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At least one version of an e-mail that's been spreading like wildfire in recent days says it this way: "Check this picture out. It has just been released by the RLDS church as being an authentic picture of the prophet Joseph Smith." The message includes a photograph that may or may not be a scan of a historical image captured by early photographic technology of the founder and first president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  LDS Church publicists released a short statement on Wednesday saying that church officials can neither confirm nor deny the authenticity of...

WERE THE KING JAMES TRANSLATORS KJV ONLY? By: Dr. Robert A Joyner D.B.S., Th.D., Ph.D. There is a group today that is called the King James Only.  This is because they insist that the King James Version is the preserved Word of God and the only Bible for the English speaking people.  They usually attack all other versions and delight in pointing out the errors in them. I want to raise and answer the question, is this the position of the King James translators?  If I can prove that the King James translators disagreed with the King James Only group...

(Easter Night; 11.35pm) Well, it would appear that the Pope's vestments have made an early landing in Gotham.... Already circulating among the New York clergy are shots of Cardinal Edward Egan wearing an old Roman-style chasuble at tonight's Easter Vigil in St Patrick's Cathedral. For the record, however, the set didn't come from Rome, but France. As the Big Apple church marks its bicentennial year, the Fra Angelico-inspired hand-embroidered "fiddle-back" depicting the Pietá was commissioned for the centennial of the archdiocese's founding by then-Archbishop John Farley, who became New York's second cardinal in 1911. The set also includes four...

What most needed reforming was left in place, the clergy and the laity as two distinct classes.

The Catholic Church is pushing for the construction of a Christian meeting center at the birthplace of the Apostle Paul in Turkey. German bishops are demanding tolerance for Christians in Turkey in exchange for their support for mosques in Germany. There is little left from the days when the town of Tarsus was not Turkish but part of the Roman Empire: a handful of columns, a few old walls -- and a house where, about 2,000 years ago, a man who would become a central figure in Christianity was born."I am a Jew from Tarsus," the Bible reads. The man...

March 21, 2008 Remembering Good Friday By Stephen Alexander  The crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, dramatically and clearly, sets Christianity apart from every other religion in the world. No other prophet or founder of any religion ever gave his life purely for the sake of sinners - not Buddha, not Confucius, not Muhammad, not any of the 230,000 gods of Hinduism. No one else has ever risen from the grave, demonstrating for all time that HE, Jesus, has Power, even over death."It is Finished." John 19:30 "Father, into Your Hands I Commit My Spirit." Luke 23:46 On that 1st...

New York's famed Plaza Hotel reopened in March after a $400 million, two-year lobby-to-roof renovation. Every room features 24-karat gold-plated sinks and fixtures. And inside every Louis XV-inspired nightstand sits a Bible, courtesy of the Gideons. The same goes for the Motel 6 in Abilene, Texas, where you pull off I-20 onto Shirley Road, park at your room's front door, open the drawer of the nightstand, and there it sits, the Bible, courtesy of the Gideons. Since 1908, sixty years before the Beatles' Rocky Raccoon went into his room, only to find it, the Gideon - distributed Bible has been...

I HAVE a vivid recollection of a conversation with a friend at an Evangelical seminary we attended ten years ago. Walking over, he said, "Scott, I’ve been reading fascinating stuff on the sacraments." "Sacraments bore me," I replied sharply. Little did I know. I thought of the incident recently as I made my way home from an inspiring hour of Benediction. I got the urge to write about the Scripture study which led me into a Catholic understanding of the Holy Eucharist (and eventually into the Catholic Church) about five years ago. It all started with a Sunday morning service...

Holy Saturday   Christ is in His tomb. Rather, His Body is in the tomb, but when His Soul left His Body, He descended into Hell to "free the captives." "Hell" here refers to the place of the dead in general ("Sheol" in the Hebrew, or "Hades" in the Greek), not to the place of torment with which the word "Hell" is most usually associated with today. The world "Hell" in the loosest, earliest sense includes: the Limbo of the Fathers, the place for those who were righteous by charity and faith in the coming Messias and who died before His...

Good Friday  Good Friday1 (also called "Great Friday" or "Holy Friday") is the most somber day of the entire year. A silence pervades, socializing is kept to a minimum, things are done quietly; it is a day of mourning; it is a funeral. The Temple of the Body of Christ is destroyed, capping the the penitential seasons begun on Septuagesima Sunday and becoming more intense throughout Lent. Traditional Catholics wear black, cover their mirrors, extinguish candles and any lamps burning before icons, keep amusements and distractions down, and go about the day in great solemnity. Jesus was put on the...

