Apologetics or Apology

This morning as I began my annual read through scripture (somewhat ahead of calendar), just on the heels of a review of my 2021 book, "The Christ I Came To Know", I again felt the need for a sequel.

This one likely even more controversial, though not the goal, but rather, my attempt at laying the groundwork for a logical justification of my lifelong devotion to scripture, likely one day necessary for my Alpha Generation grandkids.

Low risk on my part, given the growing gap of understanding of scripture, if at all even seriously studied should decades pass, given the minimal contemporary demonstration of such powerful stories as captured in the 66 Book compilation.

I know, "revival is coming", now some 500 years overdue, though even mainline Pentecostals (my heritage) offer only a well watered-down down demonstrations of the gifts, and now over 125 years and multiple denominational divides since the Azusa Street revivals broke out in 1906.

I've even thought of a title: "Apologetics or Apology!"

Is scripture indeed what we Boomers were taught as children, the Word of God? Don't hear doubt, just a cry for demonstration.

Is scripture indeed what we Boomers were taught as children, the literal Word of God?

If so, how might I go about defending such, given the diminishing demonstration within American Christianity, surely affording much of the divisiveness experienced today. Let alone, the three near waring monotheistic religions all in part claiming kin to Abraham!

As usual in my devotional time, it seemed the Spirit began speaking, not defensibly, as if my thoughts were troubling, though my reader response might be such.

Rather, proving what seemed a rational 4-way test (God knew me as a former Rotarian), along with a challenge to write as if I were Moses.

The test:

1) Full acknowledgement of Moses human tendencies, even though hearing from the Spirit. I have struggled myself for 77 years (we religious folk call it sin).

2) Take into consideration his minimal knowledge of science, though his writings unknowingly frame a logical ecosystem (my decades of intrigue with both scripture and science is showing).

3) Note a trajectory for a Messiah that Genesis sets up, the Mosaic Law and Judaism later reframed by their own prophets, even the birthplace named for this redeemer Genesis would require Known by scholars as the "protoevaneglium" alluded to in verse 3:15.

4) Then, holding fast to my own life-long experience that this God of Moses, again like myself not always obedient, was entirely just and full of grace (the Christ I Came To Know).

My litmus test?