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  • How Judaism Was Subverted

    Modern Judaism dates to the middle-ages.  Before that came the Rabbinic Period, beginning in the first century.  Before that was the period described as the “Late Second Temple” Period which included the Persian, Seleucid, Hasmonean and Roman occupation periods.  Before that were the Babylonian exile and post-exilic periods, and before that the Assyrian obliteration of…

  • The Strange Case of the Mishna

    The Jewish Mishna is an enigma.  Not its texts, per se.  They are quite “practical” and plain as instructions on how to live the Jewish life. What is profoundly mysterious is the mentality of its authors in developing it between the 2nd half of the first century and the end of the second.  You will…

  • When Was The Book of Deuteronomy Written?

    An old Jewish joke says that for every two Jews, you have three opinions, but that could also apply to biblical scholars. Because no two biblical scholars can agree on anything, and they oftentimes disagree with themselves, eagerly hedging their own theories, proposing counter-options. It is true that academics quarrel over theories for a living,…

  • The Bible’s Crucial Lesson

    Our purpose here is to expose what the Bible teaches is God’s desire and intentions of, and for us, and as a result, how the rest of one’s traditional religious beliefs and practices are supplanted. Having understood God’s heart for us, we will see which aspects of the Bible reveal it, and which don’t. Those…

  • Why Was Jesus Murdered?

    Theories about how Jesus’ death dealt with our separation from God have come and gone throughout church history.  The favored, traditional Christian doctrine is that Jesus was sacrificed on the cross to “forgive our sins”. This is believed to be crucial since those sins were holding us apart from God’s “justification” and, it is believed,…

  • Jesus’s Nature

    Christian tradition has long affirmed that Jesus is divine—one “person” of a triune Godhead. This framework interprets His authority, miracles, and exaltation as evidence of inherent deity. Yet the New Testament also presents Jesus as a fully human figure who lived, acted, and suffered within the constraints of human biology. A second model has garnered…

  • Always Learning, Never Knowing

    Most people who embark on a journey expect to arrive at their destination.  Airports contain huge boards showing the status, gate number, and destination of all of its departing airplanes.  All of the people boarding a flight for a particular destination fully expect to arrive at that destination. But this situation isn’t true of every…

  • Moses in Egypt?

    The Bible’s Exodus narrative is quite specific about Moses’s history in Egypt: his adoption by the Queen; His rise to responsibility and power under Pharaoh; his crime, and his flight to Midian to escape justice. And from Moses’s introduction in this narrative, the Exodus author goes out of his way to inform us that Moses…

  • Israel in Egypt?

    Where is the evidence for Israel in Egypt and their Exodus from it? When we look for its memory in Egypt we don’t find it. When we look for it at Jericho we don’t find it. When we look for it in Egyptian or Mesopotamian records we don’t find it. You would think something as…

  • The Development of Israel’s Idea of Righteousness

    “Righteousness” to Israel came to mean being acceptable to God. Most know that the Ten Commandments given by God to Israel at Sinai served as the foundation for Israel’s idea of righteousness. The evolution of Israel’s received understanding of their position vis-à-vis the status of “righteous” before God was dependent on their progressive revelation by…

  • Was Luke’s Gospel First?

    For Bible Nerds: The “Synoptic Problem” is not a “problem” but a question: “How is it that we have three Gospels relating many of the same stories and sayings of Jesus in sometimes near-identical words?”  Did they copy from each other?  Did they copy from some common source we no longer have?  And of these…

  • Correction!

    As you may have noticed in the past on this blog, the foot/endnote system didn’t work. If you’re one of those who read a piece and want to track to an in-line footnote to see what it says, and then smoothly click on its index to return to where you were, WordPress’s system generally (not…

  • The Singular God and the Divine Christ: A Case for Modalism

    Only some people believe that Jesus of Nazareth was divine, the same thing as God.  Almost none of those believe that God is a singularity.  They would say that He is “three in One”.  Does the assertion of Jesus’s divinity by itself create a dichotomy between these two ideas, as many claim? The purpose of…

  • Jesus in Light of Paul in Light of Jesus

    There has been a long-running tradition in scholarship of complaining that Paul tried to establish his own religion apart from the teachings of Jesus.  I claim this is a position of ignorance, and perhaps academic agenda, not because Jesus’ and Paul’s words aren’t different – they are. But, rather, because they simply haven’t understood how…

  • Refuting Paul’s Attackers

    The Apostle Paul has gotten a bad rap for centuries, mostly based on his antagonists’ misunderstanding/ignorance. Our purpose here is to review the attacker’s charges in some detail and demonstrate why they’re mistaken. In so doing, we’ll look at his criticisms in antiquity from both Jewish-Christian and Gentile-only factions of the early church, as well…

  • Life in a Moral Cesspool

    The US today is infected by a cancerous malignancy that has nearly completely destroyed the healthy portions of its host. The difference between a cultural malignancy and a biological one is that the cultural form has an attitude. It rejoices in its destruction. It celebrates the death of the healthy, unlike the biological which is…

  • Forgiven, or Transformed to Righteousness?

