The Judas Problem

Welcome back to Via Berea in the Podcast, where we try to direct people to search the scripture. When I was a new Christian, I was very bothered by the fact that I did not know the gospel before I became a Christian. I didn't quite understand regeneration yet. And it was always my desire to search the scripture to see what the scripture said after I got saved.

And so I've always loved the Bereans. And that's why I call myself one, because I want to be like they were. We have been refuting the friendly atheist. We are on question 16 now, or problem 16. I want to tell you that if you're listening to this podcast sometime in 2020 probably, you may be going through some trials right now. You may be going through some difficulties.

And I just want you to know that there are people who want to help you. There's people who care about you, even if it doesn't feel like it sometimes. There are people who I'm sure will give you toilet paper, help you with some milk or food maybe even give you some money if those are your needs there's people who will give you spiritual encouragement so this is a good time for christians to know that they can reach out to one another i think that we are in the united states where i podcast from i think we're a rugged individualists is what we're called and i think if we would reach out more for help from others and share our weaknesses, we may find mutual benefit from that.

So enough editorializing for me. I don't want to turn this into a different kind of podcast, although I do want to talk about other things than the 40 problems with Christianity, but I also want to talk about these, so let's jump in. question 17 i think is the one wrong we just finished 16 so question 17 the raising of lazarus and the woman caught in adultery our friendly atheist writes the stories of the raising of lazarus from the dead and the woman caught in adultery are extremely important in the effort to define who jesus was one tells of his immense power and the other tells of his divine wisdom Both would have been told and retold throughout the region, spread virally, and held up as convincing evidence for having faith in Jesus. Okay.

I'm not quite sure what he means by all that. They're certainly important. I'm not going to deny the importance of them. I don't know if they're extremely important in the effort to define who Jesus was when we refer to the woman caught in adultery and I think that's where he's going to go here he says however curiously neither of these events is documented in the first three gospels Mark Matthew and Luke not until the gospel of John written at least 70 years after the death of Jesus is the raising of Lazarus documented in Scripture.

And the story of the woman caught in adultery is not found in the oldest manuscripts of the Gospel of John and only appears in manuscripts beginning in the 5th century. This casts considerable doubt on the historical truth of these events. Alright, so let's start with the woman caught in adultery, John chapter 8. When you turn to John chapter 7, you get to In 8, we see a note in my ESV Bible, the earliest manuscripts do not include John 7, 53 to John 8, 11.

And that's true. And people can do some study on that. And you can see that a lot of scholars don't believe that's actually part of the Bible. and what I'll just say quite simply is I don't need Jesus drawing in the dirt and telling people he who is without sin cast the first stone as any kind of extremely important thing to define who Jesus was that story, if it's part of scripture is a wonderful part of scripture and because of the fallen world we live in, we proceed with caution when we see that it wasn't included in the earliest manuscripts and we recognize that it's possible that that was not part of Scripture.

Thus, meaning it wouldn't have been essential. So the Apostle John told us that Jesus did many things that were not written. if he were to write them all it would have filled all the books in the whole world and so we recognize that what has been written is what is sufficient so there's nothing that Jesus did that is definitional to who he is in such a way that because it wasn't written in scripture it wasn't important or that we're somehow missing out on who Jesus really was. Everything we need to know has been written.

And so I don't know the answer to whether the woman caught in adultery was included in the scripture. I know that I would side with the people who say it wasn in the earliest manuscripts so it probably not But that doesn change who Jesus is I don know anything about that story where I would derive something about Jesus and his wisdom that I wouldn derive elsewhere And part of this comes from two problems that the atheist has. One of them is judging the historical accounts in a way that is really strange, because he doesn't judge other works by the same standard, but more so not understanding that the entire Bible is written by the Holy Spirit and is about Jesus.

So he is relying on the Gospels to tell us what we need to know about Jesus as historical accounts. And it is true that the Gospels are historical accounts, and they are written about the life of Jesus here on this earth. But what the atheist fails to recognize is that I can learn about Jesus from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. I can learn about Jesus by reading the entire Bible. and whether or not any specific instance of Jesus's incarnate life was written about, that doesn't affect my knowledge of Jesus according to what God wants me to know.

