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But perhaps no ancient planetary grouping can be as striking as that of the two most lustrous planets Venus and Jupiter for the explanation that we seek. And if we hold the only identified story of the Star of Bethlehem literally, as given in St. Matthew, then what we actually necessitate is the appearance of not only one, but two “stars.” The opening appearance would have been envisioned well in advance of the Magis reaching in Bethlehem, and the other at the close of their long journey.

In Hellenistic star divination, Jupiter was the king planet and Regulus (in the constellation Leo) was the king star. As they moved around from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, the star “went before” the magi and then “stood over” the place where Jesus was. In astrological renderings, these phrases are supposed to refer to reversed motion and to stationing, i.e., Jupiter come out to reverse course for a time, then halted, and finally resumed its normal advancement. In 3-2 BC, there was a series of seven junctions, including three between Jupiter and Regulus and a strikingly conjunction between Jupiter and Venus Regulus on June 17, 2 BC. “The merger of two planets would have been a wonderful and awe-inspiring event” – according to numerous astronomers.

Others have purported a link between a double occultation of Jupiter by the moon in 6 BC in Aries and the Star of Bethlehem, especially the second occultation on April 17. This issue was quite nearby to the sun and would have been trying to note, even with a small telescope, which had not yet been formulated. Occultations of planets by the moon are quite usual, but an astrologer to Roman Emperor Constantine wrote that an occultation of Jupiter in Aries was a signaling of the birth of a divine king.

“When the purple star of Zeus, the planet Jupiter, was in the east this was the most strong time to confer kingships. What Is More, the Sun was in Aries where it is noble. And the Moon was in very close conjunction with Jupiter in Aries.”

Was the Star of Bethlehem a meteor or comet? Maybe the first thought put forward was that it was an remarkably bright fireball meteor seen streaking toward the visible horizon. But as virtually skywatchers know, such an object can be viewed to flash across the sky in a bare matter of seconds barely long enough to lead the Magi halfway across the Orient to the little town of Bethlehem. So we can confidently dismiss this concept.

Not so easily disregarded, however, is the hypothesis that the Star was a bright comet. Comets can remain visible to the unaided eye for weeks either in the predawn sky or at dusk. It is not unattainable to consider that a comet with a bright star-like head and long exquisite tail pointing like some cosmic finger toward the skyline could have drawn the Magi to Bethlehem.

The famous Halley’s Comet, last seen in early 1986, also burst out in the sky during August and September in the year 11 BC. However, most agencies dismiss it due to the poor time correspondence. Although it appears unbelievable that another great comet could have come along nearer to the given time frame of the Stars appearance and went unrecorded, we can never really be sure.

Besides, comets were viewed as portends of evil, such as hail storms and famine as well as the fatality not the birth of kings and monarchs. The Romans, in ensuring the death of the Roman General Agrippa, for example, used the 11 BC manifestation of Halley’s Comet as a benchmark. With this in mind, comets would seem to be faulty as the heavenly sign that would signal the descending of a newborn king.

We get a lot of questions about what happened to the Russian Church after the revolution of 1917 and what religious life was like during the Communist regime in Russia.

As we know, in 1914 Russia had 55 173 Russian Orthodox churches and 29 593 chapels, 112 629 priests and deacons, 550 monasteries and 475 nunneries with a total of 95 259 inhabitants.

As the twentieth century approached, Russia could boast the largest single national Church in the world.

Although freedom of religious expression was formally declared by one of the first decrees of the revolutionary government in January 1918, both the Church and its followers were heavily persecuted and deeply disadvantaged. Prior to the Russian Revolution, there were some 54 000 functioning parishes and over 150 bishops. There were soon bloody and cruel killings of bishops and priests, and massacres of believers during the Red Terror and the following years of repressions were shocking. These persecutions were even greater than the persecutions of the Ancient Christian Church both in the number of holy martyrs and the cruelty and ingenuity of the persecutors.

Many religious hierarchs fled Russia during the revolution and the civil war that followed. They contributed to the spread of the Orthodox Church in many countries. However, some hierarchs even formed their own organization that became known as the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. They split away from the Russian Church. During the 1920-30s, most church buildings were blown up, burned or converted into secular buildings; over 50 thousand priests were either executed or sent to labor camps.
By 1939, there were less than 100 functioning parishes and only four bishops.

