Apologetics and Evidence

Looking at 1 Thessalonians 4, with another passage, we find an interesting challenge . Let’s look at Thessalonians 4:13-18:   13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 15 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.   What this passage is revea

            When she came into the church office, I thought, “This... must be some kind of a joke.” She was dressed in all black. Her coat was very thick and she had long stringy jet black hair, wore a black hat, and carried a black bag. Her face was pale with very dark lipstick and she was likely in her early 60’s. She appeared to be unnaturally thin. She did not set up a meeting, but just came in and said that she needed to speak with me privately about something. It was a bitterly cold morning in the middle of January '17 in the Rocky Mountains, and I invited her in to sit with me in the office (as opposed to my study, which does not have a camera). She smelled of smoke, not from any local forest fire, but perhaps of a Marlboro, and she sat down across from the desk, trembling in fear. I asked her what I could help her with, and she told me that she was terrified. She did not go into great detail about why she was terrified, but the look in her eyes told me that she believ

Have you ever been accused of this? Why are they word games? Are we just spewing out sounds from our mouth that have no meaning? At this point, when someone is accused of playing words games, if the accusation were true, they might as well be shouting gibberish (unintelligible or meaningless speech or writing).  When one makes the flippant claim after you try to show him or her the truth through logic , that you are playing word games, or that you are just discussing semantics (“pffft” followed by an eye roll), these actually are words with meaning. More frequently than I would like to admit, I hear the misapplied accusation of “semantics” or “word games” used as an argument in order to dismiss what was said before the accusation. The thing is, when someone says this, you can simply ask them what they mean. Likely, they will just tell you that you are playing with words. Here is how to show them that they are misunderstanding. It is very basic Think of the sounds that come o