Christian friends of mine in a chat recently voiced their concerns about charging for their writing on Substack, and I was taken aback by how many hesitate.

Almost every response was “I don’t want to paywall the Gospel” or “I don’t feel comfortable charging for Jesus” or “I want to keep everything accessible for readers” or “Jesus wouldn’t want me to charge money.”

If this is you, Christian, you’re thinking about it all wrong.

You’ve been given a gift, a talent. You’re commanded by Christ to multiply your talents, and that goes beyond mere skills.

The Greek word Jesus uses in the Parable of the Talents also means “money.”

Your skills and your bills matter. God wants you to invest in them and grow them. To increase them in your life same as he wants you to get married, be fruitful, and multiply. It’s all intertwined.

Below, I give you 5 reasons why charging money for your content is a most essential part of any ministry.

1. You Can’t Multitask Forever

The modern world sold you the fantasy that you have to work hard on a billion different tasks all the time to be productive. They lied.

Pick the priority that’s guaranteed to move the needle and shut out everything else until its done. You’ll be astonished how much you can accomplish.

But if you’re poor, you can’t choose your priorities. They get chosen for you.

You’re trapped in the cycle of survival.

Therefore, the poor man can’t direct his focus where it needs to go and can’t build a lasting legacy.

Monetary wealth is a tool that gives you freedom and time to become better, create better, build better, and help change others lives. To direct your focus beyond mere survival to great and greater charity.

When you refuse to sell, you refuse the tool of money, and that’s beyond foolish.

You’re also already selling when you write...

2. You Sell Everyday Whether You Believe It or Not

Creating and publishing articles and notes is a form of social persuasion. You’re making arguments, supplying evidence, applying lessons, giving calls to action.

Every day of every week.

So why do you draw the line at asking for money?

Why?

If God convicts you not to ask for money after you’ve prayed hard and consulted him about your hesitancy, that’s one thing.

But if he gives you no clear conviction not to sell and ask for money, then you’re doing a disservice to yourself, your ministry, your readers, and your God by not trying your hardest to earn wealth and freedom through your publication.

Mistaking cowardice for compassion. Simple as that.

Because if you really cared about your audience and were offering them solutions that would change their lives for the better, solve tangible problems they have in life and in faith, you would want to earn as much as you can to give yourself the capacity to solve even bigger problems and be even more generous.

Money used right is the gateway to unlimited giving...

3. You Can’t Give What You Don’t Have

If you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t have the resources, energy, and availability to impact others. Not even your own family.

It’s not selfish to tend to the body, land, family, and resources God has given you.

You need food, shelter, community, health, sanity...all of which disappear in a flash when you’re poor and struggling for survival.

Anyone who has ever been poor can tell you. Or you can just turn on the news and learn about the lost souls out there on the streets single, desperate, high on drugs, plastered by alcohol, unable to think, decide, act in any beneficial way because they’ve failed to earn and be wise with money. Many are also purposeless because they don’t have God and give up on higher meaning.

But you haven’t. You’re here writing and have the highest meaning of all: To follow Christ and spread his truth far and wide.

He’s your mission, and he provides for his own.

Why reject a possible avenue for his provision to help you succeed in the mission to which he has called you?

If you don’t use the tool of money to advance his mission, the devil will use it to advance his own...

4. Evildoers Will Use Money If You Don’t

Satan’s already using money to advance his own causes in the world, and when Christians refuse to gain wealth and power to fight back, countries and souls are lost forever.

Make no mistake. God will not be pleasant toward your lukewarm, spinless, sideline Christianity in the last days.

He will SPIT YOU OUT OF HIS MOUTH!

Because you sat by and refused to get in the good fight in every way that you possibly could.

“But this world is not our home, and Satan won’t be crushed until Jesus returns.”

Stop it. Just stop.

So get over yourself.

You’re commanded to multiply your talents and build his kingdom on earth...

5. You’re Commanded to Gain and Use Wealth

If for no other reason, gain and use wealth because your Lord commands you to.

That should be enough for you, Christian.

Read the full Parable of the Talents:

¹⁴ “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. ¹⁵ To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. ¹⁶ He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. ¹⁷ So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. ¹⁸ But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money. ¹⁹ Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. ²⁰ And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ ²¹ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ ²² And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ ²³ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ ²⁴ He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, ²⁵ so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ ²⁶ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? ²⁷ Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. ²⁸ So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. ²⁹ For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. ³⁰ And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”

The point of the parable can’t be any clearer: If you refuse to multiply the talents God gives you, you’re just like someone who should be cast into hell for all eternity. That’s how seriously Christ takes your lack of obedience.

“But I don’t want to put a paywall on the Gospel.”

You can’t. The Gospel is free and spreads everywhere because of Christ. What he accomplished with the cross and his resurrection cannot be defeated or hindered in any way.

It can be dismissed. The world can even try to kill the messengers, but they can’t stop the song.

Putting a paywall on some of your writings, offering a course for a sum, or hosting a conference and selling tickets won’t stop the gospel at all. In fact, it will most likely attract the right people. Hungry souls desperate for solutions. Ones willing to listen.

Freeloaders, despite what you may think, are not usually desperate poor people who can’t afford your offers. Some might be, but many are just cheap and disingenuous.

It’s true.

They’re the least likely to take you seriously and see any value you in your words.

But someone who buys what you have to sell gives you their stamp of approval. Sees you as a reliable authority and will become a true fan if you let them. Such buyers become your best circle of support and lead to growth. New problems, better solutions, lifetime friends. Giving you not just wealth and resources but a reliable community to assist you, build you up, give you ideas, and critique you so you become a better servant of Christ and humanity.

You’re not paywalling the Gospel.

You’re filtering out the ears that won’t hear you and shaking the dust from your feet, while at the same time providing yourself with more time and freedom to keep on fulfilling the mission God has assigned you.

What About the Rich Young Ruler?

The most cited passage Christians cite to show they should give away everything for free is the story of the rich young ruler.

And it means nothing of the sort. Here’s what really goes down:

¹⁶ And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” ¹⁷ And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” ¹⁸ He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, ¹⁹ Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ²⁰ The young man said to him, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” ²¹ Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” ²² When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

²³ And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. ²⁴ Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” ²⁵ When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?” ²⁶ But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

As you can see, the ruler comes to Jesus asking what he must do to attain eternal life, and Jesus tells him love the Lord God and abide his commandments, sell everything he has, and follow Jesus. Nothing is more important than following the Savior.

A message the ruler sorely needed to hear because he WORSHIPPED MONEY. We know this because the passage then tells us he went away in sorrow since he had great possessions.

He was GREEDY, and money was his IDOL.

The ruler tried to worship both God and Mammon, violating Jesus’s own words in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). You cannot worship two masters, God and money, for one will own you. Either God or your worldly obsessions.

It all goes back to the delusion of autonomy I talk about in The Atheist Conversion Manual: The only autonomy you have is over your choices, whom you will serve. You must choose your master, or one will be chosen for you because of your propensity to worship. We were made to worship God Most High, Chris Jesus, but in our cursed state of sin, we go after other gods instead and erect images to them. The gods and their images become our idols, some we refuse to acknowledge.

Such was the case for the ruler and anyone else who adores money itself. A corruption of the heart. One Jesus sees right through.

Earning money is expected. Worshipping it is rejected.

That’s the consistent view of Christ Jesus throughout the gospels.

Did some followers of Christ choose to give everything up for his sake? Most certainly. But none of them were forced or coerced to give up their wealth and belongings, except the young ruler. Because Jesus knew the condition of his heart.

He chose to reject the Savior instead of this world.

“Where you treasure is, there will your heart be also” becomes manifested through his story.

Conclusion: Earn Your Keep, Flee from Greed

Aside from the rich young ruler, other examples of Christ followers staying wealthy and using their wealth generously to support the cause of Christ can be cited.

• Zaccheus

• Nichodemus

• Simon of Antioch

• James and John (their father a wealthy fisherman)

So on and so forth, everywhere.

For every rich young ruler and every greedy Judas, there are three or four honest disciples who see money as a tool to help and serve Christ, his flock, and the world, and nowhere in Scripture are those figures condemned for their wealth. Ever.

Jesus warns that it will be hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, yes. But not that they can’t.

They have it harder because the rich have a greater responsibility to be generous and advance the kingdom with their means. As Uncle Ben says to Peter Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

The rich Christian must use his wealth for the sake of the Gospel. And that isn’t a bad thing. It’s admirable. Desirable, even. Since the whole point of the Gospel is that Christ lay down his own life to save us from sin and death and commands us to lay down our own lives in return. To sacrifice in emulation of the ultimate sacrifice.

Our lives are not our own.

So activate those paid subscriptions. Sell those offers. Help people. It’s your duty.

Just never get caught up in the money itself because it’s a mere means to the end, which is Christ’s eternal kingdom.

Earn relentlessly, give generously.

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One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from G. K. Chesterton: “If there were no God, there would be no atheists.” I keep seeing it quoted on X, floating around in Substack notes, passed along like a clever bumper sticker.

Some of you saw me quote it a day or so ago.

Many read it and think “no God” means no Creator, no Creator means no humans, so atheists wouldn’t exist as humans without God.

That’s part of it. But Chesterton says something far more profound.

Strip out the very idea of God, not just the Being but the concept, and atheism has nothing left to define itself. It becomes nothing but ash. The whole of their secular religion only makes sense as a reaction to God. Both the person and idea.

You can’t build an identity out of rejecting the foundational something that was never there to begin with. If God doesn’t actually exist and the idea of him is really just made up, then there are is no atheism.

“So what? Atheists could just redefine themselves however they want.”

No, because without God, you can’t define anything. He’s essential. Here’s why…

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A Little Journey Through Ontology

Chesterton pulls straight from the ontological argument, first laid out by Saint Anselm in the Middle Ages, covered in chapter 9 of The Atheist Conversion Manual.

God is defined as the Greatest Conceivable Being, maximal in every way. Perfect. Transcending everything else in reality and grounding all of it. Spaceless, timeless, immaterial, intelligent, personal, powerful, unbeatable. Necessary.

That’s exactly how the Israelites, Jews, and Christians pictured him since the Old Testament. The Uncaused First Cause.

A God who lived only in the imagination would fail to be the greatest conceivable Being. But since all humans can conceive of a Greatest Being of all beings, and have since the dawn of time, such a Being must be there and must exist in every possible reality.

So that you can understand Anselm’s argument isn’t mere mental games, I reframe it this way on pages 134-135 of the manual:

1. Reality has a necessary beginning

2. A necessary beginning requires a necessary pre-existent Being

3. Humans can conceptualize such a necessary pre-existent Being in their minds

4. A necessary pre-existent Being is necessary in mind and reality

5. A necessary pre-existent Being must exist or it isn’t necessary in mind or reality

6. Therefore, a necessary pre-existent Being exists

By “reality,” I mean this universe, based on the cosmological argument (chapter 7). The universe had a clear beginning point, so the universe must have a Cause. The beginning and the Cause are both necessary. And since the Cause pre-exists the universe, it must be wholly other from it.

The universe would also necessarily possess some (though by no means all) traits derived from the Cause since the Cause made everything.

Following Anselm’s logic, since such a Being is possible in mind and evident in reality, he must exist in every possible world, not just ours.

No atheist has ever managed to refute the ontological argument. To do so would be to deny maximal greatness, even though we all believe greatness real and achievable, or declare the whole concept of a necessary Being illegitimate while still leaning on ideas of “necessity” and “possibility” everywhere else in their reasoning.

But reason itself, which atheists worship so much, becomes impossible without necessity and possibility, all three of which (reason, necessity, possibility) have no place in a purely material, uncreated reality…

Matter Can’t Trust Itself

C. S. Lewis is the one who artfully articulated the contradiction between matter and thought.

Take away spirit and soul, and all that’s left is matter, bouncing around randomly, aimlessly, with no design and no order behind it. If that’s genuinely all thought is, chemical noise with no order and no purpose, then thought itself becomes untrustworthy because it is random chaos from atoms and neurons arranging themselves haphazardly and spurting the illusion of consciousness.

Atheists try to skirt the issue by arguing for emergent properties, that thought necessarily emerges from material interactions in the brain.

But that argument fails because it offers no validation for the immaterial abstractions of thought, reason, trustworthiness, necessity, possibility, or any others, nor can it explain how those abstractions could possibly arise from the material.

Atheists have to think of a valid alternative to material, and what is there? Energy? Energy just is. It doesn’t do anything apart from emit from sources, so in accordance with the theory, it too is an emergent property, one atheists think is eternal. But if it’s eternal, then it must have an eternal source, which can’t be the universe, so we’ve circled right back to God.

A materialist bridge from brain chemistry to inner experience has been theorized plenty of times and demonstrated exactly zero and emergent properties turn out to be no salvation.

Furthermore, cognitive faculties, according to atheistic evolutionary theory, are shaped only for survival and were never aimed at producing true beliefs. Only at keeping an organism alive long enough to reproduce. Therefore, any perceived beliefs are meaningless unless they have some alleged survival benefit.

What’s the benefit of believing in God if he doesn’t actually exist? What’s the benefit of atheism? And how do we know what a benefit is since beneficence is an immaterial abstraction itself?

Reasoning itself dissolves on atheism and requires God. So where did atheists get the notion that reason itself is a worthy idol?

I Think, Therefore I Might Be

Atheists get the idea of reason as the ultimate eternal starting point from none other than Rene Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.”

They argue that if you don’t think, then you aren’t actually a being.

That argument surfaces most bluntly in the abortion debate. Abortionists (mostly atheists and progressives) claim that babies in the womb are expendable because they lack personhood, which is defined as conscious awareness. Derived straight from Descartes.

A major problem with that (there are many, but we’ll focus on just one) is in history according to the Bible, and even the alleged history of evolution, if we go back far enough, there was a time with no humans, and humans are the only thinking beings. Animals, of course, have instinctual “thought,” but again, Descartes refers to actual conscious awareness. The ability to contemplate and ponder the cosmos.

There was a point where there were no humans, and therefore there were no thinking beings. Ergo, there was a time where there was no being, just substance. Yet, according to Descartes’ theory, beings are the only ones that are ontological. They also happen to be the only ones that can willfully create.

So where did the substance come from? Substance itself is thoughtless and inactive, and if it came first or just is, then nothing else would exist. Life can’t come from non-life. There would be no being. But there are beings, with conscious thought aimed outside the thinker, so there must be an ultimate Being beyond humanity.

And just like that…Anselm wins again.

To go against God is intellectual suicide.

Intellectual Suicide

Chesterton sees both arguments issued by Anselm and Lewis and lands on a stark realization.

Atheists are willing to erase themselves to erase God.

They don’t just look into the abyss. They dive in headfirst, laughing like maniacs as they vanish into oblivion.

Atheism can only exist if the idea of God exists, and ideas only exist inside conscious minds. Deny God, and you lose the idea of him along with any mind capable of containing it, which means you lose atheism too. Neither God nor the idea of God nor the atheist thinking about either one survives the fall.

Knock out the first domino and all the rest go tumbling down until you’re left with nothing but a heaping pile of rubbish.

But atheists and other humans obviously exist and obviously think, which means the mind capable of conceiving God exists, which means the Being that mind was built to receive must be real. He’s the necessary Being. And if the necessary Maximally Great Being (God) is real, atheism is false by definition.

All that packed into a single quote by a master thinker.

Atheism is one giant contradiction. Parasitic rebellion masquerading as pursuit for truth. Squashed like a bug by the eternal Maker.

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Christian apologists spend their time proving evolution false. Fair enough, the science deserves every ounce of criticism it receives.

But few stop long enough to ask why the theory needed to exist in the first place, what it hands the men who fight for it hardest.

Not just racism. Everybody’s already exposed that rot.

Darwin was a racist, not by accident, by design. His writings on human origins ranked whole peoples on a ladder…civilized at the top, savage at the bottom, based on “racial” differences…a reality of history framed to elevate the strong over the weak.

Eugenicists like Margaret Sanger seized the opening. If some races sat lower on the ladder, removing them counted as tidying up. Spring cleaning. Speeding up evolution to a superior race.

