Chowon is pregnant! She's about 7 weeks in, and we've got our first appointment with the OBGYN this week. Pretty exciting!!

The new job is going well; I'm slowly getting more and more involved in my occupational duties. We got another car, so now Chowon has a way to get around. Financially, this means we have some more debt for the car loan, and this casts an ugly shadow on our thoughts of becoming land owners in the near future, but a year or two more to pay off this car is a small price to pay for the freedom that it means for Chowon, especially with the impending baby. Also, there's a chance that we can find a 2-bedroom condo with a significantly lower mortgage than our current rent, which would make things a lot easier.

Also, I like the idea behind the website, minds.com. I'm thinking of copying some of the non-personal, apologetic content of my blog there in the next few months, to spread the arguments in favor of Christianity and to promote and increase minds.com in one motion.

Speaking of which... this is an argument for Christianity that I heard a pretty long time ago, and it's stuck with me. It's a physical evidence-based argument, which is not usually my style, because I think that our interpretations of physical evidence are largely derived from our notions about how our senses are to be interpreted, and our thoughts about the origins of our faculties. Plus, I find that most non-Christians have criterion for physical evidence which literally could not be met even by a miracle, (because the miracle would just be explained away as a hitherto unobserved natural phenomena). But if I'm fair, even my typical argument is in the same way hindered by the unbeliever's prior misconceptions. Someone says to me, "let me see it and then I'll believe it", and my response is basically, "first you have to believe it and then you'll see it". In short, the only actually useful or viable method for defending and advocating Christianity is to simply deliver the gospel (1 Cor 1:18-31).

Anyway, here's the argument:

I'm not aware of any serious atheist scholars who deny that the OT was written in its entirety hundreds of years prior to Christ. Furthermore, a great majority of atheist textual critics I've listened to (and I've listened to quite a few) basically agree with the Biblical descriptions of Jesus's life and the crucifixion, although they may quibble about some of the details.

The OT's descriptions of Jesus are so uncannily accurate, that it evidences itself to have been written by someone who knew about Jesus's life in detail. Since they were written well prior to Jesus, it is the case that the one inspiring those texts knew the future in detail. Most of the events were witnessed by Roman soldiers as well as by non-Christian Jews, and several of the behaviors predicted were those of Romans and Jews, a matter of historical fact rather than a disputable account of Jesus's personal behaviors. I'll give just a couple of examples here, but there are lots more which I'll not dive into for the sake of time:

Daniel 9 describes the timing of Jesus's birth, ministry, death, and the destruction of the temple, in terms of the number of years between each event and the decree to go out and rebuild Solomon's temple in Jerusalem.

Psalm 22, quoted by Jesus while on the cross, describes the crucifixion in poetic, but nonetheless unmistakable terms. "They mock me saying, 'He trusts in the lord; let him deliver him"(v7,8), "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like was; it is melted within my breast." (v14), "My tongue sticks to my jaws" (v15), "They have pierced my hands and feet"(v16), "they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots"(v18). It talks about how the author dies, "you lay me in the dust of death"(v15), but then finishes with a description of how the author will go to the temple and perform his vows (v25), which could only happen after death if he were resurrected.

There's so many more, though! Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel foretell the political scenario surrounding Jesus's life, his rejection by the Jews, the location of his birth, his travel to Egypt and Nazareth, and the wars following his death. It's laid out so perfectly that, reading it with our knowledge of the new testament, it is really quite amazing, and I think that no other person could fulfill all these things.

The original argument came in the form of a series of quotes without references, followed byt he question, "who am I talking about?", and the quotes being so clearly about the crucifixion would prompt the hearer to say "Jesus", only afterward to receive a list of references to the quotes and find that they were all OT..... I don't particularly like giving people lists.


Now, to close out, I want to give one more little Bible-thing that I'm excited about, but which will really only be of value to Christians: The necessity of the virgin birth, and the importance of the two lineages in Matthew and Luke.

So Jesus had to come through the line of David (2 Sam 7:12-14). And, in keeping with the way things were, Jesus had to be a son of one of the kings in the royal line of David (Solomon was king after David, Solomon's son was king after Solomon, his son was king after him, and so on. Uncles and cousins aren't put on the throne). However, we read in Jeremiah 36:30 that Jehoiakim, a son of the royal line of David, will have no offspring to carry on the throne of David. Jehoiakim was indeed the last king before the Babylonian exile, and he was the last "true" king of independent Israel from the line of David. So, we have a problem. Jesus has to be from David's blood, of the royal line, but the royal line is cursed. How does God give Israel a messiah?

The answer: virgin birth. Jesus is born of Mary, descended from David by blood but not of the royal line (Luke's account); then Jesus is adopted into the house of Joseph, a descendant of Jehoiakim (Matthew's account).

Neither Luke nor Matthew directly say whose lineage they record, Mary's or Joseph's; both say "son of Joseph" or "Joseph, father of". Our two clues here are: first that Luke investigated the matter thoroughly (Luke 1:1-4), and he knew what Mary was thinking at certain times (Luke 2:19, 2:51), indicating that he interviewed her as part of his investigation. Second, and I'm not a Greek scholar so I say this second hand, but the wording used for "son of" in Luke's genealogy can in certain contexts be interpreted as "son-in-law of", leaving open the interpretation "son-in-law of Heli" in verse 23. However, I'm convinced that the clues above are unnecessary for the believer to draw this conclusion, because I know of no other way that Jesus can be the messiah, given the curse on Jehoiakim and its impact on the gift to David.

A non-Christian person might propose the third alternative that perhaps the promise to David was retracted, as it was to Saul. Indeed, many of God's promises are given conditional clauses, ("...but if you disobey, then..."). But this is not the case with God's promise to David. On the contrary, God's promise to David is supplemented with statements such as in Psalm 132:11, that God "will not retract his oath" to David.

Likewise, God's promise to His elect are supplemented by statements such as what we read in John 6:37-39, that Jesus will not lose any of those who God has given him, but raise them up on the last day. Believers, we have that assurance of our salvation from the same God who fulfilled his promises in Jesus, that we will not be lost, but we will be raised up on the last day.

"He whose forgotten dust for centuries has lain beneath this stone..."