David Schrader, PhD, National Pastor

Virginia Stem Owens, an English professor, was teaching a class at Texas A&M University, 25 years ago. When Owens asked her students to read the Sermon on the Mount, she was a bit stunned by the written responses of her students.   “I had expected them to have at least a nodding acquaintance with the reading and to express a modicum of piety in their written responses. After all, Texas has always been considered at least marginally part of the Bible Belt.”   The first paper I picked up began,...

We are now at the beggining of the season of Lent. Lent is observed by millions of Christians around the world. Lent is a 40-day solemn Christian liturgical season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. It serves as a period of preparation to commemorate Jesus Christ's temptation in the desert and passion. It is also a time for reflection, repentance, and spiritual renewal . Repentance naturally implies a genuine godly sorrow for and turning from sin, and to seek a closer realationship with God....

Pensées is a collection of French Philosopher Blaise Pascal’s arguments defending the Christian faith. Published in 1669 as Thoughts (Pensées), they have exerted a powerful intellectual influence ever since. Pascal denied that the tenets of faith must be rational, and that human reason can prove the existence of God, as some thinkers of his time argued. Rather, he held that God is beyond human understanding and that man has no assurance of meaningfulness in the universe aside from God....