On October 18th, the nation’s capital took the first step towards physician-assisted suicide. The District of Columbia City Council voted to place the measure on its November agenda.

The so-called Death With Dignity Act would permit a person with a terminal diagnosis of six or fewer months as confirmed by two doctors to obtain a lethal dose of drugs, which they would administer to themselves.

This terrible idea still faces some formidable obstacles. Chief among them are the misgivings of Washington’s large African-American community. As the Washington Post recently reported, “In national surveys, African Americans have consistently stood against assisted suicide.”

According to a 2013 Pew survey, while only 42 percent of American whites opposed physician-assisted suicide, 65 percent of African Americans and Latinos did.

By way of underscoring the gap between the races on this issue, since Oregon legalized physician-assisted suicide in 1997, only one African-American has availed himself of its provisions. That’s one out of 991 people.

The obvious question is: Why?

One readily apparent reason is religion. One African American woman quoted in the piece, who is fighting cancer herself, spoke for many District residents when she told the Post that “We believe in God. That’s not even a question. I’m fighting for my life, and my God is going to show me how.”

But there’s another reason: a distrust of the medical system. As Patricia King of Georgetown Law School put it, “Historically, African Americans have not had a lot of control over their bodies, and I don’t think offering them assisted suicide is going to make them feel more autonomous.”

Continue reading BreakPoint –  Not Buying ‘Death with Dignity’: African Americans and Assisted Suicide →

What’s courageous church leadership look like these days? It looks like Todd Wagner, pastor of Watermark Community Church in Dallas, Texas.

Recently, Watermark removed a man caught in sexual sin from its membership rolls. Watermark is one of those rare churches these days that practices church discipline. After the man’s Facebook post titled, “Watermark Church Dismissed Me for Being Gay,” was picked up by the Dallas Morning News, the church is, no surprise, being accused of religious intolerance. A Morning News columnist wrote an opinion piece titled “Watermark megachurch banned a gay man that it didn’t deserve to have as a member.”

What most of the media coverage neglects to tell is that the decision to remove the man was neither arbitrary nor sudden. After the man decided to actively pursue a homosexual relationship over a year ago, friends and church leaders began meeting with him to understand how to better love and help him.

But, as Pastor Wagner wrote, “this friend made clear to us that he no longer believed same-sex sexual activity was inappropriate for a follower of Jesus Christ and no longer desired to turn from it. Like any member whose beliefs move away from the core commitments, biblical convictions, and values of Watermark, it became appropriate to formally acknowledge his desire to not pursue faithfulness to Christ with us.”

And so the church did the only logical thing—it removed him from its membership rolls. But now, they are made the villain of the story for holding members accountable to live by Christian teaching on human sexuality. At the risk of repeating what I said about the recent story about InterVarsity, “News Flash: evangelicals have evangelical beliefs.”

But I also want to say this: the Church needs this kind of countercultural courage that Watermark leadership is demonstrating—not only by this story, but by practicing church discipline in the first place! That’s so rare.

The Protestant Reformers listed three marks of a true church—preaching the gospel, administering the sacraments rightly, and church discipline. Back in the 1800s, according to Jonathan Leeman, author of “Church Discipline: How the Church Protects the Name of Jesus,” Baptist churches in America removed about 2 percent of their members per year—and yet they grew faster than the overall growth in the population.

Continue reading BreakPoint – A Call to Church Discipline: The Courage of Watermark Church` →

In the third presidential debate on Wednesday night, Hillary Clinton said women should be able to end the lives of their preborn babies right up until the very moment of birth, long after a child is viable outside the womb.

In a recent Marist poll reported by the Wall Street Journal, eighty percent of Americans and some sixty-percent of self-described pro-choicers oppose this extreme view. Instead, they support restricting abortion to the first trimester of pregnancy.

