Free Republic

The topic of slavery is usually accompanied by bitter feelings and condemnation for Americas past. Like America, many civilizations have used slavery as a means of providing labor. Samarian drawings on clay tablets dating back to 4000 BC show captives taken in battle being tied, whipped, and forced to work. Then there are ancient papyrus manuscripts from 2100 BC that record the ownership of slaves by private citizens in Egypt. The earliest mention of slavery in the Bible would be Genesis 9:25 when Noah cursed the descendants of Canaan. From Abraham on down we read of the men in...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House as was practice during the Bush administration.

Old Testament Difficulties 140. How could God harden Pharaoh's heart and then punish him for not letting the Jews go? The sense is that God permitted Pharaoh to harden his own heart. It is but a Jewish mode of speaking. Exod. VIII., 15, says, "And Pharaoh hardened his own heart." God sent Moses to ask Pharaoh to let the Jews go, and that means that He meant Pharaoh to do so. God would not, therefore, have deliberately prevented Pharaoh from doing so. God permitted Pharaoh to harden his own heart, just as He permits men to sin even in...

Value of the Gospels 103. Will you prove the reliability of the Gospels according to the five requirements outlined by yourself to a previous inquirer? By all means, although I cannot go very deeply into the matter in the brief time at my disposal. However I shall do my best to give the main elements. Firstly, the authors assigned wrote the books attributed to them. A knowledge of Hebrew shows that the authors were certainly Jews. Historical and political references show that they were Jews of the first century, for Palestine is shown under conditions before and not after the...

Old Testament Difficulties 116. I believe in the New Testament, but not in the Old Testament. There are things in the New Testament just as hard to believe as many things in the Old Testament, and on your principle you should reject much of the New Testament itself. Yet let us act on your admission that you do accept the New Testament. Christ and the Apostles had the same Old Testament as we have today. They treat it always as the inspired Word of God in its totality. Christ, the Son of God, would have been the first to...

Old Testament Difficulties 128. That Ark surely is a fable or symbol. Even on the measurements given it could never have contained all said to be in it. It is not a fable, although it does symbolize the Catholic Church in which souls are saved from the moral flood of sin. It was over 400 feet long, 70 wide, and 40 deep. The flood was most probably local, and the animals were of various types from the region only of its occurrence. We are not obliged to believe that all living animals were represented, nor that all animals outside...

Testimony of the Evangelists by Simon Greenleaf (1783-1853)   Simon Greenleaf , one of the principle founders of the Harvard Law School, originally set out to disprove the biblical testimony concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He was certain that a careful examination of the internal witness of the Gospels would dispel all the myths at the heart of Christianity. But this legal scholar came to the conclusion that the witnesses were reliable, and that the resurrection did in fact happen.   I n examining the evidence of the Christian religion, it is essential to the discovery of truth that...

The Daily Psalms: Sunday Douay Rheims Version   MATINS: First Nocturn   Psalm 1Beatus Vir The happiness of the just: and the evil state of the wicked. 1 Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the chair of pestilence. 2 But his will is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he shall meditate day and night. 3 And he shall be like a tree which is planted near the running waters, which shall bring forth its fruit, in due...

Wolf in Calfskin: The Rampant Liberalism of the NABHow amazing is the profundity of your words! We are confronted with a superficial meaning that offers easy access to the unlettered; yet how amazing their profundity, O my God, how amazingly deep they are! To look into that depth makes me shudder, but it is the shudder of awe, the trembling of love. I regard with intense hatred all who attack the scriptures; if only you would slay them with your double-edged sword, that they might be enemies no longer! How dearly would I love them to be slain in...

EDITOR'S NOTE: When I wrote the following piece, it was meant to be tongue in cheek. Indeed, the column could have been written about Fidel Castro, Vladimir Putin or Alec Baldwin. However, those on the left were calling the surprisingly popular candidate, Barack Obama, the "savior"--a man who would supposedly put the world back on track and establish the United States as a moral beacon once again, if he were elected. I never expected to receive over 70,000 hits to this one column on RFFM.org. In addition, there are literally millions of results on the Yahoo search engine alone for...

WHO AM I? I am the salt of the earth. Mat5:13 I am the light of the world in & through Christ Jesus. Mat:14 I am a child of God. John 1:12 I am a part of the True Vine and Christ’s life flows through me John 15:1,5 I am Christ’s friend. John 15:15 I have been chosen by Jesus to bear much fruit. John 15:16 I am Jesus’ personal witness sent out to tell everybody about Him. Acts 1:8 I am a slave to God, making me holy and giving me eternal life. Rom 6:18 I am a...

