Israel was guilty of participating in various pagan worship practices. This included actual, physical prostitution at many Canaanite shrines left standing after the conquest of Canaan. The idea behind these degrading sexual rites was that the Canaanites fertility gods Baal and Asherah would favor the participants with healthy babies and crops. Continue reading WHY THE FREQUENT REFERENCES TO PROSTITUTES AND PROSTITUTION IN THE BOOK OF HOSEA?
A way of living that manifests the character of God. The term “godliness” appears most frequently in the warning of Paul, specifically the Pastoral Epistles. Paul encouraged Timothy to pursue “godliness” In an active manner (1 Tim 6:11). By so doing, he challenged him to develop a true respect for God and then, in turn, to live his life Continue reading DEFINITION OF THE DAY (GODLINESS)
Birth is our universal means of arrival in life. We can’t begin to experience all that life has to offer until we have passed through the moment of birth. Life has a formative phase in the womb that the psalmist describes beautifully: Continue reading SINGS AND SYMBOLS (BIRTH)
No doctor operating on a patient has ever discovered an organ called the soul, yet we have no better term to describe what distinguishes human beings from every other part of God’s creation. Only people have the unique gift of self-consciousness, the ability to reflect on their own experience, to interpret it to others, and then to speak about it. A famous professor once said, “Dogs bark, but dogs never bark about barking.” Continue reading WHAT IS A SOUL “3 JOHN 2”
The Israelites found themselves in the midst of a Canaanite culture that was awash in pagan immorality. These heathen nations had merged spirituality with sensuality to create a very alluring and very dangerous combination. To keep His people from joining this around-the-clock celebration of perversion, God decreed severe punishment for those guilty of sexual sin. Continue reading WHY WERE PENALTIES FOR SEXUAL SIN SO SEVERE?
As a physical feature, darkness is nothing in and of itself. Darkness is instead defined as the absence of light. Synonymous with emptiness, darkness is used to describe the earth at the very beginning of creation when “darkness covered the deep water” (Gen 1:2). Out of this absence, the first thing God created was light. In the beginning, Scripture pictures light and darkness as balanced parts of a single day and night: “So God separated the light from the darkness. God named the light day, and the darkness he named night” Gen 1:4-5). Continue reading SIGNGS AND SYMBOLS OF THE BIBLE (DARKNESS)