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December 16, 2025

Ancient Israel’s Women of Faith, by Claude Mariottini. A Review

By Clarke Morledge

Looking for a thoughtful, challenging book to read over the Christmas holidays? Here’s a suggestion.

Much of what we read in the Old Testament is about the contributions of men to the life of ancient Israel. We typically think of the big names, like Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. But what about the women?

Often the stories of women in the Old Testament are sidelined in favor of male figures. In some stories, women are even cast as villains. However, more recent scholarship suggests women stand out better in at least some of those cases, more so than previously thought.

A Cheating Wife? Or an Abusive Husband? What is the Real Story?

One often neglected story is about the Levite and his concubine of Judges 19:1-30. No matter what way you look at it, the story is tragically shocking, one of the more graphic episodes in the entire Bible.

Typically, a concubine served as a second wife for a man, in this case an Israelite Levite. The more traditional reading suggests that the Levite’s concubine was unfaithful to him, assuming that the concubine became a prostitute. In becoming a prostitute, the concubine had committed adultery, a capital offense. The concubine had fled the house of the Levite, and went back to her parents’ home. But eventually the Levite went out to pursue his concubine and bring her back to his home.

After several nights staying with the concubine’s family, he was able to retrieve his concubine from her parents’ home. On the way home, the Levite and his concubine managed to spend the night with an old man in the town of Gibeah. But during the night, men from the city came to threaten the Levite. The Levite saved himself by giving his concubine over to the men of Gibeah, who in turn sexually violated the Levite’s concubine to near the point of death. When the Levite finally returned home with the lifeless body of his concubine, he cut up her body into twelve pieces, and sent the remains throughout the land of Israel.

It is a pretty awful story. But the traditional reading has some serious problems. The traditional reading hinges on an ambiguous verse, Judges 19:2, at the outset of the story.  The ESV translation reads:

And his concubine was unfaithful to him, and she went away from him to her father’s house at Bethlehem in Judah, and was there some four months.

The KJV is even more direct, implicating the adultery of the concubine:

And his concubine played the whore against him, and went away from him unto her father’s house to Bethlehemjudah, and was there four whole months.

However, some other translations read differently. Consider the NASB, revised in 2020 (as compared to the earlier 1995 revision, which was more like the KJV):

But his concubine found him repugnant, and she left him and went to her father’s house in Bethlehem in Judah, and remained there for a period of four months.

Or the NRSVUE:

But his concubine became angry with him, and she went away from him to her father’s house at Bethlehem in Judah and was there some four months.

It turns out that the Hebrew word, zana, can be translated in different ways. The traditional reading has the word meaning to be “unfaithful” (as with the ESV) or to “commit adultery.” However, the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew text, has zana to mean to be “angry” with (as with the NRSVUE). The second meaning does not imply any sexual infidelity on the part of the concubine. Instead, it suggests that the woman had some reason to be angry with the Levite, angry enough to leave him and return home to her parents, without any hint of prostitution or other infidelity, as the KJV states.

Dr. Claude F. Mariottini, Professor Emeritus at Northern Baptist Seminary, suggests that translations like the NASB and NRSVUE get it right. The text does not tell us why the concubine found her Levite husband to be “repugnant.” While the reason for the concubine’s “anger” is never stated, it easily implies that her husband was abusive, and that she sought to return to her parents to get away from an abusive man. In an age when spousal abuse is getting a lot of attention, as with the #metoo movement, this should spark our interest more in the 21st century. There are some good reasons to accept this alternative reading.

The following verse may contain some clues, as there is ambiguity in Judges 19:3 as well. The ESV follows the traditional reading:

Then her husband arose and went after her, to speak kindly to her and bring her back. He had with him his servant and a couple of donkeys. And she brought him into her father’s house. And when the girl’s father saw him, he came with joy to meet him.

You get the impression that the Levite wants to try to persuade his concubine to return back to him. Was the Levite offering his love and forgiveness towards her? Here it is the woman who took her husband, the Levite, into her father’s house. Why did she do this? It is possible that she felt obligated to do so, for if she was unfaithful to her husband, she may have felt it was her responsibility to seek reconciliation. But there is more to the story. The NLT translation reads differently:

…. her husband set out for Bethlehem to speak personally to her and persuade her to come back. He took with him a servant and a pair of donkeys. When he arrived at her father’s house, her father saw him and welcomed him.

In this translation, there is no mention of the woman bringing her Levite husband into her father’s house. Only the father-in-law receives the Levite.  Furthermore, the NLT suggests that the Levite husband was on a mission to try to talk her back into coming home to his house, which is behavior consistent with an abusive husband. Curiously, the concubine and the Levite’s father-in-law tried some stall tactics for several nights which prevented the Levite from leaving with his concubine wife to take her back to his home. Were the concubine and her father hoping that the Levite would eventually just give up and go back home without her?

The incident in Gibeah raises other problems for the traditional view which casts the concubine as an adulterer. When the men of Gibeah threatened the Levite in Judges 19:25 , the ESV says that the Levite “seized” his concubine and sent her out to be sexually abused by the men of Gibeah. If the Levite truly loved his concubine, would he really “seize” her to be handed over to these violent men? The text purposely uses this word to convey a meaning which is certainly not a gentle way to treat a wife.

To make matters worse for the Levite, Judges 19:22, in a manner much like the story of the men in Sodom with Lot, these men of Gibeah declared their intentions to “know” the Levite, a euphemism for having sexual relations. But when the Levite relates his version of the story in Judges 20:5-6, the Levite says that the men were intent on killing him, which was not the case.

The story gets even worse. If the Levite really loved his concubine, and wanted her back, it seems really creepy and unloving for the Levite to chop her dead body up and send her body parts all across Israel. All of these pieces of evidence suggests that the standard portrayal of the concubine as a wayward woman hides the real story, namely that she was an innocent victim of a Levite husband who abused her, and in the process, she ultimately lost her life.  What a tragic story!!

Mariottini’s interpretation of this difficult passage is compelling. It demonstrates that the Bible is quite aware of the problem of “toxic masculinity,” whereby men can abuse their power and destroy the women in their lives. The story of the Levite and his concubine serves as both a warning and a rebuke against such morally perverse behavior.