During World War II, the religious persecution in Soviet Union became less pronounced, in part due to cooperation of the Church with the state on national defense issues. Years 1944-45 saw the reopening of the Moscow Theological Academy and Seminary that had been closed since 1918. After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, relations between the Church and the state started to deteriorate again. Until Perestroika, public expression of religious beliefs – Christian or otherwise – was frowned upon; known churchgoers were deprived of some social rights, they could not become members of the Communist Party, which in turn, severely limited their career opportunities and many lost their jobs and any privileges. All Soviet university students were required to take courses in so-called “Scientific Atheism”.

Cathedral of Christ the Savior was blown up in 1931 and turned into a heated open-air pool. Restoration was started in 1995.

Some priests of the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as other churches in the Soviet Union were secretly employed by the KGB for the government to discover who was a Church member. Despite the dangers, large numbers of people remained openly or secretly religious. In 1987 in the Russian Federation between 40% and 50% of newborn babies were baptized, and over 60% of all the deceased received Christian funeral services.

A pivotal moment in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church came in 1988 – the millennium of the Baptism of Russia. It appears now that the government had realized the fruitlessness of its efforts in its war against religion and instead tried to use religion to gain the support of the people.

Throughout the summer of 1988, major government-supported celebrations took place in Moscow and other cities and many churches and some monasteries were reopened. An implicit ban against religious propaganda on state TV was finally lifted. For the first time in the history of the Soviet Union, people could use their TVs to see live transmissions of services from central churches.

Today, the Russian Orthodox Church is the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world. Over 90% of ethnic Russians identify themselves as Russian Orthodox. The number of people regularly attending church services is considerably lower, but growing every year. The Church has over 23,000 parishes, 154 bishops, 635 monasteries, and 102 clerical schools.

Anastasia Dukhnina
M&M Art Travel
Find more about Russian history and culture at http://www.mmarttravel.com

Today on our CNN News Alerts we learn that the Roman Catholic Church in Dublin has admitted to having sexual predator priests and that this has been going on since 1940. Of course it has been going on for 1000’s of years but those pedophiles are dead now, where they belong.

The CNN News Alert stated; “Roman Catholic archdiocese of Dublin report says 102 priests are suspected of sexually or physically abusing at least 350 children since 1940, The Associated Press reports.”

My question is why are they only admitting to a fraction of the number of abused and sexually molested children when we all know that the number is probably five to ten times as high as reported. This would mean 1020 Pedophile Priests and over 3500 children raped, molested and sexually assaulted since 1940 in Dublin alone.

We need to close down the Roman Catholic Church as they are not above the law. We must close the church and make it against the law. And while we are at it we may as well get rid of all religion because there has been nothing but wars and mind control over the masses they purport to serve for over 8,000 years. This is the year 2006 and surely we can do better than this.

“Lance Winslow” – Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

The American theologian Horace Bushnell also played a vital role in the advancement of liberal theology. Bushnell’s liberalism included historical tradition and took into account the emotional nature of religion. He espoused the supernatural character of personality and the immanence of God in personality. By means of preaching, teaching, writing and personal practice, Bushnell attempted to divert man away from dogmas and to seek satisfaction and security in experience. In his book, Religion in America, Hudson pointed out:

…the real key to the influence of Bushnell upon his contemporaries was his success in fashioning a definitely Christocentric theology that was based upon Christian experience rather than upon any external dogmatic authority. Thus the believer was no longer under compulsion to find his security in biblical proof texts. He could not accept the conclusions of biblical scholars with relative equanimity and appropriate the results of other scientific investigations without great difficulty because his faith was validated by the inward testimony of the heart…Bushnell found a freedom denied to those who felt compelled to meet a rationalistic assault with a purely rationalistic defense.

By acknowledging Christ as the center and goal of history, Bushnell helped move man away from an arid rationalism to the Christ; away from a mechanical view associated with theology to the natural and the human; away from dependence upon external authorities to the Divine authority. Certainly, Bushnell could be considered a good friend to orthodoxy.

