I don’t suppose there has ever been a man on the face of the earth who had the power at his beck and call that Jesus had. But there was never a time when he abused it. He tried to make this lesson clear at the last supper when he got up, took a towel, laid aside his outer garment, got a basin of water, and began to wash his disciples feet. He said,…

And he said unto them, Behold, when you are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you, bearing a pitcher of water; follow him into the house where he enters in. And you shall say unto the owner of the house, The Master says unto you, Where is the guest room, where I shall eat the passover with my disciples? And he shall show you a large upp…

It seems like it’s very hard for the servants of God to keep their act together. The worst thing that can happen to us is good times. For the Israelites who returned to Jerusalem from exile, the times had indeed been very hard for a while. They had started rebuilding the temple, then they had to stop because of political pressure. Then, under the p…

When you begin pondering the last days (as the Bible presents them) and you read what the prophets have to say about that time, you’re inevitably drawn to the Book of Revelation. And what I find fascinating is how commonly the Old Testament prophets are cited in Revelation. If you have one of those Bibles that have marginal references in it you can…

There is really no question that when you read an Old Testament prophet you should ask how he was understood at the time, and how the prophecy would apply in his own lifetime. But if you stop there you may miss something very important. What a prophet like Zechariah was seeing and hearing from God would tend to repeat in successive generations; lik…

Two things came my way yesterday which, at first blush, seem unrelated. But, in fact, they have a common, underlying philosophy which needs to be challenged every time it raises its ugly head. It may even be called a hidden agenda, because it is an agenda, and no one ever talks about it. The first was an editorial in one of the popular news magazin…

When you are reading the Old Testament prophets, there’s a particular challenge you run into again and again: What time period is the prophecy aimed at? Now, I have long since explained that in order to understand a prophet you need to know where he was and how his prophecy would be understood by the people who heard it. Some of the prophecies are …

I find myself constantly fascinated at the way the prophets in the Bible interlace with one another. You wouldn’t know this on a single read. You wouldn’t know it by reading a chapter here a chapter there or by reading somebody’s argument that has proof-texts drawn in from everywhere. You have to read the Bible—all of it—again and again and sooner …

It seems odd, in a way, that Satan is not mention more than he is in the Old Testament—at least by name. There may be other references, but the word Satan appears only once in all the historical books of the Bible, once in the Psalms, 11 times mentioned in the book of Job (but he’s a major player there in the whole drama), and in all of the prophet…

The next-to-the-last book in the Old Testament—the next-to-the-last of the Minor Prophets—is a man named Zechariah. In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, came the word of the Lord unto Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the prophet, saying, The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers. Therefore say thou unto them…

And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said unto his disciples, You know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified. Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders of the people, unto the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, …

Several years ago, I was driving through an area the weekend after a tragic mass shooting had occurred there. I listened on the radio to the people who lived nearby as they responded to being put in a goldfish bowl for the whole country to watch. I couldn’t help but reflect along with them about how unfair the whole thing was. Every special interes…

Most readers of the Bible are a little vague about the time of the later prophets. They may know that Jerusalem fell and the temple was destroyed in 586 BC. More likely, though, they will have little idea of the timeline. They may know from Daniel and Jeremiah that there was to be a 70-year exile, and indeed the second temple was completed 70 years…

It’s no picnic being a prophet. Of all the jobs God hands down to men, the job of the prophet may be the toughest of the lot. And it may come as a surprise to learn that some of them (maybe even most of them) were poets and musicians. I guess there’s something about that which, maybe, suits prophecy better. I feel sorry for the many self-appointed …

The Old Testament book of Obadiah is the shortest of all the Minor Prophets and, strangely, it doesn’t really seem to say a lot to modern man. I can understand why people reading the Bible kind of brush by it. But as I have said before, trying to understand the biblical prophets solely in terms of events in the far-distant future or solely in terms…

There is a terrible irony in the prophet Zephaniah. Actually, he did his prophecy in the days of Josiah; and Josiah was one of the best of the kings of Judah but the prophecy that came down in his days were among the most dire ever handed down by any prophet. Here is how Zephaniah starts: The word of the Lord which came unto Zephaniah the son of Cu…

And the Lord spoke unto Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying, Let the children of Israel also keep the Passover at his appointed season. In the fourteenth day of this month at evening ye shall keep it in his appointed season. According to all the rites of it and…

What do you do when God decides to take down his own work? What do you do when things you have believed in, trusted, committed yourself to, worked like the devil for, sacrificed everything for, are completely shattered—not by the Devil, but by God himself? No, I am not talking about this or that church splitting or falling apart. Nor am I dealing i…

