Back in the 1960’s, American Protestantism became totally confused when T.J.J. Altizer of Emory University announced that God is dead. Many Evangelicals around the nation went ballistic and responded in all kinds of ways, some honorable and some strange. Having read Dr. Altizer’s book, we are not so sure he meant what people thought he meant. However, whatever he meant, Americans, for the most part, are now living as if God were dead. One regularly reads articles from the hands of various Evangelicals in which they call their own churches, or other churches, to task for not being what they once were. They throw charges and counter charges at one another regarding the inspiration of the Scriptures, ordaining homosexual ministers, of both sexes and many other issues that seem to be tearing them apart rather than giving them solidarity. In the 1960s, at the behest of certain immoral gurus, American youth turned to Zen, drugs, sex and New Age to take the place of God, and these things have now done that to the point that we have reared a generation of people who practice, what one observer called “anonymous Christianity,” which resulted in many church buildings that were once packed with worshipers now stand mostly empty, trying all sorts of bizarre things to attract people who are no longer interested, because for them, God is dead. In the place of the Gospel of Christ, men have substituted a social welfare Gospel trying to build new houses, new neighborhoods and

Many years ago, while teaching at a college operated by Christians, we attended a lectureship in which there was a question and answer period each afternoon. One afternoon discussions arose involving the question of the placement and meaning of Matthew 24:40-42 in which Jesus said, “Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left. Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.” The question that gave these brethren so much trouble was why did Jesus place these statements after Matthew 24:36, in which he said, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.” They pointed out that since the 36th verse obviously referred to the “end of time,” why would Jesus put a scenario into the paragraph that did not fit? All sorts of answers were advanced such as, verses 40-42 were an ellipsis, copyists had put the passage in the wrong place and other such ideas. We remember thinking, what is the problem in the portion of Matthew 24 if the Lord was not making reference to his coming in judgment on the world in verse 36, but to the fact that no one knew the exact time when he would destroy the city of Jerusalem? Did anyone to whom Jesus spoke on that occasion know the day and the

One of the favorite tricks of the relativist is to use logic when it suits them, and then speak against the use of it when it defeats them. Often people will say that you cannot depend on logic since it is just man’s way of thinking about anything. The amazing thing about such a statement is that it represents some person’s way of thinking about something. It never ceases to amaze those who are capable of serious thought that many of those who want everything to be relative and want nothing to be absolute will use the very tools to deny the absolute that others use to advance it. However, in so doing they will cry “foul” when someone uses the kind of thinking they are using to show that they are not thinking correctly. An Anglican clergy person, some months back, left the Anglican Church and became a Buddhist. He reasoned, that is, his logic told him, that Christianity was incorrigibly theistic and invincibly self-righteous. How did he arrive at that conclusion when he traded the religion that believes in one true God for one that has no god at all? Why, my friends, he used logic! Now the amazing thing about this is that this clergyman claimed one could not use logic, but he used it when he measured Christianity beside Buddhism and decided that Christianity was false and Buddhism was true. However, he would tell those who clung to Christianity that it was true for them but not for

The founder and first prophet of a large and wealthy American cult ridiculed the teaching that the three personalities of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit make up one true and living God. He wrote, “Many men say there is one God; the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are only one God. I say that is a strange God anyhow–three in one, and one in three! It is a curious organization. …All are to be crammed into one God, according to sectarianism. It would make the biggest God in all the world. He would be a wonderfully big God–he would be a giant or a monster.” In this matter, these people join ranks with the Muslims who mock and make fun of Christians for believing in three manifestations of one God. The Muslims accuse those who believe what the Bible teaches about the nature of the Godhead or Elohim of being polytheists. However, while we are not polytheists, those who hold the view of the man whose words were quoted above, are. They believe there are millions of Gods on all kinds of worlds around the universe. They have a very anthropomorphic concept of God. They imagine that he is like humans, which he is not. Perhaps the magnificent Book of Isaiah offers more verses in defense of monotheism than any other book in the Bible. Throughout chapters 43, 44 and 45 of this grand book, the truth of the existence of one God, and one God only,

When Jesus began giving the signs of the coming fall of Jerusalem in Matthew 24, he told his disciples, in verse 9, “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake.”We are not sure how others would have responded to such a prediction, but had we been living in that time and found ourselves among those to whom this statement was made, we doubt that such a prediction would have made us very happy. The prospect of being drawn before tribunals, legal or otherwise and being sentenced to flogging, scourging, even execution for preaching the Gospel of Christ would not be a great incentive to continue to do so. Perhaps many would have thought that this would be a good time to become “secret disciples” until this period of danger and death was over. We are sure that many disciples, when they learned of what they were going to suffer, were like those in John 6:66 in that they “went back and walked with him no more.” However, there were myriads of brave souls, who with the strength they could draw from the Lord, resolved to follow him no matter the cost. If one begins to study the Books of Acts, he is impressed with the great success of the Gospel, perhaps to the point that he overlooks the terrible “tribulations” that the early disciples suffered. Their first “run ins” with the Jews seemed innocuous enough.

It is often stated by students of the New Testament that there is very little emphasis placed on the destruction of the Temple and the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans in A.D. 70. However, when one begins to study the New Testament, he is amazed at the number of references to the final fall of the once holy city. Jesus himself spent considerable time to speak a great deal about the fall of the city of Jerusalem and the destruction of Judaism as a religious force in the world. As a matter of fact, the Olivet Discourse of our Lord, especially as reported by the inspired Matthew, captures a significant amount of copy in the New Testament. In Luke’s record of the events that took place on the very day Jesus was crucified, we find a significant prophecy of the fall of Jerusalem, even as he made his way to Calvary to die for the world. Luke pointed out that a great number of people, including many women of Jerusalem, followed him to Golgotha, and as they did, they mourned and lamented Jesus. This means they wailed aloud as they followed him to the place where he would die. Hearing this lamenting, Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For indeed the days are coming in which they will say, Blessed are the barren, wombs that never bore, and breasts which

Have you ever noticed that people always want to know when something is going to happen? That is, perhaps, due to the fact that man is very conscious of the passing of time, and he does not want some important event to pass him by when he is unaware. After Jesus told his disciples that the Temple was going to be destroyed, thus bringing to an end all the physical trappings of the Temple worship and the Law of Moses, they wanted to know when this was going to be. We thoroughly understand their curiosity. If someone were to tell us that the City of Moundsville was going to be destroyed, inasmuch as we are all vitally connected to that city  who live there, we would want to know when. Jesus gave his disciples some time signs, but he never did tell them the day, date or hour when the great Temple would be pulled down into ruins. He told them many of the things that would be going on in the world at that time, as well as in the land of Palestine. But he said that his coming in destruction upon the city and Temple would be sudden like lightning flashing from the east to the west (Matthew 24:26). By this, he meant it would be sudden and unexpected. Why would it be that way? Would it be because the Jews did not know that the Roman army was on the march in the land? No, it would

Modern theological liberals, both in and out of the church, are manifestly embarrassed when we speak of the wrath of God. They teach that love and wrath are mutually exclusive, and God must be either one or the other. When it is pointed out that God often exercised wrath in the Old Testament, they will immediately begin speaking of the God of the Old Testament in contrast with the God of the New. According to these people, the God of the Old Testament was a God of vengeance and wrath, but by the time of the writing of the New Testament, he had become a God of love, mercy and grace–hence, an evolving God. All this notwithstanding, the fact that the Bible plainly teaches that our God is an unchanging one. Not only do the theological liberals find themselves embarrassed by the nature of God, but also it has gotten so the theological conservatives trip around this aspect of the nature of God very lightly. We do not hear sermons on the wrath of God, and his grace, mercy and love are almost constantly emphasized in preaching, writing and worship. As a result of denial by one group and neglect by the other, the people of the last two generations have gotten a very distorted view of the nature of God. However, neither the New Testament nor the early church flinched at recognizing God as a God of wrath as well as grace, mercy and love. However, John the Immerser,

Each time we travel to the British Isles to attempt to serve Christ in his great work in that area of the world, we try to visit the great city of London so that we can enjoy looking at the displays in both the British Library and the British Museum. What a thrill it has been to stand and look upon the very same statuary on which the apostle Paul looked when he passed through the streets of Athens. It is almost breathtaking to look upon the terracotta cylinder upon which Cyrus wrote the decree for the Jews to return to their homeland at the end of the seventy years captivity in Babylon. Another favorite place to visit is the British Library that houses such things as the great Codex from Sinai, which was taken to Russia by Von Tischendorf and later sold to the British Library by the Russians for about $100,000.00. To see this ancient manuscript of a great portion of our New Testament will make one’s blood pressure rise. Across the room from this and other important manuscripts of the Bible are original copies of the Bishop’s Bible, which was the 1568 revision of the Great Bible of 1539 and the Geneva Bible of 1560, both ancient English translations, predating the King James Version. (Of course, both the Tyndale Version of 1526 and Wycliffe’s Version of 1388 preceded these, and they can be seen as well.) Also, one sees the very first copy of the King James

Inspired James, half-brother to our Lord wrote, “And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell” (3:6). The most dangerous member we have in the human body is not the trigger finger, the fist or the foot, but that little member we call the tongue. James, in the context just mentioned, went on to say, “Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God.” The power of the human mind to use the tongue for both good and evil is almost beyond comprehension. For example, a preacher of the Gospel may use his mind and tongue to convince men that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and bring them weeping down the aisle to be baptized into Jesus Christ for the remission of sin, and then turn right around and use that same mind and tongue to blaspheme or slander brethren, thus putting his own soul in jeopardy. In the KJV of the Bible, there is a word that has for many years intrigued this writer. The word is “backbiters.” It is found only once in that version of the Bible in Romans 1:30. In a context in which the inspired Paul listed the sins committed by those whom God had given over to reprobate minds, he used

When people begin to debate the existence of the absolutely pure, holy, true and living God, emotions often overtake reason and prejudice begins to speak in the name of reason. Men on both sides of the issue regarding the existence of God may be prone to do this, and it usually signals frustration, or that one has felt the weakness of his own arguments. Some of these biased assertions have stood for years as supposed arguments against the existence of God. We desire to examine a few of these today. It has often been asserted that if God is a necessary Being, then the world is too. This affirmation assumes that a necessary being must do all that it does necessarily. However, our definition is that he must be all that he is. All that is in the nature of God is necessary, but anything that he does extends beyond his nature and is done by his freewill. We illustrate in this way: The living human being must live; however, whether he propagates and brings forth after his own kind is a matter of exercising his freewill. By the same token, it was not necessary for God to create. His love may have given him the desire to do so, but it did not demand that he do so. So, his acts of creation were acts of his own freewill. God must be as he is, but he can do what he pleases so long as it does not contradict his nature. He “pleased”

How do we know that the sixty-six books that make up our Bible are the only writings that should be included in Holy Scripture? Do the Apocrypha, the Gnostic Gospels, the Gospels of Thomas or Barnabas belong in the canon? Why should these books not be included in the Bible? The answer to these questions lies in the concept of canonicity. The English word “canon” comes from Hebrew and Greek words both of which mean, “a measuring rod.” This signifies that there is a standard that must be met by all books that make up the Bible. There are several inadequate views of what the standard for canonicity should have been, such as the age of the writing, its agreement with the Torah, if written in Hebrew or its religious value. But each of these criterions is reached by making a common mistake, which is, they confuse God’s determination of what Scripture is with man’s recognition of what it is. In the final analysis, whatever the Holy Spirit moved a servant of God to write is inspired and belongs in the canon, and whatever is the mere writing of man does not! There are several crucial questions that have been asked by scholars in the church in determining which books are to be accepted as canonical. The first and most basic is, “Was the book(s) written by a recognized prophet of God?” Deuteronomy 18:18 tells us that only a prophet of God will speak the Word of God. And we