Claude Mariottini’s newest book, Ancient Israel’s Women of Faith: A Survey of the Heroines of the Old Testament, is collection of stories about many of the amazing women of the Old Testament, offering insights that will be helpful to many men and women today.

 

Women of Faith in Ancient Israel

Claude Mariottini has written a vitally helpful book: Ancient Israel’s Women of Faith: A Survey of the Heroines of the Old Testament, to highlight the often forgotten contributions of women in the story of the Old Testament, with a single chapter focused on the story of the Levite and his concubine. Thankfully, Professor Mariottini’s book has more positive stories to offer to highlight the valuable contributions made by women to the story of ancient Israel. Professor Mariottini has for years written a blog which focuses on the best of Old Testament scholarship, making the story of the Old Testament more accessible to lay persons and scholars alike. While a good deal of the material found in the book can be discovered on his blog, his new 250 page book brings the wealth of that material to one place in one text.

As Mariottini says, the influence of women in the Old Testament is often obscured by how our sources came to us, filtered through male perspectives and priorities. Make no doubt about it, ancient Israel was a patriarchal society, where women were subordinated at home, with limited autonomy, and even treated as property. Nevertheless, as the Old Testament narrative unfolds we read how women were given a greater voice and were at times vindicated in the face of injustice, which can serve as an inspiration to women today.

Mariottini does not sugar-coat the story. The men typically take center stage in Israel’s narrative.

But then certain women come at critical points in the Old Testament, to make a difference. There are fairly well-known women, like Sarah, Abraham’s wife; Deborah; a prophetess and a judge; and Rahab, who hid and rescued the Hebrew spies at Jericho.  Then there are lesser known women, like Sheerah, who was a builder of cities (1 Chronicles 7:22-24). Jehosheba, the daughter of King Jehoram of Judah, protected the young Joash, the Davidic heir to become king, from being killed (2 Kings 11:20). Huldah, a prophetess, was consulted by King Josiah, who had rediscovered a book of the law found in the Temple, bringing it to Huldah to verify that the book was indeed authentic (2 Kings 22:15-20).

Professor Mariottini follows standard insights into the Old Testament held among nearly all evangelical scholars today, insights which are not always well understood by the average church-going Christian. He acknowledges the concept of Yahweh’s “Divine Council,” whereby the uncreated and supreme Yahweh presides over a fellowship of other created divine beings, often described as “gods” or “sons of god” in the Old Testament, a concept in the academic world popularized most recently by the late Dr. Michael Heiser (Mariottini, p. 25). Mariottini acknowledges that the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, was written in stages, such that a text like Deuteronomy acts as an inspired revision to earlier material. Identifying Moses as the originator of the Pentatuech tradition need not rule out the activity of divinely inspired editors in later centuries,  or even just Moses himself later in his life, working to keep the Mosaic law tradition up to date, in light of new challenges to the people of Israel over time.

Mariottini offers several examples, by showing how Deuteronomy provides more protections for women as compared to earlier texts in the Pentateuch. In the days of King Josiah, in the seventh century before Christ, Deuteronomy was cited to prescribe these protections.

In Exodus 20:17, the tenth commandment reads:

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”

However, in Deuteronomy 5:21, the same commandment reads:

“And you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. And you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, or his male servant, or his female servant, his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”

Even though the Exodus version does not relegate the position of the wife to that of a slave, it nevertheless is ambiguous enough to indicate that the wife belongs to the husband, as though the wife is the possession of her husband (Mariottini, p. 39).

Yet the Deuteronomy version rearranges the original Exodus version, splitting the command not-to-covet into two separate commands, first that of not coveting a neighbor’s wife, and the second, that of not to covet (or desire) anything which is a possession of the husband, like a house, a field, a servant, a domestic animal, or any other possession. This gives greater clarity and explicit force to suggest that a wife is not to be treated in this same way as a man’s piece of property  (Mariottini, p. 42-43). Deuteronomy gives more explicit recognition of women having their own voice in the life of the Israelite community.

A similar pattern is observed when considering the Pentateuch’s code regarding the release of a Hebrew slave. In Exodus 21:2-6, a male Hebrew slave was to be released after six years of labor. But if that male slave enters the slave relationship as a single man, and the master gives him a wife, that woman will remain with the master even after the male slave is allowed to go free. However, in the Deuteronomy 15:12-18 version of the same rule, the woman is allowed to go free with the freed Hebrew slave, and remain the wife of that Hebrew slave (Mariottini, p. 44-47).

Perhaps the most important contribution Mariottini makes is in his highlighting of the Book of Deuteronomy, as giving us a clearer expression of addressing injustice against women in ancient Israel.

Some Critique of Mariottini

Ancient Israel’s Women of Faith is a great book, but a few criticisms are in order. There is at least one minor error whereby the NRSV’s translation of 1 Chronicles 25:5-6 is said to read: “God gave Heman fourteen sons and three daughters. All these men were under the supervision of their father for the music of the temple of the LORD.” Actually, this translation is what the NIV 2011 has for this passage. The NSRV actually substitutes the phrase “all these men” with “they were all,” a more gender accurate translation of the verse, acknowledging the inclusion of both Heman’s sons and daughters in helping to lead the worship music in the temple (Mariottini, p. 56-57).

A more serious problem arises when Mariottini expands his treatment on this passage later in the book. Here he corrects the earlier misquote of the NSRV translation of the passage, which suggests that both men and women participated in leading worship music in the temple (Mariottini, p. 83).

Mariottini describes this as the “egalitarian” reading, thus indicating that “although sin created a distortion of [this] mutuality [resulting from men and women being created equal], the gospel of Jesus Christ has abolished this distortion and that now both men and women are equally called to serve God” (Mariottini, p. 84) He contrasts that with the CSB (Christian Standard Bible) and NIV 1984 (despite the fact that the NIV 2011 keeps the same translation regarding gender), which reads “all these men.” This latter reading Mariottini says is exemplar for the “complementarian” position, that “God has set apart men to hold political and religious leadership in Israel.” This explains why the CSB and NIV suggest that the daughters of Heman were “not part of the music ministry of the temple” (Mariottini, p. 83).

