hamas govern [...]
Anti-Christians are out in force. Richard Dawkins says that teaching religion to children is a form of child abuse.[1] The video “The God Who Was Not There” is making the rounds on the Internet. Iraq-war combat veteran Paul Hackett, who is running for the U.S. Senate from Ohio, describes religious conservatives as not “a whole lot different than Osama bin Laden and a lot of other religious nuts ar [...]
If you want to attack Christian conservatives who believe that Christians have an obligation to impact the world, even the world of politics, you will hear hysterical cries from the Left on how such a view is theocratic. According to the secular left, Christianity and politics in America mix as well as Islam and politics mix in Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Liberals can never be accused of being th [...]
I received a phone call from a friend who goes to a conservative Baptist church. She asked one of the assistant pastors to help promote Justice Sunday. The purpose of Justice Sunday is to involve Christians in the political process. The pastor argued that Christians should not be involved in politics or social issues because Jesus and the disciples did not vote, rally support for social issues, or [...]
“We ought to be increasing our taxes. We who have it ought to be paying a lot more, but should insist on efficiency in expenditure.”—Walter Cronkite The 89-year-old Walter Cronkite regrets having retired as the anchorman of CBS News. He wants to be America’s “most trusted man” again. Cronkite is a socialist. Of course, you knew that, but let’s let “Uncle Walter” tell you himself. The September-Oct [...]
Many people believe that facts are neutral, that they speak for themselves.[2] These same people are under the impression that newscasters and journalists simply “report the news” devoid of biases, preconceived assumptions, or political agendas. This is hardly the case as James Davison Hunter points out in his book Culture Wars: In the very act of selecting the stories to cover, the books to publi [...]
Open and Closed Minds Why are Conservatives the only ones who are supposed to have an “open mind” on an issue like abortion? Sen. Richard Durbin, a liberal Democrat, claimed that Judge Alito has a “mind that sadly is closed in some instances.” Since Alito seems to have ruled on the Conservative side of the abortion issue in past court decisions, Sen. Durbin is concerned that he won’t have an “open [...]
I received an email from one of the authors of the Mother Jones issue that attacked Christian involvement in politics and social issues (December 2005). Throughout this author’s article he continually misrepresented me and others. I’ve answered these objections previously in articles and books and I did not feel it was necessary to do again. It gets tiresome after awhile. Mother Jones (MJ) has an [...]
Pat Robertson has gone on record claiming that God punished Ariel Sharon with a massive stroke for “dividing God’s land.” How does Robertson know this? He doesn’t. Attaching God’s name to a claim does not make it so. Robertson violated the third commandment (Ex. 20:7) by using God’s name “in vain” to give authority to an unsubstantiated assertion. Pat Boone, yes, that Pat Boone, gets it right when [...]
In an attempt to make the Bible conform to the latest advances in technology, modern-day prophecy writers look for anything that will support their view of the end-times, even if it means reading things into the Bible that aren’t there. For example Peter and Paul Lalonde misrepresent what Revelation 13:16–18 says about the mark of the beast. In an advertisement for their This Week in Bible Prophec [...]
While cleaning up my office, I came across a cassette tape of a sermon preached by Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel on December 31, 1979. He told his very accepting audience that the rapture would take place in 1981. Russia was about to invade Israel. The former Soviet Republic had gone into Afghanistan. This was the prelude to a full-force invasion of the Middle East, Smith told his audience. Today, [...]
Legendary actress Laurette Taylor (1884–1946) described acting as “the physical representation of a mental picture and the projection of an emotional concept.” As I mentioned in my article “Brokeback Morality,” the movie Brokeback Mountain is a Hollywood propaganda film designed to desensitize the American people so more will accept homosexuality as normative. The actors and setting of the story w [...]
When Christians hear the phrase the “end of the world,” they assume it’s a reference to a great end-time prophetic event like Armageddon, the Second Coming of Christ, or the inauguration of the New Heavens and New Earth. Actually, the phrase “end of the world,” as in the end of the physical world, is not found in the Bible. There is Psalm 19:4, but in context “end of the world” is a geographical d [...]
A judge and his court have spoken. Intelligent Design is not science. Science classes cannot mention God as the Creator of life. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III made the following ruling in the Dover, Pennsylvania, school board case regarding teaching Intelligent Design as a competing theory to Darwinism: “Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of [...]
We saw in yesterday’s article that modern-day illusionists are trying to demonstrate that Jesus could have been a very good magician and not a worker of miracles sent by God. Of course, the miracles Jesus performed hardly qualify as parlor or stage magic. But what about “miracles” performed by those outside the Christian worldview? Are they really miracles or just tricks performed by well-practice [...]
The miracles of the Bible are under attack from an unusual discipline. Usually biblical miracles are called into question by liberal theologians and atheistic materialists. Now, the entertainment field is getting into the act. Illusionists Barry Jones and Stuart McLeod will attempt to see if eight New Testament miracles can be duplicated by non-miraculous means. British television will air the Chr [...]
I think we should let the evolutionists have their way. They oppose any mention of creation in government schools, even rejecting the notion of Intelligent Design. They see the Scopes Trial of 1925 as the turning point for the upsurge in evolutionary legitimacy. While John Scopes was convicted for teaching evolution contrary to state law and had to pay a $100 fine, public opinion and educational m [...]
