I created a radio show demo, that has now been turned into a podcast demo. Before I officially decide to embark on launching a podcast, I want some feedback on this demo. Below you will see an embedded video of the first part of a two segment interview I conducted with Bill Foster, author of Meet the Skeptic. The final product, of course, will be a podcast and not a vlog (video blog). After listening to part one, please take a short survey for me at the following link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1oqMt_YI_gggFtl-PYYSlOuu8xlJYO41EyS3-gKAK-ZE/viewform?usp=send_form
Category: Uncategorized
2 Timothy 1 – Bible Study and Application
Vs. 1 Intro – Very brief. Humility…? Last of Paul’s letters. Shorter and shorter.
Vs. 4 – Acts 16:1-5 – Timothy’s mother was a Jewess and a believer. His father however was a Greek. Timothy was circumcised in Acts 16:3 to make the traveling easier. The faith is passed on in families. Sincere faith! The believers spoke well of Timothy 16:2, so that Paul wanted to take him along.
Vs. 6 – Timothy received a spiritual gift through prayer… 1 Timothy 4:14 – he received a gift through a prophetic message when the elders laid hands on him. I’d suspect this occurred before he went on the mission trip. 1 Timothy 1:18 refers to these prophetic messages too and encourages Timothy to stick to the path laid before him.
Vs. 7 – Spirit of power of love and of self-discipline. 1 Cor. 16:10 – See to it that Timothy has nothing to fear when he comes to you. Timothy shouldn’t be timid, but knowing that he is, the brothers and sisters need to not add to his timidity. Support each other in our weaknesses. 1 Tim 4:12 – Don’t let anyone look down on you since you are young.
Vs. 8 – Don’t be ashamed to testify about the Lord.
Vs. 9-10 – The grace of Christ has been given to us before the beginning of time, but now it has been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought immortality and light through the gospel. It’s always been his plan to save. Now it has been revealed. How do you know God is love – through Jesus!
Vs. 13 Keep the pattern of sound teaching with faith and love in Christ. Faith and love should accompany sound teaching.
What happens at death?
I have an email account associated with my Contradict Movement url. It’s andy@contradictmovement.org.
I have only received one email since I’ve had this address. It read:
I saw a bumper sticker on my way home from work… checked out your video, and you mentioned something that piqued my interest… You said that christians believe that after they die they will be raised when Jesus returns… most christians i’ve talked to believe that when they die they don’t *really* die, but instead go to heaven (either the soul, or the entire body)… thoughts?
-Dave
The following was my response to Dave:
I do have some thoughts on your question.
I believe that at death the soul will go to heaven or hell. At Christ’s return, the soul is reunited with our raised bodies, and then the soul together with the body goes to heaven or hell. Everyone alive at the time of Christ’s return goes bodily with soul to heaven or hell.
Passages in the Bible to support this view are Daniel 12:1-3 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. The Daniel passage makes it clear that the dead will ALL be raised then judged. That’s how Jesus makes it sound in Matthew 24-25 also. The 1 Thessalonians passage is harder to interpret this way, because Paul talks about those who are alive at Christ’s return not preceding those who have already died. They expected Christ to return at any moment, as I think we should also expect, so with that in mind, being the first generation after Christ they were concerned that those who died before Christ’s return would miss the boat all together. That’s simply not the case. In fact, they are with Christ now in spirit, but we will all go with Christ in body together.
I think Jesus telling the thief on the cross that he’d be with him TODAY in paradise points to the fact that the spirit goes to heaven at death. Paul’s letters also indicate that he thought that when he died he’d be with Christ right then! He struggled being in prison and persecuted – he knew that if just died he’d be with God, but that if he kept living, he could share the Gospel more and more to bring others to salvation, which was worth it despite his momentary pain. Also, in Revelation there is indication of souls who had already departed being in heaven.
There is a view that soul’s sleep until the return of Christ, at which point they are awoken and their bodies are raised. This view never has the soul leaving the body. However, Scripture describes death as when the soul is separated from the body (I need to look up this passage), which adds more weight to the teaching that the soul doesn’t sleep but goes to heaven or hell. 1 Peter 3 has a verse that references the spirits in prison, which indicates that souls are in hell NOW.
I think all Christians should believe in a bodily resurrection of ALL people before a final judgment though, regardless of their view on the spirit’s existence from death to Christ’s return! Christ’s resurrection points to our resurrection (Romans 5 and 1 Cor. 15 to name a few).
I hope that helps.
Peace in Christ,
Andy Wrasman
Charles Colson – Against the Night #1 – The Ideas that Brought the New Dark Ages
I started reading the late Charles Colson‘s book Against the Night: Living in the New Dark Ages. This book was written in 1989, and I’m sure Colson would have far more to say if it were written today. He writes about the setting sunset and our entrance into the “new dark ages.” What makes our times dark? It’s moral decay! We’ve lost the fundamental truths upon which absolute morality is established. The age of relativism is bringing down Western society as we know it.
In the first chapter of my soon to be published book, Contradict – They Can’t All Be True, I address this same problem, but my focus is on religious pluralism more so than moral relativism, but the two go hand in hand. I trace the origin of this “new dark age” in the West from its religious origins of Hinduism’s influence on Western culture from the transcendentalist movement that began in 19th century through authors such as Whitman, Emerson, and Thoreau. Colson begins earlier in 1610 with the French philosopher Rene Descartes. Descartes came to the conclusion that the one thing he knew was certain was the fact that he doubted. He could not doubt that he doubted, which led to his classic statement, “I think, therefore I am.”
Colson sees this teaching as the root of our current age of moral decline and loss of truth:
Descartes’s now-famous postulate led to a whole new premise for philosophic thought: man, rather than God, became the fixed point around which everything else revolved; human reason became the foundation upon which a structure of knowledge could be built; and doubt became the highest intellectual virtue. … Men and women could not order their lives according to what they could see for themselves through reason, and the fetters of faith and tradition fell away. … For centuries people had established their moral standards according to the discerned will of God or by appealing to Aristotelian concepts of virtue. Now Enlightened thinkers sought to root morality not within a transcendent authority or classical conceptions of virtue, but within the mind and heart of man. Moral judgments would be measured by what men and women could know or feel for themselves.
I find it interesting that Colson traces the problem back to a philosophy that ultimately strips God from the picture and makes Man the end all, be all of determining reality, and I traced the problem back to a religion that says everything is divine and thus each of us is God! The two go hand in hand. One reached the mind through philosophy and the other spoke to the heart through an Eastern religion that is experiential. The one, two punch combo that has knocked us down. Are we going to get up? Are you we going to fight back? We must reclaim absolute truth, not for ourselves, but for all of mankind who needs a saving relationship with God.
2 Peter 3:9 – “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promises. He is patient! He desires that no one perishes, but that everyone comes to eternal life through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.”
Rockin’ the Contradict T-Shirt
Andy Wrasman 