However, this analysis is misleading as the complementarian position is not as monolithic as Mariottini assumes. While some complementarian churches do restrict women from leading music in a worship service, not all complementarians hold to such a broad restriction.

These other complementarians allow women to serve in such leadership roles, though these same churches nevertheless still hold that the office of elder specifically be held only by qualified men, according to what is found in 1 Timothy 2 & 3, and Titus 1. Other leadership functions in the church, like that of deacon, worship leader, etc. are open to both men and women. This reality is reflected in the fact that the ESV translation echoes in similarity the NRSV reading: “God had given Heman fourteen sons and three daughters. They were all under the direction of their father in the music in the house of the Lord with cymbals, harps, and lyres for the service of the house of God.”  In other words, men and women participate in the leading of worship music.

The ESV (English Standard Version) is rarely described as an “egalitarian” Bible translation, and is instead popularly known as the most influential complementarian-leaning Bible translation today in the English speaking world. Nevertheless, Mariottini is right to conclude, along with the ESV and NRSV, that women were allowed to participate in the music ministry of the temple, and that should anticipate later Christian worship practice.

The question of whether or not women can serve as elders, much less other leadership positions in the church, is a contentious issue today in evangelical churches. As a moderate complementarian myself, the idea of having only qualified males to serve as elders is not a slight against women, as women clearly can exercise leadership in other ways in Christian ministry. Rather, the gender “restriction” regarding elders is more about encouraging men to act as spiritual leaders in the church, modeling what should be done in the home. Even in our supposedly morally-advanced 21st century culture in the West, typically men much more than women tend to abdicate in taking spiritual leadership in their families, relegating such a task to their wives, who are often already overburdened with other responsibilities. When husbands and fathers take more responsibility in a positive, supportive way to spiritually lead in the home, everyone in the family is enabled to benefit.  (As a side note, I spent about four years writing on the complementarian/egalitarian controversy which is dividing evangelical churches today. You can read my research referenced here. Just this past year, yet another church in my town of Williamsburg, Virginia divided over this same issue. In my estimation, there are extremes on both sides of this issue which has tragically led to such church divisions).

It is curious how Mariottini cites some scholarship which challenges the traditional translation of Genesis 3:16 (Mariottini, p. 33).  The ESV has controversially rendered this verse as:  “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”  In fairness, the ESV also includes a footnote which suggests an alternative translation: “Your desire shall be to (or toward, or even against) your husband, and he shall rule over you.” But Mariottini cites Allen H. Godbey’s translation: “Thy longing shall be toward thy husband; and he shall be likewise toward thee.”  Godbey’s translation is completely new to me, and I am not familiar with other scholars commenting on Godbey’s view.

Some of the chapters in Ancient Israel’s Women of Faith tend to be repetitive at certain points. This is because a number of the stories highlighted by Mariottini tend to overlap, which indicates that the book is more of a reference book, where the chapters can be read in any order, whereby the reader can select what stories might interest them, while coming back to other stories later. This is probably fine for most readers, who want to read a short chapter that interests them, and then read some other short chapter elsewhere in the book. But for someone who wants to read the book from start to finish, the repetition might be bothersome.

Aside from a handful of problems like these, Claude Mariottini has given us a book which assists Christians to discover how many of the forgotten women of the Old Testament expressed their voices and have made significant contributions to the story of ancient Israel. Ancient Israel’s Women of Faith will be a helpful read for those who tend to think that the Old Testament has a purely negative view of women. May these stories continue to inspire us regarding the faith of these amazing women of the Old Testament.

One more thing: As I have read Claude Mariottini before, I am a bit partial to his work. However, there is another book out now which covers the same theme of women in the Old Testament, along with a brief look at women in the New Testament. Ingrid Faro’s Redeeming Eden: How Women in the Bible Advance the Story of Salvation has received some good reviews, too, so that might also be worth checking out.

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December 13, 2025

Did Kirk Cameron Just Deny the Doctrine of Hell?

By Clarke Morledge

Kirk Cameron, the Christian actor, who first made his name in Hollywood as a teen actor in the Growing Pains television series, has recently gotten into some hot water, so to speak, with some of his fans. Cameron revealed on his podcast that he no longer accepts the traditional doctrine of hell as eternal conscious torment. Instead, he now holds to the doctrine of conditional immortality instead, at least tentatively.

A number of commentators have responded, such as Southern Baptist Seminary President Al Mohler, in an essay for the WORLD News Group. Dr. Mohler believes that Kirk Cameron’s move towards the doctrine of conditional immortality is a slippery slope towards other areas of compromise in Christian doctrine, whereby Cameron has allowed emotional concerns to overwhelm a commitment to historic Christian orthodoxy.

Cameron is in many ways a popular evangelical Christian influencer, an evangelist and a spokesperson on conservative political issues as well. He admittedly acknowledges that he is not a scholar, and some of his amateur misunderstandings of things have come out in at least one filmed “prayer meeting” a few years ago, and on an historical documentary he produced on American history, which I have critiqued.

Kirk Cameron made a historical documentary film Monumental back in 2012, among his many other projects. Cameron has become a trustworthy and influential popular spokesperson among many evangelical Christians.  But some now are concerned that Kirk has gone off the deep end…. or has he?

 

Is Kirk Cameron Now a “Heretic,” or Is He Simply Thinking Through Some Really Important Questions, and Wants to Talk About It?

Alas, Kirk Cameron means well, and to many in his audience, he seems trustworthy. So it really shocked some people, myself included, when he announced that he has shifted towards upholding a doctrine of conditional immortality.

The doctrine of conditional immortality differs from the traditional doctrine of eternal conscious torment. In the latter view, those who are eternally separated from God will undergo a never-ending experience of divine punishment resulting from their sin. However, the doctrine of conditional immortality, otherwise known as annihilationism, argues that those eternally separated from God will be punished, but that the punishment will have a terminus. To use a common expression, the punishment (of God) will fit the crime (of the sinner). Once the punishment, as rightly determined by God’s judgment, is rightly finished, the person will be annihilated. That person, separated from God, will no longer exist, eternally.

