New article in the local paper by my pastor. Answering the internet: What about cremation? https://www.qcsunonline.com/story/2024/05/29/opinion/answering-the-internet-what-about-cremation/25953.html "The most popular Google search about the Bible is, “What does the Bible say about cremation?” The short answer to that: Nothing. When God decides not to give us a rule, this is because, either way, there is no harm done and we should not be in the business of making rules to govern non-issues. The bottom line on cremation seems to be, what we do to deal with the remains of our lives is only a temporary solution. The Bible teaches a future, general resurrection of the dead. It’s called general, because all the dead will be raised to life again. So, whatever we do with a dead body in the here-and-now, that’s a temporary thing. Now, no one is ever honorably cremated in Scripture, and the burning of a dead body was often a public way of signaling the extreme displeasure of either God or the kings. For instance, a king tried to burn Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, quite unsuccessfully. A character named Achan, along with his family, committed idolatry as soon as Israel entered Canaan. They were stoned to death and then their bodies were burned. The burning had the effect of scattering them to the wind, literally, so that they would have no place in the Promised Land. Burial had the opposite effect. It made sure you stayed in the land of your inheritance until Judgment Day. In the millennia since then, millions of believers have had their bodies burned, after cruel tyrants murdered them in various, innovative ways. Or the burning was how they were slain. Either way, the Gospel hope in that situation is that God is fully capable of raising them from the dead on the last day, regardless of how their physical remains have been scattered or lost. Science suggests that a physical copy of your body could be produced from a single cell, by cloning. I bet God can do better than that. Multitudes of Christians were devoured by lions in the Roman arenas. Their only burial was in the stomachs of the beasts. God’s intention to grant his people new life for eternity will not be foiled by any of this. So, the issue of what happens to your body after you die is ultimately a non-issue. Again, God made no rule or law about it. What we see in the Bible about burial are human customs in action. They may be well-intentioned and even honorable customs, but they have no power to bind the conscience or make demands of you. I, for one, will not counsel a grieving family that they must compound their loss of a loved one by now destroying their finances to pay for a burial because of “custom.” Cremation with a Christian service or memorial is just fine. You came from dust. You will return there. The method or mode of your return, or the various intentions of those who dispose of your remains will not affect this outcome. We ought to be far more concerned with this: “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27)." Gordan Runyan is pastor of Tucumcari’s Immanuel Baptist Church and author of “Radical Moses: The Amazing Civil Freedom Built into Ancient Israel.” Contact him at: reformnm@yahoo.com #faith #bible #christian

New article in the local paper by my pastor: You can trust modern translations. https://www.qcsunonline.com/story/2024/05/15/opinion/you-can-trust-modern-translations/25910.html "My last column addressed the objection that says the Bible can’t be trusted because of how often it has been translated and hand-copied through the centuries. My point was that the documented history (in over 5,000 ancient manuscripts) shows the result is really the opposite. That is, the many manuscripts, from different centuries and regions, prove there has been stunning consistency over the last 2,500 or so years. By comparing old ones with newer ones, we can see plainly where any copyist errors or bad translations were made. This is not something that only Evangelical scholars believe. Renowned atheist scholar, Bart Erhman, agrees: You may hate what it says, but there’s no denying that the New Testament we possess today is the same as the one possessed by the church in the first several centuries of Christianity. This raises a question about translations of the Bible. If we admit that humans can and do make errors when translating from, say, Hebrew into English or Spanish, what does that say about the reliability of our modern translations? Well, it means that a translation that compares well with all the ancient data, being fundamentally faithful, can be trusted. It means that a decent translation of the Bible into your native tongue can and should be received as the inspired word of God. It doesn’t mean, though, that we must believe in perfect or infallible translations. It just means that you will come across places in your study where it will be helpful to compare the translation you’re reading with others. Most modern Bibles, in fact, point this out with little notes explaining there is some question about which is the better English word in this place or another. The historic, Protestant view is that inspiration resides in the original Scripture as it was first written. When Paul signed his name to one of his letters, that autographed copy is what was inspired. Inspiration didn’t extend to the hand-written copies that were made. However, it is precisely because of those copies that it’s reasonable to say, though we no longer have those originals, we know what they said. The relatively few places where we have any doubt at all about a word or phrase, the choice is generally between two options, neither of which change any Bible doctrines at all. The Bible itself treats translations in this manner: a faithful translation may be considered the word of the Lord. When the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, it overwhelmingly quotes from the ancient Greek translation of the original Hebrew, and freely calls the Greek rendering God’s word. We have to keep in mind which documents were inspired: the originals. No translation has to be considered specially inspired in order for us to trust that we have the word of God with us. A plethora of basically faithful translations helps us in this regard, since they can be compared with each other, and with all the ancient documents. The bottom line is, though we don’t possess the original letters of Peter, for instance, your modern Bible tells you what that original said, and there is no evidence-based reason to doubt this." Gordan Runyan is pastor of Tucumcari’s Immanuel Baptist Church and author of “Radical Moses: The Amazing Civil Freedom Built into Ancient Israel.” Contact him at: reformnm@yahoo.com #faith #bible #christian

