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The Jesus Notes
The Jesus Notes are a reflection of not only my own thoughts but are also a mass collection of notes that I have taken over the years from a wide range of sources. At this point, it would be impossible for me to attribute all of my sources. I like to think that we're all on the same team, and I'm not making a profit on any of this, and that if these notes can help further the Kingdom of God then it's okay to use them. Plus, most scholars will tell you that as long as you're using their info for academic reasons, then it's oaky to use it. -Tim Webb
The Bible
The Bible is a unified story. Everything from Genesis to Revelation leads to Jesus Christ and offers wisdom for the modern world. It is divinely inspired and is the vehicle that God uses to talk to his people. God speaks to us through the scriptures, and we respond to him in prayer. Everything you need to know is in this book! The Bible is the true word of God. It is the life blood of a person’s relationship with God. It was inspired through a definite process used by God to reveal his truths to us. The Bible was written for us but not to us. You have to look at the Bible like a library of smaller books that come together in one unified message.
You need to understand the context of the Bible to then understand the story of God, who unfolded the plan of salvation on the stage of history during real times, with real people, in real places. Its story spans about 4,000 years and was written by about 40 authors, over a period of 1,500 years. The Bible is a book that has stood the test of time. A lie would never survive this many years. It wasn’t written by just one man, but instead by many men over a period of many years, all who were inspired by God. The Bible is full of broken people who made mistakes. God loves his people and comes to rescue them.
The Bible is God’s revelation to mankind, and because God knows and controls the future, then it stands to reason that when the Bible speaks about what will occur in the future, we can believe it. Concerning predictions about the future, the Bible says, “For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit," 2 Peter 1:21. This truth is evident in the fact that, unlike the false prophecies made in other religions or by individuals such as Nostradamus, the Bible has never once been wrong – every time the Bible has predicted a future event, it happened exactly as scripture said it would. If the Bible Were a Play Act I: The CreationAct II: The FallAct III: The Redemption Act IV: The Restoration Four Foundational Principles of the Bible1. It’s rooted in geography.2. It’s emerges from history.3. It’s a unified literary work.4. It’s the true word of God. Five Cultural Principles of the Bible1. The Bible was written in a patriarchal culture.2. The Bible was written in a monarchical culture.3. The Bible was written in a polytheistic culture.4. The Bible was written in a slave-holding culture.5. Parts of the Bible were written in a culture where polygamy was accepted. Authors of the Bible 1. Moses = 5 Books, 1 Psalm, 125,139 Words2. Ezra = 3 Books, 43,618 Words3. Luke = 2 Books, 37,932 Words4. Jeremiah = 2 Books, 35,306 Words5. Paul = 12 Books, 32,408 WordsThese 5 authors wrote 45% of the Bible.*word count from original Hebrew & Greek texts Salvation by Grace Through Faith Salvation is like falling in love. Something sparks your interest and draws you to a person. It’s like that with God, who provides the grace that awakens us to him. We are saved by grace through faith, and baptism is an outward sign of our salvation. God designed it to be an outward sign of an inward reality. He wants us to be a witness in this world by demonstrating to others with baptism that we have died with Christ and have been resurrected to a new life.
Through God's grace and the Holy Spirit, we can be motivated to live upright Godly lives in Christ. We come into the family of God by grace through faith and live in the family of God by a life of good works and active love. Faith and good works are like breathing in, breathing out. You can’t do one without the other. We enter into a relationship with God through Christ. We live a saved life by conforming to the will of God.
Grace comes from the heart and is a gift from God. Grace frees us to think of others rather than ourselves…love your neighbors as yourself.
“The righteous person lives by faith alone.” -Martin Luther
“Love God then do whatever you want.” -Martin Luther
“It's faith alone that saves, but that faith is never alone.” -John Calvin The Three Stages of Salvation1. Justification = made right with God through the cross. 2. Sanctification = made holy through a life of active love and good works.3. Glorification = restored back with God in heaven for eternity. The Gospel What is the Gospel? The Gospel is not a set of ethical teachings. The Gospel is not a theology, a religious system, or a social action. It is a person! It is the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, along with his death, burial, and resurrection. The Gospel is who he is and what he did, and we appropriate what he did by grace through faith. Through Christ, God became man and can understand us and know how we feel. Christ was God on Earth through the flesh. He grew up as a child, he feared death, and felt pain. Jesus went to the desert to face Satan like all humans do, and to prepare himself for what he was facing. He was the virgin-born, sinless son of God who took the sins of humanity upon himself and died a substitutionary death. Jesus changed the paradigm from a reward/punishment perspective to a relationship perspective.
The purpose of the law is to demonstrate the need for a savior because we can't live up to the law. We can't do it on our own. It shows us how short we fall from the law. No one is rewarded for following the law, only punished for breaking it.
The Mosaic Law is a straight line for us to measure our crookedness. But none of us can live up to the law. It’s impossible! That’s why we need Christ, and he is the only answer. The law was put in place to show us how much we need Christ. Simply put, we need a savior! We need a relationship with Christ, not a set of rules and regulations. If righteousness can be gained through the law, then Christ died for nothing (Galatians 2:21).
Christianity is about a relationship with Christ, rather than a set of rules and regulations, and when you’re in that relationship you want to live like him. It doesn’t mean that you always will because you’re human, but you have the desire to. What matters most is your faith expressing itself through love. Christianity can be broken down like this…faith, then active love, and good works. In this relationship with Christ, you have the Holy Spirit living in you. You’ll still sin because of human nature but it won’t be the dominant landscape of your life. We as Christians are to be the hands and feet of Jesus for the restoration. We are the ambassadors for Christ. When we forgive, we usher in the Kingdom of God.
Here is the secret of Jesus’ life and work for God. He prayerfully waited for his father’s instructions and for the strength to follow them. Jesus had no divinely drawn blueprint. He discerned the father’s will day by day in a life of prayer. By this means he warded off the urgent and accomplished the important. The call to follow Jesus is open to everyone but we don’t get to write our own job description. He sets the agenda. The Five Essential Beliefs of Christianity1. The Trinity2. The full divinity & humanity of Christ3. The vicarious atonement of Christ 4. The Resurrection of Christ 5. Salvation by grace through faith The Four Pillars of the Early Church1. Teaching2. Fellowship 3. Breaking of Bread4. Prayer The Holy SpiritWhile Jesus purchased our salvation for us, the Holy Spirit presents it to us. While the Holy Spirit appears one in the same in both the Old Testament and New Testament, he does not appear in the period of history before the coming of Jesus as a permanent presence. He is seen operating at particular times, for particular reasons, in particular persons. For example, his spirit moved with the nation of Israel, and his permanent presence has never left since the Day of Pentecost. Think for a moment, and you will realize that one who is filled with something is controlled by it. He lives it, dreams it, and thinks it.
The Holy Spirit is to do other works as well. He is there to guide the believer into truth. It is promised that the Holy Spirit will help the believer in prayer through wordless groans. He is with the believer to cause him to walk in God’s law. God’s plan for the Christian is, in part, that the Holy Spirit equip him for usefulness to God and give him strength and power for life and service. It is the spirit’s responsibility to produce fruit in the heart and life of a Christian.
As Christians, we already possess the Holy Spirit. We receive the Holy Spirit the very moment that we believe in Jesus Christ. Although God is one being in three persons, he is still one God. To receive one person of the Godhead is to receive all persons of the Godhead, since the three are one. When we accept Jesus as our personal savior, we receive Jesus, and we also receive the father, and the Holy Spirit. John 16:13-15 tells us that the Spirit will guide us. Characteristics of SinThe world is full of sin, it always has been, and it always will be. Instead of focusing on removing sin from the world we should focus our energy on saving people from the sin in the world. The world is like the Titanic. Our job as Christians isn’t to save the Titanic because it’s a sinking ship! Our job is to get as many people as we can off the Titanic and into the lifeboat of God. Sin isn’t necessarily an act we commit, but rather, a condition that we are in. Sin is a condition of alienation and separation from God that manifests itself in our sinful action. Left to our own devices we are unable to deal with sin. We live in a cursed, broken world because of sin. You have to recognize your own condition of sin. If not, there’s nothing Jesus can do for you. You can’t seek a savior until you recognize your need to be saved. Sin is to the natural man what the tendency to rot is to the apple. God knows our situation with sin. He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome our difficulties. Before we can be cured we must want to be cured. The Four Characteristics of Sin1. Sin is subtle2. Sin distorts our judgment3. Sin escalates4. Sin cascades down through generations The Old TestamentThe Hebrew Bible, also known as the Tanakh, is an incomplete story line that is eventually completed with the life of Jesus Christ in the New Testament.
Isaac and Jacob discovered that our will may not always match the will of God. Jacob is an example that God works through, and often in spite of, the limited self-serving plans of human beings. Jacob’s story is an example that rather than use the most qualified or the most expected, instead God uses the most unqualified, the insecure, the flawed, the depressed, the doubter, and the underdog. Jacob was the perfect person for God to build his nation of people from, because Jacob was flawed like everyone else in humanity, except Christ. The writer of Genesis’ purpose isn’t to approve the plans and ambitions of humans, but to show how God in his sovereign grace, could still achieve his purpose through them.
The Old Testament is all about the covenant between God and his chosen people. It’s about ceremonial law and moral law. Christ later became the new covenant. We still follow the moral laws but not the ceremonial laws of the Jewish people. As Christians, we look at the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus and the new covenant. The Old Testament shows us the character of God as well as the history leading up to the birth of Christ. The Old Testament was a covenant through flawed men, and the New Testament was a covenant through the flawless Jesus Christ, who was the true Passover lamb.
Genesis through Esther is a linear narrative in history. Job through Malachi is a recapitulation back into that linear narrative.
The Egyptian goddess Hathor is represented by the golden calf, which is why the Hebrews chose to worship golden calves when they got away from God because it was what they knew and understood after being in Egypt for 430 years.
Books like 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel, 1 Kings and 2 Kings were originally one book, but had to be split up into a second book to fit on the scrolls.
The Abrahamic (Gen 12:2-3) and Davidic (1 Chronicles 17) covenants are the two hinges upon which the plan of salvation swings.
The Assyrians, and the Babylonian’s method of war was to rape, pillage, loot, leave, and expel the people to another land.
The Old Testament was the Bible that Christ read. Every page of the New Testament depends on the Old Testament.
Jonah is a great example of spiritual apathy and hypocrisy that most Christians could learn from today. There is a much deeper meaning to Jonah than the Sunday school lesson we have always heard.
The Psalms are theology put to melody.
Ritual vs. Moral Impurity: Someone in a state of ritual impurity could not come into contact with God’s holiness, since God flees from impurity. So, while impurity is not in itself sinful, if the Israelites did not deal with it properly, it could lead one into unholiness and drive away God’s presence. Moral impurity refers to sinful behavior which resulted in defilement of the people, the sanctuary, and the land. Moral impurity is avoidable, willful, noncommunicable, incites divine chastisement, and requires atonement from God. Eternity vs. Now God looks at death differently than we do. To us, death is the end. To God, our death here on here on earth is only the beginning.
It’s pretty simple...everybody has a soul. It’s not that you have a soul, it’s that you are a soul! We are spiritual beings with physical properties. And that soul lives on forever after our bodies die. Your body is simply temporary housing for your soul. Because our soul live on forever, a person should be more worried about stepping out into eternity with God than their temporary life here on earth. Eternity is forever but we as humans have no way of measuring forever, so we don’t always understand it.
So then, the question becomes, where will your soul spend eternity? Heaven and hell are very real places. Don’t ever let the bad decisions of other humans keep you from seeking God. Not seeking God because of a hypocrite is like not driving a car because somebody runs a stop sign and wrecks!
Most people have trouble seeing beyond what’s in front of them. As a Christian, I’m looking at the big picture of eternity. Our time here on Earth is short, it’s a blink of the eye compared to eternity in heaven. This life is temporary, and we’re all terminal from the time we’re born. Our next breath is not guaranteed!
There is a fate worse than death, and that’s spending eternity away from God. I have no expectations of a pain-free life here on Earth. It is what it is. This world has always been broken and full of death because Satan rules this world. God allows Satan and sin to exist in this world to give us a choice and to give us the gift of free will. God wants us to love him because we want to, not because we have to. He wants us to seek him because love that is forced is no love at all!
God has a plan, but we can’t always see the entirety of that plan, like with the blind man in John 9:2-3. That plan eventually includes us dying here on Earth, but if you believe in Christ your soul will live on forever in heaven. By believing and trusting in God I have hope and assurance that my true blessings will come after I die, not here on Earth. While I can’t explain God’s plan, I do know that it’s centered around everyone on Earth finding him. Although I don’t understand all of his plan now, someday it will be perfectly clear to me. I’ll see that God is not only just, but also good.
God’s plan can be compared to a child and their parents. Sometimes, my kids don’t understand why my wife and I make the decisions that we make, but as their loving parents we’re doing what we feel is best for the whole family. God has a long view of our lives. He is more worried about our ultimate holiness than he is our current happiness. We’re put on this earth to prepare for our eternal existence and our decisions here do matter.
