Dates Bible Quotes

Rejection is an opportunity for your selection.

INCEST, n. In many parts of the Bible Belt, the most popular form of dating

TEN BREAKUP COMMANDMENTS: 1. Move out 2. You cannot be friends 3. Do not process this break-up together 4. Do not bad mouth your ex to other people 5. Get rid of anything that reminds of him 6. Start and exercise regimen 7. Pursue an interest you could not have pursued while you and your ex were together 8. Take a vacation 9. Embrace Change 10. Go on a date

When you’re in love with two people, always choose the second. The fact that you are constantly thinking of the second person makes it obvious that the first will never fulfill you, unless the second person did not fulfill you either. At this point, you have to choose the third person because God is getting a little tired of your inattention and indecisiveness, and is planning on sending a fourth person into your life just to slap you around with the bible for not entering the promised land.

The greatest importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls...lies in the discovery of biblical manuscripts dating back to only about 300 years after the close of the Old Testament canon.

In the end, the happiest people are not those who are actively seeking a mate, but those who are actively seeking their Maker.

What if we take away the cool music and the cushioned chairs? What if the screens are gone and the stage is no longer decorated? What if the air conditioning is off and the comforts are removed? Would his Word still be enough for his people to come together? At Brook Hills we decided to try to answer this question. We actually stripped away the entertainment value and invited people to come together simply to study God’s Word for hours at a time. We called it Secret Church. We set a date—one Friday night—when we would gather from six o’clock in the evening until midnight, and for six hours we would do nothing but study the Word and pray. We would interrupt the six-hour Bible study periodically to pray for our brothers and sisters around the world who are forced to gather secretly. We would also pray for ourselves, that we would learn to love the Word as they do.

Lauriat made his first trip in 1873 on one of Cunard’s earliest steamers, the Atlas. His purchases routinely made news. One acquisition, of a Bible dating to 1599, a Geneva, or “Breeches,” Bible—so named because it used the word breeches to describe what Adam and Eve wore—drew nearly a full column in the New York Times.

Are there more hidden messages in the book of Ruth? Of course. The Bible wasn’t written by a human. Welcome to the mind of Yahweh. George Washington Carver said, “All learning is understanding relationships.” Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: a woman’s guide to husband material, Introduction

The only preaching which is up to date for every time is the preaching of this eternity, which is opened to us in the Bible alone – the eternal of holy love, grace and redemption, the eternal and immutable morality of saving grace for our indelible sin.

Satanists hear these, and similar statements, all the time; and they agree wholeheartedly. But, if the world has changed so much, why continue to grasp at the threads of a dying faith? If many religions are denying their own scriptures because they are out of date, and are preaching the philosophies of Satanism, why not call it by it's rightful name- Satanism? Certainly it would be far less hypocritical.

Although there was no reliable way of dating periods, there was no shortage of people willing to try. The most well known early attempt30 was made in 1650, when Archbishop James Ussher of the Church of Ireland made a careful study of the Bible and other historical sources and concluded, in a hefty tome called Annals of the Old Testament, that the Earth had been created at midday on 23 October 4004 BC, an assertion that has amused historians and textbook writers ever since.

Inviting God to write the chapters of our loves story involves work on our part - not just a scattered prayer here and there, not merely a feeble attempt to find some insight by flopping open the Bible every now and then. It's seeking Him on a daily basis, putting Him in first place at all times, discovering His heart.

We have a set of rules for our faith, our sexuality, our marriages, our dating relationships, for choosing a church—nothing is off-limits. We tell ourselves to always do this, and never do that, and everything will turn out perfectly. Worse than that, we back up our rules with Bible verses and tell everyone else to follow them too.

Hey girl, I saw the Apostle Paul and he said for you to greet me with a holy kiss.

When unrequited love dies it gets replaced with complete and utter contempt.

The Bible is God’s book of promises, and, unlike the books of men, it does not change or get out of date.

THE highest of all holidays in the Satanic religion is the date of one's own birth.

Reviewing the 6 meltdowns that had occurred in the 54 trials that had been conducted to date, that source estimated the risk to be one in a hundred million.

Even though the Bible is an ancient document, every person in every situation in every society that’s ever existed can find in this book things that endure forever. Here’s a book that never needs another edition. It never needs to be edited, never has to be updated, is never out of date or obsolete. It speaks to us as pointedly and directly as it ever has to anyone in any century since it was written. It’s so pure that it lasts forever.

The Diamond Cutter is the oldest dated book in the world that was printed, rather than being written out by hand. The British Museum holds a copy that is dated A.D. 868, or about 600 years before the Gutenberg Bible was produced.

It may sound boring or out-of-date, but it just happens to be true: the way to grow in your relationship with Jesus is to pray, read your Bible, and go to a church where you’ll get good preaching, good fellowship, and receive the sacraments.

Jesus was crucified on the fourteenth of Nisan and He was in the grave three days. So He rose on the seventeenth of Nisan. God’s new beginning of the Planet Earth under Noah was on the same date, in advance, as our new beginning in Jesus Christ.

Happiness is part of being whole. It means having an understanding of your identity and purpose, an established feeling of acceptance and value, and a sense of destiny, joy, and peace -- all of which produce overall well-being. It is impossible to be consistently happy without these characteristics. All people need to know who they are, why they are here, and to whom they belong. Having an understanding of who we are in Christ is foundational to the belief system that allows us to possess these qualities. The Bible says in Romans 14:17 that the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. You find in this passage all these characteristics that grow out of being in right relationship with God. His presence is always accompanied by peace and joy; in other words, a sense of total well-being.

The black man has been manipulated by the offspring of the evil bastards who kidnapped and enslaved his forefathers. A black man using the white man’s Bible is the best example of Stockholm syndrome to date. If blacks are in a white man’s heaven, they are janitors and maids.

Human half-truth logic, dates back to Adam and Eve, when he tried to deceive God with a truth, 'we knew we were naked so we hid', leaving God to understand that something was wrong with Adam's logic, because if Adam knew THE TRUTH, he would know that you can't hide from God.

The date of creation was calculated by using the Bible. Bishop Ussher (1581-1656 A.D.) was a highly regarded scholar of his day, and his date of 4004 B.C. is the generally accepted date for creation by most Bible scholars. Appendix A contains a summary of the dates Ussher derived from the Bible.

The essence of this knowledge was the ability to `see all' and to `know all'. Was this not precisely the ability Adam and Eve acquired after eating the forbidden fruit, which grew on the branches of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'? · Finally, just as Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden, so were the four First Men of the Popol Vuh deprived of their ability to `see far'. Thereafter `their eyes were covered and they could only see what was close ...' Both the Popol Vuh and Genesis therefore tell the story of mankind's fall from grace. In both cases, this state of grace was closely associated with knowledge, and the reader is left in no doubt that the knowledge in question was so remarkable that it conferred godlike powers on those who possessed it. The Bible, adopting a dark and muttering tone of voice, calls it `the knowledge of good and evil' and has nothing further to add. The Popol Vuh is much more informative. It tells us that the knowledge of the First Men consisted of the ability to see `things hidden in the distance', that they were astronomers who `examined the four corners, the four points of the arch of the sky', and that they were geographers who succeeded in measuring `the round face of the earth'. 7 Geography is about maps. In Part I we saw evidence suggesting that the cartographers of an as yet unidentified civilization might have mapped the planet with great thoroughness at an early date. Could the Popol Vuh be transmitting some garbled memory of that same civilization when it speaks nostalgically of the First Men and of the miraculous geographical knowledge they possessed? Geography is about maps, and astronomy is about stars. Very often the two disciplines go hand in hand because stars are essential for navigation on long sea-going voyages of discovery (and long sea-going voyages of discovery are essential for the production of accurate maps). Is it accidental that the First Men of the Popol Vuh were remembered not only for studying `the round face of the earth' but for their contemplation of `the arch of heaven'?

The real problem lay with the extensive marginal notes, which offered guidance to the reader as to how the text was to be interpreted and applied. Although the Geneva Bible dated from two generations earlier, its critique of the abuse of monarchical powers might have been written with Charles I's reign in mind.