But their experimentation and racism are only side effects. The real problem is far more treacherous.

Something sinister drives theory of evolution that rarely gets addressed, something far more alluring to men who wanted God erased from the picture.

Lack of purpose.

Evolution carries the promise of infinite human progress. No ceiling, no Author, no accountability. And that should scare you.

The Witch Doctors’ Poison Pill

Socialist circles during the French Revolution, men like Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, chased the promise infinite beneficial progress before Darwin ever put pen to paper.

Erase God, and humans inherit no limitations. Total control becomes a livable delusion instead of a fantasy.

Lamarck’s idea of living things transforming upward tangled itself into hopes for political reform and human perfectibility, nature bending toward improvement with no fixed boundary set by a Higher Cause outside the intervention of man. Which made all the God-haters salivate because they could replace the Almighty as rulers of the cosmos. Or think they could.

In The Atheist Conversion Manual, I call this the delusion of autonomy. The idea that we have absolute power and control over reality as individuals and can make it do what we want.

Control is our obsession.

But the only real autonomy any of us holds is over the choices we make with the cards we’re dealt, and you will end up serving some sort of master, whether you want to or not.

Past the line of personal choice, control runs out. Everybody senses this in their gut, watches it unfold before their very eyes, yet so many deny it outright, because we’ve never left the Garden. We’re still there, trying to usurp God’s throne.

And the illusion of progress keeps the machine churning.

Road Trip to Nowhere

Why is “progress” such a bad word? Shouldn’t humans want to get better? Yes.

But evolution can’t deliver progression toward better. Consider this analogy:

Evolution can’t even meet step 1.

Ask an evolutionist to defend point A and watch him get sucked into a black hole of endless mental gymnastics.

A single cell, supposedly assembled by chance inside some primordial soup. Non-living matter somehow flipped the switch into life. From there, an alleged unbroken chain of never-once-observed slow, stepwise transitions carries you from that first cell to the staggering variety of creatures alive today, yourself included.

Nobody has shown how raw chemical building blocks reliably chain themselves into the long, precisely ordered sequences proteins and genetic material demand under early Earth conditions, let alone how those chains ever learned to sustain or copy themselves. Dead matter and the simplest living cell remain separated by the Grand Canyon of imagination.

Talk about yikes.

But let’s say point A is confirmed. Evolution can’t hand you point B either.

You’re told you’re in this linear progression of ongoing evolution and that it’s somehow good for you, but where is the progression going? What’s the end of the journey?

Big ditch of nothingness. That’s what.

Evolutionists demand you accept a winding, dangerous route which will culminate in your death (that’s guaranteed) with no defined ulterior endpoint, and they just expect you to be happy with that. Some say death itself is the endpoint. But what’s the value in living just do die and disappear forever? Where’s the purpose?

You’ll live, you’ll die, you’ll long for more, you’ll never get more (and if you do, you can take nothing with you), but by nature, you’ll be glad. If you question the status quo, you’re stupid.

And it gets worse. Evolution can’t tell you if the road is real…

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On 8/11/2026, I posted a meme of Willem Dafoe showing atheists just make stuff up when it comes to morality, since they have no standard outside themselves.

One guy in the comment section on X lost his mind. Accused Christians of making up stuff too.

He went on and on about the many interpretations of the Bible. Said Christians invent things, since our standard, the Bible, gets read a dozen different ways by a dozen different people, which he thinks means the Bible can’t be the ultimate, holy standard. God’s righteous revelation.

The Bible can’t even be understood, according to him.

What you see with his argument isn’t what you get. It’s clever and tricky, but so detached from reality that, like with most atheist accusations, it shrivels like a dead, dried-up worm as soon as you think about it for five seconds.

I already dismantled his line of thinking in The Atheist Conversion Manual, and in a long conversation with him on X, but let’s do it again.

If disagreement disqualifies a source from being true, then nothing is true.

Historians argue over evidence.

Scientists question the meaning of data.

Philosophers spent centuries fighting over what knowledge even is.

Then there’s the nature of human memory. Ask five witnesses to describe a murder, and you’ll get five different renditions of what happened. Can’t be avoided.

So, if competing interpretations erase truth, the whole exploration of reality crashes into oblivion.

But there’s more to it than that.

In this article, we’re going to walk through why interpretation can’t defeat the Bible, can’t be a standard for defining what is true, holy, and good, and why atheism, left with only human interpretation and nothing else, gets utterly annihilated.

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Memories of Mishap and Messiah

Let’s start with a car accident analogy.

500 people witnessed a 30-car pile-up. Word spreads. Some tell the story straight. Some retell what they heard from a friend who heard it from someone else who heard it from a witness, and a little interpretive flair gets added in along the way.

Does any of that retelling change whether the crash happened?

No, because you have the original witnesses, and first responders are trained to document all details from as many as possible as soon as they arrive on scene, when memory is fresh for everyone present.

At most, ongoing interpretation means the event happened and was assessed by those who heard about it through their own perspectives, which resulted in some embellishment or distortion via false interpretations. But THAT the event happened isn’t in question.

What would put the event into question would be perfectly aligned witness statements from those who allegedly saw everything.

If the 500 witnesses gave word-for-word identical reports, the identical wording would be a red flag. Real witnesses prioritize different aspects of an event in their minds.

• One remembers the colors of the cars

• Another remembers the sound of screaming victims

• A third remembers the drivers’ bloodied faces and limbs

• A fourth remembers nothing but flames and the smell of burnt rubber

• A fifth remembers the chain snapping on the 18-wheeler that started the accident

Natural variations combined with rock-solid agreement on the core facts prove them valid witnesses, whereas perfect alignment between each story suggests rehearsal.

Some of you already know where I’m going with this: The former is what we find when we examine the Bible.

He appeared to individuals fully restored, to small groups who had known him for years, to skeptics whose doubt disintegrated the moment they touched him, and to family who had questioned him his whole life. The stories they shared of their encounters align in core details while diverging in interpretation and on minor aspects, signs they are telling the truth.

Then those who heard the stories first recorded them into creeds and later into the Gospels.

Here’s where the guy on X thought he had me: If the witnesses shared the story, others heard the account, retold what they heard, filtered the retelling through their own perspective, doesn’t that mean we only inherited interpretations of interpretations and no one knows what they’re talking about?

No.

We inherited the witness statements themselves, gathered and preserved in the gospel accounts and across the New Testament, collected as early as humanly possible in the ancient setting of the Greco-Roman period. Within living memory. When the witnesses were still alive and around to correct any errors!

The letters may not match on every detail, but they were never supposed to because they’re real, and their central claims agree across every page.

Crucifixion under Roman authority. Burial. An empty tomb. Bodily appearances after the fact.

Small stuff shifts the way independent testimony always shifts, but the meat and bones retain their place and shape. Real testimony looks exactly like what we find in the Gospels.

Theology came after witness…

1 Story, 40 Writers, 17 Centuries, 3 Continents

Later writers further fleshed out the theology and Christology of the Messiah based on the inherited witness statements and interpretations from witnesses themselves.

Deeper reflection on who Jesus was, what his death and resurrection accomplished, how his story connects back through everything that came before.

None of their reflection, however, changes the ultimate fact that Jesus really rose from the grave.

Sin and death lost. Beat to a pulp by God Most High. Which the earliest churches determined by noticing how everything in the Old Testament pointed forward to the Savior.

Atheist treat the Bible like it’s one book, but it’s a vast collection of interrelated writings by 40-plus authors across at least 17 centuries (source material for the writings stems much earlier, some arguably as early as 3000+ years ago), on 3 different continents, and every page maintains the same coherent story from beginning to end.

• God Most High made creation

• We ruined creation with sin and death

• Jesus, God-made-flesh, resurrected us and creation

• One day he’ll return as God Most High to restore the paradise of Eden

Different centuries. Different cultures. Different literary styles. Same storyline, start to finish, weaved through every…single…book.

Coherence like that doesn’t happen by accident when so many hands are involved over such an astounding length of time.

On top of that, divergence in interpretations has centered on the nature of God and the church’s role in the eternal story of salvation, but what remained accepted since before and after the inception of Christianity is the story of salvation itself.

One day God Most High would rescue this fallen world via his Messiah, and did so through the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus. No church denies that! (Except so-called “progressive Christians,” who are really atheists that co-opted the Christian name in order to form a community and have a “sense of belonging” without surrender and adherence to the Christ of the Bible.)

Disagreement takes place over the little things…

Debating all the Little Things

Anyone who reads the whole Bible sees that overarching story of salvation. Interpretations that skip past it, dilute the message, or argue it away (mainly from atheists, not Christians) misread the text, often intentionally, so as to distort and/or distract from the meaning of God’s Word.

It’s good to be cautious because humans carry our own perspectives into every text we open, sacred or not. But because of that, multiple interpretations are an asset, not a hindrance.

Working through different readings sharpens your understanding of what God revealed. Testing one interpretation against another, alongside the inherited text itself, is how anyone deepens their understanding of any complex body of writing.

That’s how people read Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, the Church Fathers, Shakespeare, and so on and so forth.

Weed out readings that damage the central message. Keep the ones that clarify, enhance, brighten, and bring the picture to life.

This is how truth gets refined.

And here’s where the atheist on X walked straight into the trap he built for me…

Everyone Interprets, Even Scientists

As I point out in The Atheist Conversion Manual, without a standard above humanity, atheism is left with nothing but human consensus, and consensus isn’t truth. Claiming the majority view as truth has been a logical fallacy forever. Known as ad populum, or the “bandwagon fallacy.” Following the crowd.

“Would you follow your friends if they walked over a cliff?” No doubt your parents issued that question in some form when you were younger.

Because they wanted you to see that following your peers without second thought is dangerous.

Crowds have been catastrophically wrong throughout history because comfort feels better than accuracy. We tend to lead with emotion. If morality and truth is reduced to whatever the current majority prefers, nothing is ever right or wrong. Just popular. And popular views flip-flop in split seconds.

Take this argument one step further, and science gets gobbled up too.

A scientist runs an experiment, generates results, makes observations, and then has to interpret what the observations from the results mean. INTERPRETATION NEVER GOES AWAY!

“What best explains what we find?”

Scientists disagree with each other constantly. Consensus forms sometimes, but even then, dissenters push back with other explanations. The history of science reads like one long parade of accepted interpretations getting overturned with better data or better analysis, yet none of that zigzagging ever meant the original observations were fake or that reality itself is unknowable.

Just like with interpreting the Bible, each and every explanation for available evidence gathered via scientific experimentation, basic observation, historical documentation, etc. has to be evaluated using logic and reason, tools which belonged first and foremost to (and still belong to) the realms of philosophy and theology.

Also, if we apply the atheist’s own standard against biblical interpretation (the idea that multiple interpretations hinder truth) consistently, the entire exploration for human knowledge becomes reduced to absurdity because humans never agree. On anything. Ever.

Reduced to rubble all because people read the same evidence or sources differently.

Unless there’s a standard beyond humanity to determine and define truth and morality, reality itself becomes incoherent and absurd beyond recognition.

Reject Absurdity

No one can escape being a theologian. Everyone has a worldview, everyone evaluates reality through their worldview and via logic and reason, everyone develops rites and practices based on their worldview, so everyone is religious. Even atheists.

To be religious is to think thoroughly about reality, find a master, and follow that master, even if it’s yourself.

Only one Master makes sense, though. God Most High. Christ Jesus. Because a perfect Being that transcends this reality and originated it is necessary for any level of coherence.

Atheists demand you embrace the absurdity of a world without God while at the same time saying you can’t have an opinion because differing opinions amount to falsity…even though that very demand is an opinion and, therefore, self-defeating (gotta love the law of non-contradiction).

They would rather destroy the whole enterprise of intellectual exploration than acknowledge the existence of the One who makes it possible. Let that sink in.

Interpretation was never the enemy of truth. Disagreement is the bedrock of truthful inquiry, the search for knowledge and meaning, and that search has revealed ultimate truth is a Person.

500 witnesses saw the Risen Savior and shared what they saw, in their own words, from their own angles, with as many people as they could, and their story revolutionized the face of this Earth for the better. Brought dead men to life.

I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.

Neither should you.

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“The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise” by Benjamin West, 1791

Original sin is foundational to the Bible and the Christian faith. Humans were made for good but fell in the Garden of Eden after choosing evil, then became corrupted by sin and death unto the depths of their bodies and souls.

Even a cursory reading of Scripture illustrates that. As does a rudimentary knowledge of human history.

Left to their own devices to do what is right in their own eyes, humans have a propensity toward evil. From birth.

Yet there are some who find original sin to be a hindrance. An absurdity, even.

One atheist reached out to me on Substack a couple days ago with this quote from Ayn Rand:

“Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accept his own depravity without proof. It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not. It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer on his renounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic God with some incomprehensible design or any passer-by whose rotting sores are held as some inexplicable claim upon him—it does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence to any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man. The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin.”

He finds original sin ridiculous. Although, ironically, via his comment Ken exposed the real absurdity: The inability of an atheistic-naturalistic universe to define right from wrong, good from evil.

I discuss the moral problems with atheism in my Atheist Conversion Manual, but today, I going to go through this quote from Rand and explain why it proves the opposite of what Ken thinks it does. That it proves the necessity of God for good. Then I’m going to counter with an idea from Dostoevsky which proves Jesus, his sacrifice and resurrection, is the only way out of the grave.

Depravity Without Proof

Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accept his own depravity without proof.

Rand picks the wrong starting point.

The Bible doesn’t begin with original sin. It begins with a perfect Creator making a very good creation, including Adam and Eve, who have been given the opportunity to choose the good (we’ll get into this deeper below).

Therefore, depravity isn’t man’s “first proof of virtue.”

Depravity is, however, man’s first proof that on his own without some sort of help or intervention, without some higher guidance, he’s guaranteed to devolve into an evil monster. And that guarantee is backed up by history.

Every ancient culture, even ones held dear like the Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans, was leaned toward immense savagery and brutality. Civilizations are celebrated only because outliers who resisted the trend of savagery came along, said enough is enough to most savagery, and fought to build just societies.

In the ancient world one tribe attacked another to prove dominance, which would include raping and pillaging of the loser. Power and control reigned supreme.

Men were weighed by functionality and usefulness, not by any sort of inherent value.

Children in particular suffered the most. They would be sacrificed on altars, left unwanted in the elements to die, and/or the ones who were kept alive, they would, in many cultures, be treated like chattel or sold into slavery to pay back debts for struggling families. Many times to viscious slave masters who would beat and torture them.

Despite how much they are romanticized these days, Native American tribes were the worst. Always in endless wars that would end not only with the losing tribe raped and pillaged but men and women would be scalped, their hair and headdresses claimed as gory trophies. There are stories of Native American victors even tying boy infants from the losing tribes to horses and having them dragged across the land until they were unrecognizable pulps of still, bloodied flesh.

Evil strikes through every human heart, as Alexandr Solzeneitzen said, and history makes that fact plain as day.

Rand herself isn’t a paragon of perfection. She was a racist, eugenicist, and avid advocate of murdering unwanted children in the womb. The only reason she is idolized is because she was a prolific and creative writer, mainly for the feminist cause, which earned her an automatic place in boss lady hall of fame.

We humans are depraved beyond measure. So where is the good? Atheism has no adequate answer.

Define Good from Evil

It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not.

Rand thinks man is left to define good from evil. But in an atheistic world, there is no good or evil.

I explain in The Atheist Conversion Manual that evil is the absence of good. You can have good without evil, but evil isn’t a thing and therefore cannot exist unless there is an original, higher goodness that exists and continues to exist.

I cited Frank Turek’s analogy of the rusty car. You can have the car without the rust, but not the rust without the car.

Evil is the erosion of good.

Therefore, it cannot be the definition of good. No one thinks that. People can mistake evil for good, but no one thinks good comes from evil.

So Rand’s assertion is attacking a straw man.

The real question is why is there good at all in such an evil world? And the only valid answer is this world was made for good by a perfect Designer, then later corrupted by the curse of sin and death.