The leaders in the Romanticist movement, including Rousseau in France and Shelley in England, were intensely interested in religion. Its later period of “phasing out” must not blind us to the relative worth of its earlier contributions, among the main of which was its strong belief that the intellect was not the only road to truth.

The modernist phase of theological liberalism is marked by the significance of historical time and an emphasis upon the notion of progress. A representative personification of this mode of liberal theology can be found in the German Protestant theologian Friedrich Schleirmacher. Commonly referred to as the “father of modern theology,” Schleirmacher developed a constructive empirical method of religious inquiry that was both descriptive and historical. Religion to him was an inner experience separated and independent from science, morality, knowledge and philosophy. He considered the essence of religion to be a personal “feeling” of absolute dependence on the universe (God). Authority was not to be found in scriptures, creeds, churches or dogmas, but rooted in the heart of the believer. Schleirmacher adamantly maintained that the great debates over proofs of God, the authority of Scriptures, miracles, and the like, were all on the outside boarder of religion. The heart of religion was and always had been “feeling” as opposed to rational proofs and discussions. According to Schleirmacher, God to the religious man was an experience; a living reality.

Although Schleirmacher’s theology seem to possess certain pantheistic touches, his reinterpretation of the Christian religion nevertheless, provided succeeding generations of theologians with a reasonable alternative to orthodoxy. He opened the door to a vast universe beyond absolutes and rationalism; to an exploratory realm beyond the Bible.

Well, if Schleirmacher was the “father of modern theology” then Rauschenbusch was the “father of the Social Gospel.” The social gospel was a movement that attempted to utilize, in the spirit of Christ, the material thrown up by the social sciences for the building of the kingdom of God. Rauschenbusch seemed to integrate all the major elements of the liberal tradition. He emphasized the unity between God and humanity and thereby saw the working of God in and through the working of humanity. His emphasis was society’s impact on Christianity and the regeneration of man. Rauschenbusch was concerned with the social welfare of the sinner and felt that this was an issue that was not forcefully addressed by the church. He continually emphasized the deep need for dealing with the issue of social justice. And although the Social Gospel looked upon scientific contributions with favor, it did not and does not relinquish its firm grip on the fact that no permanent salvation is possible without the creation of a new spirit.

The decisive events stimulating liberal interest were the Industrial revolution and the explosion of the sciences. Following the general acceptance of Darwins’s evolutionary theory, historical interest reached higher plateaus which gave rise to a concern with development of new forms of various fields. Science gave impetus to a new drive toward modernization and a seemingly vehement stressing of the primacy of the present. Christian doctrine was transformed into Starbuck’s “Psychology of Religion” or William James’ “The Varieties of Religious Experience” or Leuba’s “Psychological Study of Religion,” or the like. William Sumner’s “folkways,” a sociological study of human behavior which emphasized the social aspect of religion, rejected ideas of the absolute and the eternal. Consequently, modernists sought to consolidate religious thought with scientific knowledge. The authority of the Bible in theology began to wane as philosophy and various sciences assumed ascendancy in the interpretation of religion.

One of the best known advocates for Protestant liveral theology was Harry Emerson Fosdick. He devoted his entire career as a preacher, professor and author to the conflict between religion and science. Fosdick’s theological viewpoints focused primarily on four major ideas and were described by Ferm in his “Tribute to Harry Emerson Fosdick.” He stated that Fosdick:

1) Attempted to express the abiding truths of the Christian faith in the changing categories appropriate to the modern world. 2) Stressed the importance of reason in faith. 3) Grounded his faith in personal and social experiences. 4) Appreciated, accepted and utilized the scientific method of inquiry. Felt very strongly that science had its place and that the task of theology was interpreting the Christian message in light of scientific knowledge.

(continued in Part 3)

Rev. Saundra L. Washington, D.D., is an ordained clergywoman, veteran social worker, and Founder of AMEN Ministries. She is also the author of two coffee table books: Room Beneath the Snow: Poems that Preach and Negative Disturbances: Homilies that Teach which can be reviewed on her site. Her new book, Out of Deep Waters: My Grief Management Workbook, is expected to be available in July.

You are welcome to visit AMEN Ministries: Your Soul’s Service Station for spiritual refreshing, soul edification or to browse our newly expanded mini shopping mall.