    For centuries, the traditional, Christian interpretation of Jesus’ death has been that it was an atonement for the sins of those who would choose to “believe” and follow Him. This scenario portrayed a kind of cosmic cleansing for those who believed, though no one told us what that meant. A common assumption is that having…

  • The Fraudulence of “Biblical Historians”

    Just a quick note.  Over the past many years in reading the work of “Biblical Historians” I have been struck by what, perhaps, should have been self-evident to me from the beginning. These “scholars” are not trying to understand why, for example, Jesus’ disciples all chose (with the exception of John who was exiled to…

  • Learning the Real Paul (and Unlearning What You’ve Been Taught)

    Scholars and expositors have been mangling Paul’s message in his epistles (particularly Romans) for centuries. If we are to see Paul’s true message, we’re going to have to dig much more deeply into the text, and then unlearn nearly everything we thought we knew. No small undertaking. But in so doing, we will also see…

  • Unpacking the New Covenant Gospel

    Many Western Christians [i] and secular individuals have misunderstood the core message of the Bible’s Good News for centuries. This analysis aims to clarify the true Gospel, obscured since the Reformation, by examining relevant New Testament and Hebrew Bible passages to determine whether they support or challenge what I’m referring to as the “New Covenant…

  • What Does “He Emptied Himself” Mean?

    Recently a very long-standing dear friend of mine asked my thoughts on Paul’s phrase “he emptied himself” in Phl 2:7. He said he had been considering the meaning of the phrase for some time. I confessed I hadn’t thought about it. But, as it turns out, many hundreds of bible scholars and theologians have ever…

  • The Letters of James and Paul — Different?

    There is an undercurrent of opinion amongst scholars of the early Church and Bible students that James, the brother of Jesus, and Paul the Apostle proclaimed two different gospels – that the book of James contains an authentic look into 1st century Jewish Christianity and what his brother, Jesus, taught, while Paul’s epistles lay out…

  • Thinking About Jesus and the Crucifixion

    For nearly as long as there have been people, they have been sacrificing animals to their gods.  It has been a doctrine of Christianity from its formative days that Jesus was crucified as a sacrifice on behalf of all people.  Is this doctrine correct?  Or does it simply represent an adaptation of Jesus’ story to…

  • Paul’s Real Gospel

    When you hear a respected biblical scholar reinforcing with conviction what you’ve been learning – and teaching – for the last ten or twenty years, it’s a big deal, not to mention quite the affirmation. Such was my case in coming across a lecture by Dr. Jason Staples (one of my favorite New Testament scholars)…

  • Whatever Happened to Yom Kippur?

    I spend virtually zero time reading the Talmud.  However, I recently stumbled onto a video presentation that describes some radically strange stuff there having to do with the Yom Kippur ceremony, especially after 30 AD.  Especially for Christians, this is a must-know piece of Jewish legend.

  • Jesus’ Fulfillments

    In this piece, we’ll drill down into the claims of believers that Jesus, as the Christ – the Messiah, was the fulfillment not only of the Hebrew Bible’s Messianic prophecies, but further that He was the fulfillment of its “Law” and “the Prophets”, and, perhaps most controversially, of Israel itself, as well as inaugurating the…

  • Why Priests and Sacrifices?

    I have written several pieces explaining the fact that God, as He is recorded in the Hebrew Bible, did not want His people to perform sacrifices to Him. Yet the vast majority of the Pentateuch is all about sacrifices and offerings. Why?

  • How Old is the Hebrew Bible?

    How old are the books of the Hebrew Bible, and why should we care? Since the Bible is likely the most influential book ever written, we deserve to know the truth of its composition and history.

  • The Priestly Slander of Moses

    The Hebrew Bible presents conflicting political viewpoints between its authors. The priestly viewpoint seeks to distance itself (and its readers) from the mythic legacy of Moses as the redeemer of the nation of Israel and replace it with a system of abject reverence for, and obeisance to, the Aaronic priesthood. We’ll examine a few examples…

  • Searching for the Bible’s Sources

    Many laymen dispute that the Pentateuch was written by several distinct authors. Biblical scholars don’t. But they disagree on who those authors were and what they wrote. If we stipulate that the authors of the Documentary Hypothesis wrote the Pentateuch, what can we discover about their backgrounds and worldviews? Let’s see.

  • The Origins of Judaism

    When did “Judaism” begin to be widely practiced (i.e. widespread adherence to what we today recognize as the rules and calendar of the Pentateuch)? Irrespective of when the individual books of the Pentateuch were written, when did the majority of Judeans begin to live them out? The answer is quite shocking.

