Can a Christian Attend a Catholic Mass?: My husband’s family is Catholic, and we are traveling to see them for Easter. They want us to go to mass with them, but I feel uneasy about it now that I am an active Protestant believer. Should we go?

Q&A question: Can a Christian Attend a Catholic Mass?

Lectio Divina & Spiritual Formation?: What are your thoughts on the Spiritual Formation movement including practices like Lectio Divina in non-denominational churches?

Q&A question: Lectio Divina & Spiritual Formation?

Biblical Justification: Works Based?: I’m struggling DEEPLY with James 2: 24 vs. Romans 3: 28. Your best argument in the video you did on this 7 years ago was the definition of "justified." But my NIV Bible says "considered righteous."

Q&A question: Biblical Justification: Works Based?

“God’s Not Done…”?: Do you think there is anything wrong with the phrase “God isn’t done with you yet”? Can something like suicide diminish the amount that God would have used us?

Q&A question: “God’s Not Done…”?

Miraculous Fakery: How do we Not Discard All Miracles?: I have found myself despising the miraculous due to the number of fakers out there. How do you guard against this as you have been working through exposing the fakery of the hyper-Charismatic church?

Q&A question: Miraculous Fakery: How do we Not Discard All Miracles?

The Moments before the Betrayal and Crucifixion of Jesus

Men Are like Waffles and Women Are like Spaghetti

Day of Atonement

.Women Who Follow Jesus from the Cross to the Tomb

Statements about Jesus between Mark and Luke

It's Not the the Singular Unified Group That Often It Is Portrayed as in Roman Catholicism There Are Various Sects and Groups and Different Different Disagreeing Groups within Roman Catholicism but There's another Problem and that Is Roman Catholicism Never Kicks Heretics out It Just Almost Never Happens You'Ll Have Bishops Who Are Functioning In in Roman Catholicism That Totally Don't Believe Roman Catholicism and Actively Teach against It and There's Still Part of It so that's Not Real Unity That's like a False Kind of Unity That's Going On There So Yeah that's a Lot of Stuff I Think the Bottom Line Is God's Word Is Authoritative and Here's Where the Catholic Agrees with Me I'M Just Saying the Traditions and the Arguments for Bringing Tradition in as an Equal Authority

Then You Should Be Unclear about It That's the Safest Thing To Do if You Feel like the Scripture Doesn't Speak Clearly on an Issue Then You Can Just Be Unclear about It or You Can Be Willing To Entertain Various Views As Long as those Views Don't Violate Scripture in some Other Way but What You Don't Want To Say Is the Bible Doesn't Say Anything about this So I'M Just GonNa You Know Believe What I Like I Still Won't Have Reasons for My Beliefs Deven Nicely Says What Are the Essential Elements of the Gospel One Must Believe for Salvation as Opposed to Secondary I Hear Different Things and It Makes Me Wonder if I'M Saved Sometimes and Kind Of Scares Me Let

And When You Feel Your Discernment Run Out this Is a Wisdom Thing Maybe Someone Won't Understand It but When You When You'Re Looking at a Situation or a Person and Here's the Things You Know about Them but Then You Start Realizing There's a Lot of Things I Don't Know and that's Where Your Discernment Running Out So Just Don't Go beyond What You Actually Know and that's One Thing another Thing Is this Is Here's the Phrase I Learned for Myself Years Ago Which Is Discernment without Wisdom Is Destructive I'Ve Learned that through Experience Right Maybe I Have Discernment Maybe I'M Told Right but I Didn't Have the Wisdom on What To Do with that Discernment so My Rule Now if I Keep It Is To Wait Wait after Discernment Wait on Wisdom Okay I See that Clearly but What's the Wisdom on How I Should Handle It and I Pray and I Wait on Wisdom

11..Armenian translations

22..Clement of Alexandria

24..1st Clement (c. 95)

Scientific Advancement

Authority Replacement

Judgment

The abomination of desolation is one of the hardest passages in the entire gospel of Mark, touching on eschatology, Daniel's prophecy, and whether its fulfillment is past (70 AD) or future. Winger introduces a futurist position while acknowledging in-house Christian disagreement.

