God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

  Angel:  "You've got to show them that there's a war going on, and you've got to show that the only way to win that war is through love." Those are the words of God directly and clearly to Darren Wilson, the producer of a movie called  The Finger of God .   Darren was set on his course to make that movie from two spectacular circumstances. One was that his aunt Patsy and uncle Bob both got gold teeth set into their mouths while at a Pentecostal church service. The other is that an angel named Breakthrough confronted him directly and commanded him to make the movie he was contemplating. That first movie was about miracles, Christian miracles. They included things like gold dust appearing on people as they preached, gemstones appearing in church, and gold teeth appearing in people's mouths. The second movie was first prophesied by an evangelist, who told him that God wanted him to go into the darkness to show the light. Later, in a service at the Toronto Airpo...

                                         One of my favorite characters in Church History is   St. Jerome . He was born in the mid-fourth century (300's AD), wrote in the latter quarter of that century and the early part of the 400's. He died around 420, having produced a vast body of literature, including letters, biblical translations, biblical commentaries, and essays refuting heresies. No one had higher praise or love for the intelligent, ascetic virgins of his day. They were his dear friends. He sobbed unabashedly when they died. These women were admired when they didn't bathe or fix their hair. Some fasted frequently and wore hair shirts. They also were adept at Latin, Greek, and (with Jerome's help) Hebrew.  He supported the emerging office of Roman pope. Presbyter and bishop were basically the same office, the difference being a reference to age. These offices had at...

    Bible verses are NKJV from biblegateway.com. A brief history of the Old Testament eras I had already been a Christian for decades before I learned that Moses didn’t write Genesis. The book tells us clearly that it was written in an era  after  the Israelites took the land from the Canaanites and  after  Israel acquired its own monarchy. (Gen. 12:6; 13:7, 36:31, etc.) The same with Joshua and Judges. So, we shouldn’t be surprised to see Cain and Abel offering familiar animal and harvest sacrifices in the post-Garden narrative. The brothers’ sacrifices are echoes of offerings required in the Mosaic Law. The Cain and Abel story is not meant to be perfect history, but perfect theology. The lesson, in order to stand, must be recognizable to the Israelite people. For those who are not familiar with the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, here is a primer, a brief overview of the various important eras, but it's not your grandpa's Sunday School lesson. I add a few n...

  This post is an update from April 23, 2010. Bible links are from biblegateway.com .  When the Israelites marched out of Egypt into the desert, they were unaccustomed to desert living, so of course they were terrified and angry when in the first month of their escape, they arrived at a location called Kadesh in the Negev. The wells they expected to find there did not materialize and the whole community thought they might die a slow and horrible death without water. They did what people do--they forgot all the miracles of the past and griped that Moses brought them there to die. God commanded Moses to speak to a rock, and the rock would bring forth water, but instead of speaking, a very annoyed Moses struck it twice in anger. As a result, both Moses and Aaron were banned from entering the Promised Land. ( Numbers 20:2-13 ) So the Israelites trudged on from Kadesh and came to another dry place, but this time they didn't panic. The leaders got busy and dug a well right where the...