So, to answer the question posed by the title of this post: No, Kirk Cameron is not denying the doctrine of hell. But he is framing the way to think about hell in a category that might be unfamiliar and unsettling to others.

The debate of the exact nature of hell has been going on since the days of the early church. There are three main views on the topic: (1) the doctrine of eternal conscious torment, (2) the doctrine of conditional immortality, and (3) the doctrine of universalism. Universalism, which in its most popular form in Christians circles, as suggested by those like theologian David Bentley Hart, or William Paul Young, the author of The Shack, teaches that hell is really a kind of purgatory, whereby God will purge sin from the non-believer and eventually win that person to salvation, eventually, in the next life. In other words, hell is primarily restorative and redemptive, as opposed to being punitive.

While Christian universalism has had its proponents, even in the early church era, the doctrine was rejected as veering away from historic Christian orthodoxy. Names like Origen, and possibly Gregory of Nyssa, on up to more recent times, as with C.S. Lewis’ intellectual hero, the 19th century author George MacDonald, have espoused some form of universalism. But the orthodoxy of universalism has been rightly questioned.

However, the story is different from the doctrine of conditional immortality. There are no ancient, historic creeds or confessions which have rejected conditional immortality, unlike universalism. Prominent church fathers, and champions of orthodoxy, such as Ignatius of Antioch and Irenaeus of Lyons, were aligned with the advocates of conditional immortality.

It was really Saint Augustine of Hippo, an avid proponent of the doctrine of conscious eternal torment in the 5th century, who effectively put the nail in the coffin on general acceptance of conditional immortality…. at least for many Christians. Augustine’s massive influence pretty much made conscious eternal torment the traditional view of hell for centuries. But every now and then, conditional immortality makes a comeback, at least among a few Christians, in nearly every age of the church. So, Kirk Cameron’s musings on the doctrine of hell are far from new.

I take an agnostic view on the debate between these two perspectives at the present time. Dr. Mohler cites Matthew 25:46 as the main “go-to” verse to favor the doctrine of eternal conscious torment:  “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”  But then there is Paul’s statement in 1 Thessalonians 2:9: “They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.”

Eternal destruction sounds a lot like annihilation, at least to me. But I get Dr. Mohler’s point about Matthew 25:46. I am concerned about slippery slope tendencies on controversial topics, like Mohler, but these can be complex issues where different people will come to varying conclusions based on different ways of thinking. What matters more to me is how people arrive at their conclusion, as opposed to not just the exact conclusion they land on.

Interestingly, the world’s most famous New Testament scholar/skeptic, Bart Ehrman, believes that Jesus actually held to a kind of belief in conditional immortality, as opposed to eternal conscious torment. But Ehrman recognizes the difficulty put forward by Matthew 25:46. Ehrman’s solution, as a skeptic, is to say that Mathew 25:46 was a later invention by the early church, to make Jesus into being a teacher of eternal conscious torment (when he really was not).

This is one of those doctrinal disputes which I have wanted to study, but I have not done a thorough enough job to make any firm, informed conclusion. About thirteen years ago, I read Robert A. Peterson’s Hell on Trial: The Case For Eternal Punishment, a 272 page articulate text which I highly recommend. Peterson makes a strong argument for eternal conscious torment, while acknowledging that some verses in the New Testament do lean towards conditional immortality. I have not yet read thoroughly any counter-perspective from the conditional immortality side of the discussion. I simply have not yet had the mental bandwidth to take on such a project, and I doubt I will get to it anytime soon (though I have wanted to).

 

An Appeal to Have More Charitable Dialogue on Controversial Topics Among Christians

But what concerns me the most about the controversy concerning Kirk Cameron are some of the outlandish comments, which have called into question Cameron’s spiritual integrity. Some have claimed that Kirk Cameron is embracing “heresy” now with his views on hell. That simply is not true. Kirk Cameron might indeed be wrong about conditional immortality, but that does not make him a “heretic.”

Apologist Wesley Huff, who defends the traditional doctrine of eternal conscious torment, calls for more charitable conversation on this topic, from a post he made on X:

“With @KirkCameron announcing his position on conditionalism I’m seeing a lot of people attempting to critique it. I hold to ECT, but I do understand the topic of conditional immortality and I have yet to see anyone actually give a rebuttal that shows me they’ve interacted with the arguments and biblical reasoning from the other side. To condemn conditionalism/annihilationism as heresy is to say that John Stott, Edward Fudge, F. F. Bruce, potentially even Athanasius of Alexandria, are all heretics. This is, with all due respect, ridiculous. While the position might be unorthodox it is not heresy. If you actually want to interact with someone who knows the topic reach out to my friends @datechris and/or @DanPaterson7. Both are solid, fair minded, well educated and articulate holders of conditionalism.”

Gavin Ortlund, another theologian who holds to the traditional doctrine of conscious eternal torment, has a video which echoes Wesley Huff’s call for more charitable discussion. In Gavin’s four-layered model for how to go about “theological triage,” when Christians disagree with one another, from his book Finding the Right Hills To Die On, Gavin does not place this debate about the nature of hell as a “Tier 1,” top-level issue. It is an important issue to consider, a “Tier 3” issue, but Christians of good faith may come to different conclusions regarding the nature of hell. This is a good reminder that we should all strive for more charity in having discussions with one another on controversial topics.

I mean, if Kirk Cameron is no longer “safe,” then is anybody really “safe” anymore?

I have a couple more blogposts to put out before the end of the year, but this topic was too important not to pass up!

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November 28, 2025

Was Winston Churchill a Warmonger?? (And Other Lunacy in the “New Media”)

By Clarke Morledge

From the Christianity Along the Rhine blog series…

Lunatic conspiracy-like theories tend to run amuck at the most confusing times in the oddest places. You can spot these typically in the hands of self-promoting journalists and other thought leaders in the age of the “new media,” who have a misguided or otherwise inadequate grasp on human history.

Take for example statements made by popular conservative news commentator Candace Owens about the early Christian movement:

“And those Jews became Christians. Full stop. There is no hyphenated faith. You are either a Christian or you are a Jew. Christ fulfilled the law.”

