A Dagger to the Sky

March 31, 2011 by · 1 Comment

“Julian the Apostate endeavored to destroy Christianity. He wrote a whole book against it, but in the book, instead of destroying Christianity, he affirms that Jesus was born in the reign of Augustus at the time of the taxing made in Judea by Cyrenius.

He also confirms the fact that the Christian religion began its rise in the times of the emperors Tiberius and Claudius. He affirms the authenticity of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as the authentic sources of the Christian religion.

This same Julian went to Jerusalem to disprove the Bible, but he failed. When, unknowingly, he destroyed the wall of Babylon, he confirmed the Biblical prophecy.

When he finally came to his death, pointing his dagger up to the sky at Jesus, he gathered his blood after being wounded on the battlefield, threw it into the air, and said, “Thou hast conquered, O Galilean.”

Julian left behind no trace of the paganism he endeavored to rebuild. All of his efforts evaporated before the power of the Galilean.”

Source: D. James Kennedy, Why I Believe (Thomas Nelson; Revised edition, 1979) p106.

Filed Under: Church History · Tagged With: , , ,

Self Repair

March 30, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

A live body is not one that never gets hurt, but one that can, to some extent, repair itself. In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble- because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out.

That is why the Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or- if they think there is not- at least they hope to deserve approval from good men.

But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as a roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

Source: Clive Staples Lewis, Mere Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 1980) p64.

Filed Under: Christian Living · Tagged With: ,

We Have Shrunk

March 30, 2011 by · 8 Comments

In a consumerist world where advertising reigns and ethical and spiritual ideas must kneel in the presence of the almighty market, we have become “insubstantial” people with “thin” selves. In other words, we are not deeply rooted in any sense.

Oftentimes, we don’t think profoundly; we don’t connect meaningfully; we don’t focus extendedly. We can all too easily flit through life, trying new experiences, inventing new selves through online media. We watch endless amounts of television, keep a constant vigil over our email accounts, and update 800 of our closest friends when we make a piece of toast, but we often cannot be bothered to read, or think, or delve into the lives of unbelievers who are everywhere around us.

We have focused on ourselves, pumping ourselves up through self-esteem exercises, redefining our sins as “tendencies” that require therapy of one kind or another, and discarding traditional marks of maturity to gratify desires we refuse to tame. In the process, we have not grown. We have shrunk.

Source: Owen Strachan and Doug Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards on True Christianity (Moody Publishers, 2010) p41.

Filed Under: Christian Living · Tagged With: , , ,