Various Follow-Up Ideas

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• Thank you very much to everyone who participated in these discussions. I enjoyed getting to know you!

• Let me know if you would like a copy of, or if you would like to discuss the Just for Starters booklet.

• I mentioned that I lead a Bible study on Tuesday evenings.

• You are all welcome to our Sunday morning worship service at 10am (Easter service starts at 9:30am)​

• Below you can find a variety of resources related to some of the topics we discussed each night.

• Shoot me an email if you want to converse about anything.

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Topics Raised on Feb 27

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• My comments about Luke 1:1 - 4 raised the question of the historical accuracy of the Gospels. I mentioned Richard Bauckham's book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. I spoke about the ancient practice of placing the names of your sources at the beginning and end of your account. This is discussed especially in chapter 6 of Bauckham's book.

• Here's another piece of evidence from Bauckham's book. The following is Julian Hardyman's summary of this point, taken from the forward to the book: "In an amazing and original piece of objective research, Bauckham has done the number crunching on the names in the Gospels. And what he has shown is that the names match other documents of the same era and the same location very, very closely. The distribution of names in the Gospels matches the other sources for the same period and the same place almost exactly, something which is very hard to fake. And would be actually very hard to fake -- almost impossible-- if it was written a long time after the witnesses and didn't have the same access to them." In other words, male names such as Simon, Joseph, Lazarus, and Judas, and female names such as Mary, Salome, Martha, and Joanna, are among the most common names both in the New Testament and also in extra-biblical texts and ossuaries (from tombs) from the same time period and location.

• Another good book on the historical accuracy of the gospels is Peter Williams' Can We Trust the Gospels? 

• At this link you can find an hour-long video presenting a Protestant perspective on Purgatory.

• At this link, you can read theologian Randy Alcorn's response to the question: Will there be animals in heaven? I think his strongest argument is his point from Romans 8:18-22.

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Topics Raised on Mar 6

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• ​The meaning of Luke 23:49. The NET Bible translation translates this verse as follows: "And all those who knew Jesus stood at a distance, and the women who had followed him from Galilee saw these things." This translation encourages us to think about this verse in two parts, the first half about Jesus' acquaintances and friends, and the second half about the women. "At a distance" reminds us of Peter following at a distance (Luke 22:54). It makes sense that they would do so in order to protect themselves from being arrested or punished for being followers of Jesus. If Luke is alluding to Psalm 38:11, it could even suggest lack of devotion. Psalm 38:11 reads, "My friends and companions stand aloof from my plague, and my nearest kin stand far off." With regard to the second half of the verse, the key point about the women is their role as eyewitnesses. They are the third set of eyewitnesses in a row (the first two are the centurion and the crowds -- verses 47-48). Notice that the women also function as eyewitnesses to Jesus' burial at Luke 23:55. And then in chapter 24, they are the first eyewitnesses to the empty tomb. There is also reference to some of these women in Luke 8:1-3; Luke is showing us that these women are sincere and persistent in their devotion to Jesus.

• The second video we watched raised the topic of sin. At this link you can read an excellent 20-page essay about sin.

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Topics Raised on Mar 13

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• ​Jesus' coming back to life after his death: There are two sides to this issue: (a) Did it actually happen? The book I mentioned in that regard is N.T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God; and (b) What is its significance? A good book on that topic is Tim Keller's Hope in Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter.

• The meaning of Luke 17:21. The word for "you" in the original language is plural. So it could be translated, "you all." This is why many contemporary English translations render this line: "The kingdom of God is in your midst" or "The kingdom of God is among you" (as compared to the King James Version which reads "within you.")

• More on Luke 17:21: Looking at how this verse has been understood over the centuries, there are two basic options: (a): The kingdom of God is inside of people; or (b): The kingdom of God in the presence of the Pharisees; at this point in the account, Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees, and he is telling them that the reign of God is right there in front of them in the person of the kingdom's king, Jesus himself. There are three reasons that the second option is to be preferred: (i) The group to whom Jesus is speaking (the Pharisees) are the least likely group to have the kingdom inside of them; (ii) Nowhere else in the Gospels is the kingdom regarded as something internal. Jesus speaks of people entering the kingdom, not of the kingdom entering people (see I. Howard Marshall's discussion of this passage). (iii) In the Gospels, the kingdom is often identified with Jesus, such that the coming of Jesus into the world is the same thing as the kingdom coming into the world (Luke 10:9: "The kingdom of God has come near to you." Luke 11:20: "The kingdom of God has come upon you").

• Luke 17:21 in its immediate context: Regarding the phrase, "ways that can be observed" (Luke 17:20), Darrell Bock writes, "[This phrase] alludes to general apocalyptic signs, so prevalent in early Jewish apocalyptic speculation, including the desire to calculate the kingdom's arrival by what is seen... The Pharisees ignore what is happening before their eyes and instead look for signs, thus missing what God is doing through Jesus" (Luke 9:51-24:53, pp 1413-14).

• Luke 17:21 in our modern cultural context: One thing that philosopher Charles Taylor and sociologist Robert Bellah have argued is that a defining feature of contemporary Western culture is the idea that we make our best choices by being true to our own inner feelings and intuitions. If the interpretation of Luke 17:21 comes under the sway of such cultural preferences, then interpretive option (a) (the kingdom of God is inside people) seems intuitive. However, we are, in fact, importing our own culture-bound sensibilities into the passage. For an excellent critique of our culture's excessive exaltation of inner feelings and intuitions, see Tim Keller, Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical, chapter 6 "The Problem of the Self."

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Topics Raised on Mar 20

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• ​The relationship of Christianity to other world religions. At this link, you can listen to an excellent 40-minute talk on the way that, unlike any other religion, Christianity is both exclusive and inclusive at the same time.

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Topics Raised on Mar 27

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• ​Here's my handout about the history of the Bible and the events it describes.

• Here's the handout we looked at about the heart.

• Here's the handout about Jesus seven last sayings on the cross.

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