The Global Journal has been much concerned with the hermeneutics of a number of liberal and quasi-evangelical biblical scholars who avoid the factuality and propositional truth of Holy Scripture by arguing that biblical writers were in fact employing allegedly common “literary” styles of their time that did not mandate historical or factual accuracy (see, e.g., Vol. 15, No. 3).  Our next issue  (Vol. 17, No. 3) will feature a detailed analysis and critique of one such attempt, that of John Walton.  Readers of Dr. Joseph Miller’s devastating study will certainly be able to generalize to similar efforts by other biblical de-historicizers.  Our next issue will also contain a wonderful sermon on Psalm 46 preached on Reformation Day Sunday in 2018 by now-retired Pastor Ronald Hodel—a sermon that would not have been worth preaching if the biblical text were not de facto revelation from the Living God.

Issue 17/2 will perhaps seem on the surface to appeal solely to readers of Lutheran persuasion.  Not so!  Just as the struggle for biblical authority in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod a generation ago was repeated later in the Southern Baptist denomination, so every major church body today faces virtually identical doctrinal issues concerning the extent to which Scripture and its teachings can be accepted and seriously followed in an increasingly rationalistic age.  Whatever your denomination, you will want to read carefully Nathan Rinne’s analysis, “The Third Use of the Law, ‘Seminex,’and Today: Fatal Denial” (containing, unfortunately, an ancient photograph of your Editor), and David Thompson’s discussion of apologetics from a Lutheran perspective:  “A Confessional Lutheran Understanding of Christian Apologetics and Its Practice.”

The present issue of the Global Journal focuses on evangelism to the Jew.  The next will contain two seminal papers on Islam:  Dr Henry Hock Guan Teh’s “Islamic Legal Philosophy’s Incompatibility with Global Human Rights and a Brief Comparison with Christian Philosophical Theology”; and Hardy Housman’s “A Tablet from Heaven—or What?”  Here is the ideal opportunity for our readers to refine their understanding of the Islamic threat to Christian faith and western values.

Evangelism to the Jew is a sensitive subject.  There are, sadly, evangelicals who appear to believe that Jews are saved qua Jews—in direct contradiction to the clear message of Jesus in  the New Testament that no one comes to the Father but through personal belief in Jesus himself.  And the maltreatment of Jews by institutional Christianity across the centuries has made contemporary witness exceedingly difficult.  The nation-state of Israel, whilst granting citizenship to virtually any one of proven Jewish ancestry by way of the Law of the Return denies the application of that law to “Messianic Jews”—those Jews who have accepted Jesus as their Savior.

The Global Journal editor has often maintained that the New Testament witness “to the Jew first” is particularly assisted by the argument that accepting Jesus as the Divine Messiah offers the Jew a double advantage:  (1) fulfillment soteriologically (Messiah has come, so salvation is an assured reality) and (2) fulfillment epistemologically (though, unlike the New Testament, the inerrancy of the Old Testament cannot be demonstrated through sufficiently early historical documents, the entire revelational authority of the Old Testament is established once one accepts Jesus’—i.e., the Incarnate God’s—full confidence in the Old Testament records).

The next issue of the Global Journal will be featuring two scholarly articles on Jewish-Christian issues:  Alan Shore’s “Maimonides Against the Trinity: Implications for Contemporary Dialogue with Jewish Religious Thought” and Amy Downey’s “Modern Jewish History and the Making of the Messianic Identity.”

Grab a Kosher corned beef sandwich at New York’s wondrous Second Avenue Deli—or your local equivalent—and enjoy!

In today’s secular world, demon possession is generally regarded as nothing but medieval superstition. Modern western man has forgotten C. S. Lewis’s sage account of the devilish strategy (The Screwtape Letters, 7): “Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course, this has not always been so. We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When human beings disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us we cannot make them materialists and sceptics.”

Vol. 16, No. 2 of the Global Journal will feature selections from a learned symposium on the subject recently made available for our republication by the kind permission of The Journal of Mind and Behavior (editor: Dr Raymond Russ, University of Maine). The main article by Mark Crooks will be followed by commentaries by Craig Keener and your Editor. The Montgomery inclusion is perhaps justified by my books Principalities and Powers: The World of the Occult and Demon Possession: Christian Medical Association Essays.

The first issue of the “sweet 16^th” volume of the Global Journal will commence with a moving poem from our Associate Editor, Dr Roland Ehlke.  Then Gary R. Habermas and Benjamin C. F Shaw will offer an important review article discussing “Jewish Scholars on Jesus’ Resurrection.”  Finally, consistent with the Global Journal’s interest in connecting theology and law, Lindsay Wilson of Ridley College will pose the question:  “Taking God to Court: Was Job Wise in His Use of the Legal Metaphor?”

The late J. Barton Payne wrote a classic article—I have cited it more than once—with the disturbing title, “Hermeneutics As a Cloak for the Denial of Scripture (Evangelical Theological Society Bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 4 [Fall,1960], pp. 93-100). Our forthcoming issue is entirely devoted to a very recent and influential instance of this phenomenon as exemplified in the hermeneutic approach of Michael R. Licona. Lydia McGrew offers a detailed analysis of Licona’s latest book, with trenchant criticism of its methodology.

The lead article our next issue deals with a messy theological situation at, of all places, the Moody Bible Institute.  I have been a fan of Moody (Church and Institute) ever since becoming a Christian as an undergraduate at Cornell University.  Evangelist Dwight Moody was the Billy Graham of his time (or, rather, Billy Graham was the Dwight Moody of our time).  I presented one of my “Defending the Biblical Gospel” seminars at Moody Church and its just-retired, long-time senior pastor was Erwin Lutzer, my graduate student at the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and later recipient of an honorary doctorate at the Simon Greenleaf School of Law when I was its Dean.  In short, theological trouble at Moody really disturbs me—and should be a deep concern to evangelicalism in general.  The issue is—ignoring the politics—whether to tolerate postmodern philosophies of truth that are uncomfortable with “truth as correspondence.”  Vol 15, No. 2 of the Global Journal focuses on this question, with in-depth articles by Julie Roys and your Editor.

Readers of the Global Journal will certainly be acquainted with Francis Collins, who, unlike many scientists today, has made clear that his scholarship operates from a Christian perspective. But that commitment does not exempt him from responsible criticism, and our next issue features a serious critique of Collins’ position by Dr Hendrik van der Breggen, of Providence University College, Manitoba, Canada (http://apologiabyhendrikvanderbreggen.blogspot.ca/).   Vol.  15, No. 1 of the Global Journal will also contain a trenchant analysis by Dr Andrew Hollingsworth of the semantic theory of the late Italian uomo universale Umberto Eco, best known for his novel and film The Name of the Rose.

Even Christians with little or no knowledge of legal apologetics have heard of Frank Morison’s classic, Who Moved the Stone?—a powerful case for the facticity of the resurrection of our Lord. Global Journal 14/3 will feature Australian legal scholar Philip Johnson’s fine essay on that great Christian writer and his contributions. Also, and appropriately, Boyd Pehrson, another non-lawyer (Morison was a layman), will refute a lawyer-skeptic who has endeavoured to deep-six the Editor’s legal apologetic for the truth of the Faith.