apologetics – Twin Tree Project

Verse & Vision | May 28, 2026

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Not a suggestion, not a starting point for the particularly devout – a structural statement about how reality works. Every generation goes looking for wisdom and looks in mostly the same places: philosophy, science, experience, the opinions of people they admire. Proverbs does not say those things are worthless. It says they are downstream. Today we look at what *yir’at* actually means, what Israel’s wisdom tradition had that no other culture could locate, and why the person who genuinely fears God is harder to deceive than almost anyone else in the room.

Verse & Vision | May 26, 2026

Jesus had just left the temple for the last time. His disciples asked him two questions about the end. His first word in response was not a timeline, or a sign. It was a warning. Before anything else – before wars, famines, or earthquakes – He said: Take heed that no man deceive you. That was not an accident. Matthew 24 is one of the most significant and most mishandled passages in all of scripture. Today we give it the full weight it deserves.

Verse & Vision | May 25, 2026

The soul is not always lost dramatically. Sometimes it just drifts. A long season of difficulty, of pouring out more than is coming in, of caregiving, of grief, of waiting for answers that are slow in coming – and somewhere in the middle of all of it you look up and realize you are far from yourself. Not in crisis exactly. Just depleted. Thin. *Yeshobev nafshi.* He returns the soul. Not fixes it, not replaces it, not upgrades it. Returns it to where it belongs, to who you actually are underneath all of it. You are not taken to the quiet water because you are doing fine. You are taken there because you are a sheep, and sheep do not know how to find it alone, and the shepherd does. He does not restore a better version of you. He restores you.

Verse & Vision | May 24, 2026

There is a specific kind of fear that comes just before you say the true thing. Not the fear of physical danger, though that is real for many in this world. The quieter fear of being misunderstood. Of being labeled. Of losing the audience you were just starting to reach. Of someone deciding you’ve gone too far. That fear has silenced more truth than any official threat ever could, because it operates from the inside and does its work before you even open your mouth. The early church did not pray for safety. They prayed to keep speaking. And God moved the building to say he heard them. Peter and John did not ask God to remove the threat. They asked him to make them equal to it. He did. And then some.

Dear Christians… | You MUST Employ Discernment in the Mainstream Church

A lot of people who decide to read the Bible for themselves for the first time quickly realize something uncomfortable, and in many ways disturbing: when it comes to mainstream theology, we’ve been duped.

The institutional church is in the falling away, but it’s happening systematically, and most of us have been looking for the wrong signs.

I want to show you what scholars wrote two hundred years ago, before the drift, and let you decide whether the plain text agrees with what you’ve been taught.

Verse & Vision | May 23, 2026

There is a version of self-sacrifice that looks like the cross but isn’t. It gives and gives and gives, not from the overflow of a full and grounded soul, but from the hollow place of someone who has confused loving others with losing themselves.

Today’s passage does not call us to that. It calls us to something harder and more clarifying: the mindset of Christ, who emptied himself with full intention, for a defined purpose, in submission to the Father’s will – not in compliance with someone else’s desire for him.

Being true to yourself, in the way God means it, is not selfishness. It means honoring the soul God placed in you, protecting the purpose he put you here for, and refusing to sacrifice what is sacred on the altar of someone else’s comfort or convenience.

Self-surrender to God first, and then, from that grounded place, genuine love for others that actually does them good.

Verse & Vision | May 18, 2026

Verse and Vision is a daily series exploring the verse of the day — not just what it says, but what it means. Each post unpacks the biblical context, digs into the original language, and traces the historical and philosophical world behind the text. Where the Word echoes across history, we follow it. Where it lands in the present, we don’t look away.

Verse and Vision | May 13, 2026

Verse and Vision | May 11, 2026

The Image of the Cross: Curse or Blessing, and What Are You Living? | Daily Bread

Someone told me recently that wearing a cross is a sin. “It’s a graven image, a violation of God’s law.” But a careful study of Scripture tells a very different story.

The second commandment was never a prohibition against every image or symbol. It was a command against worshiping created things as gods. God himself commanded images to be made, each one pointing toward His glory, His presence, and His provision… and ultimately toward the cross.

Christ broke every curse the law carried through His sacrifice, fulfilling what none of us ever could. The cross around the neck of a humble, spirit-filled believer is not an idol. It is a symbol of redemption, freedom, and the good news of salvation. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and we are commanded to carry that truth into the world.

Sunday Sessions | One Gospel, Two Roads (Or, The Argument I Once Used Against My Own Faith)

Many years ago, I tried to use this exact argument to prove my father’s faith was built on sand. I was wrong. Thirty years later someone posted it online and asked anyone to disprove it with scripture. I hope this answers their invitation well, and helps whoever reads it.