You see, when you marry someone, they do become “the one.” They’re the one you’ve committed to love for the rest of your life. The Bible even says that the two of you together become one (Mark 10:7–8). And they will still be the one when they gain weight, lose weight, lose their job, get cancer, or make mistakes. It’s not magical, but that’s what makes it wonderful. It means you’re accepted and loved and secure in your relationship despite your flaws. It means you’ll always pursue each other and work to reconcile any disagreements, because that’s what you’ve taken a covenantc vow to do. In other words, it sounds a lot like our relationship with Christ.

We are committed to involving as many people as possible, as young as possible, as soon as possible. Sometimes too young and too soon! But we intentionally err on the side of too fast rather than too slow. We don’t wait until people feel “prepared” or “fully equipped.” Seriously, when is anyone ever completely prepared for ministry? Ministry makes people’s faith bigger. If you want to increase someone’s confidence in God, put him in a ministry position before he feels fully equipped. The messages your environments communicate have the potential to trump your primary message. If you don’t see a mess, if you aren’t bothered by clutter, you need to make sure there is someone around you who does see it and is bothered by it. An uncomfortable or distracting setting can derail ministry before it begins. The sermon begins in the parking lot. Assign responsibility, not tasks. At the end of the day, it’s application that makes all the difference. Truth isn’t helpful if no one understands or remembers it. If you want a church full of biblically educated believers, just teach what the Bible says. If you want to make a difference in your community and possibly the world, give people handles, next steps, and specific applications. Challenge them to do something. As we’ve all seen, it’s not safe to assume that people automatically know what to do with what they’ve been taught. They need specific direction. This is hard. This requires an extra step in preparation. But this is how you grow people. Your current template is perfectly designed to produce the results you are currently getting. We must remove every possible obstacle from the path of the disinterested, suspicious, here-against-my-will, would-rather-be-somewhere-else, unchurched guests. The parking lot, hallways, auditorium, and stage must be obstacle-free zones. As a preacher, it’s my responsibility to offend people with the gospel. That’s one reason we work so hard not to offend them in the parking lot, the hallway, at check-in, or in the early portions of our service. We want people to come back the following week for another round of offending! Present the gospel in uncompromising terms, preach hard against sin, and tackle the most emotionally charged topics in culture, while providing an environment where unchurched people feel comfortable. The approach a church chooses trumps its purpose every time. Nothing says hypocrite faster than Christians expecting non-Christians to behave like Christians when half the Christians don’t act like it half the time. When you give non-Christians an out, they respond by leaning in. Especially if you invite them rather than expect them. There’s a big difference between being expected to do something and being invited to try something. There is an inexorable link between an organization’s vision and its appetite for improvement. Vision exposes what has yet to be accomplished. In this way, vision has the power to create a healthy sense of organizational discontent. A leader who continually keeps the vision out in front of his or her staff creates a thirst for improvement. Vision-centric churches expect change. Change is a means to an end. Change is critical to making what could and should be a reality. Write your vision in ink; everything else should be penciled in. Plans change. Vision remains the same. It is natural to assume that what worked in the past will always work. But, of course, that way of thinking is lethal. And the longer it goes unchallenged, the more difficult it is to identify and eradicate. Every innovation has an expiration date. The primary reason churches cling to outdated models and programs is that they lack leadership.

Most of the people who are trained in Bible scholarship have been educated in theological institutions. Of course, a wide range of students head off to seminaries every year. Many of them have been involved with Bible studies through their school years, even dating back to their childhood Sunday School classes. But they have typically approached the Bible from a devotional point of view, reading it for what it can tell them about what to believe and how to live their lives. As a rule, such students have not been interested in or exposed to what scholars have discovered about the difficulties of the Bible when it is studied from a more academic, historical perspective.

So far as we know, Jesus did not write anything, nor did anyone who had personal knowledge of him. There is no archaeological evidence of his existence. There are no contemporaneous accounts of his life or death: no eyewitness accounts, nor any other kind of first-hand record. All the accounts of Jesus come from decades or centuries later; the gospels themselves all come from later times, though they may contain earlier sources or oral traditions. The earliest writings that survive are the letters of Paul of Tarsus, written 20-30 years after the dates given for Jesus's death. Paul was not a companion of Jesus, nor does he ever claim to have seen Jesus before his death.

Many of the most obvious conflicts between science and religion involve timing issues—the dating of events in Earth’s history. Bible chronologies typically list Adam and Eve at about 4,000 BC. In contrast, science textbooks can hardly be found that do not refer to human or “pre-human” remains 10,000 to millions of years old. Why the discrepancy?

By the way, there is no such thing as “Date Rape”. This is what, a softer, less violent version of rape? Rape 'lite'? Because it’s done to a passed out drunken co-ed in a dorm room does NOT make it any less of a crime. Rape is Rape, no matter what you call it. Treat it as the crime that it is. Call the cops. I’ll give you the number. It’s 9-1-1.

[..] as midnight inevitably came and went without the horsemen of the apocalypse making an appearance, Clara surprised herself by falling into a melancholy. For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling sea-water to retrieve the salt something is gained but something is lost. Though her friends Merlin, Wan-Si, et al. clapped her on the back and congratulated her for exorcizing those fervid dreams of perdition and redemption, Clara quietly mourned the warmer touch she had waited for these nineteen years, the all-enveloping bear hug of the Saviour, the One who was Alpha and Omega, both the beginning and the end; the man who was meant to take her away from all this, from the listless reality of life in a ground-floor flat in Lambeth. What now for Clara? Ryan would find another fad; Darcus need only turn to the other channel; for Hortense another date would of course materialize, along with more leaflets, ever more faith. But Clara was not like Hortense. Yet a residue, left over from the evaporation of Clara's faith, remained. She still wished for a saviour. She still wished for a man to whisk her away, to choose her above others so that she might Walk in white with Him: for [she] was worthy. Revelation 3:4.

Inexplicably, Newton’s prediction lines up with the end of the biblical Shemitah in September 2015 and the beginning of the “Super-Shemitah” on September 23, 2015—Yom Kippur. If one takes the Newton’s riddle calculation—beginning June 7, 1967, with the restoration of Jerusalem—and adds seven, seven-year Shemitah cycles in biblical or prophetic years of 360 days, the date comes out to September 23, 2015—the beginning of the “Super-Shemitah” of 2015–16.

I think of Christians who, having been raised to read the Genesis creation story as literal science and history, leave for college, watch the History Channel, or log onto the internet, and find out that fossils and radiometric dating are in fact not hoaxes. That’s how nice Christian college freshmen become atheists by Christmas break. If your faith can unravel that quickly, it’s enough to make you question whether your faith is worth the effort at all.

Can't we look to Mary Magdalene as simply an early church leader whose rightful place next to Christ should have been acknowledged? There are no Scriptures to place her anywhere but right next to Jesus. Even a cursory reading of the Bible shows her to be a godly woman responding wholeheartedly to a message that must have appealed to her greatly. But the fastest way to rob a woman of her power is to make her a sexual suspect. It certainly has worked all these years for MM.

If something was mentioned in Sanskrit texts that somehow did not fit into the Bible, it was labeled as mythology. Whatever could be made to 'fit', became the history of the Indian peoples according to Jones. In this manner, the Vedic and Puranic texts were digested into Biblical chronology. This Bible-centric framework of timescales is what led Max Müller many decades later to establish his dates for the socalled Aryan invasion of India, which influences scholars to this day.

The Dangers of Dating There is a new phenomenon that has hit our society. It is called dating, and everyone is doing it. Dating has turned into a huge money-maker. Now, we have television shows dedicated to dating. We have internet dating sites, speed dating, and music that encourages it all over the world. Unfortunately, the Bible doesn’t say anything about dating. I realize there are many happily married couples whose marriages are a result of dating, but I want you to understand that there is great danger in dating. I’m not referring to courting or a betrothal. I’m referring to worldly dating, which consists of premarital sex, deep emotional connections, a great deal of kissing, and heavy petting, etc. This system of dating is recreational in nature, and it has no real purpose besides fulfilling lust, loneliness, and perversion. Never forget that it’s satan who convinces us to fill a legitimate need, illegitimately. Nonetheless, let’s examine some of these dangers now.

