The Message of the Wise Men

A lot has been made of the wise men who visited Jesus very early in his life, and it seems that most folks are interested in knowing who they are or where they came from, why they brought gifts, what the star they followed actually was, etc. These are all interesting questions, but I want to look at something else. (By the way, fast facts on the wise men: we don’t know how many, we don’t know from where, and there’s nothing which says they were kings.)

I want to focus on the fact that they were not Israelites. What in the world were they doing there? Why did Matthew include them in his gospel? Most of Jesus’ interactions in this gospel were with other Jews, so it seems important when these foreigners are mentioned so prominently.

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Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible

Here’s a lengthy essay I wrote on this topic: link.

For the tl;dr crowd, here’s the conclusion: both the Old and New Testaments provide certain grounds for a valid divorce, which includes the option of remarriage. Divorce outside of these grounds is forbidden to Christians, and Christians are always encouraged to maintain the marriage.

I welcome comments! Corrections, agreements, disagreements, what-about-this observations, etc.

Born guilty?

Are all human beings really born guilty? Lots of people think so. Theologians, scholars, and preachers have been writing and speaking on this topic for over a thousand years.

There are some serious consequences of this doctrine, and I wonder if they have really been thought through. Perhaps the idea has been around so long that it has become another one of doctrines that we just assume is true, then look around for proof.

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Testing Prophets

Dr. Michael Brown has issued a call to test contemporary prophets, saying that recent prophecies about the COVID-19 pandemic form a perfect test case. Dr. Brown suggests that we can wait until mid-April and see if what two particular prophets predict comes to pass, and then we’ll know whether they (and prophecy in general) are legitimate.

Ordinarily I would agree with Dr. Brown that this is an interesting test case, but why wait? Why not test the prophets with what they’ve said already? Here is a sampling of items I found on the subject of this pandemic. The following is not an exhaustive list; there’s a lot of content out there on this subject, so material is not lacking.

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