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ApologetiX in AZ, FL, IL, PA, 40,000 Readers Strong
Sat., May. 15. 2004 1:43pm EDT
1. Friday & Saturday: Mesa AZ
2. Next Weekend: Miami FL, Greenfield IL & Philadelphia PA
3. Upcoming Concerts (Including New Ones in Kimperly WI & Calhoun LA)
4. Evidence for the Historical Accuracy of the Bible
J. Jackson, lead singer and lyricist for ApologetiX (That Christian Parody Band) here.
Dig this: As of this week, we are now up to 40,000 subscribers to this email newsletter! That's incredible! Also, this week, we learned that the Promise Keepers gatherings are now stocking "Adam Up." That's great news, too!
Sorry to those of you who received our newsletters two days late the past two weeks. We were experiencing problems with the company that operates our server, but it appears those problems have been fixed.
Did you know that today (well, it was today when I started writing this), Wednesday, May 12, is ApologetiX drummer Bill Rieger's birthday? Well, our Bill is such a selfless guy that he actually forgot that fact himself and had to be reminded last weekend by our other Bill, keyboardist Bill Hubauer. If you'd like to wish Bill a belated happy birthday, you can email him at bill@apologetix.com.
Speaking of Bill Hubauer, if you came to the Cleveland OH show last Friday, you got a special treat -- our first ever "live" performance of "The Devil Went Down to Jordan," with Bill Hubauer on fiddle! We'd never played it together before (We did our parts separately in the studio and had a guest fiddler from the country band Blackhawk play on the track), but we practiced it in sound check, and it actually worked! Thanks to Bill H. for learning the fiddle part -- just another in a long line of surprise blessings from God.
Thanks to all of you who came to see us in Cleveland and in Houston TX on Saturday! I'm sorry I had to shock all you Cleveland fans by tearing off the Browns shirt to reveal a Steelers jersey underneath, but I could think of no better way to illustrate wolves in sheep's clothing for our intro to "Little-Read Bible Book." If you think THAT got ugly, you should have seen what my fellow band members and our sound guy, Bob, had in mind if I'd kept the Browns jersey on! They were as shocked as you were!
NOTE TO THE REST OF YOU: Pirates fans and Indians fans can peacefully coexist because they're in different leagues, but Steelers fans and Browns fans are in the same division, and they don't get along too well. Our good friend, Vicki Linimiscavowskawitz, who promoted the concert, sent me a Browns t-shirt after they beat the Steelers last year, and she'd been asking when I was finally going to wear it. For the rest of the concert, I was half-expecting somebody in a Browns' standard-issue "dawg" mask to come up and pummel me. Thanks for showing restraint and Christian love! :)
Thanks also to those of you at the Houston show who patiently waited for us. We were originally supposed to play at 9:30 p.m., and then they changed the time to 10:30 p.m., but the festival started running behind (When you have 20 bands, things like that happen), and we didn't go on until 11:30 p.m. But it was so cool to see so many ApologetiX fans out there, including a fan named Randy who works with the Houston-area police on drug busts and says they actually play ApologetiX on the way to the busts. There were many other fans who went the distance, including my old friend, Andrew Marinelli, who's been following us and emailing us for years but had been unable to see us in concert until this one. It's always so cool to meet long-time fans and friends like that!
This weekend, we're back in Arizona for our first time since 2002. Two nights in the same location -- how relaxing that sounds! Please note that our website previously had the concerts marked as two on the same day, and then one on Friday and one on Sunday. That information is incorrect. We are doing a show on Friday night and another on Saturday night, both at First Baptist Church of Mesa AZ. Hope to see you all there!
1. FRIDAY & SATURDAY: MESA AZ
Friday, May 14 at 7 p.m.
NOW OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!
Tickets $10 in advance, $15 at the door
FIRST BAPTIST OF MESA
4801 E. Brown Road
Mesa, AZ 85205
CONTACT: Church 480-981-9684
Saturday, May 15 at 7 p.m.
