Christianity – The Righteous Cause

Reading the Rocks, Reading the Heavens: The Case for a Young Earth and the Logic of a Creator

Posted on July 5, 2026 by Dennis Robbins

The Argument for God That Even Skeptics Take Seriously ❧ ————— ❧ ————— ❧ Introduction: A Question Written in Stone Stand at the rim of the Grand Canyon at first light, and you are looking at a question rather than merely a landscape. A mile of stratified rock falls away beneath your feet — sandstone,…

Joey Sampaga: The Courageous Compassion of Christ, Luke 13:31-35

Posted on June 15, 2026June 15, 2026 by Dennis Robbins

Delivered by Pastor Joey | East Valley International Church | Gilbert, Arizona Text: Luke 13:31-35 (ESV) Abstract and summary of the pastor’s sermon: The Courageous Compassion of Christ — Luke 13:31-35 This sermon on Luke 13:31–35 casts Jesus as utterly ungovernable by human threats and heartbreakingly unwilling to abandon Jerusalem to its chosen ruin. Pastor…

EVIC Sunday School – Lesson 5: How the Bible Was Made and Preserved

Posted on June 15, 2026June 15, 2026 by Dennis Robbins

Lesson 5 The Dramatic Journey of the Bible to Modern Believers Introduction and Purpose of the Study Our study series has been to strengthen the class’s confidence in the Bible as God’s Word before transitioning to a longer “real-life discipleship” study. The aim is not deep theology but historical literacy: helping believers articulate not only…

Conjured into Existence: Joseph Smith’s 1842 Temple Ordinances

Posted on June 8, 2026June 11, 2026 by Dennis Robbins

Image: A digitally enhanced photo by this author of the Gilbert, Arizona LDS Temple. A Historical and Theological Examination of the Most Sacred Mormon Rituals ❦ ❦ ❦ Introduction: A Cathedral Built in Seven Weeks On the second floor of a modest mercantile building in Nauvoo, Illinois, on the warm morning of May 4, 1842,…

Joey Sampaga: The Narrow Door, Luke 13:22-30

Posted on June 7, 2026 by Dennis Robbins

Delivered by Pastor Joey | East Valley International Church | Gilbert, Arizona Text: Luke 13:22-30 (ESV) Summary of Expository Sermon: Luke 13:22–30 Strive to Enter the Narrow Door Opening Review and the Growth of the Kingdom Pastor Joey begins with a review of the prior week’s text (Luke 13:10–21): Jesus heals a woman bent over…

The Garden, the Cross, and the Finished Work: Where Was the Atonement Really Accomplished?

Posted on June 7, 2026June 7, 2026 by Dennis Robbins

A Christian Examination of the Latter-day Saint Doctrine that the Atonement Was Accomplished in the Garden of Gethsemane ✦ ✦ ✦ Introduction: A Tale of Two Gardens Ask a hundred traditional Christians where the atonement of Jesus Christ was accomplished, and ninety-nine will point to a hill outside Jerusalem’s wall called Golgotha, the Place of…

Why the LDS Missionary Is Not a Biblical “Elder” — and Why a Plastic Name Tag Is Not a Priesthood

Posted on June 6, 2026June 6, 2026 by Dennis Robbins

A Traditional Christian Examination of LDS Missionary Authority ❖ ❖ ❖ Introduction: The Doorstep and the Title Almost every American adult has met them. Two young men in dark trousers, crisp white shirts, conservative ties, and bicycles leaning against the curb. Pinned over their left breast pocket is a black plastic name tag bearing the…

Algorithms in the Sanctuary: Artificial Intelligence, Spiritual Authority, and the Pastoral Office in a Disrupted Age

Posted on June 5, 2026June 5, 2026 by Dennis Robbins

AI, the Soul, and the Christian Imagination I. The Hour at Which We Stand In late February 2026, the Barna Group, working in partnership with the technology firm Gloo, published a finding that should arrest the attention of every Christian leader in the English-speaking world. Drawn from a survey of more than fifteen hundred American…

Across The Chasm: How LDS Apologetic Writing and Traditional Christian Theology Read the Same Bible Differently

Posted on June 5, 2026June 5, 2026 by Dennis Robbins

A Comparative Analysis of Method, Authority, and Argument Introduction: The Same Bible, A Different Book When a missionary from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a Reformed evangelical pastor open the King James Bible to the same page, are they reading the same book? On the surface, the answer is plainly yes…

Recovering the Biblical Pattern of Evidence, Knowledge, and Faith for a Skeptical Age

Posted on June 1, 2026June 3, 2026 by Dennis Robbins

Why Biblical Faith Is Not Blind, Why It Is Not a Feeling, and How a Modern Disciple Can Walk in Both Reason and Trust Introduction: A Bandage Tied Across the Eyes Somewhere along the way — between the Enlightenment’s confidence and the modern internet’s noise — the word “faith” acquired a bandage. The bandage covered…