Candace Owen apparently believes that the earliest Christ followers left their Judaism behind to follow Jesus. Such statements have given rise to a kind of “replacement theology,” which has infected Christian thinking in various quarters for centuries. Now, “replacement theology” can mean different things to different people, which does get confusing. But in this context, it suggests that God has somehow forgotten the Jews, and “replaced” the Jews with Christianity.

Has Ms. Owens never met a “messianic Jew?” A “messianic Jew” is a Jewish person who has become a Christian, believing that having faith in Jesus fulfills what Judaism is all about. The growth of messianic Judaism, particularly in the last generation or so, where thousands of Jews have come to know Jesus as their true Messiah, is one of the most remarkable stories of Christian missions in our day. In other words, contrary to what Ms. Owens thinks, you can be both a Jew and a Christian, and the trend is growing.

So, where do people get such bizarre ideas? Apparently, Ms. Owens has never learned that nearly all of Jesus’ earliest disciples were Jewish, and they never forsook their Jewish heritage. Even after the Apostle Paul became a Christian, he still acknowledged that he was both “a Hebrew of Hebrews“ (Philippians 3:4-5) and “I am a Jewish man” (Acts 21:39). If you read the text carefully, you will notice that Paul is speaking in the present tense, and not the past tense. Do we need a reminder that Jesus himself was Jewish?

Back in September, 2024, another popular conservative news commentator took a step in a similar direction. Tucker Carlson has been a television journalist, who after leaving the Fox television network, became perhaps the first Western journalist to score an in-person interview with Russian President Vladmir Putin, after the Ukraine-Russian war began in February, 2022. Since then, Mr. Carlson has been on an interesting journey, essentially re-discovering Christianity, as evidenced by several interviews he has given, which is very encouraging. Carlson’s interview with campus evangelist Cliff Knectle stands out as a positive example of engaging journalism, allowing a Christian evangelist to discuss the Gospel at length without being misconstrued.

That being said, Mr. Carlson crossed a line when he interviewed an American historian, Darryl Cooper, a man who Carlson describes as “may be the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.” In that interview, Cooper makes the claim that during World War 2 era, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was a “warmonger” who was itching for a fight with Adolph Hitler, suggesting that Churchill became the “chief villain” of World War 2, making the war into something more than just the invasion of Poland. Sadly, Carlson did very little to challenge Cooper’s claims.

NOTE: This was all a year before THAT interview Tucker Carlson had with Nick Fuentes in October, 2025….. (And I need not go down the road of more recent conspiracy theories propagated by Ms. Owens, well documented by others …. which gets more and more bizarre by the day, wild claims which possess no evidence)…. But Tucker Carlson’s promotion of revisionist history by Darryl Cooper is the most troubling to me, partly because of the popular reach Tucker Carlson has, particularly among evangelical Christians.

It is troubling as Christians are often blamed for a good amount of antisemitism, needless antipathy towards ethnic Jews, which I have argued stems from a failure to interpret Scripture responsibly. So, when public figures who consider themselves as Christians, play into certain anti-Judaic falsehoods, whether intentionally or not, it nevertheless harms Christian witness.

Where do people get such nonsense?

Why do such voices get so many clicks on social media platforms?

Well, I decided to find out for myself.

One of the most highly respected biographies of Winston Churchill is by British historian Andrew Roberts, who responded to the Darryl Cooper interview by Tucker Carlson. Roberts’ articulate and evidence-based response from 2024 has been so stinging (and a follow-up piece just a year later, criticizing even the Heritage Foundation), that I knew I had to get a copy of Churchill: Walking With Destiny.  On Audible, the audiobook is a whopping 50 hours long. But in my estimation, it was worth it!

Churchill: Walking With Destiny, by the highly respected British historian, Andrew Roberts, dispels the false narratives being propagated in some supposedly Christian circles in our day. Read Roberts’ book to get the real truth about Winston Churchill.

 

Winston Churchill: Villain or Hero of the Second World War?

This past fall, in October, 2025, my wife and I were in Europe. After taking a cruise down the Rhine River, we visited the Luxembourg American Cemetery, where about 5,000 American war dead are buried, many of them who died in the Battle of the Bulge, in the ferociously cold winter of 1944-1945.  As I walked around the cemetery, and spotted the grave of General George Patton, the U.S. Army leader who relieved the tired and surrounded troops of Bastogne, during that terrible battle, I wondered why so many young American men lost their lives in an effort to defeat Nazi Germany.

According to Darryl Cooper, Tucker Carlson’s most highly revered historian, much of the American involvement in the war was prompted by the “warmonger” rhetoric of Winston Churchill.  This “warmonger” description of Churchill suggests that perhaps Adolph Hitler was not quite as bad as commonly believed, and that Churchill had become rather unhinged in his opposition to the Nazis. Is this claim really true? For if Darryl Cooper is correct about Winston Churchill, then it casts a lot of doubt regarding the moral reasoning which led to the deaths of so many Americans buried in Luxembourg.

Winston Churchill was a most complex and interesting figure, the son of another famous British politician. Winston Churchill idolized his father, though his parents often placed their own ambitions above spending time with their son. When his father, Randolph, died an early death, Winston Churchill knew that he was filled with ambition to exceed the political aspirations of his father. He even expected that he would become prime minister of the United Kingdom, some time in the future.

Churchill believed that his path of national leadership would be through a combination of military service and journalism. In some cases, he was able to serve in the military without pay, while receiving pay as a journalist. He served as a war correspondent in Cuba. He also served in the army in one of the last British cavalry clashes in Sudan. In South Africa, he was captured and imprisoned, but somehow managed to escape confinement. His imprisonment and escape from prison made Churchill a war hero.

Churchill’s military and journalism career took him far across the global British empire. While in the British army in India, Churchill began to read widely, influenced greatly by the writings of Edward Gibbon and Charles Darwin. Particularly due to Gibbon’s skeptical influence, Churchill, who had been raised a nominal Anglican, expressed doubts about the truth claims of Christianity. But as Roberts portrays him, Churchill was an agnostic, who embraced a kind of “cultural Christianity,” acknowledging the virtues of Christianity’s influence in British culture without believing the metaphysical truth-claims associated with the faith.

