Angry Comment Of The Week

I received a comment on my God's wrath and Noah’s ark post last week that qualifies as one of my top ten favorite comments critical of something I’ve written in a post I. Here’s the comment left almost a week ago followed by my response as I wrote it; spelling and grammer errors included (you folks do know that I don’t type… dontchya?):


There is no proof for Noah's Ark or the Bible. Why do you teach children these horrifying stories as fact? A baby drowning because of God's wrath and judgement. I was a Christan until recently. As an informed adult, I have finally come to question what I was brainwashed into believing. You'll probably delete or not post this, but I'm trying to make you think about what harm you're doing to these kids. They should not accept such wrath as love. Consider the fear you're instilling in them, for no reason than your own blind faith in a book you have no proof is more than a myth.

I replied:

Anonymous, I don’t delete comments that are on topic for the same reason I’m not afraid to use my real name, I’m not afraid of engaging a critic in a debate.

The account of Noah’s ark is not just about God’s wrath but one of his mercy as well. It is God’s love and mercy that we see as Noah and his family climb aboard the ark just as it is God’s love and mercy that we see as a child (or adult) rise out of the waters of holy Baptism and welcomed into the ark of Christ’s Church.

If you reread the post you’ll see that law or wrath is only half the post and I specifically said that I did NOT pile on with the wrath and the death. I did say that I spent the majority of the class talking about the Gospel and how God saves us through Christ.

The remarkable thing is that the kids I teach understand human nature better than most adults do. They understand that they are born sinful and that there needs to be a “fix” for that. There are a goodly number of adults that say we are all just good people trying to get by doing good works and changing the world. If that is the case, they really don’t need a Jesus for anything more than a life coach or cheerleader do they? Why is it that children and young adults have a better understanding of Scripture and the nature of sin than adults do?

I’m curious though, what information do you have (that I don’t) that the Bible is a myth? If you wish to go the science route (I do happen to like the) I would be happy to supply with oodles of information from real live archeologists that can at least substantiate the claims of the writers of Scripture so that you have a better understanding of the historicity of both the Old and New Testaments.

As an atheist for over 15 years one of the things that always bothered me was the science. There is a vast amount of archeological evidence and more and more things are being uncovered every day. Recently King David’s palace was discovered and the neat thing is that the majority of textual and historical critics chalked the story of David up to Jewish tribal myths. The site was found when an archeologist read her bible and noticed that David’s palce sat on top of a hill. Where did she dig? That’s right, on top of a hill in proximity to other sites noted in the Biblical accounts.

There are also historical records that are extra biblical written by folks who are not Christian that actually validate the very thing that they are writing against. I would be happy to discuss that as well… if you wish to have a conversation.
Posted by Frank Gillespie | 9:30 AM

For what it’s worth, the Ohio commenter found my site by searching Google with the words “gods wrath noah flood.” I can’t say I’m really surprised that I haven’t heard back from him or her yet.

The Shiniest Story Not Being Reported: King David’s Palace Found

Did you hear about the coolest archeology find in years? Did you hear about Dr. Eilat Mazar finding what is most likely King David’s palace in Jerusalem story? How did she find a palace that was buried in Jerusalem for a couple of thousand years? Heh, she read her Bible.

For a good long while the accounts recorded in Scripture have been treated as legends or fairy tales by many academics. From the story reporting Dr. Mazar’s find:

For a growing number of academics and intellectuals, King David and his united kingdom of Judah and Israel, which has served for 3,000 years as an integral symbol of the Jewish nation, is simply a piece of fiction. The biblical account of history has been dismissed as unreliable by a cadre of scholars, some of whom have an overtly political agenda, arguing that the traditional account was resurrected by the Zionists to justify dispossessing Palestinian Arabs. The most outspoken of these is Keith Whitelam of the Copenhagen School which promotes an agenda of "biblical minimalism," whose best-known work is The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History.

Even in Israel, this new school has found its voice. Israel Finkelstein, chairman of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology, began championing a theory several years ago that the biblical accounts of Jerusalem as the seat of a powerful, unified monarchy under the rule of David and Solomon are essentially false. The scientific methods for his assumptions, called a "lower dating" which essentially pushes archaeological evidence into a later century and thus erases all evidence of a Davidic monarchy, were laughed off by traditional archaeologists. But his book, The Bible Unearthed, wound up on the New York Times' best-seller list and he became the darling of a sympathetic media. He concluded that David and Solomon, if they existed at all, were merely "hill-country chieftains" and Jerusalem a poor, small tribal village. He claims that the myth of King David was the creation of a cult of priests trying to create for themselves a glorious history.

For years folks have been trying to locate David’s palace but have given up when it could not be located within what is the nine square acres of the original city. So how did Dr. Mazar know where to look when no one could seem to find it? More from the story:

Some biblical scholars gave up looking for the palace because, according to Mazar, they were looking in the wrong place. Scholars searched for remains of the palace within the walls of the ancient Jebusite city that David conquered and called Ir David (City of David). This city, while heavily fortified with both natural and man-made boundaries, was also very small, just nine acres in size. When no evidence of such a majestic palace as the Bible describes was found there, the next step was to claim that David's monarchy never really existed.

But Mazar always suspected that the palace was outside the original city, and cites the Bible to prove it. When the Philistines heard that David had been anointed, they went on the attack to apprehend him. This occurred after he conquered the Fortress of Zion, which was the actual nucleus of the city, and built his palace. The Bible says that David heard about it and "descended to the fortress," (2-Samuel 5:17), implying that he went down from his palace, which was higher up on the mountain than the citadel/city.

Mazar told Aish.com: "I always asked myself: Down from where? It must have been from his palace on top of the hill, outside the original Jebusite city."

Mazar says she was confident in her assessment of where the palace would be. What she discovered was a section of massive wall running about 100 feet from west to east along the length of the excavation (underneath what until this summer was the Ir David Visitors Center), and ending with a right-angle corner that turns south and implies a very large building.

One of the things I love about archeology is the fact that this science in particular is one of the Christian’s greatest friends in refuting the idea that a group of people, whether they lived two or even three thousand years ago, created a religion out of thin air that had no ties to real live history. The fact of the matter is that ancient Judaism and Christianity are the only religions that can stand up to the archaeologist shovel and still come out on top.

It just bothers me a bit that nobody seemed to want to cover this story. This find confirms a major religion’s place in history when the majority view of scientific community seems to be otherwise! It just seems like we’re living in Bizzaro world when the main stream media will report a grilled cheese sandwich that looks like Mary, the mother of God, up for auction on Ebay and overlooks important archaeological finds that validates the Biblical narrative from a scientific prospective and methodology. The next thing you know they’ll skip the finding a stegosaurus carved into Buddhist temples story! ;-)

One thing I told my Sunday school class recently is that Christians should never fear science. Yes, there are claims out there that seem to contradict Scripture but when the rubber hits the road or the shovel hits the Jerusalem hillside, my bet’s on God’s Holy Word coming out on top when it comes to truth. Yep, my money is on Scripture.