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AR 28:3 - How grace hath brought us "safe thus far"

In this issue:

APOLOGETICS - Lifting the veil to retell the tale

Apologia Report 28:3 (1,600)
January 18, 2023

APOLOGETICS

To celebrate the new year, Apologia Report's 28th, I'd like to lift the veil and praise God for the tale of Apologia's growth. This issue of AR - number 1,600! - looks back at how the Lord brought us to this point in our history.

In the early 1980s God called me to quit my engineering job in Michigan so that Pam and I could attend a seminary in California affiliated with Campus Crusade for Christ. This seminary required us to raise support so that we could intern without compensation at various organizations as part of that three-year experience. In less than three months, God dramatically raised the necessary prayer and financial support, moved us across the country at no cost, and prepared us to experience theological education in the context of its practical application.

God has supplied our income ever since. He's continued to give us new friends who have joined our support team, praying for us all along the way. I can't imagine knowing Jesus as well as I do now if it were any different.

Before seminary I'd come to greatly respect the various apologists that I'd been following, never dreaming that I might one day work with them. By the time I graduated, Pam and I had enjoyed a summer internship at Spiritual Counterfeits Project in Berkeley. There we met two men from whom I've learned much and who are fans of Apologia Report all these years later: SCP founder, Brooks Alexander, and Dean Halverson (who it seems has been serving with International Students, Inc. in assorted capacities ever since).

With seminary completed, I joined the Christian Research Institute in southern California. When I arrived there was an opportunity for someone to organize and communicate the value of the new materials flowing into the ministry for the research team. On July 24, 1985 the first of what would become many hundreds of apologetics research briefings was released: the "FYI." At first these were only seen by CRI staff. Paul Carden was working as CRI's lone missionary in Brazil and our first in-person meeting was far in the future. The fruit of my labors arrived at his São Paulo office by surface mail well after it was produced in America. (I wish I could have been a bug on the wall to watch him reading them.) He was understandably not impressed with my editing, but it seems he saw promise.)

Before long, other "working apologists," both far and near, wanted access to these strategic briefings. About the same time, the online universe was taking shape. In 1989 I was invited to write a feature article for the journal published by the seminary from which I'd graduated. My topic: the current state of apologetics resources online. That paper www.bit.ly/3wDduFR influenced me to include online resource details in the semi-weekly apologetics briefings I produced for CRI.

In 1995 the Lord led Pam and me to launch Apologia. I was trusting Him to make my briefings more valuable to CRI and to other apologetics workers as a result - how many "others" I literally had no idea. Since then we haven't focused on the number of subscribers as much as the quality of the service He's called us to supply. (I'm often reminded that any free digital resource has an audience size that's virtually impossible to calculate.)

During Apologia's early years, fellow founding board members Paul Carden and Ron Rhodes would take precious time from their other commitments to meet with me in person for joint Apologia Report editing sessions. Ron has since moved to Texas and Apologia is now in Colorado. Paul has hung in there editing AR with me ever since. As one who truly believes that "discernment depends on data," he has certainly been a "contributing" editor for AR enriching the publication's content quantity, diversity, quality, and consistency ever since.

In the early 2000s, to build my on-the-job skill-set, God had me return to grad school while still cranking out AR each week. In 2004, I completed a degree with the title "Master of ... Information Science." (If there's ANYTHING in the 21st century that nobody www.bit.ly/31P4csT can claim, it's "master" of information science!) The result was a growing familiarity with many more digital content sources. It's a long story, but as a result of that education and its application, I can point out how its influence improved many editions of AR thereafter.

In the mid-1990s I collected the majority of AR's content by personally visiting theological libraries. I had quite a selection to choose from - in Michigan (our home state and early support base), California, and Colorado (starting in 1999). I created a database to record the libraries’ hours of operation, photocopy requirements, titles of periodicals that interested me, where I left off from previous library visits and more. A scouting trip for AR content would usually take an entire day and I'd return home very tired.

Since I'm scheduled to turn 71 in August, I'm thankful that I can easily access most of AR's featured content from home. Ironically there's ALWAYS been far more important material available than we could ever feature in AR.

Back at CRI in 1993, I made the jump to only writing about online content, while Paul came alongside to highlight and summarize print resources. Until then, I'd organized our material by source; Paul changed it to the topic-centered format we've used ever since.

AR's earliest issues in 1996 featured so many topics that it would have consumed too much space to offer a summary at the top of each issue. For years I'd tried to mention literally everything of potential interest that I came across. The downside was that the most significant content wasn't given the increased emphasis necessary to reveal its value. Slowly, AR began describing what made an item important enough to feature for our readers. (Since each of us has unique areas of particular interest, it helps to learn what might make something worth a greater investment of your study time. And it works both ways. The more I dig into a topic that's growing increasingly important, the better I can summarize why its importance may also be growing for our readership.)

Speaking of "unique areas of particular interest," for the past three years, I've been slowly developing a website www.bit.ly/OT-n-NT that AR's readers have seen mentioned occasionally. (Currently, I'm working under the "B&C" tab.) A local church recently offered me the opportunity to teach an adult class on how the New Testament uses the Old. The experience will help me improve the website's usefulness. Here's a description of what I hope to cover in this class.

The time between the prophet Malachi's recorded work (roughly 400 BC) to the beginning of John the Baptist's ministry (roughly 20 AD), the "Intertestamental Period," is also known as "The Silent Years" between the Old Testament and the New. It represents a long break between these records of His written word to all humanity - the people He chose to love from the very first, and to whom He would reveal Himself in Christ.

God was unquestionably present and active throughout this time. He was readying Greece, Rome, and Israel for the coming of His Son, the greatest event of HIStory. All of this preparation was to eventually "make a way straight" for the persecuted church to disperse years later.

By around 200 BC, Israel had matured to the point that the Old Testament was translated into Greek (a work now known to us as the Septuagint, or LXX). The LXX would become the Bible of the early church. By the time the New Testament was being formed, Greek culture had distributed its mature “mother tongue” throughout the Mediterranean. By the time Rome took control of Palestine, Greek was the common language and the Greek system of commerce was in use everywhere. That’s why the New Testament was first written in Greek. Greek commerce also brought with it the means to travel faster from one end of the Mediterranean to the other by ship.

By the time of John the Baptist, Rome had ruled long enough to establish a historic degree of peace (the "Pax Romana") throughout the Mediterranean world. It also built the safest and most extensive  road system of its age. All of these developments would greatly help the persecuted church to spread throughout the Mediterranean and beyond.

The first apologetic task of the church is evident in the defense of the OT Messianic prophecies by the NT writers. This “apologia” will be the focus of the majority of our class time ... and has been a great joy for me to study. It’s become something like a summation of the interests He’s given me. However, the overall project’s website remains in a raw development phase. Only God knows how far He will take it.

In conclusion, I've been extremely blessed to have been able to serve the body of Christ through the ministry of Apologia for 28 years. I hope to continue as long as God allows. Many thanks to those who have given generously to support this work.

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