The Good is Non-Man

It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer on his renounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic God with some incomprehensible design or any passer-by whose rotting sores are held as some inexplicable claim upon him—it does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence to any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man. The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin.

She says this quote as if it’s a problem but never establishes why. Why does the good have to be man? Why can’t it be non-man?

Furthermore, how can man be the good? What is good? What is bad?

Rand presumes God is made up even though her own position is vacuous. Unable to ground truth and morality without the Creator.

What Rand is really mad about is that humanity was given a choice between good and evil and then chose against God, unleashing sin and death into this world. She and all atheists hate God for that because they don’t understand free will. They would rather God have treated all his creation, including humans, like robots. Cattle.

Atheists don’t realize, though, that should that desire be enacted, they would be rendered incapable of…anything.

Dostoevsky wrestled with the same question of free will and artfully explained why free will is necessary despite the evil Adam and Eve brought down upon creation...

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Life has no meaning. At least, that’s what atheists want you to believe.

From their worldview meaninglessness is inevitable.

They pretend it isn’t. “We’re not nihilists!”

Every time I bring up how without God there’s no meaning or purpose, they screech and gnash their teeth.

Now and then, though, that one stray atheist doesn’t get the memo and let’s the cat outta the bag.

One yesterday posts this quote from professor Brian Cox:

“There’s no evidence that the universe has purpose or intent, and it doesn’t care about us at all.

The laws of physics will continue to operate whether we exist or not.

I don’t find that depressing - I find it liberating, because it means meaning isn’t imposed from outside.

It’s something we create for ourselves, and with that comes complete responsibility for what we do.”

Uh-oh. Not supposed to say that Coxypoo. Don’t you know atheists have a reputation to uphold? Did you miss Skeptic Con this year?

Surely you can see why his Cox-splaining is utmost ridiculous. No?

Well, fortunately for you, we’re going to go through each of his statements together and expose why they fail, so you can see why nihilism is evil, wrong, repugnant, deadly, and only avoidable for the child of God.

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First, a Detour

Before we go on, it’s important to define “nihilism.” What is it?

In my book, The Atheist Conversion Manual, I define it like this:

(1) “The outright rejection of purpose, moral value, truth, and/or knowledge”

(2) “The belief that nothing matters and when we die that’s it. Poof. Gone.”

Nihilism inevitably arises from the belief that the material universe is all that exists because in such a worldview higher truth and morality cannot exist. In fact, as I argue later in the book, abstractions like love, perfection, good, bad, right, wrong, purpose, meaning, are all fictions in the naturalist/materialist world.

On this point, Cox is 100% correct, which makes him incorrect because there’s no such thing as correct. (Are you starting to see the problem?)

That’s not the only absurdity proposed by his naturalism. As we go through each of his statements, you’ll find so many.

“Theres’s no evidence that the universe has purpose or intent, and it doesn’t care about us at all”

The universe is inanimate matter incapable of feeling, so of course it can’t care. If it’s all there is, we’re outta luck.

Can’t argue with you there, Cox Meister.

But what evidence is there that the universe is all that exists? What’s the evidence your statement is even true? Can you prove that abstract thought in your mind is even real?

You see, the conundrum which immediately surfaces in Cox’s first claim is he’s accepting both the existence of the universe and the “fact” that there’s no evidence for the universe “caring,” as if those are intelligible avenues of exploration.

And he provides no justification for that assumption whatsoever.

We also run into the problem C. S. Lewis so artfully articulated. If the material universe is all that exists, then Cox’s own thoughts are just atoms and neurons bumping around or randomly coalescing without any rhyme or reason. Therefore, anything he says is automatically unreasonable.

Right out the gate, Cox fails miserably, and the pickle only gets bigger from there.

“The laws of physics will continue to operate whether we exist or not”

If I had Cox face to face, I would immediately ask him, “How do you know that?”

He’d probably come back with, “Because many humans have already died and the universe keeps going.”

But that describes a trend, not an absolute rule. We know for a fact based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics that the universe will eventually run out of energy and burn out, so whether one accepts a materialist universe or Godly universe, the evidence suggests the laws of physics will not continue operating forever.

In fact, the cited law from thermodynamics also indicates the universe had a beginning at which point the laws of physics didn’t exist.

Prior to the Planck era of the Big Bang, there was no space, time, or matter, and therefore, no “laws.” If only a material cosmos exists, then there was once nothing that somehow became something, so where did the “laws” come from? And how can they go on forever if they haven’t existed forever to begin with?

Furthermore, there’s the problem of calling them “laws.”

Atheists refuse to bend on that term. All scientists of all walks of life continue to consider the principles of physics “laws” because they work consistently with only rare deviation (like laws), and without them in place, the whole universe would collapse. But (1) they too are abstractions, which can’t exist in purely material universe (as already established), and (2) laws only come from lawgivers.

So who put the laws of physics out there? Certainly not humans. We only discovered them functioning within our cosmos. Therefore, there must be another Intelligence who put them in place.

That logical step can’t be escaped.

And since an Intelligence must have established these intelligible laws, there must also be ultimate meaning and purpose to existence.

Why then doesn’t Cox want meaning or purpose? Fortunately, he doesn’t hide his true motives…

“I don’t find that depressing - I find it liberating, because it means meaning isn’t impose from the outside. It’s something we create for ourselves, and with that comes complete responsibility for what we do”

Charming sentiment. I’ll give him that. After all, who doesn’t want to be in control?

However, “making meaning,” which is impossible from the start because in a material cosmos there’s no such thing as meaning (what does he mean by “it means meaning” if meaning is just made up?), has and always will lead to utter annihilation.

As I warn in The Atheist Conversion Manual, “Nihilism has eroded and destroyed more lives than any other belief on Earth because it is amoral. If nihilism is true, then anything goes. It’s an every-man-for-himself world.”

Only hopeless, pitiful indifference (Dawkins). And indifference justifies nothing, while permitting everything.

The responsibility Cox mentions is mere illusion, if anything at all. Responsible to whom? Ourselves?

Let’s see what humans being “responsible to ourselves” got us:

In the name of indifference, communists killed 10,000,000+ people in the 20th century, and abortionists slaughtered 300,000,000,000+ human babies since the 1970s. Systematic extermination. The former received outrage, the latter remains celebrated as a “human right,” but in a naturalistic world, neither can be justifiably condemned since people are just making and living out their own meaning. “Rights” are fiction.

Cox wants there to be a meaningless world because then he gets to play God. Do whatever he wants. What is right in his own eyes. For everyone to do what is right in their own eyes until the cosmos is one gigantic never-ending hellscape like in the Book of Judges.

Any atheists who cite his nihilism want exactly the same. They would prefer you see them as the good guys, the liberators, even though they’re just going to enslave you to your passions and make you see anyone and anything else as expendable in the pursuit of said passions.

What are you to do?

What is one to do?

Reject atheism. Reject nihilism. Toss them onto the trash heap and never look back.

Plain and simple.

You know full well the atheist position is untenable, so why even bother with it anymore?

It’s neither true nor good. It can’t even explain what “true” and “good” mean. THERE IS NO MEANING if atheism is true, and that’s terrifying, not comforting.

Truth, morality, purpose, and meaning require a cosmos made by a Master Maker, otherwise you’re a mere hopeless accident doomed to nothingness, shackled to whims and fancies with no reason to consider others. You’re duping yourself, most to be pitied.

God is necessary.

Without God, there’s no obligation, no responsibility, no higher standard…and no way out of hell.

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On Saturday, 8/1/2026, I argued the Bible is the authoritative Word of God.

We discussed how the Bible, focusing on the 66-book canon which is agreed to be divinely inspired by Catholics, Orthodox, Ethiopians, and Protestants alike, is a compilation of documents spanning possibly as old as their source material (c. 3000 BC).

We talked about how those documents came to be compiled during the Exile in Babylon and Persia, not written, because we have the Dead Sea Scrolls which have a full copy of Isaiah that dates to at least 700 BC, possibly earlier. That scroll then references books in the Old Testament that would’ve had to exist for Isaiah to reference them, suggesting early composition for all 39 books of the OT.

I also laid out a brief case for the accuracy and authenticity of the New Testament.

You can read that article for yourselves to get the full details and also to learn about how the Bible was translated and why translations are reliable, but for this article I’m going to focus on which modern English translations are the best for you to use…and which ones should you should avoid.

You and I will walk through the popular translations, the ones that everybody is familiar with. A full breakdown of their history and which ones I think are best.

This is not to say I have a preference of one over the other. I actually use many of them together when researching because comparing them and contrasting them reveals the nuances in the first manuscripts without you having to know the original languages.

Sure, it’s always best to know the originals, and if you should desire to do that, learn the Hebrew, Greek, and even Latin, I highly encourage it because the original languages open up the Bible in ways that just reading English or reading in your own personal language, your vernacular, does not.

But using multiple modern translations is a close second, so it’s important to know which ones are best.

Without any further ado, let’s go ahead and examine each of the popular translations so you can know which ones are valuable for learning and which ones are deceptive.

(P.S. Due to there being many translations, this article will be longer than our usual articles and our examination of their history, despite me only choosing the most common versions.)

Valuable Modern Translations of the Bible

The most valuable modern translations available are the NIV, the ESV, the CSB, the RSV, and the NASB. You can also use the King James Version or the New King James Version, but those are ones that should be used with caution, and I’ll explain why in a bit.

Let’s start with the NIV.

NIV

The New International Version was the vision of a guy named Howard Long.

A devout Christian, he lived in Seattle and was an engineer. Loved the King James Version but found the 17th-century language to be unuseful for trying to reach people with the Gospel of Christ.

People couldn’t understand Victorian English anymore. There was the need for something fresh.

In the 1950s, he decided to make a new version. Advocated for it and got his denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, to pair up with the National Association of Evangelicals and a group of evangelical scholars in 1965 near Chicago.

Together, they formed the Committee on Bible Translation (CBT), 15 scholars who oversaw the work of more than 100 translators from various evangelical traditions. This group began a completely new translation from scratch that went back to the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek text of the Bible.

The translators slapped the different renderings together and reviewed them with the scholars to determine which version(s) best matched the original languages.

Accuracy the end goal.

The New Testament version of the NIV was published in 1973, and then the full Bible in 1978. A revision appeared in 1984.

This Bible is a very good Bible because it attempts a word-for-word match of the original languages. The translators intended to keep the integrity of the Word of God instead of trying to inject their own personal biases and ideas into the text.

A 2005 update called Today’s NIV (TNIV) attempted to incorporate gender-inclusive language at the expense of accuracy and was discontinued after severe backlash. Then, in 2011, the version now available anywhere, which maintains accuracy while mixing in “inclusive language,” replaced the 1984 revision.

Our present NIV remains a valuable translation despite politically correct updates. Although, it’s not near as good as the next translation.

ESV

The English Standard Version is a personal favorite. I like to go to this one all the time, and I know so many other people find it very popular.

I won’t say it’s my only favorite version. My other favorite version is the New American Standard Bible (more on it below).

Both of these ones established from the beginning that their missions would be word-for-word matches of the original languages. I don’t know if it was explicitly stated the NIV would be a word-for-word match, though that’s what Howard Long intended.

For the ESV, however, there’s no mystery.

The ESV comes from, or is in the tradition of, the Tyndale-King James, and its immediate predecessor was the 1971 Revised Standard Version (more on this one also below).

In the ‘90s, evangelical leaders, which included Crossway’s Lane Dennis and also the renowned John Piper, all came together because they noticed a need for a highly accurate and readable translation that preserved the literary quality of earlier classic versions of the Bible (while at the same time updating language that may have become outdated). Same drive as Long.

After getting permission from the National Council of Churches to use the 1971 RSV as a starting point, translation work began in 1998 under the oversight of a translation committee, the general editor of which was the renowned J. I. Packer.

Denis and Piper enlisted involvement from over 100 scholars and reviewers, and the team worked on revisions from the best available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. They focused on making revisions for accuracy and clarity, and rendered a contemporary English translation that retained traditional theological terminology.

The first edition was published by Crossway in 2001, and then there were other updates that appeared in 2007, 2011, and 2016.

To this day, Reformed and evangelical pastors, seminaries, and those who prefer formal equivalents for studying and preaching tend to prefer the English Standard Version because it’s a word-for-word model. They find it refreshing, and honestly, so do I, because there are so many other translations out there that are paraphrases or disrespectful to the ancient manuscripts.

KJV/NKJV

In my last article, I didn’t exactly give a glowing review of the King James Version, so before we get started, I just want to correct any misconceptions you may have that I don’t like it.

I do like the King James Version. Love it. I think the Victorian English it contains is quite beautiful, and I highly recommend it, especially for children who are learning to read, because then they get to experience not just an accurate reading of the Bible, but a poetic one as well.

The Victorian English of the King James Version contains is quite beautiful. A lost art of English we sorely need back in our lives. Just as we need Shakespeare, we need the King James Bible because of how splendid it is to read.

However, much to the chagrin of the KJV obsessors out there, the King James Version is not the perfect translation. It’s just not.

It has variations just like all other common translations because capturing all the nuance of the original languages is difficult to do when moving them to vernaculars.

Also, King James VI Scotland/James I of England put qualifiers in there to elevate himself and ensure the Bible did not contradict his authority. These were stipulations he would not bend on when creating the King James Version for the Anglicans and Puritans of his day.

That being said, the King James Version and its successor, the NKJV (the New King James Version), are still extremely valuable.

The KJV came about because in 1604 there was conflict going on between the Anglicans and the New Puritan Movement. The Puritans wanted to return to biblical roots. They wanted to exact biblical purity based on the law, the prophets, the principles of Jesus, everything in society. Wanted it all upheld to the highest degree.

So they petitioned King James to render a new translation for them, one that also went back to the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts, the best that was available in their time.

James authorized the revision as long as it followed the Bishops’ Bible as the base text with as little alteration as possible and included the stipulations mentioned above, which would elevate himself and not counter his authority. He also required they did not follow the popular Geneva Bible, which had controversial marginal notes.

At his request, 47-54 scholars organized into six companies that worked at Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge. While they focused on the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, they also used a Latin translation as inspiration and drew heavily from William Tyndale’s English Bible, which got him burned at the stake.

Robert Barker, the King’s printer, released the official version of the King James in 1611, and the earliest printings had minor variations, just like the ESV and the NIV. To this day, it still has only minor variations, although some variations affect the meaning in places. But not so much that it ruins or completely alters the overall message of the Bible.

In the mid-1970s, as newer modern language translations gained popularity, Thomas Nelson sought to update the KJV’s archaic vocabulary and grammar while preserving its style, its accuracy, and its foundation. They began in 1975, under Arthur L. Farstad, with a team of about 130 scholars, church leaders, and lay people from various backgrounds to create the new King James Version.

Again, they went back to the Hebrew and Greek texts, using the same tradition as the original KJV, and aimed for a complete equivalent to the KJV, but with language everyone could understand.

The New King James was fully published in 1982, and it and the King James Version remain popular to this day. Rightly so, because again, they are very good translations.

CSB

The Christian Standard Bible is another one of my favorites, at least the version that we have now. The one redone in 2017.

The original version came about honorably, created by Arthur Farstad, from the NKJV project, and Edwin Blum, both of whom were sponsored by Holman Bible Publishers. Hence the original title Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB).

It was crafted in the 1980s and 1990s by a team of more than 100 conservative scholars from 17 denominations who worked from the Hebrew and the Greek. They used an optimal equivalence approach, which means they sought to optimize the English so it matched as closely as it could with the Greek and Hebrew without sacrificing clarity.

Balanced readability and accuracy.

The first full Bible for the HCSB appeared in 2004, and then a second edition in 2010. The most recent edition, the Christian Standard Bible, appeared in 2017.

In my opinion, it’s more accurate than the first editions because it follows scholarly advances, improves clarity and consistency, and makes the overall feeling of the text when reading so much better. Flows.

Even though it’s not as popular as the English Standard Version or the New American Standard, it’s still growing in popularity, especially in the United States.

RSV

Some of my Protestant friends don’t really like the Revised Standard Version, but I enjoy it. The only reason they don’t is because those who translated the RSV also translated Apocryphal and Deuterocanonical books to produce Catholic and Orthodox translations of the Bible as well.

