Gospel.com Blog

Heaven and Hell. Hades and Paradise.

Is heaven harps and wings? Does it look like Dante’s Paradisio? Is Hell like Sarte envisioned? Type ‘Heaven’ into any search engine and marvel at how many different ideas people have concerning heaven.

There’s quite a bit of misinformation about the afterlife screaming to be heard. You can find people that will tell you just about anything about what happens after we die. Want heaven to be a place where your wildest fantasies come true? Well, there are teachers that would love to tickle your ears about just that.

Obviously, for Christians the question of whose version of eternity is correct is kind of important, as that question is key to our understanding of the gospel.

That’s why this week we’ll be looking at some of those different questions, exploring the beliefs of Christians and pointing out some resources we’ve found to help you with your understanding of the Afterlife.

Long a ghostwriter for several high-profile names, Kevin Miller’s serendipitous encounter with filmmaker David L. Cunningham at a hotel in Hawaii provided the nascent screenwriter with his first professional gig: After…, a psychological thriller set in the world of base jumping and urban exploration.

Miller’s latest project, starring Ben Stein, is Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a documentary that looks at the turf wars in the science community over Darwinian evolution and the field of “Intelligent Design.”

As part of Past the Popcorn’s lead-in to coverage of Expelled, I took the opportunity to spend half an hour on the phone with Miller, chatting about his experience in the business. Next week, PtP will publish the second half of the interview, which focuses on Expelled.

Jonalyn Grace Fincher, the author of Ruby Slippers, reacts to the recently released statistic that 1 in 4 teenage girls have an STD:

There is a discouraging, though not altogether unsurprising, statistic making headlines. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 1 in 4 teenage girls have a sexually transmitted disease (STD). The New York Times covers the findings, “Sex Infections Found in Quarter of Teenage Girls”. My thoughts kicked into high gear when I heard that. What are my friends and sister’s friends going to be inheriting in the coming years? Infertility will continue to rise as infections from disease destroy the fine-tuned fertility micro-climate in a woman’s body.

…

But I suppose the thing that bothers me the most is that STDs are infiltrating the core of a woman’s body, targeting her capacities for vulnerability in the future. You know how hard it is to raise your voice when you have a sore, inflamed throat? Or to laugh a deep, vulnerable belly guffaw when you have a cough? Well, that’s a taste of how hard it will be for these young women to be vulnerable in intimacy when the sensitive parts of her body, her reproductive capacities, her sexual pleasure and recreation has been damaged, ravaged by disease, inflamed from infection. The physical pain is just a small slice of the problem. I haven’t even touched on the psychological aspects of sex without the safety and freedom of marriage…

Vulnerability means we have places that can be touched, wounded or pleased. As I’ve written in Ruby Slippers, “Vulnerability requires that we have places that are tender, places we can be affected, touched and even destroyed. A sparrow is more vulnerable than a rock. But because a sparrow is alive, it whistles, and soars, even though it can also be caught by a cat and clawed to death.” (p 112).

You can read more of her thoughts at her blog.

Internet Evangelism Day is one month away. What does your church have planned?

If you’re not familiar with Internet Evangelism Day, there’s still time to learn about it and get your church community involved. Each year on IE Day (this year, it falls on April 27), churches are encouraged to focus on a massive missions field that we interact with on a daily basis, but which often goes unmentioned by the church: the internet! It’s a day for churches to educate themselves about the evangelism opportunities that the internet makes possible, and to pray for the ongoing evangelism work taking place online every day, all around the world.

If you and/or your church aren’t overflowing with technical knowledge, don’t worry—the IE Day website has some excellent, user-friendly materials available for free download to help you learn about internet evangelism and share what you know with your church community:

• An explanation of why the internet is an excellent missions field, and a discussion of whether or not internet evangelism achieves results.
• Free resources and ideas to help you set up an IE Day service at your church—anything from a full church service focused on the topic to a small group discussion. And IE Day isn’t just for churches; all Christian groups and organizations are encouraged to take some time on or around IE Day to give some thought to the ways that the internet can be used to share the Gospel.
• Strategies for making effective evangelistic websites, and for improving your church website so that it actually speaks to non-Christians.

There’s much more to explore over at the IE Day site, so take some time to look around. There’s still a month to go, so you’ve got time to plan something (big or small) for your church, small group, or ministry. Mark down April 29 on your calendar!

Greg Wright of Past the Popcorn and Hollywood Jesus reports on a recent screening of the controversial film Expelled:

On the heels of last Thursday’s screening of Expelled in Minneapolis, at which God Delusion author Richard Dawkins sparred with associate producer Mark Mathis during the post-show Q&A, the Discovery Institute screened a 35mm print of the film for an invitation-only audience at a downtown Seattle theater just blocks away from the Institute’s offices.

Regarding the allegations of improprieties and irregularities that Dawkins and P.Z. Meyers have raised about both the Minneapolis screening and the film itself, Premise Media’s George Lang remarked that “we’re not responding to any of that because we don’t have to.”

