The founders of our Republic could only in their darkest nightmares have imagined relativism trumping objective moral standards in a free society. The rise of technology and the fall of ethical consensus have brought us to a society full of moral dilemmas. This stark reality was born out in 1973 when Christians quietly passed in a battle in the war against abortion.

The far reaching impact of that abdication is felt in the raging battle over embryonic stem cell research. In the wake of the current moral and ethical tsunami, it is incumbent upon Christians to not only provide relief but bring the rebuilding process. Nothing less than Western Civilization is at stake.

I’ll never forget what Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer said many years ago: abortion would be the watershed issue of our era. “Of all the subjects related to the erosion of the sanctity of human life abortion is the keystone.”[2] Of course, his warning tragically fell on deaf ears.

Consider the statements of some of the leading spiritual and secular leaders of our age. Beverly Harrison, a professor of Christian Ethics at Union Theological Seminary, “Infanticide is not a great wrong. I do not want to be construed as condemning women who under certain circumstances quietly put their infants to death.”[3]Esther Langston, Professor of Social Work at the University of Nevada, “What we are saying is that abortion becomes one of the choices and the person has the right to choose whatever it is that is… best for them in the situation in which they find themselves: be it abortion, keep the baby, adopt the baby, sell the baby, leave the baby in a dumpster, put it on your porch, whatever. It’s the person’s right to choose.”[4] Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, who famously remarked “that the most merciful thing a large family can do for one of its infant members is to kill it.”[5]

Where does this slippery slope lead? Think only to the words of James Watson, the Nobel prize winner and the co-discover of the structure of DNA, “Because of the limitations of present detection methods most birth defects are not discovered until birth; however, if a child was not declared alive until three days after birth the doctor would allow the child to die if the parents so chose and save a lot of misery and suffering.”[6]

This is the epoch in which we find ourselves. In view of this reality, we should go back to the words of Scripture. “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:13). A song was written with those words in mind. It was haunting, not only to hear the music but to see the images. It was the first pro-life song by Cindee Martin Morgan, who is the daughter of the late Dr. Walter Martin, the founder and former president of CRI. It was recorded by her daughter Sharon at the tender age of seven. We featured that song on the Bible Answer Man broadcast and we lauded the fact that Cindee Martin Morgan and her husband Rick Morgan were vigilant in the battle against abortion.

The reason we did that is because the reality is today there are very few Christians who will put their lives on the line for this issue. Christians have become apathetic. There was a recent Pew Research Poll that found that among all respondents to the poll concern about the abortion issues has dropped. Only 15% of respondents said that abortion was a critical issue.[7] It’s an issue to which we have been anesthetized to. This does not mean that we shouldn’t be involved in the debate or the discussion. It’s a watershed issue of our era; we should be involved.

So Cindee and Rick have continued the battle, recognizing it’s not about whether we win or lose. It’s about being faithful with the platform that God gives us. They have now come out with a new pro-life song called, “Who will Save the Little Ones?” It’s a call to lawful action on behalf of the unborn. You can hear this at our Website (http://www.equip.org/site/savethelittleones). I also did an hour long interview with Cindee and Rick on October 6, 2009; this can be heard also at our Website (http://www.equip.org/broadcasts/who-will-save-the-little-ones-20090610). To visit their Website go to (http://www.MtMoriahMusic.com) Also to equip you in defending the Pro-Life position we recommend the book Whose Ethics? Whose Morals? available at our Website or by calling 1-888-7000-0274.

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If you look at the reasoning that is used, you hear the echoes of the prosperity teachers. You hear T.D. Jakes saying, “The devil is a liar. Healing is the children’s bread. It’s promised to us in the word of God…God can do things that medicine cannot do.”[1] So if God has promised us healing and someone is still a paraplegic it means that you don’t have faith in their view.

This of course begs the question: What is faith? Faith teachers have a ready answer for you. They look at Hebrews 11:1 and they say faith is a force, words are the containers of the force, and through the force of faith you create your own reality. So if you learn to access the proper vocabulary, use the right words, you’re not going to be a paraplegic because Hebrew 11:1 says that “faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.” So—say the Faith teachers—you have right it there, faith is the substance—the stuff—and words the containers of the stuff.

Of course that’s not what Hebrew 11:1 really has in mind. A proper reading of Hebrew 11:1 in context demonstrates that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Which is to say; true biblical faith is not stuff contained in your words. It’s not a substance, a tangible reality. It’s living assurance, a channel of living trust between an individual and their God.

