(Shrine where the Ethiopian Ark is housed)

The Orthodox Church of Ethiopia has claimed for years that they actually have the original Ark of the Covenant spoken of in the Bible. One of the problems with the claim is that they have never allowed archeologists to inspect or test the artifact which most scholars believe is a mere copy at best.

However, the Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has recently announced that he will be unveiling it for all the world to see very soon. Does that mean scholars will finally have access to the ark? Probably not.

<<Here’s Dr. Ben Witherington’s take on the Ethiopian Ark>>

UPDATE: The ark was supposed to be revealed on Friday but it didn’t happen. Instead all we get is this quote from the Patriarch:

"All that which is found in the Ark is described perfectly in the Bible. The state of conservation is good because it is not made from the hand of man, but it is something that God has blessed. There are many writings and evidences of the presence of the Ark in Ethiopia. There is no reason why someone [would] dare to affirm to have something that he doesn’t have.

I am not here to give proofs that the Ark is in Ethiopia, but I am here to say what I saw, what I know and I can attest to. I didn’t say that the Ark would be revealed to the world. It is a mystery, an object of veneration."

Response: So the mystery continues. No real unveiling and no scholarly archeological inspections at all. I guess the truth of the matter and a real resolution of the issue is not to be tolerated or allowed. It is to remain an object of faith only for the Ethiopians.

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  I found Ron Howard’s new movie adaptation of Dan Brown’s 2000 novel Angels and Demons to be far better than The Da Vinci Code from a Christian perspective. The movie did not dwell on the anti-Christian theories and themes that pervaded the previous work.

That doesn’t mean that it was ‘pro-Christian’- just not substantially ‘anti’. One of the major issues continually dwelt with in the book is the so-called battle between science and religion—and in this case Catholicism. This was obviously downplayed in the movie and I found it far move enjoyable than the ‘Code’.

The movie sets, along with the Vatican and Roman backgrounds were awesome. In the final analysis, this turned out to be a very good suspenseful detective story with a good twist or two. This is actually a movie that most Christians will be able to enjoy and not be offended by—even Catholics will find it rather harmless after all the negative hype. 

( Movie Image by Getty Images via Daylife)

Ron Howard’s new movie adaptation of Dan Brown’s 2000 novel Angels and Demons just came out this week. This is the long waited sequel to The Da Vinci Code. This time the work is exploring themes of science verses religion with Christianity and particularly Catholicism in the cross-hares.

Westminster Theological Seminary has already launched a Web site www.thetruthaboutangelsanddemons.com designed to look at all the claims made in the film and answer questions raised in response to the work. Particularly to deal with impressions given in the book and in the movie that there is some kind of on-going struggle between science and religion that at some point will be totally resolved scientifically.

The purpose of the site is to delineate between fact and fiction.            *Top

April 8, 2009 – Archeologists at Haifa University have announced a major find connected to the Israelite exodus from Egypt just in time for Passover.

According to archaeologist Prof. Adam Zertal of the University of Haifa:

"The structures that we found in the Jordan valley are the first sites that the people of Israel built upon entering Canaan and they testify to the biblical concept of ownership of the land with the foot. The biblical text testifies to the antiquity of these compounds in Israel’s ceremonials, and the ‘foot’ structures were built by an organized community that had a central leadership."

Two of the five sites found are said to date from the 13th century BC.  These are very import discoveries since they support the Bible and undermine the position of many archeologists who doubt the Biblical account of Israel’s exodus from Egypt and entry into Canaan.

Response: This discovery is really good news for those of us who believe in and support the Bible.

It has become particularly fashionable among archeologists to take a ‘minimalist’ approach to the Bible–to completely disregard Bible accounts unless they are proven without a doubt. Also, a lot money lately has actually gone to European archeological research to disprove the Bible. Much of it from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim sources with vested interests to see Israeli claims on Palestine weakened.              *Top

Image by hpebley3 via Flickr

Today is the National Day of Prayer—Thursday, May 7,2009.  Please remember to pray for our nation that God’s grace and mercy will sustain us through all of the present difficulties facing our country.

