The Blue Collar Scholar

The Bible makes it clear that "all have sinned & fall short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23) The Ten Commandments are a great mirror to show the reader one's own need for salvation. Spoiler alert: In the next episode, we will see that Jesus Christ is the source of that salvation.

The previous three episodes built a brief apologetic case for the existence of God. Now comes the closing argument, where we present the evidence for Jesus Christ as the Messiah of the Jewish people, prophesied frequently in the Old Testament, as powerful evidence for the existence of God. This closing argument also helps us move past apologetics arguments that argue for a generic deity, and now w...

This episode makes the positive case that the existence of objective moral values and duties proves that there is a God. This episode also addresses the arguments against God's existence collectively known as the Problem of Evil or the Problem of Suffering.

This episode analyzes the Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God. Or, rather, the cosmological arguments, plural. There is the Kalam, the Leibnizian, the Argument from Contingency, etc. I invite you to dive into this episode as we discuss these arguments, as we advance our mission to lead someone to Christ who does not even have a concept of God.

Apologetics has nothing to do with apologizing, even though "apologetics" and "apology" share similar etymology. Rather, apologetics is the intellectual defense of the faith. Over the next few episodes, we will explore both apologetics and evangelism as we engage in a thought experiment: how to talk about God and Jesus Christ to someone who is such a tabula rasa that they don't even have a basic c...

Most people want to imagine God as a Mr. Rogers-type, friendly deity. And as we all learned in Vacation Bible School, Jesus is your friend. However, He is also a righteous Judge. And our understanding of God is incomplete if we don't have a rigorous theology that includes understanding God as Judge. But our great Judge is fair, mercy, thorough, and consistent as Judge. In this sermon, we explore t...

Our Sunday School series on marriage comes to an end with several topics that don't warrant their whole lesson: homosexuality, polygamy, and premarital sex. The episode closes with a brief survey of what a healthy marriage looks like, scripturally-speaking.

Diversity is a wonderful thing. But not every incarnation of diversity is inherently good. In the last episode, we saw that interracial marriage is not only ok, but it is occasionally lauded in the Bible as wonderful. But what about interfaith marriage. Most liberals (and I am not using that as a particularly bad term) that I know would laud interfaith marriage as an excellent example of tolerance...

My wonderful wife and I are part of an interracial marriage. I am proud of that fact. But does the Bible support the institution of interracial marriage? Many Christians have believed that the Bible prohibits these kinds of relationships. Spoiler alert: They are wrong. In this episode, we examine the Biblical texts involving interracial marriage. In short, if a man and a woman love Christ and they...

This episode expands on the previous episode and explores what the Bible says about divorce and remarriage.

Divorce is not ideal. It can even be described as an evil. That does NOT mean that those who have been touched by divorce are evil, defiled, unredeemable, yada, yada, yada. This episode begins to survey the Biblical texts on divorce, talking about what divorce is, what it is not, when it is allowable, etc.

This episode starts a new Sunday School series about marriage. This series was done via Facebook Live in the summer of 2020 while we were in lockdown.

This episode concludes our Sunday School series on the controversial topic of the End Times. This lesson talks about the Millennial Kingdom, Judgment Day, and New Heavens & New Earth. Soli Deo Gloria!

In this episode, we talk about some of the chapters of Revelation that appear to be out of chronological order. Then we look at the 3rd set of 7 judgments called the Vials of God's Wrath. Following that, this episode discusses the physical return of Christ, Armageddon, the Millennial Kingdom, the Final Rebellion of Satan, and Judgment Day.

The middle chapters of the Book of Revelation mirror the early chapters of Exodus, showing an active God who uses a series of judgements to achieve His aims. These chapters describe events that ought to be interpreted literally, as well as events that ought to be interpreted figuratively. This Sunday School lessons quickly surveys the first 14 of the judgements in the Book of Revelation, which the...

The figure that evangelical Christians know as "the Antichrist" is an archetypal figure that informs many of the great villains in fiction, especially Nicolae Carpathia in the Left Behind novels. However, the Book of Revelation does not even refer to this person as the Antichrist, preferring to refer to him as "the Beast." In this episode, we will take a brief look at what the Bible says about thi...

After discussing various interpretations of the End Times, this series will continue in a basic premillennial understanding of eschatology. The central event - or series of events - to this interpretation of the End Times is the Tribulation, a 7 year period of hardship and judgement on the Earth that precedes the physical return of Christ. Just a reminder to hold your End Times theology loosely. W...

The Rapture is almost certainly the least-agreed-upon topic in eschatology (the study of the End Times). Men and women who are dedicated to studying Scripture and are careful to let the Scriptures dictate doctrine (and not the other way around) will disagree vehemently about the Rapture. So, in this episode, we will look into the Scriptures that premillennial dispensationalists use to form the doc...

This episode opens with a nice little time capsule: a discussion about when and how to reopen after quarantine in 2020, a process that ended up happening three times as we had to thrice go into quarantine during surges of Covid. The main thrust of this episode is a frank discussion of the 4 different "schools" or interpretations of eschatology (i.e., the study of the End Times). Those interpretati...

After the completion of our church's Church History series, we began a series on the End Times. This episode of the podcast is the introductory lecture of that series. There are major themes that Revelation, the prophetic books of the Old Testament, and other New Testament books teach us. These themes are important to establish before one digs in to deeper the details of eschatology.

2 Kings 22 is one of the more subtly shocking chapters in Scripture. In it, the high priest *FINDS* the Book of the Law in some chamber of the Temple as they are engaged in renovations. The implication is the Israel and Judah went generations when even the priests did not not read Scripture, and seemingly, they weren't even aware that they were missing it. Their religious system went on for genera...

If the faithful Christian life for you is an impossibly long checklist of things you have to do (or things you must not do) and that list is mostly things that are not dictated by Scripture, then do I have good news for you! In Christ, the believer has liberty. In this lesson, we examine Freedom of the Believer. (1) Freedom of the Believer is not there to give you free reign to sin. (2) Freedom of...

In this episode a take a crack at 10 conspiracy theories.     Here is the list that I use. Link: https://gemini.google.com/share/eb9af94fd1f5?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR3uGG6FCaMsdeCUFkOj26Ky2MPegW7IPE5vW5nRcyg95hDAA4OOpIaRylQ_aem_AdPi1pqPdikY-b5wE1XlaFZCv7JiSMuErAq42zIYIUWoftlIA9SRqQ_vULuVO02-0UIF3VAxYjhpx6R9NFhLOz_0     This episode is a direct rebuttal of the Trying to Like It podcast, episode...

This is the finale of our church's Sunday School series on church history. In this episode, we discuss how the Gospel has expanded and prospered in a post-WWII world. We also look at trends that will likely define the next few decades.

My parents have been an extraordinary blessing to me. Growing up in a healthy, loving, nuclear & unbroken family is a treasure not everyone gets to enjoy. My parents are persons of high character who passed on great lessons. My father taught me the value of hard work, and my mother taught me the value of studying hard, even when the task to difficult-to-impossible. She is the original Blue Collar...