God Never Stopped Speaking

The impossibility of God ever ceasing to speak, and the consequences were He to do so

Burning Cultural Bridges? Repentance and Paul in Athens, Acts 17:22-31

Paul’s speech to the rulers of Athens in the Areopagus was a long exercise in deliberate irony, first building and then promptly burning cultural bridges. Paul did this to show them the folly of their deliberate ignorance of the true God.

Repentance and Earthly Consequences: the Consequences of David’s Sins–including Jesus

Though God forgave David his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah, this sin had a traceable chain of earthly consequences which extends to the present and which includes the death of Christ on the cross.

Adam and Eve–Idolatry in the Fall

When the first humans, who already knew all good, chose to disobey God and experience evil, they initiated every kind of idolatry known to later generations. This included worship of created things, of themselves, their own wisdom and their own desires, of their bodies, and, most importantly, of a false picture of the true God as miserly and hostile toward us.

Some Other Issues Affected by the Question of Whether and How God Speaks

The question whether God still speaks impacts a number of other issues, ranging from the nature of a believer’s relationship with God, to the miraculous, to church offices and authority.

Introduction to the Word and Voice of God

This post is the beginning of my attempt to focus on the question of how God speaks (or permits Himself to speak) to us today. It presents a summary of the various positions commonly held, from which discussion will proceed in later posts.

About Jesus in the Earliest Christianity

This post is a detailed index of what the earliest Christian churches appear to have understood, this time about the Person of Jesus. Most of these ideas were later distorted, leading to divisions in the Church and historical consequences in the world. Further links to this outline will be added as new articles are written.

The Departure of Organized Christianity from its Roots, Second through Sixth Centuries CE

This is an outline of the second part of my attempt to link early errors of organized Christianity to the state of the modern world–specifically, in this part, by showing the origins and entrance of specific errors before Muhammad which profoundly affected subsequent history. Links will be added as future posts are written.

THE VOICE OF GOD (GOD SPEAKING TO US) OUTLINE

This is the index to a series of posts on the voice, words and Word of God, the centrality of God’s voice to everything, and the argument that God both still speaks and still speaks to us, Links will be filled into the outline as future posts are written.

The Bad Example of Cain

Cain’s underlying sin was his arrogant insistence that he could come to God on his own terms. This is the “way of Cain” of which Jude speaks—self-sufficiency, insisting on coming to God on one’s own terms, murderous jealousy of those who truly seek God and are accepted by him, and “repentance” only of the consequences of these sins and not of the sins themselves. It all starts with an attitude of self-sufficiency.

From Early Christianity to Islam and Back–2. Negative Developments in Christianity Before Muhammad

Between the end of the First Century CE and the end of the Sixth Century, Christianity grew but also deteriorated in a number of ways. The deterioration arose mainly from the infiltration of Greek philosophy, a change in emphasis to mass evangelism and the politicization of Christianity, followed by the questionable conversion of Constantine. These changes set up many of the specific parts of Christianity that Islam either adopted, or reacted strongly against. They also set up mucj of later European history.