Category: Apologetics

End Of The Year Giving

How can you support us? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Since I don’t know for sure what I could write on Monday and Tuesday of next week, I want to be sure to cover this topic now. It’s getting close to the end of the year. Many times, some people want to make that last donation of the year for taxes. I would really like to encourage you to give to us here at Deeper Waters.

We have this web site, we have a podcast, and I have been doing more debates and hope to do more talks soon. If you’re interested, we also have a newsletter that you can subscribe to. We are working hard on getting the podcast up to date.

And who do we depend on for this?

You.

Due to my wife’s Social Security, it affects all of our other ability to earn aside from through this means and that is the donations done through Risen Jesus. That means the more you support us, the more we are able to do. If you do get a blessing from the work done here, it is proper to consider taking part in the planting and harvesting of the material.

Go to this page and look on the side where you see something to help support our work. That takes you to the ministry of Risen Jesus, the ministry of my in-laws. Make your donation and get in touch with them or Allie and I and let us know you made a donation and you want it to go to us. It will be tax-deductible.

Your gift gives us encouragement and more ability to function here. The more we get, the more that we can do. It gives us freedom to be able to do the things that we do. When a church pays a minister, they pay him so he can be free also to do all the necessary work in preparation for Sunday and all the work throughout the week, like counseling, visitation, confession in some orders, and other things.

I would like to be able to do more writing projects. Your donation helps with that. It would be great to someday give some pay to anyone who is willing to help with the production and editing of the podcast. Your donations help. It would be great to do some advertising of what we do here. Your donations help with that.

They also give the gift of encouragement. It means a lot to know that you believe in us and want to bless us. Encouragement goes a long way. Years ago, a pastor told me to keep an encouragement folder on my computer for good compliments I get to remind me when I start to lose hope. It’s a good reminder.

All of this works to getting us to our goals of having a bigger platform and more outreach. One hope I have really is to get us on the radio someday with the podcast. As far as I know, our podcast spends more time than any other podcast in the interview process for a more in-depth look and a radio approach would be even more professional and reach more people. Your help is required for that.

So please consider becoming a regular giver to the ministry of Deeper Waters. Just a small amount every month can make all the difference, especially if several people do this. You might think that $20 a month or so is no big deal, but to us, it is tremendous, and if 100 people did that, that would be $2000 a month, something that would be extremely helpful to us.

Thank you again for reading this blog and listening to our show and just caring. Your friendship means so much to Allie and I. We hope you had a Merry Christmas and we hope you have a great 2020.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 12/28/2019

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

What are the Gospels? I understand that we can say they’re the accounts that we have of the life of Jesus, but what are they? What purpose do they really serve? What did the writers want us to get out of them?

Not only that, what purpose did they serve? How did the ancient people view the Gospels? What did they expect when they read the Gospels? Did they think the authors really believed there was a historical figure who did these things or did they think this was a nice set of novels?

Let’s go even further. What were the writers of these works thinking? Did they have any ideas for the best way to go about telling the accounts of Jesus? What liberties did they have with the source material? Why didn’t they cite source material? What sources did they even use and were they right to use them?

These are questions we can ask when we approach the Gospels. We can also ask then about the reliability of the Gospels. Was memory that reliable? What about the distance in time? What about the Gospels being anonymous?

If only we had someone who had really studied all of these kinds of questions and was an excellent scholar in the field.

Oh, wait. We do have such a person, and he is my guest this Saturday for the Deeper Waters Podcast talking about his latest book (Although he’s sure to have written another one in the time it took me to write this blog), Christobiography. Returning to our show is Craig Keener.

So who is he?

According to his bio:

Bio sketch: Craig S. Keener (PhD, Duke University) is F. M. and Ada Thompson Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. He is author of twenty-eight books (thirty-three volumes), six of which have won awards in Christianity Today, plus other awards. He has also authored roughly one hundred academic articles; seven booklets; and more than one hundred fifty popular-level articles. His IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, which provides cultural background on each passage of the New Testament, has sold more than half a million copies. Craig is the New Testament editor for the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, which won the International Book Award for Christianity and Bible of the year in the Christian Book Awards. In 2020 Craig is president of the Evangelical Theological Society, and he is married to Dr. Médine Moussounga Keener. His blog site is http://www.craigkeener.com/.

