Nat Crawford - Executive Coach, Speaker, Leader

In an attempt to keep content fresh between my apologetic topics, which tend to be longer and more complicated in nature, I will attempt to post a daily "Well, how about that?". Bethlehem  Did you know that seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus, the prophet Micah prophesied that Christ would be born in Bethlehem? Bethlehem means "House of Bread." From the tiny, ordinary town of King David and Ruth, Jesus Christ, the Messiah would be born! Well, how about that?

I have heard of this video for sometime and I had not watched it till now. I tend to avoid mainstream things, but I HIGHLY encourage you to take 33 minutes and watch this documentary.      It is powerful and examines the state of our country, the value of human life, and the connection between the holocaust and abortion. How do you answer these questions?

There are skeptics out there who want to believe that the Bible condones and even promotes slavery. This is laughable at best. But to understand the Bible’s view on it, one must put to use good hermeneutics! Why? Because context is everything! We know that the Mosaic Laws were made up of moral, ceremonial, and judicial. When we know that we can start to see how application can be made. We realize the social pieces were unique for them in their time in for their culture. The ceremonial parts were mostly fulfilled in Christ. The moral elements are ones we need to pay particular attention to.  Look at Exodus 23:9. “ “Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt” (NIV). The Israelites were once slaves in Egypt. They knew oppression. Here we see that oppression and treatment based on birth place was condemned. Look at Genesis 1:27 “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them...

There is a tension in our culture today. Some are shouting “God is dead! There is no God!” While others contend that if there is a god, surely he is unworthy of any praise. He has abandoned us. Richard Dawkins states in his book The God Delusion “ The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”  Is this assessment true? If God is a God of love, can He truly be a God of judgment?  Is Dawkins right? Was God more focused on justice in the OT and focused on grace in the NT?  And why does God seem so different between the Old Testament and the New Testament?  With the daunting task of reading you will find God’s love, mercy, and judgment in the Old Testament and God’s lo...