Tommy Mann

Critics of Christianity often point to the existence of evil as proof that there cannot be a God. After all, if there is a God, as we say there is, and if that God is good, as He claims to be, then there should not be any evil in the world.  We all know there is evil in the world, so God is either too weak to prevent it, or too cruel to stop it. Such is the claim of the atheist.  But evil is not really a thing. It is comparable to coldness or darkness. Think about it: cold is not a thing. Something is cold when there is an absence of heat. The same is true of darkness, which is only the absence of light. Where no light is present, there is darkness. Evil is like that. It is simply the absence of good. And God made a good world. When He created the universe He called it "very good." In Genesis 1 we see the word good used seven times to describe God's creation. There was no evil because there was no absence of good.  That was all before sin. Two chapters after calling every...

  Over several chapters in the book of Genesis we see some ironic repetitions. There is an old saying that tells us, “What goes around comes around,” meaning that a person’s actions usually have consequences for that person. Consider how things “come full circle” for these people:   Abraham lies to Abimelech, telling him Sarah is his sister rather than his wife. Abraham’s son Isaac lies to (possibly the same) Abimelech, telling him Rebekah is his sister rather than his wife.    Jacob deceived his father Isaac in order to get a blessing. Jacob was deceived by his uncle Laban, who gave him Leah instead of Rachel.   Rachel sent Bilhah to Jacob to make Leah jealous. Leah sent Zilpah to Jacob to make Rachel jealous.    Jacob used a coat and a slaughtered animal to trick his father into believing he was Esau.  Jacob’s sons used a coat and a slaughtered animal to trick him into believing Joseph was dead.     There is so much childishness i...

  The devil is no fan of God’s Word, and he doesn’t want you to be one either. I believe he knows Scripture. He has been around for a long time, and he has probably read it from cover to cover. There is no way he is ignorant of the Bible. I believe he knows what it says, and he hates it.     He also knows that the more you read it and understand it, the better off you will be. Since the devil hates God yet can’t beat Him, he wants to hurt God by leading people to reject God. He does that by attacking the Bible.    Think about it: he was the first to question the Bible when he said to Eve, “Did God  really  say…?” (Genesis 3:1) He was the first to deny the Bible when he told her, “You will not surely die.” (Genesis 3:4)  And he was the first to take the Bible out of context when he told Jesus, “Throw yourself down, for He will command His angels concerning you, ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”...

Let’s be honest: the idea of a devil can seem childish, like believing in the tooth fairy. Is there actually a devil, or is that just an invention of religious people to explain away things they don’t like? In Rob Bell’s book   What is the Bible?  He makes the case that the Jews developed the concept of a devil while they were exiled in Babylon—quite late in their history—as a way of coping with a God that would allow bad things to happen.     They blamed the devil to let God off the hook.    Pointing out that the first mention of Satan is in 1 Chronicles 21, written after the exile, Bell states: “The idea of Satan didn't emerge until the exile, until the Hebrews had experienced extraordinary evil and oppression and had found themselves in a foreign land miles from home in the midst of great alienation and suffering…You can see how the idea of an opposing, evil, destructive, force/spirit/god/goddess emerged as people became more sophisticated in their think...

  The author of Hebrews might have made a mistake. In chapter 11 we read this praise of Sarah: “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.”   By faith? Since when was Sarah a hero of the faith? Her very name in this great faith chapter is surprising enough, but to credit her miraculous delivery of Isaac to her faith seems downright wrong. Don’t you remember when Sarah laughed at God?    Genesis 18:10-12 records the event. “The LORD said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?”    In the next verses the Lord asked Sarah why she laughed, and she denied laughing, but ...

Enoch is one of the most intriguing figures in history because he is one of only two people to never die. To add to that, there isn’t much of an explanation as to how he left earth. Briefly mentioned in the Bible’s first genealogy, we simply read, “Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him (Genesis 5:24).”     We get a few more details in the Hall of Faith, where in Hebrews 11:5 we see, “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.”   To be translated means to be “carried across,” as if God carried Enoch from this world to Paradise. All we know of Enoch is that he walked with God and he pleased God by faith. What does it mean to please God? I looked up the Greek word used in Hebrews 11:5 in three different Bible dictionaries, and there was no entry.    So I consulted six different commentaries on the book of Hebrews, and ...

  I love how the Bible ends the same way it begins. In the beginning a perfect God put perfect people in a perfect earth, where they could have perfect fellowship all the time. In the future there will be a restored earth. We commonly think of living up in heaven for eternity, but that heaven is temporary.     One day God will move heaven to earth, and all believers will have glorified bodies. There we will be perfect people in a perfect world, where we can enjoy perfect fellowship all the time.    In between all this perfection we see sin and the curse. Adam and Eve sinned, messing up the perfect situation. In Genesis 3:17 we read these words: “cursed is the ground because of you.” In Revelation 22:3 says, “And there shall be no more curse.”   Everything bad that has ever happened is because of the curse. Every tear you have ever cried, every disease you have ever endured, every tragedy you have ever faced—it all stems from the curse. The wages of sin trul...

