Welcome to the 4Truth.net blog. This blog will discuss contemporary Interfaith Evangelism and Apologetics issues facing North America. The blog writers are Mike Licona, Tal Davis and Bill Gordon. These writers have more than 50 years combined experience working in the Interfaith Evangelism and Apologetics area. We welcome suggestions for future blog topics. You can email us at PeopleGroupInterfaith@namb.net.
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In the King James Version, Matthew 18:11 reads: "For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost." Modern translations of the Bible do not include this verse. For example, both the New International Version and the English Standard Version skip this passage. The Revised Standard Version contains a footnote indicating that this passage is "not found in the earliest and best Greek manuscripts."Bruce Metzger, in his book A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament,writes that there is little doubt that the words of verse eleven "are spurious here, being absent from the earliest witnesses representing several textual types (Alexandrian, Egyptian, Antiochian), and manifestly borrowed by copyists from Luke 19:10." This means that the words of Matthew 18:11 almost certainly do not belong in the Gospel of Matthew.
For several decades the Church of Scientology and the Saint Petersburg (Fla.) Times newspaper have waged a war of words over that bizarre church’s activities in and around the Tampa Bay, Florida, area. The battle has especially focused on the esteemed newspaper’s investigations of the church’s practices and its growing influence in the nearby city of Clearwater. Scientology’s “Flag Land Base” headquarters is located in an ever expanding complex of buildings in that city’s beautiful bayside downtown district.
Oral Roberts was a man way ahead of his time. When television was still in its infancy, he recognized the power of the new media. I recall as a young boy, in the late 50s, watching films of Roberts’ healing services on Sunday afternoons. The shows would feature Roberts delivering a short message followed by selected scenes of him praying for the sick and lame in his healing lines. I thought his dramatic style was a little funny, as did many of my friends.
“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap” (Luke 6:38a-NIV).
"A farmer went out to sow his seed…Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13: 3b, 8-NIV)
These and other passages clearly teach us that if we give our money liberally and faithfully to “God anointed” ministries then Jesus promises to give back to us multiple times what we gave. Right? It is if you believe the message of the growing number of advocates of the doctrine of “Seed-Faith”. This concept is advocated in one form or another by numerous Word-Faith television preachers and is the premise of nearly all their on-air teaching and fund-raising.
O Mother in Heaven, Where Art Thou? Or “Do You Remember Mama?”
Since the time of Joseph Smith, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) has taught that all humans are literal sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father. It asserts we were the literal offspring of God in a pre-earth state before we were born of earthly parents on earth.