New article by my pastor: Bible not corrupted by translations. https://www.qcsunonline.com/story/2024/05/01/opinion/bible-not-corrupted-by-translations/25872.html “Pastor, how can you believe in the Bible when it’s been translated so many times?” That’s a common objection. Meaning no insult, but it’s an argument based on ignorance. The objector doesn’t know anything about how the Bible came to be and assumes the worst: a shadowy history littered with corruptions both accidental and nefarious. It’s assumed that we got the Scriptures through a process much like the old party game, “Phone Message.” In that game, you line up several children in a row. A long sentence is told to the first child. He takes off running, around a cone, and then comes back and whispers the sentence he was told to the next kid. When you get to the last child, there’s the punchline. You have the last one recite what he thinks he heard, and everybody gets a good laugh at how mangled the message has become, compared to what the first child was actually told. People think we got the Bible that way. Or, they assume the process is something like making old Xerox copies, and then making copies of the copies, until the document is ugly and hard to read. But if I write a book in English and then three friends translate my book into their native languages (say French, Spanish, and German) that has no effect on the book I wrote. None at all. It still says what it says when I typed the words, “The End.” Now, one of the friends may have made some translational errors. Maybe he’s not so great at English after all. OK, that’s not hard to spot, because eventually we’ll run across someone who knows both languages and can highlight the errors. So what should be done? We just make a new translation, hoping to improve on previous efforts. We still have the original book for making comparisons. In that process, no matter how many times it’s repeated, it doesn’t change what was originally written. The same is true for making hand-written copies: as long as we have the source document, we can spot inaccuracies and correct our work. There are in existence right now over 5,000 ancient manuscripts of Scripture and lots of ancient translations into other languages. In some cases, the source documents we’re working with date to several hundred years B.C. We have copies from many time periods and geographical regions. We have enough to say with certainty that the Phone Message game is not what happened here. How do we know? Because the older copies say the same thing, overwhelmingly, as all the later copies. The medieval era Latin carries the same message as the Hebrew and Greek from 300 A.D. If somebody made huge errors along the way, or the Council of Nicea (for instance) had forced a bunch of wholesale changes, that would be very easy to spot. We have all the receipts, as the kids say. We can spot all the issues, like missing words, misspellings, and transposed numbers. There are modern English translations that will even show you where all those places are. Nobody’s hiding any of this. There’s no need. You have the Bible God intended. Gordan Runyan is pastor of Tucumcari’s Immanuel Baptist Church and author of “Radical Moses: The Amazing Civil Freedom Built into Ancient Israel.” Contact him at: reformnm@yahoo.com. #faith #bible #christian