Defining a cult, especially in an article as brief as this one, is not an easy task; nevertheless it can be done. Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary gives several definitions for the word “cult,” but we will concern ourselves only with those pertaining to religion. This source defines the word as follows: “a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.; a religion or sect considered to be false, unorthodox, or extremist, with members often living outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader.” When the word “cult” appears in a religious discussion, our minds often go immediately to the “Jim Jones Cult,” which emigrated from the US to South America where all its members summarily committed suicide. We think of the David Koresh cult whose final standoff with the national officials ended in death and destruction for many. These may be extreme examples, but the plain fact of the matter is cults are made up of extremists of some kind. Political ones like the Aryan Nation, etc. engage in terrorist activities. Sometimes, even religious cults will do the same thing, as has been recorded in the history of the Mountain Meadows Massacre in the late 1800s. Cults often venerate (worship) a mere human being, and all their activities, no matter how bizarre, surround him/her in some way. These leaders are sometimes called prophets or prophetesses. They claim that they have a special connection with God in some way or another. Some claim

Throughout the history of the denominations that are still very much in the mainstream of America, there has been a strange relationship to the Bible. Protestants, as we call them today, were in the forefront of translating the Bible into the language of the people, a tradition that dates back to the 1300s in Britain. One of the first things that Luther did after he challenged the authority of the medieval church was to translate the Bible into his native tongue. Other men did the same, and in all the modern European languages the Bible was, and is found. Many of these early reformers had “classic” educations and were capable of reading the Bible in several languages, including the ones in which it was written. Though their prejudices beamed forth against certain portions of Scripture, such as Luther’s extreme dislike for the Book of James, which he called a “right strawy epistle,” and relegated to an appendix in his translation, the reformers led the way in both translating and interpreting the Sacred Scriptures. Not only so, but many, many preachers of the Reformation became deep Bible students and they wrote their comments on almost every portion of it, thus bringing into existence classic commentaries kept in print even today. Some of the great and classic works of biblical interpretation were done in what we like to call the “golden age” of Bible study: the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries. There are works produced in that period of time that

It is supposed that a natural curiosity on the part of man regarding the return of Jesus to this world for the purpose of judging us in righteousness (Acts 17:30-31) is to be expected. However, date setting is an exercise in futility, for God has not revealed when his Son will return to execute the sentences of eternal damnation or bliss. Since God has revealed no dates, nor hints of dates, it is useless for us to set them. In the lifetime of this writer, no less than twenty dates have been set for the return of Jesus, and that event never materialized. If what a man predicts does not come to pass, we are to ignore such a prophet because he is a false one (Deuteronomy 18:20-22). Nevertheless, men continue to comb the Holy Scriptures in the hope that they can find some hint or sign of the Second Coming of Christ. We have heard it said that we will know when Christ is coming because the only way we will be able to tell one season from another is by the falling of the leaves. That is not much of a hint! How do we tell one season from another now? The Bible nowhere says anything remotely like this. This is called “chimney corner scripture,” meaning it is not Scripture at all! Predictors of the Second Coming along with many “doomsday” predictors often turn to Matthew 24 and tell us these are the signs of Christ’s coming. Then

Generally speaking, denominations are much kinder to the Bible than are cults. The Evangelical denominations in America still claim allegiance to the Scriptures, though the mainline denominations do not. However, with the cults the primary allegiance is to what the leader or the organization says rather than to what the Bible teaches. They spend countless hours attempting to overthrow the plain teaching of the Bible, even going to the expense and trouble to make “translations” of the Scripture that read the way they want them to read rather than the way any of the ancient manuscripts do read. Other cults will come up with some sort of a book, or the writings of their original leader that, so far as they are concerned, amount to: (1) the leader’s unimpeachable explanation of what the Bible says, or: (2) overrule the teachings of the Bible with their later book or creed. To illustrate what we mean, we take a look at one of the doctrines of a large cult which teaches that Jesus was not God incarnate, that he is not eternal and that he is not God in the same sense Yahweh is. Consequently, for years and years they denied the plain statement that Jesus is the Word, and that he is God found in John 1:1-6. Finally, they made their own “translation” of the Bible in which, with absolutely no manuscript evidence whatsoever, they made read as follows: “In [the] beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God,

Denominations, as we know them in America today, have existed for more than five hundred years. In reality, they have existed much, much longer than that. As a matter of fact, when one begins to read the history of the religion called “Christianity,” he will find that from almost the time of its beginning heresies arose in the midst of Christians that eventually divided the church and formed new churches, or what we call denominations. The biblical word for heresy and heretics has reference to those teachings (doctrines) and teachers who “split” the early church with their false views, forming new denominations. For this reason the great apostle Paul, in Romans 16:17-18, wrote these words to the Christians in the ancient capital of the world, “Now I urge you, brethren, note those who cause divisions and offenses, contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and avoid them. For those who are such do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly, and by smooth words and flattering speech deceive the hearts of the simple.” Many, if not most who today claim to be Christians, find such commandments as this harsh and opposed to the pseudo-unity movement in our world today that exists under the banner of tolerating anything, so long as it stands for nothing. The Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary defines the word “denomination” in this way: “one of the grades or degrees in a series of designations of quantity, value, measure, weight, etc.” Hence, a pound is a

The most amazing event in the entire history of the world was the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Everyone who has ever read the Bible account of this event knows there is no way to ever justify, or declare as right and reasonable, the fact that the Lord was taken by lawless hands …crucified, and put to death. To the best of our knowledge, no Bible-believing person has ever said the Jews and Romans were right when they conspired against and took the life of the Son of God. Many and severe have been the denunciations of the Jews and Romans who took part in the illegal trials and crucifixion of Jesus, and this is as it should be. Notwithstanding the numerous prophecies of the Old Testament regarding the coming crucifixion of our Lord, there are those today who say that God never planned for this to come to pass. They say the Lord was sent by Yahweh to establish a physical kingdom upon this earth, and that the Jews and Romans crucified him, thus offsetting God’s plan. They say since God was unable to establish his kingdom due to the crucifixion of Jesus, he established the church as a sort of stopgap measure until a coming time when the Jews will be willing to accept Jesus as Messiah, and he can successfully establish an earthly kingdom. My Friends, this means that our God is so weak that he was defeated in his plans to bring his kingdom into this

One of the most amazing things about Premillennial Dispensationalists is the way they read the Bible. Not only do they ignore all history that is connected with it, but even those who are counted as “scholars” among them pay little or no attention to parts of speech such as prepositions, adverbs, verbs and their tenses, and sentence structure. Not only so, but they almost always totally ignore the context in which a passage is found when using it as a “proof text.” Someone has rightly said, “A text without a context is a pretext often used as a proof text.” This is common with these folk. A case in point is found in Romans 11:25-28, which reads,”For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: The Deliverer will come out of Zion, And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; For this is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins. Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers” (Romans 11:25-28 NKJV). This passage is regularly used by Dispensationalists to prove that at some future time the entire Jewish race will be saved forever. When they are reconstituted into an earthly nation,

One of the most interesting conversations recorded in the Bible took place between the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate and our Lord Jesus Christ on the day he was betrayed into the hands of sinners. The conversation is recorded in John 18:33-38, which reads as follows: Then Pilate entered the Praetorium again, called Jesus, and said to Him, Are You the King of the Jews? Jesus answered him, Are you speaking for yourself about this, or did others tell you this concerning Me? Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered You to me. What have You done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here. Pilate therefore said to Him, Are You a king then? Jesus answered, You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice. Pilate said to Him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and said to them, I find no fault in Him at all. (NKJV) One of the reasons this conversation is so interesting, in addition to the fact that Pilate found no fault in our Lord,

In the 23rd chapter of Matthew, we read the severest denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees that can be read in any literature in the world. This castigation was the fulfillment of prophecy because the prophets had foretold how the Son of God would be maligned and abused by the leaders of the Jewish people. In this instance, our Lord was not just lashing out in human anger against those who were about to crucify him; on the contrary, because he knew his days were numbered and that the earthly phase of his redemptive work was about to end, he was making a “last ditch” effort to dissuade the Jews from the path they had determined to take. Near the end of his sermon to them, he made two statements that catapult our minds back to Daniel 9:24. In this passage Daniel said, “Seventy weeks are determined For your people and for your holy city, To finish the transgression, To make an end of sins, To make reconciliation for iniquity, To bring in everlasting righteousness, To seal up vision and prophecy, And to anoint the Most Holy.” The two phrases to which we give attention are: (1) “to finish the transgression,” meaning the ultimate transgression of the will of God that was to be committed in the crucifixion of his Son; and (2) “to make an end to sins,” meaning that when Jesus was crucified upon the cross the act that would bring about the forgiveness, or end, of sins for millions of

In 1830 John Nelson Darby, the dictatorial leader of a religious group in England called “The Plymouth Brethren,” began to preach the doctrines that are now known as Dispensational Premillennialism. His preaching of these doctrines split The Plymouth Brethren into two groups  with Darby’s group being called the “exclusive assembly,” and those who opposed him were called the “open assembly” of The Plymouth Brethren. Darby preached his five-point platform of Premillennialism with a zeal that defied imagination, especially for a man of such frail physical nature as his was. He took some very stubborn stands on issues regarding the Scriptures and one of those was that he would not allow history, which he held in deep contempt, to enter into his study of the Bible. From him, O.T. Allis, in his book Prophecy and the Church (Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Co., Phillipsburg, NJ, 1978, p. 26) quoted the following: “I do not admit history to be, in any sense, necessary to the understanding of prophecy. I do not want history to tell me Nineveh or Babylon is ruined or Jerusalem in the hands of the Gentiles.” Herein lies one of the greatest problems in any attempt to deal with Dispensationalists, and that is they either wish to ignore history all together, or they want to create their own. They simply will not admit that the history that the Bible itself records, or with which the people of the Bible were involved, ever even happened. They wish to make all Bible prophecy future

[A previous article by brother West entitled “Does God Exist” appeared in the February 2004 issue of Gospel Gazette Online.] The universe in which we live needed a Cause to come into existence. We affirm that for the universe to continue to exist it needs a Cause at this very moment. Something is needed to keep our universe and us in existence so that neither it nor we will disappear. Something not only caused the universe to come into existence, but something conserves it in the present time. In Colossians 1:17, Paul spoke to this matter when he said,“And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.” The universe needs both an originating Cause and a conserving Cause, and this is the reason there is something rather than nothing. Let us look at it in this way. Finite (limited) and changing things exist. For example, just look at yourself. You have to exist in order to deny that you exist, so either way you must really exist. Furthermore, in the existence that you experience both yourself and the things around you constantly change. As Henry Lite, in his famous song put it, “Change and decay in all around I see…” Once we were children, then we became parents, then our children became parents, and we were grandparents, etc. We, like the universe in which we live, are limited and changing. Every finite (limited) and changing thing must be caused by something else. If a thing is limited and if it changes, then it

One of the most wondrous things about the Bible is that one can read it from beginning to end and never find even one instance of any predictive prophecy ever failing. One of the reasons, among many,  we know the Bible is the Book of God is the fact that not one single thing that God ever promised has ever failed to materialize just as God said it would. This is not true with the prophecies, predictions and prognostications of men. They have failed times innumerable, and yet good people will listen again and again to the same prophets make new prophecies, which like the old ones are doomed to fail. Take as a case in point the number of times in the last two millennia men have predicted and set a date for the “second coming of Christ.” It never happened! No less than a dozen times, or perhaps as many as twenty times, in the last sixty years times have been set for that coming. It never happened! Surely all who are at least twenty years old remember all the predictions of the end of time said to be coming at the end of the last millennium. It didn’t happen! We have lost all interest in the doomsday prophets of our time, because nothing they ever have said has come to pass. Up until the time of the fall of the Berlin wall and the subsequent crumble of the Soviet Union, there were constant prophecies made that the