Now that the holidays have passed, hopefully, we’ll be able to devote the time to getting the shows back on schedule again. I hope you’ll be waiting. Be there for the next episode of the Deeper Waters Podcast.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Merry Christmas

How shall we spend this day? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I have many Christmas memories. When I was born, I grew up in a mobile home and since that was one story, my sister and I had to wait outside the living room until my parents said it was time to go into the room and each side of the couch had gifts for us. It was there one Christmas I got the original Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Brothers 2, the latter of which my parents worked extensively to find a copy of asking all their friends to be on the lookout.

Eventually, we had our own house built which had two major stories and a garage. Now, my sister and I would wait upstairs until we could come downstairs. That was until 1994 when my sister got married. Most notable there was being given the gift of a car one year, which served me well and I used all through high school.

My first Christmas with Allie was actually where I had proposed to her on Christmas Eve. It was where I picked her up at the airport. If you know me on Facebook, you can read the story there. Now, I have spent a number of Christmases away from my own family.

The first one was an odd one. We spent it with Allie’s family and I just wasn’t in to it. Mike came to me and I hadn’t said anything, but he told me the first Christmas he spent with his in-laws, he was miserable. It was a switch being away, but I got used to it.

Before that, for Christmas Eve regularly in my family, we had two houses we would go to. The first was some friends and this was the first place in person I publicly ever announced my engagement to Allie. The second was my aunt Ruth’s. We would normally spend most of the night up until around midnight going around and opening gifts.

On Christmas Day, we would go over to my grandmother’s for some gifts there as well. Those two traditions have changed. My grandmother died in 2010 and my aunt died just this year. Traditions come and traditions go.

This Christmas? We’re going to the Orthodox Church first and then coming home. Allie is fixing some pumpkin spice bread to take over to her parents. Her hope this year is for a Nintendo Switch Lite from both of our parents. A couple years ago, someone gifted us with a regular Switch and we hope with the new one to be able to play the new Pokemon games together someone else gifted us with.

What has also changed for me is the focus of the holiday. I suppose I was like many other kids growing up. The real joy of the holiday was getting to get the gifts and I was thinking of my Christmas list. Nowadays, I have a hard time thinking of things I want for Christmas. Sometimes, just regular Amazon cards can work. Gifts are still nice, but it’s time with my family, especially my wife, that make the holiday.

I also much more understand the religious significance of the day. I understand more what makes Christianity special and why we celebrate today and what a difference Christ makes in one’s life. Naturally, my favorite memory now from this year is not a gift I got per se, but one that I gave, when I proposed to Allie.

Every year I know I write something on Christmas, but let’s face it. I’m not going to come up with some brand new insight on Christmas no one has ever had for all these centuries of Christianity. The best I can do is tell you a bit about my life with Christianity and what it means and hope it makes you think about what it means to you.

Merry Christmas!

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Christmas Eve Thoughts

What does Christmas Eve mean? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The day before can be a day that really gets you anxious. I took an Ambien the night before my wedding and I think I still got only one hour of sleep. You can see a wedding picture of Allie drinking a five-hour energy in our wedding photos. We can also think about the day before a graduation service or even something like the day before a new movie comes out we want to see or a major sporting event or a book coming out or a game being released or anything like that.

What was it like the night before D-Day? How many soldiers went to sleep quite sure that it was the last time they would ever go to sleep? Many of them were right. The first several that came off of our vehicles were just fodder to shield the ones that came behind. How many were sure they would never see their wives and children again?

And what then was it like the day before Jesus was born? To be sure, we didn’t really know what was happening here, aside from Mary and Joseph. Still, the forces of darkness and the forces of light knew exactly what was happening. On this blog a few times, I have said my favorite account of the Christmas story is actually found in Revelation 12.

We come together and celebrate this time as a happy and joyous time, and we should, but the original wasn’t so. Mary and Joseph were away from home and giving birth in a place where animals ate. Much later, the wise men come and then Herod comes after that wanting to kill all the young boys so he can make sure he has thwarted prophecy and killed the Messiah. (Real good thinking Herod. A God who can see the future would obviously not foresee what you were doing.)

Christmas was really a declaration of war and if that’s the case, then this day is battle preparation. It is getting set for the war. As Christians, we are to believe that there are dark powers out there that want to harm us. We can have different views on how active they are now, but they were certainly very active in the time of Jesus.

Today, the war has been ultimately won, but there are still skirmishes going on and still holdouts to the cause. I often compare it to the Matrix. Often, the ones we are fighting against are also the ones that we are fighting for.

We should celebrate Christmas this year, but let’s not forget everything that happened in the first Christmas. It was a battle. Let’s be prepared for ours today.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Urban Legends of the Old Testament

What do I think of Gary Yates and David Croteau’s book published by B&H Academic? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When I saw this book, I was intrigued by the idea and ordered it, and I am thankful that I did. This is a book that you can either read straight through or go through select chapters. Each chapter is short and starts off with the legend and then a response and then an application that follows.

