As you may have read, the United Methodist Church has determined that it will split into multiple organizations, pending final approval at its global conference in May of this year. News around the UMC over the past several years has basically revolved around disagreements regarding women in a pastoral role, support over same-sex marriage, the ability of gay individuals to hold pastoral roles in a church, and other LGBT-related issues. However, the underlying disagreement actually relates to one’s view of Scripture.

If you've read through more than one of the Gospels, you'll have noted the accounts of Jesus being anointed with an expensive perfume by a woman.

Are these accounts describing two different events or are they all describing a single event using different details?

Last week, The Atlantic posted an article by Emma Green titled “Evangelicalism’s Silent Majority” (located here).

I think that it was interesting and accurately reflects the position of many evangelicals; and by "evangelicals" here, I mean the definition that Barna uses (see description here). There are many "nominal" Christians (again, Barna definition) that would not agree with Anderson, but this should not be surprising.

To better understand where Anderson and other evangelicals are coming from, one has to understand their view of history and world events (past, present, and those to come). Scripture lays out these basic periods of time…