Just more evidence that the landscape is changing. Not only is Clinton’s extreme view on abortion unpopular—it’s outdated. A 2015 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute found that millennials are more likely than their parents to say that abortion ought to be legal only in certain stages and certain circumstances. According to another poll by Students for Life of America, just 17 percent of millennials agree with the Democratic presidential nominee that abortion should be legal right up until birth.

All of this led Ruth Graham to conclude in Slate that the pro-life movement is in the midst of a transition. But it’s not just in the sense that it’s getting younger. It’s also attracting the non-religious.

Not that long ago, being pro-life meant you were almost certainly a Catholic or evangelical. But now, the belief that killing unborn babies is wrong is transcending religious and even political boundaries.

Take Aimee Murphey, the 27-year-old founder of Pittsburgh’s Life Matters Journal. Aimee was raped by an ex-boyfriend who pressured her to get an abortion when she thought she was pregnant. That was when it clicked, Aimee says. “I could not use violence to get what I wanted in life. I realized that if I were to get an abortion, I would just be passing oppression on to a child.”

Her appeal, like that of a growing group of young pro-lifers who aren’t religious, is rooted in human rights, and the belief that our nation has committed an unspeakable atrocity in the name of convenience.

Kelly Hazzard, founder of the group Secular Pro-Life, says the non-religious argument against abortion has the potential to bring people on board who would have never otherwise taken the message of life seriously.

Continue reading BreakPoint –  Secular, Feminist, and Pro-Life: The Message Goes Mainstream →

Six years ago, Christian filmmaker Laura Waters Hinson made a gripping, groundbreaking documentary called “As We Forgive,” which explored how the African nation of Rwanda dared to seek reconciliation between the perpetrators and victims of genocide.

Now Hinson has gone back to Rwanda to make a new film, one that provides an update on the country’s progress since that terrible time. This film, “Mama Rwanda,” focuses on a specific aspect of that progress: how women, through their entrepreneurial efforts, are bringing healing and restoration to Rwanda.

“Mama Rwanda” concentrates on two women in particular, Drocella and Christine. Both of them are widowed mothers who suffered great losses during the genocide. (Drocella tells us that her first husband was a killer and her second husband was a victim.) Both Drocella and Christine put everything they have into starting businesses to support their children and help their neighbors and their homeland.

As Christine tells us, “A Rwandan woman has a great responsibility to develop our country.” It is simply the way things are: Because of the genocide, the country’s population is now 70 percent female. Hanson has written, “I wanted to make a documentary that would break down stereotypes of these women, to show the complexity of their lives, and to convey their personal struggles to love their children well while also becoming entrepreneurs.”

In the agricultural cooperative that Drocella started, perpetrators and persecuted work side by side. One worker, Ernestine, says, “You develop patience because you cannot keep that anger in your heart, otherwise you would not be able to live next to them.” The very survival of many of these people requires reconciliation and cooperation. Many of them, in the most practical of ways, are living out their faith in the God of healing and forgiveness.

Continue reading BreakPoint –’Mama Rwanda’: How Women Entrepreneurs are Restoring Their Country →

Over the past decade or more, we’ve talked on BreakPoint about China’s looming fertility crisis. This, of course, is the result of the Communist Party instituting what became known as the “one-child policy” back in 1979.

With very few exceptions, Chinese couples were permitted to have only one child. The policy, in the words of the Washington Post, “led to untold millions of forced abortions, sterilizations and horrific abuses of power.”

It also led to a huge demographic problem. As birthrates plummeted, there were fewer and fewer workers, and China’s overall population aged rapidly. China, instead of growing rich and then getting old, like European nations and Japan, will grow old long before it has a chance to get rich.

This has the Communist Party very worried. So worried that they’ve done an about face. They not only dropped the “one-child policy,” they’ve tried to convince Chinese couples that having two kids is their patriotic and political duty.

Clumsy party propaganda is telling people to “Train your body, build up strength, get ready for the second baby!” Another slogan read “Get to sleep early, stop playing cards, work hard to produce a child!”