He finally made his way into Parliament in 1901, and eventually became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, overseeing the British Navy. It was during the “Great War” that Winston Churchill’s reputation suffered the most, when he was blamed for much of the failure of the Gallipoli campaign, an attempt by allied forces to try to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. Churchill sought to revive his reputation after that by saying that the campaign was mismanaged by other military leaders, when he advocated for a Naval attack on the Dardanelles, with insufficient Army support to back up Churchill’s efforts, thus leading to the quagmire, and ultimate failure of the campaign.

Churchill continued on in the military, and served in the trenches on the continent during the Great War, after Gallipoli, avoiding death on several occasions. Even after the war, Churchill continued to serve in public office, but was eventually forced out of office in 1929. Many historians called this period, where Churchill was in many ways a government outsider, his “wilderness years.” In the run up to World War 2, Churchill became a voice sounding the alarm about Hitler, but now largely as a journalist and popular historian.

Sir Winston Churchill. Fiery debater. He had a reputation for respecting his opponent. Yet he never gave up on his belief that Nazi Germany was bent on perpetuating evil. In the end, history proved Churchill to be right. Is it possible for the evangelical apologist to have Churchill’s fortitude AND respectfulness when it comes to defending the Christian faith?

 

The Churchill “Warmonger” Thesis Challenged

As with any conspiracy or conspiracy-like theory, there is a grain of truth about Darryl Cooper’s fantastic claim that Churchill was a “warmonger.” The British Isles had suffered greatly during the “Great War,” and afterwards the economy was extremely sluggish. There was not much stomach for military conflict at the time, but Churchill did advocate for an accelerated development of the Royal Air Force, predicting that Hitler would eventually become a menace to Europe. Historian Andrew Roberts notes that many during the 1930’s considered Churchill to be a “warmonger,” stirring up trouble where none existed. Simply put, very few people considered Hitler to be the type of evil person, who in our day and age is now considered to be the very personification of evil.

Churchill opposed the appeasement policy of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who proclaimed “peace in our time.’ When Chamberlain helped to broker a peace deal with Hilter with the 1938 Munich Agreement, allowing Hilter to occupy the Sudetenland, part of Czechoslovakia, with no consultation with the Czechs, Churchill was appalled. For Hilter merely broke the agreement and occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in less than a year later.

It is true that Hilter called Churchill a “warmonger,” in view of Churchill’s reaction to Nazi German aggression. But it is completely false to claim that Churchill was somehow itching for a fight with Hitler, as though Churchill was the instigator, a point which Andrew Roberts makes clear in his biography of Churchill. 

As war grew closer, so did Churchill’s popularity increase. Churchill’s predictions about Hitler’s aggression proved true over and over again. Churchill’s urging for beefing up the military was in reaction to Hitler’s provocations, not the other way around. As Hitler’s army invaded Belgium and made its way towards France, Churchill was selected to be Prime Minister, believing that the whole of his life thus far was preparation for this dire moment in Britain’s history.

Many still distrusted Churchill, recalling the failure of the Gallipoli campaign during the “Great War” a few decades earlier. As war with Germany became inevitable, before Churchill became prime minister, he made some major mistakes in trying to coordinate efforts to stop the Nazi takeover of Norway. But as Andrew Roberts describes the next few years, Churchill learned from his mistakes. Churchill’s skill as a an orator helped to unite the British people to resist the Nazi movement, as the island of Great Britain eventually became subject to withering attack by Hitler’s Luftwaffe.

As Andrew Roberts reveals in an interview, Cooper’s thesis that Churchill was the “chief villain” of World War 2 is simply “reheated, old David Irving stuff from twenty years ago.” David Irving has been known as a holocaust denier voice in the U.K., publicly claiming that the gas chambers at Auschwitz never existed. This need not imply Cooper as being a holocaust denier himself, but it does not better his case. Cooper’s thesis that Churchill was the “chief villain” falls flat when one realizes that Hilter’s blitzkrieg against the West happened before Churchill was selected as prime minister of Great Britain. Do journalists like Tucker Carlson need to be platforming such views as merely offering a different perspective having equal footing with many others?

Though admittedly not an historic orthodox Christian, Winston Churchill was nevertheless a lonely voice who saw the anti-Christian motivations behind Hitler, and who called out the evil nature of the Nazi regime. Churchill had his quirks, and like many of his day, uttered some frankly racist statements. He opposed national sovereignty for India, which has left him with many critics still today in India. He was slow to support the effort giving women the right to vote, only being persuaded to accept the cause after marrying Clementine, who fully supported female suffrage. Churchill made many mistakes, even somewhat silly ones, at one point suggesting that a curtain supported by balloons might be launched above the border of England, carrying explosives, as a deterrent against Hitler’s luftwaffe.

Churchill: Walking With Destiny is not hagiographic. Roberts does not shy away from telling about Churchill’s shortcomings. In many ways, Churchill had a lot of the same negative qualities that people despise so much about the U.S. President Donald Trump. Yet Churchill was also a great communicator, very witty, and brilliant, with an ability to connect with the British people during a time of great national and world crisis, which ultimately helped to stem the tide against Hitler’s aggressions.

One of my favorite lines from Churchill is this: “Stop interrupting me while I’m interrupting you.”

Churchill was a British patriot, who at times was blinded by his own nationalism, xenophobia, and other faults. Nevertheless, he spoke out against Hitler for years, when relatively few in Britain in the early and mid-1930s would do so. Churchill’s study of history convinced him that Adolph Hitler was up to no good and could not be trusted. Years before the Nazi implementation of “The Final Solution,” Churchill knew that Hitler’s antisemitism was a serious problem. Thankfully, people began to eventually listen to Churchill, and Hitler was finally challenged and his Nazi regime was stopped. As the British prime minister, Churchill took an active role in countering the anti-Jewish objectives of the Nazis. Churchill was perhaps the most influential person on the planet to persuade the Americans take the fight against Hitler. Winston Churchill was the right man for the right job at the right time.

