BibleThinker

An atheist offers what he sees as the best arguments against God. I admit ahead of time that this is mostly low hanging fruit. But I also would say that this sort of atheist reasoning is so prevalent that it needs to be addressed. That being said, this stuff is pretty bad. I want to offer a breakdown of this atheist's article which is perhaps a pretty serious commentary on some of the problems in...

Every Friday at 1pm PT! Time Stamps! 0:00 Introduction 1. 0:33 Since Jesus flipped over tables in the temple, does that give people an excuse to have violent protests today? 2. 9:59 I've been dealing with doubts lately, and it never seems to be the cause of any intellectual problem - It feels like an attack. How would you handle this? 3. 12:39 We can see in the Bible that we are to care for the or...

Jesus isn't "acting like Jesus" here. He does a number of things that simply don't fit our modern pacified version of Jesus. And that's a good thing. I don't want to fall into the pacified version of Jesus that our culture likes but I also don't want to act like Jesus' radical and aggressive actions of cursing the fig tree and kicking people and animals out of the temple while flipping tables is s...

Every Friday at 1pm PT! Question Time Stamps for Quick Reference: 0:00 Introduction 1. 0:16 Do 1 Timothy 2:9 and 1 Peter 3:3-4 prohibit jewelry (wedding bands, necklaces, etc.)? 2. 9:16 In Matthew 21:1-8, there is a donkey and a colt (2 animals). Does this have something to do with Jews and Gentiles? 3. 11:30 Can a person who struggles with addiction be born again? Can you be saved, but not enter...

This question is NOT just a hypothetical. Missionaries in Africa asked me to answer this and I don't think it's application will be limited to them for too long. It seems to me that the moral slip-slide of our culture is heading toward a time when more and more of us will be confronted with the topic of polygamy. This is one of my final videos in the series I have done on divorce and remarriage. H...

OH MAN! I forgot to mention a really cool historical insight we get from the Mishnah! Apparently, Jews were expected to enter Jerusalem on foot when travelling there for Passover. This means that when Jesus entered on a donkey it would have stood out as particularly odd and unique. This give us another reason to see the profound and deliberate proclamation to be the Messianic King. I meant to shar...

Every Friday at 1pm PT! Question Time Stamps for Quick Reference: 0:00 Introduction 1. 0:47 Since there is no marriage in Heaven, are married couples going to be strangers in Heaven? 2. 5:11 If I’m not mistaken, you hold the view of conditional election, prevenient grace, and total depravity (though maybe not to the extent of the Calvinist). ​My question is, if Christ dies for all people and all s...

Expand for time stamps. I'm almost done with all my videos on this topic and boy is my brain tired! Seriously though, this study has been very rewarding personally and the feedback I have received from many of you, saying that this teaching series has really impacted your lives in positive ways, has been the absolute highlight. 0:00 quick stuff 0:48 Was Jesus really just talking about Herod when h...

Some times we have been so indoctrinated into unbiblical ideas about faith, healing and prayer that we don't notice when the Bible is trying to correct us. As we study this passage I'm going to try and point out specifically how Jesus is not giving us the hyper-charismatic or new age views on prayer, healing and faith. But there is a risk that in refuting these false ideas we will miss out on the...

0:00 CAT CAM! and Introduction 1. 1:32 What are your views on the rapture, or being “caught up”? 2. 8:14 A friend of mine believes that Mark 16:17-18 is a sign for true believers today, because Jesus also sent the 70 besides the apostles to do signs and wonders. Can you help me to help him? 3. 16:15 Do you have any advice for someone just starting out in ministry, especially as a missionary? 4. 17...

I honestly think that most pastoral abuse would stop if we would take seriously Jesus' teaching in this passage. We sometimes miss the forest through the trees when it comes to studying verse by verse. So, I'm going to start this study with a survey of how the Gospel of Mark repeatedly is contrasting the true mission of the Messiah with the false expectations of the disciples and the Jews of Jesus...

Question Time Stamps for Quick Reference: 0:00 Introduction and a bit about the American Gospel movie 1. 5:15 Did Old Testament saints believe in "faith + works" for salvation? 2. 11:34 How familiar are you with Steven Furtick and Elevation Church? Is it wrong of me to be wary of mainstream churches that seem to be too "seeker-friendly"? 3. 15:22 How do you respond to Richard Carrier's argument th...