From my pastor: MOST EMBARRASSING FAILED DISPENSATIONAL PROPHECIES, candidate five "Antichrist Identification" First off, even calling the End Times supervillain THE Antichrist is biblically shaky. "The Man of Sin" or the First Beast or the Little Horn would be more correct. (John describes "antichrist" as a spirit, not an individual man.) But Antichrist is easily the most marketable of those labels so we'll run with it. The embarrassing bit I'm referencing is the cascade of wrong guesses that have flowed out, and continue to flow out, from believers who have the Revelation open, highlighter in hand, while watching Fox News. I don't have a lot of memories before the 70's but I've been alive to see every President of the US, the USSR and Russia, and Israel since then; plus the Prime Ministers of every prominent European power, plus every Pope; plus anyone who achieved any sort of world-status in international affairs, identified as the Antichrist. In fact, just hours before I wrote this post, a FB friend suggested (I think seriously) President Macron of France. This paragraph has probably only scratched the surface of the constant stream of guesses that have all come up false. At least, with guessing the timing of the Rapture, we have a warning from Jesus that no man knows the day. That doesn't stop those bad guesses, but I'm thinking it probably does curb them a bit. With the Antichrist, there's no such warning against trying to identify him, and so the wrong guesses fly like clay pigeons at a skeet shoot. If this is what your interpretive scheme produces in every place it's taught, a non-stop avalanche of false warnings, don't you have to consider that the underlying problem is systemic? #faith #bible #christian #endtimes

From my pastor: Consider these two minutes to be part four of my expose' of Dispensational prophecy failure. Thanks for the convenient assist, Pastor Baldwin #faith #bible #christian #endtimes

From my pastor: MOST EMBARRASSING FAILED DISPENSATIONAL PROPHECIES, candidate three “The Third Temple” Immediately, I’ll be met with this answer, even before I start explaining anything. The Dispensationalist will say, “It’s coming, though! You just wait! You call it failed now, but what if it gets built in the next twenty years?” The issue is timing, though. The same believer who says, “Just wait!” also believes the Rapture could happen later today, and we’d be in the End Times seven-year period called the Great Tribulation. They see this period described in (roughly) Revelation 6-18. Everything in this section has to be done in the seven years immediately following the Rapture. The issue is that Revelation 11:1-2 has a temple in Jerusalem, being trampled down and overrun by the nations for 42 months, or the second half of the seven years. This means the temple has to be up and running at this point, midway through the Great Tribulation. I realize that there are a number of groups that currently advocate for building a new temple in Jerusalem. I’ve seen reports talking about all the resources and items they’ve amassed that could be used in its construction. The very same sorts of stories were being excitedly shared among the Dispensationalists when I was converted to Christ in 1989. I read them and was thrilled by them. Then some old-timers off-handedly mentioned that those stories had been told and repeated for decades already, even at that time. Now, again, with the caveat that God can do anything at any time, a quick look at the political situation will yield (to the mind of anyone without a Dispensationalist agenda) that any new temple in Jerusalem is nowhere on the horizon. But, but, the Rapture could happen today! And that’s the big failure of the Dispensational scheme here: For the Rapture to be imminent, the new temple needs to be at least mostly complete. In the world we actually live in, this is a pipe dream. If the temple isn’t right around the corner, then neither is the Great Tribulation. It is a failure of the system that its leaders have been confidently calling it imminent (any moment now!) for at least 80 years. #faith #bible #christian #endtimes