He says both of these stories would have been told and retold throughout the region and spread Well, Lazarus' story was spread, and he finds it suspect that it's not written about in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. And the fact of the matter is, that means nothing to me. The fact that Mark and Matthew and Luke didn't write about the raising of Lazarus is completely irrelevant to the fact that the Holy Spirit inspired John to write about it in his gospel.

I will dispute the fact that John was written 70 years after the death of Jesus. I think some people may date John as late as 90. I'm not sure. But John was an eyewitness of the events of Jesus. And however long John actually lived, he could write the events that he witnessed. He very likely had been talking about them for years.

He'd been probably preaching about these events. And at one point he decided, I'm going to write this down so that people can read it after I'm gone. And the Holy Spirit inspired the writing, so it's perfect. So we're not worried about how long after Jesus' death the events had been written. So that's just a, it's like a red herring, I guess. I'm not into throwing around logical fallacy names all the time.

I think they're easy to spot, but I think people overuse the term sometimes. But the point is that it doesn't matter how many Gospels wrote about an event. The event happened because the Holy Spirit inspired someone to write about it. So I don't see any considerable doubt on historical truths at these events at all. This is, you know, the Lazarus event, at least.

The historical truth of the other event, okay, I'm 100% with him on that, that even Christians will dispute the historical truth of the woman caught in adultery story from John 7.53 to 8.11. And so I don't see that as a problem for Christianity, since even Christianity acknowledges that that could be the case. so number 18 we'll move on the palm sunday good friday conflict our friendly atheist writes jesus is adored and worshipped as a king as he enters jerusalem on palm sunday he then proceeds to work miracles heal the sick and demonstrate his supreme wisdom making him even more of a figure for adulation so he's trying to build things up here he says but five days later without explanation he is abruptly hated so much by his own people that given a chance to have him released, they chose to free a common criminal instead. There is something seriously wrong with this story.

All right, so he's proposing that because Jesus was revered on Palm Sunday and then crucified five days later, that there's something wrong, that that wouldn't have happened. But that does happen. You probably can think of celebrities who were adored by the world, who became Christian and then very quickly were ignored by the world or hated by the world.

You can see that Jesus was feeding people in the Bible. He was feeding the 5,000 and all the different people at different times. Let me try to find an example for you. In John chapter 6, he feeds the 5,000. In the early part of the chapter, when they'd eaten their fill, he told his disciples, gather up the leftover fragments. He gathered them up.

And then, by the end of the chapter, in John 6, 66, it says, After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. Well, this is pretty close time-wise, I think. It's the next day. So Jesus feeds people. They love him. The next day, he says he's the bread of life.

He basically tells them, look, I gave you bread to eat, but it was a sign of what my body is going to be a symbol And you need to eat my flesh to live and they left so it happened in one day it just it just not that crazy to believe and so the atheist is setting up the situation in such a way that that he wants to make it impossible for people to believe that a group of people could turn on someone second thing is is that the people that actually turned Jesus over to the authorities were not the same people that adored him on Palm Sunday. And you can read about that in the Gospels. And so there was a faction of people that were forever plotting against him, it seemed like.

And then the rest of the people, weak, some of them, faithless, some of them, and some of them just wicked, turned against Jesus after at one point having been on his side. this is i don't know i'm a football fan and i'm a pretty loyal fan and i'll tell you what when a guy's playing good for my team he's my favorite player and when he starts to go down the tank oh i could turn against him real quick even more so with somebody proclaiming themselves to be god so then the atheist gives his proposal what most likely happened is that the accounts of these events was altered to absolve the Romans and place blame for Jesus's death on the Jews he says see problem 21 so we'll get there and he says this was because by the time the scriptures were written the focus of Christian evangelism was on the Gentiles throughout the Roman Empire while the Jews freshly defeated in their war with Rome were viewed as detestable villains so that's just weirdness but we'll get to it in problem 21. But in general, Palm Sunday, Good Friday conflict, there's no conflict. Jesus was lauded one day, and the next day they hated him, and it could have happened faster than five days, and it would be just as believable.

The atheist is setting up a standard by which things are considered credible or believable to him based on nothing. There are so many things that happen in our world that are unbelievable. I mean, that they're so unlikely based on previous history. You know, the Patriots coming back and beating the Falcons in the Super Bowl a few years ago. It was a statistical improbability. probability.

