You Knew

This past August 15th, as every year, the Eastern Church celebrated the Dormition of the Theotokos or The Dormition of the Virgin Mary in the Western Church perhaps. The celebration is literally remembering her falling asleep at the end of her life on earth. It is not the celebration of her death because as soon as her soul left her body she was with her son in Heaven. Mary is to be venerated because even in Luke 1:28, the angel Gabriel spoke to her saying: "Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!" Her own cousin Elizabeth said in Luke 1:42 said: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” Indeed, she was the mother of “the Word” as John 1:1 reads: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Mary was the mother of our Lord, and she is to be venerated as such, although she is just like one of us believers, and is our sister. Furthermore, we all have the hope of being with Jesus when our time on earth expires. When she slept, Mary went to be with him. In 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, St. Paul wrote the following about all of us believers in Christ which is very exciting.

"Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed (ESV Bible)."

I think that I have explained myself. And, I do take into consideration what someone may have said about Mary in the Talmud. Anyhow, the following is a brief poem that I wrote in remembrance of Mary because I simply felt like writing it. The poem is titled: You Knew and it reads as follows.



In envy some called you Marian the hair dresser, and worse things followed the phrase.

But, when Gabriel brought you the message, you were overwhelmed and filled with joy.

You got to see him grow up and, yes, you knew.

The pain and suffering must have been almost unbearable for you.

When he was on the tree, you knew, and you cried like no one had ever cried.

And, now and ultimately, you knew and know that Gabriel’s message was right.




Reference:

ESV Bible

Apologetics and the New Testament

Since this blog is about Apologetics than perhaps I should spend a little more time on the matter. Perhaps one of the best forms of apologetics is New Testament apologetics because of all the manuscripts that exist for it. Many of the facts with relevance to manuscript reliability can be found in much text on paper and all over the web. A really good website for such information is CARM (Christian Apologetics Research Ministry). The following is some of the data you will find when visiting this site:

“There are thousands more New Testament Greek manuscripts than any other ancient writing. The internal consistency of the New Testament documents is about 99.5% textually pure. That is an amazing accuracy. In addition there are over 19,000 copies in the Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and Aramaic languages. The total supporting New Testament manuscript base is over 24,000.

Almost all biblical scholars agree that the New Testament documents were all written before the close of the First Century. If Jesus was crucified in 30 A.D., then that means that the entire New Testament was completed within 70 years. This is important because it means there were plenty of people around when the New Testament documents were penned who could have contested the writings. In other words, those who wrote the documents knew that if they were inaccurate, plenty of people would have pointed it out. But, we have absolutely no ancient documents contemporary with the First Century that contest the New Testament texts (http://carm.org/manuscript-evidence).”

The website provides much more accurate data and thorough details than I am providing on the New Testament at this time; therefore, I have to say that I highly recommend that you visit CARM and take advantage of their resources. The link for CARM is a follows: carm.org.

References:

http://carm.org/manuscript-evidence.

This Chick-Fil-A thing is Confusing!

Jesus never really spoke about homosexuality; he did say to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Paul seems to be talking about it and seemingly spoke about it in Romans 1:18-32, although many theologians would agree that he was quoting Wisdom of Solomon 13-14, which is an Apocryphal book and most evangelicals do not use the Apocrypha in their canon. So, I am completely bewildered by all this stuff. I get upset with the politicizing of this Chick-Fil-A matter on both sides. I think the Chick-Fil-A guy has a right to do or say whatever he wants, and anyone who has a different view has a right to voice it out; however, I do not really see the theological foundation for it. If people want to eat a lot of Chick-Fil-A, I think its ok, but watch out for the excess of food because that may be a sin. Moreover, the sin of Sodom was that “she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” Homosexuality is nowhere on this list. If you want to see this just read Ezekiel 16:49-51 which reads as follows:

“Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it. Samaria has not committed half your sins. You have committed more abominations than they, and have made your sisters appear righteous by all the abominations that you have committed.”

I think that if one gets a mean response from someone it is usually because one is being mean first…of course, there is an exception to every rule. I personally, will try to love everyone because the Scriptures do say that we are all sinners, and none of us are good. In fact, Psalm 14:2-3 says:

“The LORD looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.”