Mick's Blog

featuring Gary DeMar
Feb 4, 2010

Prophecy enthusiasts speculate that a man on the rise to 'savior' status in the Middle East will build a new temple in Jerusalem! Of course, this story has come and gone, and the developments are not true. But what are Christians expecting to happen if a new temple is built in Jerusalem, anyway? Gary DeMar explores the Biblical ramifications of Jerusalem and such a temple.

FEBRUARY 3, 2010
WSJ.COM


The study that first suggested a link between vaccines and autism and spurred a long-running, acrimonious debate over the safety of vaccines has been retracted by the British medical journal that published it. The withdrawal supports the scientific evidence that vaccinations don't cause autism, but isn't likely to persuade advocacy groups that believe in a link.

The 1998 study of 12 children triggered worry among British parents that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine caused autism, and many decided not to immunize their children against measles, according to Richard Horton, editor in chief of the Lancet, which issued the retraction Tuesday. He called the study the "starting pistol," though not the only cause, of the controversy.

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by Joel McDurmon, Jan 29, 2010
Ameican Vision

The truth is, civil government should have the power to punish only those specific crimes that God has revealed punishments for. He did not allow civil rulers to divine people’s hearts, mandate educational curricula, invade bedrooms, or even to enforce certain laws of charity like gleaning. God gave the civil ruler no authority here. The biblical State is a very small institution with a very limited range of power. When it executes that power, it does so definitively and in the name of God; but the range of those powers pales in comparison to the modern Welfare State.

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by Bojidar Marinov, Jan 27, 2010
American Vision

By defining away the origins I defined away the possibility for ethical definitions. Remember the ethical limits I talked about? How could I find those ethical limits if all my thinking started with the simplistic Axioms of Existence and Conscience? What is is what is, and what I know is what I know. How do I derive a system of practical ethics from such simple axioms? Is morality part of existence? Is it “natural” to us? If it is, then whatever I do must be moral. If it isn’t, how do we discern between “natural” and “unnatural” existence? How do I know Howard Roark was right in blasting that building? Only because he felt he had the right? Only because of his personal interpretation of history? And how do I know Ellsworth Toohey was a villain and not a hero? Ayn Rand never answers these questions. She makes us assume the definitions, accept them by faith. And don’t get me wrong, I like Ayn Rand, I am proud to have been her first translator in Bulgarian, and I would do it again if I could. But I can’t overlook the fact that once we axiomatize existence without origins, we must keep axiomatizing every definition—because there is no beginning for anything.

I cannot be a true Libertarian without Christ. I cannot fight for liberty unless I know what liberty is and where it comes from. Outside of Christ any notion of individual freedom is lost either to a frigid web of inexorable necessity or to an ocean of relativity without shores. Only in Christ I can have true Freedom, and the Truth that gives it meaning.

If I decide to avoid the questions of the origin of my individual freedom, I can’t build a practical ethical framework for it. I can’t know what the legitimate limits of my freedom are, and therefore I can’t know what my rights—the legitimate limits of the freedom of others—are. Only in Christ I can have clear understanding of those ethical limits for any practical purposes.

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JANUARY 23, 2010
WSJ.COM

...when it comes to unsubstantiated research it's hard to beat the IPCC, whose 2007 report insisted that the glaciers—which feed the rivers that in turn feed much of South Asia—were very likely to nearly disappear by the year 2035. "The receding and thinning of Himalayan glaciers," it wrote in its supposedly definitive report, "can be attributed primarily to the [sic] global warming due to increase in anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases."

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Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

by: Vern Sheridan Poythress

All scientists—including agnostics and atheists—believe in God. They have to in order to do their work. It seems outrageous to include the agnostics and atheists. But by their actions people sometimes show that in a sense they believe in things that they profess not to believe. Bakht, a Vedantic Hindu philosopher, may say that the world is an illusion. But he does not casually walk into the street in front of an oncoming bus. Sue, a radical relativist, may say that there is no truth. But she travels calmly at 30,000 feet on a plane whose safe
flight depends on the unchangeable truths of aerodynamics and structural mechanics.

