Zechariah and John The Baptist
In the Bible and the Quran, Zechariah is the father of John the Baptist. In Surah 19 we have the story of Luke 1 and it’s been radically changed. I don’t know the exact reason why the author of the Quran decided to make these changes but here are a few things that I noticed.
I listen to Andrew Klavan occasionally on his podcast. He’s part of Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire crew. He’s written many books but this book is about his faith journey from being a secular Jew who came to believe in Jesus Christ and is now an Evangelical.
Because my website is starting to get traction, I’m getting a lot of emails. One that I recently got was from a Canadian Catholic. I asked him if I could respond to the email in a post and he agreed so here is the email and my response.
Icon of St. Anne and the Blessed Virgin Mary
I had some dialogue with two people after my recent post on the second Council of Nicaea in 787 AD and the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. They both pointed out to me that this doesn’t refute the Eastern Orthodox position because they believe that the Virgin Mary was made spotless and Immaculate at the annunciation.
The Hagia Sophia in Iznik
There is a church in Turkey that I want to visit and that’s the Hagia Sophia. I’m not referring to the grand former Church in Istanbul(which I also want to visit) but one in the little town of Iznik. Iznik is the municipality once called Nicaea. The famous city where two Ecumenical councils were held; the first in 325 AD and the second in 787 AD. Like the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, this one is also now a Mosque/Museum.
I’m very careful about the arguments that I use when dealing with Islam or any other religion. There are arguments out there that will stump the average Muslim, but when used on a Muslim who knows their faith will be shredded. Enter Jay Smith’s coin argument.
Jagmeet Singh
We all know that the left hates all religion. We know that they hate Christianity more than any other religion but they hate other religions as well. However, they do have a use for them. They don’t want them gone; at least not yet. They have a role to play in the leftist war on our Lord Jesus Christ.
An Eastern Orthodox reader of this blog recently posted the following in the comments section on one of my previous posts:
I was recently discussing with a muslim gentleman on twitter, and he constantly stated that Mohammed was mentioned in the Book of the Prophet Haggai, specifically Chapter 2 verse 7. Have you come across this further example of rather peculiar Islamic exegesis?
Two garbage books
In my last post I reviewed Jon Sweeney’s biography about renegade cleric Fr. James Martin. It’s really not a book worth reading. I suppose that it’s the opposite of hagiography when you think about it. Pray for the lost soul.
There is a clip going around of the well known Evangelical Francis Chan saying that for the first 1,500 years of the Church, the unanimous belief was that the Eucharist was the body and blood of Jesus Christ. I want to say that I don’t agree that it was unanimous. It was about 95% but still a strong majority. When Protestants start to read the Church Fathers their jaw drops at the early view of the Eucharist. They clearly viewed it as the body and blood of Christ and Francis Chan sees that.