Akin For The Truth

  Becoming fruitful in the knowledge of Jesus Christ is a well traveled road driven by the operation of God to infuse the precepts of His Word into the very fabric of our lives.

  To undertake research can be an exciting and useful endeavor, a journey. And the resulting discovery, even when about subjects already well known, is at least very personal.

The answer of origins remains a paradox for the materialist, but we continue to evaluate the assumptions underlying the origin explanations for evolution.

  We’ve been looking at a couple of interesting terms: axiom and paradox. Now, we'll combine them by looking at the famous question, Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Let's look another, more familiar, word. A paradox combines para with the Greek word for "thought" - hence something that takes us outside our normal thinking.

  Have you ever heard the term “axiom" before? An axiom is a basic truth or fact that does not need to be proven, because it’s foundational.

We'll speak today of some writings of the Apostolic Fathers, many of which are fiery, insightful and point us back to God's Word. 

Sometimes talking about Biblically-related ancient writings can be confusing. Today we learn some of the reasons why the apocrypha is rejected by ancient and modern Bible scholars alike.

We’ve been talking about the extra-Biblical evidence for the reliability of the New Testament - so here's some more examples.

  Anyone questioning the authorship and authenticity of the New Testament documents is really about 50 years out-of-date.

  Critics today can be heard saying that the canonical Gospels are late and cannot be trusted - so let's discover if the New Testament is historical or not.

  Documents of the New Testament are validated by every discovery, and now we have enough evidence from letters among Christians who were contemporary with the apostles, to place all of the writings of the New Testament in the first century.        

Possibly the most significant discovery yet made relating to the background of early Bible times, the Elba tablets describe a period 1000 years before Moses.      Jack

  Of all the major religions, Christianity and Judaism are unique, distinguished from all others in their historicity…they are historic.  

  Some critics claim that the apostles we've discussed are a fabrication, a "Christ Myth"- but do not do so on the grounds of historical evidence.     

There are many more Apostolic Fathers we could study, but for now we’ll look at just one more, Irenaeus.

  As we catch a glimpse of first and early second century writings and memoirs of devout Christian writers, we should not leave out Polycarp.

In this series so far we’ve briefly visited the 1st and 2nd century church, but now let's look at elegant Latin memoirs of a Christian lawyer, Marcus Felix.

  Today we'll look at Justin, whose writings are considered, outside of the New Testament, some of the most valuable early Christian writings. 

Next we’ll look at Ignatius, also called Theophorus: a bold and fearless martyr and the second bishop of Antioch.