That’s Protestant nitpicking that goes way too far because the Revised Standard Version is a very admirable and accurate translation.

Furthermore, the Apocryphal and Deuterocanonical texts from the Second Temple Period are fascinating and filled with truth. As noted in my last article, they’re debated today only as to whether they are divinely inspired, which is a separate question from truth.

Like the NASB, which we’re going to discuss next, the Revised Standard Version used its immediate predecessor, the American Standard Version of 1901. A translation based on the British Revised Version from 1881-1885.

In 1928, the International Council of Religious Education acquired the ASV copyright, and after study, it authorized a thorough revision in 1937.

A committee of 32 scholars, including one Jewish scholar, got together and, under the guidance of Luther A. Weigle, Dean of Yale Divinity School, produced the RSV. They used the best available critical texts of the time, including the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, and for the Old Testament, incorporated some early findings from the Dead Sea Scrolls, notably the Isaiah Scroll.

The New Testament was published in 1946, and the complete Bible with Old and New Testaments appeared in 1952. The Apocrypha and Deuterocanonical books followed in 1957, and then a second edition of the New Testament released in 1971, the committed produced Catholic versions.

Like the ESV and NASB, the RSV follows the Tyndale-King James tradition of translation. Prioritizes word-for-word and thematic honesty.

When going through the text, the committee modernized the Victorian English, much like the NKJV did, by removing archaic language. Even though they retained the “thou” for address to God in earliest printings.

Their aim was to make a translation that would be accessible for private reading, public worship, and academic study and accomplished their goal so well that the panel of scholars and church leaders who made the English Standard Version used the RSV as a role model.

I consider the RSV an honorable translation and highly recommend, though not as much as the next translation on our list.

NASB

Perhaps the most important Bible you can ever have is the New American Standard Bible. I say that because, as far as word-for-word matches go, this Bible aimed from the start to be as literal as possible when translating the Hebrew and Greek into English.

It comes from the American Standard Version of 1901, counterpart to the English Revised Version of 1885.

In 1959, the Lockman Foundation wanted to launch a project because they wanted to update the ASV’s language while keeping its high degree of literal accuracy. They also wanted to incorporate new manuscript discoveries, because, as you know from my last article, manuscripts for the Bible were not discovered all at once but gradually over time.

The biggest discovery, the Dead Sea Scrolls, absolutely revolutionized everything skeptical scholars believed about the Bible. Supported and proved the Bible to be authentic and true from beginning to end and to be earlier than once suspected.

Again, a team of scholars for the New American Standard Bible got together, not just a single scholar. It wasn’t like Jerome translating the Latin Vulgate for the church, but a team, comparing and contrasting, working side by side to make sure they got as accurate a translation as possible from one language to another. Worked over a decade to get the New American Standard Bible complete.

It was officially published in 1971 and gained a rapid reputation as one of the most literal English translations available. There were only a few revisions:

• 1977, minor

• 1995, to update readability while retaining the formal equivalents that the NASB contains

• 2020, which further modernized the English but kept the word-for-word philosophy

If your goal when reading the Bible is to be as precise as possible, which it should be, then the NASB is for you because it prioritizes precision above all else.

These are all the translations I highly recommend because they are absolutely fabulous, honest, and true to the original languages. Spectacular. You’re never going to find a better source of truth than these.

However, there are some translations you should avoid at all costs…

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Whenever you say the Bible is true online, you always get that one liberal who thinks he’s clever:

“Which Bible?”

“Which translation?”

“Which language?”

One recently spouted those at a post I made, right after saying there’s no way to prove the Bible is true without belief.

I thought about responding, but to answer those questions takes a lot longer than a comment under a post. So, I thought it would make a good article. Allegiant Faith subscribers agreed.

Here you go.

It just so happens I already dealt with the issue of the Bible’s reliability in my new book, The Atheist Conversion Manual. And I can tell you whenever an atheist, liberal or otherwise (though 98% of the time anyone who poses those questions to tear down trust in the Bible is liberal), they haven’t considered in depth conservative Christian defenses of the Bible’s authenticity and reliability.

I’m going to answer each of Mr. Paul’s questions in kind, starting with what we consider to be the Bible, so you can see God’s Holy Word is authentic, reliable, and true.

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What is the Bible?

For the sake of this article, I’m only going to focus on the 66-book canon because it contains the books that are accepted by Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, and Ethiopian alike, providing a solid, united ground to work from.

Before we go on, it should be noted that the books not included in the 66-book canon are not left out because they’re inauthentic or untrue. They’re actively debated to this day as to whether they are divinely inspired. A different question entirely because even uninspired texts can contain truth.

The 66-book canon is divided between the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) and New Testament (Greek Bible), and the former also includes some sections of Aramaic because the Israelites lived near Aram, were eventually exiled into Babylon with the Arameans, and later had to learn how to cohabit the land of Israel with Arameans when they returned from exile, per release by King Cyrus and then the defeat of Persia by Alexander the Great.

Liberal scholars love to argue that the Hebrew Bible was written during the Exile, and for a time, they got away with that faulty view…until the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.

• Prior to the Dead Sea Scrolls, all we had was the Masoretic Hebrew Old Testament from c. 1000 AD and the Septuagint or LXX (the Koine Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible).

• After, a wealth of fragments from the copies of the original Hebrew Old Testmanent were discovered, most of which pre-date the Exile. The BIGGEST find was an entire copy of Isaiah, which has been estimated to have originated in 700 BC.

Huge problem for skeptics with that Isaiah Scroll is that Isaiah references other parts of the Old Testament and names specific kings found in the Books of Kings and Books of Chronicles. That gives us multiple attestation and indicates the other books of the Old Testament, or at least the ones referenced, existed in or prior to 700 BC.

If that is the case, as it most assuredly is, then the Law (which the Israelites used to refer to the whole Pentateuch or “five books of Moses” - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) and the prophets existed before or around 700 BC, along with other books mentioned in Kings and Chronicles that kept records of the history of Israelite kingdom since the time of Samuel and Saul.

As far as we can tell, the whole Hebrew canon was written and compiled from around 1400 BC-400 BC, give or take. Meaning it wasn’t written during the Exile, but put together into its final form, which was then translated into the Greek Septuagint sometime after Alexander’s defeat of Persia.

The Pentateuch (first 5 books of the Bible) includes poems and prayers that date even earlier than 1400 BC, suggesting the source material stretches far earlier, possibly to 3000 BC or before.

New Testament books were all written during the early Roman Empire and are dated to within or just shy of the first century AD, within living memory of Jesus. 5800 manuscript fragment from copies of the original documents or quotations have been found (more than any other documents in history, and that’s not including fragments from translations into other languages) which text critics have been able to use to piece together to within 98% accuracy what the original New Testament Gospels and letters said.

So, when talking about the 66-book canon, this is what everyone means (or should mean, otherwise any talk about the Bible is skewed from the start because it’s not actually talking about the Bible).

What About Translation?

The argument that multiple translations are a problem for the truth of the Bible only became popular because of scholar Bart Ehrman, who is staunchly anti-God and, like other liberal scholars, saw any variations in texts as confusing the message of Scripture.

Ehrman also popularized the theory of late dating for the New Testament documents, which is by no means accepted by all scholars.

The idea they (Ehrman and other scholars like him) most adore is the claim that memory of Jesus was passed on in oral form (by verbal transmission) a long time before being written down.

A game of phone tag became their most popular analogy. One kid passes a message on to another in a long line, and as the message goes on it gets filtered through what each person thinks they heard with small changes over time until the message is completely warped from what the original message said. Applied to the the New Testament, if true, it would mean that the final form of the New Testament is not what the early church read and not what was written in the original documents.

In my book, The Atheist Conversion Manual, I address the above objections in detail.

(1) Late dating for the original manuscripts is not the only option. Early dating remains viable, and strong cases have been made for it. There’s not enough space here to make a detailed argument, although I do so in my book.

Furthermore, (2) whether you pick early dating for the New Testament or late dating, you still end up with documents that were written within living memory of the witnesses to Christ and his life. That fact alone destroys the phone tag argument.

Note that in the analogy, the first kid to speak the message is around the entire time. He doesn’t drop the line and then vanish. He sticks around to play the game and watch how the message transforms, and when he sees it change, he is there to make corrections.

Same for the New Testament.

The original manuscripts were written while witnesses to Jesus were still alive and could correct any alterations in the message that may have ruined it. The earliest churches could consult said witnesses to make sure what they’d been told was accurate, and they did.

Such was the case for the first century of Christianity, and the only language used was the Greek for the original documents. (There is rumor of a Hebrew version of Matthew, but it hasn’t been found by historians in any of the manuscript fragments.)

It wasn’t until the second century that the need for a Latin translation arose because Christianity spread deeper into Northwest Africa and Europe, where the dominant language was Latin. And Jerome, who translated the Old and New Testaments into the Latin Vulgate, took tremendous care because he saw his mission as a sacred one. He wanted to preserve the whole of Scripture in a word-for-word match. The translation he produced had such accuracy.

But even if it didn’t, the Hebrew and Greek testaments were maintained in Israel and across the Eastern Roman Empire, which would later become the Byzantine Empire (stretching from the Mediterranean coast up into Russia, eastward into Asia, and southward into Saudia Arabia and Africa, namely Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia).

The Orthodox did a splendid job of keeping the Bible and Apocryphal texts from disappearing from existence, as scrupulous as the Ancient Hebrew scribes who copied and preserved the Law and Prophets.

Everyone who translated the Bible was meticulous.

What About Vernacular Translations?

Vernacular means “common” or “main” language. Whatever is spoken the majority of people in a specific nation or region.

For a time, since everyone spoke Latin and that was the main language of the Western church, no one worried about translating into other languages. Same in the East with Greek.

Plus, the Catholic Church adopted the top-down hierarchical model it still employs today, where bishops from the Pope downward served as the readers and interpreters of Scripture for the people. The only other readers of Scripture were monks in monasteries, who coincidentally read everything, not just the Bible. They preserved via painstaking copy many ancient texts that we would not have today. (Think Plato, Aristotle, Homer, and much more.)

Around the 1300s, citizens all across Europe began to realize entrusting full interpretive rights of the Bible to church leadership alone left them not knowing what the Bible actually said. They just took bishops’ word for it, which wasn’t problematic when bishops could be trusted.

But toward the 15th century, the turn of the Renaissance, the Catholic Church became corrupted by a love of money like no other, and political actors from the outside crept in using bribes and power plays until the Church was ruled for a time by secular humanists pretending to be Christians. Usury became a chief complaint from many Catholics and then Protestants, from Luther and beyond.

The populace of Europe realized that the laity needed to be able to read Scripture. Not just to check the interpretations of church leadership, but also to experience the full beauty and wonder of the Word of God for themselves.

William Tyndale, who is most famous for being burned at the stake for making the first English translation, stated that he would make “the boy that driveth the plough” know more of Scripture than many learned clergy. Thereby displaying the motive.

And like those before him who translated the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek and the full Hebrew and Greek testaments into Latin, he took the job seriously, worked on a word-for-word match between the original languages and vernacular. A translation that cost him everything.

As the Protestant Reformation got well underway in the 16th century and beyond, other translators all over the West eventually took up the task of making other vernacular translations at risk of their own lives and also saw the task as sacred. Again and again, the emphasis on translation as a holy vocation resurfaced.

The only translation that was deliberately requested by a king to be written to give him ultimate authority over everyone (even above God in some senses) was that attributed to James I of England.

While the King James Version is adored by many, and is a beautiful translation (I don’t care what anyone says, Victorian English is spectacular), it has errors in it that go beyond mere spelling errors or grammatical issues. It has errors that alter the meaning of the text in spots because of the fact that its translators were enlisted by James I to tickle his fancy, not to administer an accurate word-for-word translation into English.

While they relied on Tyndale’s prior translation for much of the work, 80-90%, they didn’t use the same fastidious care applied by prior translators who transitioned the Bible into vernacular forms out of overwhelming divine calling.

What About Modern Translations?

The Renaissance and Reformation both sparked a desire for academic study unseen in the Middle Ages.

That’s not to say the Middle Ages were dark. They most certainly were not. Many a great philosophy and thought came out of the Middle Ages, despite “Enlightenment” fanatics trying to paint it as a time of vast ignorance.

But with the hunger for translation came the hunger for learning, which spread far and wide, and concern for accuracy increased.

Text criticism became a field of study to ensure that any and all texts from history are translated and matched their original languages and original documents, to the best of our ability. We’re talking years and years of lovers of history who spent centuries in ancient texts, especially the Bible, many of whom had/have the whole Bible memorized in the Hebrew and Greek, translating and retranslating the original languages to get as accurate as possible vernaculars.

The result is a wide array of translations, yes. But that’s not a bad thing.

A vast collection of translations exposes the nuances in the original documents of the Bible and forces us to study God’s Word closely. Ensures anyone and everyone can get a clear understanding of the Bible if they spend time in and cherish it, let it speak for itself, by comparing and contrasting and asking questions.

So, to the questions of “What Bible? What translation? What language?” I say don’t read just one. Read many, and study, don’t just read.

Also, make sure they are word-for-word translations and not paraphrases. Paraphrases are Bibles mixed with personal commentary.

Wednesday in our weekly paid article I will provide multiple translations I use that I think are best because of their integrity, and also tell you of some you should avoid.

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Marcel Roux (1878-1922)

Atheists think themselves superior to those who believe in God. But are they really?

Fyodor Dostoevsky dealt with the same question toward the end of his life. Russia became more industrialized, and with industrialization came anti-religious “enlightenment” ideals. Darwinism spread fast. More and more people fled the Orthodox Church for naturalism.

He came to the conclusion that atheism cannot survive.

In his final novel, the Karamazov brothers and their conflict with each other and their father illustrate the human struggle with the brand new atheism. Which seemed unbeatable and would soon devolve into the communist Soviet Union.

At the beginning of Part II, just after watching his brother and father fight over a woman, which ended with his father’s face bloodied and brutalized, Alyosha Karamazov is about to return to his kin from the nearby monastery where he serves when he’s stopped by Father Paissy, who gives him a profound and prophetic warning:

“Remember, young man, unceasingly…that the science of this world, having united itself into a great force, has, especially in the past century, examined everything heavenly that has been bequeathed to us in sacred books, and, after hard analysis, the learned ones of this world have absolutely nothing left of what was once holy. But they have examined parts and missed the whole, and their blindness is even worthy of wonder. Meanwhile the whole stands before their eyes as immovably as ever, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Did it not live for nineteen centuries, does it not live even now in the movements of individual souls and in the movements of the popular masses? Even in the movements of the souls of those same all-destroying atheists, it lives, as before, immovably! For those who renounce Christianity and rebel against it are in their essence of the same image of the same Christ, and such they remain, for until now neither their wisdom nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create another, higher image of man and his dignity than the image shown of old by Christ. And whatever their attempts, the results have been only monstrosities. Remember this especially, young man, since you are being resigned to the world by your departing elder. Perhaps, remembering this great day, you will not forget my words either, given as cordial words of parting for you, because you are young and the temptations of the world are heavy and your strength will not endure them.”

Through four crucial claims, the Father tears apart any notion that atheism can survive for long, but in its time, it will be a dangerous, deadly enemy to humanity. We’re going to explore those claims one by one and discover how they relate to our world today…

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Blindness of the Learned Ones

“Remember, young man, unceasingly…that the science of this world, having united itself into a great force, has, especially in the past century, examined everything heavenly that has been bequeathed to us in sacred books, and, after hard analysis, the learned ones of this world have absolutely nothing left of what was once holy. But they have examined parts and missed the whole, and their blindness is even worthy of wonder.”

Paissy takes a passing reference to 1 Corinthians 13:12 and modernizes it for Alyosha.

Modern science thinks itself clever. But it lacks full power and potential because it disregards what is heavenly and holy.

One can’t help but picture “learned ones” in air quotes. Paissy no doubt dubs them with that label based on their own considerations of themselves. They go about with lofty haughtiness, picturing themselves as the best of the best of the best, all the while being deceived.