Faith is only as good, therefore, as the object in whom it is placed. We place our faith in God and we say with Job, “though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him” (13:15). The reason for that is that God has given us enough evidence to trust in Him despite the difficulties of life. He had demonstrated to us that in this life we are going to have trouble because we live in a fallen world. So if you’re a paraplegic, it’s not because you don’t have enough faith. It’s because you live in a fallen world. We are called in this fallen world to put our trust in God and ultimately that trust in God is going to eventuate in a new heaven and new earth in which there will be no more paraplegics. Like Joni Eareckson Tada has said, “They will pole vault the pearly gates,”[2] because then the old order of things will pass away, and everything will become new.

In the meantime, do not follow the Faith teachers or swallow their formulas, they are dead ends and deceptions. The last thing you want to tell a paraplegic is that he doesn’t have enough faith. Some of the greatest faith bearers and exemplars of faith that I have met in my life are blind people. Joni Eareckson Tada, a quadriplegic, is my hero of faith and she taught me the true meaning of faith. Through the overflow of a life spent in a wheelchair, she has blessed the lives through her faithful service of literally millions of people around the globe. So encourage those that are hurting that they will one day walk with the Lord and have pity for people in the church who find it necessary to tell people that they don’t have enough faith.

For further information on this topic, please check out my book Resurrection and Christianity in Crisis 21^st Century both available at our Website www.equip.org or by calling us at 1-888-700-0274.

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I thought it was a particularly poignant because James Watson, who is a Nobel Prize winner and also well known as co-discover of the structure of DNA, made a statement that shows us that we are in a war of ideas. He said, “Charles Darwin will eventually be seen as a far more significant figure in the history of human thought than either Jesus Christ or Mohammed.” This isn’t by some wild eyed liberal that everyone writes off as crazy, this is someone who has won the prestigious Nobel Prize and was co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.

It shouldn’t surprise us that pagan intellectuals write or think like this, they’re pagans exercising their job descriptions. The problem is that their message is heard by multitudes because we as Christians haven’t given a reasonable answer. In other words, we haven’t exercised our job description, which is to be ambassadors for Christ. Some Christians are secret agents who have never blown their cover before the unregenerate world.

In the article in the Wall Street Journal, on one side you have Richard Dawkins, and if Thomas Huxley was Darwin’s “bulldog,” Richard Dawkins has been aptly described by some as Darwin’s “rottweiler.” Dawkins makes various statements that are of great concern. He says, “Evolution is the creator of life… the greatest show on earth, the only game in town.” “Evolution is God’s redundancy notice, his pink slip.” “God is not dead. He was never alive in the first place.” This is the Darwinian evolutionary point of view.

This is set up as a Pro/Con, on the one side, you have the Darwinian evolutionists and on the other hand you have someone who supports the notion of a creator. In that particular corner stands Karen Armstrong. What does she say? She asks, “But what of the pain and waste that Darwin unveiled?” What of the “death and racial extinction”? What of the callous cruelty and evolutionary waste? Her answer is that the notion of God like any “good myth showed you how to cope with mortality, discover an inner source of strength, and endure pain and sorrow with serenity” in an arbitrary world controlled by natural selection. Her point is not that God is real; the idea is that a belief in God can help you deal with the pain and waste that Darwin unveiled. In this view, the Bible is no more than psychology book that can help you cope with the evolutionary process.

All of this is being said in an age of scientific enlightenment in which the fossil record is saying no to evolution. It’s being communicated in an epoch of time, in which ape-men, fiction, fraud, and fantasy abound. It’s being communicated in a time when design without a designer is ever more untenable. In an epoch of time in which empirical science explodes the myth of Darwinian evolution. If you’ll notice I’m very careful with my words because we as Christians certainly believe in microevolution or changes within kinds, but the notion that a lizard becomes a bird is singularly untenable in an age of scientific enlightenment.

My point in saying all this is to note that we are in a war, a battle, and it is crucial that you as a believer are equipped to give a reason for the hope that lies within you with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15). We somehow have this notion that science is the child of secularism, that is false. Science could have only arisen within a Christian worldview. A secularist could have come up with alchemy but not chemistry, with astrology but not astronomy. The notion that secularism birthed science is completely false and as Christians we are commanded to know how to answer those who are leading our children and our children’s children astray. This should not be done by bolviating but with gentleness and respect, using our well reasoned answers as springboards or opportunities to share the grace, truth and love of the one who spoke and the universe leapt into existence.

