Several years ago when I went to church ...

... I came home and left this note to myself on the computer. As I was cleaning out my old WordPerfect files I found it. Here it is.


Notes to self:

A very interesting reading in church today: Acts 17:22-31.

Paul is in Athens and speaks of the Athenian altar "To an unknown god." He is clearly trying to find common ground with the pagans of old Athens and preaches a type of "universal brotherhood" message:

From one ancestor He made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the places where they would live, so that they would search for God, and perhaps grope for him and find him - though He indeed is not far from each one of us.

Is this saying that each people, each culture, does God's work as best they can, in their own way? Then:

While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now He commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which He will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom He has appointed and of this He has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

No talk of Jesus the God, but only an "appointed man!"

What does this mean? If anything?

Oddly enough I never got around to answering that. Any suggestions?