  • New Heavens and New Earth

    What is the proper interpretation of the Bible’s passages describing the Eschaton — the end and resolution of the world? Most, for the last 1200 years or so, have believed that when they die, they will go to “heaven”, despite the paucity of biblical evidence for this view. But what happens at the end of…

  • Why Jesus?

    God promised Israel a savior, a Messiah of the line of David.  Having rejected God and suffered for centuries they expectantly looked forward to their ultimate vindication and redemption that he would bring. 

  • Does Paul’s Potter/Clay Metaphor Say What Christians Think It Says?

    In Romans 9:18-23, Paul gives us a very sparse but dense (contextually) metaphor describing God as a potter working on “vessels” that in one case turn out “for blessing” and in others, turn out “for destruction”. Is Paul saying what traditionally has been believed he is saying? Let’s see.

  • Did Jesus Say He Was YHWH?

    In a recent video interview, Dr. Jason Staples presented the outlines of his argument that lexically, Jesus referred to Himself as YHWH in both Luke and Matthew. Now, if you’re comfortable with the whole “son of God” characterization, this may be a bit jarring

  • What Did the “Law of Moses” Mean To…?

    This post presents a three-part series looking at what the term “Law of Moses” (and similar) meant to different people at different times in the Bible; 1) The Israelites, at various points in their history, 2) Jesus (in His many interactions with others involving His understanding of its meaning), and 3) Paul, who infamously dismissed…

  • Searching For (and Finding) the “Needle in the Biblical Haystack”: Following the Bible’s “Blue Thread”

    Our premise in what follows is that there is a unified message permeating throughout the entire Bible: both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. That message represents God’s “signal” concerning how we are to treat Him (love and reverence), and each other (love, as we love ourselves). But His signal must penetrate through lots of…

  • Jesus and the Moses Scroll

    Our purpose here is to compare and contrast the “Ten Words” (Decalogue) found in the “Moses Scroll” (MS) with both of the other canonical versions found in Exodus and Deuteronomy, but also with the teachings of Jesus. We’ll see if the nuances in the MS Ten Words (and their blessings and curses) can also be…

  • Moses’ Real Words?

    In the 1880’s an antiquities dealer in Jerusalem came into possession of an apparently ancient “scroll” consisting of fifteen strips of leather containing paleo-Hebrew texts. Within a period of five years of their “publication”, the fragments had been declared forgeries by “experts” in Europe, and shortly thereafter, the antiquities dealer, Moses Shapira, committed suicide in…

  • Ruminate on God’s Word

    Recently Steve Gregg visited my area and presented a message to a Christian fellowship here. His subject was the change that we are expected to undergo having committed ourselves to Christ. But it was a metaphor he used in his message that I thought was stunning in its clarity, and worth sharing with those both…

  • How Jesus Taught

    When we read Jesus teaching in the New Testament, we know instinctively that He is speaking and teaching differently than we do today in the modern West. How is it different? What influenced His teaching “style” that we have become so familiar with over the years, but remains so distinctively “foreign” to our modern, Western…

  • God’s Issues With the Temple Cult

    A casual reading of the Pentateuch leaves one with the impression that, for some unexplained reason, God created a line of priests to mediate between him and hs rescued Hebrews and laid out in meticulous detail an intricate and fully developed sacrificial system, tabernacle, and culture. A more careful reading, however, at the very least…

  • Which Way to Horeb?

    The Exodus itinerary is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. We don’t know where virtually any of its stopping points were. At best we know something about what was there, and, rarely, how long they traveled to get there. And, of course, there’s the inertia of the traditional explanation (i.e. via Sinai’s…

  • What, Or Who, Are the Bible’s Heavenly Beings?

    One of the more obscure concepts in the Bible for me has been the idea of Heavenly beings. I say it is obscure because when they are mentioned in texts they remain quite enigmatic, and opinions among biblical scholars and theologians concerning the nature of these beings vary all over the map. In diving into…

  • Fishers of Men

    There is an intriguing connection, as pointed out by my friend and Hebrew Bible teacher, Ross K. Nichols, between some of the Hebrew Bible’s prophecies, describing a regathering set off by phrases placing that regathering in the “latter”/”last”/”days to come”, and Jesus’ statement that He would make His Disciples (the fishermen Simon (Peter) and his…

  • What Is God Waiting For?