Maundy Thursday   This day, Maundy Thursday (also "Holy Thursday" or "Shire Thursday"1) commemorates Christ's Last Supper and the initiation of the Eucharist. Its name of "Maundy" comes from the Latin word mandatum, meaning "command." This stems from Christ's words in John 13:34, "A new commandment I give unto you." It is the first of the three days known as the "Triduum," and after the Vigil tonight, and until the Vigil of Easter, a more profoundly somber attitude prevails (most especially during the hours between Noon and 3:00 PM on Good Friday). Raucous amusements should be set aside... The Last...

Spy Wednesday   In the Old Testament Joseph, who prefigured Christ, was betrayed by his older brother, Judah -- the father of the tribe whence came King David and through which the Messianic prophecies were fulfilled -- when Judah sold Joseph into slavery in Egypt for so many shekels of silver (see Genesis 37-38, and also Psalm 68:2-29 and Acts 1:13-20). From that tribe of Judah came Our Lord, Who was betrayed by another Judah, a man who is more commonly known as Judas Iscariot ("Iscariot" refers to Kerioth, a town in Judea). This Judas handled the money for the...

"Easter, Passover and the KJV"By Fred Butler There exist in American Christianity a rather vocal group of advocates who defend the King James Version as being the only true, infallible English translation.  Their contention is that it contains absolutely no transcribal or translational errors and can rightly be called the pure, inerrant Word of God.  Donald A. Waite, the director of Bible For Today ministries sums up the KJV only position when he writes:“If we really want to know what the Hebrew in the Old Testament says and what the Greek in the New Testament says in the English language...

Elijah Abel, Jane Manning James and Green Flake hold a unique, but rather obscure place in Mormon history: all three joined the church in its infancy and all three were black people. They also remained faithful after policies were altered and black people were denied full membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Abel was the first black man ordained to the priesthood in 1836. James worked in the home of church founder Joseph Smith and followed the faith's next president, Brigham Young, across the Plains to Utah in 1848. Flake came to Utah as well, but...

At 7 p.m. on a cold Thursday night, two SUVs with Maryland plates pull into a CVS parking lot at Florida Avenue and 7th Street NW. Half a dozen men in brightly colored robes emerge and begin to assemble a makeshift pulpit around a black wooden platform. Across the street, the go-go music blasting from a cell-phone store suddenly goes silent. Someone flips the switch on a little generator and two industrial lights flash on, casting a blinding halo around the men gathered by the stage. A tall man in red and gold steps to the mic. His voice booms...

When I was a little boy I thought this was called Monday Thursday, and I couldn’t quite figure that out. In fact it wasn’t until I went to seminary that someone finally explained to me that Maundy Thursday got its name from the Latin word mandatum and that this had to do with the novum mandatum—the new commandment—which the gospel according to John tells us Jesus gave to his disciples on the first Maundy Thursday. Here’s what Jesus said: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love...

The story of Purim as related in Megillat Esther is the bridge between the destruction of the First Temple and the building of the Second Temple. Interestingly, the eastern gate to the Temple Mount is called the Shushan Gate, as if to symbolize that the path to the future Temple goes through Shushan. The feast of Ahashverosh in Shushan was a low point in Jewish history. The Jews of Ahashverosh's kingdom were so deep in exile mentality that they actually reveled and feasted at the Persian mega-party despite the fact that the (kosher) food was served on the holy Temple...

On the Easter Triduum "Love Is Stronger Than Hate, It Has Triumphed" VATICAN CITY, MARCH 19, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the greetings Benedict XVI gave today to students participating in the international UNIV congress who had gathered at St. Peter's Basilica, and the catechesis he gave afterward during his weekly general audience in Paul VI Hall. * * * [Pope's greeting to students in St. Peter's Basilica] [In English, he said] Dear Friends, I offer a cordial welcome to all of you who have come to Rome from various countries and universities to celebrate Holy Week together,...

From First Part, Question 1, Article 8: "Hence sacred doctrine makes use also of the authority of philosophers in those questions in which they were able to know the truth by natural reason, as Paul quotes a saying of Aratus: "As some also of your own poets said: For we are also His offspring" (Acts 17:28)." "Nevertheless, sacred doctrine makes use of these authorities as extrinsic and probable arguments; but properly uses the authority of the canonical Scriptures as an incontrovertible proof, and the authority of the doctors of the Church as one that may properly be used, yet merely...

The apostle Paul writes, "But to each one of us grace was given, according to the measure of Christ's gift." (Ephesians 4:7) William Farel became a true follower of Christ in the early 1520's, during the time the Reformation, under the leadership of Martin Luther, was raging like a wild-fire throughout Europe. Farel had a burning zeal to preach Christ to whomever would listen and he travelled incessantly and tirelessly throughout eastern France, Switzerland, and southern Germany preaching Christ and denouncing the Pope and the excesses of Roman Catholicism. Farel, a bachelor until he was sixty-nine, was a short, gaunt...