“What is truth?” Pontius Pilate asked Jesus that question, probably indicating that he thought truth was unknowable (John 18:38).
That same question—but with the conviction that absolute truth can be known—directs this website. It is grounded in the authority of the Bible as the ultimate source of spiritual truth, while recognizing science as a valid means of understanding physical reality.
That perspective reflects my own background: formal training in theology, combined with an undergraduate concentration in physics. I do not see these disciplines as competitors. They address different aspects of the same reality, and when pursued with honesty and rigor, they do not contradict one another.
I do not believe there are “scientific truths” on one side and “religious truths” on the other, each sealed off in separate compartments. I believe there is only one truth, and God is the author of that one truth. We encounter it through observation, through history, through reason, and through Scripture. When our understanding is partial, those perspectives can appear to collide. When understanding is complete, they converge.
That conviction is why I try, whenever possible, to relate theological questions to observable reality. Not because science sits in judgment over theology, and not because faith needs validation from physics or archaeology, but because rigor matters. The same intellectual discipline that keeps science from drifting into self-confirming assumptions is what keeps theology from drifting into claims that require no examination, no accountability, and no correction.
If something is true, it will eventually cohere—with the biblical text, with history, and with the world we can observe. If it does not, then either our interpretation is wrong, our data are incomplete, or both. That principle applies equally to scientific models and theological frameworks. Neither deserves immunity from careful examination.
This methodological commitment brings us directly to an idea put forth by the physicist Richard Feynman. In a 1974 commencement address at Caltech, Feynman famously introduced the term cargo cult science.
He was describing a subtle failure in the pursuit of scientific knowledge: the careful imitation of scientific form without adherence to scientific discipline. Experiments were conducted. Statistics were cited. Technical language was employed. Yet inconvenient results were ignored, traditional assumptions were never challenged, and conclusions were protected rather than tested.
To illustrate his point, Feynman referred to the cargo cults that arose among previously-isolated indigenous islanders in the South Pacific during and after World War II. These communities had all-of-a-sudden watched military aircraft land on newly built runways, delivering food, tools, and other valuable supplies.
When the war ended and the planes stopped coming, some islanders attempted to restore the flow of cargo by recreating what they had observed. They cleared the now abandoned runways, constructed imitation control towers out of palm fronds, began wearing carved wooden headphones, and practiced signaling with torches, hoping to attract some cargo planes to return.
The imitation forms were carefully reproduced by the islanders with faith that their efforts would be rewarded with reality. However, cargo coming from the sky did not materialize.
The failure was not in their insincerity. It was a misunderstanding of causation. The islanders had correctly observed what preceded the cargo, but they did not understand the reality that produced it. Once the underlying reality disappeared from view, ritual replaced cause, and imitation replaced understanding.
Feynman’s point was sobering to the Caltech graduating class: this can happen even among well-trained, well-intentioned scientists. When the outward trappings of rigor are preserved while foundational assumptions are left unexamined, science becomes performance rather than discovery.
One of the most famous cargo cult figures is John Frum, associated with movements on the island of Tanna (modern Vanuatu). The name itself may have originated in something as ordinary as a U.S. serviceman introducing himself: “I’m John from America.” In an oral culture encountering unprecedented technology and material abundance, the phrase could easily take on a life of its own.
Over time, John Frum became a messianic figure of expectation—a distant and promised returner of cargo, prosperity, and restoration. Rituals developed around him. Symbols were preserved. American flags were raised. Mock runways were maintained. Yet no amount of ritual precision brought the planes back.
What makes the story of John Frum so instructive is not that it reveals the foolishness of others, but that it reveals something universal about human reasoning. When access to causes is lost, people preserve forms. When outcomes are desired, imitation feels like understanding. And when a framework has been accepted as true over time, it becomes difficult to question—even when it no longer delivers what it promises.
That is not a failure unique to primitive island cultures. It is a human one, and this is where the analogy becomes uncomfortably relevant to my area of research—the fields of Bible prophecy and biblical chronology.
Modern Bible chronology, the kind taught in seminaries and found in study Bibles, is often presented as the product of careful historical scholarship. On the surface, it looks rigorous. In many cases, it is internally consistent, but beneath that surface lies a methodological inversion that too often goes unexamined.
Chronological frameworks derived from fragmentary secular sources—such as damaged Assyrian king lists, incomplete eponym canons, disputed astronomical anchors, and reconstructed regnal lengths—are frequently treated as fixed reference points. When tensions arise between those reconstructions and the biblical text, the adjustment almost always flows in one direction. Scripture is compressed, harmonized, reinterpreted, or declared “theological” rather than historical. The traditional chronological framework remains intact.
Over time, this practice becomes normalized. The framework is no longer tested; it is refined. The runway is maintained. The tower is rebuilt. The signals are sent. Yet the cargo (in this case accurate Bible interpretation) does not arrive.
This is not an accusation of bad faith on the part of Bible expositors. Like the islanders awaiting John Frum, many Bible scholars are sincere, intelligent, and diligent. The problem is methodological. When tradition replaces causation, and when inherited structures are preserved rather than questioned, biblical scholarship risks becoming a cargo cult—faithful to form, detached from source.
The biblical text is not a secondary witness that must be made to conform to external reconstructions. It is a primary source. If a chronological model repeatedly requires Scripture to be adjusted in order to survive, the model—not the text—deserves scrutiny.
This essay is not an argument against biblical scholarship. It is an argument for it—of the kind Feynman demanded for science. Primary sources must be taken seriously. Assumptions must be identified and tested. Explanations must account for all the data, not just the data that fit comfortably within a traditional framework.
Science values rigor because reality resists being fooled. Theological research must value it for the same reason, and this is especially pertinent where chronology and history are concerned. Truth does not change depending on who studies it. What changes is our clarity of vision as the whole truth is pursued.
Everything on this website is written with that assumption in place: truth is unified, discoverable, and ultimately coherent because it proceeds from a single source. Scripture reveals what God has chosen to make known; creation and history display the consistency of His handiwork. When properly understood, these witnesses do not compete—they corroborate.
The biblical research presented on this website and in my books is original and hopefully thought-provoking. It challenges tradition in many instances. I am not asking you to agree with my conclusions in advance. I am asking for something more demanding: the same intellectual honesty expected in any serious pursuit of truth.
Where understanding is incomplete, humility is required. Where evidence is strong, conclusions should be allowed to stand. That is the spirit in which this website is offered—not as a demand for agreement, but as an invitation to examine the method, follow the evidence, and allow Bible truth—wherever it leads—to speak for itself.