Kingdom Ready Blog

Last October, I had the pleasure of attending Ken Westby’s One God Seminar. During that seminar I spoke on “Five Major Problems with the Trinity.” Click here to listen to the presentation. The talk was 36 minutes long and the remainder of the time addressed questions from the audience. Click here to download the notes. The rest of the 2010 conference is mostly available here (I’m still waiting on a couple of presentations).

I stopped adding new shows/podcasts to Truth Matters months ago when I went back to school. However, before I left I had recorded this show with David Burge of New Zealand. I finally found the time to edit it and so you can now download it (if it interests you) by going to www.truthmattersradio.com or clicking the link below. Also, please add David to your prayers as he is currently fighting cancer (see note at the bottom).

to listen to “Objections to Conditional Immortality Answered with David Burge” click here

Karl, recently emailed me a link to this lecture on the first chapter of Genesis. The talk is titled “Why God Didn’t Call the Light ‘Light.’” Dr. John Walton, professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College, spoke at Blackhawk Church back in 2005 about how important it is to be aware of the cultural setting of the Bible. In particular, he focused on how we should interpret the first chapter of Genesis functionally rather than ontologically. In other words, rather than thinking about what God made we should understand this chapter in reference to the functions God gave these various systems: time, weather, food cycle, etc. Not only will this teaching make you think, it will make you aware of your own cultural bias and learn how to read the Bible more effectively.

Our faith is under attack. Though many of us are not on the front lines, we all have the responsibility to be ready to make a defense to anyone who asks us to give an account for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3.15). Sadly, in most churches we do not do well preparing and teaching our people the reasons why we believe what we believe. For example, why do we believe that there is a God? How do we know the Bible has been reliably transmitted? How can we be so sure that Jesus really was raised from the dead? These questions and many more are increasingly being asked, especially of those in college. What makes matters worse is that the anti-Christians, be they professors or fellow students, are often much better prepared to defend their position than we are. Does Christianity require a leap of faith regardless of the facts? What right do we have to say other faiths are in error if we cannot explain why our own is true? Questions like these have driven me to regularly expose myself to the field of apologetics (not apologizing, but defending or giving reasons for the faith). In this blog post I have collected together a number of resources that may help you give an answer to those attacking our faith.

Dr. Ben Witherington III (BW3) is a prominent evangelical scholar who serves as the Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. He has written over thirty books, has done many radio interviews, and has appeared on quite a few mainstream TV shows as an expert on matters related to the New Testament. Furthermore, Dr. Witherington frequently writes on his blog and is often among the first to respond when challenges to Christianity emerge (i.e. the Talpiot tomb, the DaVinci Code, books by Ehrman, etc.).

After studying the New Perspective on Paul as well as a good deal of 2nd Temple Judaism, I agree with many scholars who are now complaining that the “old” reading of Romans really misreads the data. The problem has been that Christians traditionally have come to Romans with their own questions and they force Paul to answer them. Instead they should allow Paul and the Judaism(s) of his day to dictate their own questions to us while we eagerly listen.

Here is a link to the class that was taught on the Introduction to Romans and looking at 1:1-17

If any of you are interested in history, specifically Christian history, then this podcast is a must. Lars Brownworth, from Long Island, NY, teaches American History at a private, high school. He became fascinated by the history of the Byzantine empire from Constantine the Great in the early 4th century through to the destruction of Constantinople in a.d. 1453 by the Turks. This was the first explicitly Christian empire and many lessons can be learned from observing its history.

Here are the top ten most downloaded Truth Matters episodes as of May 21st, 2009.

All of the following presentations may be downloaded for free. Enjoy!

Sunday, April 26
7:00pm Welcome audio
7:30pm Anthony Buzzard: “Intense Reflections on the Bible in 2009” audio | paper

Monday, April 27

9:00 Joe Martin: “I Thought You Would Call Me Father” audio | paper

10:00 Break

10:30 Juan Baixeras: “Proving the Resurrection” audio | paper

11:30 Lunch and free time

1:30 Dustin Smith: “Christos, Caesar, Vindication, and Ethics: A Fresh Reading of Phil. 2:5-11 in Light of Recent Research” audio | paper

2:30 Break

3:00 Robin Todd: Sermon and Song audio | paper may come

We have recently added some new resources to our Death-is-Sleep page. Previously we had three sections: (1) Audio (2) Articles (3) Videos. Now we have five sections. This was done by taking some of the articles out that were really books and putting them with a couple of new ones into a new section called “Online Books.” Then, we added another new section called “Books for Purchase,” which links mostly to Amazon.com for those who want to follow up with further reading. So now our page has the following sections:

1. Free Online Audio
2. Free Online Videos