Help Save Ivan

At the software company I work for, one of our engineers has a very sick little boy. His email to use was as follows:

"My family got bad news - doctors said allogenic bone marrow transplantation is the only chance for my son Ivan. 8 months of heavy and expensive immune suppression brought some positive results so we hoped that recovering is just question of time. Ivan is very brave boy - not every human meets so much suffering during whole life, like Ivan already met in his 2,5 years. But long road is still in front of us to get full recover - we are ready to come it through. Ukrainian clinics have no technical possibility to do such complex operation, so we need 150-250K EUR for Israel or European or US clinic. The final decision will be made considering amount we able to find. Perhaps my family is able to get ~60% of that by selling the flat where parents leave and some other goods, but we still require external help."

We have set up a donation site for Ivan that you can contribute to. Donations are coming in, but we're still short of the goal. If you can donate any amount, please visit http://www.mysql.com/about/help-ivan.html and do.

Thanks!

First Sermons

I delivered my first three sermons these past few weeks and they're ready for download if you'd like to hear them. My first two messages were "The Six Steps to Spiritual Truth" Parts 1 and 2 (very challenging as I took an 8-week class and condensed it down to two, 35-minute messages!) and the third message was "If God, Why Evil?", where I discuss how to reconcile the all-good and all-powerful God described in the Bible with the reality of evil, pain, and suffering that we find all around us. The last message was very personal for me as I have definitely encountered pain and loss in my own life and it took time for me to come to terms - both intellectually and emotionally - with it all. If you've been touched by suffering and/or evil, you may benefit from this last message.

You can find the first two messages here and the last message here.

Bart Ehrman's Still At It

Dr. Bart Ehrman (a Princeton educated Ph.D.) wrote a book a while back entitled "Misquoting Jesus - The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why" where he casts great doubt on the inerrancy and the historicity of the New Testament. Dr. Ehrman is still on the debate circuit passionately defending his views (see his debate with Mike Licona here), but unfortunately for Dr. Ehrman, passion is not a test for truth. A number of New Testament scholars have provided sound refutations to his views, but one of my favorites looks to not be prevalent enough on the Web so I decided to post it on my web site. Dr. Thomas Howe's scholarly response is excellent and I would recommend it to everyone - you can find it here.