Because they limit themselves to the study of the material and mundane and can’t go beyond that domain. Their hubris and atheism won’t allow it.

Therefore, considering them “learned” can be nothing less than pure theater.

Stuck in physics, they cannot grasp metaphysics, and they are indeed blind...and weak. The “learned ones” can’t stand against the Higher Power of the kingdom of God.

The Immovable Whole

“Meanwhile the whole stands before their eyes as immovably as ever, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Did it not live for nineteen centuries, does it not live even now in the movements of individual souls and in the movements of the popular masses? Even in the movements of the souls of those same all-destroying atheists, it lives, as before, immovably!”

Paissy combines the Imago Dei with the historical resilience of Christianity.

Since Dostoevsky lived and died in the 19th century, his count of Christianity’s years stops there, but Christianity continues to be resilient even now, no matter what it faces. Nothing has destroyed it.

G. K. Chesterton, born seven years before Dostoevsky’s death, noted that Christianity’s survival has been akin to ongoing resurrections, mirroring the Savior’s own destruction of and escape from the grave. Every time the enemies of Christ think they have beaten him, he blasts aside the stone anew.

No other faith system has lasted as long. None. And yet Christianity has done so and also spread worldwide despite relentless persecution.

Paissy rightly sees that fact combined with the evident inherent value inside all humans as God’s little images to be irrefutable. Even atheists cannot escape the latter, for any attempts at escape result in abominations.

Manufactured Monsters

“For those who renounce Christianity and rebel against it are in their essence of the same image of the same Christ, and such they remain, for until now neither their wisdom nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create another, higher image of man and his dignity than the image shown of old by Christ. And whatever their attempts, the results have been only monstrosities.”

Christ is the ultimate image of humankind. He lived to the fullest what we were designed to be and then gave his life to overcome sin and death and make the holy image of God permanent in this world and beyond.

Before and after his sacrifice, humans tried and still try to perfect humanity. Create utopias and always fail.

Paissy calls our attempts “monstrosities.” Little did Dostoevsky know just how monstrous the attempts would become. Over 10 million dead at the hands of the “utopia”-makers in a single century, something he would thankfully never live to see.

Although, it seems he suspected that outcome with Paissy’s prophetic words.

You will be ruled by kings or by the King, and only the latter leads to salvation.

Strong Spirit, Weak Flesh

“Remember this especially, young man, since you are being resigned to the world by your departing elder. Perhaps, remembering this great day, you will not forget my words either, given as cordial words of parting for you, because you are young and the temptations of the world are heavy and your strength will not endure them.”

Alyosha Karamazov, while the specific addressee, represents all youth who reach adulthood and are sent out into our dead world.

Though he’s tasted the whole from having spent time around the wise fathers in the monastery and learned of Christ, unless he carries Christ with him, lives out the perfected image, he’s sure to be devoured. For his strength alone is insufficient.

Devils lurk around every corner with weapons beyond brute strength and mental fortitude. Their tactics of seduction...overwhelming.

Paissy says with confidence that Alyosha’s (anyone who thinks he can face the world alone) “strength will not endure.” Not “might not,” not “maybe could”...WILL not. Because sin crouches at the door waiting to twist, pervert, infect, and kill.

You cannot face the mundane without the holy, or you will become a monster yourself.

The Utter Futility of Atheism

Atheism, therefore, is futile because it has deliberately shoved aside the holy and made itself the soulless, monstrous option. Though promising the illusion of freedom, its only end is lust. Obsession. Seduction into evil via the promise of unattainable power.

Because it is void of the divine. Void of real life.

Prior to the warning, Alyosha already had a taste of what lust would bring. His father’s and brother’s (both atheists) obsession with Grushenka led to relational collapse and almost left his father dead.

Alyosha was about to step back into that horrid context. Not knowing what to expect.

Same for you each day when you walk out the door. Evil waits for any opportunity you give it to invade and twist your mind, unless you remain forever vigilant, walking in the footsteps of Christ.

Life resides in the Source, the perfect Imager. All else is folly.

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That should bother you.

Because as Christians we have been given the truth that outweighs all else. Christ the King, who bled and died the most horrible of deaths and then rose from the grave to conquer sin and death.

The eternal God became flesh and dwelt among us to save the world through his everlasting sacrifice and grace.

We should have courageous passion for spreading the good news of God in Christ, overflowing with abundant wisdom, but we still tend to separate truth from faith. Do exactly as the atheists want.

Why?

You’re not going to like the answer. But you need it.

You Don’t Want to Be Free

You may think you want freedom, but you don’t understand what freedom is. Independence is what you mistake for freedom.

And it’s not entirely your fault.

You live in a culture that has pushed independence in all ways (“breaking the shackles of oppression”). Online it’s known as the oppressor vs oppressed narrative. In reality, it’s Marxism. Communism lite. Satanic to the core. Literally.

You probably don’t realize this (most people don’t), but Karl Marx was a Satanist. His daughter once caught him worshipping at a secret occult shrine in his office, and in his early poetry he talks about how God is real, he hates him, and he wants to see him usurped from his holy throne.

To write his manifesto, Marx tapped into ancient Gnosticism. The cult of secret knowledge that pits all who are “awake” to hidden reality against flesh and the evil Demiurge. The oppressor God.

Don’t get me wrong. We should definitely fight for the most innocent, and there are cases of real oppression.

But the ideology of Gnostic Marxism creates an us-them dynamic which only tears down and erodes everything it touches.

And you don’t have to take my word for it. The complete and utter failure of communism everywhere it has gone since its inception is proof enough.

All because they wanted power and control. Autonomous. “Independent.” To break the chains allegedly slapped upon them by God, the church, the state, and society.

The socialist brand of freedom turns out to be nothing but replacing old chains with new ones. They look nice and shiny. The way they sparkle…magnificent. But they’re still chains. Bred from power, void of truth.

You don’t want to be that kind of “free.”

You want to be free to choose the good.

Free to Choose the Good

Scripture is clear on every page that humans are slaves to sin. Broken since the fall. And when we aren’t following one god, we will always choose another…whether we know it or not.

G. K. Chesterton once rightly said, “For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.”

Idols creep into your life without your noticing. Unless you recognize and accept the reality of idols and are on the lookout, keeping watch by night, you are easy to entice and deceive. To fall prey to your faulty passions and be led into sin, as James said in his epistle.

To choose the good…that’s the only alternative. But you can’t do it on your own. No one can.

Sure, humans can do good things occasionally (God wrote morality into the cosmos, after all), but no one lives out pure goodness on their own. Eventually, selfishness kicks in or that one Gollum-like “precious” calls out “Did God really say…?” and you’re sucked into a black abyss of sin and torment from which there is no escape. Worse. You drag others down with you, ruining or near ruining their lives.

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn puts it, “evil strikes through every human heart.” You’re already a slave.

The only way to become actually free is to choose the correct Master.

To Live is Christ, to Die is Gain

Twice, in Romans and Philippians, Paul refers to himself as “slave to Christ,” and that’s the key you’re looking for.

In Philippians, he then goes on to say this:

“Yes, and I will rejoice, 19 for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, 20 as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. 21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. 23 I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. 24 But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. 25 Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, 26 so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again. 27 Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, 28 and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. 29 For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, 30 engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have” (Phil 1:18-30).

I highlighted the four main points, but let me list them:

• “To live is Christ, and to die is gain”

• “Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ”

• “Not frightened in anything by your opponents”

• “For the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake”

Suffering for the sake of Christ is access to the good and holy, and therefore, true freedom. If you aren’t suffering for him in some way, then the chances are you are in love with the world and not taking Christ seriously.

All he did was go around speaking and writing about the truth of Christ, and the world locked him up in chains. Yet he rejoiced. Because he had freedom no one could touch.

When you go all-in and become allegiant to the King of kings, Jesus replaces all else, magnifying the good and purging the evil. You owe it to yourself to read and learn everything you can about him, the history around him, his church, and prepare yourself for battle.

Because in the case of truth, there is one Savior and many devils, and you’re already in the war.

I wrote something to help you fight.

Get the manual that walks you through the truth of Christianity, my new book

The Atheist Conversion Manual

I explain the big deception in our world and take you step by step through why you can know God exists and that he is Jesus Christ, our Lord.

37 have already bought copies in the first weekend.

And here’s one of my favorite reviews:

Readers are loving every second of my book because I don’t hold back. I tell it like it is. When you read, you reading a weapon you can return to time and again to fight the vile legions of hell and win souls for Christ Jesus.

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The Atheist Conversion Manual

Today’s the big day! I just released my first book, The Atheist Conversion Manual. The Kindle edition is available, paperback and hardcover release 7/20. I’ve been talking about it all week on X and Substack, but I never told you the story behind it.

I wrote it for a son I almost lost.

Some of you have already heard this story because I shared it in an email a while ago. I decided it needs to be an article to help you understand that anything I write for you, from books, to articles, to emails, to notes, is personal at the deepest level.

Allegiant Faith Network emerged from the intense pressures of a trying test no one prepared me for. One that almost shattered me…

My wife became pregnant with our son in September of 2023. We tried to make a big deal by keeping it a secret to surprise my family at Christmas.

But because of fibroids in her womb, she started to show right away. It was still a great celebration, just not a surprise.

The only reason that December in 2023 is worth mentioning is because it was the last happy time before everything went cratering downhill.

Her pregnancy was difficult. The usual sleepless nights and cravings were exacerbated by rashes, horrid hot flashes, a cage-fight with natal diabetes (this one was the worst because my wife HATES needles and had to take insulin), and constant worry her fibroids took up too much room for our son to develop.

Turns out…our worries were justified.

8 weeks before he was due, she started having contractions. We thought they were Braxton-Hicks. Those intrepid pranksters that make you think the baby’s on the way. After all, her due date wasn’t until late June.

Then, she lost her mucus plug.

She panicked because she wasn’t sure what was happening. And since we both didn’t know, we bet on a basic trip to the doctor.

I comforted and reassured her that everything would be fine. My reassurance ended up being like Mr. Incredible in The Incredibles saying, “We’re superheroes. What could happen?”

Everything turned out fine…but we would walk through the fire first.

Her mom took her to the hospital while I stayed behind since one of our dogs had a vet appointment, and what we thought would be a simple checkup turned into the longest weekend of our lives…

When I finally made it to the hospital and got everything arranged with family to keep the dogs taken care of, the house in order, and whatever else was necessary, they had my wife and mother-in-law set up in a room, gave her a magnesium bolus shot, and set her up on a magnesium drip with a liquid diet.

They also gave her steroids to help the baby’s lungs develop.

Labor had started. WAY too early.

The doctors and nurses told us they would do everything they could to reduce contractions. And it worked…for a time.

But after midnight April 15, 2024, they picked up again. Febrile monsters on a rampage. And that’s when I panicked (hey, nobody’s perfect), called her mom to get back to the hospital, and let my family know their grandson was probably on the way.

The deal sealed when the doctor came in later that morning and tried to do a uterine exam. See what was going on. And her water broke like flood torrents from a shattered dam.

My baby boy was coming whether the world was ready or not.

His arm in the canal. Emergency C-section. NICU.

Nothing makes you ready for the unthinkable…

Everything from that moment flew past as if we were in a hundred-meter sprint.

Operating room. Bright white lights. Slice. Little bit of a fight (he didn’t want to come out that way, apparently). Shrill cries. Couple pictures.

He was alive, but his right arm was swollen like a purple balloon from trying to enter reality wrong.

32 weeks, jaundiced, lungs underdeveloped, and only 3 pounds. They wouldn’t let us hold him except for the brief photos we took because he had to be rushed down to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

Where he would spend the next 8 weeks.

By the time he was secured in his new temporary living space, surrounded by great nurses we would come to know as friends, I was an emotional wreck.

Exhausted. Confused. Worried. Thirsty.

Every inch of me covered in a thorough blanket of sweat.

Eventually, someone collected me and guided my frail soul up to where my wife was recovering from surgery (“I thought you said she almost died”?” Just wait), and just seeing her face and knowing it was over made me slump into the chair beside her bed, a jittery mess.

It took three days for her to heal and re-cooperate. During that time, we learned she had almost bled out on the table.

The two smallest fibroids in her womb were right over where our son was positioned, so they had to be removed. Her surgeons used up 5 units of blood to keep her alive. It was a literal brush with death.

I almost went home a widower.

Many today would use this opportunity to tell you, “Don’t have kids.” And they’re absolute idiots.

Because I wouldn’t trade anything I went through for the world. Here’s why…

What would’ve still been one of the happiest days of my life became so much more because of the trial I faced. And whenever I look at my son, instead of remorse, I’m overwhelmed by joy and reminded of the immeasurable grace God shows us in this fallen world.

You see, even though I believed in and followed Jesus, it was merely through obligation. I wrote because the Bible called me to. I obeyed because that’s what we’re supposed to do.

But there was little investment. Little order. Little focus.

On 4/15/2024, I went from carefree, careless child of God to a man with purpose. From timid Chris to Courageous Chris.

A spark ignited me into high gear and inspired the ministry you see before you today. This little spark:

We’ve gotten too used to comfort in this world. It’s made us weak. Because diamonds are forged through intense pressure.

If you never go through battles, you’ll never gain the resolve of a soldier.

People want to balk at God, spit in his face, crucify him because he lets evil “run amok.” But where does that get us?

God hates evil as much as you do. He despises it. Never wanted this reality for us. But he didn’t let sin and death into the world. We did. To eradicate it would be to eradicate us. To bring good from it…THAT restores greatness and glory in ways we can’t even imagine!

And you don’t realize it until you feel the pain.

So, a word of advice: Embrace the storm.

You may cry, you may get confused, you may collapse in a chair by a bedside a total wreck, wondering what the heck is going on…but if you’re available to be forged in fire by God Most High, nothing can stop you.

I love you, friends.

Get a copy of my new book, The Atheist Conversion Manual, and help support Allegiant Faith Network here:

The Atheist Conversion Manual

It’s not like most books that defend the Christian faith. I take you through my story from darkness to light and use that story as the frame to explore evidence for the existence of God and his identity as Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Here’s what early readers are saying:

• “This is one of those books you pick up to flip through just to see what it's all about and end up reading it for an hour straight. It's a well-thought-out, well-researched manual packed with relevant, easy-to-follow information.”

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• “Chris Wright wrote the book I wish I'd read years ago when I was an atheist.”

Because I’ve been through the fire. I know what’s at stake. And I want you to know too, so you can become a fearless soldier Christ your King and build his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

(P.S. Allegiant Faith paid subscribers will receive their own personal copy later today, 7/18.)

Our mission is to engage and thoroughly challenge culture with the Gospel of Christ Jesus, evidencing and explicating the Truth of all reality for the entire world to see. Via contributions from faithful minds from all walks of life.

Through countless hours of resources on apologetics (defending the faith), biblical theology, history, philosophy, and more, we’re forming a network of warriors for Christ who understand God’s Word, God’s creation, the evil times we face, and will take to the frontlines of the ongoing war against Satan and his minions for ages to come.

Together, we seek to live out the two greatest commandments to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbor as ourselves, as Christ Jesus prescribed. And we hold fast to the words of the Apostle Paul in Galatians 5:16-23:

“16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”

But we also are not afraid to flip tables where necessary, as Christ himself did in the Temple. Christianity was born to shine the Light that defeats darkness on earth (as it is in heaven), not to be a sideline, you-do-you, love-you-guys-no-matter-what, you-can-do-no-wrong cheer club.

We, therefore, refuse to affirm or appease sin or abominations in this or any era and instead shut down evil ideas with brutal honesty…all while maintaining the humble knowledge that we too are broken sinners who are nothing without the Savior.

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Dream of Solomon, Luca Giordano (c. 1694-95)

Much to the chagrin of all the God-haters out there, fascination with the divine is on an upward trend. So many people everywhere are curious about whether or not God exists and what he’s like.

They want to study him, get to know him, emulate him. Questions that revolve around God are taking precedence over the mundane, the natural, in this present world.

