90 Minutes in Heaven – the movie The new movie 90 Minutes in Heaven hit theaters on Friday, September 11 and I went to see it last night. The movie, which is based on a 2004 book of the same name, is about a pastor, Don Piper, who claims that he died, went to heaven and returned as the result of a terrible auto accident in 1989. His book is really what kicked off the current Near Death Experience (NDE) / “Heaven Tourism” phenomenon in the Christian realm—which continues unabated with books and movies. As of this writing, after eleven years,
Read more →Biblical Guide to the Shemitah and the Blood Moons The following description is from The Berean Call website in their promotion of the book. Click here to order the book from The Berean Call website Are “blood moons” a harbinger for a catastrophic “seventh shemitah” in America? Informed Christians and serious students of God’s Word would certainly agree that America—and the rest of the world—is prophetically on “borrowed time.” With increasing speed, the signs of the times are drawing nearer and growing clearer. Unfortunately, while the church should be encouraged by Bible prophecy and exhorted to greater personal holiness and
Read more →MARRIAGE: Do words have meanings? With a single decision, a simple majority of five of nine justices on the Supreme Court of the United States, has successfully and irrevocably changed the meaning of a single word that has so clearly defined the most basic societal unit throughout history—a word with a meaning so clear and unambiguous that it had stood the test of time for millennia. Yet, on the morning of June 26, 2015, the meaning of “marriage” according to U.S. law changed forever. The institution of marriage (and by extension, the family) is unlike any other societal custom or construct that has
Read more →Will the real Bruce Jenner please stand up? Although it is certainly a “current theological issue,” I really hesitated wading into this particular mine field for a variety of reasons. The first is that I’ve already dealt with the alphabet soup of LGBT issues far more than I care to over the last couple of years in the process of simply addressing current theological issues each week. Without exaggerating, I could easily do a story related to this overall topic every week as there are continually new developments, yet I definitely don’t want to somehow communicate that I’ve become obsessed
Read more →BOOK REVIEW: Deep and Wide, by Andy Stanley (reviewed by Gary Gilley) Initial comments below by Dave James, followed by the full book review by Gary Gilley: Only occasionally one runs across an article that could be considered a “must-read”—and even less frequently, a book review that would fall into the same category. However, this particular book review by Gary Gilley really is a must-read because it deals with an issue that is broadly affecting the church in America. It is concise, insightful, relevant—and important to the on-going discussion of what it means to “do church” in a way that is
Read more →THE BOY WHO (never really) CAME BACK FROM HEAVEN One of the major breaking stories this week is the decision by Lifeway (the Southern Baptist Convention bookstore chain) to pull The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven from its shelves because one of the authors, Alex Malarkey, (the boy who “came back from heaven”) has recanted his story, saying “I didn’t die. I didn’t go to heaven.” Alex was six years old in 2004 when the car his father, Kevin, was driving was hit broadside by another car. The horrific accident left Alex paralyzed from the neck down, and he became
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