Author Archives: Duane Caldwell

About Duane Caldwell

Duane has served in many different capacities including pastor, elder, project coordinator and flight instructor. He is an ordained minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ by the Evangelical Church Alliance and holds a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, a Trinity International University school and a BS in Aeronautics from Parks College, St. Louis University.

Nefarious – Movie Review

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Nefarious - 2023 movie

Are demons real? Is demonic possession possible? Are the actions of this serial killer the actions of someone experiencing a dissociative disorder (split personality), or can it really be a case of demonic possession as he claims?

These are the questions presented to the protagonist Dr James Martin, a brilliant psychiatrist in the 2023 movie “Nefarious.” Dr Martin, both a valedictorian and salutatorian in his school career,  has been tasked with determining whether a serial killer is sane and therefore can be  cleared to suffer his court decreed penalty: death; or whether he is insane and must therefore be remanded in custody until it can be determined he is sane. The movie follows Dr Martin’s investigation, and in so doing presents the above questions and many other Biblical and moral questions to the audience in a manner reminiscent of one of CS Lewis’ masterpieces, The Screwtape Letters. Continue Reading

Which Resurrection will you choose?

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Which Resurrection will you choose?

A Resurrection Day Meditation

John Donne’s Poem “For Whom the Bell Tolls” ends with this: 

Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

It is a stark reminder that every death points to our own mortality. A reminder for each person to say to yourself – one of the times the funeral bell tolls, it will be for me.

Death is the resulting horror, penalty and curse of sin. But the good news of the gospel is that death need not be the end of the story. Every resurrection day is a reminder of that fact. A reminder of the resurrection life that can only be found in Jesus: Continue Reading

Were The Pyramids Built Before the Flood? Correcting The Record

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Correcting the Record - Were teh Pyramids built Before the Flood

From the title of the video, “Were the Pyramids Built Before the Flood”[1] by Nathan Hoffman, you might suppose this video was going to focus on the dating issues around which came first, the pyramids or the global flood? If you thought so, you, like me, would be wrong. Next, you might think it was on issues concerning biblical dating, with his suggestion that the earth is older than the 6,000 years that biblical creationists claim it is. If so, you, like me, would be mostly wrong again. While his issue concerns dating, that is not really the focus nor his main issue. As Dr. Watson is a foil to show how smart and clever Sherlock Holmes is, these issues are merely foils to lead into his main issue. The main issue that Hoffman has – which he focuses on in both this pyramid video and his previous video “How Long Were the Israelites in Egypt”[2] – is with the text from which today’s Bibles translate the Old Testament. The Old Testament in today’s Bibles is translated from what is considered the most reliable text by bible scholars, the Masoretic Text (MT). But Hoffman has an issue with it, an issue bordering on an unhealthy antipathy, it appears. Think I exaggerate? Hoffman says of the MT: “All of our Bibles were copied from this corrupted version of the Hebrew.”(29:08)  Corrupted? It is known there are scribal errors in all versions of hand copied ancient scriptures. But scholars, who respect the text, typically don’t call the texts “corrupted” and, in fact, work to identify such errors to get back to what the original text – which we no longer have – said.

Pyramids or Flood First?

I wrote this critique of his video not because of the question in the title. In viewing, it  quickly becomes clear the age of the pyramids is not the main concern for Hoffman because he starts the video by refuting the theory that the pyramids were built before the flood in the first minute of the video when he points out: Continue Reading

Question Evolution Day 2023 – The Platypus and Coelacanth

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Duck-billed platypus

Question Evolution Day 2023

Here we are at another February 12th, Question Evolution Day, where instead of presenting evidence for creation, we offer creation skeptics an opportunity to check their intellectual freedom and integrity. This is an opportunity to see if they are slaves to the evolutionary dogma or if they have the intellectual freedom and integrity to seriously consider the many challenges to Darwinian Evolution. It is an opportunity to observe that Darwinian evolution is not only internally inconsistent but the evidence does not support it. The evidence supports creation. Continue Reading

Is the Bible the Word of God?

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An agnostic sent a question about the word of God to Creation Ministries International. CMI retweeted it here, the full question is here and is answered by CMI rep Jonathan Sarfati. Sarfati approaches it on the basis of valid, internally consistent philosophical systems. But I want to take it in a different direction and answer it evidentially. That is, is there evidence that the Bible is the word of God? So in this article we’ll to take a look at the heart of the question and address the key issue which, as the agnostic puts it, is this:

I’m not denying that the bible is an excellent book, nor that it may be the word of God, but I will question one tenet:

That the Bible must be the word of God, because it says so.

Now, consider me heretic, but it strikes me that this is a ridiculous line of thought to take? If I were to say that my face was made of cucumber, and I’m four hundred years old, would that make it so simply because I said so?
I’m not entirely convinced that it would.

Continue Reading

This Christmas: Presents or Presence?

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Nativity

A Christmas Meditation

Some theologians point out a paradoxical truth regarding the first Christmas: while we tend to think many were aware of what was happening that first Christmas and were there to see it, from gospel descriptions it seems not many people knew what was happening. So few celebrated or worshipped during that first Christmas. Think about it. Besides Mary and Joseph and the heavenly hosts who told the shepherds, who was aware that the King of kings was being born as a baby in Bethlehem that first Christmas? You have the shepherds, Anna and  Simeon (who don’t see him until his presentation at the temple Luke 2.21,27), and the wisemen. And you can argue that since by the time the Magi arrive the Messiah was no longer an infant (βρεφος brephos Luke 2.12 cf. Luke 1.41) but a young child (παιδιον paidion Matt 2.8), they probably weren’t there the first Christmas either. They came later. Continue Reading

Proxy Wars

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Proxy War puppet master

“The Culture war that is a proxy war to the spiritual war.”

This is a recurring phrase in the below video of Seth Gruber giving a powerful pro-life message and explaining The White Rose Resistance. Gruber uses that recurring refrain (viewable, for example, at 26:42, 35:56, 1:05:11 among others) to describe how Satan’s strategy for deceiving people into killing babies has not changed over the millennia. And it got me to thinking of other proxy wars. Continue Reading

A Rational Faith vs An Illogical Atheist

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Milan - Resurrection of Lazarus from San Giorgio church

Milan – “Resurrection of Lazarus” from the San Giorgio church

Most of the time I do not bother to respond to the online rantings of atheists. That’s because most are not worthy of a response since they tend to be one of the following:

  • Ad hominem attacks that have nothing to do with the question at hand
  • Fiat statements that are not only completely wrong, but have absolutely no backing evidence in science, reality or truth
  • Gross misstatements or misunderstandings of science whose corrections cannot be explained in a single tweet.

In my experience most atheists online are not seeking the truth. They merely want to pour the nonsense and trash of their worldview on everyone and expect everyone to swallow – hook, line and sinker – the lies they themselves have become accustomed to. Amusingly, they consider themselves bastions of reason and science but always seem to miss it when they themselves are spouting irrational, illogical nonsense. Continue Reading

Atheists – Deeper in Denial than Demons

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Your continued mocking of God continuall confirms your choice of eternal condemnation

This article started with an observation from scripture that the title describes, but I’ll throw in a couple of other observations while we’re on the topic.

Observation 1: Atheists know who the true God is.

Though atheists deny God exists, they quite clearly know who he is and that he exists. How do I know that? Well, first scripture tells us that God has made his existence plain to all (Rom 1.19) so atheists deny him only by denying what’s obvious. Jehovah’s Witnesses have been characterized as “apostles of denial”[1] by former Watchtower member professor Edmund C. Gruss because of all the Christian doctrines they deny but, compared to atheists, the Witnesses are amateur deniers of the truth.
 Continue Reading

The Three Faces of Mitochondrial Eve

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The Three Faces of Mitochondrial Eve

Eve White in the movie The Three Faces of Eve suffers from what is popularly known as multi-personality disorder. As the title suggests, she manifests three distinct personalities. There is a theory of human origins called “Mitochondrial Eve” that is similarly expressed with three separate concepts. As is usual in the origins debate, what one believes about mitochondrial Eve is dependent on your worldview. So what is one to make of these three understandings of mitochondrial Eve? Follow along as we shed light on the proper understanding of mitochondrial Eve. Continue Reading