Guide Discovering Christian Traditions & Miracles

Free download. Book file PDF easily for everyone and every device. You can download and read online Discovering Christian Traditions & Miracles file PDF Book only if you are registered here. And also you can download or read online all Book PDF file that related with Discovering Christian Traditions & Miracles book. Happy reading Discovering Christian Traditions & Miracles Bookeveryone. Download file Free Book PDF Discovering Christian Traditions & Miracles at Complete PDF Library. This Book have some digital formats such us :paperbook, ebook, kindle, epub, fb2 and another formats. Here is The CompletePDF Book Library. It's free to register here to get Book file PDF Discovering Christian Traditions & Miracles Pocket Guide.
An extract from The Miracles of Jesus explains the cultural relevance, But in the middle of the twentieth century a remarkable discovery offered the hope of doing just that. .. This was a traditional way of honouring the dead.
Table of contents

But before I begin my pilgrimage, I need to probe an explosive question that lurks in the shadows of historical Jesus studies: Might it be possible that Jesus Christ never even existed, that the whole stained glass story is pure invention? Even John Dominic Crossan, a former priest and co-chair of the Jesus Seminar, a controversial scholarly forum, believes the radical skeptics go too far.

Scholars who study Jesus divide into two opposing camps separated by a very bright line: those who believe the wonder-working Jesus of the Gospels is the real Jesus, and those who think the real Jesus—the man who inspired the myth—hides below the surface of the Gospels and must be revealed by historical research and literary analysis.

Account Options

Both camps claim archaeology as their ally, leading to some fractious debates and strange bedfellows. Last year, scientists uncovered what many consider to be the tomb of Christ. Whoever Jesus Christ was or is—God, man, or the greatest literary hoax in history—the diversity and devotion of his modern disciples are on colorful parade when I arrive in Bethlehem, the ancient city traditionally identified as his birthplace.

The tour buses that cross the checkpoint from Jerusalem to the West Bank carry a virtual United Nations of pilgrims. One by one the buses park and discharge their passengers, who emerge blinking in the dazzling sun: Indian women in splashy saris, Spaniards in backpacks emblazoned with the logo of their local parish, Ethiopians in snow-white robes with indigo crucifixes tattooed on their foreheads. I catch up to a group of Nigerian pilgrims in Manger Square and follow them through the low entrance of the Church of the Nativity. The soaring aisles of the basilica are shrouded in tarps and scaffolding.

A conservation team is busy cleaning centuries of candle soot from the 12th-century gilded mosaics that flank the upper walls, above elaborately carved cedar beams erected in the sixth century. Another series of steps takes us down into a lamp-lit grotto and a small marble-clad niche. Here, a silver star marks the very spot where, according to tradition, Jesus Christ was born.

The pilgrims ease to their knees to kiss the star and press their palms to the cool, polished stone. Soon a church official entreats them to hurry along and give others a chance to touch the holy rock—and, by faith, the Holy Child. The Church of the Nativity is the oldest Christian church still in daily use, but not all scholars are convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was born in Bethlehem.

Only two of the four Gospels mention his birth, and they provide diverging accounts: the traditional manger and shepherds in Luke; the wise men, massacre of children, and flight to Egypt in Matthew.

Account Options

Archaeology is largely silent on the matter. Excavations at and around the Church of the Nativity have so far turned up no artifacts dating to the time of Christ, nor any sign that early Christians considered the site sacred. Having located what they believed was the site of the Nativity grotto, the delegates erected an elaborate church, the forerunner of the present-day basilica. If the trail of the real Jesus has gone cold in Bethlehem, it grows much warmer 65 miles north in Galilee, the rolling hill country of northern Israel.

Scholars who understand him in strictly human terms—as a religious reformer, or a social revolutionary, or an apocalyptic prophet, or even a Jewish jihadist—plumb the political, economic, and social currents of first-century Galilee to discover the forces that gave rise to the man and his mission. Unearthed in a synagogue in the hometown of Mary Magdalene, the Magdala Stone is thought to be modeled after the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and may have served as a ceremonial Torah stand.

Miracles as evidence of the truth of Christianity - Bad News About Christianity

Others imagine the onslaught of Greco-Roman culture molding Jesus into a less Jewish, more cosmopolitan champion of social justice. In John Dominic Crossan published a bombshell of a book, The Historical Jesus, in which he put forward the theory that the real Jesus was a wandering sage whose countercultural lifestyle and subversive sayings bore striking parallels to the Cynics. These peripatetic philosophers of ancient Greece, while not cynical in the modern sense of the word, thumbed their unwashed noses at social conventions such as cleanliness and the pursuit of wealth and status.

On a brilliant spring day after rains have left the Galilean hills awash with wildflowers, I hike around the ruins of Sepphoris with Eric and Carol Meyers, the Duke University archaeologists I consulted at the start of my odyssey. The husband-and-wife team spent 33 years excavating the sprawling site, which became the nexus of a heated academic debate about the Jewishness of Galilee and, by extension, of Jesus himself.

