Monday, April 17, 2017

Jimmy Carter: Still Crazy on North Korea, After All These Years

How Jimmy Carter and I Were Wrong on North Korea—And How Carter is Still Wrong
December 13, 2010 | by R.B.A. Di Muccio

Wasn't it Carter who was against inspections because it would make North Korea think we didn't trust them? Presidents -- Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama -- have been kicking the North Korea can down the road ever since.

Pray that God gives President Trump wisdom to deal with North Korea. Pray for freedom and betterment for the North Korean people.

Sunday, April 16, 2017

Resurrection and belonging

“The resurrection completes the inauguration of God's kingdom. . . . It is the decisive event demonstrating that God's kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven."

"The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it.”

― N.T. Wright

Saturday, April 15, 2017

What does "he was wounded for our transgressions" mean?

So, what really happened on Good Friday? What (if anything) did Christ's suffering accomplish?
The New Testament authors... saw Christ as the suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, who suffered in the place of sinners, bearing the punishment they deserved, that they might be reconciled to God. -- William Lane Craig.
Read more on atonement theories: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/must-a-biblical-doctrine-of-the-atonement-comprise-penal-substitution#ixzz4eFSJlgCz

Friday, April 14, 2017

Why is this Friday good?

Isaiah 53New King James Version (NKJV)

53 Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.
He was taken from prison and from judgment,
And who will declare His generation?
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.
And they[a] made His grave with the wicked—
But with the rich at His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in His mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
11 He shall see the labor of His soul,[b] and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,
And He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.

Footnotes:

  1. Isaiah 53:9 Literally he or He
  2. Isaiah 53:11 Following Masoretic Text, Targum, and Vulgate; Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint read From the labor of His soul He shall see light.
New King James Version (NKJV)
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

"... nothing intellectually compelling or challenging.. bald assertions coupled to superstition... woefully pathetic"