Those who are enamored with the Dispensational Premillennial view of the “end of time” believe that the 14th chapter of the great prophecy of Zechariah deals with a description of the present and future enemies of the present nation of Israel and the salvation of the city of Jerusalem during the reign of Christ on earth. While we thoroughly understand that Christ will never reign on earth, and the Bible nowhere speaks of such, the Premillennialists, nevertheless, insist that he will. They assert that Zechariah 14:1-3, which reads,”Behold, the day of the LORD is coming, And your spoil will be divided in your midst. For I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem; The city shall be taken, The houses rifled, And the women ravished. Half of the city shall go into captivity, But the remnant of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then the LORD will go forth And fight against those nations, As He fights in the day of battle” (Zechariah 14:1-3 NKJV), contains a description of an approaching battle they call Armageddon (a word found nowhere in the Greek New Testament), which will come to an end when Christ descends upon the Mount of Olives to overthrow his enemies and begin his millennial reign. Let us test this interpretation to see if it is in harmony with the rest of this great chapter. Since we do not have space to insert the entire chapter, we will summarize as follows: (1) Zechariah

In Hebrews 11:6 the author of that eloquent treatise made this very pertinent observation: “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6 New King James Version). The existence of a personal, moral, almighty God is fundamental to all that Christians believe. If there is no moral God, there is no moral being against whom we can sin, and therefore, such a thing as salvation is not needed. Furthermore, if there is no God, there could be no acts of God in the history of mankind, so all the Bible must be looked upon as a collection of myths that really have no purpose in existing. Hence, the most fundamental question having to do with all of life is, “Does God Exist?” Today, we begin a series of articles dealing with this question. There are four basic arguments for the existence of God, which are called, the cosmological, teleological, axiological and ontological arguments. We begin with the cosmological argument, which is also called the argument from creation. Our fundamental idea here is that there is in existence a universe in which we live. The universe did not cause itself, so it must have been caused by something else. Just as our infant children do not come into existence without a cause-effect relationship, and the existence of a child demands that there is/was somewhere both a mother

If there is a greater experience upon this earth than fatherhood, it must be that of motherhood. When God created man and woman, he created them so that, like the plants and animals of the earth, they could reproduce themselves. God commanded Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.” When God gave that command, he brought this thing that we call motherhood into existence, and Eve experienced it at the time she gave birth to her firstborn son, Cain. I don’t know what kind of a mother Eve was, but she brought the man into the world from whom the very Son of God would descend. Therefore, mothers should be honored! Mothers should also be honored because, like Eve the mother of us all, they gave us the life that we have upon this earth. It is true that fathers begot us, but it is the mother who carried us in her womb, and then gave birth to us, making it possible for us to have life upon this earth. That means that we are blood of their blood, flesh of their flesh and bone of their bone! The mother to child relationship is the closest one on earth. It was through what the Bible calls “the travail” of their bodies that they brought us here to live peaceable and loving lives. After we have been conceived and born into this world, the work and responsibility of a mother does not end. We should honor

This prayer is found in Ephesians 3:14-19. In this prayer Paul said that he “bowed his knees to the Father,” indicating that he put himself in some humble position, perhaps kneeling when he went to God on their behalf. After pointing out that the “whole family in heaven and earth” is named for the Lord Jesus Christ, Paul listed a number of things for which he prayed to God on behalf of these young developing Christians. Firstly, Paul wanted these Christians to develop into strong and devoted Christians because he prayed that Christ, “according to the riches of his glory,” that the “inner man” might be “strengthened with might through His Spirit.” Paul wanted the “inner man,” the spiritual man, of each of these Christians to be strengthened with the might, or power that comes through his Spirit. Spirit communicates with spirit as flesh communicates with flesh. The Holy Spirit, here called Christ’s Spirit, communicates with the spirit of man as we dwell on and in his Word. It is the inner man in which God is vitally interested because the outward man perishes day by day. Secondly, Paul prayed that through the communication of the Spirit with the inner man, Christ would “dwell in” their “hearts through faith.” Here the definite article “the” is omitted from the translation, and what Paul is saying is that Christ would dwell in their hearts by the faith which the Holy Spirit would communicate to the inner man. How does the Holy Spirit

The apostle Peter closed his second epistle with this important advice to those who would escape the apostasy that he had described earlier in the book. His inspired advice was: “but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and forever. Amen.” There are some very important truths which can be found in the text, and which we should take seriously if we are going to develop into the kind of Christians that we ought to be. Growth in Christ should be one of our primary goals as Christians, but many of us do not grow in Christ because we will not take the time and the trouble to give ourselves over to that great task. There are those of us who try to do so, and sometimes we are “put down” by those who may disagree with us on some point or another, or in some interpretation of a passage, or passages of Scripture. In order to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord, we must have the attitude of the student, that is, we must always be hungry to know more about what the Word of God teaches upon any theme. Sometimes it is asserted that God does not care what we know, he is concerned with whether or not we are obedient to him. But God does care what we know, and for that reason he advised the early Christians, and all others

For several years now, maybe even as many as thirty years, duty has been looked down upon as a just motive for any activity. The word “duty” has become archaic, and the whole concept is looked upon as something totally undesirable. Even in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ where duty has always been considered a good motive for doing the will of Christ, there are some that have come to accept the worldly view that if we do anything out of a sense of duty, we are not acting with the highest possible motivation. Nothing could be further from the truth! Jesus, while living upon this earth, set forth duty as a good motive for serving him, when he said, “So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’” Hence, the Lord did not condemn the motivation of duty, but showed it to be justified. Therefore, we should not be afraid, as Christians, to act out of a sense of duty, because there is a vital connection between duty and love. The word “duty” may have gone out of vogue in the popular parlance of the American people, but the concept has not, and that is because the concept of duty cannot be escaped. Every time someone says that he, or someone else, “ought” to do a certain thing, he is talking about duty. Duty is doing the thing that ought

Numbers are rather strange things when one stops to think about them. Often times what man cannot express in mere words he can express in terms of numbers. For example, when one desires to emphasize the fact that something is very large, very heavy or very tall, he will express those facts in terms of miles of width, tons of weight or hundreds of feet high. We deal with numbers every day, and many of the points of our own identification are expressed in terms of numbers. If we are describing a person, we will say that he/she is so tall, weighs so much or wears a certain size in clothing. We also express things in special numbers that we call statistics. These are used to set forth the ideas of how likely it is for some event to take place in your life. For example, we are told that the chances that you or I will eventually die in an automobile crash are very good. They are one in one hundred twenty-five. That means that out of every 125 times one goes out in his car there is at least the possibility that he could die in a crash. Doctors tell us that the likelihood that we can develop a brain tumor runs at about the rate of 1 in 25,000. So, there is a real possibility that one person reading this article will have to be treated for some sort of tumor of the brain before he/she leaves

We have all looked into magazines or newspapers in which we have found those “Before and After” pictures. Before the person was obese, after he is very thin. Before the person had no muscular build, after he looks “muscle-bound.” The purpose of those pictures, and the advertisements which they depict, is to get us to buy some product that is purported to work on our physical bodies in some magical way to make of us something that we are not. We rather suspect that the most of them do not do any good that would not have been done without them if the person had put forth the same amount of effort. However, there is a “before and after” picture, a “then and now” picture found in the New Testament to which we should give some careful attention. In Ephesians 2:11-13, Paul gave a “then and now” picture to the Gentiles who had become Christians in the city of Ephesus in order to show them just how greatly God had blessed them by adopting them into his family. In times past, these Gentile Christians were Gentiles according to the flesh, and as such, they were looked down upon by the Jews who referred to them disparagingly as the “Uncircumcision.” It is no secret that the Jews looked upon all Gentiles as barbarians, and at the same time took great pride in the fact that they were the descendants of Abraham and recipients of the great promises of God, as well

The books of First and Second Timothy along with the book of Titus constitute a very special portion of the Holy Scriptures so far as the preacher of righteousness is concerned. It can be fairly stated that these books were written first and foremost to those who preach the Gospel of the risen Son of God. This does not mean, however, that there are no messages in these books for the rest of those who make up the body of Christ on earth. Since preachers are both human and Christian, we need the Bible to keep us zealous, loving, kind and to warn us away from those things that would do more harm than good for the body of Christ. And since like other humans we experience heartache, disappointment and discouragement, we need such books as First and Second Timothy and Titus to keep us traveling in the path of righteousness. In 2 Timothy 2:14-26, Paul gave Timothy a long list of things to do, and things not to do as a preacher of righteousness. He was told to remind and charge the brethren that they were “not to strive about words to no profit…” nor were they to “strive about words to the ruin of the hearers. “In other words, Paul commanded this preacher not to wrangle about things that will not profit the children of God spiritually. And in this context, he gave several other admonitions regarding the shunning of profane and vain babblings which increase ungodliness like

For many years now we have been hearing, from those attempting to raise funds for the education of certain persons in this country, that “a human mind is a terrible thing to waste.” Few things which have come from the uninspired minds of men could be more true than that. It is a terrible thing to waste a human mind! Furthermore, it makes no difference what color the body in which the mind resides may be, it is a horrific thing to allow a human mind to be unchallenged and uneducated. Yet, as we look upon the state of education in the western world today, there are many, many areas in which the minds of millions of people are being wasted even while they are in school because there are strong organizations who have decided that they are not going to educate your children and mine, but they are going to brain-wash them. So, they teach little children, who are very likely to respond positively to anything a teacher says since these teachers hold a place of authority, that they are nothing more than the descendants of monkeys, rats or some other specie of animal. They teach this in spite of the fact that there is not one single solitary fact to sustain their claims. As a matter of fact, all the facts point out that human beings are a totally unique kind of specie dwelling upon this earth. But many in these powerful organizations want your children to believe that they are nothing

Every one of us is painfully aware that there are many obstacles to be overcome in our lives. Some of these are great and take a huge amount of effort on our part, and some are simple and easily overcome. Some of the obstacles, trials, tribulations that we must overcome are of a physical nature, and we often seek the help of physicians or others to help us take care of these. Some are emotional and mental, and sometimes we have to seek the help of professionals in overcoming these also. But for the Christian there are spiritual obstacles to overcome such as various kinds of temptations of the flesh, or the resurgence of poor attitudes, or something of the sort. In all probability spiritual obstacles are the most difficult for us to overcome, as a matter of fact, there are many of these that we cannot overcome on our own, and so it is necessary for us to call upon God in prayer, and he gives us the spiritual strength to overcome these problems and negative situations in life. In the great and inspiring Book of Revelation, we have a number of statements made about those who overcome. It should be noted that the people to whom the book was written were going to be suffering some agonizing persecution at the hands of the enemies of Christ, and they needed to be encouraged regarding overcoming and remaining faithful in their service to the Lord. So, our Lord, through the

In the wonderful and brilliant Book of First John, the apostle of love makes a statement in chapter five and verse thirteen that has caused no little controversy in the church and among other religious bodies. The verse, as it is set forth in the New King James translation of the Bible is as follows: “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.” One is impressed with the fact that the text says that the Christians of the day in which John was writing could know that they had eternal life. The question naturally arises as to the sense in which we have eternal life. Do we have it in the absolute sense in that nothing we can do can cause us to lose that life? No, we do not! This is just another way of expressing the Calvinistic doctrine of “once in grace always in grace.” If the Book of Hebrews demonstrates anything at all, it demonstrates that one can walk out on Christ, thus falling away from him, and lose whatever reward God may have for the saints (Hebrews 6:4-8). Everyone who understands what it means to be a “free moral agent,” with the ability to make choices, knows that a person can walk out on God just as surely as he can come to God. The Calvinists attempt