Eric Meyers, lanky and white-haired, pauses in front of a pile of columns. He stops at the top of a hill and waves his hands across a sprawl of neatly excavated walls. At least 30 mikvahs, or Jewish ritual baths, dot the residential quarter of Sepphoris—the largest domestic concentration ever found by archaeologists. This and other insights gleaned from excavations across Galilee have led to a significant shift in scholarly opinion, says Craig Evans, professor of Christian origins in the School of Christian Thought at Houston Baptist University.

When Jesus was about 30 years old, he waded into the Jordan River with the Jewish firebrand John the Baptist and, according to New Testament accounts, underwent a life-changing experience. One of his first stops was Capernaum, a fishing town on the northwest shore of a large freshwater lake called, confusingly, the Sea of Galilee. Here Jesus met the fishermen who became his first followers—Peter and Andrew casting nets, James and John mending theirs—and established his first base of operation.

Directly beyond the gate is an incongruously modern church mounted on eight pillars that resembles a spaceship hovering above a pile of ruins. This is St. From its odd perch the church offers a stunning view of the lake, but all eyes are drawn to the center of the building, where visitors peer over a railing and through a glass floor into the ruins of an octagonal church built some 1, years ago.

When Franciscan archaeologists excavated beneath the structure in , they discovered that it had been built on the remains of a first-century house. There was evidence that this private home had been transformed into a public meeting place in a short span of time. Over the following centuries, entreaties to Christ were etched into the walls, and by the time Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, the dwelling had been expanded into an elaborately decorated house of worship.

Can We Still Believe in Miracles?

Word of the miracle spread quickly, and by evening a suffering crowd had gathered at her door. Jesus healed the sick and delivered people possessed by demons. But was Jesus what He said He was—God in human form? Did He actually preform the miracles recorded in the Bible? Since most of us have not seen the physical laws of the universe obviously altered, it's hard to believe that anyone could turn water into wine, heal the sick, or raise the dead back to life.

But could those miracles recorded in the Bible really have happened?


  • Grit (Running Shorts).
  • A Course In Miracles A Biblical Evaluation.
  • Failure: Springboard To Success!

Most everyone can identify with wilderness experiences in life—finding your way through the barren and dry places of disappointment, suffering, and loss, and trying to understand why these things are happening to you. In this Day of Discovery program, you'll travel to the Judean desert, a desolate landscape of the Bible. Join Mart DeHaan and Michael Card as they explore the parched and empty places of the desert that can so easily mirror life's wilderness experiences. Gain insights from the desert experiences of biblical characters that will help you draw closer to God, and discover how you can depend on Him to lead you through your most difficult challenges.

Find hope for your own journey through the wilderness of life. Read more. Living in the Wilderness of For many year Ed Dodson served as a pastor, offering his congregation hope in times of discouragement, pain, and loss. However, when he was diagnosed with ALS and told that he had only two to five years to live, he was not prepared to hear it.

The Problem of Miracles: A Historical and Philosophical Perspective

Suddenly, the reality of death left him in need of the support and care that he had for so long given to others. Initially he withdrew himself from people and then moved on to begin an uncommon journey toward a new quality of life and purpose. It's been years since that diagnoses and the beginning of his journey and in this 5-part series Ed reveals his unfolding story. Dobson says "It's not about how long I have left.

It's about how I spend the time I do have left. Featuring clips from the film series Ed's Story, these honest conversations help to remind us of the challenges of lie in the face of death and the perspectives needed that bring peace and hope. From Jesus' majestic entry into Jerusalem to shouts of "Hosanna to the Son of David," to the miraculous resurrection, Behind the Easter Story lets you see Jerusalem as it was 2, years ago.


  • ~ Establishing His credentials ~.
  • Seen a ghost lately.
  • Robin & the Eagle from the White Mountain?
  • Search form!
  • Account Options.
  • The Monsters Are Coming!
  • What Archaeology Is Telling Us About the Real Jesus.

With a limestone scale model, hosts Mart DeHaan and Jimmy DeYoung follow the path of Jesus on that fateful week to help you gain a new perspective on the biblical events, and their consequences for mankind. What are God's plans and future purposes for the nations of Israel? Many Christians believe He has none; they believe that the church has replaced Israel in God's agenda for the world.

Yet others believe that Israel plays a distinct and vital role which will find its ultimate fulfillment when Christ returns to establish his millennial reign, ruling over the nations from His throne in Jerusalem. In chapters nine through eleven of the book of Romans, Paul the apostle makes it clear that God's dealings with the Jewish people are by no means finished. How then are we do understand God's intentions for both national Israel and the church?

What promises belong exclusively to Israel? What promises has He given to all who call Jesus their Lord and Savior- to people of every nation, tribe, and tongue who in Christ have become "one new man"?