Month: February 2020

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Why is such a day important? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Some of you hate this day, and I get it. I used to as well. Then in 2009, Allie came into my life. We spent our first Valentine’s Day together with some snow on the ground and having her Dad take pictures of us outside of her house. I got her a Kingdom Hearts necklace and we went to see Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief.

It always reminds me that love is a gift. Some of you who aren’t married might have various thoughts about it. Many guys will think to the idea that it’s okay to have sex now. That’s an awesome gift, no doubt, but there is more to it than that.

I also enjoy many simple things with Allie. Sitting down and watching YouTube or Hulu together. Going on a Pokemon raid with her or playing some other game. A drive together where we just talk about meaningless matters sometimes. It can be enjoyable sometimes when she gets into a Facebook debate and I jump in and we do it together. Just run of the mill teasing every day is a delight. As I said, while sex is great, just getting to sleep together in the same bed and wake up together is a gift.

Scripture says we become one, and it’s absolutely right. Many of you know a few years ago we had a car crash where it was sadly my fault and someone ran into the car on Allie’s side. We went to separate rooms at the same hospital and when she came to me the first time there, I was in tears I think and kept saying “I could have lost you.” Sometimes after that, she would hear me crying some and ask what was wrong and I would tell her I was thinking about that and how I could have lost her. It really opens your eyes to what someone means to you.

Allie has also become my standard of female beauty. She is the woman who truly takes my breath away. I look over at her sometimes and just think “How on Earth did I get such a beautiful woman?” Amusingly, I’m not the only one who thinks that. I have been told that when my sister was with my mother before my mother ever met Allie, my sister showed her some of Allie’s pictures on Facebook and my Mom said, “Good grief. How did he get a girl like her?”

I take it as a compliment. I still don’t know.

Today, it is a great gift to have love, but as Christ says, it is even better to give than to receive. I love that I have someone I can share all the love I have with. Allie has done so much to teach me what it means to really love someone and made me a better Christian and a better man in the process.

Happy Valentine’s Day to the love of my life. May we have many more together.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Stolen Shroud

What do I think about Daniel Westlund’s self-published book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I don’t read a lot of fiction, but the author sent me this book of his wanting to know what I thought of it. After a recent email reminding me, I decided to open it up and when I do, I am skeptical. It’s something I do with my reading where I have trained my mind to be critical when it comes to books in my field.

After all, while this book is fictional definitely, it’s about the Shroud of Turin. I really can’t go into it too much without giving major spoilers. Basically, the book starts with the main character, Mark, being at an event discussing the Shroud while it’s on display and then something happens and the Shroud is suddenly gone. He then goes on a quest to find out what happened to the Shroud and who stole it and why. On the way, his Christian faith is explored more and more.

The book switches back and forth chapter by chapter. At first, I found this annoying. Why do I give a rip about this guy’s childhood when I want to know what happened to the Shroud? However, as time went on, I found something happening.

While I came skeptical and at first was having a hard time getting into it, before too long, I found out that I was. I wanted to know what happened. I found, in the end, a story with many threads that weaved together in a wonderful way. I don’t think it was entirely flawless, but I was able to suspend some disbelief enough to enjoy the book.

The book also involves some genetic enhancements to several characters. I understand how it was used, but at the same time, it struck me as a Deux ex Machina. Maybe there really wasn’t any other way to do things, but I found that part kind of distracting.

The villain of this story was one of the most diabolical ones that I have come across and it was fascinating how all of that came together. A lot of his plan I really didn’t understand because of the high science language, but there was enough that I could grasp to know what was going on for the most part. This was truly one of the great villains.

I was surprised to see some real-life issues hit so hard like rape and sexual abuse. This book doesn’t always read like a Christian book, but that could be good because it’s a book that is set in a world where not everyone is a Christian. They do not speak and act like Christians.

I would have liked to have seen a little bit more said about the Shroud itself. I would have liked to have seen more about the objections to it being the real deal. I think there can be a convincing case made for its authenticity, but I would have liked to have seen more.

If there was one character that I really didn’t get into too much honestly, it was the main one. It seemed like he was in there because the plot had to be centered around someone, but there wasn’t much to his personality to leave me really admiring him. He could at best be what is seen as a lovable loser, but I found the other characters for the most part all deeper than he was.