Words are intriguing. They serve as the vehicles by which ideas and concepts are carried from the mind of one person to another. God has used these things that we call “words” to bring to our minds those things he would have us to know in order that we may be acceptable in his righteous sight. In the Book of 1 Corinthians, chapter two, Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit searched the mind of God, and that he revealed to man what God would have man to know from that well-spring of eternal truth that God has in his own mind. Many of the words of God are very striking and we are immediately drawn to do a word study to try and learn all the nuances of those words so that we may better understand and appreciate Christianity. Others are words that we are very likely to pass over, thinking that we understand them sufficiently to get the meaning of a given text. In the third verse of the Book of Jude, the half brother of our Lord spoke of the “common salvation.” Because the word “common” in this text is coupled with the word salvation, one is almost immediately drawn to it wondering in what sense the salvation that comes through Jesus Christ can be thought of as “common.” In Titus 1:4, Paul used the very same word in addressing Titus as his “true son in our common faith.” Again, one cannot help but wonder how the

There are words in every language which are considered beautiful because of the concepts they represent. In our language, the word encouragement is a beautiful word because of the concept which it represents. If one were to consult a modern American dictionary for a definition of this word, he would find a definition, or definitions, very similar to this: “Encouragement is that which gives courage, hope, or confidence.” This is a very short definition, but it says a great deal, especially when it is applied to the living of the Christian life. Neither Satan nor the world make it easy for one to live a life dedicated to our Lord Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, if Satan can devise a way to get us to become discouraged with living the Christian life he has gone a great way in getting us to give up on and walk out on the Lord Jesus Christ. We do not know what caused Demas to forsake the apostle Paul and go to Thessalonica, but it may have been that Satan was able to discourage him through the trials and persecutions which were endured by the apostle Paul and those who worked with him in ancient times. When we see one faltering or languishing in living for Christ due to the discouragements of this life, we should immediately go to that person with words and deeds which will help them to experience a resurgence of courage, hope and confidence in the living of the Christian

In the Book of Ephesians there are recorded in chapters one and three, two remarkable prayers which were uttered by the great apostle Paul for the Christians in the city of Ephesus. One can hardly help but wonder what it would be like to have someone as righteous, good and zealous as the apostle Paul offering prayers at the throne of God for one. But that is what he did on behalf of the church at Ephesus, and a cursory look at those prayers will be good for Christians living today. Notice if you will, please, that he offered these prayers to God after he had heard of their faith in Jesus Christ, and their love for all the saints. It would do no good to offer prayers for people who did not have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, except to pray that they might gain such faith, but since these brethren already had such faith, Paul is ready to pray for them. In addition to the great faith which they had in Christ, they also had love for all the saints. Again, we need to point out that without love, no matter how great we are, or claim to be, our lives are as empty as a clanging brass cymbal. Since these Christians had that faith and love, Paul did not cease to give thanks for them, and to pray for them. For what did Paul pray regarding the Ephesians? The first thing for which he prayed was

In 1 Corinthians 10:13 there is found one of the most comforting promises that can be found anywhere in all of the Word of God. The passage reads as follows from the NKJV: “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.” As we look upon this passage and see the assurance that we receive from being the children of God that temptation, trial or testing will not overcome and destroy our relationship with God, we take note of the fact that the reason this is true is because “God is faithful.” It is a truly wonderful thing to live for a God who is faithful to his commitments to his children. The word that is translated “faithful” in this passage of Scripture comes from pistos, and when used with reference to the God of our universe, it means “faithful, truthful, trustworthy.” God is the One Being in all the universe upon whom we can utterly depend. (When we speak of God, we are speaking of Deity which includes the Son and the Spirit.) Men may make promises, and they may keep those promises, or they may not, depending upon how they feel or what they are thinking at the time. But God is not that way because he is faithful. He is utterly and

This writer has now spent more than forty-five years of his life studying the Bible. He does not feel that he knows all there is to know about the great and grand book, but with each year of study his love and appreciation for the sacred volume has grown. One of the things that disturbs people who have studied the Bible over a long period of time is the fact that it is no longer the center of study and discussion, even for religious people, in our time. There was a time when almost every politician, when making speeches, would make references to the Bible. Sometimes these references were taken out of context, yet the Bible was held in reverence and was respected as the source book for religion and morals. But that time no longer exists, and we have such hard and callous organizations as the ACLU who work actively to remove every vestige of the Bible from anything that has anything to do with the political in the U.S. Many children are growing up today having never seen the Book of Books. For this reason we think that it is appropriate that we look at some simple facts about the Bible. The Bible is not a textbook on science, yet when it speaks scientifically it does so in a very accurate way. For example, when Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37, he mentioned almost in passing that the man who was robbed went

Several years ago we heard the late and deeply respected Batsell Barrett Baxter preach a wonderful and moving sermon to which he gave the title that we have used above. Brother Baxter was attempting to get us to see that duty is not a bad motivation, but it can actually become a way of life for us when our duty toward God becomes the deepest desire of our hearts. When our desires come to correspond with the desires of God, then we find nothing painful about serving him in any capacity in our lives. In later times, we have come to call this “cooperation with God.” When one’s greatest desire is to comply with the commands of God, one finds nothing negative about doing so. If a person finds himself having the negative emotion of resentment because he must do the duty of God, then he may rest assured of the fact that duty toward God has not become his desire. If we, like spoiled children, must have a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down, when it comes to serving God, there is something seriously wrong with our attitudes toward God and things divine and spiritual, to say nothing of the fact that there is something wrong with our attitude toward his marvelous Word. Jesus Christ, our Lord and Redeemer, came to this earth to do his duty toward God on behalf of mankind. So completely did he do that duty that he was able to say

We should begin by pointing out that it was a violent death. The probability is great that those of us living in America some twenty centuries after the death of Christ have a great deal of difficulty understanding the violent treatment that Jesus endured at the hands of his enemies. Imagine, if you can, just what it would be like to be laid on a cross made of rough timber, and have long hard nails driven through your hands and your feet. Imagine the type of hot searing pain that would flash through your body as all of a sudden that cross is dropped into a hole in the ground and your bruised and bloody hands and feet must begin to bear the whole weight of your body. Jesus suffered in that way. So violent was his death that it is difficult for us to even describe it for others. There is no more violent way to die than by crucifixion! But this violent death, which was suffered by the Son of God to make salvation possible for the masses of this earth, was a voluntary death. It was a part of the plan for the redemption of the world that God the Father, and the Son worked out before the foundation of the world. While the humanity of Jesus did not want to die, yet his divine nature knew that he must, and that he must give himself upon the cross for us. In John 10:17-18, Jesus speaking of the fact that his

There are those in the church today who do a great deal of worrying about whether or not the church can survive the onslaught of liberalism, and whether or not there will be congregations of the church existing when our grandchildren have grown to the age of responsibility. We are not reflecting upon those fears in any way, but we need to be reminded of the facts that there have been heresies and apostasies in the church almost from the beginning of her existence upon this earth. One needs only to read the Book of Acts to learn that in the very early days of her history the church was deeply wounded by a heretical teaching from a group of converted Christians called “Judaizers.” These people, who had been converted from the sect of the Jews known as the Pharisees, taught that unless a person desiring to be a Christian was circumcised and kept the Law of Moses he could not be saved. And though this heresy was dealt with by the Jerusalem council under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, these people caused a great deal of turmoil and trouble in the early church. Hardly had this heresy begun to die out when another heresy arose, this time for the Gentile segment of the church called “Docetism.” This heresy, which we gather from the writings of Paul had its beginning in the church at Colosse, continued to grow for some three hundred years until it grew into a full-blown

One of the great things one cannot help but notice as he studies the Bible is that the Great Book does not merely talk to us in ways that are purely academic, or abstract, but often gives us some very concrete teachings concerning how we are to serve God here on the earth. God, for example, is not content to merely tell us that we are to live by faith, but he also shows us, from the lives of other people whom he approved, what it means to live by faith. That is a wonderful and powerful type of teaching, and one to which all can relate from the youngest to the oldest. As one goes through the Bible studying its sacred pages, he can see the mistakes and the successes of biblical characters, and from these learn what to do, and what not to do so far as living a successful life before God is concerned. He can look at the lives of such great people as Noah, Daniel, Josiah and others, and learn what God would have us do in order to be acceptable to him. He can look at other characters like Ahaz, Jezebel, Nabal and others in order to learn what he should avoid if he is to be acceptable in the sight of God. However, there is one thing that must never be forgotten about those characters who are approved of God in both the Old and New Testaments. They were not found acceptable in

In 1 John 4:8 we read, “He who does not love does not know God for God is love.” We find this to be a very interesting and compelling statement because it tells us something about the nature of the God whom we worship and for whom we live. The passage defines the very essence of God as being love. In order for us to understand the nature or character of God as it is defined in this passage of Scripture, we must come to a proper understanding of the word “love.” This is especially true in the time in which we live because the word “love” is used to describe almost any positive emotion that a human being might have. We “love” everything from pets to pizza! We love certain movies and certain people. The word is used in such a broad sense that about the only thing that we come up with when we speak of God being love is a question mark. The latter part of the verse says, for God is agape. Agape is the Greek word that is most commonly used in the New Testament for “love.” This is the word that is used in such great passages as 1 Corinthians the 13th chapter. It would be hard to guess and interesting to learn just how many times this word is used in the New Testament. But what is more important than the number of times the word is used is what the word means. According to the Analytical

In Ephesians 2:19-22, the grand old Apostle Paul spoke of Christians being fellow citizens with the saints and members of the family of God. Then changing the figures of speech that he was using to that of a building, or a Temple, he said that we are built on the foundation laid by the apostles and prophets with Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. He went on to say that the whole building fitly joined together grows into a holy temple in Christ, and that it is in him that the Christian is being (notice the present tense) built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit. There are many things in this periphrastic rendering of these verses that would be profitable for study, but today we wish to look at the fact that Christians are built together for a “habitation of God in the Spirit.” During the dispensation of Moses, the people in whom God dwelt, by dwelling in the Temple which they had built for him, were the people of Israel. For many generations these people were the “chosen” of God and held the unique position of having a very special relationship with him because of who they were. In the dispensation of grace, God no longer dwells among a physical people such as he did in the days of the Law of Moses, but he dwells in a spiritual Temple which is made of living stones. This spiritual Temple is also known as “a chosen

“And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30). The antecedent of the pronoun “whom” in Ephesians 4:30 is “the Holy Spirit of God.” Paul told the Ephesian Christians that they had been sealed for the day of redemption. Down through the years various men have made a great deal of “to do” about what it means for the Christian to be “sealed” by the Holy Spirit. One example, which I read some years back, is that the Holy Spirit seals us up as in a quart jar so that sin cannot touch our lives, and that in that sealed state we live a sanctified life perfectly free from sin in every way. One writer said that we cannot sin, and we do not want to sin, because God has, through the Holy Spirit, sealed us up as if we were sealed in a fruit jar. Nothing can get in to tempt us or cause us to sin because we are sealed by the Holy Spirit. Let us begin by investigating the word “sealed” as it is used in this text to see just what the meaning is. The word translated “sealed” in this passage comes from the Greek word “sphragizo” which means a mark that is made by a seal or a signet ring which shows genuineness, and it brings security or preserves. The word by implication means to keep secret. Hence, the meaning of the word is not

