Doing Wise - poem

You just do what people do

But people aren’t always wise

And if you think what’s right to do

Then people’re thinking otherwise


You try to be a simple guy

Free of all pretence and pride

That’s fine, you need not shy

Coz’ pompous shows never abide.


So just do that which is right

Watch ‘gainst the popular lies

Stay calm, keep destiny in sight

You’ll always be good doing wise.

Grace and Mercy of God and Full life (John 10 10-12) - Article

Published in REVIVE Magazine, July 2021

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it….”  (John 10:10-12)

Recent studies in sheep psychology have increasingly proven that sheep are not dumb animals as popularly supposed; rather, they are intelligent, individualistic, and social animals that exhibit advanced face recognition abilities, emotional understanding, and individual traits along with group protection herd skills. Studies show that sheep emotion can be ascertained from the position of their ears; for instance, when afraid, the ears of the sheep move from their normal horizontal position towards the back; when angry, their ears would go straight up; when surprised, one ear might go up and another down. Sheep can also distinguish between pictures of calm faced sheep and tensed sheep. Researchers have shown that sheep experience despair when facing uncertain, unpredictable, and unfamiliar situations. On the unusually dark and thunderous night of November 3, 1888 England experienced a bizarre event when tens of thousands of sheep panicked, jumped their hurdles and the next morning were found scattered over miles. Being prey animals, sheep possess not only complex vigilance faculties, but also emotional mechanisms that assist them in determining if a situation is safe or dangerous. The presence of a predator like a wolf, therefore, creates a severely antagonistic environment driving the sheep into a flight of frenzy and seeking band protection, which is usually explained using the selfish-herd theory.

The selfish-herd theory states that prey animals, on perceiving danger, tend to move to the centre of a flock to avoid becoming open targets of a predator. The behavior is termed selfish because the animal uses another co-animal as a shield against the predator, thus minimizing threat to itself. The theory has been corroborated by experiments and is useful in using shepherd dogs to drive sheep. The sheep perceive the dogs as danger and herd together to create protective bands. The dogs can then drive them in a particular direction. Quite contrary to this picture, Christ is not portrayed as one who drives the sheep (as by danger, making use of a probably selfish disposition), but one who leads the sheep. Christ the Shepherd is the familiar person, who feeds the sheep; other sheep see the Shepherd feeding the sheep and happily (not frenziedly) move towards Him. Sheep are smart; if they know that a shepherd is not feeding any grain, they will leave. Sheep are scared by the wolf; but they move towards the Good Shepherd.

A lot of study has been done on wolf’s hunting methods. Contrary to many other predators, wolves do not necessarily hunt down preys by outchasing them, e.g., as a cheetah does. Instead, a wolf pack may calmly trail and stalk its prey or a herd for miles before it ascertains the right moment and the target to attack. Wolves usually single out the weak, injured, and sick ones and attack by ambushing them making any escape almost impossible. Wolves exhibit great patience and perseverance in stalking behavior. They are opportunists. They wait for the right moment and are willing to go hungry for days until they sense the right opportunity to strike. After a successful hunt, a wolf can eat up to 20 pounds of meat per feed. Jesus offered at least two analogies of how wolf-like thieves may attack the flock.

The first is found here in John 10: 12, where He talks about a shepherdless flock that is attacked by the wolf. The hired worker who was assigned to watch after the sheep saw the wolf coming and fled for his life. He was never a real shepherd. He was just a paid worker, who may be fond of some sheep, but not willing to risk his life to save the sheep. He was able to see the wolf for sure, but instead of staying with the sheep and guarding them, he chose to abandon them and leave them exposed to immediate danger. But, why did the hiredworker not flee to the centre of the flock if he wanted to really protect himself? That is what the sheep would do, right? Why did he abandon them and run away?

I suspect if the sheep would ever herd around the hireling. Probably, they would not trust him either. When facing danger, they would rather flock together with their familiar friends, to what their instincts reliably point to, than flock around a hireling that they never bonded to in the first place. He was meant to be at the exterior, exposed to the threat anyway, and not the one at the protective centre. A guardian who uses the ones he is supposed to guard as his guard is a contradiction in terms. He is like the soldier who uses his fellow countrymen as human shields against enemy attack – the very countrymen he was appointed to protect. A true shepherd, on the other hand, stands at the battlefront. One good picture of such is found in Nehemiah 4 and 6, where Nehemiah not only put himself in front of the people in the battlefront, but also exhibited real courage and fearlessness in the face of enemy threat. A true shepherd does not seek his own but the things of Christ, the Chief Shepherd (Phil.2: 21).

