February 19, 2013

Veracity…the Book!

By John Paine

Confidence in Jesus Christ

We are one!

(Our blog is one year old that is.)  And to celebrate, after 88 posts, Clarke and I are giving away as many copies as you would like of our new ebook, Confidence in Jesus Christ, the Joy of Personal Discipleship.

Confidence is a sampling of what this blog is all about, in an evangelical wrapper.  With some attitude.  It’s a hyperlinked presentation of the Gospel that you can share with anyone.

For a limited time you can get Confidence simply by clicking on the above image.

Thank you all for being such great family, friends and followers.  Please drop us a comment and let us know how we can make Veracity better for you, and please share this material.  We’ll spare you the details, but the more subscribed followers we have on the blog, the more widely our message gets spread through cyberspace.

We look forward to sharing more resources and ideas, and engaging in thought-provoking dialog in the months and years ahead.  God willing, of course.

Chi Rho!

Clarke & John

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February 15, 2013

Dead Sea Scrollback

By Clarke Morledge
George Orwell wrote about the tendency to revise history into a muddle of misinformation in order to pacify people. Though Orwell had political totalitarianism in mind, is there perhaps a similar application with respect to popular distortions of church history?

George Orwell wrote about the tendency to revise history into a muddle of misinformation in order to pacify people. Although Orwell had political totalitarianism in mind, is there perhaps a similar application with respect to popular distortions of church history?

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” George Orwell penned this in his classic novel, 1984. Can the same be said of God’s people regarding their knowledge of church history?

Perhaps the greatest battleground in apologetics today revolves around the early history of the church.   Many students of the Bible are content to honor the authority of Scripture as God’s Word straight from Jesus Christ.  Some say that if all you need is the Bible, why trouble yourself with church history?

However, the Bible as we have it today did not drop down out of the sky.   During the early centuries of the church, Christians passed down the teachings of those earliest apostles to make up the New Testament.   The Old Testament was borrowed from the Jewish community.     Put together, the Scriptures as we have them arose out of the spiritual life of the early church.   If we fail to grasp a hold on this earliest Christian history, we risk falling into a type of Orwellian trap that would make discussions about the Bible… sadly…. useless.
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February 10, 2013

Constantine the Great?

By Clarke Morledge
Constantine the Great, founder of "Christendom."

Constantine the Great, founder of “Christendom.”

Constantine awoke from his dream. Christ had appeared to him bearing the sign of a bent over cross. Earlier, Constantine had seen the same cross in a vision, with the inscription, “In this sign conquer”. Could this be the sign of victory he had been waiting for?

So the story goes…. it was the year 312, and this young Roman general was approaching the most pivotal battle in his life. Maxentius, a challenger to the imperial throne, had amassed an army to defeat Constantine. Constantine forged an alliance with another general, Licinius. But was this going to be enough to defeat Maxentius? Perhaps this sign from one of the gods was what he needed. Constantine ordered his troops to paint the sign of the cross on their shields. From there, Constantine won the Battle of Milvian Bridge, and the history of the world, along with the Christian faith, was forever changed.

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February 5, 2013

The Gospel Truth

By John Paine

Veracity Blavatar

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February 1, 2013

Contradiction or Difference?

By Clarke Morledge
Jesus carried up to a pinnacle of the Temple, by James Tissot , a watercolor between 1886 and 1894. Was Jesus taken up to a pinnacle on the Temple prior to being taken up to a high mountain and shown the kingdoms of the world, or is the order reversed? Does the chronology really matter?

Jesus carried up to a pinnacle of the Temple, by James Tissot, a watercolor between 1886 and 1894. Was Jesus taken up to a pinnacle on the Temple prior to being taken up to a high mountain and shown the kingdoms of the world, or is the order reversed? Does the chronology really matter?

The sermon this past week was on the Temptations of Jesus. I noticed that in comparing Matthew’s version with Luke’s version that there is an apparent discrepancy in the chronology. I asked my small group what they thought of the discrepancy:  “Does this impact how you view the Bible?”

You probably know the story: Early in Jesus’ public ministry, He spends forty days in the wilderness and after being exceedingly hungry, He was tempted by the devil. Mark simply records the basics (Mark 1:12-13). But Matthew and Luke spell out the order of events of the three temptations. Both Matthew (Matthew 4:1-11) and Luke (Luke 4:1-13) start with the first temptation suggesting that Jesus turn the stones to bread. However, the order of the next two temptations between Matthew and Luke are reversed. Matthew’s second temptation is where the devil takes Jesus up to the pinnacle of the temple, urging Him to throw Himself down and trust the angels to catch Him, and the third temptation is where Jesus is taken to a very high place, challenging him to worship the devil in exchange for sharing power. Luke, on the other hand, switches the chronology, putting the “pinnacle of the temple” last, prior to being taken up to a high mountain and shown the kingdoms of the world.
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