For those of us who may be in a position to dialog with Muslim friends about our faith, here’s a series of thought-provoking videos that may be helpful.
Reasons To Believe scholar Fuz Rana, who had a Muslim father, interviews Abdu Murray, who converted from Islam to Christianity and now shares his faith with Muslims through several high-profile ministries.
Abdu has hard-won, firsthand insights about how to share the Christian faith with Muslims. Among his most powerful points are the value of respect for the individual and how bridges can be built in a positive way, without attacking the person or his worldview.
One of the best things on sale is the new NIV Zondervan Study Bible eBook, where the content was briefly reviewed a few months ago on Veracity. I have been wrestling with the idea of getting the new NIV Zondervan Study Bible, since it really looked to be a fantastic resource for digging into God’s Word. But Zondervan has it on sale this week for $4.99, so for less than the cost for lunch, you can have about a 3000 page, packed Bible study resource in eBook form (that is a steal compared to the $26.43 for the hardcover). So I gave up my lunch break yesterday and got it. Here is what I found….
As a young Christian, one of the standard reasons often given to me for the truth of Jesus’ Resurrection is that all of apostles, with the exception of John, died as martyrs. Why would the apostles have died for a known lie? The only sensible conclusion is that the martyrdom of these apostles proves that the Resurrection is true.
The problem with this approach, as argued by such scholars as Candida Moss, reviewed a few years ago on here on Veracity, is that the Bible and other early sources tell us very little about the death of the earliest apostles. We are forced mainly to rely on traditions, that in a number of cases, date to a few hundred years after the martyrdom events took place. Can such traditions really be trusted?
Sean McDowell’s new book, The Fate of the Apostles: Examining the Martyrdom Accounts of the Closest Followers of Jesus, is the result of his PhD dissertation research, an exploration into the historical accounts of how the first apostles of Jesus died. Sean McDowell, Biola University professor in apologetics and the son of another popular apologist, Josh McDowell, has investigated many of the traditions associated with the martyrdom claims, weighing the evidence as to which accounts are most probably reliable and which ones are more doubtful.
Here is my application takeaway from thinking about this, though I know that some might challenge me on it: The tendency to stretch the truth a bit, when it really is not necessary, simply to make an important case for something, was a problem in the early church just as much as it is a problem in our day. We must carefully guard the Truth for the sake of the integrity of the Gospel.
Folks, we need not fear the Truth as believers, even when that Truth exposes common, popular overstatements with seemingly good intentions. Sometimes, believers have a knee-jerk reaction to criticism that can devolve into a paranoid persecution complex, that tragically trivializes real persecution being experienced by our Christian brothers and sisters in places like Syria and Iraq. Instead, as Christians, we can look to fair-minded, intelligent, Biblically-sound scholarship and sober thinking to give solid reasons for our faith, even when we are challenged. Taking responsibility for our own personal discipleship, is something we strongly advocate here on this blog, and it is important now more than ever. We must be careful not to give into smooth and slick talk in an effort to “protect Christianity.”
My local church here in Williamsburg, Virginia, the Williamsburg Community Chapel, recently announced that we will be moving to the English Standard Version (ESV) for our pew Bibles, by this coming summer. A lot of people love their NIV (I still do!), but with the unavailability of the 1984 edition of the NIV, it forces a lot of churches to make a difficult decision. I am reposting my research on this very important and timely topic….
Does your church have a “pew Bible?” Through a generous gift years ago, an anonymous donor in our church gave hundreds of copies of the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible so that everyone who comes to our church would be able to read from the Bible where they sit each and every Sunday morning for worship. What a great gift it is to have a copy of God’s Word at your fingertips!
The problem is that we use the 1984 edition of the NIV…. and the version’s publisher, Zondervan, is no longer printing copies of the 1984 NIV. So what is a church like ours to do if you want to get a new pew Bible?
Ah, so we enter into the world of contemporary Bible translation controversy. The controversy, though a bit nerdy for many in some respects, is important because lovers of Jesus are also lovers of…
So, I was in for a confusing shock as a young person in college at a Bible study meeting. An engineering student next to me, wearing blue jeans, flannel shirt, and an old pair of sneakers, was puzzled over a passage of the Bible. To find an answer, he began to read from the notes of his new Charles Ryrie Study Bible. Across from the engineer sat a young brunette woman, dressed to the “nines,” propped up in her high heels and adorned with plenty of makeup. Though evidently they were friends, she nevertheless visibly glared at the engineer, as he spoke for about five minutes. Suddenly, this woman, who later told me, she was the daughter of an executive at Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), sat up straight in her chair and challenged the engineering student. “That is not what my Bible teaches! Who does this ,’Charles Ryrie,’ think he is?”
The atmosphere in the room had become so thick, you could cut it with a knife.
After a few minutes of rigorous back and forth, the casual engineering student and the dolled up brunette finally made peace with one another, but I sat there stunned. I had no idea what kind of mess I just found myself in. I had no clue what these folks were talking about. I had no idea who this ‘Charles Ryrie’ even was. But I was determined now to find out.
The Ryrie Study Bible. One of the most influential (and, at times, controversial) aids for understanding the English Bible for almost four decades.
In the twentieth century, Charles Ryrie was among the most influential conservative evangelical Bible scholars on the American scene. I would consider him to be one of the last, great classic dispensationalist theologians. Before Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind novel series overtook the church by storm, there was the Ryrie Study Bible. Classic dispensationalism championed ideas still commonly taught in many evangelical circles today, particularly the importance of a literal, futuristic interpretation of Bible prophecy, and the distinction between Israel and the church, as one of the primary interpretive keys for understanding the unity of the Bible. Is there a common thread of logic that unites the Old and New Testaments together, and the Bible’s vision of the future? Ryrie sought to tackle these type of grand questions.
Among Charles Ryrie’s mentors, dispensationalists commonly held a hard and fast distinction between the term “kingdom of God” and the similar phrase used in the Gospel of Matthew, “kingdom of Heaven.” Some even refused to utter the Lord’s Prayer as a part of corporate worship, believing that the Lord’s Prayer belonged strictly to a future dispensation. Charles Ryrie began to question such rigid, hyper-systematic interpretations of the Bible, that were originally intended to combat the prevailing liberal Protestant theologies of the early 20th century. But classic dispensationalism also rubbed against the mindset of those older conservative evangelicals who embraced covenant theology. The “iron sharpening iron” effect of these different schools of theology eventually caused the more conciliatory Ryrie Study Bible to supersede (pun intended!) the older Scofield Reference Bible that dominated previous generations in many Bible-believing churches.
Young Millennial Christians have never heard of Charles Ryrie, and thus the Ryrie Study Bible has lost its popularity for the new generation. Nevertheless, the influence of this forceful and yet gentle scholar of the Bible remains within the evangelical church, his legacy encouraging believers today to grow in their knowledge, love, and obedience towards the Scriptures.