There’s a significant reason for that: God is abundantly more fascinating. He’s beyond everything this world has to offer.

Atheists don’t think so. Some on X recently said that God offers no explanatory power for anything, but that’s not what you find throughout history. Whenever the idea of God or even the very presence of God shows up, people are astounded, filled with wonder, overcome by awe, and physically, mentally, and spiritually changed in unprecedented ways. So much so that even in a cynical world like our own, the eternal and mysterious are etched into the forefront of our minds.

God is more fascinating.

Why?

We find two powerful answers for why God continues to be fascinating for us as human beings from G. K. Chesterton and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Riddles of God

Chesterton celebrates what he calls the riddles of God. And he says that they are so much more powerful and bountiful than the solutions of man.

Identifying God as a riddler tells us so much about who he is. It tells us that he has deliberately made himself cryptic to us and enjoys testing humanity. God reveals just enough of himself to be touchable but not fully comprehensible.

For atheists, that’s a problem, but for the Christian, it’s not because we understand God has made himself mysterious because he wants us to explore him. He wants us to seek him out.

A Being like that is hard for us to fathom because of our brokenness ever since the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden. The sin and death unleashed on us made us finite and forced the mysteries of the heavens to be shoved far from us. God moved them out of reach for our protection.

That doesn’t mean God doesn’t want us to know him or them. In fact, he encourages us to adventure. As Proverbs 25:2 says, “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings to seek things out.” We are made to explore. Made to adventure. Made to study not just the mysteries of this world, but the mysteries beyond it as well. It’s ingrained in the very code of our DNA to puzzle over God, to explore his mysteries.

Chesterton was clever by calling the cosmic mysteries “riddles” because riddles are problems to be solved, but they’re not problems that are detrimental to survival. They’re puzzles that enlighten and stimulate the mind, that grow the character and form it into what it was made to be. Mind stimulation and formation are why we enjoy doing puzzles like Sudoku and/or just plain puzzles, putting them together piece by piece to see the image it forms. Since we are made in God’s image from the beginning, inherently we seek to understand our purpose and our design. The higher things.

What gets in the way of that journey is our infatuation with ourselves and our infatuation with this world.

Unfortunately, there’s the tendency for us to idolize the creation and knowledge itself over the Creator, as Adam and Eve did. Hence the reason for God’s protection, his making the eternal mysteries harder to work for. Scripture warns about our idolatrous potentiality all the time and tells us to steer away from it with every fiber of our being, because it doesn’t just corrode the soul, it corrodes the mind and body as well. It strips away your capacity to appreciate the mysteries of God.

If all we have is this physical world, the creation, then the very pursuit of knowledge itself has no standing. It’s not really mysterious per se. Just unknown.

But when God is in the picture, there really is a universal riddle with a glorious prize at the end. The puzzle doesn’t just stop in this world. It’s not a problem here to solve. We’re not mere survivors. We’re thrivers, and we’re meant to comprehend a kingdom greater than our wildest imaginations.

Sin and death and depravity don’t want that for us, for us to thrive, because Satan is trying to usurp the throne of the kingdom. God’s kingdom. The devil knows at this point, because of the cross, that he’s lost the battle ultimately, but if he can chip away at the kingdom piece by piece and lower its numbers, he thinks he can still prevent it from becoming everything the Creator wants it to be: an eternal kingdom filled with the goodness, justice, grace, love, power, and enlightenment of Christ.

You have the opportunity to prove him wrong.

But not just anyone can grasp the mysteries of God and stand up to the devil. Dostoevsky tells us the one person who is most capable of grasping the mysteries of the Divine, and you’ll never guess who it is…

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The secularists got ahold of American education and did everything in their power to strip away any and all notions of Christianity from our history.

That fact blares loud and clear every year when the Christian roots of these United States are balked at, denied, slandered, and/or misrepresented.

Last year, I wrote an article defending the Christian foundation of this nation and the Christian principles that make it possible and identify it as God’s country.

Now, again, I will make a case for you, so you can see clearly that this nation wasn’t founded by secular “enlightenment,” by Freemasons, or by deists. It was founded by courageous Christian men who sacrificed all to establish a free and United States.

Christian Colonies

Every colony, with maybe one exception, was founded by Christians and had its own central church reflecting the many denominations at the time. Prior to the Revolution, the colonies were in constant conflict with each other because of their denominational differences.

All were Protestant, except Catholic Maryland.

9 of the 13 colonies had explicit requirements for leadership in their local governments that you had to be a practicing, Bible-believing, church-attending Christian in order to hold a position in office.

They held faith in Christ Jesus as paramount since it was what they fled England to practice. The Puritans and Quakers were especially hated by the Crown because they stood up to King Henry VIII when he committed egregious sins and made an embarrassment of himself by taking on multiple wives and killing many of them when he grew tired of their company.

Freedom to practice their Christian faith without government interference was the bedrock of most voyages to the New World and their willingness to face whatever hardships may come. The voyagers on the Mayflower made the above intentions explicit when they included in the Mayflower Compact: “for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith.”

Christianity was always front and center in the colonies. For everyone.

The Founding Fathers

Contrary to popular retellings of American history, few of the Fathers were Freemasons and none of them were deists.

Only 8-9 members of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were Masons. Five were prominent figures: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Paul Revere, and James Monroe.

It’s debated whether or not the Masons were and are Satanic. They’ve always been secular clubs and have bizarre rituals (some of which are occult and sketchy), but the stated goal of Freemason lodges, according to their founding documents, is to make virtuous and charitable men with integrity. Perhaps it was the later emphasis that attracted some of the Founding Fathers.

Regardless, Freemasonry played little role, if at all, in the founding of these United States.

Every single one of them also believed in Divine Providence, which eliminates deism off the bat because the deistic god is inactive. Made and then abandoned the universe long ago.

Beginning with Thomas Jefferson in 1774, members of the colonies repeatedly called for fasting, prayer, and humility and organized such gatherings when able, believing God in Christ would intervene on their behalf and give them victory. They also witnessed God do so repeatedly throughout the Revolution with precise miracles that aided escapes and secured victories over the British.

None of them were secretive about their motivations or their understanding that without Christianity, these United States would fail. Here are a couple examples:

• John Adams, October 11, 1798: “Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

• George Washington, Farewell Address 1796: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness… And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

“Religious” always referred to Christianity in their writings. It was THE religion. They admitted outright that a free country without a moral and religious people would not be free, and the Constitution, per John Adam’s, was “wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

The Northwest Ordinance

In the predecessor to the U.S. Constitution ratified by the colonies, it explicitly states:

“Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

The Founders and everyone in the colonies agreed that Christianity was integral to a moral and knowledgeable education. To the formation of a civilized society. Rather than banish it, they encouraged it in every school system across the United States because Christianity curbs the evils of human passions and makes possible self-government.

Many forget the Founders knew of the atheistic-socialist French Revolution across the pond. While they called on the French for aid against the British, who helped them secure final victory by destroying the British at sea along the shores of Yorktown in October 1781, the Fathers still knew of the obscene horrors atheist socialism had enacted in French society.

The French butchered thousands upon thousands for not abandoning Christian faith and surrendering to secularism, beginning with Catholic priests and Protestant pastors.

Every Father had also heard the stories from their own ancestors of what happened in England when the kings chose to live apart from God in Christ.

That’s why when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, they began the document with “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

They appealed to God and no human authority.

Humans are despicably sinful and evil. But humans without God in Christ are even more despicably sinful and evil…without restraint.

We are made in his image for him, and when we resist our design, we corrupt ourselves and his creation. That’s the way it’s been since Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden.

What About Tripoli?

Those who doubt that America is a Christian Nation love to cite what the Founders agreed to in the Treaty of Tripoli. There, they signed a statement that the United States government “was in no way founded upon the Christian religion.”

What doubters fail to do for you, though, is place that quote within the broader context of history.

The United States government wasn’t founded upon the Christian religion. It was founded upon Christ himself, God Most High, and biblical principles. A significant difference.

By going to the source, they (the Fathers) ensured that no single denomination of Christianity could take total control and establish a papacy-like rule over the U.S., nor could any secular authority do the same. The checks and balances, again, could only be held together by a moral and religious people and existed to prevent any single human from assuming total power.

So, the Founders weren’t lying at Tripoli.

America was made by Christians, for Christians, but was not in any way based a particular religious viewpoint therein. Instead, America was based on the founding documents of Christianity (the Bible) and the God behind it.

Most in our days find this confusing because the atheistic division between themselves and “religion” runs rampant, even though they are just as religious as Christians.

The Founders understood that every man is religious, sinful, greedy, and arrogant when left on his own, even those who think they are not, and put safeguards in place to establish a free Republic which would thrive as long as a moral and religious people (Christians) was around and respected the principles established by the Constitution.

Without that significant feature of American society, the entire enterprise would crumble…like it is now.

What are You Going to Do?

Now you know these United States are God’s country, and that we have effectively sat back and allowed the godless to disrespect our founding principles.

No one is required to become Christian. But the Christian principles and the God acknowledged by our Fathers and written in our Constitution must be respected for there to be order.

That’s by design.

You don’t have to like it. You can even hate it. But without such respect, only chaos and death ensue, as we are seeing all over the U.S. right now.

The Founders never envisioned communists like Mamdani taking over New York or LGBTQ cultists, Muslims, Satanists, or Indian beliefs becoming centralized in America while Christians are disrespected, shoved to the sidelines, and/or slaughtered in broad daylight like Charlie Kirk.

Our founding documents cannot withstand it.

So what are you going to do? There are only two options: (1) Cling to your idols of comfort while evil runs amok and plays fast and loose with the law and the land…or (2) fight back.

Vote, protest, pray, run for office. No matter the cost. Stand up for your God, your neighbors, and your country. Or you WILL lose everything.

Choose this day whom you will serve. As for me and my house…we will serve the Lord.

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Over the past few days, it’s come to my attention that many think all pride is evil.

That notion is both dangerous and unbiblical.

Nowhere does God in Christ condemn all pride. Like with all matters, he is concerned with proper order, proper design, the proper directing of desires and focus where they are due. With himself at the top of the hierarchical ladder.

Before we get deep into details, let’s first consider what “pride” means in the English language (and what it also means in all other languages).

It is a universal term (as in, all languages have a “pride” and various ways of describing its kinds) and is the noun form of the adjective “proud,” which means “happy, joyous, ecstatic.” To take pride in something, then, means to find happiness, joy, ecstasy in it.

The term “pride” itself is innocuous (neutral), but it can be twisted beyond recognition by bad actors. The LGBTQ movement is a case in point. They adopted pride as their banner largely because homosexuals were called “gay” by 20th-century culture, which is another term for happy, since they always give off the air of flamboyance. But what they really engage in was and is the sin of self-pride, selfishness, self-obsession, self-aggrandizement.

The central sin of all sins.

When the Bible mentions the sin of pride, the latter is to what it refers. But there is another form of pride that is both holy and commanded from every Christian everywhere…

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Ancient Hebrew and Greek Terms for “Pride”

The ancient languages of the Bible use a wide range of terms to describe pride:

Hebrew Terms (Old Testament)

• Ga’avah (גַּאֲוָה) — Pride, haughtiness, arrogance. Common in Proverbs 16:18 (“Pride goes before destruction”), Psalm 10:2, and Isaiah 16:6.

• Ga’on (גָּאוֹן) — Pride, majesty (can be positive or negative), arrogance. Used in Leviticus 26:19, Jeremiah 13:9, Ezekiel 7:24, and Zechariah 9:6.

• Zadon (זָדוֹן) — Presumptuous pride, arrogance, insolence. Found in Psalm 119:21 and Proverbs 11:2.

• Rum / Ram (רוּם / רָם) — To be high or exalted (often implying haughty pride when used negatively). Examples include Psalm 101:5 (“haughty eyes”) and Isaiah 2:11-12.

Greek Terms (New Testament)

• Hyperephania (ὑπερηφανία) — Arrogance, haughty pride. Appears in Mark 7:22 as part of a list of evils that defile a person.

• Alazoneia (ἀλαζονεία) — Boastful pride, pretentious arrogance. Found in 1 John 2:16 (“the pride of life”) and James 4:16.

• Philautia (φιλαυτία) — Self-love, selfishness. Used in 2 Timothy 3:2 (“lovers of self”) in a list of end-times characteristics.

• Physioo (φυσίω) — To puff up, become conceited or proud. Frequently used by Paul, such as in 1 Corinthians 4:6, 4:18-19, and 13:4 (“love is not puffed up”).

As you can see, pride is used to translate many different words, not all bad. The central evil is self-pride (obsession with one’s self above all else). Self-worship. Also known as arrogance, haughtiness, insolence.

The latter was the central sin of the serpent in the Garden of Eden that damned creation. He sought to usurp the throne of God, to claim what did not belong to him, to violate the established order, and we all now struggle with the same sin because Adam and Eve listened to him, disobeyed God, and committed the same violation: Attempting to strip God of his rightful rule.

The implied opposite would’ve been taking pride in or boasting in God.

Paul’s Antidote to Self-Worship

It’s okay to find happiness and joy in God’s creation. After all, it was made for us. The Bible makes clear that the danger arises when the creation replaces the Creator, when other gods and idols are put above God Most High (there’s a reason those two are forbidden in the first of God’s Ten Commandments).

Christ himself reiterated the forbiddenness of idolatry when telling us that wherever our treasure is, there will our heart be also. After first telling us to seek first the Kingdom of Heaven (God).

In lockstep with his Lord and with Hebrew Scripture, Paul reframed Jesus’s words as “boasting in the Lord.”

The apostle argues for boasting in several places throughout his epistles, but the two key spots known by almost everyone are 1 Corinthians 1:31 and then 2 Corinthians 10:17. In each, he uses the Greek term kauchaomai, which means “to boast, to glory, to exult, or to take pride in something.” Both verses quote from Jeremiah 9:23-24:

“Thus says the Lord: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.’”

Jeremiah uses the Hebrew word halal, which means “to shine, to boast, to praise.” Imagine someone beaming with overwhelming joy and infatuation. Adoration. God says he wants that very attitude directed toward himself first and foremost. To be exulted over everything in the Israelites’ lives.

For the Corinthians, Paul ties the idea of exulting (taking pride in) God to Christ Jesus (God-made-flesh) and emphasizes the distinction between the sin of self-pride and the proper obedience of finding one’s own happiness in Christ, the Creator and eternal King, above all else. He, his desires, and his commands take precedence over and in our lives.

One is reminded of John the Baptist saying of Christ Jesus, “He must increase and I must decrease” (John 3:30).

Indeed, the act of elevating God in Christ to his proper place is the act of humbling ourselves to our proper place.

How to Become Humble

Humility was shunned in the Greco-Roman world because it was associated with slaves, the poor, and the lowliest of the low.

The only ones who had a somewhat positive view of humility were the Jews because of the commands in the Old Testament scriptures to elevate God Most High above all, and because of many verses praising the trait of self-emptying or self-lowering. But even for them, humility was not a central practice.

So, when Jesus commanded humility from all humans in the Sermon on the Mount, it was beyond shocking.

Here are the terms used in the original languages to describe humility:

Hebrew Terms (Old Testament)

• Anav / Anaw (עָנָו) — Humble, meek, lowly, afflicted. This is the most common term for humility in the Old Testament. Examples: Numbers 12:3 (“Now the man Moses was very humble”), Psalm 37:11, Psalm 147:6, Zephaniah 2:3.

• Anavah (עֲנָוָה) — Humility, meekness. Examples: Proverbs 15:33 (“The fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor”), Proverbs 18:12, Zephaniah 2:3.

• Shaphel (שָׁפֵל) — To be low, to humble, to bring low (verb form). Often used to describe God humbling the proud or the humble being exalted. Examples: Proverbs 29:23, Isaiah 2:9-12, Daniel 4:37.

Greek Terms (New Testament)

• Tapeinophrosyne (ταπεινοφροσύνη) — Humility of mind, lowliness of mind. This is the primary New Testament term for the Christian virtue of humility. Examples: Ephesians 4:2, Philippians 2:3 (“in humility count others more significant than yourselves”), Colossians 3:12, 1 Peter 5:5.