Here are 5 historical arguments for and responses to 3 arguments against Jesus actually predicting His own death and resurrection along. After that apologetic section, which will take a big chunk of today's teaching, I'll share some theological and pastoral insights from this passage in Mark 10:32-34. Do you want to go through the whole book of Mark with me vs by vs, covering theology and apologet...

Question Time Stamps for Quick Reference: 0:00 Introduction and Announcements 1. 12:15 How do you go about doing a systematic theology on any given subject, such as soteriology? 2. 14:46 I was taught that Christians don't sin. 1 John 3:9 says, "Whoever has been born of God does not sin", and Romans is littered with talk of us being "free from sin". So why is this teaching wrong? 3. 22:55 What are...

Jesus' interaction with the rich, young ruler has been used by some to promote socialism and others have approached it looking for an explanation of justification like what we find in Romans. After spending some time on this passage and in the Gospel of Mark as a whole I think both of these approaches are wrong. This will be a careful, vs by vs study of Jesus' interaction with the rich man in Mark...

This is a common and terrible tactic in trying to get away from an interpretation you don't like. I'm not surprised to see this come up in the comments section of my video but I am surprised to see respectful and thoughtful men like Gordon Wenham using this sort of nonsense in print. The objection goes as follows; "When you say that adultery is justification for divorce you actually encourage peop...

Teaching that all babies who die go to heaven immediately brings up a number of important theological questions. Question Time Stamps for Quick Reference: 0:00 Introduction 1. 5:10 How do we determine when a person is accountable? 2. 11:52 What role does sin nature have? 3. 19:00 What role does Jesus have in their salvation? 4. 20:53 What about free will? 5. 43:53 Does this give people an excuse t...

Any correct interpretation of Jesus' teaching on divorce needs to account for the fact that the disciples were so shocked by Jesus that they said it was better to just stay single. In this video I try to explain how I account for the shock of the disciples with my view of Jesus' teaching on divorce and remarriage. Here's the playlist of all my videos on the topic of divorce and remarriage. https:/...

This is a heavy issue and while many people think the Bible doesn't give us much to go on, I disagree. In this study I am going to examine a number of passages people use when trying to explain what the eternal fate of those who die in infancy is. It starts with a survey of Bible passages which don't seem to help us answer our question and then a survey of passages which do. This is part of the "M...

Some tough situations have us asking whether a divorce can be justified for things not clearly mentioned in scripture. Not only do I give my best answer to the question of divorce for a spouse habitually draining the bank account, I hope that this answer will help you work through other tough questions like this one. I think the principles here apply very broadly. Here's my playlist with ALL my te...

While the Bible teaches that some divorces are justified, some people think that the command to “forgive… as God in Christ forgave you” requires us to NEVER divorce, because we must forgive even those offenses that would normally justify a divorce. This a challenging question, and I hope that my answer helps! Here’s my playlist  with all my teaching on divorce and remarriage.

People in Jesus' time had a bad attitude about marriage, just like today. They seemed to think it was a person's right to divorce whenever they decided they wanted to, just like today. But Jesus corrected this by pointing them toward the nature of marriage and showing that marriage it a holy and wonderful union that God Himself has created. Jesus takes away their excuses and calls them to get back...

I went down a rabbit hole of research to find out how some people have taken Jesus' teaching on divorce to mean the opposite of what it seems like He was saying. The issue is whether there is a special definition of "put away" as compared to "writ of divorce". On this peculiar view "put away" is taken to mean "send away a spouse without a divorce certificate", which means that if you are "put away...

What did Jesus mean by "because of your hardness of hearts Moses permitted you to divorce your wives"? Does this mean you can get a divorce if your heart is hard? Does it mean you can get a divorce if your spouse has a hard heart? Does it mean that divorce was regulated with protections for human rights because people's hearts are so hard they are going to divorce anyways? Yeah, it's the third one...

It may seem peculiar but I think that this solves a riddle about why scripture speaks the way it does on the topic of divorce. Jesus acknowledged divorce but taught that it didn't always free you from your moral obligation to your prior spouse. Paul, in 1 Cor 7, taught that a divorced couple was really divorced but still obliged to get back together or stay unmarried. In my view, this view comes n...