God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

Image from freebibleimages.com Now and then I see a title on various writing outlets suggesting that Christianity has created a whole new deity, but the fact is, Christianity spread as fast as it did because the shadow of the Triune God was already deeply embedded in the Tanak (the entire Hebrew Bible/Old Testament). Those predictive passages give astonishing affirmation to the claims of Jesus and His apostles. Read on, and I’ll make the case for it. There are many passages in the HB that speak to the coming of Messiah. In this post, I’ll pull out some of the well-known, bedrock predictions often quoted in the New Testament. If you are already a Christian who is conversant with these passages, it wouldn’t hurt to review them again. It fascinates me that John addresses all of the important Messianic titles in his first chapter. I’ll use the New King James Version cut and pasted from biblegateway.com. The Spirit of God , Genesis 1:1, 2; Job 38:1-7; and John 1:1-3. Let’s begin with ...

 God is not always in the lobby. Picture a bright, sunny lobby with posters on all the walls. The inhabitants there are fairly tribal, hailing each other with pride and solidarity. Once you get in the lobby, there is only one way out, through a door to the dark hallway of unintended concequences. The hallway is full of more doors. It's scary and complicated, a place of woe and pain, so many denizens of the lobby just stay there. It's a happy place of rigid moral rectitude, a place where simple bromides make so much sense, they couldn't possibly be wrong. The fetus/child poster Take for instance, the poster that reads, "It's not a choice, it's a child." Wow, how could anyone refute that? If you believe in God, that little fetus is a reflection of God. Killing it is murder, and fighting it is to offend God, the Creator of all mankind. Even that gooey blob of protein has the DNA of a human being in it. I admit, for a believing Christian, it's a tough call...

 At least mine weren't. And I was 40 and 43. My faith sustained me. A little backstory first. I married at 39. Being a devout Christian, I felt I had a promise of marriage and kids, so when I met my lovely geologist husband at the Division of Mines and Geology in San Francisco, I didn’t hesitate to, you know, do what you do to make babies. I got married in a $70 creamy off-white dress that you could wear to dinner, which looked great on my size 10 body. However, 2 months later, it was clear I wouldn’t be wearing it for a while. So I put on the pounds right away. By the ninth month, when a woman sees her gynecologist once a week, I was huge and extremely uncomfortable. I could hardly turn over in bed, which is about when some women grab their doctors’ coat collars and shout, “Get this thing out of me!” “I’m so biiiig,” I wailed to my doctor. “No, not really,” he would always reply. “You’re fine.” “What’s happening down here, that’s going back and forth?” “That’s the head.” “The head...

  Was it an instantaneous poof, a straight line, or a mass of squiggles? Blending common sense, science, and theology provides a solid answer.   Psalm 139:13-16 NKJV:  “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.” We are designed. You could metaphorically say that King David was planned on a drawing board, put together in a secret vault, and came forth with a manual. We are a magnificent, brilliant reflection of God’s engineering genius and of His eternal character. With our efficient bodies, our intellect, and o...

  A 2021 report from the journal  PLOS One  tells how researchers from the University of Groningen used AI technology to detect very minute differences in the style, curvature, and shape of letters in the Great Isaiah Scroll of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DDS). Scholars have dated the scroll to the second century BCE (before the common era, or BC before the birth of Christ). The AI scan found two different scribes, one who did the first half and another who finished it. That does not mean that these two scribes authored the scroll. Scholars argue about how many Isaiahs contributed to the writings of the book. A strong argument could be made for at least two, meaning that one or more of Isaiah’s followers or disciples may have written in his name. Critics, of course, will say all so-called “prophecies” are just reports after an event has happened. The trouble with all of that historical critique is that there are incredibly specific prophecies of the coming Messiah, Jesus Ch...