Ticketed Concert TBA
FIRST BAPTIST OF MESA
4801 E. Brown
Road Mesa, AZ 85205
CONTACT: Church 480-981-9684
2. NEXT WEEKEND: MIAMI FL, GREENFIELD IN & PHILADELPHIA PA
Friday, May 21, 2004 at 7:00 p.m.
(Doors open at 6:30 p.m.)
Double Show with Freddie Colloca and ApologetiX
Tickets $14, and groups of 20 are $12 each, and purchases can be made by calling the church, area Christian Bookstores, or online at the church website
Major Credit cards will be accepted
WAYSIDE BAPTIST CHURCH
7701 SW 98 Street
Miami, FL 33156 http://www.waysidebaptist.org
Phone: 305-595-6550
Saturday, May 22, 2004 at 6:30 pm
Tickets can be purchased at the church or area bookstores $10 advance, $14 door
Sponsored by INDIANA CHRISTIAN NEWS
Park Chapel Christian Church
1176 East Mckenzie
Greenfield (Indianapolis), Indiana 46140
For more information contact: 317-770-7670
WEBSITE: www.cheerfulheartministries.com
AND www.indianachristiannews.com
Sunday, May 23, 2004 at TBA
It looks like this is going to be the date of the rescheduled Timmy D. concert Philadelphia PA We're still waiting for the official site and concert time For more info, contact Timmy D. at
timmyd@safeplace.net
3. UPCOMING CONCERTS (INCLUDING NEW ONES IN KIMPERLY WI & CALHOUN LA)
This list adds concerts frequently, so stay tuned for more info. For the full details on all of the concerts below, please go to http://www.apologetix.com/tour.html and scroll to the bottom.
To inquire about booking a concert, please contact
Kathleen Burke
booking@apologetix.com
Burke Communications
949-770-3001 (9 a.m. to 5 p.m. PST).
May 14 - Mesa AZ (now open to the public!) May 15 - Mesa AZ May 21 - Miami FL May 22 - Greenfield IN Jun 4 - Chattanooga TN Jun 12 - Milwaukee WI Jun 26 - Manlius, IL Jun 27 - Springfield IL Jul 10 - LiFest '04, Appleton WI Jul 16 - Sonshine '04, Wilmar MN Jul 18 - Kimperly WI Jul 24 - Bensalem PA Jul 29 - Richmond VA Aug 1 - Ludington MI Aug 04 - Kingdom Bound '04, Darien Center NY Aug 21 - Calhoun LA Sep 5 - Erie PA Sep 10 - 12 West Linn OR Sep 18 - Alton IL Oct 9 - Peachtree City, GA (Atlanta)
4. EVIDENCE FOR THE HISTORICAL ACCURACY OF THE BIBLE
Many of you have probably heard of the famous Christian apologist, Josh McDowell, who travels worldwide lecturing on the historical accuracy of the Bible and other topics associated with apologetics, the defense of the Christian faith. I first saw Josh speak when I was a college newspaper reporter covering his visit to our campus during my senior year at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP).
It was my first taste of Christian apologetics. Although Josh didn't convert me at the time, he certainly affected me in the long run. I'd never heard anybody speak on the historic accuracy of the Bible or the stories recorded therein. It took a couple of years, but that experience listening to Josh eventually helped give me the courage and the desire to see if the Bible really was true. And the rest is history (no pun intended).
Anyway, Josh has written many books, but perhaps his best known works are "Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Volumes I and II." A few years ago, Josh published a new edition that consolidated and updated those two volumes, "The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict." I highly recommend this book to anybody out there who wants to equip themselves to better defend their faith. Here are three excerpts to whet your appetite:
A. SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE
"Sir David Dalrymple was wondering about the preponderance of Scripture in early writing when someone asked him, 'Suppose that the New Testament had been destroyed, and every copy of it lost by the end of the third century, could it have been collected together again from the writings of the Fathers of the second and third centuries?' After a great deal of investigation Dalrymple concluded:
'Look at those books. You remember the question about the New Testament and the Fathers? That question roused my curiosity, and as I possessed all the existing works of the Fathers of the second and third centuries, I commenced to search, and up to this time, I have found the entire New Testament, except eleven verses.' (Dalrymple, as cited in Leach, OBHWGI, 35, 36)"
Isn't that amazing? That means only 11 verses of the New Testament aren't requoted in the writing of the Church Fathers from 100-299 A.D.! That's incredible!