The hireling flees because the sheep are not his own. Pastors are not hirelings. They are shepherds (Eph.4:11). They are not paid workers, but bond-slaves of Christ. They recognize that they are primarily themselves the sheep of Christ, who are appointed to feed Christ’s sheep (John 21:17). An interesting characteristic of sheep is that they move towards a sheep that is following a familiar person (friend) who is feeding it. This is an instinct that shepherds utilize to lead a flock of sheep with the help of one sheep that the other sheep move towards. The pastor is someone like that sheep. He can say with Paul “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (1Cor.11:1). Jesus never appoints any hireling over His sheep. There are really no hirelings in the Body of Christ. In John 10, Jesus tells His disciples that He is not a hireling, but the Good Shepherd who gives His life for the sheep. Since the Shepherd is always with the sheep, it is not possible for the wolves to attack them in the natural wolf-like pattern. So, wolves attack the believing flock using a different strategy.

The wolf is anyone who decerns the sheep and intentionally wishes to steal, kill, and destroy them. The arch-wolf is Satan and his team of emissaries who masquerade as apostles, the devil himself masquerading as an angel of light (2 Cor.11:13,14). Jesus said that these ferocious wolves come to the sheep in sheep’s clothing (Matt.7:15). 

Shepherds today use two kinds of dogs to assist in shepherding: herding dogs and guardian dogs. Herding dogs appear like predators to the sheep forcing them into protective group behavior. Guardian dogs, on the other hand, grow up with the sheep and get bonded with them, living with them, and acting as instinctive guardians against predators. Some guardian dogs very much resemble their fellow sheep. 

 


Wouldn’t it be very dangerous if these guardian dogs were internally ferocious wolves seeking the right opportunity to devour the sheep? Such is the evil Jesus warned of when He cautioned us about wolves in sheep’s clothing.

A wolf in sheep’s clothing has no straightforward technique. He never comes in by the gate but intrudes through some other way (John 10:1,2). He is a thief and a robber because his goal is to steal, kill, and to destroy (John 10:10). He wants to steal away the sheep from the true Gospel to a false one (Gal.1:6,7). He prowls, stealthy and opportunistic, like a roaring lion seeking to devour, kill, and destroy (1Pet.5:8). 

But there is good news. The sheep can resist the adversary by standing firm in faith (1Pet.5:9). This is because the sheep follow their Shepherd and know His voice; they will never follow a stranger but will run away from him – they do not recognize the stranger’s voice (John 10:5). In fact, the Shepherd gives them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of His hand (John 10:28). 

But that does not mean that the sheep should stop being vigilant. The New Testament repeatedly cautions us to be alert, watchful, and sober minded (1Pet.5:8; 2Cor.16:13; Col.4:2; Rev.3:2; 1Thess.5:6). Sheep by nature are constantly vigilant animals; so must believers be; especially, because the enemy of our souls does not come like a menacing pride of lions but like an innocuous looking pack of wolves in sheep’s clothing. The Early Church faced such situations and the apostles repeatedly cautioned believers in the epistles. While it is true that no one can snatch the sheep out of His hand, the Bible warns believers to watch out lest they themselves drift away from faith (Heb.2:2). Paul told us that he did not think he had arrived but that he ran towards the goal of the upward calling in Christ to attain the resurrection from the dead (Phil.3:10-14).

Christ came that we may have life and life more abundantly. Obviously, He was not referring to this present life, but to life eternal which He gives to His sheep. He gives it to them by laying down His life for them and by rising again (John 10:17,18). But does it mean that the sheep had no life before the Shepherd gave them life? If so, how would they be His sheep?

Here, we are reminded of a crucial tenet of the Gospel faith – the revelation of divine foreknowledge and of predestination. God not only foreknew His sheep but also predestined them unto salvation, to be conformed to the image of His Son both in sanctification and glorification (Eph.1:11; Rom.8:29,30). Therefore, they are His eternally, even before they are born on this earth. He knows them intimately and eternally. He knows them better than they know themselves.