192,000 years, my gallant Conseil, which significantly extends the biblical Days of Creation. What’s more, the formation of coal—in other words, the petrification of forests swallowed by floods—and the cooling of basaltic rocks likewise call for a much longer period of time. I might add that those ‘days’ in the Bible must represent whole epochs and not literally the lapse of time between two sunrises, because according to the Bible itself, the sun doesn’t date from the first day of Creation.

IN THE HISTORY of the formation of the New Testament canon, locating canon lists produced by the early church is quite important. The reason for this is that these lists are seen to testify to a conscious desire on the part of the leaders of the early church to form and close a New Testament canon. The earlier the date of a list, therefore, the better evidence one has of an earlier canon consciousness. It is well known, however, that these kinds of lists belong almost exclusively to the fourth century.

There’s a beautiful poem at the beginning of a collection of books we call the Bible. In that poem, it is written: "Then God said, ‘Let us make man.’” God then recognized that it was not good for man to be alone. We can all agree on that one, I think. Loneliness is one of the most excruciating pains that the human heart, or any heart, has to go through. What did God do about it? What was His remedy? What was His answer? He created marriage. He didn’t create dating, He didn’t create courting - He created marriage.

In an attempt to help me move on from my failed marriage, my mom set me up with Jesus Freak. In fact, the stoner hadn’t even finished moving out when she told me not to worry, because she already had someone better lined up for me. I was just lonely and desperate enough to endure a four-month celibate long distance relationship with a guy who read 15 chapters of the Bible and prayed for two hours every day and expected me to follow suit. He wanted to give our hypothetical children Bible names and for us to move to Korea to become missionaries.

If a man has been married twice and had been in several relationships that ended badly, you need to ask why before you date him. So many woman are gullible and think the reason those relationships didn't work out was because the women he was involved with were insecure. All abusers blame their breakups on the woman. Don't be so egotistical that you think you have the magical assets to keep this guy in love with you. A smart woman doesn't date a man with a long history of bad relationships. She finds out the other side of the story from the women that came before her. She recognizes there is a pattern and something is not right.

Every man is a god if he chooses to recognize himself as one. So, the Satanist celebrates his own birthday as the most important holiday of the year. After all, aren't you happier about the fact that you were born than you are about the birth of someone you have never even met? Or, for that matter, aside from religious holidays, why pay higher tribute to the birthday of a president or to a date in history than we do the day we were brought into this greatest of all worlds? Despite the fact that some of us may not have been wanted, or at least were not particularly planned, we're glad, even if no one else is, that we're here! You should give yourself a pat on the back, buy yourself whatever you want, treat yourself like the king (or god) that you are, and generally celebrate your birthday with as much pomp and ceremony as possible.

The 'astronomical chronology' is a framework of the scientific structure of Egyptian history and, consequently, of the history of the ancient world. . . . The specialists in astronomical chronology made their calculations and announced their expert results. The specialists in pottery took the results of the specialists in Sothic computation as a firm base on which to build. Specialists in the history of religion, philology, and history in general followed. Difficulties were swept away. . . .The readers of cuneiform borrow dates from the readers of hieroglyphics; the Bible exegetes from the archaeologist; the historians from all of them. Thus there came into existence an elaborate entrenched system that bears very little resemblance to the real past. . . . The Sothic scheme of ancient chronology of the world is built on this chronology.

The Bible A young man from a wealthy family was about to graduate from high school. It was the custom in that affluent neighborhood for the parents to give the graduate an automobile. Bill and his father had spent months looking at cars, and the week before graduation they found the perfect car. Bill was certain that the car would be his on graduation night. Imagine his disappointment when, on the eve of his graduation, Bill’s father handed him a gift-wrapped Bible! Bill was so angry, he threw the Bible down and stormed out of the house. He and his father never saw each other again. It was the news of his father’s death that brought Bill home again. As he sat one night, going through his father’s possessions that he was to inherit, he came across the Bible his father had given him. He brushed away the dust and opened it to find a cashier’s check, dated the day of his graduation, in the exact amount of the car they had chosen. Beckah Fink

Paul also never quotes from Jesus's purported sermons and speeches, parables and prayers, nor does he mention Jesus's supernatural birth or any of his alleged wonders and miracles, all of which one would presume would be very important to his followers, had such exploits and sayings been known prior to the apostles purported time. Turning to the canonical gospels themselves, which in their present form do not appear in the historical record until sometime between 170-180 CE, their pretended authors, the apostles, give sparse histories and genealogies of Jesus that contradict each other and themselves in numerous places. The birth date of Jesus is depicted as having taken place at different times. His birth and childhood are not mentioned in 'Mark,' and although he is claimed in 'Matthew' and 'Luke' to have been 'born of a virgin,' his lineage is traced to the House of David through Joseph, so that he may 'fulfill prophecy.' Christ is said in the first three (Synoptic) gospels to have taught for one year before he died, while in 'John' the number is around three years. 'Matthew' relates that Jesus delivered 'The Sermon on the Mount' before 'the multitudes,' while 'Luke' says it was a private talk given only to the disciples. The accounts of his Passion and Resurrection differ utterly from each other, and no one states how old he was when he died. In addition, in the canonical gospels, Jesus himself makes many illogical contradictions concerning some of his most important teachings.

MT: The arrival of Christ disturbs the sacrificial order, the cycle of little false periods of temporary peace following sacrifices? RG: The story of the “demons of Gerasa” in the synoptic Gospels, and notably in Mark, shows this well. To free himself from the crowd that surrounds him, Christ gets on a boat, crosses Lake Tiberias, and comes to shore in non-Jewish territory, in the land of the Gerasenes. It's the only time the Gospels venture among a people who don't read the Bible or acknowledge Mosaic law. As Jesus is getting off the boat, a possessed man blocks his way, like the Sphinx blocking Oedipus. “The man lived in the tombs and no one could secure him anymore, even with a chain. All night and all day, among the tombs and in the mountains, he would howl and gash himself with stones.” Christ asks him his name, and he replies: “My name is Legion, for there are many of us.” The man then asks, or rather the demons who speak through him ask Christ not to send them out of the area—a telling detail—and to let them enter a herd of swine that happen to be passing by. And the swine hurl themselves off the edge of the cliff into the lake. It's not the victim who throws himself off the cliff, it's the crowd. The expulsion of the violent crowd is substituted for the expulsion of the single victim. The possessed man is healed and wants to follow Christ, but Christ tells him to stay put. And the Gerasenes come en masse to beg Jesus to leave immediately. They're pagans who function thanks to their expelled victims, and Christ is subverting their system, spreading confusion that recalls the unrest in today's world. They're basically telling him: “We'd rather continue with our exorcists, because you, you're obviously a true revolutionary. Instead of reorganizing the demoniac, rearranging it a bit, like a psychoanalyst, you do away with it entirely. If you stayed, you would deprive us of the sacrificial crutches that make it possible for us to get around.” That's when Jesus says to the man he's just liberated from his demons: “You're going to explain it to them.” It's actually quite a bit like the conversion of Paul. Who's to say that historical Christianity isn't a system that, for a long time, has tempered the message and made it possible to wait for two thousand years? Of course this text is dated because of its primitive demonological framework, but it contains the capital idea that, in the sacrificial universe that is the norm for mankind, Christ always comes too early. More precisely, Christ must come when it's time, and not before. In Cana he says: “My hour has not come yet.” This theme is linked to the sacrificial crisis: Christ intervenes at the moment the sacrificial system is complete. This possessed man who keeps gashing himself with stones, as Jean Starobinski has revealed, is a victim of “auto-lapidation.” It's the crowd's role to throw stones. So, it's the demons of the crowd that are in him. That's why he's called Legion—in a way he's the embodiment of the crowd. It's the crowd that comes out of him and goes and throws itself off of the cliff. We're witnessing the birth of an individual capable of escaping the fatal destiny of collective violence. MT

In the Old Testament, the Egyptian ruler during the period of Prophet Ibrahim (as) and Prophet Yusuf (as) are named "Pharaoh." However, this title was actually employed after the eras in which these two prophets lived. While addressing the Egyptian ruler at the time of Prophet Yusuf (as), the word "Al-Malik" in Arabic is used in the Qur'an: It refers to a ruler, king or sultan: The King said, ‘Bring him to me straight away!'… (Qur'an, 12:50) The ruler of Egypt in the time of Prophet Musa (as) is referred to as "Pharaoh." This distinction in the Qur'an is not made in the Old and New Testaments nor by Jewish historians. In the Bible, the word "Pharaoh" is used, in every reference to an Egyptian monarch. On the other hand, the Qur'an is far more concise and accurate in the terminology it employs. The use of the word "Pharaoh" in Egyptian history belongs only to the late period. This particular title began to be employed in the 14th century B.C., during the reign of Amenhotep IV. Prophet Yusuf (as) lived at least 200 years before that time. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says that the word "Pharaoh" was a title of respect used from the New Kingdom (beginning with the 18th dynasty; B.C. 1539-1292) until the 22nd dynasty (B.C. 945-730), after which this term of address became the title of the king. Further information on this Allah's Miracles in the Qur'an 291 subject comes from the Academic American Encyclopaedia, which states that the title of Pharaoh began to be used in the New Kingdom. As we have seen, the use of the word "Pharaoh" dates from a specific period in history. For that reason, the fact that the Qur'an distinguishes between the different Egyptian titles in different Egyptian eras is yet another proof that the Qur'an is Allah's word.