From my pastor: MOST EMBARRASSING FAILED PROPHECIES OF DISPENSATIONALISM, candidate two “The Revived Roman Empire” The concept here is that, in the End Times, there will be a renewal or replay of the ancient Roman Empire. The Antichrist will be at its head, of course. It will consist of 10 member states and will be a terrifying force to be reckoned with, like no military power before it . As with all the other Dispensational fancies, this one only survives by hiding behind that well-worn, gossamer dodge that says, “Yes, I know it hasn’t come to pass like we said it would, but God can make it happen in the future!” But everything you’ve pointed at with great seriousness and excitement as a possible, present fulfillment has fallen away, even though you’ve been willing to stretch and mangle your own terms beyond recognition. The failure in it is this: You think the Rapture is imminent. You believe the Great Tribulation could start tomorrow. But your own system absolutely must have Italy, and Rome specifically, as the head of the world-conquering military alliance mentioned above. It has to be up and running at the beginning of the seven years. You believe the ultimate Final Boss will go out “conquering and to conquer” at the onset. At the very least you are of two minds. You think the Tribulation could begin today, but there is no hint of the Beast’s Italian end-times army mustered anywhere. The very idea of such an army is laughable. God can do what He wants, but as things stand today, the idea is ludicrous: Italy currently spends a little more than Australia on its military, well behind several other European nations, and military powerhouses like Japan and South Korea. Its military size ranks at #31 in the world, behind behemoths like Eritrea and Morocco. Now, to their credit, Dispensationalists have recognized for decades how inconvenient this is for their system and have sought to soften the blow of failure by suggesting that maybe “Empire” can mean “treaty organization” or “trade summit”. And maybe it could be called Roman if Italy is simply a member, and not actually in charge of it. Maybe the United Nations armed troops qualify as some reflection of ancient Rome’s brutal conquerors who crushed whole countries. Only blind allegiance to a system, regardless of truth, could account for this word-salad twisting. The European Union began in 1993 and many Dispensationalists were all a-flutter when the tenth member joined. This must be it! It’s all winding down now, baby! Well, the prophetically mandatory number of ten was quickly surpassed. There are well over 30 member states now. Hey, believe what you will about what this “Roman Empire” must look like in its End Times incarnation. Knock yourself out. You just can’t consistently also believe that you could be raptured out of here at any time. That empire has to be ready to roll, as many things have to happen in a very short period. You’ve seen what trouble it’s been for a well-funded, legitimate military force (Russia) to try to take over a single, much less powerful nation. And you think Italy is on the verge of conquering ten? C’mon. Again, God can do what He wants, but at some point shouldn’t you be willing to go back and reassess your theories? #faith #bible #christian #endtimes

From my pastor: MOST EMBARRASSING DISPENSATIONAL FAILED PROPHECY, Candidate one: "The Generation of the Fig Tree." First popularized by Hal Linsey when I was a kid, this theory states that the end of the world will occur within one generation from the formation of the modern nation of Israel in 1948. Up until Jan 1, 1989, Dispensationalists taught that a Biblical generation is 40 years. Calvary Chapel icon Chuck Smith specified that the Rapture would happen in '81, to fit in the seven years of Great Tribulation prior to '88. Once those dates passed, as you can imagine, a bunch of scrambling and scurrying happened in a giant CYA effort. Maybe the first year of the fig tree generation should not be 1948, but 1967 when Israel got control of Jerusalem. Then 2007 came and went and the world stubbornly failed to end. The current, latest panic-mod of the theory is that a biblical generation can be as much as 80 years, which gives them until 2028. But it really doesn't because we're only about 4 years out and the 7 year Tribulation hasn't started (it's 3 years late). At some point, please. Just stop. The problem isn't with your math but with your interpretive scheme. For some receipts on all this start here:

