The Blue Collar Scholar

As part of the class I am taking ("Modern America Since 1968") for the History Master's Degree program at Pittsburg State University, I reviewed the classic American movie The Graduate. I gave the movie an A-, and recommend that all American adults see the movie at least once. It is perhaps the quintessential Sixties film without any over-the-top '60s tropes.

When John wrote the Book of Revelation, it was obvious that he was heavily influenced by large swaths of the Old Testament. There are obvious parallels between the plagues in Exodus 7-12 and the judgments in Revelation. But the parallels are even greater when comparing Revelation to the Books of the Prophets (Isaiah through Malachi). In many ways, Revelation has much more in common with these books - in terms of tone, style, voice, imagery, etc. - than with the other books of the New Testament. So in this episode, we will take of brief survey of the Old Testament...

Greetings! It is time for our Fall 2024 class: The Book of Revelation! We are glad to have you join us in this first lecture of the Fall, where we are introduced the the concept of "revelation" as a means by which we know things and how we know God. We take a brief journey through the Scriptures and conclude with the Bible Project videos about the Book of Revelation. Please note: the audio of these videos is shared with you for educational purposes only. This audio is not being shared with the express permission of the Bible Project, or by...

When our church went into lockdown in early March 2020, we were all expecting the Quarantine to last a few weeks. Well, in the early Fall, we finally started live worship services again, roughly 6 months after our lockdown began. A surge in COVID-19 would lead us to do a second, shorter lockdown a few months later, but our first foray into pandemic quarantine came to an end with this Facebook Live Sunday School lesson about the Gospel and the path to personal salvation.

The Bible makes it clear that "all have sinned & fall short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23) The Ten Commandments are a great mirror to show the reader one's own need for salvation. Spoiler alert: In the next episode, we will see that Jesus Christ is the source of that salvation.

The previous three episodes built a brief apologetic case for the existence of God. Now comes the closing argument, where we present the evidence for Jesus Christ as the Messiah of the Jewish people, prophesied frequently in the Old Testament, as powerful evidence for the existence of God. This closing argument also helps us move past apologetics arguments that argue for a generic deity, and now we are clearly talking about the Triune YHWH: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And Jesus, as God the Son, shows us God's character and identity. NOTE: This episode was cut off abruptly by...

This episode makes the positive case that the existence of objective moral values and duties proves that there is a God. This episode also addresses the arguments against God's existence collectively known as the Problem of Evil or the Problem of Suffering.

This episode analyzes the Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God. Or, rather, the cosmological arguments, plural. There is the Kalam, the Leibnizian, the Argument from Contingency, etc. I invite you to dive into this episode as we discuss these arguments, as we advance our mission to lead someone to Christ who does not even have a concept of God.

Apologetics has nothing to do with apologizing, even though "apologetics" and "apology" share similar etymology. Rather, apologetics is the intellectual defense of the faith. Over the next few episodes, we will explore both apologetics and evangelism as we engage in a thought experiment: how to talk about God and Jesus Christ to someone who is such a tabula rasa that they don't even have a basic concept of God (such a space alien, or a member of a tribe that has been completely untouched by modern society). In this episode, I give a quick survey of some of the apologetic...

Most people want to imagine God as a Mr. Rogers-type, friendly deity. And as we all learned in Vacation Bible School, Jesus is your friend. However, He is also a righteous Judge. And our understanding of God is incomplete if we don't have a rigorous theology that includes understanding God as Judge. But our great Judge is fair, mercy, thorough, and consistent as Judge. In this sermon, we explore the idea of God as Judge, and hopefully we will see that God as our righteous Judge is a good thing.