The book is really incredibly readable. For me, many times when I near the end of the book, I really want to just finish it. With this one, I found myself enjoying each chapter as they were stand-alone in a quite entertaining way. At the same time, they’re incredibly informative.

This doesn’t mean that I agree with every assessment the authors have. For instance, I am still prone to see the Angel of the Lord as a Trinitarian precursor. Some items in particular I was very pleased to see. I was pleased to see the Harbinger and Isaiah 9:10, the Isaiah passage about how God’s word will not return void, and of course, Jeremiah 29:11.

Others I think they did a good job on but still left open to a kernel of truth. Perhaps Psalm 22 is not a prophecy of the crucifixion, but perhaps it can depict Jesus as the ultimate unjust sufferer who is handed over to His enemies as is the case in the Psalm. Perhaps Ezekiel bread really is a very healthy bread, but it might not be that just because it’s a meal described in the Bible we should eat it.

Some I think many people might be astounded by today, but the case I thought made was quite good. Could it be that Genesis 3 really doesn’t contain a prophecy of the virgin birth (Which I do affirm)? Could it be that maybe the Arabs aren’t the descendants of the Ishmaelites and that wars between Muslims and Christians today aren’t a result of that dispute thousands of years ago?

Some of these correct false teachings that need to be corrected, but at the same time provide a better teaching. What about training up a child in the way he should go? Does Proverbs 31 give a mandate for every wife to be like that woman? Is Song of Songs really best seen as describing dating?

Also, the authors don’t really try to go after controversial debates in the Old Testament as urban legends. How old is the Earth? Nothing said about it, although there is something said about NASA supposedly finding Joshua’s missing day. The issues here should be ones that Christians largely can agree on.

I really found this book to be a fascinating and engaging read and I highly recommend it. You’re bound to find something of interest in here and I have deliberately left out many of the conclusions just so you can discover them for yourselves. The book is also definitely layman-friendly and would be a great resource for small groups.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Are We Too Familiar With Jesus?

Does Jesus not really surprise us anymore? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Awhile back, I wrote a post on why Christianity isn’t appealing. I get why unbelievers don’t like the message of Christianity, but what I don’t get is why we who are believers sometimes don’t seem to blink at it. We talk about the God of all creation who loves us immensely more than we can know and forgives us for everything and yet it seems that pales in comparison often to everything else in our lives.

Last night I thought about this more when driving home from an event my wife and I started talking about a Jesus mythicist. I gave the quote that has been said that if Jesus had never existed, we could never have invented Him. Jesus is just too amazing a figure for that. C.S. Lewis once said that the things Jesus said were the most amazing things ever said by human lips.

Could it be that here in the West, we have heard the story of Jesus so much that it never really amazes us? Many of us have grown up hearing the gospel for as long as we can remember and so we take it for granted. Do we need to look at what we believe again?

Atheists will often get us on for the outlandish things we believe. We believe Jesus was born of a virgin, (Which I do affirm) that He walked on water, that He raised the dead, that He multiplied bread and fish instantly, and that He rose from the dead. Granted there is good evidence for this stuff, but we should consider that to an extent, we do believe some things that on the face are hard to believe. These are definitely claims that would be hard to believe and if we heard them from some other position could be skeptical as well.

Yet Jesus did all of them.

We could consider that an ethical message like the Sermon on the Mount is still transforming us today. We could consider that His very life has been one of the greatest drives to moral living if not what I would contend, the greatest drive. We could consider the way He astounded His opponents every step of the way as something incredible.

We could actually be surprised by Jesus again.

We do have a downside sadly that when we go to the text, we who have grown up with it have this background here with many assumptions. It’s kind of like how I often wish we could approach texts for the first time again. Could we come to Romans 9 without debating Calvinism and have it without thinking about whether we believe in it or not? Could we approach Revelation the same way?

Then let’s also remember that this was done for love by Jesus. Love of God and love of us both. We are truly forgiven. Some of us might think we don’t have much to be forgiven of, which means we probably have more than we realize. We could all rejoice though who are Christians that our debt is paid. We are forgiven. We are promised eternal life. We are loved by the holy Trinity.

This doesn’t mean there will never be times of sorrow and sadness in our lives. Paul reported about despairing to the point of death even. It does mean that it doesn’t need to dominate us. We can always point to multiple blessings in our lives when we think about Christ.