Calvary Chapel Wiki / 1981

#faith #bible #christian #endtimes

New article by my pastor: Challenge, why doesn't God show himself? https://www.qcsunonline.com/story/2024/04/17/opinion/challenge-why-doesnt-god-show-himself/25809.html "I was reading one of the thousand or so articles that pop up on my email homepage, about why people reject religious faith: “17 Challenges Atheists Have for Believers.” These are always good for a chuckle. One objection caught my attention. It was this: If God exists why doesn’t he show himself? Well, how big a show would it take for you to believe? Would 10 consecutive, pre-announced plagues, reducing the world’s most powerful nation to rubble, be enough? How about splitting the Red Sea so people could cross through on dry land? You simply wave away the testimony of witnesses to these and a thousand other miracles. Why doesn’t he show himself? Well, for one, you still wouldn’t believe. You’d simply redouble your efforts to debunk and discredit. God already has shown himself, and you’ve amassed reasons why you don’t have to pay attention to the record. God took on human flesh and walked among us in the person called Jesus of Nazareth, and all the doubters crucified him. If he showed up in the same manner today, I don’t doubt they’d treat him the same way. And what side would you be on when they did? While he’s hanging on the cross, maybe you’d be muttering to yourself, “If only God would show himself!” In the biblical accounts of Christ’s resurrection, there were plenty of people who knew the event had happened in reality, and still chose not to believe in God. But, for a direct, biblical answer to this objection, I’d point you to Romans 1:18-22 and the assertion that God has already shown himself by the things he has made. His fingerprints are on all his works. The heavenly judge has decided you’ve received enough evidence to be without excuse for your unbelief. You know God exists, and you know precisely which God, among all those imagined, exists. You’ve felt the sunshine on your cheek. You’ve experienced love, rain, and good food. You’ve stood awestruck at the majesty of the mountains; heard the ominous roar of a sea; and been overwhelmed by the vastness and beauty of the heavens. Your unbelief is not a conclusion based on proof, but a moral choice you’ve made in the face of the evidence. God says you know. He’s shown himself. A Bible teacher named R. C. Sproul was invited to a meeting of college atheists. Specifically, he was asked to bring his best arguments for the existence of God. Sproul accepted the invitation and went to the event. He began his talk by thanking them for the opportunity. I can’t quote him from memory, but he said something like this to them: “You’ve asked me for evidence, and I’m happy to present it. I’m eager to do that for you because I think the evidence is irrefutable. But I must tell you before I begin, I think you already know. The problem is not with the evidence you know or don’t know. The problem is that you hate what you know.” Jesus said darkness hates the light and will not come to the light. How’s your unbelief been working out for you? Isn’t it time to yield to what you already know to be true?" Gordan Runyan is pastor of Tucumcari’s Immanuel Baptist Church and author of “Radical Moses: The Amazing Civil Freedom Built into Ancient Israel.” Contact him at: reformnm@yahoo.com #faith #bible #christian

New article in the local paper by my pastor: Popular objection: Jesus never said 'I am God'. https://www.qcsunonline.com/story/2024/04/03/opinion/popular-objection-jesus-never-said-i-am-god/25768.html "I’m seeing a particular objection to Christianity repeated often on the internet. It started, I believe, among some Muslims, but has spread to the larger culture. The objection is this: In the Bible, Jesus never claimed to be God. He never said, “I am God. Worship me.” I’m not sure what has made this criticism so popular recently. Can I be harshly direct and say it’s stupid? Maybe not. Maybe I should be lighthearted about it and say it’s “all hat and no cattle.” It’s a vacuous statement either way, especially if you’ve ever bothered to read the Bible once. If you have, you surely know that the teaching method of Jesus about himself is rarely direct. What Jesus prefers to do is take you by the hand and walk around a particular truth, pointing you at it and referring to it. The objection that he never said the words, “I am God,” implies that he must not have thought he was. The ascription of deity to Jesus was not something he wanted or approved of, according to this thought. But there’s not much to this, when you’re willing to read what he did say. He claimed to be the light of the world; the bread of heaven; the good shepherd (see Psalm 23:1); the judge of all people; the forgiver of sins; the living water; the way, the truth, and the life; the source of life after death; and, one who existed in glory before the creation of all things. This is a small sample. I think what this objection is doing is criticizing the Lord for his willingness to put all the evidence in front of you and let you come to your own conclusion. The Bible in general, and Jesus specifically, teach in a manner that is quite plain and open, without simply slapping you upside the head with a truth-hammer. It’s plain, though often indirect. Unless you come to it with an agenda, it’s hard to misunderstand on this point. But it’s not going to spoon feed you. It points to the truth and invites you to do with it what you will. On another level, though, Jesus did in fact directly claim divinity. He just didn’t use the words “I am God.” These objectors act like that’s supposed to be significant. He claimed to be the Son of God, and the Jews who heard him tried to stone him for using the phrase, a phrase that implied equality with God. His favorite title for himself, though, was “Son of man.” You might hear this and think it’s really a claim to humanity. But in Daniel 7:13-14, the Son of man is a divine figure, with judging and ruling authority over the whole world. Again, when his opponents heard this, they knew it was a claim to deity. The claims of Christ are so unmistakable that, as C. S. Lewis noted, we have only three options in evaluating him. He’s either a lunatic, a liar, or the Lord. He clearly thought he was God. If he was wrong, that was either intentionally lying, or it was mad raving. But if he was right, then you see what last Sunday’s Easter celebration was all about." Gordan Runyan is pastor of Tucumcari’s Immanuel Baptist Church and author of “Radical Moses: The Amazing Civil Freedom Built into Ancient Israel.” Contact him at: reformnm@yahoo.com #faith #bible #christian

