Why I Believe in God

Cornelius Van Til wrote a pamphlet called "Why I Believe in God," which you can find here. This is probably unlike any apology for the Christian Faith you've seen. Let me know what you think.

This is a really helpful site--I'll add it as a link soon. For now, click here for great movie, TV, music and game reviews.

A simple idea, at first

There are two and only two classes of men. There are those who worship and serve the creature and there are those who worship and serve the Creator. There are covenant breakers and there are covenant keepers. In all of men’s activities, in their philosophical and scientific enterprises and as well as in their worship, men are either covenant keepers or covenant breakers.

--Cornelius Van Til

Uh, this is me about 4 years ago.

Perhaps I'm not a blogger at heart

It doesn't seem that I'm very passionate about blogging. I havn't posted since late May, and summer has been very eventful. Today I read two articles by two men that I respect: Michael Coren's comments on the Pope's speech may be read here and John Piper's comments here . It is becoming clearer that Islam is at war with unbelief (and we Christians qualify for that). The Christian world (and no, we're not "all Catholics") is not intellectually prepared to answer Islam. It is not that we have no answers, for we do. For the most part, Christians do not know enough about their own faith to deal with the challenges Islam presents.

Is this offensive? It's not one of the infamous "Danish Cartoons" but certainly in the same spirit. I don't remember where I found it, but I did not create it. Back to the question, "Is this offensive?" One of the reasons that Westerners, living on a borrowed Christian worldview and culture (rapidly fading from memory), are not so upset about religious satire is that the Christian faith began with a martrydom, and has been fueled by martyrs' blood ever since.

Is this offensive? It is anti-Christian grafitti found in Rome several decades after Christianity was established there. It depicts an ass being crucified, and the writing says something like, "Alexomenos worships his god," making fun of a local Christian.

Jesus' Christianity was never about military conquest and control, despite how it was misappropriated later by the state church. The Way was established in the crucible of persecution and suffering.

Francis Schaeffer in conversation. He died in 1984.

Perhaps a little housekeeping can get this back on track. Back in the BBS days I wrote volumes on the Wittenberg Door (note the CORRECT spelling) BBS. I was the owner of the site. All sorts of ideas were discussed, but most were on faith/atheism/philosophy/apologetics, etc. Of course in those pre-internet days, only one person could be logged on at a time, and we needed a dedicated phone line. There were probably more than 20 active BBSs in Hamilton at that time, and we had a lot of activity.

This seems to be as close to the old BBS as it gets.

My 2 cents regarding the so-called holy grail: After the "last supper," someone did the dishes. End of story.

A brief review of The Da Vinci Code 19 May 2006
Scott Jacobsen
Pastor, Mountain View Christian Church
Hamilton, Ontario
I saw the movie when it opened May 19th, 2006. Unlike many of the professional reviewers I’ve read, I did not find the movie too "wordy" or that it "explained too much." If anything, the movie proceeded as if it assumed that the viewer had read the book. Having read the book, I noted a number of scenes that were adjusted to be more palatable. Some of the bigger whoppers (outright lies) that Brown uses in his book are missing or dumbed-down in the film. I don’t go to many movies, so I am always easily impressed by the large screen. The pace, setting, and effects of the film were excellent.
My complaint with the film is, of course, with the plot. If it had been any other plot, it would have been a good detective story. But the plot itself, which is supposedly fiction but touted by Dan Brown as factual, is the problem. There are many helpful resources to discover the errors of history, theology, architecture, politics and art in the movie, so I won’t go into that here. It is the not-so-hidden agenda of Brown to re-image Jesus and therefore all of church history that irks many Catholics and Christians. If I were a Roman Catholic, I would be seriously offended by the implications of the film. It borders on slanderous against Catholicism and Opus Dei. To historical, Biblical Christianity it is a crude, ignorant joke; except Brown is neither crude nor ignorant. He knows what he is doing, and the book and movie can only be described as propaganda. Repeat an old lie often enough and with enough technique and soon it will become tomorrow’s truth. The lie in the story is ancient: either Jesus is all divine, but not really human at all; or He, being fully human, is only human. Both of these errors were met in the Nicene Creed.
Not found in the book, is a speech by Hank’s character Langdon after the identity of the grail is revealed. In it, he muses that whether Jesus was divine or human (it can’t be both in Brown’s theology) doesn’t really matter. If belief is helpful, that’s what matters. I could almost hear Lennon’s Imagine in the background.
After the film I saw a lot of stunned looks on the mostly over-50 audience (I saw it at noon). Information flows in this film so fast that it is impossible to counter the propositions stated. Before one can recover from one statement, another assault on faith is at hand. I wouldn’t recommend the movie unless a viewer is prepared to read the book and to delve into the bald misrepresentations that Brown offers there. Most non-Christians are probably too Biblically illiterate to understand the issues, and will just see it as another wave in the flood alternative Jesus stories going about today. The myths of the Da Vinci Code come with such authority and arrogance that the mild protestations of Langdon (Hanks) are swept away.
This movie has given Christians the opportunity to explain the true, historical, ancient and original Gospel. We do not need to become experts in the Da Vinci Code, which will very quickly be yesterday’s news. Rather, we need to be well acquainted with "the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints."

©Scott Jacobsen, 2006. Permission granted to reproduce in entirety, with this note.