One standout irony of Churchill’s life was in how self-prophetic it was.  At age 16 or 17, Winston Churchill came to believe that one day, “I shall save London and England from disaster.”  Many decades later, that prophecy would come true.

Unlike so many voices from the “new media” of YouTube and TikTok, studied and reputable historians, like Andrew Roberts, can help to dispel the nonsense. Grab a copy of Churchill: Walking With Destiny, and learn for yourself, just like I did.

We live in an age when credible authorities for discerning the truth are being distrusted by social media algorithms. As a Christian, we should be wary of these unfortunate trends, and look instead towards God’s standard for truth: beginning with the Holy Scriptures, under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Walking along the many rows in the Luxembourg American Cemetery was an incredibly sobering experience, realizing just how many American soldiers died for the cause of freedom and the defeat of the Nazi regime. My photo taken in October, 2025.

 

George S. Patton’s grave at the Luxembourg American Cemetery. My photo taken in October, 2025.

 

Be Careful What You Click!

I go back to the lunatic storylines promoted by figures like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. With the demise of the monopolies of traditional news organizations has come the “new media” of podcasts, which claim to get at the “real truth” being obscured or hidden by “mainstream media.” Much of this democratization of the newer media driven by advances in information technology has been fruitful. The stranglehold which legacy news organizations have had over the flow of information has been broken by the “new media.” Yet while trying to hold “mainstream media” accountable, these new forms of news media have their own accountability problems.

As Konstantin Kisin, co-host of the Trigonometry podcast, says in the following video, “what you reward with your clicks is what you create more of in the world. That is not a responsibility to be taken lightly.” Our consumption of media does not simply try to tell us the truth about our world, it also reveals a lot about ourselves. This is a good measure of wisdom to think through before you flip on the television or turn on your favorite YouTube channel:

As a double-bonus, the folks at the Trigonometry podcast have a two-hour interview with Andrew Roberts, about the book Churchill: Walking With Destiny . Following that, the historian dynamic duo of Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook on The Rest is History Podcast tackle the kind of rubbish revisionism being pedaled in certain corners of the “new media,” with another installment of their history of Nazism series, this time focused on Britain’s and France’s entry into the war against Germany, following Hitter’s invasion of Poland. Both are well worth the time. Enjoy!!

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October 24, 2025

Christianity Along the Rhine: A Travel Blog Series

By Clarke Morledge

My wife and I just got back last week from a 12-day trip to Europe, and I am excited to blog about it.

The main focus of the trip was a week-long Viking river cruise along the Rhine and Moselle Rivers, starting in Basel, Switzerland and ending up in Trier, Germany. The river cruise was bookended with a two-night stay in Zurich, Switzerland on the leading end, with a two-night stay in Paris, France on the final end. For a church history enthusiast like myself, it was an amazing experience.

Veracity blogger above the Rhine River, in Basel, Switzerland.  October, 2025.

 

Over the next few months, and into the New Year, I will be periodically releasing blog installments covering different elements from our tour along the Rhine River, with highlights both before and after (SEE INDEX OF INDIVIDUAL BLOG POSTS BELOW!).  As usual, I got some book reading done before and during the trip, and I will be narrating those book reviews as I share some photos of the experience.  The land we traveled through during our trip is incredibly rich with church history (and history in general).

This is not the first time I have put together a travel blog series on Veracity. I got inspired to do this from some of the trips our Veracity blog founder, John Paine, took several times to Canada (in Toronto) and England (to see Codex Sinaiticus at the British Museum in London) a few years ago.  Thanks, John.  I am blaming you for all of these blog posts!!  😉

The newly restored Notre Dame Cathedral, in Paris, France. The fire in 2019 did a lot of damage, but the structure of building remained sound.  The restoration effort was impressive, as the inside of Notre Dame is much brighter than before. Centuries of candle smoke had darkened the Cathedral, but now it is a most glorious sight!!

 

Back in 2018, my wife and I spent 2 1/2 weeks in Rome, Italy, which still stands out to me as the best trip of all. I could have spent a whole month there and not seen everything. We had saved up for years to make this trip, and it was fantastic. It was a lot of fun to meet up in Rome for a full day with our friends Marie Knapp, and her (now) late husband Troy Knapp.

In October 2022, we took another river cruise, but this time down the Danube River, from Regensburg, Germany to Budapest, Hungary.  This was part of a full three-week tour of six European countries, to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. We were able to spend a few days earlier in Munich, and then after the Danube, a few extra days in Prague, followed by a few other days in Italy/Sicily.

For Christmas 2023, we were invited by our friends, Shannon and Andrew Bodine, to visit in Brussels, Belgium. After seeing the Christmas markets and Waterloo battlefield, we got on a train to cross the English Channel to make our way to Cambridge, England, where we met up with other friends, Jon and Meredith Thompson, who just happened to be in Cambridge for a few weeks while we were in the area. Pretty cool!

This recent trip along the Rhine River was special, and particularly enjoyable, as during the last two prior trips I got sick, which was not terribly fun. But this time, no Covid and no flu!! Yeah! …. The only downside to this recent trip was that there was constant activity, and not a lot of downtime. I need a vacation from my vacation!

Marksburg Castle, above the Rhine River, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The castle first dates back to the early 12th century, but had been damaged some over the years, most recently by American artillery during World War II.

 

I have to say that Viking has figured out how to do river cruises. They have had ads all over the PBS television network for decades, and we got to see for ourselves the famous section along the Rhine where all of the castles are featured in those ads.

The food was fantastic. We had excellent tour guides, even though the walking element on all of those cobblestone streets was very challenging for my wife. Going through the river locks appealed to my nerdy engineering side. I highly recommend doing something like this if you have the chance.

The first couple of blog posts in this series will be about the 16th-century Protestant Reformer, Huldrych Zwingli, of Zurich, Switzerland, who has become largely forgotten among Christians today, despite his enormous impact on Christian theology. I will keep a running tab and index of blog posts updated here at the bottom of this post, as reference.

Enjoy!

 

A cable car ride over the Rhine River, with our Viking longship below. Koblenz, Germany.

 

Heidelberg, Germany. Looking up towards the castle.

 

The town of Cochem, Germany, along the Moselle River.

Here is a reference list to previous travel blog post series, along with a list of posts to the current series…..

First, from Rome…………

 

Next, from Christianity along the Danube, with some time in southern Germany, along the Alps, and over to Prague, as well…….

 

Before our recent trip down the Rhine River, over Christmas of 2023, we went to Belgium and Cambridge, England….

Coming soon….. Christianity Along the Rhine…..

…. more posts to come!!

 

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September 20, 2025

Will the Rapture Happen on September 23-24, 2025?

By Clarke Morledge

Will the “rapture” happen on September 23-24, 2025? I have a quick answer for this one: “NO.”

Over the past thirteen years when I have been writing on the Veracity blog, there have been several attempts at “date setting” event predictions connected to the Second Coming of Jesus. Speculation about “blood moons,” eclipses, etc. surface from time to time, and go viral on various news feeds, and this year is no exception. Videos of people having personal dreams about the “rapture” show up on YouTube and TikTok.

I would normally ignore stuff like this, as it keeps happening over and over again. All of the hundreds of attempts over the centuries to try to calculate the exact timing of the Second Coming of Jesus, or related events, have a 100% failure record…. which is pretty terrible. But what struck me this time is how “date setters” have managed to find a way around the New Testament warning AGAINST date setting.

Back in 2017, a prediction associated with the Second Coming of Jesus was made by date setters connected to the constellation Virgo. Foreboding a fulfillment of the Book of Revelation? Nope.  Nothing happened like that in 2017….. The same will prove true for the September 23-24 prediction in 2025.

 

The standard response any informed Christian should give to “date setting” speculations can be found in texts like Matthew 24:36, where Jesus himself says:

“But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.“

In other words, Jesus as the Son does not even know the time of the Second Coming. For if Jesus does not even know, why would we think that anyone else living on planet earth would be able know any better?

You would think that should settle the matter. But apparently, some have come up with a very clever response to get around these words of Jesus.

The September 23-24, 2025 current speculation for the “rapture” has a certain twist to it. Rosh Hashanah is the time of the Jewish New Year, which will occur sometime during this period, for 2025, over these couple of days. Rosh Hashanah is also known as the Feast of Trumpets, the timing of which is determined by the sighting of the first sliver of the New Moon.

But what if certain atmospheric or other conditions interfere with an accurate sighting of the New Moon? For example, what if the evening is cloudy? Here is where the latest escape hatch for justifying “date setting” comes into play.

The claim is made that when Jesus says that the “day and hour no one knows,” this is a reference to the fact that it is not always clear as to when the New Moon could be actually sighted.  Could it be September 23rd?  September 24rd? At what hour? We are not sure, but it should be somewhere within this time frame.

If you scour Internet websites where this claim is made, the suggestion is made that Jesus is simply using a Hebrew idiom associated with the Feast of Trumpets to describe the timing of an event like the “rapture.”

The problem here is that there is no evidence which indicates that the “day and hour no one knows” is indeed such a common Hebrew idiom. You would think that if there was indeed such a Hebrew idiom, that a source can be cited to demonstrate this.

Hebrew idioms like this do exist. For example, when Jesus in the Gospels cites the sign of Jonah regarding “the three days and three nights” associated with his coming death, there is indeed an existing Hebrew idiom found among rabbinic Jewish writings, which serves as evidence to support the claim.

Unfortunately, for purveyors of the “day and hour no one knows” Hebrew idiom claim, there is no such evidence. But since the idea appears to fit, advocates for this hypothesis are not bothered by the lack of evidence.

In other words, for the date-setters, it is apparently okay for someone to claim something is true without evidence to support it, simply because you want it to be true: It is okay to simply make things up in order to justify your interpretation of the Bible.

This is really a bad way to try to interpret the Bible.1

I am no prophet, but I am willing the make a firm prediction here: While it is true that Jesus could indeed return at any time, September 23-24, 2025 will come and go and nothing will happen. As this has happened time and time again, purveyors of this type of thinking will go back and rethink their date setting, and some may suggest a new date, based on more supposedly accurate data to work with. Or they will find some other sophisticated way to wiggle out of their original predictions. If someone is foolish enough to buy into the prediction and sell their house and all of their belongings before September 23-24, they will probably be severely disappointed.

But worst of all, such another repeated failed prophecy prediction will invite more skepticism against the integrity of the Christian faith.

Folks, we can do better than this.

Notes:

1. As apologist Mike Winger shows from his videos regarding the September 2025 rapture speculations, there are other ways of mistreating the Bible which are also bad. For example, 1 Thessalonians 5 is the famous passage on the “rapture,” as verse 2 lays out what Paul is writing to his readers: “For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” Paul is indeed warning the Thessalonians of the first century that the return of Jesus will come at any time. That Jesus is returning is sure, but the timing is unexpected. But at least one popular purveyor of the September 2025 rapture hype claims that in 1 Thess 5:4 , Paul shifts his audience to address people living much, much later (like September 2025???): “But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief“.  In other words, Christians today will not be surprised as to when Jesus comes back, as they will no longer be in darkness about the timing of the “rapture.” Not surprisingly (pun intended), this popular purveyor of the September 2025 prediction gives no supporting evidence for the claim that the “you” of verse 2 shifts to a different “you” in verse 4, the later “you” being Christians living 2,000 years later. This is just making stuff up to make the Bible say what you want it to say. What is missing is the intervening verse 3: “While people are saying, ‘There is peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.”  Verse 3 here explains the meaning of verse 4, in that there will be some in Thessalonika who will be completely surprised at the coming of the Lord, when/if it comes in that day.  But the coming of the Lord will not be a surprise for the Christian believers who understand the truth that the Lord will indeed return. In other words, while the coming of the Lord Jesus will not be a “surprise” for those who expect it, we still will not know when it will come; that is, the exact timing of his coming, NOT the fact that Jesus is coming.  Since what Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, regarding the Second Coming, did not happen in his lifetime, there is nevertheless still a message for us living today. If only such prophecy “teachers” could read the Bible in context, and stop reading things into the text which simply are not there!! ↩

 

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