It was impossible. If anyone had placed a bet at that time on the Patriots, we would have called them a fool. And we probably call people fools for betting altogether. But I don't know if betting on a 98.5% option is a bad bet. But things happen. And there's no rule in our world that everything's going to always happen the same.

One day I could do something in my home that would be pleasing to my wife and my children, and the next day I could do the same exact thing and they might be bothered by it because context changes, people's feelings change, their hormones affect things. So we just don't judge the Bible by what we think should have happened. That's just what happened.

And so the atheist has got an agenda. His agenda is to prove that God is wrong. And so he's really finding as many apparent problems as he can. And some of these are just really laughable. number 19 let's move on the story of Judas the traitor is fraught with inconsistency so we're going to poison the well right away here it says first and foremost it should be obvious that what he allegedly did actually hastened the salvation of mankind as defined by Christianity without Jesus's capture and execution everybody would still be subject to the condemnation of original sin as well as their personal sins.

Okay, so what's his point? His point is that we shouldn't think of Judas as a bad guy because what he did actually brought salvation to mankind, and that's true. But the fact that somebody did something that God used for an ultimate good in no way justifies that act. So Judas committed an atrocity. He was a murderer at heart. He was a liar.

He was a thief. He was full of malice. And he brought forth the murder and crucifixion of the Son of God. He knew Jesus was an innocent man, and he did it anyway. He wasn't deceived about it, like Eve in the garden. Judas is the...

You know, if Jesus is the last Adam, Judas is the uber-Adam. You know, he just failed in every way. We'll say more revelation than Adam may have had. But the fact that what Judas did was used by God for the salvation of mankind doesn't justify Judas. And that's a problem that the atheist has here. And I'll tell you one of the reasons why.

His argument is if something turned out good, then you can't really criticize the initial act. But then he has the same problem. Because Christianity can point to a lot of good that it's accomplished. and building of hospitals the building of orphanages you know all the things that atheists criticize Christians for and say why aren you out serving homeless people today It's like, well, Christians feed more homeless people than anyone else, I think, and we're not the most populated.

And I guess if you went by a per capita, and you even included professing Christians, we take care of more people, we build more hospitals, we donate more money, we take care of orphans more than anyone else and that's if you include all the Christians that aren't even really Christians by what I would say would be my standard of Christianity salvation by grace through faith being born again because even a false Christian who's trying to follow the precepts of Christianity is going to do what we'll say are good works in the world and so the atheist can't say that just because something turned out well that you can't criticize anything behind it because most atheists would acknowledge that there's some pretty good you know methodist hospitals out there and and baptist hospitals and some of these different types of orphanages and and they could and the atheist is still allowed to say he hates the Christianity behind it. So praise the Lord that he uses wicked people for his own glory. And he uses their wicked acts, even turning their wicked act into the tool to not only condemn them, but to save others.

The atheist says, second, Jesus was not hiding during his time in Jerusalem. No, he wasn't. He was out and about performing miracles and routinely in plain view of the Roman authorities, He's making it unnecessary for anyone to rat him out for arrest. That's true. And it's not that difficult to open up a book and read, Mr. Atheist Guy.

It's not that hard to go read. There's only four accounts of Jesus' arrest. But one of the points was, and I'm going to try to find one here, because I want to show you. Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane, and they come and they take him. Let me try to find the example I'm trying to find. So Judas delivered Jesus, and one of the reasons was that they didn't want to arrest him publicly.

Maybe it's in Luke. I'm sorry if this is boring now. I'm not the... Let me see. Jesus Christ, he even says to them, to the chief priest. So here, Luke 22, 52, he says, Then Jesus said to the chief priest and officers of the temple and elders who had come out against him, Have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs?

When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. He says, but this is your hour and the power of darkness. So Jesus actually criticizes the people who arrest him for the same thing. I was routinely in plain view. And so the reason was is they were afraid to do it in public because the people loved him. Going back to the previous point, they were afraid of the reaction of the people that actually did worship Jesus. and so they had an irrational fear and they didn't understand that the scripture had to be fulfilled and Jesus says it's your hour of darkness they weren't going to do their evil deeds in the plain light for the same reason why very few people do their evil deeds in the plain light people go behind closed doors generally speaking to fornicate and have orgies to overdose on drugs to be drunk.