My pastor just published a 40-day devotional through Psalm 51, and it's outstanding.

Amazon.com

Amazon.com

"This series of 40 daily meditations is taken from King David's iconic prayer of repentance, the 51st Psalm. Deepen your walk with a devotional guide that manages to teach solid theology while also touching the tender heart. This book would be a wonderful personal study for the penitent believer during the season of Lent, written from an Evangelical Baptist perspective. Experience true repentance. Understand concepts like grace, faith, and forgiveness in a deeper, more biblical way." #faith #bible #christian

He is risen! #faith #bible #christian

"Jesus didn't die boldly & publicly for you to live your faith timidly & privately."--Shane Pruitt #faith #bible #christian

"The Easter takeaway is not that Jesus died and went to heaven so that we can die and go to heaven. It's that Jesus was resurrected in order to resurrect — and redeem — the entire cosmos."--Andrew Sandlin #faith #bible #christian

Is the popular version of the Rapture biblical? Will Christians disappear from the world suddenly, leaving only their clothing behind? I argue that it is not, and they will not because it's good to be left behind, actually.

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Being left behind is good actually, Matthew 13

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Job interview #2 with a company for an IT support position is today. Prayers appreciated!

Why Christians should care about Bitcoin

Buzzsprout

128 - Jordan Bush on Why Christians Should Care About Bitcoin - Full Proof Theology

Support the show!! - https://www.patreon.com/chasedavisThank God for Bitcoin - https://tgfb.com/SummaryIn this episode, Chase Davis interviews Jord...

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This new commentary by Ken Gentry on the book of Revelation has been in the works for many years. I can finally snag a copy!

KennethGentry.com

Divorce of Israel (2 vols.) $20 off!

An orthodox preterist commentary on the Book of Revelation

"The Divorce of Israel presents a “redemptive-historical” approach to Revelation. As such it provides a fully orthodox preterist interpretation of the Apostle John’s great prophecy, while presenting a “Now/Not Yet” understanding of the conclusion of Revelation, with the coming of the New Heavens and New Earth. In it John is presenting a forensic drama wherein God is divorcing his old covenant wife Israel so that he can take a new bride, the new covenant “Israel of God” composed of Jew and Gentile alike. John’s drama builds upon numerous Old Testament passages while expanding on Jesus’ Olivet Discourse. That Discourse declared God’s judgment on unfaithful Israel’s beloved temple and her holy city. God’s divorce results in first-century geo-political Israel’s judgment by capital punishment for spiritual adultery in rejecting her Messiah, declaring she has no king but Caesar, and persecuting the Messiah's new covenant family. Thus, Revelation presents the vitally important redemptive-historical transition from the land-based, ethnically-focused, typologically-oriented, temple-dominated old covenant economy to its worldwide, pan-ethnic, spiritual new covenant fulfillment which spiritually anticipates the consummate, material, eternal new creation wherein dwells righteousness. " #faith #bible #christian

My latest sermon: Being left behind is good, actually.

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Being left behind is good actually, Matthew 13

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"Behind the intellectual objections to the Bible and Christianity is the moral issue that keeps rebels of God from submitting to him. If God is God, then you are not free to live your life any longer as if you are unaccountable to Him." --Zachary Conover #faith #bible #christian