    About 2000 years ago, Christ rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, prophesied by Zechariah (9:9) of Israel’s long-awaited Messiah, and hailed by His followers with “Hosanna[i]”.  In keeping with God’s plan for His Creation, Jesus was murdered, buried, and then arose from death only to reappear to the Disciples and many who knew Him.  During…

  • Groaning With the Spirit

    Rom 8:26 “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” A recent post on social media mentioned an interview with NT Wright (A Deep-Dive into the Book of Romans: Dr.…

  • The New America

    The New America could care less what their country is or represents. They’re only concerned with themselves. The New America is the product of failed public education, failed parenting, failed social policies, open borders, and not just resistance to achievement but disdain for any, ANY differentiation of one vs another on the basis of an…

  • Israel’s Claim to the Land

    Given the current situation in Israel, not to mention the context of the disputes over the past 80 years, I think it is worthwhile to evaluate what the Bible has to say about Israel’s claims to their land today. The Bible is overflowing with hundreds of instances of God promising the land of Israel (“Canaan”)…

  • The Kingdom of God

    Who believes they have a sound, well-supported understanding of what Jesus was talking about when He taught on the Kingdom of God/the Heavens? I thought I did. And I almost did. But one of its key characteristics – when it started – I have been completely mistaken about.

  • New Testament Uses of Old Testament Texts

    How much do you know about the nature of references made by New Testament authors to Old Testament scripture? It turns out that there is an entire academic field centered on the study of this subject. And, there seems to be at least two conflicting views among scholars of these New Testament (NT) citations of…

  • The “Fulfillment” of Scripture

    Luke 4:[17] And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, [18] “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the…

  • Listen, Learn, Keep, Do

    What were God’s instructions to His children? Moses thought they were crystal clear. They were the basis of God’s covenant with Israel. Where do we find these covenant teachings today? In significant part, they have been abandoned. Let’s take a look at what, according to Moses, the basic precepts of being “God’s people” involved[i], and…

  • Understanding the Language of “Day of the Lord”

    The prophecies that use the oft-repeated term “day of the Lord” in describing a pending judgment by God resulting, typically, in some cataclysm, are referred to as Day of the Lord (DOL) prophecies. Most of the occurrences within the Bible of the use of this phrase appear in the writings of the Minor Prophets: the…

  • Jesus and Paul

    Dozens of books and hundreds of scholarly papers have been written on the subject of the differences in the ministry messages of Paul and Jesus. Some gloss over the differences in their attempt to maintain a united Christian front. But others use the differences to claim that Paul, not Jesus, is the real founder of…

  • Uncleanness, Sin, and Holiness in the Hebrew Bible

    Most modern Christians (and essentially all unbelievers) misunderstand the key patterns used by the Hebrew Bible to convey the concepts related to Holiness. They tend to see a moral binary pattern that can be summarized as: “Holiness is the absence of Sin”. But that’s not the pattern that the ancient authors of the Torah were…

  • Where Did YHWH “Come From”?

    Most of us are familiar with the Biblical story of YHWH introducing himself to Moses, as Moses was shepherding a flock, as a vision/theophany in a burning bush adjacent to Mt. Sinai/Horeb (Ex 3:1-2, 15). (For the uninitiated, your English Bible’s use of the word “LORD” [all caps] is its symbol for God’s name, YHWH.)…

  • Some Narrative Patterns in the Hebrew Bible

    One of the dominant features of the Hebrew Bible is its use of purely literary or literal-historical patterns – whether of actions, of the circumstances of characters, or similarities in narrative construction. Interestingly, some of the Bible’s patterns may just be literary devices for their own sake. This article identifies dozens of such forms. But…

  • The Lesson of Ecclesiastes

    Those somewhat familiar with the book of Ecclesiastes know that its headline message is encapsulated in its second verse, Ec 1:2: [2] Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. The book’s Hebrew title is Qoheleth whose meaning roughly is “an expounder of wisdom”, the narrator of the book.

  • Make Man In Our Image

    What does “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen 1:26) mean about us? And, what does it mean that God gives man “dominion” over the living things in His Creation? And, what on earth does this have to do with prohibiting them from worshipping idols? Let’s find out.

  • Who Wrote the Hebrew Bible?

    Is it possible to figure out how the Hebrew Bible was written, by whom, and when? Those who study the text for a living would say “yes”. Among them is Richard Elliot Friedman, in his 1987 book “Who Wrote the Bible?” (updated in 2019). In it, Friedman makes an absolutely fascinating and substantially believable case…

  • A Reassessment of the Source(s) and Authenticity of the  Hebrew Bible

    All scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17). There is a festering dissonance today between the traditional view of the Bible by people of faith (both Jew and Christian), and the…

  • Developing Spiritual Fitness

    Most of us think about our spiritual lives (when we think of them at all) as cerebral, passive things: things that just are, likely supported by some “quiet time”, perhaps some Bible reading, and prayer. However, our spiritual strength is only truly developed when, like a muscle in our body, it is stressed, and stressed…

  • Interpreting the New Covenant

    There is substantial controversy surrounding the proper interpretation of the announcement of a New Covenant between God and Israel and Judah (Je 31:31-34, Ezk 36:24-28). Both the Jewish and Christian interpreters spin its interpretation to suit their theological views, leaving no consensus. Let’s see if by working through the texts we can discover the truth.