If you go to nightclubs to observe the way the world acts, you see the nightclubs happen at night. They don't happen in the day usually. They're usually separate from the rest of the world. Even people that party in the day, they do it separate. But things happen at night. You go talk to any police officer, a crime happens at night.

There's something about the light and the darkness that brings that out of people. But yeah, it was unnecessary for anyone to rat him out for a rest, but Judas was willing to rat out Jesus' private prayer time in a garden for 30 pieces of silver. Finally, he says, third, if we are to believe Christian doctrine, Jesus knew that he was to be executed and that this was the principal point of his mission.

So why would he call out Judas as a traitor, both at the Last Supper and in the Garden at the time of his arrest. Judas actually offered a beneficial contribution to Jesus' mission. We already dealt with that. Judas being used by God in his evil to bring about the ultimate goal of Jesus' mission has no bearing on the fact that what Judas did was evil and it was a betrayal. you're going to be used by God for his glory dear listener are you going to be used by God in a good way or is your evil going to be used by God don't justify yourself based on the fact that God will do all things well Jesus knew his end goal was to die because he wrote the plan he was the one who decreed it Jesus, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, God himself decrees and decreed one time what was going to happen.

And so we don't thank Judas for what he did. We thank Jesus for what he did. So the atheist says, some sense of this story, one has to assume that it was changed to fit a new narrative that placed blame on the Jews for the crucifixion. Painting Judas as a traitor was part of that effort. All right, so this is part of the friendly atheist conspiracy to say that somehow the Bible, like the New Testament is like anti-Jew and pro-Roman.

He says what probably happened was that Judas was sent by Jesus to entice the Roman soldiers to the garden. Jesus then expected that God would miraculously intervene to defeat the Romans and begin the reign of Jesus as the king of the restored kingdom on Israel. And then it just gets stupid. This guy can't decide whether he thinks Jesus was a real person or a make-believe person. he has trouble deciding whether anything in the Bible is true or whether none of it's true.

Jesus expected that God would miraculously intervene. Why? Why? At no point is anything about what we read about Jesus acceptable if anything that we read about Jesus is unacceptable. So if it's not true that Jesus knew he was coming to die, then I have no reason to believe any of the other stuff about Jesus. And so this is one of those things where this guy calls the Bible revisionist, basically.

He's saying, you know, people believe... He's making it sound as if there are parts of the Bible that were true. Jesus was a real guy who did some really cool stuff and maybe he knew magic but in the end he kind of got caught off guard and then was crucified I don't know if this guy would acknowledge that Jesus proclaimed himself to be God and if Jesus proclaimed himself to be God why would it be so crazy that Jesus could predict his own death so this whole thing it just gets really backwards really quickly and I think what I want to encourage you excuse me I was drinking my coffee I want to encourage you don't get wrapped up in all these details Judas sent by Jesus to entice Roman soldiers just don't you have no more reason to believe what you're reading on the Friendly Atheist website than what you read in the Bible from a secular perspective.

You have no more reason. From a spiritual perspective, you have more reason to believe what God has written than what the friendly atheist has written. And so when you're trying to help somebody to understand the problems they see with Christianity, I want to caution you, don't get wrapped up in rabbit trails about who Judas was. Judas is an amazing character. like I said he's like the uber Adam he personified sin and unrighteousness and hatred and everything about what brought about the fall a rebellion against God so study Judas, fine, learn about him but don't get wrapped up in this stuff People that criticize Judas, the story of Judas in the Bible, are like the weirdest people.

It's like the people that walk by when I preach and they say, Hail Satan. And I'm like, wait, I thought you didn't believe the Bible. How can you even talk about Judas or Satan unless you believe the Bible? it just it's just backwards completely to be concerned with the Bible's depiction of Judas and then to try to revise it by accusing others of having revised it why not just say the whole thing's a myth I mean you don't sit here and criticize Hercules the same way nobody sits and writes about Apollo or Hermes or any of these guys that we know are mythological and find these contradictions because it's so obvious.

But the atheist effort to find contradictions with Christianity, a religion that frankly has done almost nothing but good for our world from a secular standpoint, is mind-blowing. unless you believe that his mind is darkened and then he's at enmity with God and then it makes sense let do number 20 because I not gonna I don want to talk a lot about it but this is this is a harder one He says the Roman census in Luke is number 20 The Gospel of Luke states that a Roman census was conducted during the time of Jesus's birth, and he says BC4. It could have varied. He says there's no record of this in Roman history.