I still wonder about some things at the end and wonder if they’re the best for a Christian novel, but they are things I cannot say because of spoilers. Still, I did enjoy this one a lot more than I thought I would. I would like to see more books like this.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Some Thoughts On PornHub and Sex Trafficking

How should we view women today? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

A news story is out about the FBI looking into groups like PornHub for sex trafficking. For those of us who know something about the porn industry, that sex trafficking is involved is not news to us. It’s not to say that all women in the industry are victims of sex trafficking, but I have no doubt that some are.

So let’s talk a bit about porn and why it should be shut down.

Now in the past, if you wanted to look at pornography, you had to go somewhere secret and be discrete. You had to go to the magazine stand or to the video store and there was a chance you could be caught. Unfortunately, with the good of the internet came the evil of porn and then rule 34. That states that if it exists, there is porn of it on the internet. No matter how innocent you think something is, there is porn of it out there somewhere.

As I drive around Atlanta, I listen to talk radio. Everyday practically, I will hear a commercial about erectile dysfunction. It’s constant. Why is this? I always tell my wife the same thing. I suspect it happens so much because so many men have watched porn for so long that they can’t easily be aroused by a real woman. They only go with a fake one.

This is not to say that all causes of erectile dysfunction are due to pornography. Saying women in porn videos are fake is not to say they are not real people. It is to say that what is presented is a false idea of what women and sex are meant to be.

As a man in charge of a group for guys on Facebook who are Christian and married, engaged, dating, or hoping to date and marry, when I meet a man about to marry, I ask him if he would like to talk about what to expect. This is something every guy (And every girl) needs if they haven’t had sex before their wedding night. One thing I always tell them is to think back to what you have seen on TV and movies. Think back to all the sex you have experienced on there. Now throw it out because none of it is realistic at all.

In the movies and I am sure in porn, everything works flawlessly. There are no mistakes. There are no accidents. No one has to put down a towel. No one gives a touch that is not liked. The woman and the man have perfect ecstasy together and they both orgasm at exactly the same point and everything is wonderful.

Sorry. Real sex will involve trial and error for some time and you will always be learning.

So men get a false idea of what sex is.

Not only that, it leads to a consumer mentality of women. Women are objects just to be wanted for their bodies. The purpose of a woman is to parade before a man in all her naked self and let him glorify himself in her. On porn, the woman on the other end is irrelevant. You don’t have to know her name or care about her or do anything for her whatsoever. She is your servant entirely.

Now I am not at all knocking the idea that a woman is beautiful. I saved myself for marriage and when I see my wife’s body in all her glory I am utterly amazed and mesmerized. After nearly ten years of marriage, Allie is still the woman out there that totally turns my head. She is my great gift and I will jump at any chance I can to see her body.

That’s the way God made it too.

You see, the beauty then inspires me. If I want to have the joy of Allie’s body, I need to treat her right. I need to love her. I need to honor her. Now even if I don’t feel those things at the start hypothetically, which I think happens in arranged marriages, by doing those actions over and over, I come to love and honor her because it becomes habitual and habits change your thinking. For me, loving Allie is really second nature now.

I don’t go and say “I can’t see Allie’s body now for reason XYZ” and jump on to porn instead. That treats her body like a consumable good. I can say that when I see her body, I do see her physical form and I am amazed, but the beauty I see goes beyond the physical. It is not just her body in a transcendent way. It is as if I am seeing her. I am seeing not just her form, but I am seeing vulnerability and trust. I am seeing her. How she is to be with me and me with her is how we are to be before God.

Pornography will teach you that the purpose of the woman is to serve you. If you are married though, your purpose is to serve your spouse. Women are to seek to please their husbands, as so many husbands like to say, but husbands are to seek to please their wives. It doesn’t just mean doing something on Valentine’s Day or anniversary or birthdays or special events like that. It means doing something every day that you can. Believe it or not guys, it wouldn’t kill you to get out the vacuum cleaner every now and then.