  • Wrestling With the Origins of the Pentateuch

    Modern Biblical scholarship has concluded that the majority of what we now have in the Biblical Pentateuch was substantially written in the seventh to fifth centuries BC. This creates a formidable problem for the traditionalist view (of both Jews and Christians) that holds that these foundational works were written by Moses, in Moses’ timeframe. But…

  • Did God Want a Temple, Sacrifices, or a Monarchy?

    People casually familiar with the Hebrew Bible and its narrative of the history of Israel generally accept that the cultural symbols and practices that developed in that history were prescribed – even commanded – by their God Yahweh (YHWH). A little study, however, reveals a much more ambiguous situation.

  • In the “Bronze Age”, Where Did the Bronze Come From?

    Undoubtedly, this little monograph will be met with yawns of disinterest from most. I started thinking about the question of how the wandering Hebrews could come up with enough bronze to fashion the altar God commanded them to make while researching another Exodus topic. Since an entire epoch of some 2.100 years was named for…

  • John’s Identification of Jesus

    The book of John is the fourth of four Gospels of Jesus Christ and is unique among those in its portrayal of the story.  John doesn’t so much focus on narrating a history of what Jesus did, as is common in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but on proclaiming who Jesus was, and what His life,…

  • Implementing God’s Kingdom on Earth

    The Kingdom of God is the precinct in which its citizens interact with each other and outsiders per God’s will. So, as Christians, how does God want us to act both to model and to implement His Kingdom “on earth as it is in Heaven”? Implementing the Kingdom of God “on earth, as it is…

  • Freedom, in Paul

    Countless words have been spilled analyzing and debating Paul’s intended meaning of the phrase “works of the Law”, and his theological treatment of the Law itself.  In contrast, far fewer words have been spilled analyzing and exploring Paul’s concept of the “freedom” he ascribes to those “in Christ”.  Our intention here is to show the…

  • The Parable of the Shrewd Manager

    One of the most obscure parables Jesus related to His Disciples is found in Luke 16:1-13. The average Bible reader is left scratching his head as to what on earth Jesus is doing in this parable in which He lauds what seems to be deceitful behavior by the discredited manager of his rich master’s accounts.…

  • The Bible Explained

    Do you know how the stories of the Bible fit neatly together into an integrated whole — the story of God’s interactions with His created humanity? If not, this may help.

  • A Critical Analysis of Eastern Orthodox Beliefs

    In way of introduction, I have been forming my Christian beliefs, in some cases based on other’s views, in others personal study, for now some 20+ years. Recently, I have explored some of the beliefs and doctrines of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and, surprisingly perhaps, have found substantial overlap with my own. I say surprisingly,…

  • The Problem With Murder

    We all have an instinctive revulsion of the wanton destruction of one of us by the hand of another. But why? If the victim is not one of our family or close relations, how is it that we feel the evil of his loss? How are we – the victim and I – connected? Where…

  • What is the Christian’s Calling?

    There are three polar opposite popular opinions these days as to what it is the Christian is called to do. The first is that the Christian calling is to do essentially nothing. This is the view held, in whole or in part, by the vast majority of those who identify with the Reformed Church tradition,…

  • Searching for a Consistent Biblical God

    I wonder how many people have been thrown off of their inevitable search for God by what they perceive as not just the inconsistency of the characterization of God in the Bible, but by His seemingly severe, some would say immoral, characterization in the Old Testament. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could find and…

  • Biblical Narrative As a Mosaic

    Most of us read the Bible as at most a narrative of the history of God’s people, culminated by some revolutionary stuff in the New Testament. And, it certainly, on one level, is that. But few of us read the Bible carefully enough or deeply enough to see its deeper construction as an intricate weaving…

  • Christ’s Cultural Revolution

    Most people including self-professed Christians have no inkling of the enormity of the transformation of their everyday existence Christ prescribed. His prescriptions so thoroughly upended the culture of first-century Jews that they concluded He had to be eliminated.

  • The “X-Files” of the Tanakh

    There is some very strange stuff going on, semantically, in the Tanakh – the Old Testament. Our English translations hide much of it, allowing us to blithely assume that unclear verses are either just poorly translated or, perhaps, intended to be purposefully obscure. But, what if their obscurity/ambiguity reveals some much deeper meaning than simply…

  • New Life in the Kingdom of God

    In the second three chapters of Ephesians, Paul casts his revolutionized view of human life and interrelationships that, as much as any portion of his epistles, brings into sharp focus the life transformation that followers of Christ should both expect and strive for.

