The Acts of the Word of God

When I first became a Christian, my King James Bible had as the title for the book of Acts, “The Acts of the Apostles.” Soon after this, I found myself in the Charismatic and Pentecostal traditions and learned that it should hr-hr-rEEeeally be called “The Acts of the Holy Spirit.” In some early Greek manuscripts […]

35 things most Protestants Believe about the Bible not found in the Bible

Below is a list of 35 things that every Protestant and/or Evangelical Christian I have ever met would agree are true. And, before you read the list of 35 things, please note that the following three things are true about every single one of them: There is not a single verse anywhere in the Bible […]

VIDEO: Big Problems with Sola Scriptura | A Drive-Time Monologue

This seemed like a good way to get content out the door vs. trying to do an entire video production with edits, etc. The genre here is a “Drive Time Monologue,” but I invite the listener to imagine a scenario in which we are driving together. Perhaps my passenger is a Catholic who wants to […]

Papal Infallibility | 10 Frequently Asked Questions

In my own journey into the Catholic Church, I identified around 14 theological barriers to embracing Catholicism. Near the top of my list of “deal breakers” was the notion of infallibility. As I have shared many times with many people on my journey, I had to let the Catholic Church use her own words with […]

VIDEO: Talk About Purgatory

I’m not sure how many of these I’ll do, but this is the first (hopefully not the last) video in what I’m calling (for now) “Talk About Catholicism.” This first one is “Talk About Purgatory.” It’s an un-scripted, from the hip answer to three questions: How did you understand this subject before you were Catholic? […]

Local evangelical pastor finally unlocks the Bible’s code for all of humanity (satire)

DURHAM, NC – For many people, the Bible can be an overwhelming and intimidating book. For pastors who stand and teach from the Bible every Sunday, the task can be daunting. How can one person work through all that material, and how can people finally get to a place where they feel comfortable reading the […]

Did Jesus have brothers and sisters by Joseph and Mary?

This morning I recounted to my wife an occasion about twelve years ago when I was preaching from Luke 8:19-21 where the text says, “Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd.” After reading this text to the congregation, I looked up with a […]

Does 2 Timothy 3:16-17 really teach “Sola Scriptura?” If you believe it does, I have 8 questions.

One of the charges I often hear from my non-Catholic Christian friends is that I seem to be undermining the inspiration and sufficiency of Scripture in my constant critique of the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Nothing could be further from the truth! To quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church: The inspired books teach […]

“I just go by what the Bible teaches!” (A composite, and not-so-imaginary discussion between several bible-only Christians).

Before I was a Catholic (and the entire 12 years I was the senior/teaching pastor at our congregation) I encouraged people to judge everything they believed and to judge what I was teaching them on Sundays, by the Bible — especially if there was a dispute between two contrary ideas that needed to be resolved […]

The Book of Genesis — The Bible’s first story of what God intends, and what people do

I just finished reading through the book of Genesis again — this time with tens of thousands of Catholics who are spending 2021 reading the entire Bible together with Father Mike Schmitz (along with Jeff Cavins) via the “Bible in a Year” podcast. To read Genesis is to read an epic drama! At some points […]