Blessings to all!

As you will see in the Scripture verses I will list in this article, God the Father places an extremely high value on the pursuit of knowledge – especially spiritual knowledge. He says that gaining knowledge is greater than all the silver, gold and material things of this world.

The Bible tells us we have to grow in the knowledge of God. Once you get saved – that is just the beginning. From there, God expects you to grow in the knowledge of Him, His Son Jesus Christ, His Holy Spirit and all of Their ways. As I mentioned in the article I did titled “The Power of the Word of God” – the number one way that you grow in spiritual knowledge on this earth is by reading and studying the Bible for yourself. There is no other way.

God has arranged to have all of the spiritual knowledge that we will ever need about Him, His Son and His Spirit to all be contained in this one Book. You also grow in the knowledge of God through your own personal adventures that you have with Him in your own daily walk, along with learning from other Christians – especially those who are anointed and gifted to teach from His Word.

Once again, God uses some very intense language in these verses. You can really tell that He is trying to let all of us know the extreme importance of growing in this knowledge. The reason for this is that God’s ultimate aim for us is our sanctification and transformation. He wants us to become more holy like Himself.

However, before God will allow this sanctification process to really kick into full gear through the Holy Spirit – He wants you to fully understand exactly what He is doing and why He is doing it. In other words – you have to have the knowledge as to what God is doing and exactly why He is doing it.

Even small children will pick up on this principle very quickly. Tell a child that he is not to do something – and what is the first thing he will do? He will ask you why he can’t do that particular thing. And then if the child is old enough to understand what that reason is – you then proceed to tell him why it is not in his best interest to do that particular thing. In other words – you are giving your child the knowledge that he needs to have so he knows why he should or should not do something specific.

It’s the exact same way with God the Father. God loves to transmit knowledge to His children across the board on anything that they may need His knowledge on in this life – but what prevents many of His children from receiving this knowledge directly from Him is that they have never been taught how to hear from Him when He does start to try and communicate with them or they do not press in and enter into a seeking mode with Him to get Him to release this knowledge to them.

If there is one major secret I have learned from the Lord on getting Him to release more of His knowledge to you – is that you have to go into a seeking mode with Him. God will not spoon-feed you forever. The Bible says to ask – and then you will receive. Seek – and then you will find. Knock – and then the door will open be open to you. Notice in all three of those conditions that you have to be the one to initiate it. You have to be the one to ask, to seek and to knock. If you do – then God will answer you, open doors for you and let you find the answers to your questions and problems.

King David tells us that we have to meditate on the word of God. To meditate does not mean to blank your mind out waiting for God to talk to you. Meditate means to think about, to chew on, to try and figure out what specific Scripture verses mean and how they specifically apply to your life.

What I have personally found out is that the Holy Spirit will literally guide your thoughts into the revelation that you are seeking after as you are trying to figure out what the answers are. In other words – you will find the knowledge you are needing as you are seeking after it. The Holy Spirit can either guide your thoughts into what the correct answers are by you just using some of your brain power to try and figure things out or He will guide you as to where those answers are located at.

You can literally learn how to “pull” knowledge directly from God by going into these seeking modes with Him! As you will see in some of the Scripture verses I will list below – it is the job of the Holy Spirit to guide us and teach us things in this life. In other words – the Holy Spirit is our personal guide and personal teacher in this life. The Holy Spirit can and will communicate to you if you are open to receiving this kind of supernatural communication from Him.

I will be doing a much more in-depth article in the near future on the wide variety of ways that the Holy Spirit will communicate to you – especially in the area of receiving knowledge from Him. But for this article – I just want to give you the main foundational verses from the Bible to let you know that God does want to transmit His knowledge to you across the board on anything that you will need His knowledge on in this life. Not only can God give you all the spiritual knowledge that you will seek after – but He can also give you His knowledge across the board on anything else that you may need His knowledge on in this life.

God can give you His knowledge on how to become better parents for your children, better spouses for your mates, better at whatever specific job or jobs He will be calling you to do. If God is calling you to be a policeman, an attorney, a doctor, a nurse, a stay at home mom, an architect, a laborer, a sports star – He can give you His knowledge in each of those specific areas so as to make you better at each of those jobs. There is absolutely nothing that God cannot give you His knowledge on if you are open to receiving it and are not afraid to start seeking and pressing in after it!