The situation looks different if we refuse to confine God to “the gaps.” According to the Bible, he is involved in those areas where science does best, namely areas involving regular and predictable events, areas involving repeating patterns and sometimes exact mathematical descriptions. In Gen 8:22 God promises,
While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. (ESV)4
This general promise concerning earthly regularities is supplemented by many particular examples:
You make darkness, and it is night,
when all the beasts of the forest creep about. (Ps 104:20)
You cause the grass to grow for the livestock
and plants for man to cultivate,
that he may bring forth food from the earth. (Ps 104:14)
He sends out his command to the earth;
his word runs swiftly.
He gives snow like wool;
he scatters hoarfrost like ashes.
He hurls down his crystals of ice like crumbs;
who can stand before his cold?
He sends out his word, and melts them;
he makes his wind blow and the waters flow. (Ps 147:15-18)
The regularities that scientists describe are the regularities of God’s own commitments and his actions. By his word to Noah, he commits himself to govern the seasons. By his word he governs snow, frost, and hail. Scientists describe the regularities in God’s word governing the world. So-called natural law is really the law of God or word of God, imperfectly and approximately described by human investigators.
Now, the work of science depends constantly on the fact that there are regularities in the world. Without the regularities, there would ultimately be nothing to study. Scientists depend not only on regularities with which they are already familiar, such as the regular behavior of measuring apparatus, but also on the postulate that still more regularities are to be found in the areas that they will investigate. Scientists must maintain hope of finding further regularities, or they would give up their newest explorations.

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For the BCS view to float, not only does Rev 21.1 have to mean the same thing as Gn 1.1, but since they, too follow somewhat the microcosmic idea, and that Temple means “heavens and earth”, then Gn 1.1 is what was destroyed in A.D. 70: the old covenant temple. Therefore, what their view must argue is that the old covenant began in Gn 1.1! I could not accept this since it ran into numerous problems, exegetically and historically. My view offered the least amount of resistance. I didn’t have to overhaul Gn 1.1 at all. I didn’t have to re-invent Gn 1-11 as “apocalyptic” (this will never fly with academia), nor did I have a case to prove that “science discovers truth” so I must solve the “problem” (so-called) between science and faith. I took Okkham’s Razor with a Preterist framework assumed.
Many others saw this solution and agreed. See, the BCS view (Kratt) cannot have “heavens and land” destroyed in Noah’s flood, for the ruins their entire scheme. The must argue that only the “world” was destroyed. However, we have shown that this is not necessarily the case, and that the Greek and quoting commentaries helps us make our case.
Doesn’t prove the case. Other factors come into play, as we have even seen with Kratt’s view. What I am looking for is the view that best fits in with the majority of what scholarship has to offer, while at the same time recognizing the changes that have to be made for the Preterist framework to operate smoothly.

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By Jerel Kratt
January 12, 2010

My proposition is that the heavens and earth destroyed in 2 Peter 3 are not ones “created” at Sinai (Exodus 19), but rather they are the very same ones we find “in the beginning” (Genesis 1). I plan to show this by: (1) looking at the Greek text of 2 Peter 3, specifically analyzing the adverb “now” in verse 7 and the imperfect verb “were” in verse 5; (2) presenting the context of 2 Peter 3 as it relates to Peter’s argument and line of reasoning; and (3) by presenting a theological analysis of Scripture and the “true preterist” view3 as it relates to the full significance of the Parousia event in AD 70, reaching beyond the Sinai covenant and extending all the way to “the beginning” in Genesis.

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He argues that “to flatten that [the text of Genesis] out is to almost perversely avoid the real thrust of the narrative … we have to read Genesis for all its worth and to say either history or myth is a way of saying 'I’m not going to read this text for all its worth, I am just going to flatten it out so that it conforms to the cultural questions that my culture today is telling me to ask'.”

Many might wonder—but isn’t this pursuit of contemporary context a good thing? Not so, Wright replies, “I think that’s actually a form of being unfaithful to the text itself.”

In this video clip, “Adam, Eve, and the USA”, Wright suggests that questions concerning the historicity of Genesis and the historicity of Adam and Eve get caught up in contemporary cultural issues and miss the larger story.

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