After all, there could be a great danger that if we don’t do this, we take Jesus for granted. We act like what happened was no big deal. Of course, Jesus did this, because He’s Jesus, but God was never under any obligation to forgive us for everything. If He wanted to condemn us all to Hell and spend eternity with just Himself and His angels, that would have been entirely allowable. No one could say He had done wrong. He owes us nothing.

Any maybe, just maybe, if we can realize this, we will take it more seriously than before. We have all been given grace abundantly. Perhaps those of us who are Christians should live like we really believe it.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 12/21/2019

What’s coming up? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I came across my guest in an unusual way. A Christian friend of mine shared an interesting article on a Christian defense of Dungeons and Dragons. Now I was intrigued since I played growing up and I know several Christians today who still do. I’m still heavily involved in role-playing games, though these are all video games.

The article was a good one and lo and behold, written by a professor at a Christian university. I was intrigued. I also realized that this was a person I had heard of before. He was interviewed by Mary Jo Sharp in her book Why I Still Believe to talk about beauty.

So I thought getting in touch with him would be a simple matter. We could talk about the interaction of Christianity and culture and about beauty as well. After all, could it be that those who are seeing the devil in everything and repelling from the culture are doing more harm than good in the long run?

I reached out to him then and he was delighted to come on the show. We set the date and as you can imagine, it will be this Saturday. We will be talking about the interaction of Christ and culture and straight from Houston Baptist University, my guest will be Philip Tallon.

So who is he?

According to his bio:

Dr. Tallon is the assistant professor of theology at Houston Baptist University. He got his PhD in theology at the University of St. Andrews.

Dr. Tallon is a member of the Honors College faculty and Chair of the Apologetics Department. Both areas of service allow him to explore the intersection of theology, philosophy, and the arts: helping students to understand the Lordship of Jesus over “every square inch” of creation.

Dr. Tallon’s primary areas of research are in Christian theology and theological aesthetics. He is especially interested in doing ‘theology through the arts,’ which examines how the arts can reorient and enrich our understanding of Christian truth.

We’ll be talking about beauty, play, and culture. How do we find God in all of these things? What is the way that Christians are to interact with culture? Could there be danger in seeing a devil behind everything that seems contrary to us?

I hope you’ll be watching for the next episode. We are almost completely caught up with episodes after all. Please also go and leave a positive review on iTunes for the Deeper Waters Podcast.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Purple Cow Fallacy

How do we interpret prophecy? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

It’s not a secret to my readers that I am an orthodox preterist in my eschatology. Sometimes, I like to debate with futurists and dispensationalists. Eschatology is just a subject I enjoy discussing. I will also say my wife is still a futurist, though not a dispensationalist, because I do not press the issue on her and want her to come to her own conclusions.

Anyway, one mistake I see futurists often making is what has been described to me as the Purple Cow fallacy. In this, imagine a famous rock star in the 60’s. He predicts after his retirement that one day another great musician like him will show up. It will be known this has happened when the hide of a purple cow is seen across America.

There are two schools of thought on how to interpret this prophecy. The first is the globalist school of thought. This is the one that says that the sky will turn the color of the hide of a purple cow. The other is the localist. These say that a man will take the hide of a purple cow and put it on the back of his car and drive across America.

One day, the localists claim the prophecy has been fulfilled as someone has driven across the country like that. The globalists are immediately aghast. How can you say that the prophecy has been fulfilled? Would not everyone have seen the sky change color that way?

You and I are observers on the outside. We think this whole prophecy thing is a crazy delusion so we have no skin in the game. Still, from our perspective we can point something out. We can point out that the globalists could be right on the meaning, but in this debate, they are begging the question. They are assuming that the prophecy is only fulfilled if their interpretation of it takes place, when what is under question is the interpretation of the prophecy.

We Christians have to deal with this as well and this includes dispensationalists and futurists. How many Jews tell us “How can you say the Messiah has come? Would not the world already be living in perfect peace and harmony and the third temple be built?” Christians have to say that obviously hasn’t happened yet, (And for the third temple I dispute it ever will) but that doesn’t mean the Messiah has not come because that is begging the question about what the prophecy means.

So it is with dispensationalists that I encounter often where it is assumed that a prophecy must be interpreted a certain way and if it hasn’t happened or I don’t think it will happen that way, then I am calling into question Scripture. Not at all. I am calling into question your interpretation and to keep pointing to your interpretation is to beg the question.

