Jon Morrison

I took a moment to pay homage to the moment in history when my...

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 09:16:18 -0800

I took a moment to pay homage to the moment in history when my childhood collided with my adolescent life.

Muppets and Weezer.

Call it a brain nap.

On Tenacity.

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 01:27:12 -0800

Enjoy this word from Oswald Chambers in My Utmost For His Highest for February 22.

“Tenacity is more than endurance, it is endurance combined with the absolute certainty that what we are looking for is going to transpire. Tenacity is more than hanging on, which may be but the weakness of being too afraid to fall off. Tenacity is the supreme effort of a man refusing to believe that his hero is going to be conquered. The greatest fear a man has is not that he will be damned, but that Jesus Christ will be worsted, that the things He stood for – love and justice and forgiveness and kindness among men – will not win out in the end; the things He stands for look like will-o’-the-wisps. Then comes the call to spiritual tenacity, not to hang on and do nothing, but to work deliberately on the certainty that God is not going to be worsted.”

Bread Truck Monday

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 10:00:05 -0800

Last week my friend Dave Smith reminded us all of one aspect of ministry that I had to laugh about. Quoting Mark Driscoll, the two of them get a resounding “Amen” from pastors all over the world as Driscoll honestly speaks about his “Break Truck Monday Fantasy.”

Here it is:

“‘Is there ever a time, even if you love God, that you’re in ministry and you think about quitting? Yes. I call that Monday. Every Monday, every Monday I have – I love you, I love the church – but every Monday I have a bread truck fantasy. I will share with you my bread truck fantasy. My bread truck fantasy is that I drive a bread truck. That’s what I do. I get up on Monday, I go to the bakery. They hand me the keys to the bread truck. I’m in charge of bread.

Bread doesn’t commit adultery. Bread doesn’t get its girlfriend pregnant. Bread does it have alcohol problems or DUIs. The bread truck doesn’t have, you know, unpredictable giving patterns. The bread – the bread’s just the bread. And I get in the truck and I turn on sports radio, and I don’t have a cell phone because I don’t need one. The bread can’t email me; has no urgent emergency. In addition, I don’t have an e-mail address or a website because it’s just bread. I drive around all day in the bread truck and what do I smell? Bread.

And when I get hungry, I pull over and I put meat and cheese on the bread, any time I like. I deliver my bread all day to the bakery and then they take the bread off the truck. When it’s all done, I go home and you know what I think about? Nothing. Because there’s nothing else to do, there’s nothing else to think about. My job is done. On Friday, nothing. It’s a glorious fantasy that I have. Every time I see a guy in a bread truck, I’m coveting another man’s life.

I’m thinking, “That guy is brilliant. That is a brilliant man. In the bread truck.” and the best thing with the bread truck is, if you get in a terrible wreck with the bread truck and you roll the bread truck in the bread goes everywhere – it doesn’t matter, it’s just bread. They’ll make more. There are days, in every minister’s life – it’s just Bread Truck Monday. That’s what it is. Every Monday, I have Bread Truck Monday, kay?’

Some great observational comedy. Great reminder Dave.

March 3, 2012.

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:32:00 -0800

The nice thing is that when it’s your own blog, you can post whatever the heck you want.

6 months of running sprints and early morning practices comes down to one sold out game…

Who Is Colin?

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:00:00 -0800

A couple days ago I was at a pub with some friends when I recognized a girl from Vancouver that I had met a few days before. Vancouver people tend to have instant connections…unless they’re in, well, Vancouver.

I called out to her, “Hi Alex.” She said hi back and then introduced me to her friend she was with…

“This is Colin.”

Um…

This exchange between two new acquaintances in front of three other witnesses soon got awkward. I told her I was actually named “Jon” but not to be embarrassed because name’s are kind of tough to remember sometimes.

When the conversation soon wrapped up, I sat back down with my friends and they wanted to make sure to remind me of all that had just taken place.

“Hey Colin. I think I’ll call you Colin for the rest of the year.”

“You look like a Colin,” said one.

“No, not really,” added the other.

For the next five minutes we debated this: Whether or not I would make a good Colin or not. I didn’t mind being called Colin but the subjective foundation from which they were both trying to build upon was troubling to me.

Who is Colin to you?

