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How and why Christians should engage in the arts at church, at home, and in all areas of life.
By Mark D. Harris
**Source Images for the The Church, the Arts, and Shaping the World for Christ.**
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Faith and Scholarship: What does it mean to be a Christian Intellectual? Let’s see…
By Mark D. Harris
Years ago my wife and I were buying Christmas gifts for our children and we ran across some information cards that proclaimed in bold letters “It’s OK to be smart.” I was a little surprised that anyone would think that it is not OK to be smart. Having that announcement on a stack of cards is a little like printing “It’s OK to be healthy” on a bag of apples; who would dispute it?
Nonetheless, the marketers for those cards put it there. Over the years I have noticed the same message again and again. It is on products, in the media, and even on the playground. Hearkening back to my childhood, I remember the “nerd” and the “pencil necked geek”. The “jock” would get the girls and the “brain” would get the scorn. This is not a new phenomenon.
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Prophets seem strange to us, but they also seemed strange to their contemporaries. Who were they, and what did they do? What did the Old Testament prophets do?
By Mark D. Harris
Some Christians believe that the Old Testament (OT) prophets were men who predicted a distant future revealed to them by God. Either the coming of Christ or the book of Revelation and the end times (or both) are seen as the main message of the Old Testament prophet. Some critical scholars in the past have seen OT prophecy as unique or even fictitious; their messages brand new without any connection to Israel’s past and with no relevance for the future. In reality, the primary mission of the prophets was to proclaim God’s truth to the people of their time and place, just like pastors and teachers today are called to do.
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Will a genuine believer in Jesus Christ who kills himself still go to heaven? Suicide in the Bible addresses that question.
By Mark D. Harris
My wife called me at work several weeks ago; the morning was good but the news was not. Our daughter had been perusing her friends’ posts on Facebook and saw some from one family that were unclear but disturbing. We called them, close personal friends for over 15 years, and learned that their oldest son had killed himself.
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What are miracles? Do miracles really happen? Read on to understand miracles in the Bible, the Holy Scriptures.
By Mark D. Harris
The presence of “miracles” in the Bible has been a source of difficulty to both Christians and non-Christians alike since the Renaissance (14th to 17 centuries) and the Enlightenment (17th to 18th centuries), when some would say that medieval superstition gave way to a new birth of learning and culture and the age of reason. Science and technology grew with breathtaking speed in the past several centuries and the explanations of reality provided by science seemed to discredit the beliefs of earlier years. In our day, many have rejected belief in miracles and even the resurrection of Jesus Christ altogether. Some hold that religion and science are mutually contradictory and in permanent enmity, or at least that they have nothing to do with one another.
What is a miracle? Webster’s New World Dictionary, 2nd College Edition defines a miracle as “an event or action that apparently contradicts known scientific laws and hence is thought to be due to supernatural causes, i.e. an act of God.
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