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 long as society is behaving itself—people are living good lives, they’re being moral, they don’t start trouble—you don’t even hear from the prophets. God never send…

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 mothers with little babies with their bellies distended and being told they’re starving to death. You would believe it looking at those little twiggy limbs. We might even sit down and write a c…

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 reign of Jeroboam II, king of Israel. In those years Israel was riding high—at their height in prosperity and in military power. But so was Assyria in the east with its great city, Nineveh.…

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 BC. He mentions in the book two particular dates. One is the destruction of the Egyptian capital No-Amon (Thebes) in about 636 to 630 BC and he is speaking of the future destru…

And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them: Concerning the feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are My feasts. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of rest, a holy convocation. Ye shall do no work therein; it is the Sabbath of the L…

I’m sure you’ve heard the old axiom: Once bitten, twice shy. Or maybe you heard it another way: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I think that old saw may lie behind my skepticism of prophets. More than once, I have declared that I have never encountered anyone whom I considered a genuine prophet, in the biblical sense. I have…

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 have to do with the distant future—and then an even more distant. Other parts deal with the prophet’s own day. How can you tell which is w…

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 from those who pass by without a care, like men returning from battle. You drive the women of my people from their pleasant homes. You take away my blessing from their chi…

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 up with your own interpretation. But when you take the trouble to paint in the background, a lot of things become clearer. It’s very easy, though, …

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 that we are today repeating is a cycle represented in the Bible by the House of Israel. And it is precisely why, when you read the Bible and come …

And you shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the basin; and none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning. For the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when he sees the blood upon the lintel, and on the t…

There was a time when I thought the anti-abortion people were just a little too cute in calling themselves “pro-life”. I don’t think that any longer. I’ve come to the conclusion that it was precisely the right term to use. At least it’s the right term for Christians to use because the real issue is much bigger than abortion (if that’s possible). To…

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 Hosea is particularly poignant because, in order that we would understand this, God had his prophet go marry an adulterous woman and have children with her…

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 very big deal out of it—all it took was a little goat. That the little fellow had to die because you sinned would have an effect on a normal person, I should think. For the most part, …

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 much the same way. And it was harder for them because God immersed them in what was happening and he used them as object lessons. Poor Hosea had to marry a hoo…

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 went off after other gods, and thus it was spiritual adultery. It came as a bit of a shock to me when I started researching the issue and…

Από τον webmaster@borntowin.net (Sermon by Ronald L. Dart)

Από τον Ronald L. Dart

There are times, reading the prophets in the Bible, that I feel like I am reading an op-ed piece on current events. The 83rd Psalm is uncanny when read in the light of today’s news. But maybe you didn’t realize that many of the Psalms are prophetic, especially when you understand what prophecy is. It is not a mere foretelling of future events. If t…

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 prophets write like poetry—calling up verbal imaginary to add weight to what they’re saying. In fact, what it is the…

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. You don’t need an at a boy, when you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing in the first place. But that’s not entirely fair to the prophets—they did have good news in th…

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 future, and in what order, or what the signs are so you will know what they’re going to be. That’s not really what prophets are all about. They are…

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 poets with an axe to grind. These men are who they say they are and they had a close encounter with God. The word of God had come to them and spoken. They’re not r…

Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was necessary for me to write unto you, and exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the …

When a person knows that God is there—but he can't touch him, can't see him—there should be a longing for God. Unless, of course, God is not in his thoughts. Then, if God is not in his thoughts, a man can walk through life with no awareness of God—no sense of God's presence, no awareness of the closeness of God. But when we are far away from God, w…

In the days of the Old Testament prophets, the gate of the city was like the county courthouse used to be. It was where the courts were but also where most business was conducted. It was the official gathering place for the town council—the elders in those days. Even today, if you’re going to foreclose on a piece of property, you have to go down to…

Therefore flight shall perish before the swift, and the strong will not strengthen his force, neither shall the mighty deliver himself: neither shall he stand who handles the bow; and he that is swift of foot shall not deliver himself: neither shall he that rides the horse deliver himself. And he that is courageous among the mighty shall flee away …

We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. 1 John 4:19–21 ESV [GE_Study_Questions_Link]…

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) That which we have see…

And for this reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge self control; and to self control patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfru…

“If a man dies, shall he live again?” That’s the question, isn’t it? “Is this all there is?” People want to know. We are going to live out our lives here in misery, pain, frustration, aggravation, and irritation, and after that comes oblivion forever. Sometimes one thinks that oblivion might even be merciful after all of this. “If a man dies, will …

For even to this were you called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow his steps: Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judges righteously: Who his own self bore our sins i…