We noted last week that one of the principal problems of trying to treat Scripture as a purely human book is that, though God can supernaturalize nature, we cannot naturalize the supernatural. God can assume a human nature and join it to His divinity. But we cannot take a supernatural thing and reduce it to mere nature without doing it violence. We cannot reduce Jesus to a mere man, nor man to a mere animal, nor the Bible to a mere book without saying stupid and preposterous stuff.Proof of this abounds. If we will not receive Scripture on its terms...

Jesus famously said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you as well.”Elsewhere, he restated this principle using a different image and adding a negative corollary: “Take heed what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. For to him who has will more be given; and from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away" (Mark 4:24-25).Moderns love to argue about the fairness of these observations, as though Jesus is somehow advocating abolition of the capital gains...

A Scriptural Way of the Cross with Meditations by Saint Alphonsus LiguoriThe Sign of the Cross In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Act of Contrition Intention You should form the intention of gaining the Indulgences, whether for yourself or for the souls in Purgatory. Prayer My Lord Jesus Christ, You have made this journey to die for me with love unutterable, and I have so many time unworthily abandoned You; but now I love You...

A Christian organization whose church-based clubs challenge kids to memorize Bible verses says its graduates are keeping the faith. The president of Awana International, Jack Eggar, told CDR Radio that it commissioned a survey of adults who had spent at least 6 years in Awana when they were growing up. "[W]e found that over 90-plus percent of these kids [now adults] remained faithful to the things of God or faithful in church, and are still active in their faith -- even sharing Christ with others," Eggar shares.

This is a great reference source for Bible study and general online reading. Links to all Books and Chapters are on one page which makes this very helpful. Also there are audios of a number of translations. Here are links to some of the more popular and reliable English language translations. 1. New International Version - http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/?action=getVersionInfo&vid=31 2. New American Standard Bible - http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/?action=getVersionInfo&vid=49#books 3. New King James - http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/?action=getVersionInfo&vid=50 4. Amplified Bible - http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/?action=getVersionInfo&vid=45 5. Holman Christian Standard Bible - http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/?action=getVersionInfo&vid=77 6. King James Version - http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/?action=getVersionInfo&vid=9

  "Exodus" is the Greek name for the second book of the Bible. In Hebrew, it is called the Book of Names. That's because, like Catholic encyclicals, the Hebrew books of the Bible are titled by the opening words of the book: "These are the names . . . ."   It is fitting that this title be given to Exodus, since Exodus is a book in which names play a huge role, both in the way they are emphasized and the way they are strategically de-emphasized. Exodus pauses to tell us the names of the two earliest pro-life...

PROVIDENTISSIMUS DEUSENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII  ON THE STUDY OF HOLY SCRIPTURE  To Our Venerable Brethren, All Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and Bishops of the Catholic World, in Grace and Communion with the Apostolic See.Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic Benediction.[...] The Authority of Holy Scripture; Modern Criticism; Physical Science17. To prove, to expound, to illustrate Catholic Doctrine by the legitimate and skilful interpretation of the Bible, is much; but there is a second part of the subject of equal importance and equal difficulty - the maintenance in the strongest possible way of its full authority. This cannot be done completely...

Christ came to redeem mankind from slavery to the passions by His life of sacrifice. Everything about Him went against the grain in a most unprecedented, radical manner causing scandal to the Jewish people who were expecting a temporal Messiah. Observe: he loves sinners, and eats with them; adulterers receive mercy; the ill He heals on the Sabbath. Most disturbing of all, He is not married but is a virgin and preaches continence for the sake of the Kingdom of God.The priesthood of the New Law is not made up of the powerful and intellectual but of men from ordinary...

In the following article, adapted with permission from his book "By What Authority?: An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition" (Our Sunday Visitor Books), Mark recounts his thought processes when he was an Evangelical considering the role of tradition, which Evangelicals supposedly reject in belief and practice.I wondered: Is it really true that we Evangelicals never treat extra-biblical tradition as authoritative revelation? Is it really the case that all Evangelical belief is derived from the clear and unambiguous teaching of the Bible alone? Do we really speak forth only what Scripture speaks, keep silent where Scripture is silent, and never bind the...