Terry Pruitt's Blog

Psalm 100 (ESV) His Steadfast Love Endures Forever A Psalm for giving thanks. 1Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth A 2Serve the LORD with gladness! B Come into his presence with singing! A 3Know that the LORD, he is God! A It is he who made us, B and we are his; {and not we ourselves} B we are his people, B and the sheep of his pasture. B 4Enter his gates with thanksgiving, A and his courts with praise! A Give thanks to him; B bless his name! B 5For the LORD is good; A his steadfast love endures forever, B and his faithfulness to all generations. B Pattern Analysis Hebrew poetry rhymes ideas rather than words. Sometimes scholars describe the patterns with letter. For instance, the ABB pattern means that there is the first line with an idea. The second line relates a new idea, but the third line is a repeat of the second idea, perhaps with a new perspective. Pattern analysis helps to understand the structure so that the reader can lift the meani...

The Jollyblogger points to a post by Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost called Divine Demarcation: Why Christians Should Discard 'Supernatural' . For some time I have thought that the definition of a miracle commonly used, that is "something done outside the confines of laws of science" is quite inadequate. God often uses means and controls and governs all things day in and day out. Then people place God's actions as supernatural and everything else is his grand wind up toy. That is not the picture we have in Scripture. God is guiding all things. Thanks Joe for your post.

A friend recently asked how do Christians know that Christ is sinless. Someone recently told this friend that Christ was fully God and fully man, so therefore Christ sinned since “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Of course in this case, Jesus is the exception. Often times when we say “all” we exclude in a natural manner those not in the category, for instance no one naturally take it that this means all things in the universe sin. We don't take it that all rocks are sinful. This would be a category that would be excluded, even though a rock can be used for sinful purposes such as raw material for making an idol or it could be used as a murder weapon. In these cases, still we do not hold the rock as sinning but merely an object used for the purpose of sin. On the other end of the spectrum, we don't count the angels in heaven nor God himself as sinful. So the all excludes many things. The problem comes in since we would naturally count t...

The CBS Numb3rs episode which aired last Friday night, called “ Atomic No. 33”*, made me start thinking about the use of the word “cult”. They used the word in Numb3rs to say that the FBI has a list of cults that they watch for violations of the law. I'm wondering if the FBI really does have such a list. If they do, should it really be called a cult list? It really does not matter if the organization claims if it is religious or not. It also does not matter if an organization is deemed by others to be religious or not. What does matter is if the group is breaking the law. However, if a law enforcement group such as the FBI does maintain a list of cults, then what is the criteria? I would suspect the criteria would be abnormal control of the members, abuse of members and/or illegal practices. What do I mean by abnormal control? I mean draconian methods of control such as pressuring members to giving up of all possession, requiring fasting and causing sleep deprivation....