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An Examination of Conditional Immortality (Part One)

I know that "Conditional Immortality" is quite a divisive topic, and one you may have come across before (sometimes referred to as “Annihilationism”); and have been told outright that it’s “heresy” or false, or that it’s an emotional argument people want to believe because it ‘sounds nicer’ than the doctrine of Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT). Or maybe you’ve never even heard of this before and you didn’t realise there were alternative interpretations and views on hell. If you are new to this, in brief it means that “the wicked” will be removed from existence after judgement and finite torment, rather than living forever in torment. Any...

The World's Oldest Anti-Christian Meme

I first came across the Alexamenos graffito back in Bible college in the early 2000s. It was one of those “fun facts” that gets dropped into a church history lecture and sticks with you — the ancient Roman equivalent of someone spray-painting an insult on a wall. I filed it away, thought it was fascinating, and largely forgot about it for two decades. Then, recently, I discovered something about it I had never known. There’s a response to it. Scratched in a different room, in a different hand. So I started digging into this more to verify the information and discovered more historical curiosities surrounding the graffiti than I ever knew existed wh...

Horus, Jesus, and Egyptian Mythology: Separating Fact from Fiction

...n has led some people to draw comparisons between the birth of Horus and the virgin birth of Jesus, although once you consider how Horus was conceived, it becomes clear that there are no real similarities at all. There's also no connection to December 25th with Horus. Horus' Miraculous Life As a powerful god, Horus was believed to perform various miracles in ancient Egyptian mythology. some of these feats include healing powers (he healed his own injured eye), protection and victory in battle, and control over natural forces, such as the sun and the moon (since he was a sky god, after all). While these are miraculous feats, it's important not to confuse them w...

An ancient fragment mentions Jesus' wife!?

...UPDATE (3rd May 2014): It is now believed to have been confirmed as a hoax/fake; read the full story on The Wall Street Journal. Ancient and not a fake according to scientists IMAGE: HARVARD UNIVERSITY, KAREN L. KING/ASSOCIATED PRESS A little while ago, there was some hoopla in the news about a newly discovered fragment of papyrus from ancient times which contained the phrase "Jesus said to them, 'my wife...,'". Obviously, and not surprisingly, the media made a big deal out of this. Atheists and the like, saw it as a blow to Christianity and conspiracy theorists everywhere thought it confirmed their views that the Vatican and the Catholic Church wer...

Lent: Day 13 - Justin Martyr: First Apology, Chaps. 12-23

...ection is something which seems to be a sticking point to accept, but they “maintain that with God nothing is impossible” and goes on to contrast the way in which they will be planted like seeds in the ground through death, so that in the future they will come up with new bodies. To try and explain this concept even more, the resurrection is contrasted with “human seed” (ie. sperm); [If I] were to show you human seed and a picture of a man, and were to say with confidence that from such a substance such a being could be produced, would you believe before you saw the actual production? Basically, if you’d never known human growth, and someone show...

Lent Day 21: Athanasius: Life of Anthony: Chaps. 1-10

...oved. And some welcomed him as a son, others as a brother”. But as we draw closer to God, the more attention we can also draw from our adversary, the devil. Having seen that someone so young could be so pious, the enemy began “whispering to him the remembrance of his wealth, care for his sister, claims of kindred, love of money, love of glory” trying to cloud his mind with the things of the world. During this time, the devil went to great lengths to tempt and attack Anthony to try and cause him to stumble. In various ways and forms (some physical, even!) the devil took his best shots but Anthony put his mind to Christ and the Scriptures to overcome thes...