I suppose one of my friends thought of a Colin that I looked like.

Another had an idea of Colin that I did not match.

Was there a real Colin of whom we could all appeal to? Would it be Colin Firth from Pride And Prejudice? Colin Farrell? Colin Powell? Maybe it is Colin Hall, my small group leader in grade eight.

People do this with babies too and I never quite get it. Maybe you’ve been a part of a conversation like this:

He’s a beautiful baby. What’s his name?

We named him “Michael.”

Oh good, because he really does look like a “Michael.”

We thought so too.

He definitely isn’t a “David.”

Oh no, definitely not.

Who is this archetype, Michael, and is anybody asking what this Michael looked like as a baby? This would help form an adequate frame of reference from which to draw from in the future. It just seems all too subjective as it is now.

And Then When Theologizing…

I suppose people take this same relativistic approach when talking about God. I have a view of God, you have a view of God, we all have this idea of God. What then is God like?

Are all ideas of God equal just like all ideas of Colin? Thankfully, the idea of God is much different than the idea of Colin.

It is right to get to know who God actually is. There is only one God. He has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ. He is not some unknowable force nor he is an arbitrary idea like Colin.

If there is a real Colin out there, I’m sure he would like to be known as himself and not some prettier version of me.

Does Supralapsarianism Hinder Free Will?

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:00:00 -0800

I don’t die on the free will hill but I still acknowledge how much our choices matter. I’m sure some will appreciate this.

Supralapsarianism, the argument I’m working on from a previous post claims that this world we live in now is the best of all the possible worlds there could be. I say this because in this world not only God exists but he has come to us and died for us in person of Jesus Christ. In order to do that he had to allow us to sin. If we sinned, there would be suffering. So did God force us to sin?

If God had already made us knowing we would sin, does that mean he is to blame for our sin. Another level you can ask, does Supralapsarianism hinder humanity’s free will?

Some call God’s goodness into question by suggesting that humanity was forced into sinning in order for God to carry out his rescue plan of atonement.

In God, Freedom, and Evil, Alvin Plantinga illustrates that in the best-of-all-possible-worlds that God could make, humans have free will to choose what is morally good. For morality to exist, the possibility of evil must exist and given x amount of worlds available, based on what Plantinga calls, transworld depravity, people will make poor choices. He explains,

But if every person ‘suffers from transworld depravity, then no matter which person God instantiates, the resulting persons, is free with respect to morally significant actions, would always perform at least some wrong actions.

Plantinga argues that it is illogical for God to create a world where no free creature never sins. The key word is illogical. It cannot happen that free people would never choose to rebel at some point, some time. We are all great case studies for this.

Here’s the most important point: In these potential worlds that contains free creatures who sometimes sin, the best possible word is the one that God provides atonement for them.

That’s why God is great in that he makes us free, knows everything that we will do and still saves our butts so we could be with him.

“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1).

There's Always A Market...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:54:00 -0800

Happy Valentines Day

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 01:08:00 -0800

On Supralapsarianism And The Problem of Evil.

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:41:00 -0800

I had fun kicking around a solution to the problem of evil a couple weeks ago and wanted to post something about it.

I did a paper on Supralapsarianism for Christian Faith And Philosophy class that drew heavily from the work of retired Notre Dame professor, Alvin Plantinga. This post contains sections of my paper so it is a little more rigid and wordy but I tried to smooth it out a bit to make it more fun.

To many, the supralapsarian/infralapsarian debate is a strong case for theology run amok. In many ways, I totally agree. But if it can help the theodicy mystery then it is still worth talking about. Often it is only the Reformed community that is willing to touch these words and debate this way. I am staying philosophical on this and keeping a boundary on Calvin and his peeps.

Background

For many years theistic philosophers have grappled with the traditional “How could God be good, powerful and all-knowing if he allows evil?” question. One of the ways to answer this question is to posit the “Best-Of-All-Possible-Worlds” scenario. Before you leaven, allow me to explain quickly.

What Would Be The Best Possible World You Could Imagine?

The best-of-all-possible-worlds argument begins by asking the question, “Given all the various possibilities of universes that could have been actualized, which one would be the best to live in?” What characteristics might be expected from the best possible world that could exist? There would, some would argue, be an abundance of love (love of/for both God and humanity), and creaturely happiness. Alvin Plantinga adds, “Other characteristics on which the goodness of a world depends would be the amount of beauty, justice, creaturely goodness, performance of duty, and the like.”