As of this morning, though, word from both Motive and the Institute is that a press release about the Minneapolis screening is forthcoming from Premise presently.

The screening followed Lang’s remarks with fairly enthusiastic response from the decidedly partisan audience. Still, the reaction was noticeably calm and measured. The print itself was crisp, clean, and bright.

Hollywood Jesus has just launched SteinWatch, a daily blog tracking news related to Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

Have you ever thought about the function of a worship leader? Is it just to look cool? Maybe you’re the person behind the keyboard or guitar every week wondering what in the world you’re doing. This short reflection from studentsoul.org talks about The Importance of Being a Worship Leader. Here’s an excerpt:

Do you sometimes feel insignificant or inadequate as a worship leader? Worship has the potential to bring people before God, and worship leaders, like doorkeepers, assist by standing at the door and welcoming people into God’s presence.

I remember being on the worship team at a retreat and feeling depressed because I didn’t possess the same gifts as the others. When I shared my insecurity, one of my friends quoted Psalm 84:10: “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.”

It made me feel worse.

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Jump over to their blog to read more on this from Sundee Frazier.

Psalm 84:9-12

Behold our shield, O God,
And look upon the face of Your anointed.
For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand outside.
I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God
Than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
For the LORD God is a sun and shield;
The LORD gives grace and glory;
No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.
O LORD of hosts,
How blessed is the man who trusts in You!

Have questions about the Bible? If you’ve never stumbled across a Bible passage that you didn’t understand, you’re the exception—with the thousands of people, places, events, and teachings scattered throughout the Old and New Testaments, it can be a challenge to keep it all straight. While traditional Bible studies are a good way to shed light on tough Bible passages, tracking down a Bible study that answers your precise questions isn’t always easy.

That’s where the Lockman Foundation’s Study Bible Forum comes in. It’s an online, interactive Bible study site where you can ask questions about specific Bible verses—and receive answers from other forum users. You can also look at what questions other users are asking, and offer your own answers or insights. It’s a bit tricky to explain, so we’ve put together a short video introducing the Lockman Foundation and demonstrating how the Study Bible Forum works:

Study Bible Forum is much more focused than most internet forums—it’s a place for Bible study, not general chatting. That makes it a great (and completely free) resource to supplement your regular Bible reading and study. Sign up for an account and explore it for yourself!

Each week, Past the Popcorn offers a thorough look at the latest round of films opening on big screens.

Look no further than Ted Haggard or Jeremiah Wright. Evidence abounds that wearing the name of Christ exempts no one from fits of inexplicable behavior.

So it should come as no great surprise that one of the major releases this Holy weekend features a Christian who behaves very poorly—not because he’s a Christian, but because his basic character flaws are so profound that his weak grasp on Christianity isn’t enough to save him. David Gordon Green’s Snow Angels is “a drama that pulls no punches,” says Michael Brunk. “There are moments of levity, but overall the tone is fairly bleak… Personally, I found it riveting.”

(more…)

Michael Jacob’s highly entertaining feature documentary Audience of One has been on the mainstream festival circuit for more than a year now, garnering rave reviews and awards—and yet failing to snare a distribution deal. The film traces the efforts of San Francisco pastor Richard Gazowsky to fulfill his calling from God: to write, produce, and direct a $200 million sci-fi Bible epic called Gravity—the “Best Film Ever Made”—and thereby establish a film studio that will crank out forty-seven feature films a year.

Past the Popcorn Managing Editor screened the film on DVD recently, courtesy of the film’s producer, and found it to be engaging, witty, and cautionary.

In fact, he was so taken with the film that he felt others ought to know about it even though we still don’t have the chance to see it either in theaters or at home.

Thursday. Four days after excited crowds welcomed Jesus to Jerusalem. One day before the horror of the crucifixion.

This is the day that tradition calls Maundy Thursday—the day of the Last Supper, the day that Jesus would wash his disciples’ feet; the day of the betrayal. It marks the beginning of the end of Holy Week, the first act in the divine drama that unfolds over the following three days. On Maundy Thursday, we’re getting close to the joyous celebration of Easter—it’s like a tiny speck of light at the end of a tunnel. But the next few days make for a long, bleak tunnel.

Here are two items to help you think through today’s significance:

• The Already Not Yet blog has been posting a series of Easter devotionals that walk through the major scenes of Holy Week. Today they offer a glimpse of the Last Supper—which they note is probably the most awkward social gathering in all of history (how would you react if the guest of honor accused somebody at the table of planning to betray him?). If you’ve not been following their devotional series this week, it’s worth heading over and getting caught up.
• At Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, Jill Carattini focuses on one of the most curious events of Maundy Thursday: Jesus’s washing of the disciples’ feet. What is the significance of this act—and why would Jesus choose to do this, of all activities, on the very night he would be betrayed and condemned?

It’s Thursday, and at this point in the Easter drama, things are looking bleak. They’re going to look even worse tomorrow, on Good Friday, when all hope seems to die.

It’s a sobering thought. But as you ponder this, either at home or at a Maundy Thursday church service, don’t forget that Easter is coming.