Then one evening he reached the last chapter, and then the last page, the last verse. And there it was! That unforgivable and unfathomable misprint that had caused the owner of the books to order them to be pulped. Now Bosse handed a copy to each of them sitting round the table, and they thumbed through to the very last verse, and one by one burst out laughing. Bosse was happy enough to find the misprint. He had no interest in finding out how it got there. He had satisfied his curiosity, and in the process had read his first book since his schooldays, and even got a bit religious while he was at it. Not that Bosse allowed God to have any opinion about Bellringer Farm’s business enterprise, nor did he allow the Lord to be present when he filed his tax return, but – in other respects – Bosse now placed his life in the hands of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And surely none of them would worry about the fact that he set up his stall at markets on Saturdays and sold bibles with a tiny misprint in them? (‘Only ninety-nine crowns each! Jesus! What a bargain!’) But if Bosse had cared, and if, against all odds, he had managed to get to the bottom of it, then after what he had told his friends, he would have continued: A typesetter in a Rotterdam suburb had been through a personal crisis. Several years earlier, he had been recruited by Jehovah’s Witnesses but they had thrown him out when he discovered, and questioned rather too loudly, the fact that the congregation had predicted the return of Jesus on no less than fourteen occasions between 1799 and 1980 – and sensationally managed to get it wrong all fourteen times. Upon which, the typesetter had joined the Pentecostal Church; he liked their teachings about the Last Judgment, he could embrace the idea of God’s final victory over evil, the return of Jesus (without their actually naming a date) and how most of the people from the typesetter’s childhood including his own father, would burn in hell. But this new congregation sent him packing too. A whole month’s collections had gone astray while in the care of the typesetter. He had sworn by all that was holy that the disappearance had nothing to do with him. Besides, shouldn’t Christians forgive? And what choice did he have when his car broke down and he needed a new one to keep his job? As bitter as bile, the typesetter started the layout for that day’s jobs, which ironically happened to consist of printing two thousand bibles! And besides, it was an order from Sweden where as far as the typesetter knew, his father still lived after having abandoned his family when the typesetter was six years old. With tears in his eyes, the typesetter set the text of chapter upon chapter. When he came to the very last chapter – the Book of Revelation – he just lost it. How could Jesus ever want to come back to Earth? Here where Evil had once and for all conquered Good, so what was the point of anything? And the Bible… It was just a joke! So it came about that the typesetter with the shattered nerves made a little addition to the very last verse in the very last chapter in the Swedish bible that was just about to be printed. The typesetter didn’t remember much of his father’s tongue, but he could at least recall a nursery rhyme that was well suited in the context. Thus the bible’s last two verses plus the typesetter’s extra verse were printed as: 20. He who testifies to these things says, Surely I am coming quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!21. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.22. And they all lived happily ever after.

Here’s some startup pedagogy for you: When confronted with any startup idea, ask yourself one simple question: How many miracles have to happen for this to succeed? If the answer is zero, you’re not looking at a startup, you’re just dealing with a regular business like a laundry or a trucking business. All you need is capital and minimal execution, and assuming a two-way market, you’ll make some profit. To be a startup, miracles need to happen. But a precise number of miracles. Most successful startups depend on one miracle only. For Airbnb, it was getting people to let strangers into their spare bedrooms and weekend cottages. This was a user-behavior miracle. For Google, it was creating an exponentially better search service than anything that had existed to date. This was a technical miracle. For Uber or Instacart, it was getting people to book and pay for real-world services via websites or phones. This was a consumer-workflow miracle. For Slack, it was getting people to work like they formerly chatted with their girlfriends. This is a business-workflow miracle. For the makers of most consumer apps (e.g., Instagram), the miracle was quite simple: getting users to use your app, and then to realize the financial value of your particular twist on a human brain interacting with keyboard or touchscreen. That was Facebook’s miracle, getting every college student in America to use its platform during its early years. While there was much technical know-how required in scaling it—and had they fucked that up it would have killed them—that’s not why it succeeded. The uniqueness and complete fickleness of such a miracle are what make investing in consumer-facing apps such a lottery. It really is a user-growth roulette wheel with razor-thin odds. The classic sign of a shitty startup idea is that it requires at least two (or more!) miracles to succeed. This was what was wrong with ours. We had a Bible’s worth of miracles to perform:

1. Commit to take the lead in the godliness of your relationship. Read the Bible's passages about how men and women and all Christians should treat one another. Especially take the lead in establishing boundaries that will keep you from sexual sin. Assume that this woman is going to be your wife or the wife of some other Christian brother (who might be currently dating your future wife). Treat her as the precious sister in Christ that she is. 2. Decide in advance whether or not you are willing to love a woman in the self-sacrificing, nurturing way the Bible describes. Until you are ready to faithfully hold a woman's heart in your hand, do not enter into a dating relationship. 3. Realizing that God wants you to learn to put her interests ahead of your own, ask her the kinds of things she likes to do and be eager to spend time doing them. 4. Be willing to talk about the relationship. Initiate honest dialogue about how you feel. Do not resent her desire to have the relationship defined, but protect her heart by making your level of commitment clear and thereby making clear the appropriate kind of intimacy to go along with that commitment. 5. Pay attention to her heart. Ask her about her burdens and cares. Seek ways to minister to her and to make her cares your own. Instead of being critical of her, speak words of encouragement and support. 6. Do not be shy in ministering the Word of God to her. Do not preach, but exhort her and call to mind God's promises and God's love for her in Jesus Christ. Make it a primary goal that she will be spiritually stronger by having been in a relationship with you. 7. If something about her bothers you, think about how you can encourage her in that area. Realize that none of us is without flaws. Pray for her weakness and try to strengthen her in that area. If your concerns are enough to deter you from wanting to marry her, let her know in a forthright manner while being as considerate as possible.

When a Christian is delivered from demons or curses, it does not mean that those spirits had been living in his spirit. The Holy Spirit occupies the spirit of the believer, but demons can harass, torment, and oppress the soul of the believer. The Holy Spirit possesses the believer, meaning He owns him. Demonic spirits seek to oppress the Christian by controlling a part of his life. Being tormented by demons does not mean that you are not saved. It does not mean that those spirits own you. Derek Prince, who is a powerful influence on my life in the area of deliverance, shared in one of his talks that the Greek word New Testament writers used for demonic possession is “demonized.” He would explain that being demonized does not mean ownership, but partial control. It means that demons seek to control one area of your life. They cannot have possession or ownership of your spirit. How do you know which area demons control? Usually, it is in the areas where you are not in control because some demon is dominating that area of your soul. When you get delivered, you get the control back. During deliverance, that part of your soul gets released. Maybe you are thinking, darkness and light cannot abide together. It does not say that in the Bible. Some think that the Holy Spirit and an evil spirit cannot dwell in the same vessel. Really? Says who? The Scripture that we get this from says, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14). This verse does not say light and darkness cannot coexist. It says they should not exist together. Paul is telling us the way things should be, not what they cannot be. If you think Christians cannot be demonized, let me tell you, I have heard stories of when both light and darkness operated in the same person. For some examples, there was a fallen pastor who once preached holiness while frequently visiting prostitutes; a newly saved believer who habitually returned to drug abuse and suicidal attempts of self-destruction; a Christian leader who influenced many for the Gospel’s sake but ended up in jail for fraud and thievery.  Paul stated in 2 Corinthians 6:14, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers,” and then went on talking about how darkness and light should not have any fellowship together. If darkness and light cannot coexist, then Christians cannot date unbelievers. We know that this happens all of the time. It should not, but it does. The same thing happens with demonized Christians. They should not be under this demonic influence, but nowhere in the Bible does it say that this is not possible.