We are living in a time of amusement and entertainment. If the entertainment is good and clean, there is nothing wrong with enjoying that amusement and entertainment for a period of time. But life cannot be just amusement and entertainment. If that becomes the case, then the joy that comes from the entertainment is soon obliterated so that it no longer holds for us the entertainment factor that it once did. So entertainment conscious have we become that we are now being told by our school officials that schooling should not be in any manner like work, that it should always be fun and pleasurable to the children whom we are attempting to teach. We believe that this is a mistaken view of life, and that children should be shown the value of work and accomplishment, and not left with the impression that everything they do must entail some sort of entertainment. This view has become so prevailing that many of the religious bodies in the US, and other places, have turned away from the concept of worship to the concept of entertaining people and calling it worship. The idea that every moment of the day for a child, or a young person, is to be one grand round of pure enjoyment is not in touch with either the realities of life or with good common sense. Life is not that way, and one of the days in the future of these children, they are going to have to suffer

In virtually every one of the so-called sitcoms that one sees on television these days, there are open and frontal attacks made upon what the world calls “Christianity.” Those who believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of the only true and living God are attacked, ridiculed, and many jokes, some of them not so nice, are made at the expense of believers. Christianity is made out to be some kind of a stodgy, antiquated religion which is about to pass away. They also depict ministers as inept, sinful, hypocritical and lazy. If any other group of people, such as homosexuals, for example, were singled out and depicted in such a way, there would be a scream go up that could be heard all over the earth; the ACLU would immediately start a lawsuit against someone. But this is not the only persecution that is directed at those who call themselves “Christians” in the land in which we live. The federal government feels that it has the right to step in and investigate the doctrine of various churches — whether that has been requested by those churches or not. They feel they have the right to overturn, by making illegal, such doctrines as they feel are opposed to “civil rights.” There is a movement at this very hour to have homosexuals treated as a minority race in this country, and if that movement succeeds, you and I will not be able to tell a person who is living that life-style

Psalm 22 Introduction: Based upon certain evidence in the text, which we do not have the space to discuss here, we have long believed that Psalms numbers 22, 23, and 24 are a trilogy of Psalms concerning the death of Christ, his resurrection by the Shepherd who led him beside the still waters, and his ascension back into heaven where the multitudes recognize him as the King of glory. It may be that at one time all three of the Psalms were one, due to the fact that uninspired men divided our English Bibles into chapters and verses sometime about 1550 A.D. (Perhaps this can be more thoroughly discussed at a future time.) But that the Old Testament prophets saw beforehand the suffering of Jesus Christ, and the glory that would follow that suffering, as is affirmed in 1 Peter 1:11, simply cannot be denied. Two clear examples of this dual theme are found in Psalm 22, which focuses upon the death of Christ, and in Psalm 2 which speaks of the glorious honor that was bestowed upon Christ at the time of his resurrection. It is the first of these two psalms which we wish to study in this lesson. This Psalm is referred to as a “passional psalm,” meaning that it deals with the passionate suffering of Jesus Christ for the redemption of the world. It is said to have been written by David, and there is no strong evidence to prove that it was not. The New

That man has a soul, or a spirit, or an inward man, cannot be denied by anyone who has ever read his Bible. That the soul, spirit or inward man is the part of us which shall live forever is also taught within the pages of the New Testament. Not only so, but Jesus taught us something very important about the value of the eternal soul of man when he asked, “For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26) These two questions were intended to be rhetorical by our Lord, and by asking them he was telling us something very important about that part of each of us that none of us has ever seen. The context in which Jesus asked these questions was his emphasis to his disciples that they were going  to have to be ready to forfeit, if necessary, their own souls in order to follow him and to carry out the work he had for them to do. In attempting to emphasize that if they lost everything this world had to offer but succeeded in saving their own souls by their service to him, they would be the better because the soul of just one of those disciples was worth more than all the world. Jesus was, no doubt, using a figure of speech here called a hyperbole, because no one that we know has

Psalm 109 Introduction: According to the heading of this Psalm, David is the composer of it, and there is not real hard evidence to set aside this conclusion. David portrays a person crying out for divine aid against a gang of merciless enemies who were attempting to bring about his destruction through false accusations and treacherous slander. The history of the life of the great King David qualified him to paint this word picture of a betrayed person who was godly in his life, because of the many confrontations that David had with various enemies while he lived on earth. This psalmist speaks of many enemies because he uses the plural number, and yet his focus is upon a single person. In describing this foremost enemy, David, no doubt, draws upon his own experiences with Saul, who pursued him to kill him, with Ahithophel, who betrayed him, (2 Samuel 15) and Shemei, who cursed him when he was fleeing from Jerusalem during the rebellion of Absalom. When one begins to interpret this psalm, there are two fundamental questions which face him. Who is the person who cries out to God for relief from attack? Who is the terrible enemy who is attacking him? There does not seem to be much within the Psalm itself to answer these two questions. Ordinarily, one would speculate that David, the author of the Psalm, was speaking of his own plight, or a former plight, but that would only be a speculation. The distinguished Apostle Peter shed some very

If one were to sit down and read his New Testament without carrying all of the denominational baggage that usually accumulates during our lives here, he would have no trouble at all understanding that baptism is, indeed, essential to the salvation of the immortal soul of man. However, since what we have just suggested is not very likely the case, at least not here in the United States, it is necessary again to set forth some arguments to prove that in order to be saved from past sins, and in eternity, it is absolutely essential for a penitent believer in Jesus Christ to experience immersion in water in order to be saved. Those who believe in salvation by faith only, or by grace only, have denied for four or five hundred years that baptism is part of the salvation that God presents by grace through faith. And though this denial has been at the very heart of many sermons and debates in the religious world, the New Testament of our Lord and Savior has not changed its teaching upon this subject, or on any other so far as that is concerned, in the last two thousand years. And when all is said and done, and the last denial of God’s truth upon this subject has been shouted from the housetops, the Bible will still say what it has always said, and man will still be accountable to what the Bible says regardless of all of the theology that may be

Psalm 69 Introduction: According to the New Testament, the betrayal of Jesus Christ by Judas Iscariot is the subject of two prophetic psalms, namely, 69 and 109. Both of these passages focus on the terrible judgment which God would bring upon Judas, the betrayer of the Christ. Psalm 69, a portion of which we will study in this lesson, is quoted or alluded to twenty-two times in the New Testament. These references are found in John 15:25; Mark 3:21; Luke 8:19; John 7:3-5; 2:17; Romans 15:3; Hebrews 12:2; Matthew 27:34-48; Mark 15:23-36; Luke 23:36; John 19:28-30; Romans 11:9-10; Matthew 23:38; Luke 13:35; Acts 1:20; 1 Peter 2:24; Romans 1:28; Philippians 4:3; Revelation 3:5; 13:8; Luke 10:20; and Hebrews 12:23. No other of the Psalms, with the exception of Psalm twenty-two, is more distinctly applied in the New Testament. Of course, we must point out that the mere quoting of a passage does not necessarily mean that it is a direct prediction of a person or an event. But the subject of this Psalm is an ideal person who represents the whole class of righteous sufferers, including David who authored the Psalm. However, the only person to live on the earth in whom is found all of the various characteristics which are set forth in the Psalm was our Lord Jesus Christ. On the other hand, Jesus is not the exclusive subject of the Psalm, unless the sins he confessed in verses five through twelve, represent the sins that Jesus bore

In the day and time in which we live, we are hearing a great deal about the word “tolerance,” both in the secular world and in the religious world. There was a time when people firmly believed in certain things and they would without fear or rancor stand for those things. In the past, we had the era of the great debates, in both religion and politics, but the present climate seems to be that one should take the position that everyone can be right about everything, and that we should not question what a person believes so long as he is sincere in that belief. (One does not know how one could know of the sincerity of another unless one would accept every person’s unilateral statement of his sincerity.) When one ascribes to this point of view, that means that the sincere Hindu is as much of a child of God as a sincere Christian. There may be some who claim to be Christians who believe this, but there are no sincere Hindus who do! All of us practice tolerance to some degree or another, whether we agree with certain ideas or not. For example, those of us who are members of the churches of Christ, with but a very few exceptions believe that baptism is essential to the salvation of the human soul. Other religious bodies agree with this, but disagree on what constitutes baptism. Other religious bodies take the position that baptism has nothing to do with

One of the great mysteries of the Bible is the relationship that exists between God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Almost all Christians have struggled to understand the nature of the Godhood, or the Trinity as it is sometimes called. We have often done this with very little success because our small minds simply cannot grasp the having of One True God in three persons. However, the New Testament, as well as the Old Testament, refers to the nature of God, Christ and the Holy Spirit from time to time, and does so with a matter-of-factness that will often cause us to overlook the deep truth that is found in a given text. In Colossians 1:19-20, after pointing out that Jesus Christ is the Head of the Body, the church and that he is the firstborn from the dead that in all things he might stand in first place, the apostle Paul wrote these words: “For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.” This passage of Scripture almost incidentally tells us something of the nature of God and of Christ, and of the relationship sustained between them so far as the reconciliation of the world is concerned. Let us direct our attention to the fact that in Jesus, while he lived upon

Psalm 78:1-2 Introduction: Matthew, in chapter thirteen, verses thirty-four and thirty-five, made a direct reference to the first two verses of this Psalm when he said, (34) “All these things Jesus spoke to the multitude in parables; and without a parable He did not speak to them, (35) that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: ‘I will open My mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.’” This Psalm was written by Asaph who was a musician who lived during the lifetimes of both David and Solomon. The claim that Asaph wrote the Psalm is authenticated by the fact that the Psalm itself recounts the history of the people of God only down to the time of David. Biblical commentators often struggle in their efforts to release Matthew from using merely accommodative language when he quotes this Psalm in the passage mentioned above. One explanation is that Asaph was not only a musician but a prophet as well, and that he was here in his teaching showing how the Messiah would teach on earth. But Matthew regarded these verses as a direct prediction of the nature of the teaching of Christ during his earthly ministry. But it must be remembered that physical Israel was a type of spiritual Israel (the church) and here Asaph, as a prophet speaking in parables, is a type of Christ who would also speak in parables during his ministry upon the earth.

The greatest of all the miracles associated with the life of Jesus is his resurrection from the dead. Jesus himself said that this would be his ultimate miracle in Matthew 12:39 and 16:4 when he told the Jews that the sign that he would show them would be that of the prophet Jonah. He went on to say that as Jonah was three days and nights in the belly of the whale, so the Son of Man would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. No story of the life of Christ could be complete that does not tell of his resurrection from the new tomb of Joseph. One of the sources we have of the resurrection of our Lord from the grave is found in the 28th chapter of the Book of Matthew. Here we have recorded the story of the great earthquake and an angel of the Lord descending from heaven. After arriving upon the earth, this great angel rolled the stone back from the door of the tomb and sat upon it. He is described as being as white as snow and having a countenance like lightning. What a sight that must have been to have seen! This creature from heaven, more beautiful than anything any of us have seen came to testify regarding the empty tomb of Jesus. It is no wonder that the Sacred Volume records that the guards who had been appointed to keep watch on the tomb of the

Psalm 118 Introduction: There can be no doubt that Psalm 118:22 is Messianic in its import because this verse is cited in the New Testament and applied to Jesus Christ.  (See: Matthew 21:9 & 42; Mark 11:9-10; 12:10-11; Luke 20:17; Acts 4:11; Romans 9:33; Ephesians 2:19-22; 1 Peter 2:4-12.) God would only have to apply this passage of Scripture to the Messiah once in order for it to testify that it was speaking of the Messiah, but he has done so on several occasions. There are other views as to who is rejected in this Psalm some of which we will list below: Some say that it was Israel who was rejected.  We cannot recall Israel ever being called a stone or a cornerstone.  Besides, God did not reject Israel until after Israel rejected his Son. The text does not speak of God rejecting anyone, but it was the “builders” who did the rejecting. Others suggest that the Psalm is speaking of the family of David, but that is exactly opposite from what God promised to do in an earlier Psalm.  (89) Others (Jewish writers) believe that it is David personally that is the rejected stone, but David is never pictured as rejected by God in any way; as a matter-of-fact he was a man after God’s own heart.  This can only apply to the Messiah! Thirteen verses of the psalm are in the first person singular, and this causes us to ask “Who is the one doing the speaking?”

