Auschwitz, 70 Years Later

Auschwitz was liberated 70 years ago this month. Here's a drone's perspective on the most efficient killing machine the world has ever seen.

Sermon by a Kuwaiti Imam

Interesting sermon by a Kuwaiti imam in which he speaks candidly about why Arab people, in general, are less prosperous than other ethnicities. It's not wise, in most cases, to paint an entire culture with the same, broad, generalized brush; nonetheless, a lot of what he says rings true with my own observations over the years while traveling in Arab or Palestinian areas of the Middle East and North Africa. I seriously doubt that he expected or wanted his comments to go viral over the Internet. I have to say, though, that the imam's candor and honesty are refreshing!

Iran, Obama, Boehner and Netanyahu

People have been saying for years that we shouldn't get all excited about Iran making a nuclear bomb because even if they had one, they lack the capacity to deliver it. But according to Caroline Glick (who is usually a reliable source of information), that's changed. Indications are that they now have the ability to deliver the package to Tel Aviv. They would probably avoid Jerusalem because of its proximity to Palestinian areas. At any rate, here's what Carolyn has to say.

http://carolineglick.com/iran-obama-boehner-and-netanyahu/

Archaeologists Reveal Major Discovery in Jerusalem

Here's an interesting news item from our friend Noam Matas at America Israel Travel in CA. There's been a rather spectacular archaeological find in Israel. Check it out below. We're looking into this to see if our March tour group can visit this site. The tour is full, technically, but if you really want to go, we'll see if we can squeeze you in. For more info, click the "tours" button at the top of this page.

http://www.americaisraeltravel.net/blog/archaeologists-reveal-major-discovery-in-jerusalem/

Ravi Zacharias Speaks at the Mormon Tabernacle in Utah

Now here's some interesting news! One of evangelicalism's most distinguished apologists, Ravi Zacharias, recently spoke at the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City—and he received a standing ovation when he was finished. 

Photo above: Ravi Zecharias speaks at the Mormon Tabernacle on January 18, 2014.

It's no secret that the Mormons have been craving acceptance by mainstream Christendom for a long time. The Mitt Romney candidacy in 2012 helped, especially among political conservatives, because he and his family (who are lifelong Mormons) presented such a wholesome image—something many people (but apparently not enough) admire in our postmodern age.

Mormons are not particularly fond of being known to most evangelicals as a "cult," but the stark and unavoidable reality is that Mormon theology diverges from historic Christianity on its core beliefs about the identity and nature of the Son of God. (In Mormonism, God is an exalted man and Jesus is Lucifer's brother.) A religious group or movement can be right about everything else, but if it's wrong about who Jesus (Yeshua) is, then there's no other way to slice it—it's really not authentic, historic Christianity. 

So then, is it a cult? Well, there are different definitions for the term "cult," but that doesn't change the fact that whether or not it fits the dictionary definition, Mormonism is not the Christian faith that we see in the Bible. That’s why our Mormon friends need additional books of revelation (like The Book of Mormon and The Doctrine and Covenants)—because support for some of their beliefs is so scant in the Bible itself, if it’s there at all.

And what about Ravi's speaking at the Tabernacle? Should he have done it, or not? Did it lend credibility to a false religion that proclaims a false gospel of human effort and works? Or was it an opportunity to speak truth in a venue where the true Gospel is seldom heard? Years ago, I asked a dear friend, a Baptist evangelist, why he accepted an invitation to speak at a Catholic seminary in South America. He said, "Gary, I would preach in Hell itself as long as no one censored my message and they agreed to let me out when I was done." 

It's not the first time an evangelical has spoken at the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. D.L. Moody did it twice in the late 1800s (and according to Ira Sankey's eyewitness account, two of the Mormon president's daughters responded to the invitation and got saved!), Ravi did it in 2004 (facilitated by Utah evangelical leader Greg Johnson), Nick Vujicic (the dynamic evangelist who was born without arms or legs) did it in 2010, and now Ravi has had a return engagement. And there have been others, as well.

In Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis (who had formerly been an atheist) wrote, "A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere .... God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous."

God is, at times, unscrupulous. I like that. And He sets traps, even for Mormons. They hear the Good News of Jesus the Messiah in the most unlikely of places—like the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. Where can a Mormon safely go these days? What is this world coming to?

What do you think about this? Sound off here on the blog by leaving your comment below!

Top 10 Posts of 2013 - Keeping it Real

In the second most popular post of 2013, Dr. Gary Hedrick addresses the skeptics who charge that the Bible, like Area 51, also needs to be demythologized.

Click here to read the original post.

Top 10 Posts of 2013 - Have Iranians Pulled a Fast One?

In the 3^rd  most popular post of 2013, Dr. Gary Hedrick visits the Iran issue and asks if the Iranians have pulled a fast one. Click here to read the original post.

Top 10 Posts of 2013 - A Six Minute Crash Course on "The Middle East Problem"

The 8^th  most popular post this year takes a look back at the Middle East Problem. Dr. Gary Hedrick presents a short video by Dennis Prager.

Have Iranians Pulled a Fast One?