• Tapeinosis (ταπείνωσις) — Humility, lowliness, humiliation. Examples: Luke 1:48 (Mary’s song: “he has looked on the humble estate of his servant”), Philippians 3:21, Acts 8:33.

• Tapeinoo (ταπεινόω) — To humble, to make low, to bring low (verb). Examples: Matthew 23:12 (“Whoever humbles himself will be exalted”), James 4:10 (“Humble yourselves before the Lord”), 1 Peter 5:6.

• Prautes (πραΰτης) — Meekness, gentleness (often closely associated with humility). Examples: Galatians 5:23, Ephesians 4:2, Colossians 3:12, James 1:21.

Meekness and humility are associated (and both appear in the Sermon on the Mount) because they encompass the idea of self-control. Having a character that knows its own powers and weaknesses and keeps them arranged according to Godly design. Ever vigilant against sin.

Such is holy wisdom.

Foolishness is living however you see fit, without consideration for higher order. Consider what James has to say on the matter: “Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” (James 1:12-15)

The fool is the one who follows his own desires (i.e. LGBTQers and anyone else who makes idols of their desires), which inevitably leads to sin and death because all humans are depraved since the Fall, but the wise man is he who empties himself of himself and follows the desires of the Creator.

From Nothing to Something

Therefore, the idea that all pride is sin is pure hogwash. What the Bible really emphasizes is what the Catholic Church calls (and for the record, I am not Catholic; I’m just calling it like I see it) ordo amoris (order of loves). Living out the hierarchy of design God built into creation.

Arranging our desires in accordance with the desires and demands of the King. Making ourselves nothing so that he can make us into something. Thereby evading the trap of forming idols from our wants.

Put another way, you and I must become allegiant to God in Christ, our eternal King…in all ways…at all times.

Such allegiance entails submitting our bodies, minds, souls...everything...unto him forevermore. We will ourselves into clay so he can mold. So he can breathe into us new life and then re-fashion us into his image, making priceless gems from the rubble of sin and death.

All of the above is what it means to take pride in Christ Jesus, and it is not only biblical, it is our holy and sacred duty.

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This week there were some on X debating the usefulness of apologetics (defending the Christian faith), and I frankly don’t get it.

OF COURSE apologetics is useful. It’s intellectually fleshing out the faith you believe in. Learning its tangible truth. Christianity’s own firm link to reality.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but there’s much more beyond theology and Christian living. If we only write on those topics, people start to believe Christianity is nothing more than wishful thinking.

Apologetics saved my life. When I was in undergrad, struggling with my faith at a liberal arts university, the verse that brought me back was 1 Peter 3:15:

“...in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect...”

It teaches that Christianity is much more than another faith system. It’s an intellectual powerhouse. A giant. The TRUE faith. And we are required to defend it in the here and now. That’s part of treating Christ as holy and honoring him in our hearts.

So you are commanded to defend your faith.

But that’s not the only reason you should. Here are 5 other reasons apologetics is necessary for every Christian, including you.

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1. Apologetics Helps You Get the Record Straight

Like it or not, there are heresies out there. Paul warns again and again that false teachers would come along and try to lead the church astray into false doctrines.

Well, those false teachers don’t openly announce themselves. They come like the serpent.

You know as well as I do (or you should) that Satan comes as an angel of light. The same goes for his ideas and his followers, and if you’re caught off guard, you can be easily pulled down into darkness, away from the true Light of the Savior.

2. Apologetics Makes Your Faith Real

When you learn to defend your faith, you align it with reality and it becomes more than just a mental state or something you do.

Atheists love to accuse us Christians of having blind faith. If we never defend our faith, then they are correct. Because we will have then never thought through the implications of it and tied it to the real world.

But we don’t have to bow to their labeling since our faith is the truth of the eternal King.

It is REAL, it is KNOWABLE, it is DEFENSIBLE.

3. Apologetics Lets You Venture Into New Horizons

My personal favorite reason for studying apologetics is it forces you to take your faith into new horizons.

Christians since the beginning engaged in other topics besides the faith. In fact, it was part of taking every thought captive for Christ, as Paul commanded the church in Corinth.

I discuss in my book The Atheist Conversion Manual (releasing July 18th, 2026) how early Christians embraced the tools of philosophy and saw the thinking of the world as an avenue through which to enrich their beliefs in God Most High through Christ Jesus.

Some, like Tertullian, were resistant because they were worried that using other thinking besides the Word of God would lead people astray. Into false doctrine. And to be fair, that possibility can’t be discounted. After all, Paul even warned it could happen.

But the tools of philosophy are logic and reason, and they don’t belong to the world. They belong to God. He wrote them into the universe, into its every atom.

Philosophy is also the ground of all other knowledge. Therefore, it’s inescapable. You will use reason to some extent whether you like it or not.

Everyone does.

Christ himself reasoned with everyone he spoke to. Especially the Pharisees. Every encounter he had with them was an intellectual jousting match. People weren’t just entertained while watching. They were also enlightened and transformed beyond measure.

In lockstep with the King, the early church realized that, since reason is embedded in reality and the Savior too reasoned, it was and is worth the risk to take hold of it to advance the truth of Christ. To acknowledge its own reality.

Then there’s the two most important reasons why apologetics matters…

Read more

Atheists on X are up to their dirty tricks again. So desperate, it’s laughable.

I came across this meme comparing theism to a man walking into a pitch-black cave looking for a black cat that isn’t there, then yelling “found it.”

It’s crass, unimaginative, and on closer inspection ends up defending theism, not atheism, because the atheist doesn’t understand its actual implications.

(1) It presumes the existence of both black cats and caves without evidence

(2) It depends on prior human experience that hasn’t been confirmed

Let’s dig into each of those points deeper, and I’ll show you what I mean.

In the Shoes of the Spelunker

The meme presumes the existence of both dark caves and black cats. Someone could argue both exist because they’ve been experienced, but the same argument applies to God.

Countless people throughout history claim direct experience of him. Atheists will tell you those experiences are bunk. But if experience alone fails to establish God’s existence, experience alone fails to establish the existence of black cats and caves too, yet nobody questions caves and cats.

Talk about double standards.

Atheists could counter with the prospect of repeatability, but that doesn’t solve the problem. There are witnesses throughout history who claim repeated contact with caves, cats, and God, so we’ve circled back to square one.

Maybe invisibility is a good argument? God is invisible to the human eye, so he can’t exist. Not quite. You see, gravity and the magnetic field are both invisible. All we see are their effects. Yet no one questions their existence.

Then there’s the problem of prior knowledge. For the atheist to declare the black cat isn’t there, he needs to not just know the cat exists somewhere in reality, he must also know its location and verify the specific cat in question is the actual cat rather than a lookalike.

There is good news. If a lookalike exists, that presupposes the existence of an original cat, otherwise it couldn’t look alike to the original.

Bad news? There are lots of lookalikes to God throughout history, so they too must presuppose an original, if we’re to be consistent.

All the above considered, the man searching the cave is the real honest investigator. Sure, maybe he forgot a flashlight. But at least he has the open mind to consider the possibility of the cat and the cave as a possible haven for it.

Who’s Actually Fumbling in the Dark

The man in the meme, representing the theist, is the one acting rationally. He treats human experience as a legitimate source of evidence, despite its flaws, and searches for the truth using the tools available to him.

The atheist relying on naturalism alone is the one batting around blind for an answer he already decided isn’t there.

Thinking, perception, intelligibility, even the reliability of reasoning itself…all illusions taken on blind faith.

Anyone familiar with philosophy may recognize the meme as a rehash of Bertrand Russell’s infamous teapot in space. He argued in 1952 that the exploration for God is akin to a teapot floating somewhere between the Sun and Mars, so tiny that not even the most advanced telescopes could find it. Russell argued the teapot might be there or it might not, but one doesn’t need to believe the person who says it’s there unless they can provide evidence.

Russell’s analogy runs into the same flaws as the black cat meme. In order to even get to the teapot in space, one has to first establish confidently the existence of teapots and space. One has to also establish with confidence the existence of the Sun and Mars and the reliability of evidence. Which can only be accomplished through human experience, the trustworthiness of which is what is being questioned.

The analogy also presumes the presence of only one witness. But what if there were multiple witnesses to the teapot being launched into space? Say at least three people saw it. Does the teapot between the Sun and Mars become more or less credible?

What if multiple witnesses saw a black cat enter the cave?

The core issue never changes. Naturalism always borrows from the order, logic, intelligibility, and reliable perception that make sense in a designed universe alone.

Strip out an intelligent source behind reality, and there’s no reason to trust senses, memory, or reasoning at all. For anything. Not even science.

The One Bizarre Movement That Gets It

Unfortunately, the LGBTQ movement grasps this contradiction better than regular atheists.

The underlying logic of the movement runs like this: If everything is unverifiable and human perception is untrustworthy, “natural” becomes whatever anyone decides it is, and one person’s word carries no more weight than another’s.

We can do whatever is right in our own eyes.

If there’s no transcendent design behind human nature, and no objective standard grounding what a body or a self actually is, then nobody has standing to call any self-identification wrong. Calling it wrong requires an objective “natural” that exists independent of personal preference. An actual cat, not a probable cat.

LGBTQers apply the existing philosophy honestly, all the way to its logical end, and arrive somewhere humans would rather not look.

• You’re a man who “loves” another man? Sleep around with him, pretend you’re married, adopt or buy a toddler and then abuse him together.

• You’re man who thinks he’s a woman? By all means, lop off your balls.

• You think you’re a pig? Go roll around in mud all day, eat beyond your appetite, fatten up so someone can sell you at the state fair or make bacon.

• You think you’re a dog? Spend all day outside, sniff and lick your butt, never bathe, and catch flees.

After all, there’s no reality except what we make, right? Gotta live your truth even if that means doing so at the expense of others. If anyone tries to contest your redefining of reality, claim victimhood, despite your choices being entirely self-directed and the consequences self-inflicted.

When God is off the table, nothing makes sense, nothing is reliable, anything goes, and humanity nosedives to hell.

No Brakes on the Way Down

Many cultures across history have recorded profound encounters with the divine that shaped ethics, laws, and civilization. These experiences have consistently pointed toward a personal reality greater than ourselves.

Dismissing them while accepting ordinary sensory data as reliable creates an inconsistent standard that undermines the atheist position from the inside out.

You can’t have your black cat and an absent God too.

Modern movements that reject fixed design in favor of self-defined reality are the product of ungrounded naturalist assumptions. Mental health struggles, disgusting perversions, bodily butchery, rampant child abuse, and generational decay become not only acceptable, but expected.

Naturalism offers no brakes against depravity because naturalism rejects transcendent accountability for rationality, experience, morality, and reality.

A worldview claiming intellectual superiority while standing on folding toothpicks doesn’t deserve one second longer in the spotlight. Time we kicked it into the dustbin of history.

You live in God’s world.

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We’ve entered “Pride” Month once again, and people are, as usual, going nuts celebrating. Although I will say it’s much different than prior years, because not as many corporations are jumping on the LGBT bandwagon.

Conservative Christian parents who saw the insanity preying on our children and said, “Not on my watch,” formed the resistance and brought “Pride” crumbling to its knees.

It’s still a battle, though no longer uphill, I think. The tide is shifting. But don’t mistake our covered ground as victory.

The woke everyone declared dead is alive and well. The movement changes face or goes underground until the chance arises for it to pop out its shriveled, ugly head. Clawing, spitting, foaming, gnashing, perverting…but never uplifting, healing, building, or renewing.

A claimed homosexual online (I forget his name, though I wouldn’t share it even if I remembered, out of respect) told me we tend to group LGBTQ together under one banner when only a few bad apples are causing problems. But the problem is and always has been the LGBTQ movement itself, the ideology, the behavior. From the LGB to the TQ and the endless viral strain of letters and numbers they dare weld to the sequence.

The alphabet mafia is acidic because the entire project is built on pride.

We all know how horrible and destructive pride is (at least, you should). The worst of all sins. The one that caused Adam and Eve to fall in the garden. Every evil, every wrong, every deceit, born of lies aimed at acquiring self-desire. Corrupting and corroding humans from the inside out.

Pride is the name, the foundation, the banner, and the battle cry. It breeds a culture of entitlement, self-destruction, and spiritual decay feigned as victimhood. No sin has caused greater harm to civilizations across the board.

They can cover it in glittery colors all they want. They’ve only succeeded in branding their religion as the disgusting, self-consuming monster we all know it is.

They Stole the Wrong Symbol

Satan was clever getting them to co-opt the rainbow, God’s own symbol of mercy and grace, twisted into a mark of faux superiority.

They unsheathed it like a shiny sword. With total confidence. Acquired for themselves special treatment nobody else receives because they believe the rest of the world must bow to them.

Ironically, they’ve branded themselves for destruction.

You and I know the rainbow is God’s symbol of grace, that he would never Flood the world again. And here’s the thing about grace: In Scripture, it lasts only for a season.

Evil is always held accountable.

The pre-Flood evildoers paid a global debt, and their fate bleeds through the rainbow. That omen now blares in every corner of the West, while the most innocent become LGBTQ victims.

So many children are ruined by their cult, and for what? To tickle the fancies of a deluded minority?

God has taken notice. Rest assured.

But even if he didn’t, their own worldview entails their cult should perish.

Anti-Evolutionary Pests

A fatal flaw for the LGBTQ movement is that it doesn’t line up with nature. At all.

Forget God for a moment and think about this:

LGBTQers are majority atheists who uphold evolution as gospel. Even those who claim some form of divine presence still tout Darwin, and Darwin’s foundational rule is survival of the fittest. Survival of the fittest necessitates that the strong outlive the weak through random beneficial mutations via sexual reproduction over LONG stretches of time.

But LGBTQers can’t produce biological children of their own. Every avenue available to them, IVF, surrogacy, adoption, depends entirely on natural heterosexual reproduction. The movement relies on the very natural design its ideology undermines.

They’ve made themselves weak parasites who defy the natural order.

By the “laws” of evolution, a species producing no offspring with strong traits disappears from the gene pool. The strong, meaning heterosexual male and female humans building generations, thrive. The LGBTQers, the groomers of stolen kids, the non-reproducing subset, die.

Those are the rules.

This leaves two options. Either we (1) scrap evolution as a theory, which still offers no comfort to the LGBTQ movement because the only alternative is God created humanity as male and female to be fruitful and multiply together, or (2) we recognize the patent absurdity of an ideology failing to hold up in any way, secular or sacred.

Frankly, we should do both options. But society’ll never go for the former. Evolutionary theory is too entrenched.

So the latter is our course, and it should be executed without mercy. They’re due recompense for their wickedness.

No Action Goes Unanswered

Actions have consequences. A law built into the cosmos.

LGBTQers consider themselves the primary judges of truth, and they pretend to decide for all what is normal or good and what must be destroyed, while also maintaining truth is fluid or culturally determined.

Fluidity. A multitude of colors compressed into a single unity.

You’re meant to believe humans are the same and just have to come together. Disagree and become a target of their rage. Their cult brands anyone a threat who stands outside or opposes their agenda.

• Trust

• Accept

• Affirm

• Defend

• Celebrate

Or else…

Communism with pretty colors.

Twisted desires produce twisted behavior. The alphabet mafia built for itself a world of delusion, and within that delusion, they justify the most demented horrors imaginable. Sexual diseases, sterilization advertised as a cure, kids bought and sold like props, confused souls ripped apart from the inside out.

But every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Whatever any of us does affects those around us, nature, the entire cosmos, and ripples into the future for better or worse.

Evil corrupts each second it’s allowed to stand. When we ignore it, or worse, identify with sin and make it a social idol, death and misery boil and infect. The West has suffered more degradation, dishonor, destruction, and debauchery than at any other time in recent memory because of the rot wrought by pride.

We’ve tried to play God too long or sat on the sidelines while demons run amok. The consequences are catching up.

This is our only chance to repent.

The Time is Now

Stand strong, Christian parent. Fight on. Because there’s still hope.

God continues to extend grace. For now.