2 Corinthians 11:13-15: For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.

Romans 3:20-24: For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

Email: dennis@novus2.com

The LDS Word of Wisdom: A Revelation Examined from a Traditional Christian Perspective
The Revelation That Wasn’t a Commandment: How a Cup of Coffee Came to Guard the Gates of Mormon Heaven “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” — 1 Peter 3:15 ❦ ❦ […]
Render Unto Whom? Tithing, Trust, and the $300-Billion Question in Latter-day Saint Stewardship
LDS Vs Traditional Christianity – A study in comparative theology ❦ ❧ ❦ Introduction: A Tenth, a Temple, and a Trillion Dollars Few subjects reveal the distance between traditional Christianity and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as sharply as the doctrine of tithing. On the […]
The Silence of Infinite Spaces: The Vast Universe, the Infinite God, and the Limits of Human Knowing
A Philosophical and Theological Essay ❦ ❖ ❦ I. The Terror and the Question More than three centuries ago, the mathematician and Christian apologist Blaise Pascal set down a confession that has haunted every thoughtful reader since: the eternal silence of the infinite spaces frightened him. He was […]
Reading the Rocks, Reading the Heavens: The Case for a Young Earth and the Logic of a Creator
The Argument for God That Even Skeptics Take Seriously ❧ ————— ❧ ————— ❧ Introduction: A Question Written in Stone Stand at the rim of the Grand Canyon at first light, and you are looking at a question rather than merely a landscape. A mile of stratified rock falls away beneath your feet — […]
The Graveyard of Third Parties—and Why Tucker Carlson Is Walking Into It
This Third-Party Gambit Runs Aground on American Political Arithmetic ❧ ✦ ❧ On the first day of July 2026, from a taxidermy-cluttered barn in the Maine woods, Tucker Carlson announced that he intended to break the American political system in two. Speaking to the Columbia Journalism Review, the […]
Born of the Soil, or Born of Consent? Why Birthright Citizenship for the Children of Illegal Aliens Departs from the Constitution’s Origins
Why Birthright Citizenship Rests on a Feudal Mistake ❖ ❖ ❖ Introduction: A Question the Founders Never Answered — Because We Never Asked It Rightly On June 30, 2026 — in the two hundred and fiftieth year of American independence — the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its decision in […]
How the Justice Department Turned to “Birth Tourism” After Losing at the Supreme Court
26,000 Babies and a Booming Industry: The Real Scale of Birth Tourism A Standalone Companion to “Born of the Soil, or Born of Consent?” ❖ ❖ ❖ The Morning After: A Loss at the Court, a New Front at the Department The ink on the Supreme Court’s decision was scarcely dry. On the morning of June […]
No Master but Duty: The Improbable Life of Bass Reeves, the Man Who Rode the Indian Territory
Image: Enhanced and colorized photo from the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Photograph by E.L.Goff. (Public Domain). He Could Not Read His Warrants — and He Never Got the Wrong Man ❦ ❖ ❦ Prologue: A Tramp on the Red River Road On a worn road […]
Masters of the Arizona Desert: The Hohokam and the Thousand-Year Garden They Carved from the Sonoran Sand
A storytelling history of the desert farmers who built the largest irrigation network in ancient North America — and of the descendants who never truly left. circa 200 – 1450 A.D. ❖ ◆ ❖ The City That Rose From Ashes In the winter of 1867, a Confederate veteran and sometime prospector named Jack […]
Custer’s ‘Lone Survivor’ and Other Tall Tales: Who Was Arizona Bill?
The Tangled Life and Tall Tales of Raymond Hatfield Gardner — “Arizona Bill” (1845–1940) ❖ ————❖———— ❖ On a gray winter morning in 1940, an old man lay dying in the charity ward of a San Antonio hospital. He had no money, no verifiable family, and, the Army insisted, no record of ever having […]
Where the Desert Comes to Life: Inside Life Time Ocotillo — Gilbert, Arizona’s New Athletic Country Club
More Than a Gym: How Life Time Ocotillo Is Redefining Wellness in the Southeast Valley ❖ ❖ ❖ There is a particular hour in the Sonoran Desert when the heat finally breaks. The sun slides west behind the San Tan Mountains, the saguaros throw long shadows across the gravel, and the whole valley […]
The Woman Who Wore the Star: America’s First Female Marshal
The Improbable Life of Phoebe Couzins — Lawyer, Lawwoman, and the West’s Unlikeliest Pioneer 1842 – 1913 ❦ ❖ ❦ A Star Pinned to a Silent Blouse On a raw December morning in 1913, six mourners gathered at Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis to bury a woman the nation had once strained to hear. […]