This realization gives us great hope. We do not need to be like that sheep that are driven by despair and confusion due to extreme darkness, danger, uncertainty, and the unknown. The Shepherd is with us. The Shepherd suffers with us. The Shepherd suffers for us. The Shepherd knows what we are going through, but also guarantees us what will happen in the end. He is the source of life to us. He is also the source of courage in times of suffering. He does not put us under hirelings. His Spirit in us is His presence in us to teach, to guide, to strengthen, to ward against evil, and to transform us into His image. But His sheep are not dumb creatures propelled by mere herd-mentality, going with the crowd. They are intelligent, individualistic, and live as a community – they are one.  The adversary prowls like a roaring lion ready to devour the weak and unstable. The sheep of Christ are not driven by any selfish-instinct; rather, they reach out to protect and save the weak by bringing them into the centre. They bear each other’s burden. They love each other as the Shepherd loved them, not merely as they love themselves (John 15:12). 



Automatic Retributive Justice - Karma. Vs Nyaya

 While the idea seems attractive and naturalistic, it renders all notion of wisdom, human institutions of justice, reward and punishment meaningless. Why bother about government, police, courts if justice is automatic. Therefore, the Nyaya logicians argued for the Moral governor of the universe.


God's Silence - Verse

A spectacle to the crowd
If one cares to be audience,
A receptacle of God
Though He acts in silence.

Any Speed Limit in Genesis 1 Act

 If light speed has a limit and so does everything else in the universe, was there a limit to the speed things were created in Gen 1?


Ans: The Gen 1 account talks of the creation of light, stars, and the sun quite apart from each other (unless one wishes to read Big Bang into it). If so, the act of creation was not subject to the law of speed limit; in fact so because the act itself created light.

Jesus ate fish (post-resurrection) - Implications

 Luk 24:42-43 “They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.” (NIV)

Firstly, food was not sustenance to Him. He was immortal and eternal.

Secondly, resurrection did not mean He could not eat meat (here, fish)

Thirdly, He ate to provide proof of His resurrection.


Divine Temporality, Craig, Kant, and Epistemics - Thoughts

Ratio-reductionist theology culminates in counter-intuitive discourses. Ratio-reductionist theology is theology that attempts to map divine being and attributes in terms of extra-empirical/counter-empirical, i.e. purely rational conceptualization that is aversive of spatio-temporality, motion, change, plurality, and contingency - well conceptualized in the philosophies of monism and non-dualism.

Empirical theologies, on the other hand, do otherwise. Polytheistic theologies are a good example of these. The divine is spatio-temporal, and other things that come with it.

It is not surprising, therefore, when the logical consequence of something like the Kalam Cosmological Argument would be the attempt to temporalize God as seen in William Craig's position that the timeless God entered time at the time of creation. But, "creating" is a temporal concept, isn't it? If so, it would require God to be temporal before becoming temporal! 

But, why should it be necessary to say that God was or is "timeless"; then, why does it become necessary to attribute temporality to God? 

From the attempt to reconcile the rational categories of uniformity, immutability, abstraction/transcendence, universality, and necessity with the empirical categories of plurality, change, concreteness, particularity, and contingency have spun out various proposals such as platonism, panentheism, process theologies, particular non-dualism, and so on.

Kant was, perhaps, meekest enough to acknowledge that our concepts are limited by our faculties and experiences. He found theology a place not in reason or experience but in action that springs from the moral will. For Kant the pronouncement "The fool has said in his heart there is no God" would mean different from what Anselm understood. Anselm thought that the fool was a rational fool, whose pronouncement was logically-contradictory. For Kant, the fool was a moral fool, whose actions denied God in terms of radical evil. The moral fool might be well-versed in all the arguments for the existence of God while failing to practically know God in his life.




Nathan Zacharias and Margie Zacharias defend Ravi Zacharias

Check out the blog post at Defending Ravi


" My Mom recently sent an email to some friends and family that is being circulated. She’s since asked me to post it here to ensure it’s ongoing accuracy. Good am, Family. I love you all.  I wanted you all to know that I have spent the last week going through every paper and article in […]

Email From My Mom

Buttress of Belief

The Bible does not encourage blind belief. It provides buttresses of belief varying according to context, some of which include:

  1. A miraculous sign (e.g. Moses in Egypt; Isaiah..)
  2. A covenant sign and oath (e.g. Abraham, Lord's Supper)
  3. A surety or guarantee (e.g. Passover..)
  4. A particular requested sign (e.g Gideon's fleece)
  5. A particular factual sign (e.g. Elizabeth to Mary)
  6. A prophetic word - dream (e.g. Joseph to the prisoners)
  7. A prophetic word - knowledge (e.g. Jesus to Samaritan woman)
  8. A prophetic word - foretelling (e.g. Jesus to Peter...)
  9. A healing, providential, protective, deliverance miracle (e.g. Gospels)
  10. An angelic sign (e.g. Resurrection)
  11. A divine stroke (e.g. Uzziah's leprosy, Zachariah's muteness, Miriam's leprosy)
  12. Prophetic fulfillment (Jewish and Gentile, including the Star of Magi)
  13. etcc....
Since the nature of the belief is supernatural, the buttress usually is also supernatural. 
  1. A written legal surety - The Bible (Word of God) 
  2. A living personal surety - The Holy Spirit 
  3. An authoritative signature - The Name of Jesus Christ (to make orders and requests in prayer and word of deliverance)
  4. A testifying community - The Church
Items that must not be considered as buttresses of belief:
  1. Personal feelings (which are fluctuating)
  2. Zeitgeist or spirit of the age (which are more of a fad)
  3. Probabilistic naturalist reasoning (whose final resort is chance and whose counterfactuals are not really factual)
  4. Speculative philosophy (which is mere speculation that attempts to act as an hypothetical gap-filler)
  5. etcc
Any of the non-buttresses will be able to try to explain away the true buttresses (A.1-13). The non-buttresses actually constitute unbelief. They are also explicitly skeptical if not absolutely irrational and are unreliable for any reasonable venture. 

PHOTO: (from dreamstime.com, google images) 

Dialectics of Vaccination

(google images, reuters.com)

The African variant is said to have beaten Pfizer's vaccine according to an Israeli study.

Humans invent vaccine to beat the virus
The virus develops immunity to beat the vaccine... ad infinitum

Dialectical vaccinationism

Zoom classes and alienation

(cartoon circulating on social media nowadays)

Zoom, webex, meet, ...... Pros and cons

Pros:
1. Safe inside
2. Time saver
3. Less paper
4. Less expensive than classroom
5. Travel money saver
6. Video recording, sharing...
7. Polls, annotations, etc

Cons:
1. Connection issues
2. More distractions (unless in quiet room and phones off)
3. Screen stress
4. Social alienation
5. Depersonalization (cams off, no response, lack of personal touch)
6. No non-verbal feedback for teacher (when cams off) - highly demotivating
7. Less engagement
8. More burden on teacher to engage class
9. Breakout rooms, not very successful unlike class group discussions
10. Virtualization of life and habit

Resurrection poem


HAPPY RESURRECTION SUNDAY!

One act of justice
Cancelled our woes
One act of surrender
Defeated all foes
One act of power
Broke the grave
When Christ arose
On Resurrection Day!


It was no fiction,
The crucifixion.
No hallucination,
The resurrection.
They all saw Him die
So does history testify,
And timid apostles did the world defy
After they saw their Lord alive!

He died, He rose, He lives!

On the Internal Witness of Scriptures

I think it is very erroneous to assume that the internal witness of Scripture is unreliable unless supported by external (or extra biblical) testimony. 
1. When witnesses to an account are two or more, the testimony already carries a level of reliability. The Pentateuch, Kings, Chronicles, Prophets, Gospels contain accounts by varying sources that can be cross-referenced to gain a fair historical picture.
2. Cases of sole testimony cannot be disregarded as totally unreliable as per the rule of truth-expression. To stipulate that one must not testify or witness unless his/her experience is shared by others is to impose a gag on truth-expression or the possibility of hearing truth. In fact, it is a sealing of self from the possible sole source of information. Sole testimony, however, is also open to challenge if there can be enough reasons for raising such a challenge. But, in the most central narratives in Scripture, the witness party includes several persons. Thus, as per #1, the combined testimony of all these witnesses demands a hearing.

Why did Jesus' birth and resurrection happen so secretly or were revealed only to a few?

The scriptural evidence argues otherwise.
1. The birth of Jesus was announced by angels to the shepherds who not only visited Him but also talked about their experiences.
2. Before His birth there was the pre-evidence of Zacharias, Elizabeth, and Mary herself from her experience and visit to Elizabeth.
3. The Magi declared their finding to Herod who cross-referenced it with the Jewish scriptures, but tried to eliminate Jesus.
4. His birth was not a secret. Yet it was a mystery of Godliness against the mystery of ungodliness that is also at work in the world.