The one thing about the new deal with Iran that should make everyone extremely uneasy is this: Israel doesn't like it. They say we have made a big mistake. The Israelis, who have one of the most formidable intelligence networks in the world, say the Iranians have pulled a fast one on the West with this agreement. When you stop and remember that the Iranian mullahs are the ones who defend suicide bombers, who strap explosives onto their bodies and walk into public places where they blow themselves up, murdering and maiming innocent men, women, and children with no remorse, it's not hard to understand why civilized people everywhere cringe at the idea of a nuclear-enabled Iran. The respected, conservative Weekly Standard has this take on it ("Abject Surrender by the United States"). Also, check out CNN's "Twenty Questions about the Iran Nuclear Deal".

One further word of caution. When thinking about Iran, we should always distinguish between the policies of the Iranian Islamist government and the Iranian people themselves. Historically, the Iranian people have had close ties to the West and have been friends of the United States. One little-known fact is that when the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in the USA were announced in Iran, thousand of Iranians poured into the streets to show sympathy. Two days after the tragedy, 60,000 Iranians in a Tehran football (soccer) stadium observed a minute of silence in memory of the victims of 9/11 (see "Candle Power: Iran Mourns America's Dead" from Time Magazine [Sept. 18, 2001] at web.archive.org). Our true enemy is not the Iranian people but rather Islamist extremism and the minority of religious crazies who propagate it.

Keeping It Real: Demythologizing Area 51

In the 1996 blockbuster film Independence Day, directed by Roland Emmerich, the President of the United States (played by actor Bill Pullman) learns that aliens crash landed near Roswell, NM, shortly after the close of World War 2. He is told that their bodies were spirited away to a top-secret military facility in Nevada known as Area 51. It's one of the movie's sub-plots.

In developing his fictional storyline, Emmerich drew on events that are believed by some to have happened in 1947. That's when, on Independence Day of that year, a rancher in New Mexico reportedly found debris from a crashed UFO on his property. Air Force officials later told him that what had crashed on his property was a weather balloon. However, true believers in UFOs found that explanation profoundly unsatisfying. An entire industry subsequently grew up around the Roswell incident. Rumors persisted that the government was trying to cover up the fact that a UFO had crashed on earth. Some reports even said that the bodies of aliens had been recovered. The City of Roswell has embraced the UFO legend for more than half a century and does a brisk tourist business catering to UFO enthusiasts and curiosity seekers. For info from the History Channel about the Roswell incident,click here.

Wikipedia has a good summary of what we have known, up until now, about Area 51: click here

Now the government is declassifying more documents about Area 51 that were restricted as "top secret" during the Cold War era and even up until now. It turns out that the "weather balloon" explanation wasn't entirely on the up and up (surprise, surprise, the government fibbed!)--so the UFO people were onto something after all. A lot of what was happening in that sprawling, remote California-Nevada desert northeast of Edwards AFB was related to research, experimentation, and the testing of military aircraft, including stealth technology. So in that sense, there were, indeed, "unidentified flying objects" (UFOs) in those desert skies!

The National Security Archives are housed at George Washington University in Washington, DC. The latest batch of declassified documents is labeled "The Area 51 File: Secret Aircraft and Soviet MiGs--Declassified Documents Describe Stealth Facility in Nevada (National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 443)." It tells us, among other interesting tidbits of information, that the US military secretly obtained Soviet MIG fighters during the Cold War years for testing purposes. Where did they get them? We still don't know.

Check out the latest archive for yourself by clicking here.

Some skeptics charge that the Bible, like Area 51, also needs to be demythologized. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and main author of our Declaration of Independence, edited the New Testament to produce a version of the Gospels that omitted the miracles of Jesus. The so-called "Jefferson Bible" reflected Jefferson's belief that Jesus of Nazareth was a great religious leader and moral teacher but not a miracle worker. Jefferson evidently thought he had rescued the NT from religious mythology and fanciful imagination.

Unlike the mythology that grew up around Roswell and Area 51, however, the NT narrative has a firm historical foundation consisting of numerous consistent and credible eyewitness accounts (1 John 1:1-3). Furthermore, not all of those accounts were written by "friendlies." Ancient Jewish sources, for example, do not dispute that Jesus worked miracles; on the contrary, they assume that He did! The Talmud explains the miracles of Jesus by suggesting that He used magic that He learned in Egypt (Sanhedrin 107b; Sotah 47a). It never says the miracles didn't happen.

Wouldn't you think that if the Lord's miracles were a figment of someone's overly active imagination, His enemies in the first century religious establishment would have been the first ones to alert us to that fact?

That's why demythologizing the Bible is such a sticky business! It's dangerous because the skeptic ends up reading his own unbelief and hardheartedness back into God's Word. It mutilates the Bible by excising one of its central themes--namely, that God has invaded our world in the Person of His Son, Yeshua the Messiah, whose identity was confirmed by the miracles He performed (e.g., Acts 2:22-24).

As Yeshua-believers, we should be all about truth and evidence. We agree that there's a place for demythologizing things that aren't true. But when it comes to Yeshua the Messiah and God's holy Word, we'd better keep it real!