Category: Religion and Philosophy

This is where I give voice to my views about the meaning of life. If you are someone who doesn’t think someone should share their views on God, salvation, etc, then you’ll most likely be dreadfully offended by looking in this category – enjoy!

Response to Ian’s challenge: “The accounts of these things happening to Jesus are no more than copycat stories of mythological prior accounts found in Egyptian, Syrian, Greek, Babylonian and Mesopotamian sources.”

“On the other hand there is more than adequate evidence from pre-Christian religions of exactly the same things that supposedly happened to Jesus. Scourging, whipping, suffering and crucifixion feature in these pre-Christian religions.

Conclusion: the accounts of these things happening to Jesus are no more than copycat stories of mythological prior accounts found in Egyptian, Syrian, Greek, Babylonian and Mesopotamian sources.

Of course, in that case, the gospels’ accounts are also mythological, not real historical ones which were completely misunderstood and misrepresented by the early Roman church. Another one of their historical blunders. Think about that this Easter.”

  • Ian on Quora

Introduction

What you are describing is no problem to Christian theology, Ian, and I would like you to read from my message to you now exactly how we account for these things, as of course it is a perfectly reasonable point, but thankfully one we have a very satisfactory answer to. I say “satisfactory”, meaning that those who want to believe will be satisfied by it, and those who want to disbelieve, well, they’ll obviously find holes to pick in it. I ask you to try to be open-minded.

The idea of “typology” in Christian apologetics

Here goes. We include in our theology something called typology. We see so-called “types” of Christ in the Old Testament. Jesus Himself gives an example of one when he tells us the brazen serpent in the wilderness was Him. In another case he states that Jonah prefigures Him, His use of Psalms indicate that in many respoects the life and sayings of David prefigure Him.  Look and Live: Christ as the True Bronze Serpent will give you more on that, including the scriptural references, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typology_(theology) contains more information from a not specifically Christian viewpoint about this idea in Christian theology. It’s an important idea and until you get to grips with it, you haven’t done justice to the claims of our faith on your heart.

We see clear types of Christ in numerous pagan religions, and if Christ demonstrates Himslein a brazen serpent then He can also be represented in a number of pre-Christian religions. What we notice is that that around the world as missions went into the field, they found many Christ figures, sons of God, who died for us, various sacrificial animals especially lambs, When they realised that these were forfigurings of the person and work of Jesus as shown in the New Testament, they readily exchanged their former belief systems for these. Nobody believes right now in Hercules or Osiris or various Norse deities that claimed to be sons of Gods.

The God who winks?

In Acts 17 we see from verse 15 onwards an account of St Paul’s arrival in Athen’s and his sermon to the Athenians from Mars’ Hill. He told them that their altar to the Unknown God wasn’t a different God that they worshipped, but the true God, only worshipped ignorantly. Today we might make the same Pauline comment to Muslims who state that the 100th Name of God is unknown to men. The Bahai’s already tried to claim this but we know that it is of course Jesus. The summary to Mankind of all that God is, in very human flesh.

I recommend you to read the whole passage but in particular please note these verses:

v30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:

v31 Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

 

We see God being willing to “wink” or overlook ignorance, but now a day is appointed for the judgement of the workld, and we know from Jesus’ own lips that this day will only come when every tribe and nation has heard the true gospel of His sacrifice on our behalf, and each nation which has never heard the gospel is no longer limited to the hints of the way of salvation that the human conscience and the types scattered across the world’s native cultures can have given them.

Once we have properly heard the Gospel, there is no more excuse for ignorance, there is no more winking by God, no more “hyperidōn” as the Greek puts it, no more overlooking the fact that an idol was worshipped and instead gracious imputation of the worship of Christ as it was with the bronze serpent in the wilderness.  We now have the full Acts 4;12 scenario: “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” than solely in the name of Jesus Christ.

They want to place Christ in a no-win situation

But we are left between a rock and a hard place with atheists. When they hear that we preach those without Jesus are going to hell, they say “how unfair on those who lived in the past before the gospel reached them or before Jesus lived”. But when we show the myriad of these types of Christ, these brazen serpents, to whom the elect persons of all ages could look and live as they were deemed to be reacting toe the Gospel, had they encountered it, then atheists say “you see, there’s nothing original about Christ, all He is is a hodgepodge of pre-Christian religions!”.

Please give this your heartfelt consideration.

I want you to be ready

There are wars increasing around us, new plagues, famine is coming, awful plans by people whom we are paying taxes to be trustworthy, yet they merely work out the agenda of the demons who possess them, often fully convinced they are doing humanity a great service, and completely unaware of the lethal tools of Satan that they are. If I did no know that Jesus is victor, I would be walking around with a cold feeling of fear in the pit of my stomach, a feeling many know today and need to know that Jesus is the answer.

