The Arabic word for God is Allah, and missionaries wrestle with what to say in evangelism. For instance, should they track with the classic Campus Crusade opening, “Allah loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life”? It seems odd, since a lot of baggage goes with that word, including its frequent use by …
In his “High Priestly Prayer” in John 17, Jesus asked the Father that His believers would “be one.” And Paul was impatient with church quarrels between those who said, “I follow Paul . . . Apollos . . . Cephas . . .or . . . Christ. He asked them rhetorically, in 1 Corinthians 1:12-13, …
In 1997, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee objected to the wording of a bill designed to guarantee insurance coverage for victims of catastrophic weather. He wanted to strike the expression “Acts of God” from the document and substitute reference to “natural disasters.” He said, “While I realize that to some this is a minor issue, it …
Metaphors can flip and become the literal meaning, and the original, literal expression can become the metaphor. The word “broadcast” is a case in point. When the first radio towers went up, pioneers of this new technology turned to agriculture to describe how their signals went out with a wide sweep. It struck them that …
Which Bible Is Preeminent, the Style Bible or the Holy Bible? Read More »
Back in the 1990s, I was involved in the launch of a new publication, and I attended a workshop in New York to be sure we were crossing our t’s and dotting our i’s. One of our teachers explained that we would need to decide first off if we were going to publish a magazine …
Jesus told His disciples that they would be His “witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). And this wasn’t just a matter of geography. Pentecost, in Jerusalem alone, required a host of languages. And that was just the start, for linguistic missionaries have now …