We believe that it will be profitable for us to look at the case of doubting Thomas in order to see the problems that are connected with this subject. The first of these problems is that the Bible does not refer to Thomas as doubting, but this description has been given to him by uninspired men. When the disciples told Thomas that they had seen the Lord, he knew that they were making the claim to have seen the Lord after he had been put into the new tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Thomas declared, “unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my fingers into the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” So, Thomas declared that he would not believe in the resurrection of Christ until he had physical evidence, that is, until he had empirical evidence (evidences through one of his five senses) he simply would not believe that Jesus Christ had resurrected from the dead. It is upon the basis of the statement made by Thomas that he came to be called “doubting Thomas.” There is no evidence that Thomas had decided that he would never believe that Jesus would resurrect from the dead, but that he did not believe at that time, nor would he do so until he had the evidence that the Lord was alive. “Doubting” is defined as “to be undecided and uncertain about a matter.” In this sense, Thomas doubted the resurrection of our Savior. He

Religious people amaze me with some of the things they do and say, but the brethren astound me with some of the things they say and do. It is not important that I am either amazed or astounded, but what is important is the way some people believe they have the right to act and react with regard to God. That we are living in unholy, irreverent and disrespectful days is not something that anyone who is reasonably observant would deny, but in the last several months I have observed a kind of irreverence and disrespect that I have never before seen in the fifty years that I have been a Christian. In the past ten or twelve months, I have had recounted to me stories of people, all of whom were of the liberal hue, walking out of the services of the church because they did not like something the preacher said. The first time I heard of it happening, I said, “Oh, well that was in Tennessee, it was an isolated incident, and I will probably never hear of it again.” How wrong I was! At least five times since that time I have heard of it happening again, and the last time not too far from home. Can you imagine the colossal audacity, and the unmitigated arrogance that it takes for someone who calls himself a Christian to get up and walk out of a worship that is supposedly directed to God because he/she does not like

Psalm 40 Introduction: In Hebrews 10:5-7, the writer quoted three verses from this Psalm. According to the inspired author of that book, in these verses our Lord Jesus Christ was speaking to the Father at a time when Jesus was leaving heaven to come into this world. For this reason there are very few, if any Christian scholars to doubt that this Psalm is Messianic in its import. In this Psalm, as well as in many others of the Psalms, one has a difficult time in trying to determine what is spoken by the writer, and that which is spoken of the Messiah. It would seem logical to believe if Christ is doing the speaking in verses 6-10 of the Psalm, he would be doing the speaking throughout the Psalm, but not necessarily so because in verse twelve there is a confession of sin which certainly could not be attributed to the Messiah for he was, and is, the sinless Son of God. In addition to this there are in verses fourteen and fifteen prayers which some scholars regard as incompatible with the spirit of forgiveness that Jesus demonstrated on the cross. Milligan handles this problem in the following words in his commentary on Hebrews:  “This citation is from the fortieth Psalm, and has reference primarily to David as a type of Christ; and secondarily to Christ himself as the antitype.”  Milligan goes on to say: “David speaks; but Christ, whose Spirit already dwells and works in David, and who will

For many, many years this preacher has been quoting Matthew 10:32-33 to prove that it is necessary for one to confess with his mouth that he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And while it is true that all who become Christians are to confess with their mouths that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, in order to be saved, except for the deaf mute, who would confess with his hands, that is not what the passage in Matthew Chapter Ten is speaking of. Such passages as Romans 10:8-10 teach us very clearly that we are saved by the confession of the name of the Son of God, and there is nothing wrong in asking a person who comes to be baptized if he or she believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. But again, this is not the subject under discussion in the passage in Matthew. And those of us who have used the Matthew passage to prove that one must confess Christ in order to be saved, have done so ignoring the context of the statement Jesus made, and the reason why Jesus said what he said, and the type of confession of which he spoke on that occasion. Matthew Ten tells the story of the “twelve” being sent out to preach to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Not only were they to preach but they were to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead and cast out demons.

Psalm 8 Introduction Two of the Psalms, numbers eight and forty, focus on Christ’s “making himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant, and coming in the likeness of men.” In Psalm Eight the Messiah is set forth as the last Adam, who was made, during his earthly pilgrimage, “a little lower than the angels.” In Psalm Forty there is, as it were, a door opened so that we can hear some of the discussion which took place in heaven before the Lord came to Bethlehem as the infant son of Mary. The fact that Psalm Eight is referred to so frequently in the New Testament as being Messianic precludes any argument that it cannot be so.  As a matter-of-fact, it is quoted at least four times in the New Testament, and every time it is applied to Jesus.  Notice: When Jesus made his Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem and the Temple at the climax of his ministry the people cried out, “Hosanna to the Son David; blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.”  The leaders of the Jews protested the people’s saying this because it implied that he was the Messiah, so Jesus quoted Psalm 82 which says, in part, “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings you have perfected praise . . .”  (See: Matthew 21:1-16.) In the Book of Ephesians 1:20-22, Paul refers to the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus Christ.  He told us that Jesus is

Each year, at midnight on December 31 those of us who live according to the Gregorian Calendar bring to a close the happenings of the past three hundred and sixty-five days, and declare that we have entered into a New Year. Under our calendar, this happens every 366th day, and one would think that it would become rather old and trite during the period of a lifetime. But there seems to be a certain kind of excitement in the air, and we find great pleasure in adopting the idea that things are about to begin anew for us. This idea seems to be somewhat characteristic of man, and it really does not make much, if any, difference what our calendar may be. For example, the Chinese, who do not live under the same calendar as we do, enter into great celebrations at their new year. Although their culture is vastly different from ours, still, like us, they relish the passing of an old year and celebrating the beginning of a new one. One of the things that we do which is so meaningful is that we often sincerely wish one another “happy new year.” It seems to me that what we are saying, when we do this, is that we are hoping that the next 365 days will be good to us, and that we will find great blessing in them. When those of us who are Christians wish one another “happy new year,” we are expressing a desire that great

Psalm 132 Introduction: Psalm 132 is Messianic in its implications, because it reflects the promises which have been made to the house of David. The ultimate implications of the promises to David reach their fulfillment in Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah. Those who sang this song-prayer in ancient Israel could not have been ignorant of what this Psalm teaches. This Psalm (132) is very closely related to Psalm 89, which we have just studied, but there is one important difference, and that is, Psalm 132 has a note of confidence from the very beginning and continuing throughout the Psalm, while Psalm 89 has a dark and pessimistic outlook in certain places. Psalm 132 is a prayer-psalm, and it is called a pilgrimage psalm because many commentators think that it was written after the children of Israel returned from their captivity. Other students of the Bible assign this Psalm to the time of the United Kingdom, making it possible for David to have written it, or for it to be written after the death of David at the dedication of the Temple of God by Solomon. However, the Psalm is more easily understood if we consider it to be a prayer of the people rather than the prayer of one of the monarchs. The portion to which we shall give the greater attention is that made up of verses eleven through eighteen, which is the second portion in which God answers the prayer that has been offered in the first ten

From time to time one receives questions for which there are no easy answers. This is especially true in times like these when there are so many winds of change blowing to and fro, helter skelter in the church for which Jesus gave his last full measure of devotion. At times like these, the hearts of some people are broken when they see that some of the people whom they have loved and appreciated through the years are giving up on the precious teachings of Christ and his Apostles, and are turning to man’s interpretations of the Scriptures. These interpretations bring about division, and brethren who were once true to God and to one another, now find themselves on opposite sides of a question, or some interpretation. We need to make abundantly clear that it makes no difference what any man says concerning the holy Scriptures, the Scriptures are always right, and never wrong because they are “God-breathed.” So, in the final analysis, what the Scriptures say is true while all of the interpretations of men may be wrong. But in times of anxiety, like the ones in which we are living, someone always asks a question that concerns us all. This question is asked in light of Paul’s admonition in such passages as Romans 16:17, in which we are commanded to mark and avoid those who cause divisions and sins contrary to the doctrine of Christ. The question often comes in a framework something like this: “I am confused because I

Text: Psalm 89:3 & 20-52 Introduction: Tremendous promises were made by God to David through Nathan the prophet, as we have seen in our former lesson, and the author of this Psalm, who was probably Ethan the Ezrahite, (1 Kings 4:31) zealously believed in those promises.1 This Psalmist also foresaw a time when it would appear that God had abolished his covenant with David, a time when the Dynasty of David would fall into shameful dishonor among the governments of the world. Ethan prays to God, in this Psalm, that the days of Davidic humiliation would be shortened, and that God would absolve his Messiah. The Messianic force of this great Psalm lies in the fact that no one but the Messiah could possibly fulfill all the promises that are made to David in this Psalm. Of this Old Testament hymn, brother Hailey said, “This psalm seems to have been written at a time when the nation was cast down by its enemies and the rulers of David’s house were in a state of deep humiliation (vv. 35-52).  The psalmist was pleading with Jehovah to remember His covenant with David.  He began with a burst of praise for Jehovah’s lovingkindness, faithfulness, and mercy (vv. 1-2).  As he proceeded he quoted Jehovah, saying, ‘I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant: Thy seed will I establish for ever, And build up thy throne to all generations.’ . . . The psalmist resumed his praise of

One of the genuine pleasures that come from studying the Bible is to look upon the various characters around whom various stories revolve. One could spend a lifetime doing nothing but studying the characters of the Bible and one would be strengthened spiritually for having done so. There are two kinds of people who are generally mentioned in the Bible. One is those who are very righteous and fully desirous of following God and living a life of faith. The other is those whose lives are very wicked and from whom we learn how not to live as we attempt to serve Christ upon this earth. One of the characters who has always caught my attention and about whom I have had the joy of studying, intermittently through the years, is a lady by the name of Mary Magdalene. Several things can be learned about her from the New Testament and we will take the opportunity of noticing only a very few today. The first thing we wish to notice about this devoted follower of Jesus Christ is that Jesus had at some time in her life cast seven demons out of her (Mark 16:9). What these demons were and how they affected her we are not told, but the evidence supports the view that her heart was filled with gratitude for what Jesus had done for her, and she, along with some other women, became disciples of our Lord. Mary is often accused of being a prostitute, but to

Text: 2 Samuel 7:12-16. (12) “When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. (13) He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. (14) I will be his Father, and he shall be My son. If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men and with the blows of the sons of men. (l5) But My mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. (16) And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever.” Introduction: We will now move from the early days of the prophet Samuel to the days in which he was dealing with the great King of Israel — David. David, after he had come to Jerusalem, and made it his capital, sought also to make that city the religious capital of the nation. In those days the Tabernacle was located at Gibeon, and the Ark of the Covenant was located in the little town of Kiriath-jearim which was about nine miles, or so, west of the city of Jerusalem. David ordered the Ark to be brought to Jerusalem and placed in a special tent that he had prepared for it. This was done, and great celebration accompanied the installation of the Ark

All of us who study the Bible are keenly aware of the fact that on more than one occasion the nation of Israel, which had been chosen before the world began to be the people through whom God would bring his son, followed the heathen people around them and began to worship idols. Sometimes they became so brazen in doing this that they had the audacity to bring various idols right into the Temple of the Living God. When they did this, although they sometimes retained God as one of their deities, God rejected their worship and called upon them to change their hearts before he would accept their worship. It was not that God did not want their worship and devotion, but he did not want it as long as their hearts were, in whole or in part, given to other gods. So again and again, God would plead for them to come back to him with all their hearts and give up their devotions to the dead gods around them. These incidences in history teach us as clearly as anything can be taught that it is possible for one to give up worshiping God and begin to worship idols. But the question with which we hope to deal today is: “Can one when he thinks he is worshiping the one True God, actually be engaged in a form of idolatry?” We answer that question in the affirmative, and will through the rest of this brief article show how

