Articles
by Frank Tyler
Introduction
How many Christians both hear and quote from memory the following verse… perhaps hundreds of times?
For God so (ο ὕ τως) loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16; bold added for emphasis) [1]
As your brother in Christ, may I ask, if God so loved the world, and demonstrates His love through Jesus’ incarnation and crucifixion ( that He gave His only begotten Son) and then through Jesus’ promise of everlasting life [2] ( that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life ), then what is the manner of His love? Many say, “loved so much;” others might say, “loved sacrificially.” Following in the historical wake of our Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection, these answers remain transparently true, and are rightfully the basis of many outstanding evangelistic tracts. However, in His witness to Nicodemus, Jesus had not yet been crucified; therefore, He was witnessing to an individual who could not have understood God’s love for the world based upon an event which had yet to transpire. If neither answer accounts for Jesus’ witness to Nicodemus, then what is the manner of God’s love that Nicodemus might understand within the immediate context of Jesus’ witness?
by Don Crouse
Copyright 2018 Don Crouse
We have the iMac, the iPod, the iPad and the iPhone. Now, I present to you, the iMonkey! It's still in beta testing, but it will work just fine for my purposes today.
So what exactly is the iMonkey? Well, I'm glad you asked (just pretend you actually care). The iMonkey is the smart monkey. I didn't invent it. But it's about time someone marketed it! You probably already have some familiarity with the smart monkey and you don't even know it. It's actually called the Infinite Monkey Theorem.[1] The Infinite Monkey Theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will type the complete works of William Shakespeare. Well, that is something, isn't it? Amazing - especially considering William Shakespeare didn't even do that! The typewriter wasn't invented until 1808. Shakespeare died in 1616. But that doesn't stop the iMonkey! The iMonkey isn't obligated to live by the normal constraints of time and physics. And it doesn't even have to work in reality. It just has to work in principle… because it's only a theory. Of course, in the real world, the iMonkey would never work; but in theory anything is possible, right? Well, maybe not.