Thank you -- I have long waited for an article such as this one! Amen to your proposed responses from Christians on these new challenges. I wish more churches will start to take things more seriously.

There are only a few sanctified. Others become sick during trials. Jersulum was defeated. Moses raised his arms and warriors continued to fight and win. Jesus today needs warriors. I am being poisoned and police have never questioned about crime. Other corruption.FDA approves blood thining drugs that cause diabetes on purpose. Seriously. They give it psychotics. Police are out numbered by mobs. They should do a campaign for decent officers in small mob controled towns. Mobs run for sheriff. Jesus wants Total submission. listen every second for God the father. Faith in forgiveness from God. Psalms 99:9-hillpray. Please fight these evil USA mobs or death from God or evil. Gal 3:2. 1 corinth 14:26. Every movement about love. Chichasha OK- isreal. Proverbs 19 20 21. Amen!

Having studied under Dr. Bock, I can say that he is someone for whom I have a lot of respect. However, Darrell is wasting his enormous talents by focusing on the worst popular culture has to offer. The last thing we need to be spend money on, when half the world's population lives on $1 a day. is entertainment in the guise of scholarship. This is exactly what the shows he sites are. Hyping the latest new thing to sell more ads. Having read Darrell's Da Vinci Code book, mostly out of curiousity after the WSJ named it the best of the bunch (but did we really need 25+ books debunking the DVC?), which while well written, missed the point that most people liked the book, not because of its ridiculous assertions about Jesus, but in spite of them, finding it an entertaining read. NG's translation work on gospel of Judas has already been discredited by secular scholars with no dog in this fight. We don't need to join this silly parade of nonsense, nor defend against it, but to rise above it.

I think what I find most problematic about this article is the notion that all of this is somehow new; as opposed to what it really is, simply a change in emphasis. For example, the writer notes above that "[S]cholars' books were usually fact-checked and peer-reviewed by other experts before being released." That may be true in strictly scholarly publications, but that's not really the issue here. Rather, the only thing that has changed in the last few years is the appearance of popular books by mainstream, non-evangelical scholars such as Borg and Crossan. One need only thumb through a listing of the vast majority of books and television programs that have present a strictly traditionalist view, while offering the likes of Jerry Fawell and Pat Robertson as "biblical scholars". Bias may be a problem here. But it's hardly new and certainly not one-sided.

Christianity today is not what it used to be in the 1st Century. Where have all of "God's powerful weapons" gone that were used to destroy strongholds and false arguments and to pull down proud obstacles raised against the knowledge of God and to take every thought capture and make it obey to Christ? (2 Cor. 10: 4-6). In Christianbity today, there is no firsthand and personal knowledge of Christ as is possible! That is why Christians are completely powerless and oversensitive in the face of a hostile world which wants to know the truth. Without knowing ourselves who Jesus Christ is, as taught and introduced in His teachings (largely neglected), we do not have a chance at all to stand on our assumed "faith". It is neither the media which became a nuisance; nor the world which is the enemy of the cross of Christ. Hard as it may be to believe, it is us! The problem is Christianity, full of theology, but without Christ and His Gospel; without the answers to life.