These are from Reasonable Faith. The new one is on fine-tuning, and it’s probably the best thing you can give someone to understand the fine-tuning argument in 6 minutes.
A massive gate unearthed in Israel may have marked the entrance to a biblical city that, at its heyday, was the biggest metropolis in the region.
The town, called Gath, was occupied until the ninth century B.C. In biblical accounts, the Philistines — the mortal enemies of the Israelites — ruled the city. The Old Testament also describes Gath as the home of Goliath, the giant warrior whom the Israelite King David felled with a slingshot.
The new findings reveal just how impressive the ancient Philistine city once was, said lead archaeologist of the current excavation, Aren Maeir, of Bar-Ilan University in Israel.
“We knew that Philistine Gath in the 10th to ninth century [B.C.] was a large city, perhaps the largest in the land at that time,” Maeir told Live Science in an email. “These monumental fortifications stress how large and mighty this city was.”
[…]Both the impressive settlement size and mentions in biblical accounts suggest to scholars that the site is the historic city of Gath, which was ruled by the Philistines, who lived next to the Jewish kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Most scholars think that Gath was besieged and laid to waste by Hazael, King of Aram Damascus, in 830 B.C., Maeir said.
[…]The team also found ironworks and a Philistine temple near the monumental gate, with some pottery and other finds typically associated with Philistine culture. Though the pottery represents a distinctive Philistine style, it also shows elements of Israelite technique, suggesting the cultures did influence each other in ways unrelated to war.
James Bishop adds this:
Recently, in 2005, an important inscription was found. Scratched on a shard were two non-Semitic names written in Semitic “Proto-Canaanite” letters. The two names: “ALWT” (אלות) and “WLT” (ולת), are similar to the name Goliath (גלית). Goliath was the feared Philistine warrior champion, who according to the biblical text, was a native of Gath, and was felled by David. Although this is not conclusive historical evidence of the Biblical Goliath’s existence, it provides excellent evidence of the cultural milieu of this period.
The story of David and Goliath is found in 1 Samuel 17. Why don’t you give it a read? It’s a great story.
I was just thinking about going through 1 Samuel myself, for personal reasons. I started this week wishing very much for vindication in a situation where someone completely disregarded my advice and then instead took the advice of a very impractical and inexperienced child. I really wanted to not be affected by this, and it made me think of Saul and David, and Saul’s anger at David. I just have so much disappointment for this one particular person who is making so many mistakes. I am anticipating a real judgment by God against this person in the near future. I expect that when this judgment comes, that this person will really understand the difference between making decisions based on emotions and selfishness, and making decisions based on practical concerns. I really would like to be vindicated.
Anyway, I felt alarmed about how much I was thinking about this expected vindication, so I thought – time to go to the Bible to remind myself what I am supposed to be like. I wanted to inform myself with the Bible in order to have the right response, whatever happens. So, I thought of 1 Samuel, and I thought that if I could just read about Saul’s anger again, then I would get the right perspective on anger and stop worrying about this until it’s all decided. So I was already headed to 1 Samuel this week, to fix my bad character. Then this 1 Samuel discovery came out.
One of the nice things the Bible gives you – when you’ve read it – is a knowledge of where to go when you need to encourage yourself to act the way God wants you to act. I’m supposed to be full of love and forgiveness, I know. But when I am not acting like that, I need to know where to go to find something that will get me back on track.
Any kind of confirmation of the Bible from science or history is just awesome, because it helps us to take the Bible seriously as truth, and then actually adjust our own actions to respect it, since it is true. And it’s true regardless of our needs and feelings. That’s why we need evidence. Evidence makes us less likely to push our feelings and desires onto the Bible, and more likely to adjust our actions so that they are compliant with what the Bible says – just the same way as we might make our computer program comply with the syntax of the language, so that it compiles and runs. The more I look at evidence, the more seriously I take the Bible, and the more I will involve God’s concerns for me in my decision-making – like this case where I need to be patient and wait for everything to come out.
Ironically, I ended up talking to a friend about my vindication-seeking, and she wanted the whole story about why I was angry. And by the time I was done telling her, I felt a lot better. It’s nice when Christians help each other. And we have Bible study tomorrow, too. I want to keep God’s character on my mind so that I make good decisions.
By the way, if you can think of anything else in the Bible that is related to this problem of feeling injustice and wanting vindication, please let me know by e-mail or in the comments.
Like Christian ministers across the confessional spectrum, David Wells takes seriously the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew: “I was in prison and you did not visit me.” Minister of evangelism of Pleasant View Baptist Church in McQuady, Kentucky, he has been visiting and mentoring juveniles in the Warren County Regional Juvenile Detention Center for 12 years.
Not any more. On July 7th, the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) revoked his volunteer credentials and permanently barred him from visiting, counseling or leading worship services for juveniles. He was found in violation of a newly revised departmental policy on “Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity” because he could not sign a state-mandated statement that he would not use the word “sinful” when talking about homosexuality. The policy states that volunteers:
shall not refer to juveniles by using derogatory language in a manner that conveys bias towards or hatred of the LGBTQI community. DJJ staff, volunteers, interns, and contractors shall not imply or tell LGBTQI juveniles that they are abnormal, deviant, sinful, or that they can or should change their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The acronym “LGBTQI” stands for “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, and Intersexed.”
I recommend reading the articles to get the details on the inmates, so that you see what they are in for, what their real problems are, and what it is that the pastor talks to them about.
But I want to skip to the end, which is about the conflict between the gay agenda (don’t offend me by saying that what I am doing is wrong, because it makes me feel bad) with the Constitutional right of religious liberty.
More:
The issue really isn’t the way Wells speaks to the juveniles he ministers to. The issue is what he says. In effect, the DJJ wants to remove the Bible from his hands. The policy equates the teaching of Biblical morality with derogatory and hateful speech.
Removing the Bible from a pastor’s hands is like taking a scalpel from the hands of a surgeon. The policy effectively deletes passages such as Romans 1:24-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, and 1 Tim 1:10 from the New Testament. The words of Scripture are the gifts a pastor has to offer. He’s not there just to counsel the young people. He’s there to tell them the good news of Jesus Christ. That’s not hate speech, it’s love speech.
Wells is represented by Liberty Counsel. In a letter to the commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice, Liberty Counsel explained that the new policy creates an unconstitutional religious test for access to the DJJ. The First Amendment prohibits the government from discriminating on the basis of viewpoint. This detention center may not prohibit the expression of biblical morality because DJJ policymakers object to the Bible.
That’s what the American Constitution says, but the authorities in other states and in federal and military prisons have begun imposing similar restrictions on religious speech. This may become one more aftershock of the Obergefell v Hodges decision. The homosexual equivalency movement wants to insert homosexual activity into the category of a protected class under State and Federal law in order to use the police power of the State against those who disagree with them. It’s one more example of a growing soft persecution underway in the United States.
I have been saying for some time that Christians have been really missing the boat by focusing on charity without theology. We are interested in being nice so we can be liked. We are not interested in telling the truth, so that we can be faithful. We spend all our money feeding hungry people and helping the poor and so on, and nothing is going to defend religious liberty – the freedom to actually treat what the Bible about God as real and serious – in public. Maybe instead of doing nice things, we can try to focus more on doing good things. We can start by not voting for secularists who charm us with their desire solve the world’s problems by redistributing wealth, and instead vote for people who promise to protect our religious liberty and our freedom of conscience. No more giving money to World Vision and the Boy Scouts of America and Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. We have other things to think about now.
WINTERY KNIGHT 