That’s a nice world if you ask me. It could get better.

According to the doctrine of the God’s necessary existence, any world in which God exists is better than a world in which he does not. There is yet a better world than one that simply has a God. Plantinga writes,

There is also a contingent good-making characteristic of our world—one that isn’t present in all worlds—that towers enormously above all the rest of the contingent states of affairs included in our world: the unthinkably great good of divine Incarnation and Atonement.

Supralapsarianism (the philosophical side of it that is) begins with the premise that the best possible world that could be actualized is one where God exists, incarnates to earth and then displays his attributes in the atoning work of saving humanity from their own sin.

If God must incarnate and atone in this world then prior to the creation of humanity, he must permit his creation to rebel against him. This rebellion described in Genesis 3 is the root of sin, evil and suffering in this world.

In order for God to have something to atone for, he allows suffering and evil to exist in this best possible world. Whatever evil goes on in the world, it cannot override the greatness of the incarnation and atonement.

Why Supralapsarianism Is Important

As mentioned, the best possible world in which God could create is one in which he will incarnate and atone. In these dynamic, historic events God personally reveals who he is and how he wants to relate to his creation. It was German theologian, Karl Barth, who argued that if humans are to have any knowledge of God, it must come from God’s own initiative. A world in which God reveals himself is better than one without revelation.

In the incarnation one encounters Jesus, the person and Word of God himself. Jesus said to his disciples, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (John 14:7). Jesus, the incarnate Word, shows his creation what God is like and how we are to relate to him.

The atonement of Jesus gives a greater demonstration of God’s desire to reveal himself and his nature to humanity. The death of Jesus Christ by crucifixion on a Roman cross is the event that Christians believe provided sufficient atonement for the sin of the world. Plantinga explains,

Jesus Christ, the second person of the divine trinity, incomparably good, holy, and sinless, was willing to empty himself, to take on our flesh and become incarnate, and to suffer and die so that we human beings can have life and be reconciled to the Father.

The crucifixion event is the greatest display of God’s attributes. On the cross, Jesus showed that the holiness of God and the justice of God demand reparition for humanity’s sin. Additionally, Jesus’ willingness to pay this price also displays God’s love, grace and mercy of God towards his creation. “Could there be a display of love to rival this? More to the present purpose, could there be a good-making feature of a world to rival this?”

The incarnation and atonement, therefore, are the best possible ways in which God could reveal himself in a best possible world.

Conclusion

Simply put, God allows sin, suffering and evil because what he will do with incarnation and atonement are far greater. In order for God to atone, there must be sin to atone for. If there is sin then there is its companions, evil and suffering present as well. The Christian belief is that no matter what kind of evil is permitted to run amok on the earth, God will deal with it according to his characteristic being all powerful, all knowing and completely good.

Convinced? If you want to read Plantinga’s paper on this, here it is.

On Unworthy Servants

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 14:51:00 -0800

“Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’” (Luke 17:7-10).

How liberating reading this passage of Luke’s gospel was.

Want To Be An Unworthy Servant?

There are not a lot of performance expectations on the unworthy servant. He (or “She” but I’ll stick with “He” for this post) is by his very nature, “unworthy” of anything. The bar has been set low. I believe this is so in order that anyone, be they rich, poor, talented, clumsy, smart, simple- really, can become such a servant should they desire to enlist.

The only credential you need to join is that you need to know that you are unworthy.

One good thing about being unworthy is that should the master choose to use you for anything, it is a bonus. The alternative is just to spend your life chasing after all the things you see people enjoying on TV.

That’s slavery- not servanthood.

There is camaraderie in servanthood. The unworthy servant is free from the competition that could arise from two people who are serving in similar roles. If the Master chooses one of his servants over another, it is not like either one is more worthy than the other. They are both unworthy. This is especially important if they disagree on theology. One unworthy servant can look and see another unworthy servant being used by the Master and they can celebrate it together.