Death in Tunnel 13: The DeAutremont Brothers and the Birth of American Forensic Science
Image: Wanted poster, distributed June 1, 1924. Courtesy Southern Oregon Historical Society 1988.11-8.5, MS 672 (via Smithsonian) A Narrative History of the West’s Last Great Train Robbery ❖ ❖ ❖ On the morning of October 11, 1923, engineer Sidney Bates had exactly one day of work left in him. […]
FROM A PUSHCART BY THE TRACKS: The Improbable Rise of Dutch Bros Coffee
A Narrative History of Brotherhood, Loss, and a Coffee Empire Built on Kindness The railroad tracks ran through downtown Grants Pass like a seam stitched into the floor of southern Oregon, and on a gray morning in 1992, two brothers wheeled a pushcart up beside them and waited to see whether anyone […]
THE LAW WEST OF THE PECOS: Judge Roy Bean and the Strange Equity of the Frontier
The True Story of the Hanging Judge Who Never Hanged Anyone A Saloon on the Edge of the Map Picture the place first, because the place explains the man. Three hundred miles of the Chihuahuan Desert lie between San Antonio and El Paso, and somewhere out in the middle of that emptiness, the Pecos […]
The Long Roll Call of Liberty: A 250-Year Narrative of American Freedom
An American Journey Through Liberty ❖ ❖ ❖ Introduction: A Republic Still Being Written On the reverse of the parchment Declaration of Independence, in a plain clerk’s hand, someone wrote a single docket line so the document could be identified when it was rolled up for storage: “Original […]
The Gospel of the Gun: John Wesley Hardin and the Myth of the Frontier Shootist
The True Story of John Wesley Hardin: A Narrative History (1853 ~ 1895) ✦ ✦ ✦ A Preacher’s Son in a Burning Land He was named for a man who spent his life trying to save souls, and he spent his own taking lives. The irony was not lost on the people of Texas, and it would not be lost on the […]
Born to Save the World: Tom Cruise, Scientology, and the Smile That Sells
Stardom, Faith, and the Price of the Hero Myth ❖ ❖ ❖ Introduction: The Man Who Refused to Fall On a warm August evening in 2024, a sixty-two-year-old man leapt from the roof of the Stade de France, abseiled into a packed Olympic stadium, took an American flag from a gymnast and a mayor, and rode […]
Chick Corea, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Long Argument Between Belief and Art
Between the Keys and the Cosmos Prelude: A Child at the Piano When Armando Anthony Corea first sat down at the piano, he was four years old, and the instrument had been set before him by his father, a Boston trumpeter who led a Dixieland band in the 1930s and 1940s. That domestic scene—an […]
Joey Sampaga: The Courageous Compassion of Christ, Luke 13:31-35
Delivered by Pastor Joey | East Valley International Church | Gilbert, Arizona Text: Luke 13:31-35 (ESV) Abstract and summary of the pastor’s sermon: The Courageous Compassion of Christ — Luke 13:31-35 This sermon on Luke 13:31–35 casts Jesus as utterly ungovernable by human threats and […]
Letters To A Mormon Elder: Chapter 8
Letter 8 — The Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham Vision Letters To A Mormon Elder by James R. White Thursday, July 5 Dear Elder Hahn, I received your note yesterday morning. I have considered just how to respond, and feel that I should indeed continue on and address the topic of the Book […]
EVIC Sunday School – Lesson 4: How the Bible Was Made and Preserved
Lesson 4 The Incredible Cost of Preservation of the Bible Introduction and Purpose of the Study Our study is a six-week informational series intended to strengthen the class’s confidence in the Bible as God’s Word before transitioning to a longer “real-life discipleship” […]
EVIC Sunday School – Lesson 5: How the Bible Was Made and Preserved
Lesson 5 The Dramatic Journey of the Bible to Modern Believers Introduction and Purpose of the Study Our study series has been to strengthen the class’s confidence in the Bible as God’s Word before transitioning to a longer “real-life discipleship” study. The aim is not deep […]
“Ye Shall Be as Gods”: The Serpent’s Promise as the Blueprint of LDS Cosmology
The Garden’s Oldest Whisper: How LDS Cosmology Repackages Genesis 3:5 ❦ ❦ ❦ I. The Architecture of an Older Whisper Of all the doctrines a religion must defend, the doctrine of God is the one upon which everything else turns. As Latter-day Saint Apostle Dallin H. Oaks once told an audience at […]
Restoration or Appropriation? How Mormonism Borrows Its Bible, Its Art, and Its Credibility from “Apostate” Churches
The LDS Church claims to be the only true restoration of Christianity, Yet it can’t stop borrowing from the very traditions it condemns. Image: Side‑by‑side, it’s hard to miss! If this is a uniquely “restored” church, why does its official emblem look like a line‑drawing photocopy of a […]