We have many resources on this topic ranging from a brand new DVD called Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record to a classic DVD we have recommend in the past entitled The Privileged Planet and much, much more. You can check these out at our Website of www.equip.org or by calling us at 1-888-700-0274.

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I address this at length in The Complete Bible Answer Book; here’s a portion of that answer.  

It has become increasingly common for Christians to suppose that the full gospel includes the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues, but that is not what the Bible teaches. The apostle Paul makes this plain. Believers are “all baptized by one Spirit in one body (1 Cor. 12:13) yet not all who believe speak in tongues (vv. 10, 30). I don’t know if you can get any clearer. So tongues can be a manifestation, it isn’t the only manifestation.

Furthermore, even if one does speak in tongues, it is not a guarantee that they been baptized in the Holy Spirit. Paul puts it this way in 1 Corinthians 13; “If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or clanging symbol.”

Also, Scripture makes this point clear, the normative sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit isn’t speaking in tongues, it’s the confession of Jesus Christ as Lord, repentance from sin, and obedience to God. (Rom. 8:1-17; 1 John 4:12-16; cf. Eph 1:13-15). In sum, righteousness, not tongues, is the core of Christianity compressed in a single word.

To check the full portion of this answer and hundreds more check out The Complete Bible Answer Book by visiting our website at www.equip.org or by calling us at 1-888-7000-0274.

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According to Islam, the Qur’an is not only credible, it is God’s only uncorrupted revelation. In other words, the Bible by virtue of the standard of Islam, cannot possibly be an uncorrupted revelation. The truth, however, as I’ve mentioned many times on the Bible Answer Man broadcast is that the Bible can de demonstrated to be divine, rather than merely human in origin. That can’t be said for the Qur’an because unlike the Bible, the Qur’an is replete with faulty ethics and factual errors.

Here’s an example; In Sura 4:3, Muhammad allegedly received a revelation from God allowing men, to “marry women of your choice, two, three, or four.” Ironically, in Sura 33:50 Muhammad received a divine sanction to marry “any believing women who dedicates her soul to the Prophet if the Prophet wishes to wed her.” Here’s the point; other men were only permitted by the Qur’an to marry up to four wives, Allah however, provided Muhammad a divine exception for his marriage to at least 12 women, including one girl he wed at the tender age of 11 (see the Life of Muhammad by Muhammad Husayn Haykal).

Also troubling is the fact that the Qur’an allows men to “beat” (lightly) their wives in order that they might “return to obedience” (Sura 4:34). When we compare the personal morality of Muhammad in the Qur’an with that of the personal morality of Jesus in the Bible, the difference is remarkable. The Qur’an exhorts Muhammad to ask “forgiveness for thy fault” (Sura 40:55). Conversely, Christ’s ethics with regard to every aspect of life––including his treatment of women––was so unimpeachable that He could rightly ask, “Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?” (John 8:46; cf. 2 Cor. 5:21; 1 John 3:5).

Unlike the Bible, the Qur’an is riddled with factual errors. A classic case in point involves the Qur’an’s denial of Christ’s crucifixion. This denial, chronicled in Sura 4:157, is explicit and emphatic: “They killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them…for of a surety they killed him not.” In reality; however, the fatal suffering of Jesus Christ as recounted in the New Testament is one of the most well established facts of ancient history. The Qur’anic denial of Christ’s crucifixion has led to a host of other errors as well. From a Muslim perspective, Jesus was never crucified and, thus, never resurrected. Instead, in Islam, God made someone look like Jesus and the look-alike was mistakenly crucified in His place.

Here’s the bottom line; the distance between the Muslim Qur’an and the Christian Bible is the distance of infinity. Not only does the prophetic prowess of the Bible elevate it far above the holy books of other religions, but as new archeological nuggets are uncovered the trustworthiness of Scriptures as well as the unreliability of pretenders is further highlighted. Faulty ethics and factual errors together demonstrate that the Qur’an is devoid of divine sanction. In sharp distinction, ethics and factual evidence demonstrate that the Bible is divine rather than human in origin.

Again, I encourage you check out this great new resource on Islam, entitled Islam: What You Must Know. You can get at our Website of www.equip.org or by calling us at 1-888-700-0274.