Intro to Mark 13:14-23 study; sets up the interpretive stakes

Antiochus Epiphanes in 167 BC is the only historical event outside the Bible that uses the exact phrase "abomination of desolation" (1 Maccabees 1:54). He banned Jewish worship, erected an altar to Zeus in the temple, and sacrificed a pig on it — giving Jesus's audience a concrete reference point while Jesus still pointed to a future fulfillment.

Historical background: Antiochus Epiphanes and the Maccabean revolt

2 Thessalonians 2 describes the same figure Jesus warned about: a "man of lawlessness" who sits in the temple declaring himself God, whose coming is connected to satanic signs, and who will be slain at Christ's return. This harmonizes with Daniel and Mark, and the self-worship element connects to Revelation's description of the Beast demanding worship.

Paul's teaching in 2 Thessalonians 2 as parallel to the abomination of desolation

Some skeptics argue that the gospel of Mark has a "low Christology" — presenting Jesus as a mere messianic figure without full divine identity. Winger argues Mark's trial narrative (14:53-72) is actually a theological climax demonstrating the opposite: high Christology is central to the earliest gospel.

Framing the apologetic argument against low-Christology claims about Mark

When the high priest asks if Jesus is "the Christ, the Son of the Blessed," Jesus responds "I am" and quotes two Old Testament passages: Daniel 7:13-14 (the Son of Man receiving all dominion) and Psalm 110:1 (sitting at the right hand of God). Both are deity-laden claims — riding the clouds is a divine prerogative in the OT (Psalm 68:4; Deut. 33:26), and the Son of Man receives eternal worship from all nations.

The high Christology embedded in Jesus's self-disclosure at his trial

The presence of women as the primary witnesses to the empty tomb was an embarrassment to the early church in first-century culture, where women's testimony was widely discredited. What was a liability then is actually strong evidence for historical reliability now — people don't fabricate stories that hurt their own credibility.

The criterion of embarrassment and the women witnesses; Celsius's criticism

Richard Bauckham's thesis in "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" is that names appearing in Mark's gospel identify living witnesses known to the community receiving the text. When Mark names Simon of Cyrene "the father of Alexander and Rufus," and Paul greets a "Rufus" in Rome (Rom. 16:13), this likely connects to the same family — confirming these are not invented characters but real people vouching for the account.

Named eyewitnesses in Mark as evidence of historical reliability; Bauckham's thesis

The three women witnesses (Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome) are named only at this point in Mark's narrative, precisely when Peter disappears. Mark systematically uses named witnesses when Peter is absent — suggesting these women functioned as eyewitness guarantors of the crucifixion, burial, and empty tomb accounts.

The women replace Peter as named witnesses at the passion; Mark's literary structure as historical indicator

Salome is present at the death scene and the empty tomb, but absent from the burial scene (only the two Marys watch where Jesus is laid). This inconsistency would have been smoothed over in a fabricated account. The simplest explanation is she wasn't there for the burial — a subtle but significant mark of historicity.

The inconsistency of Salome's appearances as evidence of historical accuracy rather than legend

Mark uses consistent "witnessing verbs" (looking on, saw, looking up, behold the place) as the women observe Jesus die, watch where he is laid, and discover the empty tomb — signaling to the reader that these women are functioning as formal eyewitness testimony in a legally significant sense, not merely as background characters.

The pattern of seeing/witnessing verbs applied to the women in Mark 15-16

The claim that Jesus was never buried in a known tomb (made by scholars like Bart Ehrman) is a minority position that, if true, would undercut the empty tomb argument for the resurrection. Winger's goal is to show the burial is historically well-supported and that Ehrman's case relies on selective use of sources.

