Truth.
Without it the world devolves into an amorphous chaos where everyone's preferences describe a personal reality disconnected from everyone else's. In that dark place no decision is good or bad, no action is right or wrong. But in the presence of truth - we are exposed for what we are. Therefore we need truth as the divine measuring rod of our identities.
"I am the truth" - Jesus The Christ.

How many people wrote the Torah?

Submitted by normanjd on Wed, 10/12/2011 - 1:27pm
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Just read an article on software that helps determine how many writing styles and where they are used for Hebrew texts...

Can computers solve mystery of bible’s ‘ghostwriters’

"...Now researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed an algorithm that they claim can delineate between the different contributors within individual books of the Bible. The program does this by detecting noted differences in writing styles and dividing the texts into probable author groupings. Its designed to distinguish between certain linguistic patterns, such as word preferences...."

I would love to see this run on the book of Psalms... It might be good to write a greek version to add to the debate on if Paul wrote Hebrews... I love it when science and the Bible get together... :)

The Work of the Holy Spirit

Submitted by gephartr on Tue, 10/11/2011 - 10:17pm
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kuyper_work_spirit.jpg

After three-quarters of a century, Dr. Abraham Kuyper's exhaustive study of the work of the Holy Spirit — now available for the first time in a paperback edition — still stands undiminished as a comprehensive Protestant statement about a central but much-misunderstood part of the Christian faith. / “I have made an effort,” Dr. Kuyper writes in his preface, “to represent the work of the Holy Spirit in its organic relations, so that the reader may survey the entire domain. And in surveying, who is not surprised at the ever-widening dimensions of the work of the Holy Spirit in all the things that pertain to God and man?” / The 123 brief sections that make up this work first appeared in the Heraut, a Dutch religious weekly of which Dr. Kuyper served as editor. So it is that this profound exposition is lucidly written in the language of the ordinary people for whose spiritual growth he was deeply concerned. / “Brings together the material belonging to this great topic with a systematizing genius that is very rare, and presents it with a penetrating appreciation of its meaning.”—from the introduction by B. B. Warfield / Few men of his era accomplished as much in as many diverse areas of human life as Abraham Kuyper. When he died at 82 in 1920, he was on of the Netherlands' most famous citizens. As pastor, educator, author, editor, and politician, he was tireless in his efforts to apply the Christian faith to every department of life, and thus earned the esteem of his countrymen and the respect of many beyond the borders of Holland. He was the founder of the Free (Reformed) University of Amsterdam in 1880, and served from 1901 to 1905 as Prime Minister of the Netherlands.

Evidences of the Christian Religion, With Additional Discourses

Submitted by spitzerpl on Tue, 10/11/2011 - 11:01am
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From the Preface:

THE character of Mr. Addison, and his writings, for justness of thought, strength of reasoning, and purity of style, is too well established to need a recommendation; but their greatest ornament, and that which gives a lustre to all the rest, is his appearing throughout a zealous advocate for virtue and religion against profaneness and infidelity....

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