At least 200 dates have been suggested, varying from 3483 to 6934 years B.C., all based on the supposition that the Bible enables us to settle the point.  But it does nothing of the sort.  The literal interpretation has now been entirely abandoned; and the world is admitted to be of immense antiquity.  On such questions we have no Biblical evidence, and the Catholic is quite free to follow the teaching of science.

We are facing a war every day. The enemy of our souls, Satan, desires to steal our faith. He couldn’t care less if we read and memorize the whole Bible, go to church every week, and help the poor. If the enemy can discourage and prevent you from praying and believing God, he has you conquered. Discouragement, as well as lack of prayer and joy, will eventually devastate your belief system and your marriage.

sn Sarah will have a son. The passage brings God’s promise into clear focus. As long as it was a promise for the future, it really could be believed without much involvement. But now, when it seemed so impossible from the human standpoint, when the LORD fixed an exact date for the birth of the child, the promise became rather overwhelming to Abraham and Sarah. But then this was the LORD of creation, the one they had come to trust. The point of these narratives is that the creation of Abraham’s offspring, which eventually became Israel, is no less a miraculous work of creation than the creation of the world itself.

himself. Out in the hallway, waiting for the john, Muriel asked Tommy Molto what he thought. Molto picked with a fingernail at spots of tomato sauce on his shirt and tie, and said he didn’t know what to think. Muriel wasn’t sure either. When they returned, Anne-Marie had slid her chair beside Collins’s and was holding his free hand. The other was still gripping his Bible. After a minute or two of fiddling with the tape recorders to be sure they were running, Muriel gave the date and time, then asked Collins what happened when they left Paradise. “I followed Erno back to his house, and sat with him in his car. He’d been through some changes that night. We both had. At Paradise, he’d been outta-his-mind angry, then all blown away and subdued. Now he was just flat-out scared, trying to think out every angle not to get caught. He had one lecture after another for me. Make sure and mention to some folks how him and me went out for a pop last night. Don’t ever get myself inebriated and start braggin about all this to my homes or some lady I was after. The big thing on his mind, though, was how to get rid of that apron full of stuff in his trunk — the gun, the wallets, the jewelry, it was all in there. It was past three by now

The Historical Setting of Genesis Mesopotamia: Sumer Through Old Babylonia Sumerians. It is not possible at this time to put Ge 1–11 into a specific place in the historical record. Our history of the ancient Near East begins in earnest after writing has been invented, and the earliest civilization known to us in the historical record is that of the Sumerians. This culture dominated southern Mesopotamia for over 500 years during the first half of the third millennium BC (2900–2350 BC), known as the Early Dynastic Period. The Sumerians have become known through the excavation of several of their principal cities, which include Eridu, Uruk and Ur. The Sumerians are credited with many of the important developments in civilization, including the foundations of mathematics, astronomy, law and medicine. Urbanization is also first witnessed among the Sumerians. By the time of Abraham, the Sumerians no longer dominate the ancient Near East politically, but their culture continues to influence the region. Other cultures replace them in the political arena but benefit from the advances they made. Dynasty of Akkad. In the middle of the twenty-fourth century BC, the Sumerian culture was overrun by the formation of an empire under the kingship of Sargon I, who established his capital at Akkad. He ruled all of southern Mesopotamia and ranged eastward into Elam and northwest to the Mediterranean on campaigns of a military and economic nature. The empire lasted for almost 150 years before being apparently overthrown by the Gutians (a barbaric people from the Zagros Mountains east of the Tigris), though other factors, including internal dissent, may have contributed to the downfall. Ur III. Of the next century little is known as more than 20 Gutian kings succeeded one another. Just before 2100 BC, the city of Ur took control of southern Mesopotamia under the kingship of Ur-Nammu, and for the next century there was a Sumerian renaissance in what has been called the Ur III period. It is difficult to ascertain the limits of territorial control of the Ur III kings, though the territory does not seem to have been as extensive as that of the dynasty of Akkad. Under Ur-Nammu’s son Shulgi, the region enjoyed almost a half century of peace. Decline and fall came late in the twenty-first century BC through the infiltration of the Amorites and the increased aggression of the Elamites to the east. The Elamites finally overthrew the city. It is against this backdrop of history that the OT patriarchs emerge. Some have pictured Abraham as leaving the sophisticated Ur that was the center of the powerful Ur III period to settle in the unknown wilderness of Canaan, but that involves both chronological and geographic speculation. By the highest chronology (i.e., the earliest dates attributed to him), Abraham probably would have traveled from Ur to Harran during the reign of Ur-Nammu, but many scholars are inclined to place Abraham in the later Isin-Larsa period or even the Old Babylonian period. From a geographic standpoint it is difficult to be sure that the Ur mentioned in the Bible is the famous city in southern Mesopotamia (see note on 11:28). All this makes it impossible to give a precise background of Abraham. The Ur III period ended in southern Mesopotamia as the last king of Ur, Ibbi-Sin, lost the support of one city after another and was finally overthrown by the Elamites, who lived just east of the Tigris. In the ensuing two centuries (c. 2000–1800 BC), power was again returned to city-states that controlled more local areas. Isin, Larsa, Eshnunna, Lagash, Mari, Assur and Babylon all served as major political centers.

Old Babylonian Period. Thanks substantially to the royal archives from the town of Mari, the eighteenth century BC has become thoroughly documented. As the century opened there was an uneasy balance of power among four cities: Larsa ruled by Rim-Sin, Mari ruled by Yahdun-Lim (and later, Zimri-Lim), Assur ruled by Shamshi-Adad I, and Babylon ruled by Hammurapi. Through a generation of political intrigue and diplomatic strategy, Hammurapi eventually emerged to establish the prominence of the first dynasty of Babylon. The Old Babylonian period covered the time from the fall of the Ur III dynasty (c. 2000 BC) to the fall of the first dynasty of Babylon (just after 1600 BC). This is the period during which most of the narratives in Ge 12–50 occur. The rulers of the first dynasty of Babylon were Amorites. The Amorites had been coming into Mesopotamia as early as the Ur III period, at first being fought as enemies, then gradually taking their place within the society of the Near East. With the accession of Hammurapi to the throne, they reached the height of success. Despite his impressive military accomplishments, Hammurapi is most widely known today for his collection of laws. The first dynasty of Babylon extends for more than a century beyond the time of Hammurapi, though decline began soon after his death and continued unabated, culminating in the Hittite sack of Babylon in 1595 BC. This was nothing more than an incursion on the part of the Hittites, but it dealt the final blow to the Amorite dynasty, opening the doors of power for another group, the Kassites. Eras of Mesopotamian History (Round Dates) Early Dynastic Period 2900–2350 BC Dynasty of Akkad 2350–2200 BC Ur III Empire 2100–2000 BC Old Babylonian Period 2000–1600 BC Go to Chart Index Eras of Egyptian History (Round Dates) Old Kingdom 3100–2200 BC First Intermediate Period 2200–2050 BC Middle Kingdom 2050–1720 BC Second Intermediate Period 1720–1550 BC Hyksos 1650–1550 BC Go to Chart Index Palestine: Middle Bronze Age Abraham entered the Palestine region during the Middle Bronze Age (2200–1550 BC), which was dominated by scattered city-states, much as Mesopotamia had been, though Palestine was not as densely populated or as extensively urbanized as Mesopotamia. The period began about the time of the fall of the dynasty of Akkad in Mesopotamia (c. 2200 BC) and extended until about 1500 BC (plus or minus 50 years, depending on the theories followed). In Syria there were power centers at Yamhad, Qatna, Alalakh and Mari, and the coastal centers of Ugarit and Byblos seemed to be already thriving. In Palestine only Hazor is mentioned in prominence. Contemporary records from Palestine are scarce, though the Egyptian Story of Sinuhe has Middle Bronze Age Palestine as a backdrop and therefore offers general information. Lists of cities in Palestine are also given in the Egyptian texts. Most are otherwise unknown, though Jerusalem and Shechem are mentioned. As the period progresses there is more and more contact with Egypt and extensive caravan travel between Egypt and Palestine.

