Grace Blogs

Islam is the 2nd largest religion in the world, with 1.3 billion followers. What does Islam teach? How does it square with what the Bible teaches? What will you say the next time you have an encounter with a follower of Islam that could best lead them to the truth of the Gospel? Here in week three of our Jesus Is… series, we will describe where Islam began, what it teaches, and ways to share the true identity of Jesus with a Muslim. MP3 download.

 

 audio [41:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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When we speak that there must be a necessary change when a person trusts in Christ there is often an undercurrent of distinction between the message of Jesus and the teaching of Paul. Advocates for looking toward Paul for the Gospel (and not the messages of Christ) will appeal to the sections of Scripture like Romans 3 and 4 because it is in these chapters we see the clearest picture of justification by faith alone. The reasoning goes something like this, “if there must be fruits of obedience to express a person truly being justified, then Paul would have most certainly included that teaching in these chapters.” At this point, a citation of a teacher(s) such as …

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In this past Sunday’s God Questions series, we tackled the question: If God loves the world so much then why is there so much pain in this world? In talking about that, we mentioned that pain was introduced with the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Astute listeners have pointed out that in Genesis 3:16, God gives Eve (and all women after her) the bad news that He would increase her pain in childbirth. This implies that there was at least some pain in childbirth before the fall.

This is correct. When we said that pain came after the fall, we meant pain in the sense of pain, suffering, and grief. The central

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Tullian Tchividjian has written a blog that I thought was particularly interesting in finding balance in an age-old problem between being too removed from this world and being too relaxed in maintaining a distinction in lifestyle.

Quote from the above-linked posts that I thought were helpful in framing the handles of “removed” and “relaxed:”

Regarding being too removed:

Martin Luther was once approached by a shoemaker who enthusiastically announced that he had recently become a Christian. Wanting desperately to serve the Lord, he asked Luther, “What should I do now?” As if to say, “Should I become a minister, or perhaps a traveling evangelist? Or maybe I should make shoes only for missionaries and preachers?” Luther asked

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Have you ever wondered what TV personality Joel Osteen is trying to say and how does it jive with Biblical Christianity? Well, here’s your chance to hear a solid teacher take a swing at just this issue on a national stage. Michael Horton will appear on 60 Minutes this Sunday, October 14, to discuss the ministry of televangelist Joel Osteen and whether or not Osteen’s motivational message is more about self-help than a true representation of the Christian faith. 60 Minutes airs on CBS Sundays at 7 p.m. ET/PT (check local listings).

Who is Michael Horton?

Dr. Horton is the J. Gresham Machen professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Westminster Seminary California, the host of the nationally syndicated broadcast …

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In Love Your God with All Your Mind, author J.P. Moreland asserts that the American culture has become filled with people who are characterized by what psychologists refer to as the “empty self.” He describes this condition as being dangerous to the Christian because it is “constituted by a set of values, motives, and habits of thought, feeling, and behavior that perverts and eliminates the life of the mind and makes maturation in the way of Christ extremely difficult.”

It’s hard to cover all of Moreland’s points about the “empty self” on a blog post short enough for anyone to read, but I am attempting it, minus his well-presented support for each point (for that, you’ll need to read

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This as a follow-up to the July 1st GraceTalk question I answered. I didn’t have enough time to cover all of the material I would have liked to. Also, having the answer laid out in writing (with passage hyperlinks) makes following the references easier. The question was…

Does 2 Chron. 24:15 contradict Gen 6:3? If Jehoiada was 130 years old when he died – how can that be reconciled with God saying man will only live to be 120 years old?

Preface

Before dealing with the question itself. it is worth noting the importance of answering questions like this. There will always be mysteries in the Scriptures—things that are hard to understand or explain. As Dan sometimes says

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A day after Greg’s visit, I’ve got a lot of stuff swirling around in my head that I’d like to write about; but, there is one thing that I want to get out while it’s fresh. During the Sunday morning service and the ensuing Q & A, Greg represented a defense of the problem of evil from a perspective known as compatibilism. This view maintains that the Bible pushes us into a position of affirming that God’s sovereignty and man’s freedom (i.e., responsibility) are both in play simultaneously and must be compatible–even if we cannot fully explain how that works out. I think Jonathan Edwards was one of the first to develop this idea in a philosophically rigorous way.

This …

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Following his talk on Evil, Suffering, and the Goodness of God, Greg takes questions from the audience.

00:49 – How do you proceed if the challenger refuses to concede that evil is not a thing?
07:10 – How do you respond to people who contend that it is misguided to defend God because He actually is the Author of evil?
10:00 – What about natural evil?
17:13 – Are we making excuses for God?
24:25 – Does Greg’s view of natural evil deny God’s involvement in His creation?
33:00 – Comment: God is not a puppet master, but He uses evil for His purposes.
34:45 – How do we respond to someone who says that since any parents would want to prevent the suffering of their …

 

 Q & A with Greg on the Problem of Evil [49:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Greg Koukl equips us to answer the most pervasive and difficult challenge to the Christian understanding of the nature of God. For more resources on the problem of evil, check out the apologetics section of the STR Web site.

The Q & A session that followed will be posted shortly.

 

 Evil, Suffering, and the Goodness of God [44:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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