The response? Yawns and outrage. You see, after 35 years of being told “one child is enough,” people have come to believe it. As a recent article in the Washington Post put it, “Having only one has become ingrained in Chinese culture and society, and people no longer believe the party should be telling them what to do in the bedroom.”

Actually, that’s an understatement. When officials in Hubei province, east of Shanghai, sent a letter to party members urging them to implement the new “two-child policy,” the result was “outrage” on Chinese social media.

One person wrote “You can’t just make people have kids when you want them to, or stop when you tell them, we are humans not pigs!” Even state-run media called the letter “ridiculous and illegal.”

Continue reading BreakPoint –  Chinese Government Urges People to Make Babies: Chinese People Tell Government to Mind Its Own Business →

In early October, Joshua Wong, a 20-year-old student from Hong Kong, flew to Thailand to meet with fellow students in that country. No sooner had he gotten off the plane than he was detained by Thai officials, who were eager to curry Beijing’s favor, and then deported back to Hong Kong.

It’s not the first time something like this has happened to Wong. As the South China Morning Post put it, Wong “has a habit of visiting countries that deny him entry.”

What makes Wong such a persona non grata? Simply put, he’s a Christian who’s willing to stand up for freedom—and that makes the Chinese communist government in Beijing very nervous.

To understand why, a short history lesson is in order. When Great Britain ceded Hong Kong back to China in 1997, the agreement stated that the principle dubbed “One Country, Two Systems” would govern relations between Hong Kong and mainland China for the next 50 years.

Under this principle, Hong Kong’s domestic affairs would be governed by the systems it inherited from Britain. This included freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and, eventually, free elections.

This kind of autonomy made Hong Kong a free, prosperous, and democratic example for the rest of China to compare its lot to, and the Communist Party knew it. Thus, less than 20 years into the agreed-upon 50 years, China began to try and undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy by attempting to “pre-screen” candidates in Hong Kong’s upcoming elections.

In response, hundreds of thousands of students, in what came to be known as the “Umbrella Movement” because of the use of umbrellas against the tear gas canisters used by police, shut down large parts of the city for the better part of three months.

And that brings me back to Joshua Wong. As the Wall Street Journal reported, while the protests were about democracy there was “an undercurrent of another, much older tension: Between Christianity and Communist China.”

Continue reading BreakPoint – Christians and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement: Defying Tyranny →

Recently on BreakPoint, we told you how Baptist ethicist David Gushee proclaimed there was no more middle ground on LGBT issues. He’s right. You either approve of so-called sexually progressive ideas or you don’t—and if you don’t, you’ve placed yourself in the bigoted, wrong-side-of-history category.

That’s exactly what happened with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Earlier this month, IV informed employees that they were expected to align with traditional Christian teaching on marriage and human sexuality. If they couldn’t, they were asked to come forward.

TIME magazine reported on the announcement this way. “One of the largest evangelical organizations on college campuses nationwide “has told its 1,300 staff members they will be fired if they personally support gay marriage or otherwise disagree with its newly detailed positions on sexuality starting on November 11.” They called it a “theological purge.”

But they completely misreported the story.

This was no out-of-nowhere,  drop-the-bomb announcement. IV conducted a four-year study of human sexuality and the Bible to write a 20 page position paper, that wasn’t limited to beliefs about homosexuality or same-sex marriage. They then initiated an 18-month process of communicating their positions to staff, which was simply a clarified version of what they’d always held on these issues. “The goal,” according to IV, “was to clarify our position while also providing ample time for those whose convictions differed to seek out better-fitting ministry opportunities.”

Staff were given the paper in March 2015, not last week. And they offered to help those who didn’t align with their convictions with their transition to different employment.

In other words, IV affirmed what Christians have always believed about sexuality until culturally yesterday. As expected, some staff—though as I understand it, very few—didn’t align with the new policy. Some were upset, which is to be expected. But I don’t know a single organization, much less a Christian organization, that doesn’t expect employees to align with their values.

