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It’s a Bible verse that has puzzled Christians and been used by critics to attack the trustworthiness of Christ Himself. When Jesus, speaking of His return, said, “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Matt. 24:34), did He believe His second coming would happen before those hearing Him would die? At first blush, it sure looks like it. Skeptical philosopher Bertrand Russell thinks so. In his essay “Why I am not a Christian”, he argued that Jesus got it wrong, saying: “For one thing, he certainly thought that his second...

Introduction The famous evolutionist Julian Huxley once said, "Any view of God as a personal being is becoming frankly untenable. The difficulty of understanding the functions of a personal ruler in a universe which the march of knowledge is showing us ever more clearly as self-ordered and self-ordering in every minutest detail is becoming more and more apparent" (Essays of a Biologist [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923], p. 217). His sentiments were echoed by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell: "That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin,...