  • Paul’s Apocalypse of Christ

    In his letter to the Ephesian church, the Apostle Paul reveals that for millennia God had knowledge kept secret that suddenly, through Christ, had been revealed, first to Christ’s Apostles, and then to those to whom they preached.  The revelation of this secret, this μυστήριον mustḗrion, was for Paul the life- and reality-shattering apocalypse of…

  • Abandoning the Love of Jesus

    Modernity has gradually abandoned the love of Jesus as the key tenet of society with predictably disastrous effects.  Ever since the Enlightenment (1650-1900) mankind has committed itself to a mission of analyzing technical and societal problems and, through its own IQ, skills, and determination (you know, “hard work”, etc.), “fixing” them. 

  • Creating a New Nation

    The stark differences between ideological factions in the United States are, to me, intractable.  As factions, they will never again lock arms, sing Kumbaya, and collectively do what’s in the best interest of the nation as a whole, irrespective of what they, individually, may need to give up to achieve that end.  Why is this?

  • “Angels” of the LORD

    The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) has many stories in which beings typically identified as “an angel of the LORD ”, or just “angel”, are depicted interacting with people as, apparently, another person. What can we learn about these persons from the texts? More than you might think.

  • A Call to a Radical Christian Revolution

    The premise of this note is that in order to rescue this civilization, Christ Himself is going to have to “appear” in the world to demonstrate to its inhabitants that He is the way, the truth, and the life.  And, since we Christians are the members of His body on earth, that job falls to…

  • Death by Selfie: Egotism as the Root of Our Troubles

    In an article at The Daily Wire, Joseph Curl reports that a 23-year-old Chinese crane operator, Xiao Qiumei, who had 100,000 followers on social media, fell 160 feet to her death while filming herself on a giant crane. She was the second woman to die in China in July by way of a fall while…

  • Why Was Jesus A Human

    Why a human Jesus? Wasn’t there another way?

  • What Paul Meant by “all Israel”

    How did Paul see “all Israel” being saved? (Romans 11:26)

  • The Inversion of Virtue

    The West, I argue, has turned a corner from which it will be impossible, short of a miracle, to un-turn.  We’ve become addicts of narcissism, ignorant judgements, and feigned righteousness.  We’re continuously fed their messages of “just a little more” so that our impending overdose is all but assured.  But, perhaps most depressing is the…

  • Did God Deceive Israel?

    People who read the Bible somewhat seriously are well aware of the Biblical story leading up to the nation of Israel; their near-total rejection of their redeeming God; His attempts to retrieve them from their apostasy; and their ultimate destruction as a nation and collection of tribes in 70 and 135 AD.  What some may…

  • Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

    Most will recognize this title as one of the most famous admonitions of Jesus of Nazareth.  But most of us don’t have much experience in fulfilling it.  How can we turn this around?

  • Isaiah’s Servant and “Israel”

    The book of Isaiah is in many ways a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. In it, we find a seemingly bipolar God concerning His chosen but about-to-be-exiled Israel. One moment He chastises their behavior while the next He promises future redemption and blessing. And in it, we find the enigma of His…

  • Make Straight the Way of the LORD

    Anyone who has spent any time in Israel knows that it is a land of hills, and therefore of constant elevation change from one location to another.  From the cliffs overlooking the Rift Valley of the Dead Sea and Masada in the South, to Qumran, to the Central Highlands, to the Golan Heights and Mount…

  • America is Not Greek

    Our democratic institutions evolved out of those invented by the Greeks.  The Greeks were intoxicated by the idea of rational speech – logos.  Their principle was that logos was at the heart of the Greek-invention and revered culture of political discourse.  And “discourse” only occurred when those involved shared in the same virtues and  all…

  • A Defense of God’s Character From Calvinists

    Calvinism defames and assaults the character of God. Here’s how.

  • Life Elevated

    Much of today’s popular psychological messaging is designed to make us happy and content with ourselves by puffing up our self-esteem.  Much of this messaging is commercial, designed to create in us a frame of mind favorable toward purchasing whatever is being sold.  This psychology doesn’t have your best interests at heart; it doesn’t want…

  • Needfulness

    If you haven’t yet recognized your abject needfulness; haven’t yet plumbed the depths of your prideful self-satisfaction with your comfortable, predictable existence as your greatest and most challenging failure, then you haven’t approached the door of God’s Kingdom, nor, perhaps, do you know where to look for it.

  • The New Covenant…of Moses?

    It may come as a surprise (as it did to me) that Moses, virtually before Israel was identifiably a nation, predicted the replacement of the Covenant he was given for them by a succeeding, New covenant in which God took things into His own hands.

  • Rejecting God

    My purpose here is to raise awareness of the deep-seated origins of the civil unrest being played out today in the West.  It’s just not as pat or as superficial as people in today’s media would have us believe.  There’s much more going on here than simple protest.