Continue reading BreakPoint –  InterVarsity Upholds Christian Teaching, and Many Don’t Like It →

After talking this week on BreakPoint about the awful doctor-assisted suicide bill in Colorado, we’d planned to cover the complete misrepresentation of Intervarsity by both Time magazine and progressive post-evangelicals. But that will have to wait.

The headlines were stolen this week by a video of terrible comments made by Donald Trump in 2005. It has further divided the American people, and it has further divided Christians. In just the last week I’ve been accused of being both pro-Trump and “a tool of the progressive agenda.” Even so, I’m going to wade into these contentious waters today.

It should go without saying that the media are not unbiased. They’ve been looking for a silver bullet to end Mr. Trump’s campaign, and they think they’ve found it. So they’ve swarmed. But that’s no excuse. Mr. Trump handed them the ammunition.

His comments from 2005 are indefensible and disgusting. That’s why it’s so disheartening to hear Christians, including some Christian leaders, dismiss them. “His words were from eleven years ago,” some say. That might have mattered if he were, at the time, a teenager addicted to today’s hip hop music. But he wasn’t. He was 60.

“Others have done worse,” others say. But that’s not a moral argument, and it doesn’t make Trump’s words any less repugnant.

Trump himself, after an initial apology, has repeatedly dismissed his own comments as “locker room talk.” In doing so, he’s only dismissed his own apology.

Continue reading BreakPoint –  ‘Locker Room Talk’ is No Excuse: Christians, Trump, and the Election →

The late Chuck Colson was known for many things: his role in the Watergate scandal, his subsequent conversion to Christ; his work with prisoners around the world, and his efforts in promoting a Christian worldview.

But to his closest associates, Chuck was also known for his sense of humor. He loved practical jokes, and as odd as this sounds, jokes about bathroom mishaps—the kind of potty humor made famous by humorist Dave Barry.

So for this and many other reasons, I really wish Chuck were around to deliver this particular commentary.

You see, archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority, digging in the remains of what was once the biblical city of Tel Lachish, made a startling discovery that confirmed the biblical text in a most startling way: They found an ancient toilet.

To fully appreciate the significance of the find, we need to go back in time to the eighth century before Christ. King Hezekiah, one of only a handful of post-Davidic kings that earns the Bible’s seal of approval, initiated series of reforms aimed at eradicating syncretism in Judah.

At the heart of these reform efforts was eliminating what the Bible called “high places” or bamot in Hebrew. These were cultic sites containing an altar, usually located, as the English name suggests, on a hill or a ridge.

While ostensibly dedicated to the worship of YHWH, over time the sites, and the worship that occurred at them, became syncretistic: pagan deities were honored alongside YHWH. Thus we are told that asherim, or “Asherah Poles,” cultic objects dedicated to the worship of the Canaanite goddess of fertility, were erected at these sites.

Hezekiah was commended because “He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles.”

And that brings me back to the discovery at Tel Lachish. Archaeologists found a “large room that appears to have been a shrine. The room contained two four-horned altars, whose horns had been intentionally damaged.” Excavation leader Sa’ar Ganor “believes that the destroyed altars corroborate biblical references to King Hezekiah’s reforms: his efforts to centralize worship in Jerusalem and abolish it elsewhere.”

Continue reading BreakPoint – No Pooh-Poohing Biblical History: The Lachish Latrine →

Yesterday on BreakPoint, I told you about the dangers of physician-assisted suicide laws: How they inevitably turn the “right to die” into the “duty to die,” how these laws lead to the deaths of non-terminally ill patients, and how they threaten the lives of the disabled and the most vulnerable among us.

We must be prepared to talk about these deadly laws with friends and neighbors and persuade them to oppose physician-assisted suicide.

A great place to start is to focus on the definition of words, especially “dignity” and “compassion.” These words are used to great effect by pro-euthanasia forces, but they’ve been redefined. “Dignity” went from meaning worthy of honor and respect to meaning little more than fully affirming one’s lifestyle choices.