Many, many Christians are missing out on this part in their walk with the Lord. God will supernaturally communicate His knowledge to you – but you first have to realize that He does want to communicate His knowledge to you and then you have to learn how to pick it up and properly read it when He does start to communicate to you. Again – I will go into much more detail on how to really hear from God in another article – but in this article, I want to show to you by the Scripture verses I will list below, that God really does want to impart and transmit knowledge to you.

As you will see in the way that I will present the appropriate Scripture verses on this subject to you – we are dealing with an incredible profound reality – in that God Almighty Himself – a Being with perfect knowledge on all things – is willing to communicate and transmit His knowledge to us through the Holy Spirit – who is literally living on the inside of us! Think about this – that you have the knowledge of God already residing on the inside of you in the Holy Spirit who is already living on the inside of you!

The Scripture verses I will list below will show you the extreme importance that God is placing on each and everyone of us in that we seek to obtain this kind of knowledge from Him. In some of these verses, God is making some very powerful and profound statements. He says:

That we are to GROW in the grace and KNOWLEDGE of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

That His people are literally destroyed and will go into captivity for lack of knowledge.

That gaining His knowledge and wisdom will help you walk safely in this life, help preserve you and help keep you on the right path that He has set up for you to follow in this life.

That gaining knowledge, wisdom and understanding is better than all of the gold, silver and rubies of this world and that it does not even begin to compare to anything else that you may desire in this life! In other words, gaining the knowledge of God in this life is bigger and better than any materialistic thing that you could ever buy, want or desire in this life!

To think that God Himself is making this kind of statement in that acquiring knowledge is more important than anything else that we can acquire in this life is as big and powerful of a statement that He can make about what is really most important in this life!

Notice in the first bullet point above that we are to grow in the knowledge of God. I believe that the main reason God is telling us that gaining knowledge is more important than anything else we can seek after in this life is because we cannot grow in God unless we obtain His knowledge and then seek to implement these truths into our lives and walk with Him.

After you get saved – God then expects you to start to spiritually grow and mature in your walk with Him. You cannot become more holy, more transformed and more sanctified unless you are spiritually growing. And you cannot start to spiritually grow unless you are first seeking after the knowledge that will cause this spiritual growth to occur in the first place!

If you really study the people who are most alive in this life – it is the seekers – it is the people who are constantly learning, constantly trying to improve their knowledge base on whatever it is they are seeking after. It is the knowledge seekers that are making the great discoveries that are changing the course of human history with the discoveries that they have made. And they could not have made those discoveries without first seeking after the knowledge that would eventually lead them to those specific discoveries.

As you will see in some of the profound Scripture verses I will list below – God will make you seek and search after knowledge – much in the same way treasure hunters will search for buried treasure. Talk to any true knowledge seeker – and they will tell you that most of their joy comes from the journey of trying to find the knowledge that they are seeking after. Once the discovery has been made and they have found everything that they may need on a particular subject – then it is off to the next great adventure.

Nothing will stimulate your mind and emotions and make you feel more alive than seeking after the knowledge on something that you may really be interested in and be very passionate about. However, many in our country have become “brain dead” and mentally lazy as a result of becoming couch potatoes by watching too much TV. God has incredible knowledge adventures set up for each and everyone of us if we are willing to get up out of our ruts, step out of our safe boats and start seeking after the things that He wants us seeking after.

Before I go into the Scripture verses on all of this – I will leave you with one last thought.

The knowledge of God is like a treasure chest that has no bottom to it! There is no limit to the amount of knowledge that God can release to you if you are willing to dive into that treasure chest and start seeking after it. Think about this long and hard – that the one and only all powerful and all knowing God of the entire universe is willing and able to transmit His knowledge to you on whatever it is you are wanting His knowledge and wisdom on.

Every single Christian has this incredible treasure chest of knowledge and wisdom literally residing on the inside of them in the person of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is only too anxious and just waiting for you to tap into Him to get this knowledge to start to be released to you!

This incredible knowledge adventure is waiting for each and every Christian who is willing to get off the couch and start using the brain power that the Lord has given to each and everyone of us to start to seek after this kind of knowledge.

Article written by Michael Bradley of Bible Knowledge Ministries. Their website is a resource of Bible commentary and teaching. They currently have over 100 Bible articles. All free of charge.
The article was an excerpt from Michael’s E-book titled, Seeking After the Knowledge of God You can go to their site and download the book free of charge. © 2005 by Michael Bradley. All Rights Reserved.

The newest and best religion of all is the Jeti Religion. And it is going strong as many people abandon the ridiculous ancient fables, folklore and religious hand-me-down crap we know of today as literature and not even good literature. Recently in an online think tank the subject of religion came up and a member stated;

“We can then foresee in the distant future not a abolishment of religion, but a synthesis of higher thought and religion as a highly philosophical, scientific and spiritual form of metaphysical science.”

Indeed we are seeing such an emergence now in the UK and Australia with the Star Wars “Jeti” type religion concept. So you have something here indeed. Now then if you can get rid of all these fundamentalist religions, which blindly follow their genes of past periods into mortal combat, that would be nice.

As civilizations have grown up in the first world and if we use the GDP of the first world nations to limit population growths to the point of collapse then we no longer need human wars. But we must also realize that wars also have helped mankind achieve greater heights in technological advancement, so then we would need to replace human wars with a common cause and to continue their drive and forward progression.

Personally I am of no religion whatsoever and am not interested in signing up for any. If a human needs a religion to help them find “self worth” then perhaps said human has an identity issue with self. In that case a religion of any kind might be a crutch worthy to provide an inner peace or life’s mission. However if one lives a life of falsehood, is that indeed a life experienced well lived?

If one chooses a religion like you have mentioned; indeed it is better than the other tales and folklore of past periods carried on into this present period, but replacing one concept with another; well is that really the solution or are you attempting an “interim” or bridging concept for the human race to allow them to rise up? If so I applaud such efforts, although perhaps there is a way to skip all these steps completely? Consider all this in 2006.

“Lance Winslow” – Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

The stimulus to our thinking

I saw this bumper sticker on the car ahead: “God is too big for just one religion.” This calls for a closer examination.

Of course, in one sense, this statement articulates a great reality. Everyone can admit the truth of the title of J. B. Phillips’s great book, Your God is Too Small. We never envision God as bigger than He really is, only smaller. We regularly underestimate His capacity to love, to empower, or to execute His perfect justice.

Foolish attempts to diminish God

This attempted shrinking of God is not limited to Christians, those whom Jesus sometimes describes as “you with such little faith.” The same thing happens among ex-believers as well. John Shelby Spong, in his attack on biblical Christianity, Why Christianity Must Change or Die (HarperCollins, 1998), praises a theology professor who became an atheist because, he explains, “he felt he could no longer be part of that faith community whose god was too small to be God for him and his world” (xviii). Yet in the name of enlarging our view of God, Spong goes on to deny that God is either omniscient (all-knowing) or omnipotent (all-powerful) (see 4-10). “The God I know,” Spong confides, “is not concrete or specific…. This God can never be enclosed in propositional statements” (4).

Such a god is not the Supreme Being of the Bible. Lacking omniscience and omnipotence, it is not Supreme. In fact it is not even a Being, but an impersonal something like “The Force” of the Star Wars movies that influences us from the Beyond. In the words of John A. T. Robinson, Spong’s theological mentor, “God is, by definition, ultimate reality” (Honest to God [SCM Press, 1963], 29).

Robinson, Spong, and others must see themselves as too intellectually sophisticated to believe in “God the Father, the Almighty.” God’s greatness has dwindles away, as well as His power, His knowledge, and even His personality. Listen to Paul’s commentary of such intellectually motivated, self-imposed exile: “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools…. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator–who is forever praised. Amen” (Romans 1:22a, 25).

Too big for temples

The God that reveals Himself in the Scriptures is much bigger than we conceive Him to be. Nearly 3,000 years ago, Solomon perceived this: “The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain You. How much less this temple I have built?” (1 Kings 8:27). Paul confirmed this view of God in his famous sermon to the philosophers of Athens (Acts 17:24-25):

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And He is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because He himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.

The god we invented?

Although acknowledging God’s infinitude, Paul is already addressing the fallacy underlying in the statement, “God is too big for just one religion.” That fallacy is conceiving of religion, in typical, post-modernist fashion, as a human construct. For religion to be valid–having divine, dynamic power because it transcends the transient and culture-specific and connects us to what is real or rather to Him who is real–it cannot be a human invention, moving from us to Deity. It must instead be a divine provision, moving from Him to us.

Paul then continues in this same trajectory (verses 26-31):

From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. “For in Him we live and move and have our being.” As some of your own poets have said, “We are His offspring.”

Therefore, since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the Divine Being is like gold or silver or stonean image made by man’s design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent. For He has set a day when He will judge the world with justice by the man He has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising Him from the dead.

Boxing God in

God dismisses all human-invented religion as “such ignorance,” and He asserts His universal authority by commanding “all people everywhere” to repent and submit to the One He has raised from the dead. Of course, this refers to Jesus Christ, our Savior and Master.

Those who reject God’s revelation about Himself in the name of making Him bigger inevitably diminish Him. For example, those who seek to impose the cultural value of pluralism on religion suggest that God’s love is too vast to reject equally sincere believers of all faiths. Spong states, “I have surely met holiness in Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, which I am not willing either to deny or to denigrate. So what does ‘God’s only son’ mean to those of us who cannot and will not be bound by the religious prejudices of the past?” (11-12).

To Spong, “holiness” must mean something other than the biblical sense of likeness to the character of Yahweh (see Leviticus 19:2) and moral purity (1 Thessalonians 4:3-8), for his examples are inconsistent with each other in how they exhibit the attribute.

For the Christian, holiness has one source, Jesus Christ Himself. It is not something we achieve through rigorous discipline or ascetic practices. Along with righteousness and redemption, we receive holiness as a gift when we put on Christ (1 Corinthians 1:30-31). Accepting all religions in the name of God’s love eliminates God’s righteousness, His goodness, and His truth. It tells God, “You must become smaller so you can fit into my preconceptions.” But God replies, “I am who I am. I will be what I will be.”

The offensiveness of Christianity

This is a significant part of the offensiveness of the cross, an aspect that modern Christians, sadly, try hard to avoid. We Christians, if we are true to our God and to His religion, are exclusivists. We cannot be obedient to the Master who revealed Himself as the Way, the Truth, and the Life if we deny His claim that “no one comes to the Father but by Me” (John 14:6). Jesus’ claims are exclusive, and His earliest followers understood this clearly. Peter, Paul, and John all agree that their Master is the only salvation available (Acts 4:12, 1 Timothy 2:5-6; and 1 John 2:2).

Exclusive, yet inclusive

Christian exclusivism doesn’t mean we Christians seek to exclude others. Our divine mandate is to “go into all the world and proclaim the Good News to every human being” (Mark 16:15), to “teach all nations” (Matthew 28:19). That’s inclusive, as inclusive as the generous heart of God.

The teachings of Christianity justify its audacious claim on all of humanity. In Christ, for example, racial and cultural distinctions no longer have significance (Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11). Gender roles in Christian marriage involve mutual rights and responsibilities (1 Corinthians 7:2-5; Ephesians 5:21-33). The fruit of the Spirit, growing in each Christian’s heart, is what we need for the “healing of the nations”: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control (Galatians 5:22-23; see Revelation 22:1-3). Christ’s aim is world conquest, though not with the scimitar or the M-1, but with persuasion (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)! These are principles that people of all nations can endorse, and as they put them into practice, they can experience throughout the world the unity that marks God’s blessing.

God desires an intimate relationship with His creatures, but in order for that relationship to be possible, He must change us, first by redemption (saving us from the multi-effects of sin in our lives), then by sanctification (accepting us as bearers of Christ’s holiness, then transforming us by His Spirit in ever-increasing holiness). In other words, He must remake us into His image; we cannot remake Him into ours.

If we resist this work of God in our behalf, we will be excluded, not by His choice, but by ours. True religion–that which comes from God Himself–is big enough to include everyone, everyone, that is, who is willing to be forgiven and transformed.

Want to go deeper?

Here are some resources to aid you in exploring the claim of Christianity to be God’s only way of salvation.

Geivett, R. Douglas. “Is Jesus the Only Way?” 177-205 in Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus. Ed. Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland. Zondervan, 1995.

Jeremias, Joachim. Jesus’ Promise to the Nations. Fortress, 1967.

Nash, Ronald H. Is Jesus the Only Savior? Zondervan, 1994.

Olkholm, Dennis L., and Phillips, Timothy R., eds. More Than One Way? Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World. Zondervan, 1995.

Steve Singleton has written and edited several books and numerous articles on subjects of interest to Bible students. He has taught Greek, Bible, and religious studies courses. He has taught seminars and workshops in 11 states and the Caribbean.

Go to his DeeperStudy.com for Bible study resources, no matter what your level of expertise. Check out “DeeperStudy Bookstore,” and subscribe to “DeeperStudy Blog” or “DeeperStudy Newsletter.”

As we understand the nature of existence and the relation of existence to God, it only follows that we should seek to understand the reason for our existence. For what purpose are we, as individuals, here. The answer is the same for everyone–to seek and fulfill the will of God.

It should first be said that no person is placed on earth to “do” anything. We are not here to win souls, preach the Gospel, to feed the poor, etc. What I mean by this is that works on their own can neither be good nor evil (Rom 14:14). We have to break away from any mentality that would suggest otherwise. No act is good or evil on its own. It is the conditions of the act– and, ultimately, how those conditions relate to the will of God– that gives an act its moral weight. When Adam and Eve received the knowledge of good and evil, man for the first time had the knowledge to judge for himself what is right and what is wrong. However, any act of morality that stems from man is inherently wrong (or, at best, void of quality), no matter how it measures up to the human standard of good and evil. Any act that stems from the will of God is inherently right, because the will of God sets the conditions that truly make any act good or evil. Therefore the standard of good and evil should be disregarded. There is only the will of God as a standard, nothing else. That which departs from the will of God is sin; that which is in alignment with the will of God is righteousness. It is clearly the will of God to win souls, preach the Gospel, feed the poor, etc. We should, therefore, do such, not for the sake of the act, but to do the will of God. There is no other purpose for existence.

It should also be said that the spoken will of God does not depart from that which is written in the Word of God. So then, it should not be said that this is a morally relative point of view. Only that the will of God is absolutely right, and the will of man is absolutely wrong. We must, then, bend our will to His.

Richie Fortenberry is the founder of RF Media Design, a website design company. http://www.rfmediadesign.com

The conservative approach to God and his word has a kind of trinity of truth at the heart of its doctrine. All three parts of this trinity come from the Bible but together they are what can assure us that we have found a true biblical conservatism. It is not always a failsafe and at times may still produce some controversy among the believers, but it is an altogether safer platform from which to start any search for biblical truth and the salvation of God.

The first doctrine in the trinity of truth is found in 2 Peter 3: 16…All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof for correction, for instruction in righteousness: Starting here is to fully recognize the authority, the inspiration and the infallibility of Gods word. This is also the best starting point from which to approach all second coming doctrine.

The second part of the doctrinal trinity comes from 2 Peter 1:20…Knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation: The opposite of private is public. That means there is a public interpretation among the believers. A consensus or a main stream of thought emerges concerning all Bible interpretation the world over. Just one example would be that while some think that antichrist could be only a spirit or some body politic like the UN, the larger body of Christ (the church) worldwide holds that he is just what scripture says he is…a man.

The third part of the doctrinal trinity, answers why the church arrives at generally the same interpretation all over the world. But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you. 1 John 2:27a. The Holy Spirit teaches every believer around the world the same thing, God is not divided against himself. Thus a Spirit taught church says what its Father says, it hears the voice of its Savior, and it doesn’t hear every wind of doctrine. The church doesn’t cuddle up with every doctrinal new kid on the block. If we were to take the time to do the homework we could see that the main body of the church throughout the world comes up with just about the same interpretation of scripture, not counting the liberal church of course. That single Spirit taught, scripture trusting interpretation is what conservative means. If you stick to the conservative side of second coming doctrine you will find yourself outside of the confusing fray and that is exactly where God wants you to be.