Resurrection
This was also no secret.
1. The guards knew about the supernatural visitation, the great angel who rolled the stone....
2. The priests also knew about it and tried to protect the guards by fabricating a tale of disciples stealing Jesus' body, which they were not able to prove and neither their persecuting the disciples could force them to change their testimony of what they saw. 
3. Obviously, given #2, the transformation of the disciples from timid to courageous witnesses was not the result of a mere visionary or subjective experience. 
4. There was claim of a larger body of over 500 people who saw Jesus post-resurrection. It wasn't hallucination. It was also not spiritism. Jesus ate with the disciples and Thomas touched His side.
5. Both Jews and non-Jews were aware of this and it was a stumbling block to both.

Does Evolution have a mind of its own? Does it decide?

Ever since Darwin, there is a tendency to ground human behavior (regardless of the ethical question) on some numinous mind or intent of evolution itself. One of the most popular is the gene or species survival argument that tries to explain several acts like adultery/promiscuity and even murder and suicide as grounded in evolution's intent to make more gene copies or ensure species survival, thus attempting to deterministically ground human behaviors in some underlying, unconscious (collective) force, principle or "archetype". Thus, the responsibility is shifted from the individual to the species and from the species to the "one" that created or made possible this species. This "one" is the new scientific reality, life, elan vital, God. The evolutionary psychologist Carl Jung went to the extent of believing Satan (or the archetype of evil) as the fourth in the "divine quaternity", for he thought the Trinity was insufficient. Genesis 3 gets repeated. What elaborate enterprise to self-deception!!!!! 

Light of the World

"You are the light of the world,"
He unhesitatingly said.
Your task is to speak the word
Reversing darkness and death.
Words are lamps, words are light
They bring healing, they give sight.

In a world of ideas, dark and dead
The breath of the Spirit is the light of life.
In a life so wrecked by sin's evil web
The word of the Spirit is the Healer's knife.
The word is in your mouth, so let it out
In speaking and writing, say it loud!

Words are lamps, words are light
They bring healing, they give sight.

The 4 Pillars of Faith

Rev 2:4-5 NHEB 4 But I have this against you, that you left your first love. 5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen, and repent and do the first works; or else I am coming to you, and will move your lampstand out of its place, unless you repent. 
_______________________________________________
Evidence and intellectual assent alone is not faith.
Passion and zeal alone is not faith.
Faithfulness alone is not faith.
Diligent labor alone is not faith.

Faith requires all. 

TRUTH.(1Tim.2:7; Jn.8:32) - Cognition
LOVE (Gal.5:6; I Pet.1:8) - Affection
PATIENCE (Heb.6:12; James 1:4) - Duration
WORKS (James 2:17) - Action

Faith without truth is blind
Faith without love is heartless
Faith without patience is weak
Faith without works is dead

Believing is knowing
Believing is loving
Believing is staying
Believing is doing

Faith is consistent both logically and temporally (in thought and through time). 

Doubt is fearful, fluctuating, failing, faithless.

Blessed are those who believe, love, labour, enduring the fiery trials, with joy inexpressible full of glory!!

When love seems lost, recall that first love, repent from and renounce the things that created this love-distancing, do those first works of love, and by doing love will relive and thrive....

*The lampstand, menorah, is the Spirit of Christ in us. Do not quench. Do not grieve. Live and walk in the Spirit.

The centrality of faith: resurrection

And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!
I Corinthians 15:17 NKJV

The Bible records the testimonies of those who saw Christ alive and proclaimed alive not only by angels but by Himself along with what they perceived as "irrefutable proofs" which included not only His consuming broiled fish and honeycomb (Lk 24.42,43) but also His unveiling of the OT prophecies regarding His death and resurrection.

The resurrection of Christ is proof of the annulment of curse and the defeat of death serving as the guarantee of the blessed hope. The evidences were and are extremely extraordinary since the miracle was extraordinary. These included the rolled stone and pronouncements by dazzling angels, the several appearances of t Christ with physical contact and traces (fish eaten = physical data), His group teaching, ascension and further announcements by angels. In addition, the pouring of the Spirit on Pentecost todayand confirming signs and miracles attest to the power of the living Christ. All of which were and testifiesrecorded.

Now, to rule out those evidences would only be possible through a discrediting of the Gospels and NT writings. But, that would hard to accomplish without first discrediting every other ancient work (e.g Platao) which are far weaker in credibility than the NT manuscripts. 

And in addition, the proofs weren't just given 2000 years ago. The proof lives today through the Spirit in us who works and testifies if the Son...