But now let’s look at the word “choice.” In the Netherlands last spring, doctors euthanized a young sexual assault victim who suffered from depression and anorexia. Did she “choose” to die, or did her mental state prevent her from choosing to live? According to LifeNews.com, in Oregon, only 5.3 percent of those who request suicide are referred for a psychiatric evaluation—“despite studies showing prevalence of depression in such patients.” In fact, most patients in Oregon who were assisted in their suicide did not list physical pain as the primary reason. A far greater number listed depression instead.

Thus it should alarm all of us that Colorado’s Proposition 106 does not require psychiatric evaluation for patients requesting suicide.

How is it compassionate, we should ask, to refuse to help those whose depression is crippling their ability to face severe physical problems?

Continue reading BreakPoint – How to Help Others Say ‘No’ to Assisted Suicide →

In a recent article at National Review Online, George Weigel tells a chilling story about just how far the culture of death has advanced in some parts of the West.

Three elderly parishioners at the Canadian church he attends during the summer were diagnosed with cancer. Now, that’s bad enough. But what followed was even worse. The first thing they were asked after being told their diagnosis was, “Do you wish to be euthanized?”

While this story should upset us, it shouldn’t shock us. Despite all the promises made by supporters of physician-assisted suicide, the so-called “safeguards” against pressuring vulnerable people to end their lives “have proved to be inadequate and have often been watered down or eliminated over time.”

Or, as Belgian law professor Étienne Montero observed, “What is presented at first as a right [to die] is going to become a kind of obligation.”

Thus, in fourteen years Belgium went from euthanizing terminally-ill adults, to killing chronically-ill adults, to offing adults who had lost their will to live, to finally disposing of children.

As Weigel’s story suggests, Canada seems literally hell-bent on catching up with Belgium in this regard. Physician-assisted suicide has only been legal there since this spring and it has already has transformed the practice of medicine in Canada. And if some Canadian philosophers get their way, a willingness to kill your patients will be a prerequisite for practicing medicine in the Great White North.

Now it’s Colorado’s turn to play waiting room Russian Roulette. This November my fellow Coloradans and I will vote on Proposition 106, also known by its Orwellian title: “The End of Life Options Act.”

The supporters of the act, which is modeled on California’s recent legislation of the same name, assure voters that a vote for physician-assisted suicide is a vote for “compassion.” They assure us that it will remain limited to cases of extreme suffering.

But as Weigel points out, the language of the proposed act is “duplicitous.” It characterizes killing someone as “palliative care.” And it defines an “adult” as anyone 18 or older, which leads to the absurdity of not being old enough to drink but old enough to request assistance in killing yourself.

Continue reading BreakPoint –  A Suicidal Ballot in Colorado: Will the Right to Die Become a Duty to Die? →

Thank heavens that Columbus was able to convince the world that the earth was round. Except, as Chuck Colson explains in this classic BreakPoint commentary, Columbus didn’t have to convince anyone.

For well over a century and a half, secular intellectuals have promulgated the myth that when it came to understanding the natural world, medieval and earlier Christians were superstitious simpletons. As we mark Columbus Day today, sit back and listen to Chuck Colson as he debunks that pernicious fairy tale.  Here’s Chuck.

To paraphrase the opening of a popular ESPN show, these four things everyone knows are true: Before Columbus’s first voyage, people thought the world was flat. When Copernicus wrote that the Earth revolved around the Sun, his conclusions came out of nowhere. Three, the “scientific revolution” of the seventeenth century invented science as we know it. And four, false beliefs and impediments to science are Christianity’s fault.

There’s just one problem: All four statements are false.

As Rodney Stark writes in his new book, “For the Glory of God,” “every educated person” of Columbus’s time, especially Christian clergy, “knew the earth was round.” More than 800 years before Columbus’s voyage, Bede, the church historian, taught this, as did Hildegard of Bingen and Thomas Aquinas. The title of the most popular medieval text on astronomy was Sphere, not exactly what you would call a book that said the earth was flat.

