In Defense of the Christian Faith

A few weeks ago, we talked about how the Jews of the Dispersion mentioned in 1 Peter 1:1 were Gentiles who had been sanctified; we talked about this in connection with the OSAS doctrine . Today, I'd like to continue on this topic. Let's begin with verse 3 of chapter one: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead... We immediately notice from this Scripture that we have a "living hope"; too often, we are full of "wishful" thinking in the worldly sense -- "I wish that could happen," "I hope so," etc. But the Biblical word for hope is "expectancy." It is used everywhere in the Bible in the same sense as it was with Abraham: "being fully persuaded that what He had promised, He was able also to perform." In other words, hope is "knowing" that God will do what He said He wi...

I am posting this early Tuesday night for The Word For Wednesday, hosted by Jean , because I will be gone on another day trip tomorrow, and I don't think it's fair to keep my readers waiting so long to hear from me... so while I'm gone, I would appreciate your thoughts; please leave me some comments! :D ----------- A few months ago, I was on a message board typing up a response to a post, when I came across someone claiming the following: "I am not a Gentile, hence, I was never lost." His stance was "Possession precedes loss; Israel was the Lord's possession, we never were." First, let me say that, in my view, this is simply another way of claiming "once saved, always saved." I have encountered a few of these people in the past, but this case was different. I tried to explain to this person that if we were never lost, then there would be no need for Christ to come and make us a vessel of honor. Still, nothing could persuade him that he ...

Note: Today’s WFW was rather interesting… I had written this post a while back, saved it on my computer, and forgot about it (never published it, either). All day yesterday, I had been thinking of what I could post today, but nothing seemed to come to mind or jump out at me in the Scriptures. Then, I was searching for something “non-WFW-related” in my computer archives, when I came across this would-be post. I began reading and editing it before I actually realized that it is again about faith! ;) I once read a good, apologetics book, which had some great information in it; however, in an effort to sort out an apparent contradiction, the author mixed up the truth of God's Word with his ideology when he briefly mentioned the difference between James' and Paul's interpretation of faith and works. He said that James was talking about justification before men, and Paul was talking about justification before God. At first glance, it may seem probable, but anyone who reads Ja...