Also, pray for the American Church which is in the middle of a transition.

Best of all, pray for revival to fall upon our nation once more.

Here’s a link to the website:

National Day of Prayer if you would like to participate in one of the sponsored activities.

The National Day of Prayer is coming up soon on Thursday this week (May 7).  Here’s a link to the website:

National Day of Prayer if you would like to participate in one of the sponsored activities.

Bart D. Ehrman, (San Francisco: Harper One, 2009, 292 pages)

New Testament scholar Ben Witherington gives an incredible detailed analysis of Bart Ehrman’s New book: “Jesus Interrupted”—Dr. Witherington starts out in Part One of his 6 part series with the following observation:

“Bart Ehrman is both a gifted writer and a gifted lecturer. Perhaps his best gift is the ability to distill difficult and complex material down to a level that undergraduates and ordinary lay folk can understand. It is thus understandable that his popular level books on the New Testament and cognate subjects have been well and widely read, and in age disposed to ‘dis’ the Bible anyway, which is to say, in a generally Biblically illiterate age, Bart’s work has been seen as confirming suspicions already long held by the skeptical or those prone to be skeptical about the Bible and Christianity.

One of the problems however with some of Bart’s popular work, including this book, is that it does not follow the age old adage— “before you boil down, you need to have first boiled it up”. By this I mean Bart Ehrman, so far as I can see, and I would be glad to be proved wrong about this fact, has never done the necessary laboring in the scholarly vineyard to be in a position to write a book like Jesus, Interrupted from a position of long study and knowledge of New Testament Studies.  …”

Bart Interrupted— A detailed Analysis of ‘Jesus Interrupted’ Part One

Bart Interrupted— A detailed Analysis of ‘Jesus Interrupted’ Part Two

Bart Interrupted— A detailed Analysis of ‘Jesus Interrupted’ Part Three

Bart Interrupted: Part Four

Bart Interrupted— A detailed Analysis of ‘Jesus Interrupted’ Part Five

Bart Interrupted— A detailed Analysis of ‘Jesus Interrupted’— Coda

The series concludes with the following:

“Bart Ehrman speaks for himself, and my concern would be to make clear that there are thousands of good and critical NT scholars of some faith or no faith who would disagree with his conclusions. The issue here is not faith vs. critical thinking, or devotional reading of the Bible vs. scholarly reading of the Bible. The issue is what sort of critical reading of early Christian history and its texts is warranted by the evidence, and indeed which view is more open minded about what counts as evidence, and what does not. …

In the meantime, it is important to stress in conclusion that Bart Ehrman is not the voice of the critical consensus on the NT. He could be called the popular voice of one particular more liberal or radical interpretation of the data. BW3”

Response: This series is not to be missed by any serious new Testament student. Dr. Witherington does us all a great service in tackling Dr. Ehrman’s latest.

All of Ehrman’s books are popular and he usually hits the TV and radio circuit to support his new works so you should be hearing soon from some of your secular friends about how the NT can not be trusted. Fortunately armed with this series you will be able to tell them that it is Dr. Ehrman’s conclusions that should be questioned.          *Top

(Image via Wikipedia)

March 28, there was a Nightline TV debate on the existence of Satan. Mark Driscoll and Anne Lobert argued that Satan does exist, while Deepak Chopra and Charles Pearson argued the opposite. Here’s a great extended analysis of the Battle by Rich Bordner:

The Devil is in the Details: Nightline Faceoff on Satan

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that this blog and all of the Answers For The Faith blogs were taking forever (30 seconds) to load and at other times not at all. At first I attributed it to a possible database attack like I had experienced early last year.

After checking all my databases, running ‘tracerts’ for my hosting co. and doing a bunch of different things to get a grip on the reasons for the slow load I finally figured out that the WP theme that all these blogs use was not working very well with the WordPress 2.71 upgrade and with the latest Firefox browser which upgraded about the time when I started noticing the problem. <<Read the Rest>>

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