Then he says according to the Romans meticulous record, so you know he's letting us know that the Romans had meticulous records so if there was one of these we would have known about it. He says the only census that took place during this time frame was AD 6 to 7 and it didn't include those areas. Alright so he can't find a record of it so he's automatically thinking it didn't happen.

According to Luke the residents were required to travel to their cities of birth to be counted. This absurd requirement was never applied to any census that the Romans conducted throughout their empire. This would have involved cases where families would have been split apart going to different cities, and it would have devastated the region's economy.

Obviously, the Romans would want to know how many people were living currently in each area rather than how many were born in a certain city. Now, I agree, that is weird-seeming, and I asked that question to a number of people of why they think this was the case. And one person shared with me an article by a guy, I think his name was Bach, B-O-C-K. And this guy wrote an article.

Let me see if I have it still. And the point of the article was... Oh, that's the wrong one. the point of the article was that it was possible that the Romans did have a census and they allowed the Jews to do the census the way Jews normally would have done a census which would have been based on where their family was from yeah let me find it excursus the census of Quirinius so many have been written in Latin at first I don't know so it was written by oh I wish I could find the guy's name because but anyway I read this article where somebody tried to work out through all the scriptures what was the possible answers to what was going on and I just can't find the guy's name though I think it was Bach B-O-C-K or Brock and it was complicated and it is a this is a difficult problem I'll say I don't think it's a now I don't believe the Bible problem.

Because I think what we have to realize is that Luke is writing as a historian. Luke told us the truth of what happened. And Luke told it from the perspective that he told it. And we need to understand that the Bible is our authority. And so we believe that there was a census and that it caused Joseph and Mary to have to migrate and that it brought them to Bethlehem.

And that is, that's just a fact so that the scripture would be fulfilled, that he would be born in Bethlehem. And so I encourage you to study this one for yourself, to find resources, to read the scriptures. And also I want you to remember that the fact that we have not found a meticulous record of a Roman census that would coincide with Jesus' birth is meaningless.

We haven't found a lot of things that were buried in antiquity. I mean, we have like very little evidence of everything before the flood because the world was mostly destroyed, right? So it's really one of these matters where we have to, at some point, we have to exercise faith that God knows what he's talking about and knew what he talked about when he wrote the Bible.

And Luke was a great historian. He was a reliable person. And so we trust Luke even when we're not sure we can make sense of some of it. so but I agree I mean I just filled out my 2020 census and I did it from my home I didn't go somewhere else to fill it out so I agree it's a strange requirement in our mind and we don understand it and we don understand why it happened the way it happened but there are people who have offered ideas and I would I would argue that this is one of those things that's kind of minor you just don't you don't stop your faith over this one this this should actually allow you to say okay I'm gonna have some faith and things that can't be seen if all of Christianity was visible it wouldn't really be faith but he continues he says the reason for this artifice from the writer of the gospel is evident Jesus was known by many to have been born and raised in Nazareth but the scripture said he was born in Bethlehem therefore some device was needed to convince followers that he was not born in Nazareth as everyone would have assumed but rather had the appropriate credentials so now he's going to Jesus is a real historical figure from Nazareth and there was this concern that he actually fulfilled prophecy which is interesting because in other accounts he shows how Jesus failed to fulfill prophecy and failed to actually do what the Savior came to do or there wasn't enough evidence of it but somebody went into the Gospel of Luke, whether it was Luke or somebody else and decided to change it so that it looked like he was born in Bethlehem even though he wasn't so that it looked like he fulfilled prophecy and so these people that apparently half the time took no care whatsoever to document enough of what happened and Jesus didn't even do what he came to do according to some of these secular scholars then they took the care to say he was born in Bethlehem and he says as a side note this deception by the author of Luke provides some evidence that Jesus was a true historical figure, given that a mythical person could just as easily have been invented who was born and raised in Bethlehem.

