What would happen to you if you were down and out and there was no one to help? Where would you be if you were sick and broke in a strange city with no place …
The Minor Prophets #20 - Joel
When you read the Old Testament prophets, a pattern begins to emerge. And if you know what to look for it begins to clear the air somewhat in trying to understand what they’re about. As …
The Minor Prophets #19 - Joel
Living as we do in an age of plenty, it’s hard for us to understand famine. What we do know about it is a long way off and kind of unreal. We see picture of …
The Minor Prophets #18 - Jonah
Once upon a time there was a man named Jonah. I am sure you heard of him. He was the son of a man named Amittai and we know he was an active prophet during …
The Minor Prophets #17 - Nahum
We don’t know a lot about Nahum. He describes himself as an Elkoshite but no one knows where Elkosh is to date him. The date of his prophecy can be placed between 700 to 600 …
Extreme Grace
It had been a hard three days. David and the handful of young men with him had left in hurry and they had taken no food. By the time they got to a place called …
The Minor Prophets #16 - Micah
Reading the biblical prophets—with understanding—is no easy task, at best. But when you try to do it without knowledge of the history behind it becomes hopeless. For one thing, there are parts of prophesies that …
The Minor Prophets #15 - Micah
The words of the prophet Micah could just as easily be said and written today. Micah wrote in Chapter 2: Lately my people have risen up like an enemy. You strip off the rich robe …
The Minor Prophets #14 - Micah
It’s a small wonder that people have a hard time understanding biblical prophets. The truth is, unless you know something about the situation on the ground when they wrote, you’re just left with to come …
The Minor Prophets #13 - Hosea
History really does repeat itself. The reason is simple and obvious: We keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over again—and it produces the same results over and over again. The cycle of history …
Disillusionment and Redemption
Many years ago, in the middle of a theological argument about what is required for the saving of a man’s soul, I formulated another of what I call Dart’s Laws. This one is, simply stated: …
The Minor Prophets #12 - Hosea
At times, when you read the prophets, there’s an almost melancholy sense—a sadness, a blues, as it were—because you realize that God didn’t want things to go the way they were going. The Book of …
The Minor Prophets #11 - Hosea
The whole idea behind sin offerings in the Bible is for a man to acknowledge his sin and to recognize that there is a price to be paid for it. Now, God didn’t make a …
The Minor Prophets #10 - Hosea
It’s painful watching history repeat itself. It’s even more painful to realize you can’t do much to head it off. But there’s nothing new under the sun, and the prophets of old must have felt …
The Minor Prophets #9 - Hosea
I remember a time when I thought all those references in the Bible—and the prophecies in particular—to adultery and harlotry were talking about spiritual adultery. The idea was that Israel was married to God, she …
The New Calvinism
Let me tell you an obvious fact you may never have thought of: You hold a set of ideas, some of which are contrary to what your church actually believes. And you are probably unaware …
The Minor Prophets #8 - Hosea
Unfortunately, the Biblical prophets don’t write their story like history. I say unfortunately, but that’s strictly from a 20th-century point of view. It’s probably because we aren’t really quite on the right wavelength. Instead, the …
The Minor Prophets #7 - Hosea
I have always said that whenever you see a prophet coming down the road it is almost certainly bad news. Because God doesn’t send us a prophet to tell us how well we are doing. …
The Minor Prophets #6 - Hosea
The Old Testament prophets pose a singular problem for the reader. This is because they are prophets, not seers like Nostradamus. They aren’t there to tell you when things are going to happen off in …
The Minor Prophets #5 - Amos
I’ve been reading the Biblical prophets for a long time now. In all that time, the thing that strikes me the most about these prophets is how real they were. These aren’t just old Hebrew …