The wrap dress is a very flattering style on any body type. You just need to make sure you fit the shoulders, and the rest of the dress takes care of itself. It makes women look feminine, pulled together, and at ease in the world. I encourage all women who are trying to update their work wardrobes to invest in a couple of flattering wrap dresses. It’s easy, one-step-dressing: it travels well, and it’s easy to care for. With a wrap dress and heels – a complete outfit that can fit in the average purse – you’re all set for a business meeting or dinner date.

Palm branches were symbolic of national hope for Jerusalem. The date palm was abundant in Israel and one of the staple products of the economy. Soon after this time, date palms were portrayed on coins stamped by the rebels against Rome. In the early spring in Jerusalem, the branches of palm trees were still small. Cloaks were used to spread in front of a king as early as 2 Kings 9:13.

Alec grinned. "You will get used to it." I snorted. "I don't think a few days are enough for me to get used to how repulsive you can be." "A few days? Kitten, there is no time frame on our relationship." I raised my eyebrows. "Wait a second, you're sayin' if we're still civil after this trip that you still want to date me?" Alec shrugged. "Why not? I like you, and I'm finding being in a relationship fun. I don't know what Dominic and Ryder complain about all the time." I felt a huge smile take over face. "They have both got some mileage in with their girls, give us a few days and you will probably want to ring my neck." Alec snorted. "I'm remembering Dominic's Man Bible here so I'm just going to nod my head and agree with you." I reached over and patted his head. "Good boy.

Korie: When I was a student at Ouachita Christian School, my senior-year Bible teacher, David Matthews, adopted a little five-year-old boy. In class that year, we talked a lot about how important it was for Christians families to adopt and that children should never be left without a home and loving parents. The idea always stuck with me. James 1:27 says: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” When we were dating, like most couples, Willie and I talked about how many kids we wanted to have. I told Willie about my desire to adopt and he was all for it. We both grew up with big families so we decided we wanted to have four kids, with at least one of them through adoption. We never knew how that would happen. We didn’t know if we would adopt a boy or a girl or a newborn baby or older child. We decided we would remain open, and if God wanted it to happen, it would happen. There were several families at White’s Ferry Road Church that adopted children, including one couple that had adopted biracial twins. Their lawyer came to them and asked if they were interested in adopting another biracial child who was about to be born. They told her they couldn’t do it at the time, but they remembered that we had expressed an interest in adopting a child. Their lawyer called Willie and me and told us how difficult it was to place biracial children in homes in the South. We were shocked. It was the twenty-first century. We committed to being a part of changing that in our society. Skin color should not make a difference.

So time continued on slowly and painfully. Perhaps the old analogy of being a record stuck on repeat had become too dated; I felt like I’d just gotten an IPod and only could afford one song so that one song played over and over again until I felt as if it was just part of the constant monotony.

Finding someone is easy, but finding the RIGHT someone the RIGHT way is not.

Satan’s goal is to divide and destroy (John 10:10): he tempted Adam and Eve to sin, which divided them and the rest of humanity from God. Since then, he has been trying to divide us through lifestyle choices— ways to eat, work out, dress, date, and even worship. In contrast, the only reason God divides is to further unite us: he divided the curtain that separated us from himself (Ephesians 2:14), and separates our sins from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12).

Carbon dating revealed that these seeds were two thousand years old! Dr. Sarah Sallon, the director of the Borick Natural Medicine Research Center at Hadassah University Hospital, and Dr. Elaine Solowey, who runs the Center for Sustainable Agriculture at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura, got permission to try to germinate a few of them. One of the seeds grew—a male whom she called Methuselah after the character in the Bible, Noah’s grandfather, who was said to have lived to be nine hundred and sixty-nine years old.

The ‘Gezer Calendar’: inscribed on limestone, this is possibly the oldest known piece of Hebrew writing, dating from about the 10th century BCE.

Unlike joy, anger, and sorrow, which are relatively simple and clear emotions, subtle emotions that cannot be defined. There have been numerous attempts to define love, such as "sad compassion," "sadness," and "something that can give anything," but none of them fit perfectly. Therefore, this emotion has dominated much of human art, and is mainly sublimated into singing. It is the most common but complex of human emotions, and having this feeling for someone itself makes me so happy just to think good about the object, and on the contrary, I feel very sad when the object leaves. If this emotion goes too far and flows in the wrong direction, it can ruin people. As a result, love has a strange power to laugh and make one cry. In addition, people tend to think of themselves as a good person with a lot of love because they are drunk on the feelings they feel toward their favorite object they like. In addition, it is one of the most complex human emotions because it has a singularity that can be fused with joy and sorrow, and because it can be derived from love, and love can be derived from joy and sorrow. In particular, it seems to be the opposite of hate (hate), but it has the same shape as both sides of a coin, so hate is often derived from love and vice versa.[13] In the case of the opposite, it is also called hatefulness, and ironically, there is a theory that it is the longest-lasting affection among the emotions. In Christianity, faith, hope, and love are the best.[14] In the West, it is said that the first letter to the Corinthians of the Bible, Chapter 13:4-7, is often cited as a phrase related to love.[15][16] Also, this is directly related to the problem of salvation, perhaps because it is an attribute of God beyond doctrine/tradition/faith. According to Erich Fromm, love is the same thing as rice, and if it continues to be unsatisfactory, it can lead to deficiency disorders. The more you love your parents, friendship with friends, and love between lovers, the healthier you can be mentally as if you eat a lot of good food. The rationale is that many felons grew up without the love of their parents or neighbors as children. It is often a person who lives alone without meeting a loved one in reality, or if he is a misdeed, he or she often loves something that is not in reality. Along with hatred, it is one of the emotions that greatly affect the human mind. Since the size of the emotion is very, very huge, it is no exaggeration to say that once you fall in love properly, it paralyzes your reason and makes normal judgment impossible. Let's recall that love causes you to hang on while showing all sorts of dirty looks, or even crimes, including stalking and dating violence

the number-one reason people are not studying God’s Word today. They think it’s archaic, out of date.

A smart woman analyzes the previous relationships of the people they date. They don't take their word for it that they were innocent in the breakup. Smart women look for patterns.

God understands the importance of looking inward. The Bible teaches us to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39). Loving others is contingent on the ability to love yourself. The ironic thing is that many singles are ready to get out there and love someone else, but they haven’t taken the time to love themselves. Loving yourself requires that you know, value, and respect the person you are while moving toward the person God has made you to be. But somehow this important truth gets moved to the back burner. We tend to focus so much on the first part of this verse that calls us to love others that we neglect to love ourselves.

The Bible did not change, but the passages he chose did; the way that he preached did as well. By the time Mary’s due date rolled around, she and the baby’s father were married and all was forgiven, but I never forgot. We read the Bible how we want to read it. It doesn’t change, but we do.

By direct command, example, implication, or principles, God's Word tells us everything we need to know about every aspect of following him in life—from dating to marriage, from working to grieving, from evangelizing to eating. What should churches do? The answer is in the Bible.

EUSEBIUS [Chronicles, Anno 2083] (beginning October, A.D. 67), says, "Nero, to his other crimes, added the persecution of Christians: under him the apostles Peter and Paul consummated their martyrdom at Rome." So JEROME [On Illustrious Men], "In the fourteenth year of Nero, Paul was beheaded at Rome for Christ's sake, on the same day as Peter, and was buried on the Ostian Road, in the thirty-seventh year after the death of our Lord." ALFORD reasonably conjectures the Pastoral Epistles were written near this date. The interval was possibly filled up (so CLEMENT OF ROME states that Paul preached as far as "to the extremity of the west") by a journey to Spain (Rom 15:24, 28), according to his own original intention. MURATORI'S Fragment on the Canon of Scripture (about A.D. 170) also alleges Paul's journey into Spain. So EUSEBIUS, CHRYSOSTOM, and JEROME. Be that as it may, he seems shortly before his second imprisonment to have visited Ephesus, where a new body of elders governed the Church (Acts 20:25), say in the latter end of A.D. 66, or beginning of 67. Supposing him thirty at his conversion, he would now be upwards of sixty, and older in constitution than in years, through continual hardship. Even four years before he called himself "Paul the aged" (Philemon 1:9).

