When you pick up the Bible to begin reading the New Testament, you will commonly start with Matthew. It may come as a surprise to you to learn that the Gospel itself makes no claim …
Introduction to the New Testament #7
There is little to learn from the order in which the books of the New Testament are presented in the Bibles we have today. There is no evidence that there is an inspired order. And …
Introduction to the New Testament #6
The New Testament is really an amazing set of documents. It is only logical to ask how it got written in the first place. We have already talked about how it was transmitted to us, …
Introduction to the New Testament #5
The New Testament is really a miracle in every way. We now know that most of the books that form our New Testament were written in a short period between AD 50 and the destruction …
The Epistle to the Romans #3
All of us go through stages of learning in our Bible study. Each time we read something like Paul’s letter to the Romans, we see it with new eyes. Unless, of course, we feel as …
The Testimony of Four
Somewhere in the Middle East, probably near Jerusalem, an older gentleman settled himself with his writing tools and pondered how he would begin to tell his story. At one time he had been a contracted …
Introduction to the New Testament #4
When you think about it, it is a logical question. Why didn’t Jesus write his own book? For that matter, why didn’t an angel hand the prophets a golden plate with prophecies written by the …
Introduction to the New Testament #3
It is of some interest that the New Testament church soldiered on for some 20 years before anyone wrote down anything that has remained for us to look at. (The fact that transitory papyrus was …
Introduction to the New Testament #2
When you sit down to read the New Testament, you encounter a strange cast of characters. I say strange—but only strange to us. The New Testament writers didn’t bother to explain, because all these characters …
Introduction to the New Testament #1
Imagine that you are in a room, all by yourself. No one else is there. No one else is supposed to be there. You are in the process of carrying out a rather simple task, …
The Epistle to the Romans #2
The second chapter of Romans begins with a Therefore. Any time you see that in Paul’s letters, you need to pay attention, because it means what follows depends on what has just been said. Paul …
A God Forgotten
What do you do when you cut loose from God? How do you live, what guides your decisions? How can you tell right from wrong? And when you think about it, who consciously cuts loose …
Thanks from the Heart
View PostThe Ten Commandments #15
When the last words of the Ten Commandments had rolled down Mount Sinai, and the last echoes had faded away amid the hills and valleys, the people standing at the foot of the mountain were …
The Ten Commandments #14
Of all the Ten Commandments, there’s one that can be called the “Peace of Mind Commandment”, or if you prefer, the “Mental Health Commandment”. It is the Tenth Commandment, “Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s …
The Ten Commandments #13
The very foundation of our legal system is truth. If people can come into court, swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and then lie through their teeth, justice …
The Epistle to the Romans #1
Back in the good, old days in the heyday of biblical scholarship (especially those German schools of scholarship) lots and lots of people were doing computer analyses on Paul’s epistles and said, Well, we don’t …
What Do You Want to Believe?
What do you want to believe? You should really give that question some serious thought before you ever look at the evidence in a given case. Because what you want to believe is like a …
The Ten Commandments #12
The last six of the Ten Commandments are said to be summarized by the statement You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And that’s well enough, but I want to take another look at them …
The Ten Commandments #11
Did God create sexually-transmitted diseases as a trap for man? Is it a kind of punishment to man for having too much fun? Is that the whole idea—that God created man, and then in a …