Why the burial of Jesus matters for the resurrection argument; Ehrman's challenge introduced

Deuteronomy 21:22-23 required that anyone executed by hanging be buried the same day so as not to defile the land. According to Dr. Craig Evans, the Sanhedrin was specifically tasked with ensuring proper burial of executed persons in Jerusalem to maintain ritual purity — meaning even the enemies of Jesus had religious motivation to bury him promptly.

Jewish law and Sanhedrin practice as evidence for burial; Deut. 21:22-23 and the purity argument

Pilate demonstrably cared about Jewish sensitivities — he removed Roman standards from Jerusalem when Jews protested, and Rome generally allowed subject peoples to maintain their customs (Josephus, Against Apion 2.73). The argument that Pilate would ignore Jewish burial customs for crucified victims contradicts the historical pattern of Roman governance in Judea.

Pilate's demonstrated sensitivity to Jewish customs undermines Ehrman's argument

Philo's "Against Flaccus" (§83) records a Roman governor in Egypt allowing crucified persons to be taken down and given to relatives for burial during a festival — showing there were documented exceptions to any general policy of leaving bodies on crosses, and that burial was sometimes permitted on special occasions across the Roman world.

Philo's "Flaccus" as evidence of Roman burial exceptions for crucified persons

If human value depends on whether a parent wants you and loves you, then all people who are unloved or unwanted by their parents become valueless. Genesis 1:27 and 9:6 establish that human value is innate and image-based — grounded in being made in God's image — not dependent on parental affirmation or social circumstance.

Theological argument: image of God as the basis of innate human value vs. conditional value logic

The pro-choice logic of "this child will suffer, so it's merciful to kill them" parallels suicide logic: if a life is going to be hard, end it early. Applied globally, it would justify aborting virtually all children in sub-Saharan Africa. The Christian answer to suffering is not termination but redemption, care, and help — the "take care of them" solution rather than the "kill them" solution.

The "merciful abortion" argument compared to suicide logic; global poverty counterexample

JW salvation requires four things: (1) taking in the "knowledge" of God and Jesus as defined by the organization, (2) obeying God's laws (works-based), (3) belonging to the Jehovah's Witnesses organization, and (4) demonstrating loyalty through door-to-door witnessing. Their own source says "the ransom given by Jesus does not give or guarantee everlasting life" — grace through Christ alone is explicitly denied.

JW soteriology: four requirements for salvation; works-based, organization-dependent

The real authority in JW life is not the Bible but the governing body — eight men in New York City who "formulate doctrine" and whose instructions, according to Watchtower, determine your "spiritual health and relationship with God." The NWT Bible is a doctrinally distorted translation that changes key texts about Christ's deity, and members are discouraged from researching outside Watchtower sources.

JW authority structure: governing body over Scripture; the NWT as a distorted translation

Michael W. Smith removed his endorsement of the Passion Translation after Winger and others highlighted scholarly consensus that it is an unreliable translation. Bible Gateway also removed the TPT from their platform. Winger sees this as a positive cultural shift: mainstream evangelicalism is becoming aware that the Passion Translation is a sectarian, doctrinally distorted product rather than a legitimate Bible translation.

The Passion Translation: Michael W. Smith removes endorsement; Bible Gateway drops TPT

Brian Simmons, translator of the Passion Translation, has made contradictory claims: calling his translation "God-breathed" in charismatic settings while denying it is inspired in the same way as the apostolic writings. His study notes contain claims like "the Temple took 46 years to build and humans have 46 chromosomes, therefore we are the temple God is building" — presented as divine revelation rather than scholarly research.

Brian Simmons's self-contradictory inspiration claims and problematic study note methodology

Winger explains the reason for his extensive long-COVID delay in completing the Women in Ministry series: the number of complex texts and exegetical issues in 1 Timothy 2 is genuinely large, and he refuses to produce a rushed or shallow treatment of a topic that will have real impact on people's lives and churches. This reflects his broader ministry philosophy of thoroughness over speed.