Servants In The Master’s Service

The Master has the right to do whatever he wants with his servants. They are only servants. The Master brings one up for awhile and he keeps one on the bench. Sometimes he sends them out together. Sometimes he puts the former back on the bench and calls up the latter. Or he might keep both the unworthy servants on the bench and they can just hang out and become friends.

It would be in the best interest of these unworthy servants to learn to content themselves each day. They must learn to take joy in the service of the Master for whatever he uses them for. It really is a simple task for the unworthy servant. He has to simply wake up each day and submit himself to his Master. The master promises to provide for him, supplying all his needs for the present and the future. This is an act of grace on the part of the Master. The servant is worthy of none of it.

Sometimes the service will be goose-bumpingly amazing. Sometimes it will be incredibly difficult. Sometimes there might be long periods of neutrality. This is the spectrum in the life of unworthy servanthood.

And after four score and ten years of submission to the Master’s service, you might ask these servants what they thought of their experience. Well that answer was already given at the beginning. They might say rather bashfully,

“We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.”

On Resurrections.

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 10:23:00 -0800

“So she [Mary] ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the One whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tom, and we do not know where they have laid them.” John 20:2

I like how honest the Bible is about the humanity of the characters involved.

Mary Magdalene was a resurrection skeptic just like many people today. Granted, people may have different reasons for being skeptical but they are still skeptics nonetheless. Today, in our post-Englightenment 21st century Western world we have our own doubts about a truth claim that a man in the first-century Near East would be publicly killed and then rise again three days later.

There are reasons for modern skepticism. If someone want to research resurrections they could go to a graveyard every day for a whole year and just watch to see if any resurrections happen. After a full year of data and (most likely) no resurrections on record, the researcher could safely concluded that resurrections are im-

probable.

That is as far as the research can take you.

One cannot say they are impossible unless you had every record for every death ever in history. The truth is that history does have accounts of a resurrection after death that must be taken into consideration as part of this study. The gospels in the New Testament all say that Jesus was killed by crucifixion and raised three days later. This kind of thing didn’t happen back then either.

In fact, the first Christians were so skeptical about people rising from the dead that they had to back it up with evidence (the story of Thomas, the Acts sermons and 1 Corinthians 15:4-8 come to mind). I’ve considered the evidence and have concluded that it is more rational to believe that God did raise his Son Jesus Christ from the dead rather than any of the alternative explanations (and there have been many from the very day it happened).

The Christian story of resurrection tells me that no matter how improbable a bodily resurrection is, it is certainly not impossible.

Don't Give Up

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:34:00 -0800

This was an incredibly moving post from Jon Bloom of Desiring God.

God’s Word is sufficient to be our source of encouragement, nourishment and respite. How sad it is for those who do not have God’s word in times of need.

How much more sad it is for those who have God’s word but neither value it nor read it?

I would encourage you to read Bloom’s post taking time to meditate on each verse. Remember that, in Christ, God’s promises are always yes (2 Cor. 1:20).

There you go. What I have received, I pass on to you. It sure helped.

29 Ways To Stay Creative. I like this.

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 04:16:29 -0800

29 Ways To Stay Creative. I like this.

A good reminder for pastors in coffee shops. (Taken with...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:47:24 -0800

A good reminder for pastors in coffee shops. (Taken with instagram)

You got it Spurgey! I’m another example. (Taken with...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:45:48 -0800

You got it Spurgey! I’m another example. (Taken with instagram)

To Run Or Fly?

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:59:00 -0800

“Run, John, run.

The law commands

But gives neither feet nor hands.

Better news the gospel brings;

It bids me fly and gives me wings.”

— John Bunyan

My Tall el Hammam Trip

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 15:44:00 -0800

“By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. Then the LORD rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the LORD out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land.” -Genesis 19:23-25

I have been a Christian for as long as I can remember and yet I must confess that doubt is something I have often struggled with. The Bible calls us to live the Christian life by faith but I am aware that all the faith of all the Christians in the world is worth nothing if this story and those like it did not happen.

One of the most crazy stories in the Bible is found in Genesis 19 which gives the account of the destruction of the Cities of the Plain, the most famous being the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. When we read a story like the one above, there are two options to consider:

Dismiss the story as mythological because these sorts of things do not happen all the time.

Believe that what the Bible says is true and trust that, if you figure out where this happened, you can go to the place where the Bible says Sodom existed, you can go and dig it up.