As for Copernicus’s sudden flash of insight, Stark quotes the eminent historian L. Bernard Cohen, who called that idea “an invention of later historians.” Copernicus “was taught the essential fundamentals leading to his model by his Scholastic professors”—that is, Christian scholars.

That model was “developed gradually by a succession of . . . Scholastic scientists over the previous two centuries.” Building upon their work on orbital mechanics, Copernicus added the “implicit next step.”

Thus, the idea that science was invented in the seventeenth century, “when a weakened Christianity could no longer prevent it,” as it is said, is false. Long before the famed physicist Isaac Newton, clergy like John of Sacrobosco, the author of Sphere, were doing what can be only called science. The Scholastics—Christians—not the Enlightenment, invented modern science.

Continue reading BreakPoint – Columbus and the Rise of Science: We’ve Been Lied To →

I just saw a commercial during a football game that inspired me, and then irked me. A young black girl is shown growing up in the Civil Rights era, watching the achievements of African American athletes, political activists, and religious leaders. Believing she can become anything if she sets her mind to it, she fights for acceptance in financial firms, eventually graduates with an MBA, and becomes a Wall Street executive. “You may trod me in the very dirt,” she says, “but still, like dust, I rise.”

It’s a great message. But halfway through this ad for the University of Phoenix, alumna Gail Marquis is shown marching hand-in-hand with LGBT activists and waving a rainbow flag. The implication is crystal clear: The fight of African-Americans for equal rights is the same one LGBT Americans are fighting today.

Unbelievably, this conflation between skin color and sexual orientation surfaced during the recent unrest in Charlotte, North Carolina. In an interview with historian Brenda Tindal, Public Radio International’s John Hockenberry suggested that protesters and rioters who took to the street following the police shooting of Lamont Scott were actually angry about—get this—the new transgender bathroom law! Are you kidding me?

This kind of race-exploitation has infected even the highest levels of government. Back in May, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch filed a lawsuit against North Carolina to force accommodation on the transgender bathroom issue. “It was not so very long ago,” she then lectured the nation, “that states, including North Carolina, had other signs above restrooms, water fountains and public accommodations, keeping people out based on a distinction without a difference.”

It’s a line that has won the LGBT movement virtually endless mileage. Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of today’s equivalent of the Civil Rights struggle, or to be viewed like racists by future generations.

But the fact remains, the two issues are just not the same. And black leaders—many of whom fought for the right to be treated as equal human beings decades ago—keep telling us this.

Writing at the Charlotte Observer last summer, Clarence Henderson, the chairman of the North Carolina Martin Luther King, Jr., Commission, called it “insulting to liken African Americans’ continuing struggle for equality” to the LGBT movement.

Continue reading BreakPoint – LGBT is Not a Color: Stop Hijacking Civil Rights →

Recently, US Secretary of Education John King, while speaking at a press conference, remarked that although some homeschool situations are just fine, in general, “Students who are homeschooled are not getting the kind of the rapid instructional experience they would get in school.”

King also said that part of the school experience is learning how to deal with and build relationships with peers and teachers—implying that homeschoolers don’t get this kind of experience.

Now, before I go on, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll tell you that my wife and I homeschool our three daughters. To be specific, we’re part of a community of homeschooling families with a hybrid model that shares resources and that journeys together. We think our daughters are receiving a first-rate education. I say that not just so you know I’ve got a horse in the race, but because my wife and I have personal experience. We know this world. We live in it.

But back to the Secretary’s comments. It’s not clear what he meant by “rapid instructional experience,” but that can mean a sort of checklist approach—plowing through the material, cramming for standardized tests, and hitting every mandated topic. In that sense, he’s right. Many homeschoolers don’t get “rapid instruction” of this sort, but that’s not really education in the first place.

But what has me most concerned about the Secretary’s remarks is the classic “we know better than you” attitude so endemic among governmental elites—whether it’s telling us what kind of healthcare we need, or how to teach our young ones about the most intimate of human relations.