The LGBTQ cult marked themselves for destruction, denies nature, and only drains the life from every body, mind, and soul. We’re never should’ve put up with them from the start, but we certainly shouldn’t now.

The demons overreached, we took notice, we fought, and judgment was delayed. Victory can still be ours.

We’re already winning. This is the worst “pride” month in the U.S. the LGBTQers have had in a long time, and it’s only gonna get worse for them because they’ve overstepped too many times. Came after our kids and our livelihoods so they could celebrate their damnable, disgusting, unnatural, vile, decrepit perversions at our expense.

No more!

We must, have, and will continue to expose how destructive this ideology is until it becomes an embarrassment in the history books.

Humanity’s future hangs in the balance.

There won’t be another opportunity. Either their ideology is wiped out for good or we are.

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This past week, I was told sticking to creation ex nihilo (from nothing) and using the Big Bang to do so is straw-manning.

Atheists are so confident the Big Bang doesn’t show nothing-to-something they practically accosted me on X when I dared say otherwise.

Well, it just so happens they’re all wrong, and I think it’s because atheists don’t understand what Christians mean when we say creation ex nihilo.

Prior to the beginning there was God and nothing else. Whatever could be contained in God as the eternal standard is what was. The immaterial or spiritual.

He was, is, and always will be because he has no beginning and no end. Therefore, the only something was God and his perfect nature, the ground of all being.

Ex nihilo, then, describes the formation by God of the tangible thingness of the objective material universe. From no thing to some thing.

And when we examine the Big Bang, that’s precisely what we find.

Cosmologists have only been able to measure up to what’s known as the Planck era. A split-second sliver in time where all space, time, and matter came into existence. Which means, whatever was before was spaceless, timeless, and immaterial. Dispossessed of what we could consider tangible thingness.

In this article, you and I are going to walk together through what’s known by cosmologists, the theories atheists have provided to explain the pre-Planck state of reality, and determine why God’s miracle of creation ex nihilo remains the reigning champion of explanations for the existence of the cosmos.

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First A Word On Cosmology

Cosmology isn’t an exact science, and atheists tend to gloss over this.

The field rests on imaging of space, interpretations of photographs and video data, and the application of mathematics, all of which require the tools of logic and reason rather than direct observation.

Empirical method, by definition, requires direct observation, controlled testing in a lab, model-building, interpretation of results, and the ability to repeat experiments. The study of cosmology is only indirectly observable, able to be modeled, and capable of interpretation, but it can’t be tested in a lab or repeated…with the exception of samples collected from other nearby planets. But the latter sample-testing only tells us how our solar system is now, not how it was in the past or what other solar systems are like.

Therefore, it’s more accurate to label cosmology rigorous philosophy employing scientific tools.

Does that mean cosmology can’t be trusted? Absolutely not.

But almost every finding in the field is filtered through interpretation. Again, without repeatable testing. Cosmologists interpret the findings of other cosmologists, who interpreted the findings of those before them, and so on and so forth.

The whole shebang gets more complex when you realize all cosmological theories are unfalsifiable in the sense of empirical study. Because they’re dealing with the proposed history of the universe.

What this means for you is models are highly speculative, can be wrong, require revisions, and, even then, can still become entrenched via broad academic biases, which is what happens for materialist explanations (those that deny immaterial or spiritual realities) of the Big Bang.

As a reminder, here is what cosmologists, both materialists and intelligent design advocates, broadly agree on:

Spaceless, timeless, and immaterial. Write those three words down, because every atheist alternative hypothesis has to contend with what they mean.

Keep all this in mind as we walk through their explanations against creation ex nihilo.

1. Stephen Hawking Needs an Architect

Stephen Hawking proposed the pre-Planck state consists of imaginary “content.” Specifically, imaginary numbers.

Imaginary numbers are hypotheticals, potentialities, represented by the lowercase letter i. Their actuality, as in their real existence, is established only by solving complex equations.

So, they represent possibility, not fact.

The strength of Hawking’s hypothesis is its having acknowledged the possible and produced a working cosmological model for the universe.

But it suffers from an insurmountable weakness. It doesn’t answer the question of what came before the Big Bang.

Since potentialities are not actualities, they’re an effective nothing. You run into the enduring question of how the actual and tangible came from the abstract intangible.

Also, what Hawking’s framework describes is a pre-Planck state made entirely of information. A blueprint encoding the instructions needed to assemble the universe. And blueprints or programs aren’t self-existent. Such specified information, by all we’ve observed in this universe, comes from minds. From designers. From programmers.

Therefore, Hawking’s model, by its own logic, implies a Mind behind the pre-Planck state. Hawking spent much of his career resisting this conclusion, but his model points there regardless.

Atheist proposals only get stranger from here…

2. Source?!!!

Some atheists have proposed energy as the answer to the pre-Planck riddle. They say energy is eternal and serves as the uncaused foundation of everything.

As you’ve surely guessed, problems abound.

First, we don’t know energy is eternal. What we know is that energy is neither created nor destroyed within our observable universe.

It IS however generated, and generation requires sources.

In our cosmos, those sources are material forces functioning as emitters.

• Solar energy traces to the sun.

• Hydroelectric energy traces to water-fueled power.

• Light energy traces to solar bodies and other heat-emitting sources.

• Gravitational fields and magnetic fields are forces tied to physical bodies (planets, asteroids, stars, comets, etc.).

Every form of energy ever studied has a source. So, to assert that energy is eternal means asserting an eternal Source. And proposing that Source to be nothing doesn’t work because a nothing-source is just nothing.

Beyond the source problem, eternal energy runs into the issue of infinite regress: an unending chain of causes with no beginning. A chain with no beginning never starts, which means nothing ever changes.

Especially in the case of inanimate matter or forces.

Energy has no agency. Energy doesn’t decide, initiate, create, move, or act on its own. Energy just is. An infinite chain of impersonal, non-agent energy would therefore remain infinite, impersonal, non-agent energy.

But atheists don’t want to fess up to that flaw because of the implied resolution.

The only category of thing ever observed producing, creating, and changing is sentient agents. So the eternal source of energy, if you follow proper methods of observation, has to be eternal, immaterial, personal, and sentient.

Or…you know…God.

But what about black holes? Do they solve the riddle of the Big Bang without God?

3. Swirling Vortex of Death

The third hypothesis materialists love suggests the universe originated from a black hole.

Pop science and science fiction have given this idea enormous exposure. As soon as I started this section, you thought of films like Star Trek and Interstellar where black holes are wormholes jumping through or twisting spacetime.

Such portrayals might fly in science fiction, but the reality of black holes is much different.

A black hole is a rip in the cosmos caused by catastrophic gravitational collapse from a dying star. Black holes pull everything within reach into permanent nothingness. They ERASE matter, energy, space, time…anything…including themselves. Like demonic vacuums to hell.

Time dilation theories have kept fictional representations of black holes alive, like revolving universe models and the multiverse theory. Also popular in fiction but found nowhere in reality.

However, let’s play devil’s advocate and say multiple universes do exist.

In that case, the multiverse hypothesis doesn’t explain how all these universes are popping into existence, since each would have its own pre-Planck state if it began. What came before remains a mystery.

And black holes only muddy the water.

Since a black hole destroys existence itself, none has ever been witnessed making anything. Also, for a black hole to form, gravity must exist first, and gravity depends on material sources. But:

• No material existed prior to the Planck epoch

• No material means no gravity

• No gravity means no black hole

Hence, we have an unresolvable chicken-or-the-egg scenario. Rendering a black hole implausible as the origin of our universe.

Atheists have one more cop-out, though…

“I Don’t Know” Isn’t An Option

One particular atheist thought he was clever in my comment section by saying, “We don’t know what happened prior to the Big Bang, and neither do you. Get used to it.”

Agnosticism. Say “I don’t know” and be comfortable leaving the question open.

But that’s intellectual laziness.

Agnosticism feels like neutrality but is really indifference, and indifference seeks no answers because it’s indecisive. If pushed into a corner, indifference would curl up and die like a weak-skinned armadillo.

Lack of curiosity and adventure kills.

Imagine our ancestors had collectively settled for indifference on the hardest questions. Nothing would’ve been accomplished. Barbarians would still govern every corner of the earth with minimal technology and zero civility. The same unanswered questions of our origin and purpose would hang over every generation with no forward progress.

You and I are taught progress matters. Are we just tossing that out the window now?

The reason some atheists suggest embracing agnosticism is because they don’t like where the answers lead. The destination. They would rather stay locked up in a comfortable, lukewarm materialist cage than consider the option of God Most High.

Indifference is where knowledge dies.

Discoveries, on the other hand, are driven by creative decisions by those who believe there’s a destination and are ready to accept whatever that destination may be. By people who refuse to accept “I don’t know.”

Lewises and Clarkes roughing and toughing wild terrains with sleepless nights, endless imagination, insatiable hunger for the truth, and a willingness to accept and overcome whatever costs may arise.

So far, the people in history with the biggest spine for adventure, who have made the greatest contributions ever known, have been Christians because we know the Maker, love him, and crave to learn more and more about the incredible universe he’s created.

Ball’s in God’s Court

Since the alternatives have been examined and found wanting, only one option remains: A spaceless, timeless, immaterial, personal, intelligent, powerful God made the cosmos with purpose and intelligibility. Built a readable universe for the sentient creatures inside it (us) to explore, study, comprehend, and relish.

By design.

Why is anything legible at all unless the intent was for someone to understand the creation? The universe didn’t have to be ordered. Laws of mathematics didn’t have to describe reality with precision. Human minds didn’t have to be capable of understanding cosmic structure.

The fact these things align points toward a Mind who made the cosmos to be known. Especially by those minds mirroring his own Mind. His own imagers.

Atheists rage and resist said conclusion with ferocious energy like rabid dogs because a God fitting the description derived from cosmological study matches the God of the Bible. The Christian God. Christ Jesus. Whom many have despised with fierce and genuine passion since his incarnation into human history.

Like Greco-Roman pagan counterparts, they hate the eternal King because a personal, transcendent his existence means good and evil are real. Moral obligations are non-negotiable. And since no one defines stable ethics on personal grounds, we can’t just do whatever we want. We don’t get to be God.

Humanity violated God’s law in the Garden of Eden, and the consequence was sin and death unleashed into a creation. Chaos into order. Nothing into something. Entropy. The slow erosion of everything, perverting and consuming from within, starting at the depths of the human soul. Consumed by pride and coveting his holy throne.

A miracle made the cosmos. A curse slowly kills it.

And from this curse, we all need a Savior.

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You’ve been here before, your friend holding an innocent captive behind the blackened barrel of a silver Glock. His father’s. Faint rings of white powder crust around his nostrils like crystalized sugar, and his shoulders sag. It takes all his energy to lift his right arm, the pistol snagging gravity like a bell weight.

But he stands firm, the clerk mesmerized by those glazed eyes.

He switches hands and bumps your shoulder. “I told you he would cry, Hopscotch.” He laughs. “See.”

Hopscotch is your nickname. They gave it to you the first day, after fists beat you to the ground. The way your arms protruded and your legs were in an upside-down V made it look like the children’s game. Trevor said it was honorable, but you don’t feel it. It’s drowned out by the streams of water running the clerk’s face.

He’s Arab…or something like that. Maybe Indian. The sun-dried brown skin says so. He has yet to speak. He sinks back against display cases of cigarettes and tobacco cans, gaze fixed on the threat. He reached under the counter earlier. There’s a silent alarm sign outside. You don’t know if he tripped it, but the door won’t budge.

“Hey…Jimmy…man,” you say. “Maybe we should let him go. Just get outta here.”

He scoffs. “Come on, man. Don’t you wanna be in?” He licks his lips and wipes the sweat out of his eyes. “Jeremy was clear, man. We go back without em, he’ll hang us dry.”

Jeremy. Darkest dealer in Detroit. Some call him Fuller, the name of the street he operated from in high school, out of an abandoned shack with F*** OFF written on the side. He parks his carcass in a rundown gray wood slum east of downtown. A suburban block littered with lowly souls enduring the torture of pre-afterlife. Drugs go quick in those parts, the bodies flooding in and out of that crapshoot apartment like an assembly line. How he keeps things discreet no one knows, but some suspect it’s the abortion clinic just down the street. The pro-lifers seem to draw attention with their protesting like a bear tramping through a Dollar Tree.

Trevor got you and Jimmy stuck with Fuller. Said he had connections, could get you anywhere you wanted to go. You were wary at first, though. Trevor is really good for nothing except wiping his own pearly white cheeks, though he probably even needs a guidebook for that. But for a teenage kid whose single mother battles stage three cancer and can’t see her own reflection in the mirror, much less her only son, the idea of going somewhere was salivating to you.

Fuller sized you up that first day. Wasn’t sure a puny, Caucasian runt from San Francisco could run with the big dogs. After you survived the barrage of fists (his first test), he’d pinned you to the floor and shoved his shiny revolver between your split lips. This is what life is, kid, he’d said. The doorway to death. All it takes is a little…

He pulled the trigger. Your heart cracked.

He rolled off you, laughing hard, holding his sides. When done, he helped you up and patted your back. You got guts, kid, unlike the rest of my worms.

He sent you to the drugstore a block down, claiming the owner had failed to pay up. You weren’t sure exactly what that meant, but you agreed anyway. He promised you entry into his clique as a bagman. Said he had one on every corner of the city. They collected fees and were the best of the best, so you had to be…if you wanted him to get the word out to all his larger clients. Wealthy brokers who dealt under the table to protect their billion-dollar name tags. They were always inquiring about young protégés like you.

He only let Jimmy come along because you asked. Thought he was a danger to the operation but let it slide. Jimmy asked too many questions and seemed like the sort who would back down from confrontation, but Fuller didn’t know him like you do. It was his idea to get the Glock, his idea to walk inside and point it right at the clerk’s face. You were the coward, but you weren’t going to admit that. Not a chance in hell.

“Man, this is ridiculous. This guy hasn’t done–”

“You chickenin out on me?”

You shake your head. “I’m just saying, Jimmy–”

He points the gun at your forehead, periodically glancing at the clerk to make sure he stays put. “Get over the counter and pop the register.” His breath is fast. “Don’t you dare ruin this for us!”

You comply, reluctantly. You put your right foot on a box of candy bars and push up. They crackle under your shoe and go flat like flounders. You can picture the pieces squishing against each other, shattered. But when you look down, they still have their puff, only fractured, like your arm when you fell off your ten-speed in seventh grade.

You land beside the clerk. He’s watching you, wide-eyed. The dark stain on his blue uniform is growing. You want to tell him it’s okay, that everything will be fine, but you can’t. Not with Jimmy. With him, you never know.

Your mother never liked him. Told you he was bad vibes. But since she was always wrapped up in that mystical crap, you paid her no mind. You should’ve listened, but you couldn’t let him go.

You’ve known Jimmy since Pre-K. He was the wily sort then but never got into much trouble. It was the years that changed him, brought out his worst. His father beat his mother bad. Jimmy would come to school sharing stories with you of how he’d thrown her into the cabinets or slammed her head into the table or smashed her jaw with his wooden slugger. You asked him why she never got out of it, and he said they were coupled, whatever that meant. He just stared at the cherry trees flanking the playground, kicking rocks.

The fights always got worse. And when his father lost his job at the insurance company…

You and Jimmy were sophomores then. It was late. You heard the knock at the door, but not until it became banging. Your mother was yelling, rambling on about the ruckus in the neighborhood and how the black family next door (she called them Negros, but you never liked that word) could never keep it down. But when you opened the door, it was Jimmy. His face was covered in tears, shining as if it waxed. He was sobbing, heavy gasps that forced him to lean against the doorframe for balance.

He fell into your arms and you pulled him to the couch. He lay there heaving, water darkening the fabric, while your mother ran over, frantic and yelling Is he hurt? Where’s he hurt? You saw the first-aid kit in her hands.

You turned him over. It took effort, but he slowly rolled, still shaking. What happened? you said.

He sucked in deep. The slobbery panting of an overworked hound.

She’s dead, he said. He shot her.

Your stomach sank as he told the story…

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