Love Truth Blog

Jesus: I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore (Rev. 1:17-18). Crucified. Buried. Empty tomb. Multitudes of witnesses. Changed lives. Christ lives on....He is risen....He is risen indeed! Two millennia ago the heavens and earth were shaken as a new universe emerged from the shambles of the old. Multitudes have since been redeemed and prepared for their resurrection to eternal life. Because He lives I can face tomorrow! ~ WGN

I truly sense there is an unsettling fundamentalism circulating that robs the soul of a capacity to read and understand obvious metaphors. This becomes all too clear when it comes to the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus continually reminded the disciples that He would die and rise again after “three days and three nights” (Matt. 12:40; Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; John 2:19). He made many statements about dying and resurrecting on the “third day” (Matt. 16:21; 17:23; Luke 9:22; 18:33; 24:7, 21, and 46). The Scriptures also indicate that Christ burial took place prior to the start of the Sabbath (Mark 15:42-47; Luke 23:50-56; John 19:31-42), and that the empty tomb was discovered after the Sabbath ended (Matt. 28:1; Mark 16:1) on the first day of the week (Matt. 28:1; Mark. 16:2, 9; Luke 24:1). Here comes then Mr. Fundamentalism on the Left. He will tell me, “Well, there you have it. “Three days and three nights” just does not work, since you never really get 72 hours from Friday evening to...

July 20, 2012 is one of those days when evil rears its ugly head and we are left speechless. The suspect, James Egan Homes, walked into the midnight premiere of the Dark Knight Rises at a theater in Aurora, Colorado, and begins a shooting spree. 12 killed 58 wounded. It is unspeakable to even describe. We can invent words to describe great injustices and tragedies, like “genocide,” but they never really come close to the intenseness of the experience. Aurora is not the first place. Great evils occurred elsewhere, such as Auschwitz, the Cambodian “Killing Fields,” Rwanda, Columbine, the 9/11 attacks in New York, just to name some. History is littered with these kinds of events. How do we come to grips with the kind of evil that happened in Aurora? The aftermath of such acts of evil leave us with questions. Did friends/acquaintances see any signs that he would do such a thing? Is the problem physical a brain malfunction? Was the person in the right state of...

Someone wondered if Jesus Christ’s resurrection is patterned after our own resurrection, would we retain our scares just as the Lord did? Appearing to the apostle Thomas, the resurrected Lord said, “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing” (John 20:27). The Lord revealed His scares to demonstrate that He did die upon the cross, was buried, and rose again on the third day. This was a divine manifestation to help build faith in His disciple. Whether or not the scares disappeared at Christ’s ascension is not mentioned in the Bible. To the question of what the resurrected body would be like, Paul wrote, “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there ...

10 years ago I was living in Tustin, California. I just woke up, turned on the television to footage of smoke billowing out of the World Trade Center twin towers in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. More news flashes came only to reveal another plane had crashed into the Pentagon. It was certainly an unspeakable shocking and mystifying moments when you just do not have words to describe what is going on in your head. As the day went on, subsequent news reports revealed the crashing planes were part of an attack by radical militant Islamic extremist. The world had changed overnight, and nothing was the same ever since. It seems that the entire world spent the entire first decade of the twenty first century coming to grips with that event one way or another. Some mourned the loss of loved ones who were actual victims of the attack. Others found relief in hearing how a loved one escaped harm’s way on that dreadful morning. Wars came, governments toppled, and r...

He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

Since we are nearing ever closer to Resurrection Sunday, I thought to add one more post on Mark’s Resurrection account, and this one has some real apologetic and theological “hot potatoes.” One “hot potato” is the fact that the earliest and arguably more reliable Greek manuscripts of Mark 16 end at verse 8. Complicating things is that some of the later Greek manuscripts contain verses 9-20, but few of them end with the lines: And they promptly reported all these instructions to Peter and his companions. And after that, Jesus Himself sent out through them from east to west the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation. Of course, the problem is not as bad as it seems. Suppose for a moment Mark did in fact end his Gospel at 16:8, with the women who were so shocked and astonished about witnessing the empty tomb they kept silent, such does not pose any problems for those who believe Christ had risen. The reality is that Mark is not the first one to write about the resur...

As I’m reading through John 20-21, I am reminded that in as much it is helpful to attempt a harmony between John and the other New Testament Gospels, it is likewise important for readers to keep in mind the deeply profound theological points John wants to communicate through his own telling of the post-resurrection accounts. What strikes me is this Gospel has some of the more memorable eye-witness accounts to the risen Lord, which are united together with author’s purpose of presenting Jesus Christ as the Son of God so that those who believe might have eternal life (20:30-31). In these chapters Mary Magdalene, Thomas, and Peter come face to face with the resurrected Lord, and find comfort in their despair, but through their interactions they are revealed another dimension to the reality of the Son of God—Jesus Christ. In John’s Gospel, Mary Magdalene discovers the empty tomb and weeps over not knowing where the body of Jesus had gone. Even when the Lord appears before her eyes, she...

One of the soul challenging aspects of doing apologetics is the opportunities to resolve alleged Bible contradictions. One that recently came up concerned a supposed problem between Matthew and Luke regarding the location where the resurrected Lord appeared to the disciples. According to Matthew, the resurrected Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene and another gal named Mary, and He instructs them, “go and take word to My brethren to leave for Galilee, and there they shall see Me” (Matt. 28:10, NASB). The women then told the disciples and the disciples went to Galilee, saw the risen Lord, and received their commission (Matt. 28:16-20). Now Luke agrees that the women first saw the risen Lord (Luke 24:1-9), and they told Peter, which led him to investigate the empty tomb (Luke 24:10-12); however, he then tells readers that on Resurrection Sunday Jesus appeared to two disciples traveling to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35). The same evening, the risen Lord appeared to the disciples in Jerusalem (Lu...

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent. Sometime ago I was scanning through some Web news and I noticed Christianity Today put up some articles reflecting on Lent. As today, marks the beginning of the Lent season, I thought they would be interesting reads to meditate on: Steven R. Harmon: To Take Up the Cross Frederica Mathewes-Green: For Spiritual Exercise Michael Horton: To Lead Us to Christ I came to know Christ in a Baptist church, so I never really experienced the Lenten tradition, and out of ignorance, filed such practices under “Roman Catholic traditions that Baptists just don’t do.” Of course, it is not just a Roman Catholic thing, and many Protestant Lutheran and Anglican Christians observe the season. Perhaps there may even be something beneficial to voluntarily setting aside special days each year, which allow us to be deeply immersed in activities that constantly bring to mind the story of redemption unveiled to us in the Scriptures. Ashes remind us that from be...

The crux of a Christianity centers on the resurrection of Jesus. “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain,” writes Paul. Without the resurrection, there would be no Christianity. Although many cults, liberal scholars, and atheist have attempted to disprove the resurrection, there is still good reason to believe it to be true. We can believe in the resurrection, because the testimonies recorded in Scripture are reliable. The manuscript evidence attests to the reliability of the Bible. There exist more ancient manuscript copies of the Bible dating near to the originals than any other work from antiquity. Josephus, Tacitus, and other first century non-Christian sources corroborate the historical narratives contained in the Bible. Archeological discoveries (e.g. the finds of William Ramsey) also confirm the people, places, and events of Scripture. Moreover, there are predictive prophecies contained in the Bible that came to pass (e.g. the fall o...