Text: 1 Samuel 2:35, “Then I will raise up for Myself a faithful priest who shall do according to what is in My heart and in My mind. I will build him a sure house, and he shall walk before My anointed forever.” Introduction: By way of a background setting, it must be pointed out that Jehovah, at Mount Sinai, said that the nation of Israel was to be a kingdom of priests.  (Exodus 19:6 and compare 1 Peter 2:1-10 regarding the church.) The statement by God in Exodus 19:6 appears to be a further development of the prediction that God gave to Abraham that he was to be a blessing to other people and nations. And so it came to be that Israel became a priestly nation which was to be a blessing to the rest of the world. Now, within the general national priesthood, God ordained a specific family, that of Aaron to officiate as priests (Exodus 29:9). And toward the end of the wanderings in the wilderness, God made a covenant with Phinehas of an everlasting priesthood (Numbers 25:12-13).  (Phinehas was the son of Eleazar, and the grandson of Aaron.) But in our text, God announced that he would remove the priesthood of Aaron and bring into existence a new priesthood which would be under the leadership of a faithful priest. Aaron, who was the first High Priest under the Levitical system, was survived by two sons whose names were Eleazar and Ithamar. God ordained that Eleazar should succeed his father, Aaron, as High Priest (Numbers

In Ephesians 4:30, we read the following words: “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” There are many interesting things to study in this simple verse of Scripture. For example, it would be very nice to understand the “sealed” in this passage. Perhaps we will enter into a study of that word at some later time. It would also be beneficial for us to study what is meant by “the day of redemption,” and perhaps we will study that phrase in the not too distant future. But for today we wish to ask the question, what does it mean to “grieve” the Holy Spirit of God? Whatever it means, it must refer to something that is quite serious! The word that is translated “grieve” in this passage comes from the Greek “lupeite,” from “lupeo,” which means to cause distress, heaviness, or grief; to be made to have “sorrow.” The concept of the word is the very same that we experience at the passing of a loved one, or something of such a grave nature. Think about the fact that it is within the capacity of a mere human being to bring grief to the Godhead by the things that we do, or fail to do, or by the things that we believe or fail to believe! It seems to me a thing almost unbelievable that mere human beings have the capacity to grieve the Godhead, and yet we

Occasionally, we receive some questions about the matter of fasting as it is set forth in the New Testament. We have been asked if Christians must fast in order to be acceptable in the sight of God, and if we are to fast, how do we know when to do so? Answering these questions will allow us to make some general observations regarding the matter of fasting. The first observation is that this was a thing that was done by the Old Testament Jew. And though God, in the law of Moses required only one day of fasting per year, according to Leviticus 16:29-31, the Jews added several other periods of fasting to this one required by God’s law. (See: 2 Chronicles 20:30; 1 Samuel 31:13; 2 Samuel 12:16; 1 Kings 21:9 & 27; and Esther 4:16.) God did not seem to mind that the Jews engaged in fasting more often than he had required under the law, so even under the law, with the exception of the Day of Atonement, fasting was a voluntary exercise and was not a requirement of God. By the time that Jesus began his ministry upon the earth, fasting was quite common among the Jews and especially among a sect called the Pharisees. Some of the Pharisees fasted as often as twice a week, but they did so more for the purpose of showing themselves off to men than they did for dedicating themselves wholly to God for the period of the fast. Jesus

Text: 1 Samuel 2:10, “The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken in pieces; from heaven He will thunder against them. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth. He will give strength to His king, and exalt the horn of His anointed.” Introduction: “The Book of Joshua relates the thrilling story of the Israelite conquest of Canaan.  The book covers about twenty-seven years (1407 -1380 B.C.).  Though rich in spiritual lessons and typology, the Book of Joshua contains no personal Messianic prophecy.”1 From the Apostle Paul, in his discourse at Antioch in Pisidia, (Acts 13:14-41) we learn that God gave the children of Israel Judges for about four-hundred-and-fifty years, from the time of the death of Joshua until the coming of the prophet Samuel.  The dark days of the Judges are recorded in the book by that name, and in the first seven chapters of the Book of 1 Samuel. As Briggs says, “The period of the Judges was ill adapted for the development of the Messianic idea.  The conquest of the Holy Land and the settlement of the tribes in the midst of the conquered Canaanites whom they had failed to drive out, resulted in breaking up the national unity, in lowering the spiritual tone through the influence of the people of the land, and in the decay of the religious life of the nation.  It had been impossible to observe any of the Mosaic codes during the wanderings in the wilderness.  It was also impossible to realize

“Does the Bible teach for or against interracial marriage?” Neither. The Bible teaches that marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman who are, in the sight of God, permitted to enter into the relationship for life. The Bible does not teach that this relationship can exist between two people of the same gender, because one of the purposes God had in mind for marriage from the very beginning of time, when he said to Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it . . .” is thwarted when two people are of the same gender. Since they cannot fill all the purposes for which marriage was brought into existence, they cannot lawfully marry in the sight of God, and for them to do so is an abomination, no matter what the State of New Hampshire may say! The only time, to the best of my knowledge, the Bible speaks even indirectly to the subject of an interracial marriage was in the case of Moses who married a second wife who was an “Ethiopian” woman (Numbers 12:1). You will recall that the first wife of Moses was a woman of another nationality who was a Midianitess named Zipporah. We are not told all that transpired regarding this marriage, but by the time we come to Numbers Twelve, we find Moses marrying another woman. Perhaps by this time Zipporah was dead, or perhaps this second wife was a case of polygamy. At any rate,

In the society in which we live today, we hear a great deal of talk about Materialism. Some people praise it, some people, especially preachers, condemn it, and around the holiday season of the year we hear many complain that the real meaning of the holiday season has been lost due to the commercialism and materialism. But, we need to ask ourselves the question, “Just what is materialism?” Obviously, there are some things of a material nature that we must have in order to live. We actually need food, clothing, shelter, and all these things belong to that class of things known as material. As a matter of fact, God has taught us in his Word that we are to pray for these things, and that he will provide them for us through his divine providence. So, if we are going to refer to materialism as being something bad, then we must define the word before we can condemn the concept, or accept it, for that matter. Materialism is defined as follows: “A theory that physical matter is the only fundamental reality and that all being, processes, and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter.” The philosophical materialism simply leaves God completely out of the picture, and so one would have no real reason for celebrating anything connected with God, nor would one have a reason to worship if all that is in the universe is material. Still another definition of “Materialism” is what one might call economic materialism, or communism. It

Text: Deuteronomy 32:43. (LXX) “Rejoice, you heavens, along with him, and let the sons of God worship him. Rejoice, you nations, with his people, and let all the angels of God ascribe might to him. For he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful unto his land, and to his people.” (Dr. James E. Smith’s rendering of the verse from the Septuagint.) Introduction: As we can see, the rendering of this passage in theSeptuagint version of the Old Testament is somewhat different from the common translations that are known today.  For example, the NKJ reads as follows: “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people; for He will avenge the blood of His servants, and render vengeance to His adversaries; He will provide atonement for His land and His people.” Nothing is said in our common translations of this text about the angels worshipping the Messiah. But, “On the basis of Hebrews 1:6, Deuteronomy 32:43a must be regarded as personal Messianic.  The writer of Hebrews was utilizing the Septuagint text which differs somewhat from the traditional Hebrew text which simply reads, ‘Rejoice, O you nations, with his people.’  A pre-Christian Hebrew manuscript discovered at Qumran makes clear that at this point the Greek translation represents the original text.” (James Edward Smith, What the Bible Teaches About the Promised Messiah, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, 1993, p. 71.) “In accordance with divine direction (31:19) Moses composed a prophetic poem (32:1-43) which he recited to the people just before his death. The written record

Text: Deuteronomy 18:15-18. Introduction: 1.         As the tremendous stream of Messianic prophecy flows on, we come to the profound prophecy of Deuteronomy Chapter Eighteen, a prophecy that has both excited and bewildered men for years. 2.         In this prophecy, God points out that the Messiah would be a prophet as well as the great leader of the people. 3.         This prophecy takes us back to Mt. Sinai when the people were overcome with fear because they had heard the voice of God, and they desired that Moses go up on the mountain and speak with Jehovah on their behalf, because if they were to hear the voice of Yahweh again, they would die. 4.         God put his stamp of approval on the attitude of the people so far as his awesomeness was concerned, and revealed to Moses privately his intention to bring a very special prophet into the world. 5.         The revelation was made public some forty years later during the second discourse of Moses in the plains of Moab.  This discourse is recorded in chapters five through twenty-six of the Book of Deuteronomy, a book whose name means, “the second giving of the law.” 6.         In this discourse Moses dealt with the obligations of the people toward their judges, or kings, (16:18 ¾ 17:20), with their priests (18:1-8), and with their prophets (18:9-22). a)         The section dealing with the prophets opens with Moses setting forth a strong prohibition against the use of occult activities. b)         The Israelites were forbidden under the penalty of death to attempt to see into the future

With the end of the twentieth century, we hear more and more people talking about the end of time. There is a flurry of excitement, at the end of this century just as there was at the end of the last and the beginning of this one, that involves itself in the setting of dates for the second coming of Christ. This is especially true among those people who are called “Premillennialists,” because they take great delight in trying to ascertain the time in which the Lord will return for his people. This is also true because they teach that there will be several comings of Christ during the last time. But our purpose today is not, primarily, to speak of the strange doctrines of the various kinds of “Millennialists,” but to note that date setting for the end of time is nothing new to the Christian dispensation. From the earliest of times in the Christian Age, men have been setting dates for the end of time and for the return of the Lord. For example, a man by the name of Montanus, in the year AD 135, announced that he was a prophet, and that the New Jerusalem would soon descend from heaven and take root in the ancient country of Phrygia. Christians were admonished to get ready for the second coming of the Lord and the establishment of his kingdom. Later in that same century, another Christian by the name of Cerinthus, in AD 176, announced that it

Introduction: 1.         As strange as it might seem, the great books of Exodus and Leviticus have no specific predictions of the coming, and the work of Jesus Christ. 2.         The sacred record that we call the Bible, reveals only three Messianic prophecies that date to the time period in which Moses lived. 3.         One of these came from the mouth of Jehovah himself, one came from the hypocritical prophet Balaam, and one from the great lawgiver Moses.  None of these are found in the Books of Exodus and Leviticus, but are found later in the writings of Moses. 4.         The utterance of our text, namely Numbers 24:17, was the fourth prophecy that was spoken by the soothsayer Balaam when he was employed by Balak, king of the Moabites, to curse the children of Israel when they were camped in the plains of Moab. 5.         It can be dated to the fortieth year after the Exodus from Egypt, and therefore, was given about 1407 B.C. 6.         Three times Balaam tried to pronounce a curse upon the people of God, but each time Jehovah turned his curse into a blessing.  Before he left Balak, Balaam volunteered to portray the future of Israel prophetically. 7.         In this last oracle by Balaam, the personal Messianic element appears. Through the mouth of the two-faced prophet, Jehovah continued to develop the theme of the royal Messiah which is found in Jacob’s prediction regarding Shiloh’s rule in Genesis 49:10. 8.         That this is a prophecy of the coming royal Messiah is supported by the following facts: a)         The