Sooner than we know, history comes to a conclusion, Jesus returns in glory and power. As He does so, there are all over the world groups of people working in offices and factories together, or asleep in the same houses – one is taken, others are left, to their destruction and endless regret. They see Him, but the age of grace is over. The call to repentance and faith which we proclaim today then no longer maintains its validity. This age is soon gone, whether by your own death or the end of the entire world, which rolls nearer and nearer with Newtonian acceleration.

I want you to be ready.

Vladimir Khailo at Wem Baptist Church

01 March 2022

Original YT playout date: 23 September 2010
Duration: 1:20:45

A response to militant atheists who think it’s ok to fight religion by any means

 

The Amazing Atheist, an extreme anti-religious commentator on You Tube at the time this was originally

Vladimir and Maria Khailo during that trip to the UK.

posted, says that violence is sometimes the answer. Well, the recording in this video I’m appending is of Vladimir Khailo, a leader of the Independent (ie. unregistered with the state) Baptist Church in the Ukrainian SSR during the 1980s. Someone who knows all about what happened when the atheist regime of the Soviet Union decided to try to “heal” belief by the use of neuroleptic drugs and other psychological “treatments” – he was one of the more famous of their guinea pigs among the leaders of the persecuted Baptist Church. What happened to him and thousands more was violence perpetrated by a savagely zealous atheist state disguised and dressed up as medicine and social intervention.

A harrowing account

 

This is his harrowing story, well worth the listening. The guy in the high pitched voice translating for him was me. Thirty four years ago, I was his translator when he got out of the Soviet Union. This he obtained at the personal request to Gorbachev by Sakharov. One of the first things he did when he was freed was to come to Britain and thank the British churches for sticking up for him and remembering him when he was going through that hell. I had the great privilege of spending ten days in the company of this strong Christian leader who had faced the nastiest, cruellest things that communism had threatened believers with. Witness in his own skin to some of the worst systematic abuses perpetrated outside of wartime by a country on faultless citizens.

Everything changes, but anything can happen again

OK, in Russia, this tribulation pretty much stopped 34 years ago and the prayers of the church were answered. These days it is going strong in other parts of the world. And as long as atheists in America and other parts of the free world believe that violence is the answer, we can never be sure that it won’t be us in Vladimir’s position 34 years from now. Once again is it likely to be violence done to us in the guise of a moral State healing and having an ethical explanation for every piece of violence it will do to the believers.

Here we go again?

I am preparing this post on the day when Russia invaded Khailo’s country again, so we simply do not know what sorts of things now lie ahead for Ukrainians, including the believers of that country.  It looks like it is set to be a long conflict. And while this time it is not specifically Christians who are on the receiving end of the persecution, there are going to be the usual horrible effects that always happen when people place their political ideas above the Gospel truths of God.

Church details here: http://www.wembaptistchurch.co.uk/howtofindus.htm”
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My betta fish is making a bubble nest, but I have no other fish, he’s the only one. Why is he making it?

He doesn’t know that he is in captivity. He doesn’t know you don’t have any intention of giving him a female. He only wants to be ready if one turns up.

Either he has worked out that he depends on you for everything, and his internal monologue is as follows:

“This big monkey gives me my food, fresh water and everything else, so when he sees I am ready to breed, he will also provide the female”.

Or else he has gone through a kind of utilitarian monologue in his brain, saying to himself:

“The existence of a desire for something predicts that it exists. I desire food when I am hungry and food comes. I desire for there to be an existence of God, and then God comes to me in my dreams. Now I desire the existence of something else, I don’t know what it is yet, but I know it must be something to do with that thing up there I got strangely driven to build out of my sticky saliva, and air. And when the thing that it is for comes along, I’ll know what it is.”

 

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I am a Hindu girl but my boyfriend is Muslim, he keeps complaining about my clothes that they are too modern and I should wear hijab whenever I meet him. He says that I should not show my face to other boys it is a sin. What should I do?

I am a Hindu girl but my boyfriend is Muslim, he keeps complaining about my clothes that they are too modern and I should wear hijab whenever I meet him. He says that I should not show my face to other boys it is a sin. What should I do?

He seems to be picking and choosing what bits of his religion apply to him. He ought not to be marrying a non-Muslim girl and he ought not to be dating without any intention to marry.

Mixed-faith romance often ends in tears.

If he is so concerned about the issues of haram and halal, then he should be consistent and choose a jeevan sathi who shares his deen.

I think if you are wise you will marry someone who shares your cultural and philosophical outlook. If he cannot find the integrity to be consistent and end the relation with you, you can help him out.

One Muslim reader then replied:

The Hindu girl should think twice if they want to continue their relation. If she is really interested in marrying a Muslim she should immediately convert to Islam. Let her future husband lead and guide her.

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Walking Through Hradcany – My Prague Vlog # 37 – discussion of office of Pope

Original YT playout date: 29 August 2010
Duration: 23:40

I walk back from a meeting via Hradcany. You can actually get on foot much more directly than by transport, although it is rather steep. Here I get drawn by myself into a theological discussion of what is meant by the Rock on which Christ tells Peter that He would build his Church. I also get caught in the rain.
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