He allows us to endure hardship because it helps us grow and mature spiritually, and the Bible tells us that we will be rewarded for our suffering here on Earth once we get to heaven. Suffering produces perseverance and sharpens our character. We see our true colors when we suffer, and we see what we’re made of during hard times. It also allows us to see who God is. Suffering is part of our calling. Jesus suffered for me, so I should expect to suffer for him.
We don’t have control over how or when we die but we can control what happens to our soul after we die. I’m living for eternity while others are only living for this world. It’s sad to think that some people only have this world to live for. Because rest assured, this world will let you down, will break you, will disappoint you, and abandon you.
I live in the radical middle. I want to work for a higher purpose. I’m living for the kingdom of God not the kingdom of Earth. I’m living for eternity, not for right now. God is at home. We are the ones living in the far country.
I would ask this question, what do you have waiting on you when you die? Where will your soul spend eternity? Look at the obits, people die every day. Where are they now? Stephen Hawking was one of the most brilliant minds to ever walk the face of this planet. He was a devout atheist who dismissed God for the sake of science. I wonder what it was like for him the very second that he died, when he discovered that there really is a spiritual world out there beyond anything he could have ever imagined. I wonder if his first thought after dying was “Ooops!” There have been enough recorded near-death-experiences of people from different faiths and all walks of life to know that something happens to your soul when you die. It’s hard to deny that fact! So, where will your soul go when you die?
“Aim at Heaven and you’ll get Earth thrown in. Aim at Earth and you’ll get neither.” -C.S. Lewis Delivering the GospelThe gospel is the greatest message in the history of mankind! You don’t ever change the message, but you have to constantly change how you deliver that message, based on the culture you’re operating in, otherwise you won’t be effective as a disciple. The Apostle Paul figured this out two thousand years ago when he said, “Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings,” First Corinthians 9:19-20, 22-23. Churches today are in a time warp, with a combination of Baby Boomers, Generation Xers, and Millennials, all in the same congregation. We now live in a culture that communicates in 144 characters or less. Society and culture is constantly changing!
What good does it do to take the Great Commission out into the word if no one is listening to you and you’re not affective? Also, how are you going to carry out the Great Commission when you hate the very people you’re supposed to be saving? God tells us we’re all sinners! We may be Christians, but we’re not qualified to judge other sinners. God hates sin, but he loves the sinner. He makes that abundantly clear in Romans 5:8.
If he didn’t love sinners, we’d all be doomed. Jesus said in Matthew 9:12, “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” Who did Jesus hang out with? Prostitutes, tax collectors, leapers, the poor, and people who sinned. The Pharisees looked great on paper, but their hearts were out of sync with God’s plan. “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules,” Matthew 15:8-9.
God said love your neighbor as yourself, but he never said to pick and choose which neighbor you’re going to love! We should deliver the Gospel by allowing the Great Commandment (love your neighbor as you love yourself) to govern the Great Commission. Answers from the Movie "An Interview With God"“Satan is overrated! He only has strength to the extent in which you give it to him.”
“The world they see is just that, sometimes it’s just the way it looks…that I don’t exist.”
“What’s the meaning of life? To live, to struggle, to serve God, and to ask questions like, what is the meaning of life.”
“The Old Testament and the New Testament are the word of God, but as translated by man, and understood by man.”
“Everyone has their own journey but there is only one path.”
“Is a person’s soul immortal? A soul wouldn’t be much of a soul if it weren’t immortal.”
“Can an atheist be a moral person? An atheist can be a moral person, the same as you can build a house without a foundation. But you just better hope the earth doesn’t shake.”
“How do you reconcile free will with God’s will? The entire foundation of human law depends on the existence of free will. God’s will and human free will are not contradictory because they’re not two versions of the same thing, but they do fit perfectly together. God designed it that way. People make choices and those choices have consequences. And if knowing God’s will were part of every human decision how would anything ever happen? You have to make your own choices, and you have to live with them, no matter how you arrived at them.”
“There is something far greater than this earth that we can’t see.”
“Everyone wants to get to Heaven but none of us want to die.”
“Think of what the world looks like from God’s perspective. Think about knowing every human deed, thought, and aspiration. Also, knowing all of the isolation, pain, and emptiness of life. Now, multiply that by every human soul that ever existed.”
“Most people only notice the bad things when they happen to them. And that’s the saddest part of all. I hear it all…why is there war, starvation, poverty, disease, fire, flood, a child goes missing, a man loses hope. But food can grow, diseases can be cured, a child can be saved, or a veteran can be helped. Look to each other and that’s where I’ll be. Miracles happen every day. Sometimes the miracle is you!”
“The world is broken because Satan rules this world. You have the choice to stay in it or rise above it with God.”
“Having faith isn’t worth much if you don’t really believe. What can we do that’s beyond God’s forgiveness?”
“Faith isn’t something you can just have, not in the conventional sense, because faith isn’t the goal, faith is a process. It’s a lot like a marriage. The vows you take aren’t the end, they’re just the beginning. It takes time and dedication…every day.” Why Do We Need Proof?I like to watch some of the documentaries on Netflix and Hulu about the existence of God and the Bible, only because I can learn from the details, especially with archeology in the Holy Land. They always have new shows on around the time of Easter, and some recent ones include The Bible’s Buried Secrets, and Jesus, the Countdown to Calvary. But overall, the Bible is the only proof I need of God’s existence and his love for me, because there is no faith in constantly looking for proof.
If God wanted us to have infallible proof of his existence there would be a huge museum in Jerusalem and it would contain the remains of Noah’s Ark, the Ten Commandments, The Ark of the Covenant, the original cross, along with a slab of rock from Jesus’ tomb, both with blood soaked stains. And it could all be DNA tested and carbon dated by any scientist, of any faith in the world for its accuracy.
But God didn’t plan it that way. The entire existence of the Jewish and Christian religions hinge on one thing. Faith. The constant pursuit of scientific proof of God is no different than stock-piling manna. God wanted the Israelites to collect manna on a daily basis so that they would put their trust and faith in him.
God can give us absolute proof anytime he wants. Why? Because he’s God! But then we would believe in him out of obligation, or because of what we can get out of it, rather than genuine love and faith. God wants us to come to him on our own terms and because we love him, not because we’re forced to. In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul tells us, “For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So, they have no excuse for not knowing God.”
Indiana Jones and other archeologist can search the world over, but they will only find bits and fragments of the Bible story, because that’s the way God designed it. The ApocryphaThe Apocrypha is a collection of writings that Protestants call the Apocrypha (hidden writings), Roman Catholics call the deuterocanonical (later or second canon) books. These books were written between 300 B.C. and 100 A.D., the Intertestamental Period between the inspired writings of God’s Prophets in the Old Testament and those of the Apostles and their contemporaries in the New Testament.
The Apocrypha would be covered under the evidence for the Bible if these writings were truly inspired - but evidence seems to indicate that they are not. In the Bible we find prophets of God whose messages are ratified by miracles or prophecy that comes true, and whose message is immediately accepted by the people (Deuteronomy 31:26; Joshua 24:26; First Samuel 10:25; Daniel 9:2; Col. 4:16; Second Peter 3:15-16) What we find in the apocrypha is just the opposite - no apocryphal book was written by a prophet. None of these books were included in the Hebrew Scriptures. There is no ratification of the authors of any apocryphal book. No apocryphal book is cited as authoritative by later Biblical writers. There is no fulfilled prophecy in any apocryphal book. Finally, Jesus, who quoted from every section of Old Testament scripture, never once quoted from the apocrypha. Neither did any of his disciples. What About the Poor Native Who Never Heard of Christ?Reason to Believe by R.C. Sproul-All men know the father because God has revealed himself to all men, Romans 1:20.-All men distort & reject the true knowledge of God. -There are no innocent people in the world. People who die without hearing the gospel will be judged according to the knowledge they have. They will be judged guilty for rejecting God the Father. God never condemns innocent people. -God judges according to the knowledge people have. Idolatry as a religion does not please God but adds insult to injury to the glory of God. Idolatry does not represent man’s search for God, but rather man’s flight from God. -The Gospel is God’s gift of redemption for the lost. God sent Christ to give people an opportunity for redemption from the guilt they already have. If men reject Christ, they face the double judgement of rejecting both the father and the Son. -The pagan needs Christ to reconcile him to God the Father. Christ himself viewed the pagan as being in a lost condition.-Christ commands the church to make sure everyone hears the gospel. -Religion does not redeem people but may add to their guilt. The Charles Colson StoryThe validity of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection is often questioned, but this quote by Charles Colson, who served as special counsel to President Richard Nixon, brings the reality of it into the 21st century.
Colson once wrote, “My personal experiences in the Watergate scandal convinces me of the historic proof of the resurrection.” He went on to explain that President Nixon’s closest advisers conspired to keep the illegal break-in a secret. The conspiracy unraveled three weeks later, when Nixon’s legal counsel John Dean, fearing a prison sentence, went to the prosecutors and offered to testify in exchange for immunity ‘to save his own skin.’ Other conspirators followed suit, bringing down the Nixon Presidency.” Colson said, “Think of it: the most powerful men around the president of the United States could not keep a lie for three weeks. And you’d have me believe that the twelve apostles – powerless, persecuted, exiled, many martyred, their leader Peter crucified upside down – these common men, gave their lives for a lie, without ever breathing a word to the contrary? Impossible…People will die for something they believe to be true; but men will never die for something they know to be false.” Understanding God's WillThe question is often asked why a loving God would allow something bad to happen. We first see this when he allowed sin to enter the world in Genesis chapter three. Then again when he allowed his people to be enslaved for over 400 years in Egypt. God tells Pharaoh in Exodus 9:15-16, “For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” He continues in Chapter ten by saying, “…I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I might perform these signs of mine among them that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the Lord.”
We as humans need to realize that God has a complete view of the big picture, while we only see small, finite portions of it. We have to remember that our physical death is different to God than it is to us. To us, it’s the end. But to God, it’s only the beginning of our spiritual lives in eternity. We may see an act of God as being cruel and uncaring, based on our micro view of the world. God also reminds us that he’s God and he can do what he wants when he wants. In Exodus 33:19, he says, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”Other examples of God using unorthodox means to fulfill his will are with the secular kings Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus to both punish and reward the nation of Israel. Even as cruel as the Holocaust was, no one can deny that because of it, prophecy in Ezekiel 37 was fulfilled when the nation of Israel was restored to the world map in 1948.
Christ himself demonstrated the use of God’s will in John chapter 9 with the story of the blind man. When his disciples asked whose sins caused this man to be blind Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
With each and every human, God tells us in Jeremiah 1:5 and Psalms 139:13 that he formed us in the womb. He has a will for all of mankind, even if we don’t accept him as God.
The Christian authors Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle sum up the question of God’s will perfectly in their book Erasing Hell… “The answer has to do with God’s moral will verses his decreed will. Some things may be part of God’s desire for the world, and yet these desires can be resisted. God doesn’t desire that people sin, but he allows it to happen because humans are moral agents and who often make evil choices. God is not a puppet master who pulls everyone’s strings to suit his will. That’s why the Lord taught us to pray things like “your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” God’s desire—his moral will is resisted.
And then there’s God’s decreed will. This refers to those things that God makes happen regardless of what human’s decide. He sometimes uses our bad choices—our rebellion against his moral will—to carry out his decreed will. There’s a difference, in other words, between God’s values that please him (moral will) and those events that he causes to happen (decreed will).
Is it getting too heavy? Maybe an illustration will help. In Judges 14-16, we read about a loose cannon named Samson. Though he was mighty in warfare, his moral compass was significantly flawed, as seen in his love for ladies of the pagan sort. At the beginning of the story, Samson falls in love with a Philistine woman, which was against God’s moral will (Judges 3:1-6). And yet Judges 14:4 says that his love affair was “from the Lord.” God was “seeking an opportunity against the Philistines,” and so he used Samson’s lust to oppose the Philistines. Samson’s love for Pagan women went against God’s moral will but became part of God’s decreed will. Samson was free to go against God’s moral will, yet God intervened to carry out his decreed will in using the situation to fight against the Philistines.”