From time to time we receive questions from members of the congregation, and one that we received recently has to do with the tongues of angels mentioned in 1 Corinthians 13:1. We enjoy receiving questions from time to time because it indicates that people are studying the Bible for themselves, and that they are serious about that study in that they are asking questions about the things they do not understand. The passage under consideration reads as follows: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.” If I am understanding the question properly the questioner wants to know if the angels in heaven speak a language all their own, and is that what Paul was referring to when he spoke of the languages “of men and of angels”? As to what languages may be spoken in heaven by the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit and the angels, those of us who dwell on the earth would have no way of knowing. Every time the Bible speaks of something that is said in heaven, or something that is said by God or by angels that has been spoken in the languages in which the Bible was written, or in the language spoken by the hearers at the time, it is intelligible to mankind. For example, at the transfiguration of Jesus the voice of God came out of a cloud and said, “This

Text: Genesis 49:8-12 Introduction: 1.         The fourth and final prophecy dealing with the Messianic theme to be found in the Book of Genesis is found in chapter forty-nine, verses eight through twelve. 2.         This is in the context of Jacob’s final predictions regarding his sons just previous to his death. 3.         If we are counting correctly, this prophecy can be dated somewhere about 1860 B.C. 4.         “Jacob fathered twelve sons. With the prophecy of Genesis 49:10 eleven-twelths [sic] of the lineage of Jacob was eliminated from being the line through which the Messiah would come.”[1] 5.         Up to this point God, through his prophets, has told us that the Messiah would be born of a woman (Genesis 3:15); that he would be divine and dwell in the tents of Shem (Genesis 9:26); that he would come from the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Genesis 12:3 et al); and in the prophecy of Genesis 49:10, God narrows the tribe from which the Christ would come to that of Judah. 6.         It was normal in the days when these great Patriarchs lived upon the earth for the eldest son to have a special position at the time the inheritance was divided at the death of a father. 7.         However, this was not the case among the descendants of Abraham as we see from noting that Isaac was not the first-born of Abraham, that Jacob was not the first-born of Isaac, since Esau was born some minutes before his twin brother Jacob. 8.         Under the guidance of the blessed Holy Spirit

In the major portion of the fourth chapter of the Book of Genesis, we have recorded a history of one of the sons of Adam and Eve whose name was Cain. The story most remembered from this chapter is, of course, the story of Cain’s killing his brother Abel because of his jealousy over the fact that God accepted the offering of Abel and rejected the offering of Cain. Due to the fact that Cain committed this horrendous crime, he was banished to the “land of Nod,” where his wife bore him children, and a whole family of people descended from him. Here, in the land of Nod, polygamy began when Lamech, the great, great, great grandson of Cain took two wives. The life of Cain becomes very interesting to those of us who are Christians because when Jude, half-brother of our Lord Jesus Christ, wrote the little book of the New Testament that bears his name, he spoke of certain evils that had arisen in the early church as a result of a certain type of false teacher. Of these false teachers, who had crept in unnoticed, Jude said, “Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.” While it would be very interesting to notice what the error of Balaam was, and how the false teachers were rebelling against God as had the people of Israel in the days

Texts: Genesis 12:1-3; 22:15-18; 26:4, 23-24; 28:1-5,14-15; 35:9-12. Introduction: 1.         As Dr. James E. Smith, so beautifully put it: “About the year 2092 B.C. God initiated a new stage in the drama of redemption. God called Abram to leave his hometown of Ur of Chaldees to embark upon a pilgrimage in search of that city whose maker and builder was God (Heb. 11:10).  No one can precisely compute the time lapse between the Flood and the call of Abram.  If there are no gaps in the genealogy of Genesis 11, the minimum figure between these two events would be 427 years. . . . In a cluster of predictions during the Patriarchal era God defined clearly the chosen line through which Messianic blessing would come into the world.  It becomes clear in Genesis 12 – 28 that the channel of blessing would be Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Toward the end of the Patriarchal period Jacob singled out Judah as the chosen one among his twelve sons.”[1] 2.         God made this promise to Abraham on six different occasions. a)         Genesis 12:1-3,7. b)         Genesis 13:14-18. c)         Genesis 15:4-5, 13-18. d)         Genesis 17:1-8. e)         Genesis 18:17-19. f)          Genesis 22:15-18. 3.         God renewed this promise to Isaac, the “only begotten son,” of Abraham on two different occasions. a)         Genesis 26:4 b)         Genesis 26:23-24. 4.         God also made this same promise to Jacob on two different occasions. a)         Genesis 28:14-15. b)         Genesis 35:9-12. 5.         God had made a seven promise statement to Abraham while he was yet in Haran, and after he left Haran and entered into the land of Canaan God added an eighth.  They

One of the most interesting standpoints from which one can approach a study of the Bible is from a view of eschatology. Since the word “eschatology” comes from a Greek word which means “Last things,” when one studies the Bible from this point of view he is looking at the many “last things” upon which the Bible speaks. There are some, such as the premillennialists, who take the position, that every mention of last things, and every prophecy of last things in the Bible refers to the “end of time.” Others want to make all references to last things in the Bible refer to some other event. When one studies his Bible from the standpoint of the study of last things, or a study of eschatology, he must realize that there is more than one “eschatology” revealed in the Holy Scriptures. For example, when one studies the fall of Israel to Assyria, and the fall of Judah to Babylon, he is studying the last things for those nations at that time. After the destruction of Solomon’s beautiful Temple, and after the Babylonian captivity, neither the tribes who had made up Israel, nor the ones that had made up Judah ever came back to be what they were before destruction came upon them at the hands of their respective enemies. That was an “end time” for that nation as she had been. She simply would never be that way again. Again, an example, the fall of Judah brought to an end

Surely every person who is worthy of the name Christian desires to know more and more about God. It seems that there should be such an insatiable desire to know God that one would never be satisfied with the knowledge that he has. The more one learns about our God the more closely he is drawn to him, and the more deeply he can love him, and the greater will be the desire to serve him. Since our subjective faith is based upon knowledge, one reason there is such a limited faith in God is because there is such a limited knowledge of him. One of the ways for us to get to know more and more about God is to study his nature, or the characteristics of his nature that are revealed in Scripture. We can only know about God what he has chosen to reveal about himself in nature and in special revelation. Nature anyone can see, investigate and study, thus learning some important things about our God, but it is by special revelation, that is, through a study of the Scriptures, that we can come to know God as he would have us know him. Another way for us to come to know God is to come to know the names by which he has chosen to reveal himself in Scripture. Since no single name can possibly reveal God, the Scriptures use several names, or we should say that in the Scriptures God has revealed himself using

Genesis 9:24-27 Introduction: 1. The second stage of the development of messianic prophecy in the book of Genesis is found in this passage of Scripture. 2. This prophecy has long been overlooked by those of our brotherhood who have studied the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. 3. Perhaps that was done while hastening to get to so many of the great prophecies of the book of Isaiah, or perhaps for some other reason, but we feel that we will do ourselves a great injustice if we fail to stop and take a careful look at the blessing that Noah spoke to his son Shem, and see what that blessing has to say regarding the Messiah. 4. Let us begin by reading the text: Genesis 9:24-27, (24) “So Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done to him. (25) Then he said: ‘Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants he shall be to his brethren.’ (26) And he said: ‘Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant. (27) May God enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem; and may Canaan be his servant.” 5. Now let us make some pertinent observations relating to the time that went by between Genesis three, and Genesis nine. a) There is no way of telling exactly how many years passed by between the prophecy of Genesis 3:15, and the one of Genesis 9:24-27. b) If the genealogies of Genesis Five are accurate representations of the time that passed, and they

We have heard doomsday predictions coming from the prophets of doom in the last several months. These people claim to have special scientific knowledge of the future, and claim to be able to predict the future to some extent. For example, some “scientists” have come up with a rather fanciful theory that the dinosaur population was wiped off the face of the earth by a tremendous asteroid that is supposed to have struck the earth sixty or seventy billion years ago, and upon that theory they further postulate that if it has been that long since an asteroid of that magnitude struck the earth, then it must be about time for it to happen again. We do have evidence of rather large objects from space impacting the earth, but there is not one shred of evidence that the earth has ever been struck by a heavenly body of the size of the one they claim killed the dinosaurs. The plain truth of the matter is that no one knows what happened to the dinosaurs, and no one knows that the earth has been here for billions of years. As a matter of fact, what is called “the young earth theory” (the theory that the earth is less than 15,000 years old) has much more evidence to back it up than the theory that the earth has been here for millions and billions of years. These people gather up bone fragments, and from these they make an animal that may have or may

Text: Genesis 3:9-19; (Emphasize vs. 15.) Introduction: 1. The story of redemption has its beginning, and that not by mistake, in the first book of the Bible ¾ Genesis. 2. In order to understand the story (scheme) of redemption we must understand what happened in the very outset of human history. 3. God had created Adam (man) and Eve (mother of all living), and placed them in an indescribable paradise called Eden, which means, “a place of delight.” 4. In Eden God placed man under law both positive and negative. The positive law can be found in Genesis 1:28; 2:15-24. And the negative law is found in chapter two verses sixteen and seventeen. a) Both the positive law, and the negative law (commands of God) were very simple, and were fully understood by the inhabitants of Eden. b) So long as they were obedient to this law, they lived in a state of tranquillity, peace, and beauty which are hard for those of us living in these miserable times to imagine, and are impossible for us to understand. 5. Enter the serpent, (Nahash, the most common word in the Old Testament for “snake”) who Moses described as being “more subtle,” that is, more crafty, more deceitful, more cunning, than any other, “beast of the field which the Lord God had made.” (Lord God here refers to Jehovah, or Yahweh and is not the plural name Elohim which is used in chapter one, verse one, and some verses following.) 6. The serpent asked Eve a question which was intended to raise doubts in her

When we were children in our Bible classes, our teachers sought to teach us the meaning of some of the words with which we would become very familiar, if we studied our Bibles as we should have. We were told that a “Priest” was a man who spoke to God on behalf of man. Later we learned that a priest did much more than simply speak to God on behalf of man, but he also, under the law of Moses, offered sacrifices, and engaged in many rituals, according to the divine commands of God, that were designed to draw man closer to God. Thus we came to appreciate the priest in the Old Testament system which, in turn, gave us a greater understanding of, and appreciation for the priesthood in which we serve under the New Testament dispensation. We understand that as Christians each one of us is a priest, and we serve in our priesthood under Jesus Christ our great High Priest, who is after the order of Melchizedek. In those same Bible school classes we learned other definitions of other important words such as the word “Prophet.” We learned that a prophet was one who spoke to man on behalf of God. In the Bible classes, in which I studied as a boy, we were taught these simple definitions that need to be taught again and again with each succeeding generation. I have learned that many Christians want to define the word “Prophet” to mean one who predicts,

In virtually every one of the so-called sitcoms that one sees on television these days there are open and frontal attacks made upon what the world calls “Christianity.”  Those who believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of the only true and living God are attacked and ridiculed, and many jokes, some of them not so nice, are made at the expense of believers.  Christianity is made out to be some kind of stodgy, antiquated religion that is about to pass away.  They also depict ministers as inept, sinful, hypocritical and lazy.  If any other group of people, such as homosexuals, for example, were singled out and depicted in such a way, there would be a scream heard all over the earth, and the ACLU would immediately start a lawsuit against someone. But this is not the only persecution that is directed at those who call themselves “Christians” in the land in which we live.  The federal government feels that it has the right to step in and investigate the doctrine of various churches.  It feels that it has the right to overturn, by making illegal, such doctrines as they feel are opposed to “civil rights.”  There is a movement at this very hour to have homosexuals treated as a minority race in this country, and, if that movement succeeds, you and I will not be able to tell a person who is living that lifestyle that he is a sinner!  There is no sin in being black, white, Asian