This January I boarded a cheap flight to Jordan to help my (now) friend Dr. Steven Collins and his team on their archaeological dig. I wanted to come with an open, academic mind willing go where the evidence led. Not prone to believe anything without looking at it critically, I was impressed with how his whole team was working with this attitude.

If this is going to work out, that is - if the Bible story of the destruction of Sodom and all the “Cities of the Plain” is true, digging it up will reveal the: 1. Right time. 2. Right place. 3. Right stuff.

RIGHT TIME

Genesis 13 tell us that around the time of Abraham and Lot (Middle Bronze Age) there existed a city named Sodom which was part of a group of cities called, ‘The Cities Of The Plain.’ One of them was a sister city of Sodom called Gomorrah. Sodom was the biggest of the cities, it was much bigger than Jericho or Jerusalem.

When you dig through the remains of the city, you see Middle bronze age pottery in a Bronze Age strata. I dug up a lot of pottery sherds. Even brought some of them home too! They make nice souvenirs costing little more than the dirt I found them in!

There are classic Middle Bronze Age walls that are made of stone and mud brick up to 6m thick. Now when I say classic, I mean, “this is what the professionals call ‘classic.’” To me, it just looked like a row of rocks piled on each other. I wish they wrote “Middle Bronze” on them. That would have helped.

I do that with journal entries now just for the sake of polity for my future excavators.

To the experts, the good news is that these indicators of chronology (walls, pottery, dirt layers) line up perfectly with the Biblical account of when Abraham and Lot were around.

Right time. We are one for three thus far.

RIGHT PLACE

Genesis 13 says that Abraham and Lot stood on a mountain known as Bethel. It overlooks the Dead Sea and the entire Jordan Valley. The text says that they saw all the “Cities of the Plain” but the word “Plain” in Hebrew is “Kikkar” which is also translated as a “disk” or flat bread…what looks like a tortilla.

Genesis 13 says that Abraham took the west and Lot went into the valley as far as Sodom.

You may want to now turn to your Bible in the uninspired section…the maps.

Now for various reasons (mostly because they don’t believe the story is real) liberal scholars in the 20th century put Sodom either under the Dead Sea or just South East of it.

That’s not what the Bible says, however. Dr. Collins has one by one confronted skeptics and already published material. Some of them like author of Biblical Archaeology, Hershel Shanks, Dr. Collins has taken to the site itself and had to lay out what the Bible actually says about Sodom.

Dr. Collins believes the best way to find out about the cities of the Bible is to look at what the Bible says.

In 2002, Dr. Collins got a grant from the Jordanian Department of Antiquities and started digging at the site of where he believed to be Sodom. The time matched up, but in a way that most would find hard to believe (unless you believed the Bible). They discovered early on that something happened during the Middle Bronze Age to this city that wiped it out, living it inhabitable for approx. 500-700 years.

Interestingly enough, all the other Cities of the Plain excavation sites report the same thing. They report a mysterious gap in the strata from Middle Bronze to Early Iron. This is also called the LB (Late Bronze) gap. All these booming cities came to a screeching halt, all around the time of Abraham.

RIGHT STUFF

Not only is the city missing, I must tell you of the destruction layer. I was given a square to dig down and found it creepy to dig through what they call on the site, the ash layer. These layers (“or terminal layers” or “destruction layers” as they are also called) are sometimes thin and can be up to a meter deep. You can see the lines left in the dirt.

In some of the pictures you can see stone foundations of walls that, according to MB2 buildings, were covered by up to 10 feet high of mud brick. In many places the mud brick is there, sometimes it is gone entirely and sometimes it lays in a heap on a floor. It is not uncommon to find bodies underneath.

Bodies have been found. Some incinerated from the waist up, and some with limbs completely thrown from the original body. One person died with their toes completely curled up.

Something dramatic happened here.

You can have the right place and time but if you go digging and find nothing, well that certainly makes the case a lot more difficult to make.