So now here he says he admits, though, that this actually makes Jesus seem more real, which is interesting, because it's hard to imagine that Jesus is a real person based on these atheist objections. but I'm not worried about these and I'm not worried about this one I actually spent a lot of time trying to research this one and it's a hard one to understand and when you're trying to compare scripture to historical records it can get a little confusing if you don't understand the nature of evidence and if you are coming with a skeptical mindset. But if you're coming with the mindset that God is the author of history, he foresaw all things and foreordained all things, and thus has perfectly wrote his word, it's been firmly fixed in the heavens for all eternity, there's really no fear. There's really no doubt of what happened.

And so Jesus Christ came out of Nazareth and was born in Bethlehem. And whatever the circumstance was, no matter how exceptional the requirement was that brought a pregnant woman in Bible times to travel to another city, Whatever that circumstance was, instead of seeing it as a strange revisionist history to try to force a person to have fulfilled a scripture, what we can see it as is a miracle of God. Or maybe not so much a miracle of God, but just the providence of God.

How God, through ordinary means, providentially arranges everything according to his purposes. that no matter how strange it was that a pregnant woman who was you know unwed an unwed pregnant woman whose husband decided to stay with her and then travel to Bethlehem for whatever odd reason you you can say so that she would give birth there, that you see it not as unbelievable, but you see it as an amazing work of God's providence. If God's providence always followed some logical pattern, it wouldn't even be remarkable. What's remarkable is when And my friend, let me tell you this story.

This is remarkable. When my friend tells me that his garage door broke in the midst of a bunch of other things that went wrong in his life And then a few days later he took his family to get a cheeseburger somewhere And when they almost got to the cheeseburger place they realized that they actually had forgotten one of their children at home. It was seriously a home alone thing.

Everybody thought he was there. And they get home, and there's the boy, and he's safe, and he's fine. and it hits him that the only way this little boy knows how to go out of the house where he could have gotten lost was through the garage door that was now broken. And that is remarkable providence. Because that's not the normal order of things. That's not the way things would work.

If a Savior is supposed to be born in Bethlehem, you expect that a family that lives in Bethlehem is going to be the family from which that Savior comes. If it was normal for people to travel to Bethlehem for a particular reason, we would expect, well, it's somebody who's going to travel there for this particular reason that's going to bring about the Messiah. It's the exceptional circumstance through which God works in a way that's unpredictable by human reason that is what should cause us to glory in him.

That's what should cause us to be in awe of his amazing knowledge and power to affect all his holy will. So I'm going to leave you with that. We went over, I think, four items, 17 to 20. don't let your faith be shaken by these questions. And it's the water hose of them. It's the 40 problems of Christianity that blows you away. Because when you look at each one, it's just not that complicated.

Now, it's taken hours to talk about these, sure. But when you're standing witnessing to someone and you're telling somebody that they need to repent and believe in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins or they're going to suffer in hell for all eternity. But Jesus was raised from the dead so that all those who believe in him can be justified and ascend into heaven as he did someday.

And somebody starts bringing up all these little things. Just remember that their mind is blind and that they're not going to exercise the faith necessary to actually be able to understand what the Bible says until God grants it to them. And so you patiently bear with them in love and you pray for them and you teach. You teach people who are willing to listen the answers.

You debate them if that's necessary. And at some point, you have to walk away from the situation knowing that this is really a work of God in their life that's necessary for them to be able to believe the things that have been written. So take care of yourself. Take care of your family. I hope everybody stays well. Everybody in my family so far has not gotten sick.

Nobody I personally have contact with has been sick. But I have one friend who I have met in person who I haven't talked to in a while, but he's sick now. And he got to COVID-19. It's a serious thing. It's really out there. So take care of yourself, be prepared, and keep a good attitude about everything that's happening in our world.

It's acceptable to desire national repentance while still trying to stay positive about encouraging people that God will take care of his people one way or another. and hopefully he will save people through this situation. I'm sure he already has. And there will be people who for all eternity will not lament the COVID-19 crisis, but they will praise God for using it to bring them to faith.

And so let's all have that attitude that, like Judas who betrayed Jesus, we can lament a situation that is undesirable that's clearly a result of the fallen world while praising God for how he will work all things for the good of his people those who are called according to his purpose thank you for listening to Be a Berean with your host Michael Coughlin I am a writer at thingsabove.us and I also have a personal website michaelcoghlan.net You can contact me by emailing me michael at thingsabove.us I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures.