Nurse Challenges Biola University's Rhetoric

Biola nursing student, Diana Jimenez, had an epiphany this semester when the reality of what abortion does to babies made in God's image became seared into her consciousness by graphic photos.

Her passion to help her fellow students become aware of the plight of unborn children and their mothers, led Diana to put herself in the middle of a flap over Biola's principles and policies.

Read also about Diana's courage and the irony of Biola's president, Dr. Barry Corey, calling for students to have courage while his security officer threatens one for speaking out against child killing.

Apparently a baby was saved because of Diana Jimenez's display. Praise God!

Post-show Update on the Plurality in the Godhead: In chapter four of his book Unseen Realm, author Michael Heiser makes a terribly shortsighted claim. When you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The Bible teach about a heirarchy of spirit beings. But Heiser is so obssessively focused on them that tragically he undermines one of the most important passages in Scripture. At Genesis 1:26 God says, "Let Us make man in Our image and in Our likeness." So, toward justifying his obsession, Heiser hijacks that incredibly important passage and claims that it refers to God and to some created spirit beings. This gross error robs those who believe him of one of the most important passages in Scripture about the plurality in the Godhead. From kgov.com/deity:

Tripartite Man: And so we humans are body, soul, and spirit (1 Thes. 5:23). For God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…" (Gen. 1:26). So mankind is made in God's image and likeness, image referring to our form, and likeness to our essence as sentient, morally-responsible persons. And unlike animals which look to the ground, men and women stand upright with a heavenly gaze.

God's Image: God created a form, that is, an image, for the eternal Son to indwell. The verses Jehovah's Witnesses assume undermine Christ's deity are actually verses describing this aspect of Him at the creation. For the very first thing that God created was this form for His Son to indwell! (See Gen. 1:26 along with Col. 1:15; Rev. 3:14: Heb. 1:3; 5:5; 10:5; 2 Cor. 4:4; John 1:14; Phil. 2:5-6; 1 Tim. 2:5; and Rev. 1:13-18. When a son is "born" isn't the beginning of his existence anymore than when by taking up an image the Son became the "firstborn" of creation, was the beginning of His existence.) And in that image, "He made man" (Gen. 9:6), and not in the image of apes. "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them (Gen. 1:27).

The Plurality in God: The very first verse of Genesis presents the plurality of God, with Genesis 1:1 using a plural subject and a singular verb, that is, In the beginning gods He created the heavens and the earth. Elohim is the plural of the typical Hebrew word for God, which is El (cherub and seraph for example become plural as cherubim and seraphim, with Elah likely being the dual form, and Elohim being a plurality, in this case, three for the triune God). So, did Moses make a grammatical error in the first sentence of the first book of Scripture, in what has become not only the world's best-selling book, but in the most well-known sentence in the history of the world by using a singular verb with a plural subject? Of course not. For this was intentional. The Hebrew Scriptures in the most solemn texts presents God as a unified plurality. What grammarians refer to as the "royal we" comes from God's references to Himself using the plural: "Let Us make man in Our image," (Gen. 1:26). The solemn Hebrew prayer, called the Shema Yisroel, to the "one God" uses another plurality. For "The Lord our God, the Lord is One (of plurality)" at Deuteronomy 6:4 uses neither of the expected terms, yachad or even bad, words meaning a singularity, but God's Word uses the word echad, which is one in plurality as used by God at the Tower of Babel, "the people are one," and by Joseph "the dreams of Pharaoh are one," and by Moses, "the people answered with one voice," and back again to the beginning of Genesis at the institution of marriage when God says, "and they shall become one flesh." So this foundation prayer to God does not the use the Hebrew words for one, which mean a singularity (which words are never used in the Bible referring to God), but God describes Himself in the Bible using the One of plurality. So the Shema says: the Jehovah (who is the one God) our Elohim (plural) Jehovah is a Plural Unity! And Deuteronomy 6:4 is the central passage to all theology of God. Then the Scriptures go on to teach that the three Persons of the Trinity are God the Father (Isa. 63:16; Mal. 2:10), God the Son (Ps. 2:12; Zech. 12:10 and as in the chart above), and God the Spirit (Gen. 1:2; Isa. 48:16; Isa. 6:3; Rom. 5:5). See also Mat. 28:19; Acts 5:3-4, 9; 2 Cor. 13:14, and Psalm 110:1 with Matthew 22:41-46, and verses that show the personhood of the Spirit including Heb. 10:15-17.

Heiser also errors, tragically, by rejecting the biblical timeframe for the creation of the Earth. Early in his Unseen Realm book he claims that angels were created "long before" Adam and Eve. The scriptural and scientific rsr.org/evidence however makes it overtly clear that God judged the Earth with a global flood in the day of Noah. Thus, the geological formations used as evidence for an old earth are actually the consequences of the global flood. Instead of a little water over a long period, there was a lot of water over a brief period. See also rsr.org/day-age and rsr.org/radioactivity.

Another criticism of Heiser is his inconsistency from chapter two to chapter three of Unseen Realm. He argues that Bible verses about spirit beings must be understood in light of the ancient Israelites' understanding of these spirit beings. However, inconsistently, he also argues that the spirit beings which the Bible refers to as "sons of God" are not angels. Reading that I immediately turned to the Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament and saw that these ancient Jewish scholars and experts in the Torah translated this as "angels". So, while it is important to Heiser to argue that they are not angels, the ancient Jews described them as angels. So Heiser's readers should realize that, for whatever truth is mixed in his writings, his hermeneutic is not, interpret based on the ancient view of spirit beings, but, interpret based on the Heiser view, which goes along with the ancient view only if Heiser approves of it. Inconsistencies like this, of course, are not unique to Heiser nor are they at all unusual. It's just that his readers should realize that he is not as objective a commentator as many assume.