The Flood: Forming and Deforming, Creating and Un-creating
There are is a word and a phrase tucked away into the flood story in Genesis 6 that escaped my attention until this morning. Here it is, “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was […]
Antidote to Fear from Ezra-Nehemiah
Ezra and Nehemiah tell the story of the exiles returning from captivity to resettle the promised land. They come back to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple and the walls of the city. These rebuilding projects are external signs of a deeper inward rebuilding project. That project is the rebuilding of a holy people to the […]
Nehemiah 1 – The Prayer
Nehemiah starts off with bad news. People return to Persia with news regarding the state of affairs in Jerusalem. The wall is in ruins and the people have been shamefully treated. This breaks Nehemiah’s heart. His response is found in 1:4, “When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I […]
Getting More Out of Lists in the Bible – Ezra 1:9-2:70
It is easy to get lost in the lists you find in Ezra 1 & 2. When you get to a list in the Bible it is easy to skim over it and try to find out what is next rather than stopping and asking yourself what the list itself communicates. The first list in […]
Ezra 1 – There’s a Stirring
“In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and also to put it in writing” – Ezra 1:1 My last two posts were about Jeremiah […]
Jeremiah 29:11 Part 2 – Saying the Text Had a Meaning is Not Legalism
On my last post I had a few facebook comments that surprised me a bit. I just didn’t see it coming. They said that my take on Jeremiah 29:11 was legalistic. I presume they said that because my point was that the verse gets hijacked from its original context to be made to say whatever […]
The Unseen Realm By Michael Heiser
I don’t usually start off book reviews like this but I want to encourage you to read Michael Heiser’s “The Unseen Realm.” My typical approach to a review is to tell you what I think about it and then leave you plenty of room to decide if it is something you should or shouldn’t read. […]
Why Do We Exist?
“In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when […]
Interpretation Even Impacts the Formatting of Scripture
You may not pay much attention to it but there are interpretations that affect the way Bibles are formatted. Here are a few places this shows up: Red letters: There are passages of scripture that are hard to tell where Jesus starts and stops talking. John 3 is probably the best known instance of this. […]
The Bible in Translation: 450 BC to 1500 AD
I was fortunate enough to visit the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit in Los Angeles last week. It was amazing seeing all of the items that were in the exhibit that touched on so many things from the Old Testament well into the first century. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1946 and continued to […]