The Equip Project Podcast

In Episode 5 we discuss Mormonism.

Mormons form the 4th largest religious grouping in the United States, after Catholics, Baptists, and Methodists. Globally, there are 16.7 million Mormons. 

Mormonism is growing quickly, especially in the United States. Over 70,000 missionaries are working across the globe at the moment. Many of our listeners will have encountered them on University Campuses in Ireland and the UK. So this topic is going to be of real importance for many of our younger listeners.

In this episode we discuss the early life of Mormonism’s founder, Joseph Smith. Then we consider the religion’s core text, the Book of Mormon. Next we pick up the story of how Mormonism developed from its early days. And finally, we talk about five key differences between Mormonism and Christianity. 

It's our prayer that each of the conversations during these season strengthen your confidence in the better story told by Christianity, helping to dispel your doubts, and drawing you closer to the Lord Jesus Christ.

In Episode 4 we discuss Islam.

We consider three big contrasts between Islam and Christianity. We’ll contrast the two founders, by examining the evidence for Muhammad and the evidence for Jesus. Then we’ll contrast the way secular academics have handled the origin of each religion. And finally, we’ll contrast the manuscripts of the Quran and the Bible. After considering these contrast we go on to make five specific criticisms of Islamic thought. 

It's our prayer that each of the conversations during these season strengthen your confidence in the better story told by Christianity, helping to dispel your doubts, and drawing you closer to the Lord Jesus Christ.

In Episode 3 we discuss Taoism. 

It’s often said that there are three religions in China – Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. But that statement isn’t referring to 3 different groups. As we’ve seen in the previous episodes, the religions of the East interconnect and merge and contradict each other all the time. So it’s said that for morals, the Chinese look to Confucianism; for spiritual experiences and mysticism, they look to Taoism. And for after-death needs
they look to Buddhism.

Taoism has two forms. There is a philosophical form, and there is a religious form which offers all sorts of different gods. In his episode we focus on philosophical Daoism. 

It's our prayer that each of these conversations strengthen your confidence in the better story told by Christianity, helping to dispel your doubts, and drawing you closer to the Lord Jesus Christ.

In Episode 2 we discuss Buddhism. There are about 500 million Buddhists in the world today, making up about 7% of the world’s population. Most Buddhists live in countries like Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka, Tibet, China, and Vietnam. Just like Hinduism, there are different schools of Buddhism and the differences between them are confusing.

In this episode we discuss the founder of Buddhism,  Buddha himself. Then we consider the two main schools of Buddhism – Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism.

It's our prayer that each of these conversations strengthen your confidence in the better story told by Christianity, helping to dispel your doubts, and drawing you closer to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Season 9 has finally arrived! Sorry we've been away for so long! 

This season we'll be focusing on 'World Religions and Cults', we'll have conversations about Buddhism, Islam, Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormonism. But in this first episode we discuss Hinduism. 

It's our prayer that each of these conversations strengthen your confidence in the better story told by Christianity, helping to dispel your doubts, and drawing you closer to the Lord Jesus Christ.

On Easter Sunday 2024 we held an Equip Live to discuss why we're so sure Jesus really rose from the dead! We also took questions from the audience. Listen now! 

In this season we have been talking about the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. For the past 250 years the Gospels have been a battleground. Critical scholars have done their best to portray the Gospels as fictions invented by the early Church to serve political purposes. 

In this episode we discussed alleged contradictions in the Gospels. We work our way through a number of examples, and seek to show that the Gospel accounts are coherent and, therefore, can be trusted. 

We’ve called this season ‘Battleground’ because the four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – have been attacked in recent centuries by critical scholars who argue that the Gospels don’t contain an accurate record of what Jesus said and did. 

In this episode we will be thinking particularly about what Jesus said. Do the Gospels record Jesus actual words accurately, or do the words attributed to him really come from the Gospel writers themselves?

We’ve called this episode ‘The Quest for the Historical Jesus.’  The basic idea is that critical scholars try to dig a great ugly ditch between what they term 'the authentic Jesus', the Jesus of history, and 'the Christ of faith'. According to these critical scholars, the Gospels are the product of the early church. For mainly political reasons, the early church invented the Christ that we know. And so the job of the scholar is to sift through the Gospels, like an archaeologist who carefully chips away at different levels of an ancient structure until we get to the rock bed of the authentic Jesus.

In this episode we push back against such criticism and discover that it really shouldn't worry faithful Christians at all. 

In the first two episodes of Season 8, we consider the historical context of the Gospels. We'll think about the blank page in our Bibles that separates the last book of the Old Testament from the first book of the New Testament. There's a 400-year gap between the end of Malachi and the Gospels. It's sometimes called the intertestamental period.

This historical context really matters. Many young Christians can believe that Bible history exists in a parallel universe from the rest of world history. It's as if the Bible begins in a land far far away. But Christianity is truth revealed in history. So one of our big aims in these first two episodes is to show how biblical history is woven seamlessly into world history. Christianity is not a cunning fable. It is about real historical events. 

We hope Season 8 is a blessing to you. To God be the Glory.