I’ve never understood the whole follow your heart thing. My heart doesn’t know what it wants half the time. How am I supposed to follow it? Not to mention that the Bible says the heart is deceitful above all things.

for Edwards, God’s Word and Spirit illuminate our worldly wisdom, rendering our knowledge more clear, beautiful and real than ever before. In a remarkable notebook entry dating from 1729, Edwards depicted this point vividly: A mind not spiritually enlightened [by means of the Bible and God’s Spirit] beholds spiritual things faintly, like fainting, fading shadows that make no lively impression on his mind, like a man that beholds the trees and things abroad in the night: the ideas ben’t strong and lively, and [are] very faint; and therefore he has but a little notion of the beauty of the face of the earth. But when the light comes to shine upon them, then the ideas appear with strength and distinctness; and he has that sense of the beauty of the trees and fields given him in a moment, which he would not have obtained by going about amongst them in the dark in a long time. A man that sets himself to reason without divine light is like a man that goes into the dark into a garden full of the most beautiful plants, and most artfully ordered, and compares things together by going from one thing to another, to feel of them and to measure the distances; but he that sees by divine light is like a man that views the garden when the sun shines upon it. There is ... a light cast upon the ideas of spiritual things in the mind of the believer, which makes them appear clear and real, which before were but faint, obscure representations.133

[T]here is another explanation for why these scriptures are so different. With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (texts that date to the first and second centuries), scholars learned that it was a common practice for religious leaders to alter accepted religious texts. As each great religious leader came along, an edited version of existing texts (including Old Testament texts) might be produced emphasizing the “correct” interpretation of that text according to the insights of the current religious leader. The new texts were not simply a commentary on the verses; rather, verses could be added, eliminated, or otherwise altered in order to convey the desired meaning. In other words, a prophetic leader would take Solomon’s sword to the accepted text and change things he did not agree with or expound on other teachings. This was a traditionally accepted way of sharing religious insights as well as a means of showing reverence to the prophetic, religious leaders of their day. It was a common practice among the ancient Hebrews. For example, among the nearly 900 texts discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are 15 different copies of Genesis, 21 different copies of Isaiah and 36 copies of Psalms. Among the multiple copies of the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, some copies vary in length by as much as 15% because of these changes and alterations. And so, the religious texts during and after the time of Jesus were altered, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes intentionally. This explanation helps us understand the errors and inconsistencies in the texts, but it further undermines the argument that the Bible is inerrant.

Are you going to marry her or not?" Joni had disappeared up the stairs to dress for their date. Her father eyed him critically. The force of Bill's question rocked him. "I hope so." "Well, what’s stopping you? You two get any closer and you'll be living together again. I may nit know a low about the Bible, but I do know premarital relations are sinful. Are you going to wait until I'm a grandfather before you propose?” Joni obviously got her bluntness from her father. “I’m praying about it, sir.” “Pray faster.

When God speaks of a “new” covenant, it means he has made the first one obsolete. It is now out of date and will soon disappear.

After the fall of Atlantis and Lemuria, the elements of civilization were brought by survivors to the British Isles and Scandinavia, which, along with the Arctic, make up the remnants of what had once been. Due to the devastating after-effects of the Age of Catastrophe, the inhabitants of Britain were forced to vacate their habitats and flee for safety to the eastern climes. They crossed the land-bridge between Britain and Scandinavia, and ventured into lands less affected by the great cataclysm. Southward and eastward they went, taking their customs, religious rites, technology, language, art, music and symbolism. However, because these forced emigrations occurred before the official dates posited for civilization's rise, they have been deliberately ignored. Nevertheless, in 2008, new found evidence revealed that Egypt was indeed colonized by Westerners over fifteen thousand years ago. Wall paintings dating from this remote period have been found in southern Egypt bearing a striking resemblance to those found in the caves of Lascaux, France. As Comyns Beaumont said, this artwork is Nordic in origin. It belongs to travelers from the North-West who desperately sought refuge from the cataclysm that made their own homelands uninhabitable. The races of Egypt, Libya and India knew these handsome visitors as “Men of Gold,” “God Men,” “Good Men,” “Goat Men,” and “Stag Men.” In the Bible they are cryptically referred to as “Edomites” or "Red Men." This title - attributed to early Egyptians - simply denotes sunburn. Red is the color a fair Caucasian man’s skin turns when exposed to intense equatorial heat. It is singular to find a white

Paul concludes, "And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony" (v. 14). A romantic relationship begins with attraction and then grows through affection for each other. But a relationship matures toward true and godly love as it ripens into a desire to give, a longing to bless, and a willingness to sacrifice and to serve. The Bible gives the highest expression of love in terms of God's gift of his only Son, Jesus Christ: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son" (John 3:16). This is the love with which we are to bind our thoughts and words, our feelings and interactions. The result, when two people love with the love that comes from God, is that most wonderful realization of unity, in which two people give all of their individuality into what Paul calls a "perfect harmony.

READINESS FOR SECOND COMING. [1 Thess. 5:1–11] Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

Today the idea of the shed blood of Christ is becoming old-fashioned and out of date in a lot of preaching. It is in the Bible. It is the very heart of Christianity.

Our church had an awkward beginning. We grew out of a movement that was dead wrong about the dates and times of Jesus’ return. But out of that great disappointment and gross error grew a people devoted to voraciously studying the Bible and banking on being with Jesus as soon as He would allow.

Imagine there is a fabulously wealthy king who looks out the window of his castle one day and, in the distance, sees a beautiful Cinderella-type peasant living in the slums. His heart is ravished and he thinks, “This is the  perfect bride for my son, the prince.” Unlike other kings—wicked worldly kings—he cannot just abduct her and make her a slave-concubine of his son. He must genuinely invite her to take the hand of his son voluntarily. So, along with his entourage and his son, they make their way out of the palace into the squalor beyond the moat, searching hut to hut and through the markets until they find her. The offer is made: “Young lady,” says the king, “this is my beloved son, the prince of this kingdom and heir to all that is mine. I humbly beseech you to come out of your life of poverty and oppression and to join my son in holy matrimony, enjoying all of the benefits that come with a princess’ life.” The offer seems to be too good to be true. All she needs to do is consent to the proposal. But there’s a hitch. The king continues, “There is a deadline. If you don’t say yes by such-and-such a date, we will arrest you, put you in our dungeon, where torturers will fillet you alive for endless ages, supernaturally keeping you alive such that your torment is never-ending. Moreover, after the deadline, your decision is irrevocable. No repentance is possible. The dishonor of your rejection is too great to warrant any second chance. The consequences of refusal are without mercy and utterly irreversible.”  As the king, the prince and their cohort leave, the prince turns and says, “Oh yes, please hurry. And always know that I will love you forever and for always … but only until the deadline.” Is this our gospel? If it were, would it truly be a gospel that preserves the love of God, the freewill of humanity and the mutual consent inherent in and necessary to God’s invitation? I don’t buy it any more. Without going into great detail here, might I suggest that because God, by nature, is the eternally consenting Bridegroom, there are two things he cannot and will not do: He will not ever make you marry his Son, because an irresistible grace would violate your consent. Your part will always and forever be by consent. His consent will never end, because a violent ultimatum would violate your consent. Divine love will always and forever be by consent. Emphasis on forever. “His mercy endures forever” (Psalm 136). “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness” (Jer. 31:3). I don’t believe the divine courtship involves wearing you down with his love until you give up. It’s simply that he’ll always love you, with a love that even outlasts and overcomes death (Song of Solomon 8). The Bible at least hints (Rev. 21-22) that the prodigal Father will wait for you, invite you and keep the doors open for you until you’re ready to come home. He’ll wait for you forever. 