Let me be clear: The federal government’s ever-growing reach into our children’s education is a bi-partisan effort. The Department of Education was established by Jimmy Carter. George W. Bush signed the disastrous “No Child Left Behind” initiative into law. And Common Core, which many argue will leave kids unprepared for college, has both Republican and Democratic support.

Continue reading BreakPoint – Homeschooling, the Feds, and You: Who Knows Best? →

We all know about the dire circumstances faced by Christians in the Islamic world. Even the White House has finally called what’s happening to Christians in Iraq and Syria “genocide.”

But there’s another place where religious freedom is under assault: Russia.

This is a surprise to some. After all, post-Soviet Russia takes pride in its Christian heritage. Its president, Vladimir Putin, has positioned himself as a champion of Russian Orthodoxy. His stance on traditional marriage and opposition to homosexual activists has won him praise and admiration from many conservative Christians.

But just ask Donald Ossewaarde if he thinks that Putin and Putin’s Russia are champions of religious freedom. Ossewaarde, a Baptist missionary from the United States, was one of the first people to run afoul of the recently passed “Yarovaya Law.”

The Yarovaya Law, which purports to be a counter-terrorism and public safety measure, prohibits “religious gatherings in unregistered places,” restricts promoting religion on the internet, and makes it easier for Russian officials to deny entry into and departure from the country.

And since the Yarovaya Law places severe restrictions on evangelization (or “proselytizing” as the Russian government sees it), it’s not hard to see how a Baptist missionary might get into trouble.

The law defines “missionary work” as “the activity of a religious association, aimed at disseminating information about its beliefs among people who are not participants (members, followers) in that religious association, with the purpose of involving these people as participants (members, followers).”

Activity that falls under this definition may “only be performed ‘without hindrance’ at [designated] churches and other religious sites . . . [and it is] expressly forbidden to perform missionary activities in private residences.”

Continue reading BreakPoint – Russia: Christians Face Increasing Persecution →

Is the Bible we read today the same Bible that was written millennia ago by prophets and apostles? That was a question that consumed scholars for generations. You see, prior to 1947, the earliest manuscript copies of the Old Testament were from the Middle Ages. Critics seized on this as a major hole in the Bible’s reliability. How, they asked, could we trust a text that had been copied hundreds of times in the thousands of years since its authors wrote it? Surely it had suffered corruption through all those duplications.

But seventy years ago, a Bedouin shepherd boy shattered those doubts when he threw a rock into a cave, breaking some clay pots containing the Dead Sea Scrolls. These ancient manuscripts of the Old Testament were near matches to the medieval text, confirming our modern Bible’s antiquity and pushing the earliest known evidence for the Hebrew Scriptures back a millennium.

Now, thanks to another discovery on the shores of the Dead Sea, and an exciting technological breakthrough, that date has moved back even further.

This story begins in 1970, when archaeologists at En-Gedi found a burnt scroll that was little more than a lump of charcoal. A fire in 600 AD had destroyed the synagogue there, leaving its ancient documents so brittle that a touch would cause them to disintegrate. Unable to read the scroll, curators merely preserved it, hoping that someday, the technology necessary to peek at its contents would be developed.

Well, that day has arrived. The New York Times reports that computer scientists at the University of Kentucky partnered with biblical scholars in Jerusalem to pioneer a technique for “unfurling” this badly-damaged scroll. Thanks to traces of metal in the ancient ink and a new method for reconstructing 3-D surfaces, known as “volume cartography,” these scientists were able to read the charred parchment, without ever opening it.

The results were stunning. Dr. Michael Segal of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem marveled: “Much of the text is as readable, or close to as readable as actual unharmed Dead Sea Scrolls.”

That text is the first two chapters of Leviticus—ironically, a set of instructions for burnt offerings to the Lord. But what’s really amazing is that the fragment is identical—letter for letter—to the Masoretic text that forms the basis of modern Old Testament translations.

Continue reading BreakPoint –  The Bible Shows Its Age: Unfurling the Burnt Scroll →