  • Don’t Waste God’s Time

    Few understand what being called into the life of Christ means to them or requires of them. Fewer still understand, having answered this call, how such a life is even possible, let alone what that life looks like as it is lived out. And very, very few know that answering that call and living that…

  • Freedom from Disquiet

    It’s interesting to me that today in the West, a substantial portion of the population apparently believes that they have an innate right to not be exposed to anything that upsets them – be it KAG hats, critical commentary (social media posts?) on their ideas, objective description of our real history, moral values… whatever. This…

  • A Christian’s Response to Cultural Marxism

    What is cultural Marxism and how should I respond to it?

  • The Law of Faith

    Paul in Romans 3:27 says: Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. Unfortunately, Paul never explicitly tells us what this law is that he is referring to (this is the only occurrence of the phrase not…

  • The Obedience of Faith

    In this note we’ll look at this imperative of obedience to Christ as portrayed in the Bible, and uncover some insight into what the Bible means by “obedience” and “believe”.

  • Recovering the Gospel – II

    Here I want to look at, to the degree we can, how Jesus Himself thought about the Gospel He was bringing. What did He think the Gospel was that He was bringing, and, more importantly for our present situation, how did He see it being enacted?

  • Recovering the Gospel – I

    When you hear the term “Gospel”, what story or message comes to mind? When you hear the statement “Believe and be saved”, what does “believe” mean to you? And when you read: “For by grace you have been saved through faith”, what is your understanding of what “faith” looks like?

  • A Fresh Look at Paul

    What was Paul teaching us in his epistles?  Ever since Martin Luther and the Reformation he inspired 500 years ago, we’ve thought we knew.  However, in the last 30 years, a different understanding has been proposed as the result of research to understand Jewish thinking on their relationship to God in first-century Israel, so that…

  • Man in God is Immortal

    Times of uncertainty, like those we find ourselves in in the Spring of 2020, bring stress on both the believer and the unbeliever. For the one who believes in the Son, however, he knows that he has the assurance of God that he will share in His eternal life (1 John 5:11-13, John 6:47, Romans…

  • Biblical Love

    In the Bible the people of God are commanded to love Him (Deut 6:5, 11:13, 30:6, Mt 22:37) and love their neighbors (Lev 19:34, Mt 22:39-40), whether those neighbors are love-able or not. But what is Biblical love? And how do we get it, and give it away[i]?

  • The Parables of the Treasure and Pearl

    What did Jesus intend for His audience to understand from these similes?

  • A Vision of Heaven

    What makes us think we have any idea of what “heaven” is like?

  • Dispelling Christianity as “Hate”

    Christians today face sometimes virulent hatred from secularists. Why? We even have people who profess to be Christian demeaning their supposed brethren. What’s prompting all of this revulsion and disdain, if not outright hatred, and how should we respond (if at all)?

  • Living Christ

    This note focuses on the sincere Christian desiring to live the life he has been called to live in Christ — to live your life as Christ would live it if He was you.

  • Creation: A Design for Glory

    Did God “know” the future “before the beginning”? Or did He simply design it?

  • Hearing the Good News

    Most modern western Christians miss what the Bible has to say about its good news – the Gospel of Christ. It’s right there in black and white. But somehow they miss it – read right past it. How does this happen?

  • Being a Disciple

    Not many self-proclaimed Christians these days would claim the mantle of “Disciple”. They think those were the twelve guys who followed Jesus around (or were they Apostles?). Most have no idea what the term means and what is, therefore, involved in actually becoming one.

  • God’s Calling to Himself

    When you read something in the Bible, perhaps for the umpteenth time, but suddenly it communicates something new to you, you pay attention. Such was the case when I ran across (on my way to researching a completely different topic) these verses in Hebrews 3:7-8:

  • Christianity for Dummies

    What is Christianity, really, and what do Christians believe and how do they live? There are lots of platitudes and stereotypes around, but very little real understanding. The purpose of this note is to try to cut through the misunderstanding and answer these and other related questions in simple, direct and common language.

  • Israel, Judah and Jerusalem in Prophecy

    Confusion by those reading the Old Testament’s (OT) prophecies regarding Israel, Judah, Jerusalem, and Zion has resulted in profound disagreements by interpreters.  Some (Jews, many Dispensationalist Christians, and some “Hebrew Roots” Christians) believe the prophecies should essentially be taken literally.  The Jewish Temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem in the future; all people of Jewish…

  • Perceiving God

    Christians are taught to “know” and love God.  And for some, their experience in the faith leads them to moments of perceiving God with them.  Here I’m not talking about some strange incursion into your life by some spirit-like presence, perhaps in response to some crisis or loss in your life.  The web is full…

  • Not One Stone Left Upon Another

    Do you know why God had to see to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple? I didn’t.