In many places the New Testament tells us Jesus is sitting to the right of the Father. Matthew, Mark, and Luke each record an exchange Jesus had with Pontius Pilate shortly before the crucifixion; Pilate asked Jesus point blank if He was the Christ, and Jesus replied, “If I tell you, you will not believe, and if I ask you, you will not answer. But from now on the Son of Man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God (Luke 22:67-69).”   Many people know that the right hand was the seat of prominence in their culture. The seat to the right of the one throwing a banquet was reserved for the guest of honor, and it is why the disciples argued internally over who would sit at Jesus’ right side in the kingdom.    But the seat to the right also has another cool meaning. In ancient Jewish courts there was a scribe seated to the left and the right of the judge. Once his verdict was rendered one of the scribes would go to work. If the verdict was guilty, the scribe to the...

Sibling rivalries go back a long way; all the way back, in fact, to the first siblings. Cain and Abel are the first people that the Bible mentions being born (although they may well have had older siblings). In a fit of rage, Cain murdered his brother because of the different reactions the Lord had concerning their offerings.    Genesis 4:4-5 tell us, “And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.” The preceding verse says Cain brought an offering of the produce from his garden, while Abel brought one from his flock. The former was rejected while the latter was received. Rather than being upset with himself, Cain turned his anger towards his brother and committed the world’s first act of murder.    But what is missing from this passage is God’s instruction. When did God ever tell them what kind of offering to bring? Genesis never tells us. It isn’t until Exodus that God gave Moses the law and its requirements for b...

Do you see the glass as half empty or half full? Are you the kind of person who is prone to look on the bright side, or do you fixate on the shadows?    When it comes to offering heartaches, life can be quite generous. The longer we live in this fallen world, the more acquainted we become with suffering. Things do not go our way. We get dealt bad hands. No matter how we choose to phrase it, life can stink sometimes.    If we are not careful, we will see little reminders of our frustrations everywhere we look. Rather than looking at your car in the garage and being thankful that you own a vehicle (and the garage where it is housed), you think about how you cannot afford your neighbor’s sports car. God has blessed you with a mode of transportation, but the sight of it makes you angry. That is how you know your focus is in the wrong place.    In the Bible’s opening book we read about Joseph. Although his father loved him more than his ten older brothers, it wa...

One of the most powerful and feared Muslim rulers of the Roman era was Abdalrahman. According to the classic book The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, there is a monument in his honor that bears this inscription from his own mouth: “I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they amount to fourteen. O man! Place not thy confidence in this present world!” It is hard to imagine that such a wealthy and powerful ruler would say at the end of his life that he only had fourteen total days of happiness. From the outside looking in one might think the life of the rich and famous is all happy all the time, but this shocking confession blows that thought out of the water.  All people have a desire for happiness, and we certainly want more than fourteen days of it over the course of our lifetime. When we are experiencing moments of happiness we hope that it will last forever, but inevitably it ends. A child spending a day at Disney Worl...

The Bible has a lot to say about God forgetting and remembering, and if we do not understand these words properly, we may get the wrong idea about some things. The most notable passage about God remembering is associated with Noah when the floodwaters were subsiding. Genesis 8:1 says, “But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth…”    God remembered Noah? Had He forgotten about him before that? We don’t want to give ourselves the impression that Noah slipped God’s mind, and then one day God thought, “What was I supposed to do today? Oh, that’s right! Noah is on that ark, and I’d better do something to help him.” Remembering doesn’t have the absolute literal usage that implies having first forgotten; the idea is better thought of as God honoring His word. We also see God remembering Abraham (Genesis 19:29) and Rachel (Genesis 30:22), among others. Sometimes His remembering results in puni...

  It was Shark Week on Discovery Channel again, so you know what that means: cool shark footage, and evolution. We can’t watch TV anymore without being bombarded by references to billions of years or other Darwinian “facts.” If we aren’t careful we can play into their hands, hearing these comments from scientists so often that we just assume they are true and our well-meaning religious friends just don’t understand science. But if we learn how to think for ourselves, we can push back against matter-of-fact statements about Darwinism.    For example, while watching a special on sharks I heard the narrator make a strange comment of this shark’s digestive system. He said that sharks cannot digest fish, so they evolved a special system to allow them to do so. That was it. He said it like we know that is how it happened. We are supposed to think, “Wow, its awesome how it evolved itself the ability to eat,” and we chalk that up to survival of the fittest. If the shark didn’t ev...

  As a Bible believer, I make my decisions based on God’s Word. I believe the Bible is completely true and free from error. The Bible is inspired, it is living and active, it is profitable, and it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes.    Because of this biblical worldview, the Bible is the place to start when making decisions or when telling someone about the Lord. But some object to this on the grounds that, since unbelievers don’t believe the Bible, then we should use other sources to convince them when we are talking about God. I understand that sentiment, but I reject it.    I realize that it might sound like circular logic to tell someone that Jesus is the Son of God “because the Bible says so,” and they should believe the Bible because “the Bible says it is God’s Word.” But here are two things to consider. First, when making a defense of what we believe, we always start with that which holds the most authority. If you start with pers...