Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience

When I checked my Inbox on Saturday morning I found an email from Jimmy DeYoung (one of ABI’s co-founders) concerning the Manhattan Declaration. Because the Manhattan Declaration was still breaking news, Jimmy wanted to discuss it on his weekly radio program. So I quickly went to work trying to learn as much as I could before he called back to do the interview. The Manhattan Declaration is a 4732-word document which was made public at the National Press Conference on Friday, November 20. It was drafted by a committee that included Chuck Colson, Dr. Robert George and Dr. Timothy George

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Dispensationalism must be wrong – Part One

A number of arguments are regularly used to try to discredit dispensationalism and conclude that it is flawed and must be wrong as a theological system. Interestingly, two frequent arguments against dispensationalism are based on the history of dispensationalism, having nothing to do with theology or exegesis. One argument attempts to discredit dispensationalism with the charge that it is a “young” theological system. The other attempts to discredit dispensationalism with the charge that its development is suspect. However, neither is actually a legitimate argument against dispensational theology and both are relatively easy to refute. The Relative Youth of Dispensationalism Those

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“Cheap Grace?” by Dr. Roy Zuck

This blog is by guest contributor, Dr. Roy Zuck. Dr. Zuck is Senior Professor Emeritus of Bible Exposition, Dallas Theological Seminary and the editor of the theological journal Bibliotheca Sacra. He is the author or editor of many books including Basic Bible Interpretation, Bible Knowledge Commentary, A Biblical Theology of the Old Testament and A Biblical Theology of the New Testament. Dr. Zuck is one of ABI’s endorsing theologians. __________________________ Must a person submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ in order to be saved?  If he did not make Christ Lord of his life at the moment of salvation,

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Council on Dispensational Hermeneutics

I am writing from Baptist Bible College and Seminary in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, in the middle of the second annual Council on Dispensational Hermeneutics. One of the first charges leveled against dispensationlists and dispensationalism is that this system of theology lacks all academic credibility and depth. It is further often charged that dispensationalism and particularly its eschatological aspects, such as the Rapture, the Tribulation and the Millennium are not found in the Bible and cannot be supported by responsible exegesis. If there is anything that one can learn from being here at this conference, it is that these charges as

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Worldviews: Born-Again and Unbiblical? – Part I

Several days ago, I posted a blog with questions / topics proposed by an ABI Facegroup member. This post deals with one of those topics – “worldview.” _________________________________ It would be natural to expect that Christians would have most of their values, morals, ethics – their overall philosophy of life – to be informed and shaped by principles found in the Bible. However, apparently such an assumption would be inaccurate based on the the results of a survey published by the Barna Group on March 6, 2009. The survey reports that only 9% of all Americans hold a biblical worldview

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Important Questions from a Reader

Today, I received an email from an ABI Facebook Group member with some questions and issues that this person would like for us to consider as topics to be addressed on the ABI website and/or blog. I have also encountered these myself in a variety of contexts including ministry situations, articles and books, blogs and forums, conversations and just during personal reflection. I have summarized the main issues below and plan to write on many or most of them in over the next few weeks (or have guest writers contribute, as well.) So, stay tuned. (As always, please feel free

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The Shack: “But it’s just fiction…”

(This article is available in downloadable and printable PDF, 2-column article format: Click here to download) Even though I just posted a review of The Shack on the ABI website by Glenn Kreider, I wanted to take a few moments to further discuss an issue that I have both read and heard in a sort of defense of the book – the “fact” that The Shack is fiction. Although The Shack was self-published by a then-unknown author, it ended up on Amazon.com, reached “critical mass” through word-of-mouth – and the rest is history. To put things into perspective concerning the

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Does “I am the way…” Teach Universalism?

This appears to be the essence of Brian McLaren’s claims concerning John 14:6 in one of the chapters of his upcoming book A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith (to be released in February 2010). On his blog, Mr. McLaren writes the following in response to a comment received from a reader concerning John 14:6: I reworked that material into an important chapter in my upcoming book, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith. The passage is often used to answer the question, “How do we relate to people of

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The Problem of “Red-Letter” Bibles

(This article is available in downloadable and printable PDF, 2-column article format: Click here to download) I subscribe to Google Alerts because they are a very helpful research tool. If you’re not familiar with Google Alerts, when you subscribe, you can put in topics or names – and then, almost real-time, whenever these “hits” appear anywhere on the internet, you receive an alert into your email Inbox. One of these alerts just arrived in my Inbox concerning “Phyllis Tickle” – and it was related to one of my “pet” issues, so I decided to just go ahead and write about

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The Beginnings of ABI – Part III

In that first two-line email to Jimmy DeYoung in June, 2008, I had mentioned the “Pre-Trib Study Group.” ___________________ The Pre-Trib Study Group  (now the Pre-Trib Research Center – www.pre-trib.org) was started in 1992 by Tim LaHaye and Tommy Ice out of a concern that they were witnessing a broad departure away from Pretribulational Premillennialism within evangelicalism. Premillennialism is the belief that Christ will return prior to a literal 1000-year (millennium) during which time He will rule as the earth’s sovereign king from the Throne of David in Jerusalem. This is distinguished from Amillennialism – meaning “no millennium” – which

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The Beginnings of ABI – Part II

Even though our decision to move back to the U.S. and start a new ministry probably seemed very sudden to many, it was actually the culmination of a long process of preparation through which the Lord had taken us. —————————— I wrapped up the previous post with: This prompted me to write a simple two-line email to Jimmy DeYoung (a long-time friend and Founding Director of Prophecy Today), asking the question: “Is there a need for an organization, something like the Pre-Trib Study Group, to help hold the line on historical, conservative evangelicalism?” As I mentioned, I wrote this email

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The Beginnings of ABI – Part I

I’m sure many have wondered about the details of our transition from being with Word of Life in Hungary for 16 years to returning to the States to be involved with launching the new ministry of The Alliance for Biblical Integrity. Now that a year has passed since we first began thinking about the transition, I am now in a position to look back over the last several years and especially the last twelve months and give a fairly coherent summary of exactly what has happened and why we are so excited about this new phase in our lives. For

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Welcome to the ABI weblog!

Thanks for visiting! This is the first blog posting for The Alliance for Biblical Integrity. I hope to post several times a week, discussing various issues involving biblical hermeneutics and the current theological trends which are causing doubt and confusion concerning God and His Word. I also hope to regularly post blogs from guest writers, as well as link to other blogs on relevant topics at various sites across the web. The ABI blog and the ABI website are both under ongoing development and there should significant progress on both in the coming weeks. Please check back often and sign

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