Since Daniel eight suggests that the Antichrist will come from a new small and insignificant country, I personally believe that the Assyrians will soon create their new independent country. This new country will probably be born within the region of the Nineveh plains of Northern Iraq. This region is at the heart of the ancient Syrian division of the Grecian Empire. Perhaps this new small Assyrian country will encompass parts of modern Syria since the Nineveh Plains of Northern Iraq are near the Syrian border. The idea of an Assyrian independent state is not new.                              In 1931 and 1932, the League of Nations received at least five petitions from Assyrian groups. The first two petitions were dated October 20th and 23rd, 1931. These came from representatives of Assyrians in Iraq including Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII, the Patriarch of the Church of the East. They requested that the Assyrians in Iraq be transported to land under the rule of one of the Western nations or, failing that, to Syria, which was still a French Mandate. Neither Britain nor Iraq objected to this idea, but no country volunteered to take the Assyrians. Britain argued that creation of a homeland was unnecessary because once Assyrians abandoned their quest for an autonomous homeland; they would become an integrated and "useful" part of Iraq. The third petition sought the recognition of Assyrians as a millet (nation) within Iraq and the creation of an Assyrian region within Iraq by redrawing Iraq's border with Turkey to include within Iraq the Turkish regions that Assyrian refugees in Iraq had lived in prior to their expulsion from Turkey. Failing this, the petition requested a special homeland within the existing borders of Iraq, made up of the whole of the district of Amedia plus adjacent parts of Zakho, Dohuk and Aqra, for the Assyrian refugees from Turkey then in Iraq. The fourth petition, dated September 21, 1932, was signed by 58 people claiming to represent 2,395 families. The final petition, dated September 22, 1932, is another from Mar Shimun. It alleges that the Assyrians have a right to claim their original homes or suitable substitutes from the United Kingdom, for whom the Assyrians fought in the First World War. It requests the return of the Hakkiari province or resettlement along the lines sought in the third petition. The petition noted that the Assyrians had voted for Iraq in the plebiscite for the Mosul Liwa based on the League's 1925 recommendation that the Assyrians be given local autonomy.26 (Emphasis mine)

But the reason why this is all so important is because the standard interpretation of Biblical archaeology is increasingly that the events of the Bible did not happen because they do not line up with the artifactual evidence of archaeology. There is simply no current evidence of a crushing defeat of Egypt or the resultant wandering of the Jews in the desert around the traditional date of 1445-1400 B.C. (or the more critical late date of 1275 B.C.) There is no current evidence of the cities of Ai or Jericho being inhabited, much less destroyed around the dates that Biblical scholars say they must have happened. Aardsma shows that there is however archaeological evidence of all of the above occurring about one thousand years earlier than normally attested by Bible scholars. With a thousand year shift backwards, all the Biblical history falls into place with known external evidence.

As I was reading, I started thinking about Jessica and the idea of getting married. We could be doing this--reading our Bibles, cooking our own food, hanging out--at our own house. Suddenly, I was excited about the idea of leaving Mom and Dad’s house and starting my own family with Jessica. All my brothers had gotten married before they were twenty, and here I was twenty-two, and not married. I knew Jess was the one. I’m not going to look at any more girls, I thought, still reading through Scripture out loud. I just want to get married to the woman I love. There was a deep sense of knowing inside of me. I didn’t want to overthink it anymore; I just wanted to do it. If we knew we wanted to be married, why wait? So all of a sudden I just burst out, “We should get married.” Jessica looked up from her Bible, surprised. I wasn’t down on my knees, and I didn’t have champagne or a ring, so she wasn’t exactly expecting a marriage proposal. But that’s what it was. A random impulse of a marriage proposal. I looked in her eyes and said it again. “Let’s get married. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” There were hugs and tears, and then we ran out to tell Mom and Dad the news. More hugs, more tears. And wedding plans started right away. “We’ll just elope,” I said, “or get Dad to marry us.” We didn’t want to waste a second. Now that we knew, we wanted to get married as soon as possible and start our lives together. But Mom had a fit. “No,” she said in a loud voice. “We have to have a wedding. I’ve always dreamed about your wedding, Jep.” I didn’t want a big wedding, and I knew it would take time and cost a lot of money. “Mom, I just think it would be better this way.” “Look, just some family,” she argued back, “and maybe some of my best friends. I’ll help get everything together. It won’t be hard. You’ll see.” Then she tilted her head and smiled that big smile; how could I say no? We finally gave in because we could see how important it was for her, but we made it clear we wanted to get married as soon as possible, so we set a date for two weeks away. We don’t waste much time down here in Louisiana.

The earliest known copies of Jewish Scriptures in Hebrew dated to the tenth and eleventh centuries CE, and among them the differences were mostly small and insignificant. Taking them as witnesses to the earlier texts from which they were copied, it seemed logical to conclude that these many homogeneous texts must have derived from a common original via a highly accurate scribal tradition. But evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls seems to contradict this conclusion. Among the hundreds of biblical manuscripts discovered there, many of which are more than a thousand years older than anything scholars had ever seen before, we find not uniformity but diversity, including many significant differences. The logical assumption now is that Jewish Scriptures became more uniform and free of variants over time, as scribes gradually established a more or less standard edition.

I gingerly and quietly plopped the idea into the laps of those with whom I thought it would be safe: the married women at church. Big mistake. Immediately I was assaulted with some of the most ridiculous and unbiblical things I’ve heard in church to this day. Here are some examples. “The last thing you want to think about right now is marriage.” “When you stop thinking about marriage, that’s when God will bring someone to you.” “Maybe you’re not spiritually mature enough to marry.” “Go on another missions trip. That’ll get your mind off marriage.” “I wish I were still single. Wanna trade?” These were all said by Christian women, many of them long-time believers, Bible study leaders, elders’ wives, and/or women in other places of authority. I felt so foolish. If it wasn’t good to desire marriage, then I figured I’d better just keep my mouth shut. I certainly didn’t want my fledgling hope to be dismissed so easily. I’d either have to nurture it in secret or try to squelch it altogether. Many singles have done just this. We’ve shut down. We’ve tried to reprogram ourselves. We hold others at arm’s length on this subject because we don’t want to get hurt.

The whole subject is very uncertain. Ewald appears to fix the date of the birth at five years earlier than our era. Petavius and Usher fix it on the 25th of December, five years before our era. Bengel on the 25th of December, four years before our era; Anger and Winer, four years before our era, in the Spring; Scaliger, three years before our era, in October; St. Jerome, three years before our era, on December 25th; Eusebius, two years before our era, on January 6th; and Idler, seven years before our era, in December." [360:2]

The Church, at an early date, selected the heathen festivals of Sun worship for its own, ordering the birth at Christmas, a fixed time, and the resurrection at Easter, a varying time, as in all Pagan religions; since, though the Sun rose directly after the vernal equinox, the festival, to be correct in a heathen point of view, had to be associated with the new moon." [496:5]

We have seen, then, that a festival celebrating the resurrection of their several gods was annually held among the Pagans, before the time of Christ Jesus, and that it was almost universal. That it dates to a period of great antiquity is very certain. The adventures of these incarnate gods, exposed in their infancy, put to death, and rising again from the grave to life and immortality, were acted on the Deisuls and in the sacred theatres of the ancient Pagans, [226:3] just as the "Passion Play" is acted to-day.

Dr. Hooykaas, speaking of the four "Gospels," and "Acts," says of them: "Not one of these five books was really written by the person whose name it bears, and they are all of more recent date than the heading would lead us to suppose." "We cannot say that the "Gospels" and book of "Acts" are unauthentic, for not one of them professes to give the name of its author. They appeared anonymously. The titles placed above them in our Bibles owe their origin to a later ecclesiastical tradition which deserves no confidence whatever." (Bible for Learners, vol. iii. pp. 24, 25.)

Notice that “love thy neighbor” - a wildly popular piece of wisdom found in the Bible - is a command. Jesus is commanding us to love. Now, Jesus understood that emotions and feelings cannot be commanded; they cannot be controlled. He must be saying that love isn’t the way you feel about someone, it’s the way your treat someone. Love isn’t something that happens to you, it’s something that you make happen. It’s a choice.

In the first book of the Bible it is written that: "The Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” In another translation it is written like this: "God was sorry that he had made the human race in the first place; it broke his heart.” "It grieved him to his heart." "It broke his heart." We grieved him to his heart. We broke his heart. God’s heart can be…broken? You cannot love without being vulnerable - because love involves the risk of the person you’re loving not loving you back, of rejecting you - and that hurts. That grieves you to your heart. God had created man, and He loved them - but they didn’t love Him back, and it broke His heart.