The grandson of Herod the Great, Herod Agrippa is best known for being the first to execute one of Jesus’ disciples. “He had the apostle James (John’s brother) killed with a sword. When Herod saw much this pleased the Jewish leaders, he arrested Peter” (Acts 12:2-3). An angel freed Peter.
Continue reading A LITTLE KNOWN FACT ABOUT (HEROD AGRIPPA I)
By banishment, which in the ancient world was the social equivalent of execution (also an option). Today, our identity and sense of self are radically individualistic. We believe that each individual has rights that a just society will distribute equally; that is, without respect to differences of race, age, or matters of conscience such as religious preference. These ideas find their origin in Europe’s emergence from feudalism and in the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century.
Continue reading HOW IS A PERSON “CUT OFF” FROM HIS PEOPLE?
Old Testament law distinguished between sins of ignorance, or sin unintentionally (Lev 4:2, 13-14; Num 15:24-29), and premeditated sins (“sin presumptuously” or with a high hand, Num. 15:30-31). Sins committed in ignorance incur guilt (Lev 4:13,22,27); however, the sacrificial system provided atonement for such sin (Lev 4; 5:5-6). In contrast, “high-handed” or “presumptuous” sin is an affront to the Lord punishable by exclusion from the people of God. The Law provided no ritual cleansing for such sin (Num 15:30-31).
Continue reading DEFINITION OF THE DAY (IGNORANCE)
Most other Bible prophets lived before God punished the Jews by exiling them to Assyria and Babylon, in what is now Iraq. So those earlier prophets warned the Jews where they were headed if they didn’t stop sinning. But even those prophets offered hope, promising that God would bring the Jews home one day.
Continue reading BIBLE BOOK OF THE DAY (ZECHARIAH)
15 Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.
Continue reading SCRIPTURE OF THE DAY (MATTHEW 18:15-20 “DEALING WITH A SINNING BROTHER”)
In a terrifying vision, Isaiah finds himself standing in heaven’s throne room in the presence of God. The time is 740 BC, the year King Uzziah dies.
“It’s all over!” Isaiah says. “I am doomed, for I am a sinful man” (Isaiah 6:5). He knows God is holy and that sin can’t survive in God’s presence.
Continue reading A VISIT TO HEAVEN
An anonymous reader wrote:
Shouldn’t a person have the right to watch or read whatever he pleases? As long as he watches or reads in the privacy of his own home, and nobody gets hurt, what difference does it make?
Continue reading PORNOGRAPHY’S PAIN (WHO GETS HURT BY THIS “HARMLESS” PASTIME?)
18 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.
19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
Continue reading SCRIPTURE OF THE DAY (JOHN 15:18-25 “THE WORLDS HATRED”)
In the beginning, Eve was not her name.
Eve wasn’t even second choice for the name of humanity’s mother. It was third. Adam came up with it only as they were leaving the Garden of Eden, forced out of God.
Continue reading A LITTLE KNOWN FACT ABOUT (EVE)
The number four and groups of four connect with our sense of place in the horizontal world. Everything around us is in one of four directions: east, west, north, or south. In the worldview of the Old Testament, complete descriptions were often developed in sets of four. When the tax collector Zacchaeus expressed his practical faith in Jesus, he included a promise to “pay four times as much as I owe to those I have cheated in any way” (Luke 19:8). Jesus accepted that commitment as a sign of genuine repentance, symbolic of completeness. And there are four Gospels, a complete picture of the life of Christ.
Continue reading SIGNS AND SYMBOLS OF THE BIBLE (FOUR/4)