Long-COVID illness and the delay in completing Women in Ministry series; commitment to thoroughness

Hebrews 1:1-2 opens with a declaration of continuity: the same God who spoke through the prophets in many times and ways now speaks through his Son. This compacted theology establishes Jesus as the culmination and continuation of God's revelation — not a replacement or contradiction of it.

Hebrews 1:1-2: the continuity of divine revelation from OT prophets to the Son

The Transfiguration (Matt. 17 / Mark 9 / Luke 9) visually enacts Hebrews 1:1-2: Moses and Elijah appear representing the Law and the Prophets, but God's voice from heaven says "This is my Son — hear him." The old revelation is present and honored, but the new word is through Jesus. This is "Hebrews 1 in living illustration."

The Transfiguration as a visual fulfillment of Hebrews 1:1-2's funnel from prophecy to Son

Andy Stanley's "unhitching from the Old Testament" teaching conflates two different questions: (1) Are Christians under the law of Moses? and (2) Must Christians believe the Old Testament is true? Acts 15 answers question 1 (no, Gentiles need not keep Torah); it says nothing about question 2. Stanley's conflation leads him to suggest that disbelieving the OT is an acceptable option for struggling Christians.

Critiquing Andy Stanley's conflation of applicability of OT law with the truthfulness of the OT

If the Old Testament is not reliably true, then Jesus — who consistently affirmed, quoted, and grounded his teaching in the OT — cannot be trusted either. Hebrews 1 frames the same God speaking through both prophets and Son; you cannot "unhitch" from the OT without also unhitching from the Jesus who is the culmination of it.

Why abandoning OT trustworthiness undermines confidence in Jesus himself

There are two distinct groups who identify Jesus with Michael the Archangel: (1) Jehovah's Witnesses who use it to demote Jesus to a created being (heresy), and (2) orthodox Christians like Spurgeon, Calvin, and Wesley who identify Michael as a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ without denying his deity (an in-house disagreement). These require different responses.

Two types of Jesus-Michael identification; distinguishing heresy from in-house disagreement

The proof texts used to identify Jesus with Michael are weak. 1 Thess. 4:16 says Jesus comes "with the voice of an archangel" — but also "with the sound of a trumpet," which no one takes to mean Jesus is a trumpet. Daniel 10:13 calls Michael "one of the chief princes" — not the unique chief — and inter-testamental literature (1 Enoch, Tobit) uses "archangel" for multiple beings, not one.

Evaluating the key proof texts for Jesus-Michael identification; each is insufficient

The Book of Revelation extensively exalts Jesus as Alpha and Omega, First and Last, worthy of worship — but when Michael appears (Rev. 12:7), he receives no such fanfare. The contrast between how Jesus and Michael are treated in the same book strongly suggests they are distinct beings, with Jesus occupying an utterly different category of glory.

Revelation's contrasting treatment of Jesus and Michael as evidence they are distinct beings

The Charlie Kirk memorial was, in Winger's estimation, probably the largest gospel presentation in human history by audience size — with Frank Turk and others delivering bold, explicit gospel proclamations to a global broadcast audience. Winger calls Kirk a martyr, killed because of his Christian convictions on transgender and sexuality issues, and argues this warrants Christian acknowledgment rather than avoidance due to political discomfort.

The Kirk memorial as historic gospel event; Kirk as a Christian martyr

When solidly biblical Christians disengage from politics out of fear of being seen as partisan, they cede that space to power-hungry leaders who compromise — leaving politicians with access only to figures like Paula White rather than those with genuine theological integrity. There is a real cost to being on the fence: biblical values go unrepresented in policymaking.

The cost of Christian political disengagement; faithful Christians must enter the arena

DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) as typically practiced promotes equal outcomes rather than equal treatment — a distinction Winger argues is biblically significant. The Bible opposes oppression and affirms equal human dignity, but not coerced equal outcomes. Equal outcomes ideology ends up producing new forms of oppression and racism by design.

Biblical critique of DEI: equal treatment vs. equal outcomes; oppression theme in Scripture