  • The Jewish and Christian God

    Jews and Christians have almost nothing in common except their God.  He is one and the same God. Jews believed they were chosen by God for special blessing, that this blessing was an inheritance due to their birthright, originating with their father Abraham if they would only faithfully live by His Law (discussed, below).  They…

  • Seek First the Kingdom of God

    Not all Christians experience the same quality of spiritual life.  For some, their lives are joyful, full of confidence, full of assurance of their acceptance and eventual reward, and full to overflowing with the Spirit of God, to the point that they feel compelled to give it away to those around them. For others, life…

  • Escaping Christian Indolence

    Multitudes of Christians today think that they have no obligation to serve their Lord.  They seem to be content having, in their mind, obtained their “salvation”, to simply sit by, go through some motions, and wait to go to heaven.  Why is this behavior so common today?  There are a few reasons that can be…

  • Belief, and the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit

    There appears to be in the Christian church today a profound misunderstanding of the working of Salvation in the Christian’s life. On the one hand, we have the tried and true fundamental statement of salvation found in Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians (2:8): For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is…

  • “in Christ”?

    What does it mean to be “in Christ”?  How do I know if I am?   The Apostle John tells us this: 1 John 5:20 (ESV) [20] And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him…

  • Free Will?

    If God decided the destiny of every person that would ever live before the foundation of the world, why bother exhorting people to change their lives? If God directs every (significant) action and outcome of everyone’s life, why tell them to change?  They’re just doing what God specifies they do. If God didn’t provide humans…

  • Blessing

    Do you understand the meaning in the Bible of the word “blessing”. I didn’t.

  • A Conversation with God

    What do you do when you’ve studied the Bible for a few decades, had a lifetime of Sunday morning messages, and you’ve still got a few questions?  Well, I decided to go straight to the Source.  Fortunately, God had a few minutes he could spare.  So, he agreed to sit down and listen to my…

  • The Grace of God

    The grace of God is widely misunderstood by Christians today. I misunderstood it for decades, to my humiliation. So I can easily understand why and how others can be misled. In searching for a definition, the one that I feel best describes its efficacy is provided by Dallas Willard: “Grace is the action of God…

  • Thinking About the Trinity

    Don’t make it hard. Don’t overthink it. “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One”

  • Forsake Offense

    When many look at what’s going on today they see an attack on their long-held values.  Others see sinister forces at work to prevent them from achieving a better society.  And let’s just stipulate that both are reacting honestly, in that their feelings are not fake. What’s unusual today is the strength of those feelings. …

  • The Rise and Fall of America

    Introduction Democracies come and go.  As some measure these things, the average life span of a democratic republic is about 200 years, and ours is about 250 years old.  But they don’t simply die from old age.  The pathology is present in their genes from the outset: the rule of the people. In 1787 Alexander…

  • Israel as Metaphor

    Those familiar with the Jewish Bible — the Tanakh — or what Christians call the Old Testament, have puzzled for centuries over the meaning of the failed history of the Israelites, culminating in the destruction of their Temple and Jerusalem in 70AD, and their destruction or banishment from their homeland in 136 AD following the…

  • Redeem the Time

    I recently watched this message from Dallas Willard delivered to an audience at Westmont College in 2011.  Most of what Willard has to say in all of his books and talks rivets my attention.  But this one particularly grabbed me.  It is definitely worth submitting it to careful review, particularly as we commemorate this Easter…

  • Should I Believe This, and If So, How?

    God has endowed us with minds and logic. We look at the assembled evidence concerning a question, and we draw conclusions using them based on the criteria, deep down, of “What’s best for me?”

  • Scientific Evidence for God

    From our earliest days, we have perceived God through His creation. From the majesty of the Universe to the delicacy of a hummingbird, or the simple beauty of an Orchid, we have equated the exquisite wonder of creation with its even more majestic Creator[1]. Today, however, the evidence science finds in God’s “Second Book” –…

  • The Bible

    Is the Bible itself an evidence for God? Well, one would be hard-pressed to find another 2500-year-old document that continues to influence the moral behavior of millions of people daily. Why do you suppose that is? Is it because standing against the cultural tide is somehow trendy? Or that dying to yourself so that you…

  • The Christian Message and Its Story of God

    So what is this Christian message, and why, for growing numbers of people today, has it been either ignored or judged irrelevant?

  • Christianity in the Age of ‘Whatever?’

    Lots of people write blogs.  Very few people actually read them. So why this one? Recently I’ve been absolutely stunned by the power of the delusion our society is suffering regarding truth, good and evil.  In this perverse worldview, people who elect to strap on explosives and detonate them, or fire automatic weapons at unsuspecting…