More examples of God’s decreed will:Genesis 45:5-7, 50:20: Joseph realizes his suffering in Egypt was God’s plan to save lives.Exodus 9:15-16: Raised you up for this very purpose to show my power. Exodus 10:1-2: I hardened Pharaoh’s heart.Exodus 33:19-20: I will have mercy & compassion on whom I want.Judges 7:2: God reduces Gideon’s army down to 300 so they would know it was God who won.Judges 14:3-4: Samson’s wife was used as an opportunity to confront Philistines.1 Kings 22: God and the Divine Counsel decide how to kill King Ahab.Ezra 1:1: God raised up King Cyrus to send his people back home. Psalm 139:13: You knit me together in my mother’s womb. Isaiah 44:28: Cyrus is my shepherd & will do as I say.Isaiah 53:10-12: It was the Lord’s will to make Christ suffer.Jeremiah 1:5: I formed you in the womb.Jeremiah 27:6-22: God raises up Nebuchadnezzar as his servant. Jeremiah 29:11: I know the plans I have for you.Ezekiel 38:23: I will make myself known; they will know I am the Lord. Habakkuk 1:5-11: “I am raising up the Babylonians.”The stories of Job & Jonah, & David & BathshebaMatthew 5:45: God causes the sun to rise, rain to fall on both good & evil.John 6:26: The masses miss the meaning of feeding the 5,000, hungry looking for more.John 9:3: God used the blind man to display his works.John 11:4: Lazarus’s death was for the glory of God & Jesus. Acts 9: God uses Paul’s persecution to spread the disciples.Revelation 17:17: God is the architect of the end times, fulfilling his final judgement. What Language Did Jesus Speak?While Jesus very likely spoke Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, Aramaic was likely the language Jesus spoke the most. The Gospels record Jesus speaking numerous Aramaic words: talitha koum (Mark 5:41); ephphatha (Mark 7:34); eloi eloi lama sabachthani (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34); abba (Mark 14:36). Historians, archaeologists, and cultural anthropologists are almost universally in agreement that Aramaic was the common or colloquial language in Israel during Jesus’ time. Aramaic was very similar to Hebrew, but with many words and phrases that were borrowed from other languages and cultures, especially Assyrian and Babylonian. It’s a Semitic subfamily of the Hebrew language. Hebrew was spoken primarily by the scribes, teachers of the law, and the religious elite, the Pharisees and Sadducees. Hebrew was likely read in the synagogues, so most people were probably able to speak and understand some Hebrew. Since Greek was the language of the Romans, who had power over Israel during Jesus’ time, Greek was the language of the political class and anyone who wanted to do business with the Romans. Greek was also the universal language at that time, so, the ability to speak Greek was a highly desirable skill.
Some, however, refused to speak Greek out of resentment toward their Roman oppressors. When Jesus spoke with Pontius Pilate, it is possible that he spoke to him in Greek, although Pilate, as the governor, likely would have been able to speak Aramaic as well. Jesus, as God incarnated in human form, could have spoken any language he chose. In his humanity, Jesus likely limited himself to the languages common to his culture: Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek. Jesus likely spoke whichever of the three languages was most appropriate to the audience he was addressing. Giving and OfferingYou can’t out give the Lord. Rather than give a certain amount as an obligation, we are urged to share generously of whatever talents, abilities, and wealth God has entrusted to us. For most of us this is an amount far above a mere 10 percent. Deuteronomy 16:17 says, “Each of you must bring a gift in proportion to the way your God has blessed you,” while 2 Corinthians 8:11-12 and 9:6-9 tells us that we reap what we sew, and that God loves a cheerful giver. “Now you should finish what you started. Let the eagerness you showed in the beginning be matched now by your giving. Give in proportion to what you have. Whatever you give is acceptable if you give it eagerly. And give according to what you have, not what you don’t have. Remember this—a farmer who plants only a few seeds will get a small crop. But the one who plants generously will get a generous crop. You must each decide in your heart how much to give. And don’t give reluctantly or in response to pressure. “For God loves a person who gives cheerfully.” And God will generously provide all you need. Then you will always have everything you need, and plenty left over to share with others. As the Scriptures say, ‘They share freely and give generously to the poor. Their good deeds will be remembered forever.’” Hearing GodWe hear God speak to us through a strong sense of clarity that doesn’t originate from ourselves, sometimes showing up through gut feelings, impressions, thoughts, emotions, insights, dreams, visions, and more. I like to call these mile markers, signs that God gives us along the way that let us know we’re on the right path. Exegesis vs. EisegesisExegesis is a legitimate interpretation which "reads out of' the text what the original author or authors meant to convey. Eisegesis, on the other hand, reads into the text what the interpreter wishes to find or thinks he finds there. It expresses the reader's own subjective ideas, not the meaning which is in the text. Death of the Apostles (Tradition)Peter crucified upside down in Rome.James beheaded in Jerusalem. Thomas killed in Southern India.Matthew killed in Ethiopia.John poisoned in Rome, lives, exiled to Patmos.Paul was beheaded in Rome. Human Resurrectons of the BibleElijah: Widow at Zarephath’s son: 1 Kings 17:17-24Elisha: Shunammites son: 2 Kings 4:20-37Elisha: Elisha’s dead body: 2 Kings 13:20-21Jesus: Son of widow of Nain: Luke 7:11-17Jesus: Daughter of Jairus: Luke 8:40-56Jesus: Lazarus: John 11:1-44Peter: Tabitha: Acts 9: 36-43Paul: Eutychus: Acts 20:7-12 Acts of Prayer1. Adoration2. Confession3. Thanksgiving4. Supplication The 14 Tribes of IsraelReuben Mother: LeahSimeon Mother: LeahLevi Mother: LeahJudah Mother: LeahDan Mother: BilahNaphtali Mother: BilahGad Mother: ZilpahAsher Mother: ZilpahIssachar Mother: LeahZebulun Mother: LeahJoseph Mother: RachelBenjamin Mother: Rachel*Dinah Mother: Leah*Ephraim Sons of Joseph*Manasseh Sons of Joseph The 14 ApostlesPeterAndrewJamesJohnMatthewThomas PhillipJudas BartholomewThaddeus James, son of AlphaeusSimon The Zealot*Matthias*Paul The 10 Plagues of Egypt BloodFrogsGnats FliesLivestockBoilsHailLocustDarknessDeath The 10 Commandments1. Do not have any other gods2. Do not create & worship any other gods3. Do not use the Lord's name in vain4. Keep the sabbath day holy5. Honor your mother & father6. Do not kill7 Do not commit adultery8. Do not steal9. Do not lie10. Do not covet The Four Types of Love1. Phileo = Brotherly Love (Friendship)2. Eros = Emotional Love (Romance)3. Storge = Affectionate Love (Family)4. Agape = Divine Love (God) History of Israel's KingsForty-two Kings of Israel; Saul, David, Solomon then thirty-nine after that; nineteen in Israel, all bad; twenty in Judah, only seven good. King Sennacherib of Assyria defeated the northern kingdom in 722 BC. Then Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon defeated Assyria in 612 BC. King Cyrus of Persia then defeated Babylon in 539 BC. List of Herods in the BibleHerod the Great (ruled 37 B.C. to 1 B.C.)Herod Antipas (ruled 1 B.C. to 39 A.D.)Herod Agrippa I (ruled 37 A.D. to 44 A.D.)Herod Agrippa II (ruled 50 A.D. to 93 A.D) List of Roman Emperors in the BibleAugustus (31 BC–14 AD)Tiberius (14–37 AD)Caligula (37–41 AD)Claudius (41–54 AD)Nero (54–68 AD)Galba (68–69 AD)Otho (January–April 69 AD)Aulus Vitellius (July–December 69 AD)Vespasian (69–79 AD)Titus (79–81 AD)Domitian (81–96 AD) Kings of the ExileNebuchadnezzar (Daniel)Belshazzar (Daniel)Cyrus (Daniel, Ezra, Isaiah)Darius (Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah)Xerxes (Esther)Artaxerxes (Nehemiah, Ezra) Bible TranslationsSeptuagint 300 BC to 50 A.D. (Greek translation of Hebrew Bible)Masoretic 600-900 A.D. (Hebrew & Aramaic text of the Hebrew Bible, Tanakh)Dead Sea Scrolls 408 BC to 318 A.D. (Hebrew Texts except Esther) 75 Years that Changed the WorldThe Printing Press 1440Discovery of the New World 1492Protestant Reformation 1517 My Top 30 Biblical PeopleTHE ROCK STARSJesusSatanMosesPaulAbrahamDavidJacobJohnPeterMary THE DIFFERENCE MAKERSAdam & EveCaiaphasDanielJosephNoahJoshuaNehemiahJohn the BaptistBarnabasTimothy HONORABLE MENTIONS Rahab Mary Magdalene LukeBarnabasJudas Jeremiah ElijahElishaEstherIsaiah My Top 10 Books of the Bible1. Romans: The Christian Handbook2. John: Proof of Jesus' Deity 3. Revelation: The Story Ends4. Acts: Beginning of the Church5. Galatians: There is only one Gospel6. Genesis: The Story Begins7. Exodus: Deliverance & Law8. Daniel: Faith & Prophecy 9: Isaiah: Incredible Prophecy10: Psalms: God’s Love & Character Mountaintop ChaptersGenesis 3 The FallGenesis 12 Abraham’s CovenantGenesis 22 Sacrifice of IsaacExodus 3 Burning Bush, I AmExodus 11 Death of FirstbornExodus 12 The Passover & ExodusExodus 20 Giving of the LawDeut. 28 Blessings for ObedienceJoshua 2 Rahab & The SpiesJudges 6-7 Gideon2 Samuel 11 David & Bathsheba1 Kings 18 Elijah & the Prophets of Baal2 Kings 4 Elisha & the WidowJob 38-42 Who are we to question GodPsalm 23 Pouring out David’s Heart about God’s characterPsalm 139 God knows our very fiberEcclesiastes 3 The Seasons of LifeIsaiah 9 Hope in the MessiahIsaiah 53 Off-the-charts-prophecyEzekiel 37 Valley of Dry BonesDaniel 7 The Four BeastsDaniel 9 The Seventy SevensMatthew 24 The Olivet DiscourseMatthew 26-28 The Passion WeekLuke 1-2 The Birth of JesusJohn 3 Everlasting Life, Born AgainJohn 4 Jesus & the Samaritan WomanJohn 9 Jesus & the Blind ManJohn 14 Everlasting Life, Holy SpiritActs 2 The Holy Spirit & The Day of PentecostActs 9 Paul’s ConversionRomans 8 Salvation Defined Romans 12 Living Out Our Faith1 Corinthians 13 Love Defined1 Corinthians 15 Our Spiritual BodiesGalatians 5 Fruits of the Spirit2 Thessalonians The AntichristHebrews 11 Faith Hall of FameJames 2 Faith & Deeds1 Peter 3 The Day of the LordRevelation 13 The AntichristRevelation 19 God Brings It All HomeRevelation 20 Defeat of SatanRevelation 21 New JerusalemRevelation 22 The Tree of Life The Apostle's CreedI believe in God, the Father almighty,creator of heaven and earth.I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spiritand born of the virgin Mary.He suffered under Pontius Pilate,was crucified, died, and was buried.He descended to the dead.On the third day he rose again.He ascended into heaven,and is seated at the right hand of the Father.He will come again to judge the living and the dead.I believe in the Holy Spirit,the holy catholic Church,the communion of the saints,the forgiveness of sins,the resurrection of the body,and the life everlasting. Amen. The Dead Sea ScrollsThe Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts that were found in the Qumran Caves in the Judaean Desert, on the northern shore of the Dead Sea in the West Bank; the last scrolls discovered were found in the Cave of Horror in Israel. The texts have great historical, religious, and linguistic significance because they include the second-oldest known surviving manuscripts of works later included in the Hebrew Bible canon, along with deuterocanonical and extra-biblical manuscripts which preserve evidence of the diversity of religious thought in late Second Temple Judaism. Almost all of the scrolls are held by the state of Israel in the Shrine of the Book on the grounds of the Israel Museum, but ownership of the scrolls is disputed by Jordan and Palestine. Many thousands of written fragments have been discovered in the Dead Sea area. Researchers have assembled a collection of 981 different manuscripts – discovered in 1946/47 and in 1956 – from 11 caves. Archaeologists have long associated the scrolls with the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes. Most of the texts use Hebrew, with some written in Aramaic (for example the Son of God text; in different regional dialects, including Nabataean), and a few in Greek. Discoveries from the Judaean Desert add Latin (from Masada) and Arabic (from Khirbet al-Mird) texts. Most of the texts are written on parchment, some on papyrus, and one on copper. Scholarly consensus dates the scrolls from the last three centuries BCE and the first century CE. Bronze coins found at the same sites form a series beginning with John Hyrcanus (in office 135–104 BCE) and continuing until the period of the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), supporting the radiocarbon and paleographic dating of the scrolls. Two silver scroll-shaped amulets dated c. 600 BCE and containing portions of the Priestly Blessing from the Book of Numbers were excavated in Jerusalem at Ketef Hinnom. Owing to the poor condition of some of the scrolls, scholars have not identified all of their texts. The identified texts fall into three general groups: About 40 percent are copies of texts from the Hebrew Scriptures. Approximately another 30 percent are texts from the Second Temple Period which ultimately were not canonized in the Hebrew Bible, like the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, the Book of Tobit, the Wisdom of Sirach, Psalms 152–155, etc. The remainder (roughly 30 percent) are sectarian manuscripts of previously unknown documents that shed light on the rules and beliefs of a particular group (sect) or groups within greater Judaism, like the Community Rule, the War Scroll, the Pesher on Habakkuk, and The Rule of the Blessing. Maybe So, Maybe Not ProverbThis Chinese proverb reminds me of God's will, because sometimes, regardless of how much we pray, God’s will is different than ours and things don’t always turn out the way we hope they would. But we should never lose faith when this happens, because God is sovereign, and his will is always perfect, no matter how we understand it. Sometimes things are a blessing in disguise, but we don’t immediately recognize it. *Obviously, the proverb is meant to serve as an example and is not Biblical.
A farmer and his son had a beloved stallion who helped the family earn a living. One day, the horse ran away, and their neighbors exclaimed “Your horse ran away, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”
A few days later the horse returned home, leading a few wild mares back to the farm as well. The neighbors shouted out, “Your horse has returned and brought several horses home with him. What great luck!” and the farmer replied “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”
Later that week, the farmer’s son was trying to break one of the mares and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. The villagers cried, “Your son broke his leg, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”
A few weeks later, soldiers from the national army marched through town, recruiting all the able-bodied young men for the army. The farmer’s son wasn’t conscripted because he was still recovering from his injury. His neighbors shouted, “Your boy is spared, what tremendous luck!” The farmer replied “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.” Mother Teresa, "Do it Anyway" Quote“People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.” Bible Nuances & Cross References-David & the Moabites: 1 Samuel 22:3-4, Matthew 1:5, Ruth 1:1-Three Thousand Died – Three Thousand Saved: Exodus 32:28, Acts 2:41-Haman & King Agag, 1 Samuel 15:17-34, Esther 3:1-The Bronze Snake: Numbers 21:4-8, 2 Kings 18:4, John 3:14-15-The talking donkey, Numbers 22:28-Unicorns: Numbers 23:22 and 24:8; Deuteronomy 33:17, Psalms 22: 21 and Psalms 92:10; Job 39:10; Isiah 34:7 *all KJV References-Jesus preaches to spirits in prison, 1 Peter 3:19, 4:6 Between the Testaments, Malachi to MatthewAlexander the Great of Greece conquered King Darius and the Persians in 330 B.C. Because of prophecy in the Book of Daniel there is peace with him and the Jews. Alexander spread Greek culture and influence throughout the middle east and parts of Europe. The New Testament was written in Greek, and heavily influenced by Greek culture. Hebrew scriptures were translated to Greek for the library in Alexandria, Egypt in 284 B.C. Antiochus IV imposed harsh laws on Jews and defiled temple. The Maccabean Revolt in 166 B.C. retakes and cleanses the temple, which is now known as Feast of Hanukah. Palestine is the most fought over country in world history.
Judah was recognized as a free state in 142 B.C. Pharisees "pious ones" and Sadducees "Greek influenced" emerged. Roman General Pompey the Great conquered Jerusalem in 63 B.C. He renamed Judah to Judea and made it a Roman province. Samaria to the north is home to Jewish half-breeds. Pompey and Julius Caesar plunged Rome into civil war in 49 B.C. Antipater is named a procurator of Judea by Caesar. Marc Antony named Herod the Great named client king of the Jews from 40-4 B.C. Herod, who was a descendant of Esau rather than Jacob, greatly expanded upon the second temple for tax purposes, making it sixteen stories tall.
The temple has been partially destroyed and rebuilt about 6 times between two testaments. Synagogues began to spring up. Priests were no longer from Levi. After Herod, Israel was ruled by a series of governors. Herod's son, Herod Antipas, was named tetrarch (ruler of fourth part) over Galilee. Antipas married Herodias, his brother's wife, who ordered the death of John the Baptist. Pilate was appointed governor of Judea in 26 AD shortly before the beginning of Christ’s ministry. Word DefinitionsAbba = Daddy or Papa Abomination = A vile, shameful, detestable actAdvent = ArrivalAmen = It is so or so be itAmillennialism = Christ’s reign during the millennium will be spiritual in nature, not literal.Angel = Messenger Apocalypse = A prophetic revelation Apostasy = To turn back; quit believingApostle = One sent out with a messageChrist = Greek for Anointed One. Hebrew is MessiahChristophany = An appearance of Christ in the Old TestamentDisciple = A follower. Being like Christ. Imitate Jesus' ministryEcumenical = The Universal Christian ChurchEcclesia = The Church, a called-out assembly or congregationEisegesis = Interprets what the reader wants to hear.Exegeses = Critical explanation or interpretation of the Bible, the way the author intended.Futurism = Biblical end times prophecy has yet to be fulfilled. Gospel = Spreading the good newsGrace = God's unmerited favor & divine enablementHallelujah = Hebrew for Praise ye the LordHebrew = One who has crossed overHermeneutics = The method used for interpreting scripture. Immanuel = God is with usIslam = Surrender or submission—submission to the will of God.Justified = To be just or rightLegalism = Having to do certain things & rites to be accepted by GodLicentious = Unrestrained sexLiturgy = Public worshipRapio = Latin for Rapture, snatch upRepent = Turn & change directionsPreterism = Believing that prophecy and the end times of the Bible have already occurred. Saint = Set apart for a special purposeShalom = Jewish for peace; wishing the fullness of God's blessingSanctified = Made holy; consecratedSuper secession = God is done with corporate Israel.Theophany = Appearance of God in physical formWokeism = Behavior, attitude being sensitive to social & political injusticeYeshua = The Hebrew name for Jesus.YHWH (Yaweh) = The Hebrew name for God the father.Zion = The hill in Jerusalem where the Temple was built. Also, known as the new Jerusalem after the return of Christ. Notable Quotes“I believe wholeheartedly in the Bible. I try to live my life like Christ and seek God every day. I would rather live by example than to judge. WWJD!” -Tim Webb
“I know the Bible is true because it was written by 40 different authors, over 1,500 years, telling a consistent story. If it were a lie it wouldn’t have lasted this long.” -Tim Webb
“I’ll tell you what I know, what I don’t know, and what I think. -Tim Webb
“The Lord puts us where he wants us when he wants us there.” -Tim Webb
“We all have our Red Seas to cross. We just have to trust that God will part them for us. I call this the God Factor! It’s when we are humanly out of options and divine intervention is all that we have left.” -Tim Webb
“Drinking isn’t a sin, but drunkenness and lack of self-control is. More often than not, drinking leads to other sins, and that’s the problem!” -Tim Webb
“Parts of the Bible are hard to understand and interpret. But not the Gospel. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is easy to teach and easy to understand. A monkey could understand the Gospel!” -Tim Webb
“The key to life is accepting the fact that we can die at any second. So, the quicker you can turn your thoughts beyond your existence here on Earth and focus on eternity with God, the better off you’ll be. ‘What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Matthew 16:26’” -Tim Webb
“As disciples we’re in the business of saving souls. It’s the most important job in the world! The greatest surgeon can save thousands of lives but eventually those people will still die. What then? That’s why what we do around here is so important. And we can’t let disagreements or inconvenience get in the way of that.” -Tim Webb
“We all have to suffer over something. Nobody gets off scot-free.” -Tim Webb
The church, in general, has become so focused on sin itself that they have forgotten about the sinner. Saving sinners is our mission, and that may require us to get our hands dirty every now and then, Luke 19:10.
This world is like boot camp. We’re born into it, but then seek our way out of it by stepping into eternity with God. -Tim Webb
“I didn’t try to fix Shawna. I just tried to help her when she would let me.” -Evelyn Webb “In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.” -Blaise Pascal
“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by anything created but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.” -Blaise Pascal
“The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.” -Blaise Pascal
God primarily speaks to us through scriptures, and we speak to God through prayer. -Fred Brammel
“The point and focus always needs to be on God and to move people closer to God.” -Fred Brammel
“How do we bring people closer to God in a world where people view the church so negatively?” -Fred Brammel
“We live in a shallow time because we live in a shallow culture.” -Fred Brammel
“Slow down son, you have all of eternity!” -Fred Brammel
“Churches become so much like the world that they fail to distinguish themselves from the world.” -Fred Brammel
“A man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God.” -Fred Brammel “The Bible is right for all people, right for all places, and right for all times.” -Dick McCullum
“I want to deepen my faith and develop a mastery of myself. Sin is always a declaration of autonomy.” -Francis Chan
“As creator of Heaven and Earth, God can do with the Earth as he pleases.” -Francis Chan “I’d be a Christian if it weren’t for the Christians.” -Gandhi
“God doesn’t make good people or bad people. He just makes people. That’s it. Sometimes they do good things, sometimes not so good. But the beauty is you get to wake up and choose every day. He gives us the free will to make that choice.” -Prison Guard, Orange is the New Black
“This was me for a long time. Then, God showed me that it’s not about organized religion and hypocritical clergymen. It’s about a relationship with Jesus Christ. Once I was able to see this, my life changed. Maybe the God you think you know isn’t really what or who God is at all.” -Travis Marcum
What do you need to know? The answers are in your born-again spirit! That is why we must recognize God's voice and not be conned by Satan. To grow spiritually and mature and not stay in a babyhood state of spiritual growth, we must learn to look inside for answers, for that is where they are. To be carnally minded is to look to the flesh, but to be spiritually minded we look to the Holy Spirit in our spirit, and we can know what to do in every circumstance and situation we encounter. Mark 11: “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” That includes the answers! Amen. -Ron Crowe
God tells us repeatedly that he cares more about the heart than outward appearances. Hypocrisy is teaching truths that you’re not applying to yourself. -Bill Creacy
“God either actively causes or passively allows all things in the Universe to happen.” -The Bible Project
“The best translation of the Bible is one that you will read.” -Tim Macky
“Even if it wasn’t fair, even if it wasn’t true, even if it wasn’t right. If it was humbling, it wasn’t all a waste. God will raise you up.” -Beth Moore
“When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Kentucky, because everything there happens 20 years after it happens anywhere else.” -Mark Twain
“My definition of salvation is I have an eternal personal relationship with God, starting now.” -Tim Webb
“Trying to study the end times by reading the King James Version is like trying to run a marathon in cowboy boots. Sure, you can do it. You just won’t get very far!” -Tim Webb
“If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.” -C.S. Lewis "Hope is the only emotion stronger than fear." -President Snow, The Hunger Games "You can not choose the time in which you live, but you can choose to make a difference while you live." -Mike Ritchie "The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himslef for man." -John Scott Random Notes & Terms GOD-Sometimes God chooses to strengthen us rather than remove us from our circumstances. -God regulates our conduct. We keep his law not to be saved but because we are saved. Just as the law needs love to inspire it, love needs the law to inform it. God is both a judge and a father. There is eternal weight to your present choices. -God’s purpose is a lot like the jet stream, constantly moving and fluid.-Dispensations are different time periods of God’s administration with man.-God does impossible math. It’s not my place to feed the 5,000. It’s my place to provide the fish and the loaves of bread.-The Manna Program is God giving us exactly what we need, when we need it.-God’s purpose and timeline become abundantly clear when you read and embrace the Bible.-God doesn’t want perfection; he just wants your heart.-God reveals himself to us three main ways: the Bible, Jesus Christ, and the created order.-Eternity is less about getting us into heaven and more about getting heaven into us. -The misrepresentation of God has been the most damaging thing in the world, usually at the hands of religion, because religion has put us into a system ruled by punishment. -Mosaic law = 613 commands & laws-God can work with us, or despite us. His grace is the source. We are the resource.-It’s not our place to figure out God’s will but rather to accept it. -Science is the how, God is the why. JESUS-Jesus is a true and better Adam and Abraham.-Jesus refused to engage in the cultural wars of his time.-Parables make the subject matter easier to explain for the speaker and easier to understand and remember for the audience. They make you ponder their meaning.-Jesus’ teaching was an upside-down paradox from what the Jews were used to.-When Christ took the throne, he changed it from a throne of justice to a throne of grace.-The law of Christ is to love others as he loved us. THE CHURCH -The Church isn’t perfect because it’s lead by imperfect humans. The church should be about progress, not perfection.-We’ve developed an “us-versus-them” mentality, but our focus should always be on the team. Legalism, hypocrisy, exclusivity, and self-righteousness is eroding the gospel. You can’t hate people and engage them with the gospel at the same time. The American Christian nation is hating on the very people that they’re supposed to be saving. Gospel-centered Christians should not focus on saving America, but rather focus on saving Americans, Matthew 9:12.-The church is where heaven & earth intersect.-The universal church is every believing Christian that will have lived between the Day of Pentecost and The Rapture.-Countless churches are foundering on the shoals of social, political, technological, and generational change.-The Jesus Movement is a continuation of the gospel after Christ left the earth.-It becomes a problem when church tradition is considered equal to scripture. Man-made church rules do not outweigh scripture. -The great commandment of love your neighbor like yourself governs the great commission of delivering the gospel to all of creation. -If God had not permitted the human race to be tested and to fall, the universe would never have had the supreme spectacle of his forgiving love and redemptive grace as revealed in Christ.-The Book of Jonah is a great example of how God’s own children can sometimes be the biggest obstacle to his will and purpose. BELIEVERS-It’s a biblical mandate not to hoard your faith. -Legalistic righteousness is trying to earn your salvation through works and deeds.-The age of accountability: The age when children are old enough to choose or not choose God. Before that, God chooses them on their terms because they are too young to choose him on his terms.-Looking at the serpent on the pole was an act of faith, not reason.-Change is inevitable, but growth is intentional.-We need to practice spiritual prepping.-In the modern world, we’ve become addicts of temporary joy and instant gratification.-May you always be covered by the dust of your rabbi.-We should let God handle the justice.-We are still susceptible to sin as born-again believers because we are still flesh. Our flesh is constantly fighting against the Holy Spirit, or vice versa.-Stop thinking like a human and start thinking like God. -A life with God doesn’t have to be boring!-Heaven is a dimension of existence. Earth or human space is another dimension of existence.-Christian worldview, or a biblical worldview, is looking at and interpreting the world from a biblical point of view.-The base of God’s people are normal people with normal problems. -The prayer of relinquishment is when we align our will with God’s will. -Pride is the complete anti-god state of mind.-God, please, please, make my life an answer to someone else’s prayer.-As Christians our righteous anger at sin must never surpass our compassion for sinners.-Death is the finest graduation day that a believer of Jesus Christ can ever experience.-Be worthy to serve the suffering. -Shame is the bad after taste of sin. -There is a big difference between condoning sin and loving a sinner. REVISED: July 13, 2024
You need to understand the context of the Bible to then understand the story of God, who unfolded the plan of salvation on the stage of history during real times, with real people, in real places. Its story spans about 4,000 years and was written by about 40 authors, over a period of 1,500 years. The Bible is a book that has stood the test of time. A lie would never survive this many years. It wasn’t written by just one man, but instead by many men over a period of many years, all who were inspired by God. The Bible is full of broken people who made mistakes. God loves his people and comes to rescue them.
The Bible is God’s revelation to mankind, and because God knows and controls the future, then it stands to reason that when the Bible speaks about what will occur in the future, we can believe it. Concerning predictions about the future, the Bible says, “For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit," 2 Peter 1:21. This truth is evident in the fact that, unlike the false prophecies made in other religions or by individuals such as Nostradamus, the Bible has never once been wrong – every time the Bible has predicted a future event, it happened exactly as scripture said it would. If the Bible Were a Play Act I: The CreationAct II: The FallAct III: The Redemption Act IV: The Restoration Four Foundational Principles of the Bible1. It’s rooted in geography.2. It’s emerges from history.3. It’s a unified literary work.4. It’s the true word of God. Five Cultural Principles of the Bible1. The Bible was written in a patriarchal culture.2. The Bible was written in a monarchical culture.3. The Bible was written in a polytheistic culture.4. The Bible was written in a slave-holding culture.5. Parts of the Bible were written in a culture where polygamy was accepted. Authors of the Bible 1. Moses = 5 Books, 1 Psalm, 125,139 Words2. Ezra = 3 Books, 43,618 Words3. Luke = 2 Books, 37,932 Words4. Jeremiah = 2 Books, 35,306 Words5. Paul = 12 Books, 32,408 WordsThese 5 authors wrote 45% of the Bible.*word count from original Hebrew & Greek texts Salvation by Grace Through Faith Salvation is like falling in love. Something sparks your interest and draws you to a person. It’s like that with God, who provides the grace that awakens us to him. We are saved by grace through faith, and baptism is an outward sign of our salvation. God designed it to be an outward sign of an inward reality. He wants us to be a witness in this world by demonstrating to others with baptism that we have died with Christ and have been resurrected to a new life.
Through God's grace and the Holy Spirit, we can be motivated to live upright Godly lives in Christ. We come into the family of God by grace through faith and live in the family of God by a life of good works and active love. Faith and good works are like breathing in, breathing out. You can’t do one without the other. We enter into a relationship with God through Christ. We live a saved life by conforming to the will of God.
Grace comes from the heart and is a gift from God. Grace frees us to think of others rather than ourselves…love your neighbors as yourself.
“The righteous person lives by faith alone.” -Martin Luther
“Love God then do whatever you want.” -Martin Luther
“It's faith alone that saves, but that faith is never alone.” -John Calvin The Three Stages of Salvation1. Justification = made right with God through the cross. 2. Sanctification = made holy through a life of active love and good works.3. Glorification = restored back with God in heaven for eternity. The Gospel What is the Gospel? The Gospel is not a set of ethical teachings. The Gospel is not a theology, a religious system, or a social action. It is a person! It is the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, along with his death, burial, and resurrection. The Gospel is who he is and what he did, and we appropriate what he did by grace through faith. Through Christ, God became man and can understand us and know how we feel. Christ was God on Earth through the flesh. He grew up as a child, he feared death, and felt pain. Jesus went to the desert to face Satan like all humans do, and to prepare himself for what he was facing. He was the virgin-born, sinless son of God who took the sins of humanity upon himself and died a substitutionary death. Jesus changed the paradigm from a reward/punishment perspective to a relationship perspective.
The purpose of the law is to demonstrate the need for a savior because we can't live up to the law. We can't do it on our own. It shows us how short we fall from the law. No one is rewarded for following the law, only punished for breaking it.
The Mosaic Law is a straight line for us to measure our crookedness. But none of us can live up to the law. It’s impossible! That’s why we need Christ, and he is the only answer. The law was put in place to show us how much we need Christ. Simply put, we need a savior! We need a relationship with Christ, not a set of rules and regulations. If righteousness can be gained through the law, then Christ died for nothing (Galatians 2:21).
Christianity is about a relationship with Christ, rather than a set of rules and regulations, and when you’re in that relationship you want to live like him. It doesn’t mean that you always will because you’re human, but you have the desire to. What matters most is your faith expressing itself through love. Christianity can be broken down like this…faith, then active love, and good works. In this relationship with Christ, you have the Holy Spirit living in you. You’ll still sin because of human nature but it won’t be the dominant landscape of your life. We as Christians are to be the hands and feet of Jesus for the restoration. We are the ambassadors for Christ. When we forgive, we usher in the Kingdom of God.
Here is the secret of Jesus’ life and work for God. He prayerfully waited for his father’s instructions and for the strength to follow them. Jesus had no divinely drawn blueprint. He discerned the father’s will day by day in a life of prayer. By this means he warded off the urgent and accomplished the important. The call to follow Jesus is open to everyone but we don’t get to write our own job description. He sets the agenda. The Five Essential Beliefs of Christianity1. The Trinity2. The full divinity & humanity of Christ3. The vicarious atonement of Christ 4. The Resurrection of Christ 5. Salvation by grace through faith The Four Pillars of the Early Church1. Teaching2. Fellowship 3. Breaking of Bread4. Prayer The Holy SpiritWhile Jesus purchased our salvation for us, the Holy Spirit presents it to us. While the Holy Spirit appears one in the same in both the Old Testament and New Testament, he does not appear in the period of history before the coming of Jesus as a permanent presence. He is seen operating at particular times, for particular reasons, in particular persons. For example, his spirit moved with the nation of Israel, and his permanent presence has never left since the Day of Pentecost. Think for a moment, and you will realize that one who is filled with something is controlled by it. He lives it, dreams it, and thinks it.
The Holy Spirit is to do other works as well. He is there to guide the believer into truth. It is promised that the Holy Spirit will help the believer in prayer through wordless groans. He is with the believer to cause him to walk in God’s law. God’s plan for the Christian is, in part, that the Holy Spirit equip him for usefulness to God and give him strength and power for life and service. It is the spirit’s responsibility to produce fruit in the heart and life of a Christian.
As Christians, we already possess the Holy Spirit. We receive the Holy Spirit the very moment that we believe in Jesus Christ. Although God is one being in three persons, he is still one God. To receive one person of the Godhead is to receive all persons of the Godhead, since the three are one. When we accept Jesus as our personal savior, we receive Jesus, and we also receive the father, and the Holy Spirit. John 16:13-15 tells us that the Spirit will guide us. Characteristics of SinThe world is full of sin, it always has been, and it always will be. Instead of focusing on removing sin from the world we should focus our energy on saving people from the sin in the world. The world is like the Titanic. Our job as Christians isn’t to save the Titanic because it’s a sinking ship! Our job is to get as many people as we can off the Titanic and into the lifeboat of God. Sin isn’t necessarily an act we commit, but rather, a condition that we are in. Sin is a condition of alienation and separation from God that manifests itself in our sinful action. Left to our own devices we are unable to deal with sin. We live in a cursed, broken world because of sin. You have to recognize your own condition of sin. If not, there’s nothing Jesus can do for you. You can’t seek a savior until you recognize your need to be saved. Sin is to the natural man what the tendency to rot is to the apple. God knows our situation with sin. He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome our difficulties. Before we can be cured we must want to be cured. The Four Characteristics of Sin1. Sin is subtle2. Sin distorts our judgment3. Sin escalates4. Sin cascades down through generations The Old TestamentThe Hebrew Bible, also known as the Tanakh, is an incomplete story line that is eventually completed with the life of Jesus Christ in the New Testament.
Isaac and Jacob discovered that our will may not always match the will of God. Jacob is an example that God works through, and often in spite of, the limited self-serving plans of human beings. Jacob’s story is an example that rather than use the most qualified or the most expected, instead God uses the most unqualified, the insecure, the flawed, the depressed, the doubter, and the underdog. Jacob was the perfect person for God to build his nation of people from, because Jacob was flawed like everyone else in humanity, except Christ. The writer of Genesis’ purpose isn’t to approve the plans and ambitions of humans, but to show how God in his sovereign grace, could still achieve his purpose through them.
The Old Testament is all about the covenant between God and his chosen people. It’s about ceremonial law and moral law. Christ later became the new covenant. We still follow the moral laws but not the ceremonial laws of the Jewish people. As Christians, we look at the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus and the new covenant. The Old Testament shows us the character of God as well as the history leading up to the birth of Christ. The Old Testament was a covenant through flawed men, and the New Testament was a covenant through the flawless Jesus Christ, who was the true Passover lamb.
Genesis through Esther is a linear narrative in history. Job through Malachi is a recapitulation back into that linear narrative.
The Egyptian goddess Hathor is represented by the golden calf, which is why the Hebrews chose to worship golden calves when they got away from God because it was what they knew and understood after being in Egypt for 430 years.
Books like 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel, 1 Kings and 2 Kings were originally one book, but had to be split up into a second book to fit on the scrolls.
The Abrahamic (Gen 12:2-3) and Davidic (1 Chronicles 17) covenants are the two hinges upon which the plan of salvation swings.
The Assyrians, and the Babylonian’s method of war was to rape, pillage, loot, leave, and expel the people to another land.
The Old Testament was the Bible that Christ read. Every page of the New Testament depends on the Old Testament.
Jonah is a great example of spiritual apathy and hypocrisy that most Christians could learn from today. There is a much deeper meaning to Jonah than the Sunday school lesson we have always heard.
The Psalms are theology put to melody.
Ritual vs. Moral Impurity: Someone in a state of ritual impurity could not come into contact with God’s holiness, since God flees from impurity. So, while impurity is not in itself sinful, if the Israelites did not deal with it properly, it could lead one into unholiness and drive away God’s presence. Moral impurity refers to sinful behavior which resulted in defilement of the people, the sanctuary, and the land. Moral impurity is avoidable, willful, noncommunicable, incites divine chastisement, and requires atonement from God. Eternity vs. Now God looks at death differently than we do. To us, death is the end. To God, our death here on here on earth is only the beginning.
It’s pretty simple...everybody has a soul. It’s not that you have a soul, it’s that you are a soul! We are spiritual beings with physical properties. And that soul lives on forever after our bodies die. Your body is simply temporary housing for your soul. Because our soul live on forever, a person should be more worried about stepping out into eternity with God than their temporary life here on earth. Eternity is forever but we as humans have no way of measuring forever, so we don’t always understand it.
So then, the question becomes, where will your soul spend eternity? Heaven and hell are very real places. Don’t ever let the bad decisions of other humans keep you from seeking God. Not seeking God because of a hypocrite is like not driving a car because somebody runs a stop sign and wrecks!
Most people have trouble seeing beyond what’s in front of them. As a Christian, I’m looking at the big picture of eternity. Our time here on Earth is short, it’s a blink of the eye compared to eternity in heaven. This life is temporary, and we’re all terminal from the time we’re born. Our next breath is not guaranteed!
There is a fate worse than death, and that’s spending eternity away from God. I have no expectations of a pain-free life here on Earth. It is what it is. This world has always been broken and full of death because Satan rules this world. God allows Satan and sin to exist in this world to give us a choice and to give us the gift of free will. God wants us to love him because we want to, not because we have to. He wants us to seek him because love that is forced is no love at all!
God has a plan, but we can’t always see the entirety of that plan, like with the blind man in John 9:2-3. That plan eventually includes us dying here on Earth, but if you believe in Christ your soul will live on forever in heaven. By believing and trusting in God I have hope and assurance that my true blessings will come after I die, not here on Earth. While I can’t explain God’s plan, I do know that it’s centered around everyone on Earth finding him. Although I don’t understand all of his plan now, someday it will be perfectly clear to me. I’ll see that God is not only just, but also good.
God’s plan can be compared to a child and their parents. Sometimes, my kids don’t understand why my wife and I make the decisions that we make, but as their loving parents we’re doing what we feel is best for the whole family. God has a long view of our lives. He is more worried about our ultimate holiness than he is our current happiness. We’re put on this earth to prepare for our eternal existence and our decisions here do matter.
He allows us to endure hardship because it helps us grow and mature spiritually, and the Bible tells us that we will be rewarded for our suffering here on Earth once we get to heaven. Suffering produces perseverance and sharpens our character. We see our true colors when we suffer, and we see what we’re made of during hard times. It also allows us to see who God is. Suffering is part of our calling. Jesus suffered for me, so I should expect to suffer for him.
We don’t have control over how or when we die but we can control what happens to our soul after we die. I’m living for eternity while others are only living for this world. It’s sad to think that some people only have this world to live for. Because rest assured, this world will let you down, will break you, will disappoint you, and abandon you.
I live in the radical middle. I want to work for a higher purpose. I’m living for the kingdom of God not the kingdom of Earth. I’m living for eternity, not for right now. God is at home. We are the ones living in the far country.
I would ask this question, what do you have waiting on you when you die? Where will your soul spend eternity? Look at the obits, people die every day. Where are they now? Stephen Hawking was one of the most brilliant minds to ever walk the face of this planet. He was a devout atheist who dismissed God for the sake of science. I wonder what it was like for him the very second that he died, when he discovered that there really is a spiritual world out there beyond anything he could have ever imagined. I wonder if his first thought after dying was “Ooops!” There have been enough recorded near-death-experiences of people from different faiths and all walks of life to know that something happens to your soul when you die. It’s hard to deny that fact! So, where will your soul go when you die?
“Aim at Heaven and you’ll get Earth thrown in. Aim at Earth and you’ll get neither.” -C.S. Lewis Delivering the GospelThe gospel is the greatest message in the history of mankind! You don’t ever change the message, but you have to constantly change how you deliver that message, based on the culture you’re operating in, otherwise you won’t be effective as a disciple. The Apostle Paul figured this out two thousand years ago when he said, “Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings,” First Corinthians 9:19-20, 22-23. Churches today are in a time warp, with a combination of Baby Boomers, Generation Xers, and Millennials, all in the same congregation. We now live in a culture that communicates in 144 characters or less. Society and culture is constantly changing!
What good does it do to take the Great Commission out into the word if no one is listening to you and you’re not affective? Also, how are you going to carry out the Great Commission when you hate the very people you’re supposed to be saving? God tells us we’re all sinners! We may be Christians, but we’re not qualified to judge other sinners. God hates sin, but he loves the sinner. He makes that abundantly clear in Romans 5:8.
If he didn’t love sinners, we’d all be doomed. Jesus said in Matthew 9:12, “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” Who did Jesus hang out with? Prostitutes, tax collectors, leapers, the poor, and people who sinned. The Pharisees looked great on paper, but their hearts were out of sync with God’s plan. “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules,” Matthew 15:8-9.
God said love your neighbor as yourself, but he never said to pick and choose which neighbor you’re going to love! We should deliver the Gospel by allowing the Great Commandment (love your neighbor as you love yourself) to govern the Great Commission. Answers from the Movie "An Interview With God"“Satan is overrated! He only has strength to the extent in which you give it to him.”
“The world they see is just that, sometimes it’s just the way it looks…that I don’t exist.”
“What’s the meaning of life? To live, to struggle, to serve God, and to ask questions like, what is the meaning of life.”
“The Old Testament and the New Testament are the word of God, but as translated by man, and understood by man.”
“Everyone has their own journey but there is only one path.”
“Is a person’s soul immortal? A soul wouldn’t be much of a soul if it weren’t immortal.”
“Can an atheist be a moral person? An atheist can be a moral person, the same as you can build a house without a foundation. But you just better hope the earth doesn’t shake.”
“How do you reconcile free will with God’s will? The entire foundation of human law depends on the existence of free will. God’s will and human free will are not contradictory because they’re not two versions of the same thing, but they do fit perfectly together. God designed it that way. People make choices and those choices have consequences. And if knowing God’s will were part of every human decision how would anything ever happen? You have to make your own choices, and you have to live with them, no matter how you arrived at them.”
“There is something far greater than this earth that we can’t see.”
“Everyone wants to get to Heaven but none of us want to die.”
“Think of what the world looks like from God’s perspective. Think about knowing every human deed, thought, and aspiration. Also, knowing all of the isolation, pain, and emptiness of life. Now, multiply that by every human soul that ever existed.”
“Most people only notice the bad things when they happen to them. And that’s the saddest part of all. I hear it all…why is there war, starvation, poverty, disease, fire, flood, a child goes missing, a man loses hope. But food can grow, diseases can be cured, a child can be saved, or a veteran can be helped. Look to each other and that’s where I’ll be. Miracles happen every day. Sometimes the miracle is you!”
“The world is broken because Satan rules this world. You have the choice to stay in it or rise above it with God.”
“Having faith isn’t worth much if you don’t really believe. What can we do that’s beyond God’s forgiveness?”
“Faith isn’t something you can just have, not in the conventional sense, because faith isn’t the goal, faith is a process. It’s a lot like a marriage. The vows you take aren’t the end, they’re just the beginning. It takes time and dedication…every day.” Why Do We Need Proof?I like to watch some of the documentaries on Netflix and Hulu about the existence of God and the Bible, only because I can learn from the details, especially with archeology in the Holy Land. They always have new shows on around the time of Easter, and some recent ones include The Bible’s Buried Secrets, and Jesus, the Countdown to Calvary. But overall, the Bible is the only proof I need of God’s existence and his love for me, because there is no faith in constantly looking for proof.
If God wanted us to have infallible proof of his existence there would be a huge museum in Jerusalem and it would contain the remains of Noah’s Ark, the Ten Commandments, The Ark of the Covenant, the original cross, along with a slab of rock from Jesus’ tomb, both with blood soaked stains. And it could all be DNA tested and carbon dated by any scientist, of any faith in the world for its accuracy.
But God didn’t plan it that way. The entire existence of the Jewish and Christian religions hinge on one thing. Faith. The constant pursuit of scientific proof of God is no different than stock-piling manna. God wanted the Israelites to collect manna on a daily basis so that they would put their trust and faith in him.
God can give us absolute proof anytime he wants. Why? Because he’s God! But then we would believe in him out of obligation, or because of what we can get out of it, rather than genuine love and faith. God wants us to come to him on our own terms and because we love him, not because we’re forced to. In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul tells us, “For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So, they have no excuse for not knowing God.”
Indiana Jones and other archeologist can search the world over, but they will only find bits and fragments of the Bible story, because that’s the way God designed it. The ApocryphaThe Apocrypha is a collection of writings that Protestants call the Apocrypha (hidden writings), Roman Catholics call the deuterocanonical (later or second canon) books. These books were written between 300 B.C. and 100 A.D., the Intertestamental Period between the inspired writings of God’s Prophets in the Old Testament and those of the Apostles and their contemporaries in the New Testament.
The Apocrypha would be covered under the evidence for the Bible if these writings were truly inspired - but evidence seems to indicate that they are not. In the Bible we find prophets of God whose messages are ratified by miracles or prophecy that comes true, and whose message is immediately accepted by the people (Deuteronomy 31:26; Joshua 24:26; First Samuel 10:25; Daniel 9:2; Col. 4:16; Second Peter 3:15-16) What we find in the apocrypha is just the opposite - no apocryphal book was written by a prophet. None of these books were included in the Hebrew Scriptures. There is no ratification of the authors of any apocryphal book. No apocryphal book is cited as authoritative by later Biblical writers. There is no fulfilled prophecy in any apocryphal book. Finally, Jesus, who quoted from every section of Old Testament scripture, never once quoted from the apocrypha. Neither did any of his disciples. What About the Poor Native Who Never Heard of Christ?Reason to Believe by R.C. Sproul-All men know the father because God has revealed himself to all men, Romans 1:20.-All men distort & reject the true knowledge of God. -There are no innocent people in the world. People who die without hearing the gospel will be judged according to the knowledge they have. They will be judged guilty for rejecting God the Father. God never condemns innocent people. -God judges according to the knowledge people have. Idolatry as a religion does not please God but adds insult to injury to the glory of God. Idolatry does not represent man’s search for God, but rather man’s flight from God. -The Gospel is God’s gift of redemption for the lost. God sent Christ to give people an opportunity for redemption from the guilt they already have. If men reject Christ, they face the double judgement of rejecting both the father and the Son. -The pagan needs Christ to reconcile him to God the Father. Christ himself viewed the pagan as being in a lost condition.-Christ commands the church to make sure everyone hears the gospel. -Religion does not redeem people but may add to their guilt. The Charles Colson StoryThe validity of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection is often questioned, but this quote by Charles Colson, who served as special counsel to President Richard Nixon, brings the reality of it into the 21st century.
Colson once wrote, “My personal experiences in the Watergate scandal convinces me of the historic proof of the resurrection.” He went on to explain that President Nixon’s closest advisers conspired to keep the illegal break-in a secret. The conspiracy unraveled three weeks later, when Nixon’s legal counsel John Dean, fearing a prison sentence, went to the prosecutors and offered to testify in exchange for immunity ‘to save his own skin.’ Other conspirators followed suit, bringing down the Nixon Presidency.” Colson said, “Think of it: the most powerful men around the president of the United States could not keep a lie for three weeks. And you’d have me believe that the twelve apostles – powerless, persecuted, exiled, many martyred, their leader Peter crucified upside down – these common men, gave their lives for a lie, without ever breathing a word to the contrary? Impossible…People will die for something they believe to be true; but men will never die for something they know to be false.” Understanding God's WillThe question is often asked why a loving God would allow something bad to happen. We first see this when he allowed sin to enter the world in Genesis chapter three. Then again when he allowed his people to be enslaved for over 400 years in Egypt. God tells Pharaoh in Exodus 9:15-16, “For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” He continues in Chapter ten by saying, “…I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I might perform these signs of mine among them that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the Lord.”
We as humans need to realize that God has a complete view of the big picture, while we only see small, finite portions of it. We have to remember that our physical death is different to God than it is to us. To us, it’s the end. But to God, it’s only the beginning of our spiritual lives in eternity. We may see an act of God as being cruel and uncaring, based on our micro view of the world. God also reminds us that he’s God and he can do what he wants when he wants. In Exodus 33:19, he says, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”Other examples of God using unorthodox means to fulfill his will are with the secular kings Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus to both punish and reward the nation of Israel. Even as cruel as the Holocaust was, no one can deny that because of it, prophecy in Ezekiel 37 was fulfilled when the nation of Israel was restored to the world map in 1948.
Christ himself demonstrated the use of God’s will in John chapter 9 with the story of the blind man. When his disciples asked whose sins caused this man to be blind Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
With each and every human, God tells us in Jeremiah 1:5 and Psalms 139:13 that he formed us in the womb. He has a will for all of mankind, even if we don’t accept him as God.
The Christian authors Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle sum up the question of God’s will perfectly in their book Erasing Hell… “The answer has to do with God’s moral will verses his decreed will. Some things may be part of God’s desire for the world, and yet these desires can be resisted. God doesn’t desire that people sin, but he allows it to happen because humans are moral agents and who often make evil choices. God is not a puppet master who pulls everyone’s strings to suit his will. That’s why the Lord taught us to pray things like “your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” God’s desire—his moral will is resisted.
And then there’s God’s decreed will. This refers to those things that God makes happen regardless of what human’s decide. He sometimes uses our bad choices—our rebellion against his moral will—to carry out his decreed will. There’s a difference, in other words, between God’s values that please him (moral will) and those events that he causes to happen (decreed will).
Is it getting too heavy? Maybe an illustration will help. In Judges 14-16, we read about a loose cannon named Samson. Though he was mighty in warfare, his moral compass was significantly flawed, as seen in his love for ladies of the pagan sort. At the beginning of the story, Samson falls in love with a Philistine woman, which was against God’s moral will (Judges 3:1-6). And yet Judges 14:4 says that his love affair was “from the Lord.” God was “seeking an opportunity against the Philistines,” and so he used Samson’s lust to oppose the Philistines. Samson’s love for Pagan women went against God’s moral will but became part of God’s decreed will. Samson was free to go against God’s moral will, yet God intervened to carry out his decreed will in using the situation to fight against the Philistines.”
More examples of God’s decreed will:Genesis 45:5-7, 50:20: Joseph realizes his suffering in Egypt was God’s plan to save lives.Exodus 9:15-16: Raised you up for this very purpose to show my power. Exodus 10:1-2: I hardened Pharaoh’s heart.Exodus 33:19-20: I will have mercy & compassion on whom I want.Judges 7:2: God reduces Gideon’s army down to 300 so they would know it was God who won.Judges 14:3-4: Samson’s wife was used as an opportunity to confront Philistines.1 Kings 22: God and the Divine Counsel decide how to kill King Ahab.Ezra 1:1: God raised up King Cyrus to send his people back home. Psalm 139:13: You knit me together in my mother’s womb. Isaiah 44:28: Cyrus is my shepherd & will do as I say.Isaiah 53:10-12: It was the Lord’s will to make Christ suffer.Jeremiah 1:5: I formed you in the womb.Jeremiah 27:6-22: God raises up Nebuchadnezzar as his servant. Jeremiah 29:11: I know the plans I have for you.Ezekiel 38:23: I will make myself known; they will know I am the Lord. Habakkuk 1:5-11: “I am raising up the Babylonians.”The stories of Job & Jonah, & David & BathshebaMatthew 5:45: God causes the sun to rise, rain to fall on both good & evil.John 6:26: The masses miss the meaning of feeding the 5,000, hungry looking for more.John 9:3: God used the blind man to display his works.John 11:4: Lazarus’s death was for the glory of God & Jesus. Acts 9: God uses Paul’s persecution to spread the disciples.Revelation 17:17: God is the architect of the end times, fulfilling his final judgement. What Language Did Jesus Speak?While Jesus very likely spoke Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, Aramaic was likely the language Jesus spoke the most. The Gospels record Jesus speaking numerous Aramaic words: talitha koum (Mark 5:41); ephphatha (Mark 7:34); eloi eloi lama sabachthani (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34); abba (Mark 14:36). Historians, archaeologists, and cultural anthropologists are almost universally in agreement that Aramaic was the common or colloquial language in Israel during Jesus’ time. Aramaic was very similar to Hebrew, but with many words and phrases that were borrowed from other languages and cultures, especially Assyrian and Babylonian. It’s a Semitic subfamily of the Hebrew language. Hebrew was spoken primarily by the scribes, teachers of the law, and the religious elite, the Pharisees and Sadducees. Hebrew was likely read in the synagogues, so most people were probably able to speak and understand some Hebrew. Since Greek was the language of the Romans, who had power over Israel during Jesus’ time, Greek was the language of the political class and anyone who wanted to do business with the Romans. Greek was also the universal language at that time, so, the ability to speak Greek was a highly desirable skill.
Some, however, refused to speak Greek out of resentment toward their Roman oppressors. When Jesus spoke with Pontius Pilate, it is possible that he spoke to him in Greek, although Pilate, as the governor, likely would have been able to speak Aramaic as well. Jesus, as God incarnated in human form, could have spoken any language he chose. In his humanity, Jesus likely limited himself to the languages common to his culture: Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek. Jesus likely spoke whichever of the three languages was most appropriate to the audience he was addressing. Giving and OfferingYou can’t out give the Lord. Rather than give a certain amount as an obligation, we are urged to share generously of whatever talents, abilities, and wealth God has entrusted to us. For most of us this is an amount far above a mere 10 percent. Deuteronomy 16:17 says, “Each of you must bring a gift in proportion to the way your God has blessed you,” while 2 Corinthians 8:11-12 and 9:6-9 tells us that we reap what we sew, and that God loves a cheerful giver. “Now you should finish what you started. Let the eagerness you showed in the beginning be matched now by your giving. Give in proportion to what you have. Whatever you give is acceptable if you give it eagerly. And give according to what you have, not what you don’t have. Remember this—a farmer who plants only a few seeds will get a small crop. But the one who plants generously will get a generous crop. You must each decide in your heart how much to give. And don’t give reluctantly or in response to pressure. “For God loves a person who gives cheerfully.” And God will generously provide all you need. Then you will always have everything you need, and plenty left over to share with others. As the Scriptures say, ‘They share freely and give generously to the poor. Their good deeds will be remembered forever.’” Hearing GodWe hear God speak to us through a strong sense of clarity that doesn’t originate from ourselves, sometimes showing up through gut feelings, impressions, thoughts, emotions, insights, dreams, visions, and more. I like to call these mile markers, signs that God gives us along the way that let us know we’re on the right path. Exegesis vs. EisegesisExegesis is a legitimate interpretation which "reads out of' the text what the original author or authors meant to convey. Eisegesis, on the other hand, reads into the text what the interpreter wishes to find or thinks he finds there. It expresses the reader's own subjective ideas, not the meaning which is in the text. Death of the Apostles (Tradition)Peter crucified upside down in Rome.James beheaded in Jerusalem. Thomas killed in Southern India.Matthew killed in Ethiopia.John poisoned in Rome, lives, exiled to Patmos.Paul was beheaded in Rome. Human Resurrectons of the BibleElijah: Widow at Zarephath’s son: 1 Kings 17:17-24Elisha: Shunammites son: 2 Kings 4:20-37Elisha: Elisha’s dead body: 2 Kings 13:20-21Jesus: Son of widow of Nain: Luke 7:11-17Jesus: Daughter of Jairus: Luke 8:40-56Jesus: Lazarus: John 11:1-44Peter: Tabitha: Acts 9: 36-43Paul: Eutychus: Acts 20:7-12 Acts of Prayer1. Adoration2. Confession3. Thanksgiving4. Supplication The 14 Tribes of IsraelReuben Mother: LeahSimeon Mother: LeahLevi Mother: LeahJudah Mother: LeahDan Mother: BilahNaphtali Mother: BilahGad Mother: ZilpahAsher Mother: ZilpahIssachar Mother: LeahZebulun Mother: LeahJoseph Mother: RachelBenjamin Mother: Rachel*Dinah Mother: Leah*Ephraim Sons of Joseph*Manasseh Sons of Joseph The 14 ApostlesPeterAndrewJamesJohnMatthewThomas PhillipJudas BartholomewThaddeus James, son of AlphaeusSimon The Zealot*Matthias*Paul The 10 Plagues of Egypt BloodFrogsGnats FliesLivestockBoilsHailLocustDarknessDeath The 10 Commandments1. Do not have any other gods2. Do not create & worship any other gods3. Do not use the Lord's name in vain4. Keep the sabbath day holy5. Honor your mother & father6. Do not kill7 Do not commit adultery8. Do not steal9. Do not lie10. Do not covet The Four Types of Love1. Phileo = Brotherly Love (Friendship)2. Eros = Emotional Love (Romance)3. Storge = Affectionate Love (Family)4. Agape = Divine Love (God) History of Israel's KingsForty-two Kings of Israel; Saul, David, Solomon then thirty-nine after that; nineteen in Israel, all bad; twenty in Judah, only seven good. King Sennacherib of Assyria defeated the northern kingdom in 722 BC. Then Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon defeated Assyria in 612 BC. King Cyrus of Persia then defeated Babylon in 539 BC. List of Herods in the BibleHerod the Great (ruled 37 B.C. to 1 B.C.)Herod Antipas (ruled 1 B.C. to 39 A.D.)Herod Agrippa I (ruled 37 A.D. to 44 A.D.)Herod Agrippa II (ruled 50 A.D. to 93 A.D) List of Roman Emperors in the BibleAugustus (31 BC–14 AD)Tiberius (14–37 AD)Caligula (37–41 AD)Claudius (41–54 AD)Nero (54–68 AD)Galba (68–69 AD)Otho (January–April 69 AD)Aulus Vitellius (July–December 69 AD)Vespasian (69–79 AD)Titus (79–81 AD)Domitian (81–96 AD) Kings of the ExileNebuchadnezzar (Daniel)Belshazzar (Daniel)Cyrus (Daniel, Ezra, Isaiah)Darius (Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah)Xerxes (Esther)Artaxerxes (Nehemiah, Ezra) Bible TranslationsSeptuagint 300 BC to 50 A.D. (Greek translation of Hebrew Bible)Masoretic 600-900 A.D. (Hebrew & Aramaic text of the Hebrew Bible, Tanakh)Dead Sea Scrolls 408 BC to 318 A.D. (Hebrew Texts except Esther) 75 Years that Changed the WorldThe Printing Press 1440Discovery of the New World 1492Protestant Reformation 1517 My Top 30 Biblical PeopleTHE ROCK STARSJesusSatanMosesPaulAbrahamDavidJacobJohnPeterMary THE DIFFERENCE MAKERSAdam & EveCaiaphasDanielJosephNoahJoshuaNehemiahJohn the BaptistBarnabasTimothy HONORABLE MENTIONS Rahab Mary Magdalene LukeBarnabasJudas Jeremiah ElijahElishaEstherIsaiah My Top 10 Books of the Bible1. Romans: The Christian Handbook2. John: Proof of Jesus' Deity 3. Revelation: The Story Ends4. Acts: Beginning of the Church5. Galatians: There is only one Gospel6. Genesis: The Story Begins7. Exodus: Deliverance & Law8. Daniel: Faith & Prophecy 9: Isaiah: Incredible Prophecy10: Psalms: God’s Love & Character Mountaintop ChaptersGenesis 3 The FallGenesis 12 Abraham’s CovenantGenesis 22 Sacrifice of IsaacExodus 3 Burning Bush, I AmExodus 11 Death of FirstbornExodus 12 The Passover & ExodusExodus 20 Giving of the LawDeut. 28 Blessings for ObedienceJoshua 2 Rahab & The SpiesJudges 6-7 Gideon2 Samuel 11 David & Bathsheba1 Kings 18 Elijah & the Prophets of Baal2 Kings 4 Elisha & the WidowJob 38-42 Who are we to question GodPsalm 23 Pouring out David’s Heart about God’s characterPsalm 139 God knows our very fiberEcclesiastes 3 The Seasons of LifeIsaiah 9 Hope in the MessiahIsaiah 53 Off-the-charts-prophecyEzekiel 37 Valley of Dry BonesDaniel 7 The Four BeastsDaniel 9 The Seventy SevensMatthew 24 The Olivet DiscourseMatthew 26-28 The Passion WeekLuke 1-2 The Birth of JesusJohn 3 Everlasting Life, Born AgainJohn 4 Jesus & the Samaritan WomanJohn 9 Jesus & the Blind ManJohn 14 Everlasting Life, Holy SpiritActs 2 The Holy Spirit & The Day of PentecostActs 9 Paul’s ConversionRomans 8 Salvation Defined Romans 12 Living Out Our Faith1 Corinthians 13 Love Defined1 Corinthians 15 Our Spiritual BodiesGalatians 5 Fruits of the Spirit2 Thessalonians The AntichristHebrews 11 Faith Hall of FameJames 2 Faith & Deeds1 Peter 3 The Day of the LordRevelation 13 The AntichristRevelation 19 God Brings It All HomeRevelation 20 Defeat of SatanRevelation 21 New JerusalemRevelation 22 The Tree of Life The Apostle's CreedI believe in God, the Father almighty,creator of heaven and earth.I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spiritand born of the virgin Mary.He suffered under Pontius Pilate,was crucified, died, and was buried.He descended to the dead.On the third day he rose again.He ascended into heaven,and is seated at the right hand of the Father.He will come again to judge the living and the dead.I believe in the Holy Spirit,the holy catholic Church,the communion of the saints,the forgiveness of sins,the resurrection of the body,and the life everlasting. Amen. The Dead Sea ScrollsThe Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts that were found in the Qumran Caves in the Judaean Desert, on the northern shore of the Dead Sea in the West Bank; the last scrolls discovered were found in the Cave of Horror in Israel. The texts have great historical, religious, and linguistic significance because they include the second-oldest known surviving manuscripts of works later included in the Hebrew Bible canon, along with deuterocanonical and extra-biblical manuscripts which preserve evidence of the diversity of religious thought in late Second Temple Judaism. Almost all of the scrolls are held by the state of Israel in the Shrine of the Book on the grounds of the Israel Museum, but ownership of the scrolls is disputed by Jordan and Palestine. Many thousands of written fragments have been discovered in the Dead Sea area. Researchers have assembled a collection of 981 different manuscripts – discovered in 1946/47 and in 1956 – from 11 caves. Archaeologists have long associated the scrolls with the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes. Most of the texts use Hebrew, with some written in Aramaic (for example the Son of God text; in different regional dialects, including Nabataean), and a few in Greek. Discoveries from the Judaean Desert add Latin (from Masada) and Arabic (from Khirbet al-Mird) texts. Most of the texts are written on parchment, some on papyrus, and one on copper. Scholarly consensus dates the scrolls from the last three centuries BCE and the first century CE. Bronze coins found at the same sites form a series beginning with John Hyrcanus (in office 135–104 BCE) and continuing until the period of the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), supporting the radiocarbon and paleographic dating of the scrolls. Two silver scroll-shaped amulets dated c. 600 BCE and containing portions of the Priestly Blessing from the Book of Numbers were excavated in Jerusalem at Ketef Hinnom. Owing to the poor condition of some of the scrolls, scholars have not identified all of their texts. The identified texts fall into three general groups: About 40 percent are copies of texts from the Hebrew Scriptures. Approximately another 30 percent are texts from the Second Temple Period which ultimately were not canonized in the Hebrew Bible, like the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, the Book of Tobit, the Wisdom of Sirach, Psalms 152–155, etc. The remainder (roughly 30 percent) are sectarian manuscripts of previously unknown documents that shed light on the rules and beliefs of a particular group (sect) or groups within greater Judaism, like the Community Rule, the War Scroll, the Pesher on Habakkuk, and The Rule of the Blessing. Maybe So, Maybe Not ProverbThis Chinese proverb reminds me of God's will, because sometimes, regardless of how much we pray, God’s will is different than ours and things don’t always turn out the way we hope they would. But we should never lose faith when this happens, because God is sovereign, and his will is always perfect, no matter how we understand it. Sometimes things are a blessing in disguise, but we don’t immediately recognize it. *Obviously, the proverb is meant to serve as an example and is not Biblical.
A farmer and his son had a beloved stallion who helped the family earn a living. One day, the horse ran away, and their neighbors exclaimed “Your horse ran away, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”
A few days later the horse returned home, leading a few wild mares back to the farm as well. The neighbors shouted out, “Your horse has returned and brought several horses home with him. What great luck!” and the farmer replied “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”
Later that week, the farmer’s son was trying to break one of the mares and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. The villagers cried, “Your son broke his leg, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”
A few weeks later, soldiers from the national army marched through town, recruiting all the able-bodied young men for the army. The farmer’s son wasn’t conscripted because he was still recovering from his injury. His neighbors shouted, “Your boy is spared, what tremendous luck!” The farmer replied “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.” Mother Teresa, "Do it Anyway" Quote“People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.” Bible Nuances & Cross References-David & the Moabites: 1 Samuel 22:3-4, Matthew 1:5, Ruth 1:1-Three Thousand Died – Three Thousand Saved: Exodus 32:28, Acts 2:41-Haman & King Agag, 1 Samuel 15:17-34, Esther 3:1-The Bronze Snake: Numbers 21:4-8, 2 Kings 18:4, John 3:14-15-The talking donkey, Numbers 22:28-Unicorns: Numbers 23:22 and 24:8; Deuteronomy 33:17, Psalms 22: 21 and Psalms 92:10; Job 39:10; Isiah 34:7 *all KJV References-Jesus preaches to spirits in prison, 1 Peter 3:19, 4:6 Between the Testaments, Malachi to MatthewAlexander the Great of Greece conquered King Darius and the Persians in 330 B.C. Because of prophecy in the Book of Daniel there is peace with him and the Jews. Alexander spread Greek culture and influence throughout the middle east and parts of Europe. The New Testament was written in Greek, and heavily influenced by Greek culture. Hebrew scriptures were translated to Greek for the library in Alexandria, Egypt in 284 B.C. Antiochus IV imposed harsh laws on Jews and defiled temple. The Maccabean Revolt in 166 B.C. retakes and cleanses the temple, which is now known as Feast of Hanukah. Palestine is the most fought over country in world history.
Judah was recognized as a free state in 142 B.C. Pharisees "pious ones" and Sadducees "Greek influenced" emerged. Roman General Pompey the Great conquered Jerusalem in 63 B.C. He renamed Judah to Judea and made it a Roman province. Samaria to the north is home to Jewish half-breeds. Pompey and Julius Caesar plunged Rome into civil war in 49 B.C. Antipater is named a procurator of Judea by Caesar. Marc Antony named Herod the Great named client king of the Jews from 40-4 B.C. Herod, who was a descendant of Esau rather than Jacob, greatly expanded upon the second temple for tax purposes, making it sixteen stories tall.
The temple has been partially destroyed and rebuilt about 6 times between two testaments. Synagogues began to spring up. Priests were no longer from Levi. After Herod, Israel was ruled by a series of governors. Herod's son, Herod Antipas, was named tetrarch (ruler of fourth part) over Galilee. Antipas married Herodias, his brother's wife, who ordered the death of John the Baptist. Pilate was appointed governor of Judea in 26 AD shortly before the beginning of Christ’s ministry. Word DefinitionsAbba = Daddy or Papa Abomination = A vile, shameful, detestable actAdvent = ArrivalAmen = It is so or so be itAmillennialism = Christ’s reign during the millennium will be spiritual in nature, not literal.Angel = Messenger Apocalypse = A prophetic revelation Apostasy = To turn back; quit believingApostle = One sent out with a messageChrist = Greek for Anointed One. Hebrew is MessiahChristophany = An appearance of Christ in the Old TestamentDisciple = A follower. Being like Christ. Imitate Jesus' ministryEcumenical = The Universal Christian ChurchEcclesia = The Church, a called-out assembly or congregationEisegesis = Interprets what the reader wants to hear.Exegeses = Critical explanation or interpretation of the Bible, the way the author intended.Futurism = Biblical end times prophecy has yet to be fulfilled. Gospel = Spreading the good newsGrace = God's unmerited favor & divine enablementHallelujah = Hebrew for Praise ye the LordHebrew = One who has crossed overHermeneutics = The method used for interpreting scripture. Immanuel = God is with usIslam = Surrender or submission—submission to the will of God.Justified = To be just or rightLegalism = Having to do certain things & rites to be accepted by GodLicentious = Unrestrained sexLiturgy = Public worshipRapio = Latin for Rapture, snatch upRepent = Turn & change directionsPreterism = Believing that prophecy and the end times of the Bible have already occurred. Saint = Set apart for a special purposeShalom = Jewish for peace; wishing the fullness of God's blessingSanctified = Made holy; consecratedSuper secession = God is done with corporate Israel.Theophany = Appearance of God in physical formWokeism = Behavior, attitude being sensitive to social & political injusticeYeshua = The Hebrew name for Jesus.YHWH (Yaweh) = The Hebrew name for God the father.Zion = The hill in Jerusalem where the Temple was built. Also, known as the new Jerusalem after the return of Christ. Notable Quotes“I believe wholeheartedly in the Bible. I try to live my life like Christ and seek God every day. I would rather live by example than to judge. WWJD!” -Tim Webb
“I know the Bible is true because it was written by 40 different authors, over 1,500 years, telling a consistent story. If it were a lie it wouldn’t have lasted this long.” -Tim Webb
“I’ll tell you what I know, what I don’t know, and what I think. -Tim Webb
“The Lord puts us where he wants us when he wants us there.” -Tim Webb
“We all have our Red Seas to cross. We just have to trust that God will part them for us. I call this the God Factor! It’s when we are humanly out of options and divine intervention is all that we have left.” -Tim Webb
“Drinking isn’t a sin, but drunkenness and lack of self-control is. More often than not, drinking leads to other sins, and that’s the problem!” -Tim Webb
“Parts of the Bible are hard to understand and interpret. But not the Gospel. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is easy to teach and easy to understand. A monkey could understand the Gospel!” -Tim Webb
“The key to life is accepting the fact that we can die at any second. So, the quicker you can turn your thoughts beyond your existence here on Earth and focus on eternity with God, the better off you’ll be. ‘What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Matthew 16:26’” -Tim Webb
“As disciples we’re in the business of saving souls. It’s the most important job in the world! The greatest surgeon can save thousands of lives but eventually those people will still die. What then? That’s why what we do around here is so important. And we can’t let disagreements or inconvenience get in the way of that.” -Tim Webb
“We all have to suffer over something. Nobody gets off scot-free.” -Tim Webb
The church, in general, has become so focused on sin itself that they have forgotten about the sinner. Saving sinners is our mission, and that may require us to get our hands dirty every now and then, Luke 19:10.
This world is like boot camp. We’re born into it, but then seek our way out of it by stepping into eternity with God. -Tim Webb
“I didn’t try to fix Shawna. I just tried to help her when she would let me.” -Evelyn Webb “In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.” -Blaise Pascal
“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by anything created but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.” -Blaise Pascal
“The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.” -Blaise Pascal
God primarily speaks to us through scriptures, and we speak to God through prayer. -Fred Brammel
“The point and focus always needs to be on God and to move people closer to God.” -Fred Brammel
“How do we bring people closer to God in a world where people view the church so negatively?” -Fred Brammel
“We live in a shallow time because we live in a shallow culture.” -Fred Brammel
“Slow down son, you have all of eternity!” -Fred Brammel
“Churches become so much like the world that they fail to distinguish themselves from the world.” -Fred Brammel
“A man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God.” -Fred Brammel “The Bible is right for all people, right for all places, and right for all times.” -Dick McCullum
“I want to deepen my faith and develop a mastery of myself. Sin is always a declaration of autonomy.” -Francis Chan
“As creator of Heaven and Earth, God can do with the Earth as he pleases.” -Francis Chan “I’d be a Christian if it weren’t for the Christians.” -Gandhi
“God doesn’t make good people or bad people. He just makes people. That’s it. Sometimes they do good things, sometimes not so good. But the beauty is you get to wake up and choose every day. He gives us the free will to make that choice.” -Prison Guard, Orange is the New Black
“This was me for a long time. Then, God showed me that it’s not about organized religion and hypocritical clergymen. It’s about a relationship with Jesus Christ. Once I was able to see this, my life changed. Maybe the God you think you know isn’t really what or who God is at all.” -Travis Marcum
What do you need to know? The answers are in your born-again spirit! That is why we must recognize God's voice and not be conned by Satan. To grow spiritually and mature and not stay in a babyhood state of spiritual growth, we must learn to look inside for answers, for that is where they are. To be carnally minded is to look to the flesh, but to be spiritually minded we look to the Holy Spirit in our spirit, and we can know what to do in every circumstance and situation we encounter. Mark 11: “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” That includes the answers! Amen. -Ron Crowe
God tells us repeatedly that he cares more about the heart than outward appearances. Hypocrisy is teaching truths that you’re not applying to yourself. -Bill Creacy
“God either actively causes or passively allows all things in the Universe to happen.” -The Bible Project
“The best translation of the Bible is one that you will read.” -Tim Macky
“Even if it wasn’t fair, even if it wasn’t true, even if it wasn’t right. If it was humbling, it wasn’t all a waste. God will raise you up.” -Beth Moore
“When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Kentucky, because everything there happens 20 years after it happens anywhere else.” -Mark Twain
“My definition of salvation is I have an eternal personal relationship with God, starting now.” -Tim Webb
“Trying to study the end times by reading the King James Version is like trying to run a marathon in cowboy boots. Sure, you can do it. You just won’t get very far!” -Tim Webb
“If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.” -C.S. Lewis "Hope is the only emotion stronger than fear." -President Snow, The Hunger Games "You can not choose the time in which you live, but you can choose to make a difference while you live." -Mike Ritchie "The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himslef for man." -John Scott Random Notes & Terms GOD-Sometimes God chooses to strengthen us rather than remove us from our circumstances. -God regulates our conduct. We keep his law not to be saved but because we are saved. Just as the law needs love to inspire it, love needs the law to inform it. God is both a judge and a father. There is eternal weight to your present choices. -God’s purpose is a lot like the jet stream, constantly moving and fluid.-Dispensations are different time periods of God’s administration with man.-God does impossible math. It’s not my place to feed the 5,000. It’s my place to provide the fish and the loaves of bread.-The Manna Program is God giving us exactly what we need, when we need it.-God’s purpose and timeline become abundantly clear when you read and embrace the Bible.-God doesn’t want perfection; he just wants your heart.-God reveals himself to us three main ways: the Bible, Jesus Christ, and the created order.-Eternity is less about getting us into heaven and more about getting heaven into us. -The misrepresentation of God has been the most damaging thing in the world, usually at the hands of religion, because religion has put us into a system ruled by punishment. -Mosaic law = 613 commands & laws-God can work with us, or despite us. His grace is the source. We are the resource.-It’s not our place to figure out God’s will but rather to accept it. -Science is the how, God is the why. JESUS-Jesus is a true and better Adam and Abraham.-Jesus refused to engage in the cultural wars of his time.-Parables make the subject matter easier to explain for the speaker and easier to understand and remember for the audience. They make you ponder their meaning.-Jesus’ teaching was an upside-down paradox from what the Jews were used to.-When Christ took the throne, he changed it from a throne of justice to a throne of grace.-The law of Christ is to love others as he loved us. THE CHURCH -The Church isn’t perfect because it’s lead by imperfect humans. The church should be about progress, not perfection.-We’ve developed an “us-versus-them” mentality, but our focus should always be on the team. Legalism, hypocrisy, exclusivity, and self-righteousness is eroding the gospel. You can’t hate people and engage them with the gospel at the same time. The American Christian nation is hating on the very people that they’re supposed to be saving. Gospel-centered Christians should not focus on saving America, but rather focus on saving Americans, Matthew 9:12.-The church is where heaven & earth intersect.-The universal church is every believing Christian that will have lived between the Day of Pentecost and The Rapture.-Countless churches are foundering on the shoals of social, political, technological, and generational change.-The Jesus Movement is a continuation of the gospel after Christ left the earth.-It becomes a problem when church tradition is considered equal to scripture. Man-made church rules do not outweigh scripture. -The great commandment of love your neighbor like yourself governs the great commission of delivering the gospel to all of creation. -If God had not permitted the human race to be tested and to fall, the universe would never have had the supreme spectacle of his forgiving love and redemptive grace as revealed in Christ.-The Book of Jonah is a great example of how God’s own children can sometimes be the biggest obstacle to his will and purpose. BELIEVERS-It’s a biblical mandate not to hoard your faith. -Legalistic righteousness is trying to earn your salvation through works and deeds.-The age of accountability: The age when children are old enough to choose or not choose God. Before that, God chooses them on their terms because they are too young to choose him on his terms.-Looking at the serpent on the pole was an act of faith, not reason.-Change is inevitable, but growth is intentional.-We need to practice spiritual prepping.-In the modern world, we’ve become addicts of temporary joy and instant gratification.-May you always be covered by the dust of your rabbi.-We should let God handle the justice.-We are still susceptible to sin as born-again believers because we are still flesh. Our flesh is constantly fighting against the Holy Spirit, or vice versa.-Stop thinking like a human and start thinking like God. -A life with God doesn’t have to be boring!-Heaven is a dimension of existence. Earth or human space is another dimension of existence.-Christian worldview, or a biblical worldview, is looking at and interpreting the world from a biblical point of view.-The base of God’s people are normal people with normal problems. -The prayer of relinquishment is when we align our will with God’s will. -Pride is the complete anti-god state of mind.-God, please, please, make my life an answer to someone else’s prayer.-As Christians our righteous anger at sin must never surpass our compassion for sinners.-Death is the finest graduation day that a believer of Jesus Christ can ever experience.-Be worthy to serve the suffering. -Shame is the bad after taste of sin. -There is a big difference between condoning sin and loving a sinner. REVISED: July 13, 2024