B. GLEASON ARCHER
Gleason Archer wrote a book called "Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties" that I bought for our lead guitarist and producer, Karl, about 13 years ago (and borrowed back from him a few years ago and still haven't returned yet), is also mentioned in "The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict." He has some great answers for just about any difficult Bible questions you might encounter. This week I read some of his credentials in the "Evidence" book. Dig this:
"He was known around the seminary as the man who had learned over thirty languages, most of them languages of Old Testament times in the Middle Eastern world. Dr. Gleason Archer, who taught for over thirty years at the graduate seminary level in the field of biblical criticism, gives the following modest description of his qualifications to discern the meaning of difficult biblical texts:
'As an undergraduate at Harvard, I was fascinated by apologetics and biblical evidences; so I labored to obtain a knowledge of the languages and cultures that have any bearing on biblical scholarship. As a classic major in college, I received training in Latin and Greek, also in French and German. At seminary I majored in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic; and in post-graduate years I became involved in Syriac and Akkadian, to the extent of teaching elective courses in each of these subjects. Earlier, during my final two years of high school, I had acquired a special interest in Middle Kingdom Egyptian studies, which was furthered as I later taught courses in this field. At the Oriental Institute in Chicago, I did a specialized study in Eighteenth Dynasty historical records and also studied Coptic and Sumerian. Combined with this work in ancient languages was a full course of training at law school, after which I was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1939. This gave me a through grounding in the field of legal evidences.'"
Here's what Archer says about the internal consistency of the Bible:
"As I have dealt with one apparent discrepancy after another and have studied the alleged contradictions between the biblical record and the evidence of linguistics, archaeology or science, my confidence in the trustworthiness of Scripture has been repeatedly verified and strengthened by the discovery that almost every problem in Scripture that has ever been discovered by man, from ancient times until now, has been dealt with in a completely satisfactory manner by the biblical text itself -- or else by objective archaeological information. The deductions that may be validly drawn from ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, or Akkadian documents all harmonize with the biblical record; and no properly trained evangelical scholar has anything to fear form the hostile arguments and challenges of humanistic rationalists or detracts of any and every persuasion."
C. JUDAS' DEATH: DO THE BIBLE ACCOUNTS CONFLICT?
Many people have problems reconciling the two accounts of Judas' death in the Matthew vs. Acts. I'm already familiar with the following explanation, but I thought it was phrased well, and it would be enjoyable for everybody who's receiving this email. Also, I didn't know the little bit about the geography of that area itself, so I really thought it was cool. Here's this week's final excerpt from "The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict":
"Students of the Bible are often troubled to find statements in the Bible that appear to contradict other statements in the Bible. For example, one of my associates had always wondered why the books of Matthew and Acts gave conflicting versions of the death of Judas Iscariot. Matthew relates that Judas died by hanging himself. But Acts says that Judas fell headlong in a field, "his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out." My friend was perplexed as to how both accounts could be true. He theorized that Judas must have hanged himself off the side of a cliff, the rope gave way, and he fell headlong into the field below. It would be the only way a fall into a field could burst open a body. Sure enough, several years later on a trip to the Holy Land, by friend was shown the traditional site of Judas' death: a field at the bottom of a cliff outside Jerusalem."
That's just a small sample of the cool stuff you'll find in "The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell. Go check this book out! It's awesome!
God bless you!
Apologetically,
J.
-- J. Jackson Lead Singer/Lyricist ApologetiX (That Christian Parody Band) www.apologetix.com j@apologetix.com
Romans 5:3-5
Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
--------------------------------------------------------------- ApologetiX That Christian Parody Band http://apologetix.com
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