Pornography cheapens the people in your life and will make it harder for you to love. In sexuality, it’s important to know what pleases you or else your spouse won’t know how to bring you the happiness they should want to bring you, but your main goal should be to please your spouse. Many a guy will say that despite the idea that sex is all they want, they are not really pleased with sex if they do not think they have pleased their wives. That is their real goal.

Now I realize that women also struggle with porn. This is not to diminish that, but as a man, it is easier to write to the men. The women can find their own parallels, but if you struggle with porn, please get help. Get an accountability partner. Get some software on your computer and other devices that can hold you accountable. Join a group like Celebrate Recovery and get some help. This will not be an easy battle, but it is worth it.

Remember on those videos also, that girl on there is someone’s daughter as well. She deserves to be treated respectfully and with dignity. Women, for you, please never lower yourself ever to win the heart of a guy. If you have to lower yourself, he is not worth it. You are worth more than that.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Praying in the Presence of our Lord with St.Thomas Aquinas.

What do I think of Mike Aquilina’s book published by Lambing Press? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

My wife got me this book as a gift knowing that I am looking to improve my prayer life and that I’m a big fan of Thomas Aquinas. At the start, this is a book by a Catholic for a Catholic. I am not faulting that at all. Protestants write for Protestants normally, Orthodox for Orthodox, Atheists for atheists, Muslims for Muslims, etc. Naturally, they all write books at times to try to convince others, but books that are more devotional will be more likely to be non-argumentative.

So if you’re a Protestant reading this, no, you likely will not agree with the views of the Eucharist and Mary, but that’s okay. It is quite foolish to say whichever camp you belong to that you cannot learn from the others. Aquinas is definitely someone we can all learn from and not just in his intellectual mind, but in his devotional mind.

Aquilina goes through some of the prayers of Aquinas and breaks them down bit by bit and has a devotional entry on each of them. This could then be a good daily devotional to be read just to have something to meditate on. At the same time, someone could go straight through, like I did, and get some good material out of it.

Reading through also gives the reader something to shoot for. Aquinas was in his day from my understanding a loner and standout from the crowd, but his passion is something not talked about often. Aquilina tells us that when Aquinas had a hard problem, he would go and lean his head on the altar and rest it there hoping to receive solace.

God wasn’t just an intellectual pursuit for Aquinas, although there was certainly a lot of that in his life. God was a being, a personal being, to be desired for His own sake. It is easy to go to God to thank Him for what He has done, which we should, and to make our requests known to Him, which we should do, but too often we do not come to Him for who He is.

Aquilina tells us that adoration is something that should be reserved for God alone. Of course, there’s always the chance that words change meanings and what we mean by adore isn’t the same thing as was meant back then. The attitude would still need to be the same and that would be that only God deserves the highest place. Any Christian knows that sadly, that can be a struggle at times.

So if you want to improve your prayer life and use Aquinas as a model, this is a good one. Areas of disagreement for Protestants do not have to be the focus. Catholics and Orthodox are more likely to enjoy those elements of the work, but we could all bear to improve our prayer life. Aquinas is a great model for that.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Stop Calling Me Beautiful

What do I think of Phylicia Masonheimer’s book published by Harvest House? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This book was not what I expected. I honestly thought with the title it would be more about helping women to realize they’re beautiful. It’s really the opposite, and that’s a good thing. Masonheimer wrote this book about being tired of women’s conferences that seem to be entirely all about self-help.

She argues that women need something deeper than being told they’re beautiful. Ultimately, they need Jesus Himself. They need to find their comfort in God. Women bounce around from thing to thing, or in a sadder case from man to man, hoping to find something that will fulfill them when Christ is waiting there for them the whole time.

Masonheimer goes after this whole fake culture. One chapter is even about the Instagram Bible. How many women (And men) try to make their Bible study times look really good on Instagram or Facebook (The cup of coffee supposedly making it extra holy), but then they really neglect Bible study? When they do Bible study, they do it for the hopes that they will learn something about themselves and not really to learn about God.

The next part of the book is about different false beliefs for women in the church. Legalism is the first one where much is made for women about things like skirt length. Even if the rules are good, the rules can often seem to be equated with Christianity.

Next come chapters on grief and anxiety and how to handle them. This can be a challenging one for women who are usually emotional creatures, more so than men, and yet are told to not be emotional. Women need to know how to handle serious loss and how to handle anxiety.

Thankfully, there’s a chapter on sexual stigma which is needed. Pornography is no longer just a man’s problem. Many women are watching porn as well. Many women are also told if they have sex before marriage that at that point they are damaged goods since most guys want a virgin. Masonheimer deals with all of these.

She then goes on to talk about community. Women need a place where they can be women. They need a place where they can be accepted and be safe. I also want to stress in my opinion that online friendships are great, but women and men both need face to face relationships where they can get comfort as well.

After that, she talks about the fear of man. This isn’t man in the sense of the male of the species, but in the sense of worrying about what everyone thinks about us. We do that so much, that we don’t focus on what God thinks and getting to live a life that He approves of.

There are other chapters on shame and how to live now, but I think I’ve said enough to let people know this is important. Women don’t just need pablum. They don’t just need self-help. They actually need something deeper.

So if I would actually change anything in this book, I would say go deeper still. I would like to see some information on the doctrine of God, Christ, how to do Bible study, and other such things. That could be for another book. In essence, a sort of apologetics for women would be good.

Still, I agree. Women, and men as well, don’t need pablum. We need something real. We need Jesus.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Review of Tom Jump vs Jonathan Sheffield

What did I think of this debate? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Someone recommended I look into the work of Tom Jump. I have heard a lot about him. Something interesting is that I saw that he said he has Aspergers which means he and I have a similarity. I saw him debate Gil Sanders on the existence of God with Thomism and think Gil was the one who knew most what he was talking about in that debate.

Some of you might cry bias, but realize I try to be as objective as I can in debates. I can think the atheist is wrong with his conclusion, but I can think he presented the better argument. When my father-in-law does a debate and I watch it, I give an honest feedback and if I don’t think it was a great debate on his part, I tell him.

My main area is the historical Jesus so I decided to see what Tom Jump had to say about the resurrection. I only found one such debate thus far and that was against Jonathan Sheffield. Right off, Sheffield’s argument for the resurrection I found quite unusual and was one I had never heard before. Those interested in the whole debate can go here.

Sheffield argues that many claimants of various religions were investigated by the Roman Empire and dealt with. Nothing was ever found about Christianity and a forged statement arguing that an investigation had been done was made. Sheffield argues that if Christianity was false, it would have been easy to shut it down at the time.

This is not the argument I would use, but it was interesting. I’m more interested in Jump’s response. Jump gave sadly the usual responses we see such as ECREE and of course, there had to be an appeal to Richard Carrier in there. At one point, he did reference the work of Mike Licona, but I wonder if he read it himself or just got it secondhand.

I would have liked to have seen more information on the historical data itself. I would have especially liked to have seen more on the burial. Jump goes with the position that Jesus was likely thrown in a common grave which is a position that was held by Crossan at one point at least and is held by Ehrman today.

I really don’t know after watching the debate where Jump stands on many issues aside from he doesn’t believe Jesus rose from the dead. Does he believe Jesus even existed? (If he likes Carrier, there’s reason to think he doesn’t.) When does he think the Gospels were written and who wrote them? What does he think of Paul?

I naturally don’t find ECREE convincing at all as an argument. Extraordinary is never defined and what is extraordinary for one person isn’t for another and how do you recognize extraordinary evidence. Does it glow in the dark? A young-earth creationist finds evolution and atheism an extraordinary claim. An atheist finds theism and young-earth creationism an extraordinary claim. If you went to a third world country and told them we landed on the moon (Assuming they had never heard of such an event), they would find that claim extraordinary.

At any rate, while I would not use the argument Sheffield used, though it was interesting and if he has success with it, wonderful, I found Jump’s response was less than adequate. I wouldn’t mind seeing what else he might say in debate on the resurrection, but so far I haven’t seen anything that calls it into question.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Case Against Miracles Chapter 4

How do we access miracle claims? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This chapter is by someone named Darren Slade and involves asking how we access miracle claims. I found this chapter really to be a slow chapter. There was little if anything said about miracle claims themselves and much more said about how to access people for credibility.

That’s fine, but at the end of the day, it made it look like someone has to jump through 1,000 hoops before we will take them seriously on a miracle claim. At the same time, it is claimed that it is not hyperskepticism. Excuse me if I’m skeptical of the idea that this is not hyperskepticism.

Keener was treated as someone who is naive and believes too easily. I saw nothing like that in my reading of Keener. Nothing was also said of the times that Keener provided medical documentation of some miracles in his book. To be fair, the next chapter deals with this more, but it would have been good to have seen something.

There is material on how eyewitness testimonies are routinely inaccurate. This is something that really boggles my mind when I see it. When we are told about the New Testament, we are told that it is late and thus not by eyewitnesses. When we can show it was by eyewitnesses, then the claim becomes you can’t trust eyewitness testimony anyway. Heads, I lose. Tails, you Win.

Slade also says that a theistic worldview should not play a determining role in evaluating the evidence. If you want to do that, then neither should an atheist or agnostic worldview. Making claims of miracles jump through 1,000 hoops is doing just that.

He also says because someone has a history of truth telling. For some reason, he leaps into straight the opposite and uses Joseph Smith as an example. Joseph Smith is certainly a candidate for being a witness that is not credible. I still do not understand the sudden shift, however.

Slade also says something about the Innocence Project has exonerated 361 people and 2/3 were convicted on faulty eyewitness testimony. That sounds impressive, but I want to know the other side. How many people have had the eyewitness testimony stand up? How many times has it been accurate?

The problem with many of these tests for memory and credibility is that they are often designed to make the person slip up in their memory and use tests to bring out fallibility. It’s a way of stacking the deck. People are often looking for the way memory errors instead of the ways it is reliable.

In the end, I remain unconvinced. I just saw someone being forced to jump through 1,000 hoops as I have said. While several things could be said about Keener, it’s hard to say he’s not thorough. This guy writes and researches so much he probably wrote another book while I wrote this blog.

We will continue later.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: The Peanuts Papers

What do I think of Andrew Blouner’s book published by Literary Classics of the United States? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Normally, I wouldn’t write on a read done just for fun, but this is an exception. I had stopped at the library recently for the latest Mary Higgins Clark (And sadly her last seeing as she passed away last month) when I saw on the displays shelves The Peanuts Papers. I had seen this book on Amazon and was curious, but I hadn’t purchased it. I figured I would check it out and see how it was.

Growing up, I was one of the rare kids who liked Peanuts, at least the reading of the strips. I would regularly go to the library and get the books and read through them again and again and I had my own books of Peanuts at home. Most of the kids preferred Garfield instead. I read Garfield too and liked it, but as I look back, the strip hasn’t really aged well. Peanuts has remained timeless.

Today, if I want to read a funny strip, I will normally go with Fox Trot, and while Peanuts could be funny at times, there was something else going on and my younger self didn’t notice it, but my older one does. Reading many of these essays by cartoonists and others helped me see some aspects that I had missed.

If there was a downside to the book really, I hate to say it, but it was the poems in the middle. I am not averse to poetry, but these seemed to both be ramblings that would occasionally reference the comic strip. I really didn’t see what they had to do with the subject matter.

One aspect of Peanuts that occurred to me is really, Peanuts didn’t change with the times. Not that the strip was static, but you didn’t see amazing advances in technology being welcomed into the strip and the characters adapting, at least as much as I remember it. The kids are never just in their houses talking over an internet connection. They don’t speak on cell phones. They go outside and play baseball and sit on steps and lean on walls of nondescript suburban areas.

Yet one area in my writings I want to hit on is always religion and that is how Charles Schulz handled it. It is actually a great compliment to something that you can make a joke about it. Our society loves sex and politics and many of our jokes are about those topics. That we joke about religion can be seen as the way we treat religion.

Schulz always had fun with Christianity in the strip, but at the same time, he was always respectful of it, being a Christian himself. (Those who disagree with him are invited to read A Charlie Brown Religion, which I have reviewed as well) Religion is seen as a sort of given in the world of Peanuts. This is especially so with Linus, the walking biblical scholar who also gets a bit confused at times, seeing as he has a Santa Claus figure in the Great Pumpkin.

Yet after reading these articles on Peanuts, I return to the strip thinking about it in new light. I someday hope to get the complete collection of Peanuts and be able to read through every strip there is. Either way, Charles Schulz gave us a national treasure. I think all cartoonists today who write strips owe a debt to him.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Olivet Discourse Matthew 24:13

Is the Discourse talking about salvation? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

One of the favorite topics evangelicals like to discuss is salvation. It’s a great topic, but just because the Bible uses the word saved, it doesn’t mean it’s talking about salvation. For a case in point, let’s look at today’s verse.

“But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

One of my favorite examples of this is in Acts 27. When the ship Paul is on is in the sea in the middle of a storm, some sailors decide that they will flee in a lifeboat. Paul has already told them that everyone will be spared, but they’re not believing it. So what does Paul say?

“Then Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, “Unless these men stay with the ship, you cannot be saved.”

Wow. So Paul was saying salvation was out of reach? Now to be fair, being dead could make it hard to get saved, but Paul is talking about something else. He is talking about surviving the storm at sea.

So when Jesus is talking about this, He is talking about avoiding death. He is not saying that enduring earns one salvation, although one who has salvation ultimately will endure. Now were there plenty of reasons for someone to not endure?

Yes. Apostasy will be a reality for the early church at this point. The book of Hebrews is the prime example of this. This was not persecution to the point of shedding blood as the writer of the piece himself says, but it is persecution that is leading people to be tempted to return to Judaism.

Christianity was a shameful movement at the start and if you are staying in it for salvation, well, Judaism already has that. Why not return to Judaism and avoid the social ostracism that takes place with Christianity? It was a tempting offer and that’s why the author makes repeated warnings to people to not abandon Christ. This letter quite likely has more such warnings than any other letter.

Jesus is describing people in Jerusalem going through a similar time, except it will be far worse, which we will get to later. This will be an event to endure indeed. There are some who place this in a “great tribulation” in the future which could very well return us to a salvation by works. As we go on through the discourse, I hope you will see that such an interpretation is unnecessary. Everything can easily fit into the first century.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Olivet Discourse Matthew 24:12

Will people be more wicked? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Today, we continue our look at the Olivet Discourse. We are going to be talking about wickedness. Let’s look at the verse.

“Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold”

Okay. So maybe some could say that this can apply today, and of course, it could. However, what we are asking is if it applies to the time of Jesus. This is what is known as a necessary but not sufficient condition. Just because it applies to the first century, it is not sufficient to show that it must be the time Jesus has in mind, but it is necessary that that time be included.

So was there an increase in wickedness?

Indeed there was. Look at what Josephus says about the practices going on at the time. When the siege started, everything seemed to be permitted. Murders were frequently taking place. An excellent fictional look at this are the chronicles written by Brian Godawa on the topic.

Nero and Caligula were both crazy emperors. Nero especially was known for wickedness. (One reason I think he’s the Beast in Revelation, but that’s for later) Nero could kill anyone easily, even if that someone was his own mother.

This was going on also in the New Testament. Jude and 2 Peter both have long sections on wicked people. It’s generally thought that one borrowed from the other since they are quite similar, but that would mean at least that both saw the problem. I am aware some skeptics place 2 Peter late, but I am not someone who places it later on.

Consider 2 Timothy 3:1-9

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth. They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.

Note something about this. Timothy is told to avoid these people. These people are already around. Paul is speaking about present realities going on in the life of Timothy. Some will say, “But this speaks of the last days!” Yes. Let’s see what was said in Acts 2.

Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

“‘In the last days, God says,
    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
    your young men will see visions,
    your old men will dream dreams.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
    I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
    and they will prophesy.
I will show wonders in the heavens above
    and signs on the earth below,
    blood and fire and billows of smoke.
The sun will be turned to darkness
    and the moon to blood
    before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.
And everyone who calls
    on the name of the Lord will be saved.’

When did Peter say the last days would come? When God would pour out His Spirit on all people. We see this going on at Pentecost and it happens throughout Acts with Gentiles getting the Holy Spirit. Some will wonder about the wonders described later on, but we will get to that eventually in the discourse. We already live in the time that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved so both bookends of this passage are fulfilled. Keep in mind that this is similar to the question about the end of the age. The last days are not the last days of the world but of the age the people were living in.

So again, we have a consistent fulfillment.

We shall continue next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters