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In Bible Study, Blog, John on
February 28, 2023

The Light of the World

I do not have a green thumb.

My mom is a gardener, and she loves spending hours outside planting seeds, watering plants, pruning back leaves, and harvesting vegetables for the family to eat. The entire backyard is filled with fruit trees and wood planter boxes, and we’ve enjoyed many servings of green beans, corn, and sugar snap peas from the garden.

I, on the other hand, can barely keep a houseplant alive for a few weeks or maybe a few months, if I’m lucky. I can’t tell you how many succulents or snake plants I’ve killed over the last few years. I try to water them and take care of them, but over time they all slowly shrivel up and die. The only plant I’ve managed to keep alive is a small pothos, and he’s been going strong for a little less than a year and half.

One thing I’ve discovered throughout my houseplant woes is that I often don’t give my plants enough sunlight. Most plants need a good amount of light to grow and thrive. And this is also true with other living organisms—animals, insects, human beings. Light is a basic necessity of life on earth, and without it, most life would probably cease to exist.

Believe or not, the sun is not the greatest source of light there is. There is a more powerful and more beneficial source of light in existence. This better Light of the World is the Son.

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In Blog, Common Questions, Theology on
February 14, 2023

Are Humans Good by Nature?

Are most human beings inherently good? Most people would say yes. Of course, there are evil people out there: dictators, terrorists, rapists and serial killers. There is no doubt that these kinds of people are sinners, and very few, if any, would argue that they are “good” in any sense of the word. However, they would likely argue that the majority of humans are good by nature, and while we all have our shares of failures and foibles, most of us do not reach this level of evil in our lifetimes.

According to The State of Theology survey done by Ligonier Ministries in 2022, seventy percent of Americans believe that everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God, and sixty-six percent agree with the statement, “Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.” Perhaps these are not surprising numbers when we consider our secular culture and its atrophied sense of what sin is. However, the survey also shows that professing Evangelicals share these beliefs. Sixty-six percent of Evangelicals agree that humans are born innocent in God’s eyes, and fifty-seven percent believe that most humans are good by nature.[1]

Like with everything else, Christians ought to root their beliefs and understandings of the world in the infallible truths of Scripture. What is the Bible’s take on this question? Are humans good by nature? To answer this, we must go back to the beginning.

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In Apologetics, Blog, Book Reviews on
January 31, 2023

Counterfeit Kingdom

Some of my most beloved worship songs from youth group and summer camp were created by Bethel Music, the music label that was birthed out of the music ministry at Bethel Church in Redding, California. Songs like “You Make Me Brave,” “No Longer Slaves,” “King of My Heart,” “Raise a Hallelujah,” and “Goodness of God” became some of my favorite songs to listen and sing along to. Despite not intentionally listening to these songs in many years, much of these lyrics are committed to my memory.

However, as I’ve grown in my faith over the last several years, I’ve learned more about Bethel Church and the doctrines she teaches. The more I’ve learned, the more skeptical I’ve become of their theology and philosophy. And within the last year or two, I’ve come to realize that the kingdom they preach is a counterfeit one.

Bethel Church subscribes to a belief which has been named the New Apostolic Reformation (or NAR for short). As Holly Pivec and R. Douglas Geivett argue in their book Counterfeit Kingdom, NAR is an extremely unbiblical and dangerous movement.

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In Bible Study, Blog, John on
January 16, 2023

The Bread of Life

I don’t know about you, but I really love bread.

I love all kinds of bread. I eat bagels in the morning for breakfast. I eat buttered toast for an evening snack. My go-to bakery item at Starbucks is banana bread. When I place an order at Panera Bread, I never ask for the chips or the apple—I always go for the baguette. If a restaurant brings breadsticks before the meal, you can bet I’m going to eat one (or two). I’m a believer that consuming chili without cornbread is sacrilegious. And if I suddenly woke up with a gluten allergy and couldn’t eat any kind of bread any more, I think I would die. (Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic, but I would be very, very sad.)

All of that being said, bread is great, and a lot of people think so. In fact, every country and culture around the world has some form of bread as a basic staple of their diet. The ancient Jews once had a very special kind of bread that they treasured dearly. However, their great affection and desire for this bread made them miss an even greater Bread that was right in front of them.

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In Blog, Common Questions, Theology on
January 2, 2023

Can God Learn, Change, or Adapt?

There seems to be a growing number of people who believe that the God of the Old Testament is not the same God of the New Testament. This belief is not exactly new or revolutionary. It really has been around for centuries, ever since Marcion spouted ideas like this and got excommunicated from the church for being a heretic in the year 144 A.D. But as the years pass by, we are seeing more and more professing believers agree with this sentiment—that the loving and lovable Jesus who arrived on earth in the first century A.D. is not the same God as the fiery and vengeful One of old.

In Ligonier Ministries’ biennial State of Theology survey, they asked both believers and unbelievers whether they believed that “God learns and adapts to different situations.” Forty-eight percent of professing Evangelicals who participated in the survey agreed with this statement.[1] This means that about half of supposedly Bible-believing Christians in this country believe that God is able to and does change over time.

However, this belief is not a biblical one, and as we’ll see in a moment, how we think about this issue has a great impact on our Christian faith.

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