Does God need the devil to scare people into church?

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Our old friend, the increasingly irrelevant Bill Maher, has said that Christianity uses the devil to scare people into church. Alan Shlemon of Stand to Reason has put up a short (5 minute) video responding to this claim. Rather than duplicate his effort, I just want to refer to Alan's video as a good response.
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Holidays said…
Too bad to see people are not religious these days :(
12/14/2012 08:47:00 AM
company formation said…
Thank you so much for this review! I found it very helpful, this seem like a program that would be of great use to me. Keep it up!
12/17/2012 11:42:00 PM
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Where did Jesus say "It is better to give than receive?"

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A visitor to the CADRE site recently sent a question about Paul's statement in Acts 20:35 which records Paul as saying, "And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, 'It is better to give than to receive'." The reader wanted to know where Jesus said this. This was my answer:

You are correct in noting that this saying of Jesus quoted by Paul is not found anywhere in the four Gospels. My own study Bible says "This is a rare instance of a saying of Jesus not found in the canonical Gospels."

Does the fact that it isn't stated in the Gospels mean that it isn't reliably from the lips of Jesus? I don't think so. The Apolstle John said at the end of his Gospel (John 21:25): "Jesus did many other things as well.If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." Obviously, this is exaggeration for the sake of making a point, but it means that Jesus di…
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More evidence for the Historical Truth of David and Goliath

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Even people unschooled in the Bible know the basics of the story of David and Goliath – if for no other reason then the analogy is used whenever something small takes on something large and powerful. Just to prepare to write this blog, I searched for “David and Goliath” on Google News and found stories about residents in a small town in Ireland fighting a large developer, a battle between McDonald’s and a small Irish food chain over the trademark to Big Mac , and the violent stoush resulting when a large galaxy and a small galaxy get too close to each other among other stories. Yes, the story of the future King David, while still too young to join his brothers in a fight for the new kingdom of Israel, against the biggest, baddest Philistine of the time is well-known even to those who have a stunted education of the Bible.


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As with…
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Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesus, Jonah and U2’s Pride in the Name of Love

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As we approach Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I have been thinking about U2’s song Pride (In the Name of Love) (hereinafter, "Pride"). The song, of course, concerns MLKJr. (According to U2 Sermons, U2 formerly ran a video of MLKJr giving his “I have been to the mountaintop” speech during the playing of the song.) However, the lyrics of Pride are quite apparently not exclusively about MLKJr.

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On the Significance of Simon of Cyrene, Father of Alexander and Rufus

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One of the most interesting passages in Mark’s Passion Narrative, from a historiographical perspective, is Mark 15:21:

A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country and they forced him to carry the cross.
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As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus.
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As they went out, they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon; they compelled this man to carry his cross.
Matt 27:32.

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How Many Children in Bethlehem Did Herod Kill?

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A Simple Illustration of the Trinity

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Common but Bad Illustrations

I remember one pastor using the example of a man being a Father to his son, a son to his father and a husband to his wife. See? A Trinity. Yes, it is a Trinity, but it is not the Biblical Trinity because it is an example of Modalism or Sabellianism. The Trinity is not God presenting himself in three different forms or modes. The Trinity teaches that each of the three persons of the Trinity are separate persons each of which is fully God.

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Baciccico's Women at the Tomb



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Do God's Omniscience and Omnipotence Contradict?

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Atheists think it is. I've seen many a knock down drag-out fight, multiple threads, lasing for days, accomplishing nothing. I wrote that dilemma off years ago before I was an internet apologist, so long ago I don't remember when. I wrote it off because at an early date I read Boethius who, in his great work The Consolation of Philosophy (circa 524), puts to rest the issue by proving that foreknowledge is not determinism. In this essay I will demonstrate not only that this is true but the atheist error about omniscience and omnipotence contradicting are actually hold overs from the pagan framework which Boethius disproved.
___________________ Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480?-524) Aurthor The Consolation  of Philosophy ___________________
For years my debates on the matter were marked by silly repetition. I would constantly argue that just knowing that someone does something is not controlling it. But atheists were always cock sure that it was. I used the follow analogy: I…
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[I]t was the feeding-trough, appropriately enough, which was the sign to the shepherds. It told them whic…
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