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Islam:  What You Must Know

After reading the synoptic gospels, Ehrman was unable to figure out whether the women saw a man, as Mark says (Mark 16:5), or two men as Luke says (Luke 24:4), or an angel as Matthew says (Matt. 28:2).^[1] I’m left to wonder why one of professor Ehrman’s students didn’t pause for a brief moment to unpack the mystery for him because as Professor Ehrman himself has figured out, wherever there are two angels there is also one angel^[2], always, always, always, without exception. The fact that Mark only references the angel who addressed the women shouldn’t be problematic for someone who has made a virtual art form out of exploiting discrepancies and secondary details of the Gospels.

Furthermore, even though Luke does not specifically refer to the two men as angels; the fact that he describes these beings as “men in clothes that gleamed as lighting” should have been a dead give away. Moreover, as a historian addressing a predominately Gentile audience, Doctor Luke—no doubt—measured his words carefully so as not to give rise unnecessarily to pagan superstitions.

Finally, as with Mark, the fact that Matthew only references one angel does not preclude the fact that two angels were present. After reading the accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke or John, for that matter, there is ample data by which a real historian can determine that the man described by Mark was indeed an angel and that “men in clothes that gleamed as lighting” were angelic, and that though Matthew only mentions an angel, he clearly does not preclude the possibility that another was present.

Contra Ehrman then, what credible scholars look for is a core set of reliable facts that either validate or invalidate historical accounts. Here, as elsewhere in the Gospels, one can objectively conclude that the core set of facts presented by the Gospel writers are authentic and reliable.

To help equip you I’ve developed a new resource called Memorable Keys to Essential Christian D-O-C-T-R-I-N-E. It’s available at our Website at www.equip.org or by calling us at 1-888-700-0274. Also check out my Complete Bible Answer Book.

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Memorable Keys to Essential Christian DOCTRINE

In our reading back during the winter in Genesis, we found a poignant and profound picture of the fall of Adam into a life of perpetual sin and his banishment from paradise. He is relegated to restlessness and wandering, separated from intimacy and fellowship with his Creator. Then the very chapter that references the fall, records the divine plan for restoration of fellowship. That plan takes on definition with God’s promise to make Abram a great nation through which all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Abraham’s call therefore is the divine antidote to Adam’s fall.  

God’s promise that Abraham’s children would inherit the Promised Land was but a preliminary step in a progressive plan through which Abram and the heirs of Abraham would inherit a better country—a heavenly country. That plan comes into sharp focus when we see Moses leading Abram’s descendents out of their 400 year bondage in Egypt. Through 40 years of wilderness wanderings, God tabernacled with His people and He prepared them for the land of promise.  

Like Abraham however, Moses only saw the promise from afar; but when you start to read the book of Joshua, you will see God’s plan taking on tangible reality, as Joshua leads the children of Israel into Palestine. The wandering of Adam, Abraham, and Moses finally give way to rest on every side. So Joshua was able to say, “Not one of all the Lord’s good promises to the house of Israel failed: every one was fulfilled.” (Joshua 21:45).

So as Adam would fall in paradise, Abraham’s descents would fall in Palestine. Thus Joshua’s words in his final farewell take on ominous reality, “But just as every good promise of God has come true, so the Lord will bring on you all the evil He threatened, until He has destroyed you from this good land He has given you. If you violate the covenant of the Lord your God… you will quickly perish from the good land He has given you.” (Joshua 23:15-16).

Though the land promises reached their zenith under Solomon, the land eventually vomited out the children of the promise just as it vomited out the Canaanites before them. During the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles the wanderings experience by Adam were once again experienced by the descendants of Abram.

Of course, God’s promises to Abraham were far from exhausted because Palestine was but a preliminary phase in a patriarchal promise. God would make Abram not just the father of a nation but Abram would become Abraham the father of many nations. Abram would be heir of the world. The climax of the promise would not be Palestine regained but something far greater, it would be paradise restored—as God had promised Abraham real estate, so too He has promised him a Royal Seed. Joshua led the children of Israel into the regions of Palestine, but Jesus—the Royal Seed of Abraham—will one day lead his children into the restoration of paradise.

The point here is simply to say as you read through Joshua, remember you are on a continuing journey through the Bible, which is God’s unfolding plan of redemption. It starts with paradise and the loss of paradise and it ends with paradise restored. A New Jerusalem, not the old Jerusalem, but a New Jerusalem that Paul says, “is free and she is our mother.” (Gal. 4:26) Paradise lost becomes Paradise restored, and that is what each and every one who loves Jesus Christ had to look forward too.

For further information please see my Legacy Study Bible and my book The Apocalypse Code.

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