Lastly, one of the key findings was a glazed piece of pottery that Dr. Collins first found 10 feet deep. Knowing that glazed pottery was not introduced in the Middle East until the Ottoman days of the 8th century, Collins told me that he first swore out loud thinking that his site had been compromised. Upon looking closer, it was not a glaze but a melt. In fact, the surface of the sherd was of a different substance altogether. A few of these findings were taken to a lab back in the New Mexico and it was said to be of similar essence to Trinitite. I was not familiar with this stuff so Dr. Collins explained that neither the heat of the sun, a fire or a kiln can create the stuff. It has been found in the wake of a nuclear explosion. 2000 degrees! That’s the kind of heat we are talking about here.

RIGHT TIME, RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT STUFF.

Watch the National Geographic Channel because Dr. Collins and the project will be featured. In the meantime, for more information, check out www.tallelhammam.com.

Church of Enlgand newspaper March 1924…history has some...

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 03:26:02 -0800

Church of Enlgand newspaper March 1924…history has some common themes. (Taken with instagram)

We Made It

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 04:23:49 -0800

Here’s the link.

On Moving Dirt

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:50:00 -0800

“Jon, you moved a lot of dirt today.”

This is the daily refrain I get from my site supervisor, Gary, who I have been working with all week. Gary has been on working on Tall el-Hammam for 8 years, since the very beginning of the dig. He has been my archaeological mentor and has taught me more than I ever thought I would need to know about baulk lines, the ideal trowel size, and when NOT to use a pick to get through dirt.

These lessons have been the daily routine of my week in Jordan. It’s cool, but it’s not all that glamorous (this is why there have not been many updates since digging began).

A Typical Day

6:00 AM. My roommate, Kenny, an 18 year old high school graduate from California and I do our morning devotions together. This week we’ve picked some Psalms to go through. I’m teaching him the importance of daily Bible reading and to believe that God can speak to him personally. I believe it was Martin Luther who said that we teach best what we need to learn most.

Kenny and I make up the entirety of the young adults group that I now lead.

7:00 AM Breakfast buffet. They just keep filling your coffee too!

7:30AM 40 volunteers get on a coach bus and drive off to the site.

7:45AM We load up trucks and hike 10 minutes to our digging square.

8:00AM Start moving dirt around. This part is not very sexy but can be rather tedious, slow and yet still occassionally rewarding. You really have to lower your standards from hoping to see destruction all the time to being excited to see a new wall developing. That being said, it is still quite spooky to go through a solid layer of ash and charcoal on the top of each area.

You should understand that, in the above picture, this is what I’ve been working on for 5 days (with 3 other volunteers). If there is nothing in that little square, there is nothing I can do about that. I say this only to protect myself from having to answer the question of “How many bodies did you find?”

They found two in the square beside me. I’m a little jealous of that but that’s between the Lord and I and certainly not for the blogosphere to have to worry about.

11:30AM A schwarma based lunch with the team and the Jordanian workers we hired to help us. They’re a friendly bunch and call me “Beeg Jon.”

2:30PM Pack everything back into the trucks and head to hotel for our daily pottery washing routine.

I am good at washing the pottery but I’m useless to know anything about it. The supervisors are trained to be able to look at a base of an artifact, a curve or a handle and be able to date it as (Early Bronze Age 1-3 or Iron Age 1-3 etc). It’s quite impressive.

Lots of our findings are the Middle Bronze Age, just as one would expect from the biblical timeline of when Sodom was wiped out.

4:00PM The work day is now done. It’s time to shower up, rest, go float in the Dead Sea, get dressed for dinner or a combination of a few of them.

6:00PM Amazing dinner. Worth mentioning because it is a highlight for many- not for my gut though.

7:30PM I have a lot of reading to do for school. This is study time in my room or hotel lobby.

10:00PM Lights out.

This Is The Place

Even though I haven’t found much, I have resigned myself to see that such dramatic findings are not why I’m here. I have learned so much in being on the site, by asking many questions and just see the geography and lifestyle of the Near East. The Bible always comes more alive when I can see it firsthand.

The places the Bible talks about were really there. The events it talks about really happened. After being in Jordan at Tall El-Hammam for the past week, I’m more convinced of this today than I was before I came. I will have to post the reasons later. For now, It has been worth playing hookie at Oxford for a week to come and check it out for myself.

They’ve told me I will be coming back and I believe it. There is so much more to go.

I think you should consider coming as well. There’s always room in the square for one more. They’ll supply the trowel, you just have to move the dirt.