Posts by Brent Niedergall
What Is the Authority of Scripture?
How would you have responded to a poll back in 1979? A 1979 Gallup Poll asked this question: If you, yourself, were testing your own religious beliefs, which ONE of these four religious authorities would you turn to first? What the church says What respected religious leaders say What the Holy Spirit says to me…
Read MoreWhat Is Inspiration?
Does God breathe? The Scriptures are God-breathed according to 2 Tim. 3:16. It says exactly this: “All Scripture is breathed out by God” Scripture is God’s product. We call this the doctrine of inspiration. Here’s a definition. Inspiration may be defined as the Holy Spirit’s superintending over the writers so that while writing according to…
Read MoreWhat Is the Infallibility of Scripture?
Ask Pepsi how much error can cost you. Error can have consequences. A computer error back in the ’90s cost Pepsi their money and reputation in the Philippines when they accidentally printed the winning number for a million peso giveaway on 800,000 bottle caps (mentalfloss.com). People make mistakes. We err. But what if the Bible…
Read MoreWhat Is Inerrancy?
What else comes from Chicago besides hotdogs and deep-dish pizza? Back in 1978 in the Windy City, 268 evangelical scholars signed on the line to affirm their belief in the doctrine of inerrancy. Inerrancy means the Bible is free from error.1 They called the document they signed the “Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.” I’ll spare…
Read MoreWhat Is Scripture?
Theology in 300 Seconds (give or take) [follow link to video, previous article here] “The B-I-B-L-E, Yes that’s the book for me.” What about you? The Bible is the Word of God. Jesus is the “Word of God” and “the Word” (Rev. 19:13; John 1:1). The “Word of God” also includes those words God has…
Read MoreWhat is revelation?
As Bernard Ramm put it: “In its broadest sense “revelation is the sum total of the ways in which God makes himself known.”1 We could never know God — we could never discover God — if God did not reveal Himself to us. It would be kind of like Jack Slater from Last Action Hero…
Read MoreThe Cost of Covetousness
GameStop and Reddit captured recently captured our attention with some craziness involving the stock market. At the beginning of this year—back in January—GameStop stock was selling for under 20 bucks a share. But then it started climbing. There was this whole dynamic of amateur investors battling it out against big-time Wall Street investors. And the…
Read MoreWhen Will Things Get Better?
Life is full of expectation and waiting. We’re always waiting for something! The weekend Seeing friends and family The release of a book or a movie or a video game The next season of The Mandalorian The end of COVID. We’re always waiting for something to come. We can’t wait for what’s next. I often…
Read MoreAre These the Last Days?
One of the “joys” of training to become a soldier in the United States Army is pulling what’s called fireguard duty. The Army used to house soldiers in wooden barracks with wood-burning stoves. So soldiers would rotate shifts through the night to make sure the place didn’t burn down. Even though there’s not so much…
Read MoreSerendipity for Singing, Not Sinning
Christmas is the only holiday you never want to arrive because that means Christmas is going to end. What makes the Christmas season so enjoyable is the season itself and the anticipation. So we’ll take down the lights. We’ll pack away the decorations. And eventually, we’ll stop listening to Christmas music. No more “O Holy…
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