Today is my final post on Biblical Words and World. I hope we’ve all had some fun together digging deeper into God’s word over the past year! I wish to thank Patheos for hosting me, my editor for putting up with me, and you, my readers from all over the world. Read more
“I hear words I never heard in the Bible,” sang Simon and Garfunkel in “Keep the Customer Satisfied.” There are many words we thought were in the Bible, until we try to find them: words like retirement, depression, tolerance. Read more
Musonius Rufus was a first century AD pagan Stoic philosopher whose views were much like the teachings of the New Testament. He was also very liberated in his beliefs about the equality of men and women. Read more
Polls are a lousy source of truth. Consider the inscription I saw on a bathroom wall years ago: "Eat [manure]! Ten billion flies can't be wrong!" Here we see the danger of following the crowd or the Gallup Poll when we're trying to figure out right from wrong. Read more
Jeremiah 29:7 gives the exiles from Judah a message from God: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile.” Tablets from the Babylonian town of Al-Yahudu (“City of Judah”) confirm that the Jews did what God told them to do in Jeremiah 29:7. Read more
America has gone back to the days when the Roman Republic first went out the window. God has turned back the clock to the first century AD, in order to wean us away from the comforts of freedom and justice, and to re-set our priorities. Read more
A few years ago, I discovered the website of a large Midwestern church. I was grabbed by the glorious half-truth on the front page: “The Truth is Simple: God loves you, no matter who you are. No matter how you have lived your life. No matter your age. No strings attached.” Antinomianism – irresistibly packaged. Read more
How much could we know about the life and teachings of Jesus if all we had was the letters of Paul? At first glance, it looks like almost nothing. However, if we take a closer look, we can see that Paul is echoing Jesus quite a bit. Read more
Second Peter is the best example of an accused fraud, more than any other book of the Bible. If Second Peter does not come from the apostle Peter, we might as well throw it in the garbage, because the writer claims to have been an eyewitness to Jesus’ Transfiguration (2 Peter 1:16-18). Read more
How much of the Bible is timeless, and how much is time-bound? Why is a ham sandwich OK, but gay sex is not OK? Why is the command to slaughter the Canaanites not for us today? And is Jesus just for us, or is he Lord of all times and places? Read more
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