WWUTT

Burning Man is an annual week-long festival held in the middle of a dessert, and gets its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy. When you go to the Burning Man website , it says, "Burning Man is not a festival." Oh, my bad. It must have been the costumes, live music, and celebration that threw me off. So Burning Man is "a temporary community, based on 10 practical principles" which include, "radical inclusion, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression," and there are "radical rituals." Also, decommodification. Advertising and the selling of goods are prohibited at Burning Man. (But admission will cost you over $1,000 on your Visa or Mastercard. All sales are final, and no refunds will be issued for any reason. Someone's making bank off of this flimflam!) So tens of thousands of people gather for an annual event in the middle of no where, encouraging self-expression, rituals, and dancing around a large wooden ido...

In Mark 7:18-19 Jesus said, "Are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?" (Thus He declared all foods clean.) Now, what's with the parentheses? Cynics will say that modern translators have added this portion. The NIV, ESV, NASB, they all say, "Thus He declared all foods clean." But that's not in the King James. Therefore, it's a translation addition. It isn't in the original text! Actually, yes it is. All of the earliest Greek manuscripts say this. If you look in the New American Standard, you might notice the words "Thus He" are italicized. That's because a direct Greek-to-English translation would not include these words, but they are implied. So to make sense in English, the words "Thus He" are required in order to clarify the text. Jesus' quote ends at ἐκπορεύεται ("go...

Unlearn the Lies is an online ministry that wants to correct many of the false assumptions people have learned about the Bible (kind of like another ministry we know!). While host Lex Meyer seems like a nice guy who just wants to honor God, that "honor" has to fit his Hebrew Roots framework . Like most Hebrew Roots guys, Lex loves wandering into myth. He teaches that Elijah never ascended into heaven , the thief on the cross next to Jesus didn't go to heaven , and the idea that we go to heaven is pagan and might be the biggest lie we've ever been told. Lex denies that when we die, we go to be with the Lord, but rather we enter a state of soul-sleep until the resurrection of the dead. He twists Jesus' own teaching on the afterlife, and says that if hell is a place of eternal torment, that would make God a sadist. Jewish holidays and dietary laws are also favorite topics. Lex says Jesus never declared all foods clean, and the statement in Mark 7:19 was ad...

The Hebrew Roots movement (not to be confused with the Black Hebrew Israelites) teaches that the church has been corrupted by Greek and Roman influences, and we need to get back to our Hebrew beginnings. After all, Jesus and His disciples were Jews, so to be a good Christian, you must be a good Jew. Hebrew Roots adherents, also known as Messianic Christians, believe Christ's death on the cross did not fulfill the Mosaic covenant, but renewed and expanded it. Therefore, you must keep the Sabbath on Saturday, celebrate Jewish feasts and festivals, and observe the dietary laws. Boy, if there aren't scores of passages that directly respond to this! Jesus declared all foods clean in Mark 7:19, and said it again to Peter in Acts 10:15. In Romans 14, Paul said not to be divided over opinions about days and food. And in Colossians 2:16 he warned about Judaizers who pass judgment over dietary laws and Jewish holy days. These were shadows of things to come which were fulfilled ...