This is not an argument per se that futurism and/or dispensationalism are wrong, but it is a request to stop using a fallacious argument. This also does not prove preterism is true either, though I am convinced it is. However, if you do debate this kind of topic regularly, watch for this fallacy. Once you become aware of it, you see it happening often.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Is Religion Natural?

What belongs to the order of nature? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

While browsing Facebook on Sunday, I saw a meme shared in an apologetics group saying homosexuality is natural because animals perform homosexual acts. Religion is not because animals do not do that. Therefore, it’s not homosexuality that isn’t natural, but religion that is unnatural.

Memes are to some people meant to get you thinking. This one did get me thinking.

“Why do people think arguments so dumb are so powerful?”

To begin with, as in memes, there is never any defining of terms. What is religion? What does it mean to be natural?

I could also question that animals don’t do religion. Some animals are said to have strong burial rites that they follow. Who is to say that a lion roaring over his prey is not designed to praise his creator that way?

There’s also the problem that there are many behaviors that animals do that we would not consider to do. Animals freely poop in public and unless you live in San Francisco, this is normally frowned upon. Animals also eat their own young and again, most of us don’t have a drive to legalize cannibalism because it’s natural.

But if the person wants to play this game, we’ll play this game.

I do not know of any animals who are writing rational discourses or presenting rational arguments. By this standard then, to make a rational argument is unnatural. Therefore, we should not make rational arguments.

I also do not know of animals doing science. Now I know that so many of our atheist friends love science, but if we’re going this route, then science has to be deemed as unnatural. Therefore, if we want to do what is natural, we cannot do science.

Now if you’re an atheist reading this argument, do notice something.

Nowhere in here did I say homosexual acts are sinful. While I do think that, you do not have to agree with me on this point. I just said that this is a bad argument for a position. It is possible to affirm that you think my view is false and yet that an argument against it is bad. I think there are bad arguments against atheism and bad arguments for Christianity.

If someone wanted to refine this, they would need to define their terms. I never did in this piece because I wasn’t the one making the argument and I was trying to go by the understanding I figured the meme maker had. I could be wrong, but that’s part of the problem of the poster not defining his terms. I can’t read his mind.

And for Christians, keep in mind this doesn’t make the argument either. This argument I have presented cannot establish homosexual practice is wrong. We must make our own arguments that way.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Walking This Walk

What do I think of Brad Erlandson’s book published by Xulon Press? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Upfront, Brad is a friend of mine. He gave me his book free of charge as a gift and I wish to provide a fair review. I am going to try to avoid bias as best I can.

I have long had the opinion that if you had a good writer and director behind it, you could take the life of any person you meet on the street and turn it into a major motion picture and it would be a box office hit. People are fascinating and their stories are interesting.

Erlandson’s story is a common story about growing up in a family and actually being rebellious. Eventually, he finds his way to Jesus and from then on, his story is about his zeal to spread the gospel. Something about the book is that he goes regularly from autobiography to exhortation about how he thinks people ought to live.

In the last third of the book, he gets to the main part where he talks about being hit by a drunk driver and how he is now in a wheelchair as a result. He talks about his attitude toward the lady who hit him and how to view the disabled. He talks about his opinion on faith healing and how some pastors do go too far with this.

There are times I found myself disagreeing with some positions Erlandson gave in his book, but these are rightfully on secondary issues and Erlandson says he is fine with people having different opinions, which he knows from our personal discussions. He doesn’t deny that these issues should be discussed, but they should not be a point of disagreement. With this, I fully agree.

The book is also easy to read. There is not really difficult theology in there that people will not understand. There is a touch of apologetics involved. This is not just about the problem of evil, but other areas. Erlandson himself spent some time teaching apologetics at a church.

Sometimes, I did wish Erlandson would focus more on the crash. As I said, this showed up in the last third of the book. Perhaps it would have been good to have done it like it can be done in a TV show where you will get shown a scene of a later event and then the episode goes to show you how you got to that event.

I also did think sometimes Erlandson seemed to get distracted and spend more time with a story than I thought necessary. These stories could be interesting at the time, but then you’d move on and wonder what it has to do with the main story. Of course, the problem could lie with me.

Still, Erlandson’s story is a sad story and a happy one both. It is sad to think about the evil that he has gone through, but there is joy in seeing that he handles it and perseveres. Does he want to be healed? Of course, but he at the same time still lives and enjoys his life in the meanwhile. It is one thing for evil to happen to you in the past. It is one thing to stay in that and let it keep happening to you. As he says, you can get bitter or better. Erlandson has chosen better, and may it not be taken from him.

In Christ,
Nick Peters