The Disciples Believed They Saw the Risen Jesus – Part 1
“When I was young, I was reading a book by C. S. Lewis, who wrote that the New Testament says nothing about the Resurrection. I wrote a real big ‘No!’ in the margin. Then I realized what he was saying: nobody was sitting inside the tomb and saw the body start to vibrate, stand up, take the linen wrappings off, fold them, roll back the stone, wow the guards, and leave.” – Gary Habermas[1]
The Swoon Theory: Could Jesus Have Survived the Cross?
While there is strong historical documentation that Jesus died by crucifixion, some still wonder if Jesus only appeared to die and all the sources got it wrong. What if Jesus merely fainted (or “swooned”) on the cross and the soldiers mistook Him as dead? What if Jesus then resuscitated in the tomb, escaped, and convinced His disciples that He had been resurrected from the dead?
The Historical Basis for Jesus’ Death by Crucifixion
In recent years, doubt concerning the historicity of Jesus’ life and death has increased among the general populace. In 2015, the Barna Group and ComRes found that “four in 10 (40%) of all adults in England either don’t believe or aren’t sure, that Jesus was a real person who lived on earth. Among younger adults the percentage grew to 46%.
The Holy Spirit is our Comforter
“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever” (John 14:16). The word here translated “advocate” is the Greek word parakletos. The word combines two other Greek words, para, meaning “alongside,” and kletos, meaning “one who is called to stand alongside another.” R.A. Torrey…
The Holy Spirit Acts as a Person
In a previous article we looked at three characteristics of personality displayed by the Holy Spirit—knowledge, will and emotion. These are characteristics of a person, not an inanimate object. Is The Holy Spirit a person? Now we will show how the Holy Spirit’s actions also indicate personality. As Charles Ryrie says, “Actions are attributed to…
The Holy Spirit Displays the Characteristics of Personality
“It is a fundamental revelation of Scripture that the Holy Spirit is a person in the same sense that God the Father is a person and the Lord Jesus Christ is a person. The Holy Spirit is presented in Scripture as having the same essential deity as the Father and the Son and is to be worshipped and adored, loved and obeyed in the same way as God.”[1] Personality, John Walvoord explains, “is commonly defined as containing the essential elements of intellect, sensibility, and will.”[2] We shall briefly look at each of those elements.
The Holy Spirit: Not a “Thing” but a Person
In the Introduction to her book Jesus in Me, Anne Graham Lotz says, “I’ve heard the Holy Spirit spoken of as an ‘it,’ a feeling, a dove, a flame, a ghost, an emotion, or even an ecstatic experience…. The Holy Spirit is not a thing but a person.”[1] Not only that, we learn from Scripture…
Introduction to the Holy Spirit
In his excellent book Forgotten God, Francis Chan makes this statement: “As I thought about this chapter, I realized how ludicrous it would be for anyone to say they were going to explain the Holy Spirit. The Bible says we cannot fully understand God, and I am certainly not the exception to that rule. There are things about God that are mysterious and secret, things we will never know about Him. But there also are things revealed, and those belong to us…
Miracles of New Age “Energetic Medicine” – Part 2
Warning: Energetic Medicine May Be Hazardous to Your Spiritual Health As I pondered what I had read in these books by Chopra, Weil, Siegel, and other similar thinkers [See Part 1], my mind—instead of “attuning” to these ideas—raised many red flags. For example, if we are really a part of the divine (as Siegel indicates),…
Miracles of New Age “Energetic Medicine” – Part 1
I recently came across an article in a magazine about a person who pulled a ligament in his foot during a workout. It caused pain throughout his entire leg. With strained effort, he made his way to an orthopedist, who subsequently informed him he might require some serious surgery—and it might take a long time…
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