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.

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

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.

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

The Bible is God’s book of promises, and, unlike the books of men, it does not change or get out of date.

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.

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 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.

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'?

There are those who mock Jews and Christians who believe God promised the Land of Israel to the Jewish people. But, as noted, even an atheist would have to acknowledge no other people ever established a state there—as Jews have three times—or have claimed it as their own dating back three thousand years.

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.

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.

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?

[..] 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

The first place to fall, after the crossing of the Jordan, was Jericho, one of the most ancient cities in the world. The excavations of Kathleen Kenyon and carbon-dating show that it goes back to the seventh millennium BC. It had enormous walls in the Early and Middle Bronze Ages, and the strength of its defences produced one of the most vivid passages in the Bible. Joshua the prophet-general ordered the priests to carry the Ark round the city, with their ram’s-horn trumpeters, on six consecutive days; and on the seventh, ‘when the priests blew with the trumpets’, he commanded to all the people: ‘Shout; for the Lord hath given you the city.’ Then ‘the people shouted with a great shout, that the walls fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city.’126 Owing to erosion, the Kenyon researches threw no light on how the walls were destroyed; she thinks it may have been an earthquake which the Israelites attributed to divine intervention. The Bible narrative says: ‘And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and ass, with the edge of the sword.’ Miss Kenyon established that the city was certainly burnt at this time and that, in addition, it was not reoccupied for a very long time afterwards, which accords with Joshua’s determination that no one should rebuild it, and his threat: ‘Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho.

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.

Amen—A Hebrew word introduced into the Egyptian mystic rites at an early date as a term used to express the hidden and invisible God, or a truly inspired representative of God. In this latter sense the term is used in the Christian Bible just once; in Rev. iii, 14, Jesus is called “The Amen.” But at a much earlier date the same word, with the same mystic vowel sounds was used to designate the name of the God of Thebes, and the term Amen-Ra came to express the name and hierarchy of a powerful God among the Egyptians. Amenhotep IV changed his name to Khuen-Aten because of the significance of the term Amen. As used in modern religious practices, the term, Amen, means verily. The origin of the word is found in the Sanskrit awn and also in om.

In March 2020, are we really in need of the motivational speakers or motivational books? To motivate us for what? For staying home? To those who need it, it's Ok. But I believe that we need the Bible! And this is why I love the Bible, the infallible word of the Lord; because the word of the Lord is always up to date and the one who trusts in His word will never be put to shame. It is written: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” Says the Lord Jesus Christ.

Have you ever heard the statement: Being in the world but not of it? This has been mentioned in writings dating back thousands of years and even in the Bible. This is basically saying that we are now human beings in this world. It is okay to accept this form, but we do not need to be only this form with all its behaviors and tendencies. It is possible, through the level of our species’ consciousness, to witness the human development (dilemma) that we have imposed onto the true self.

To understand, you need some basic history. There is no evidence that Israel was ever a significant slave population in Egypt or that the mass Exodus, desert wanderings, or invasion of Canaan ever occurred. Israel appears to have simply evolved in Canaan, entering actual history when the Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah recorded annihilating a people called “Israel” in Canaan on his victory stele, dated about 1200 BC.

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

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

[I]t is helpful to remind ourselves that the church - and its writings - did not come into existence until forty years after Jesus' resurrection. Things got lost. Things got whispered down the lane. Original meaning could have been abandoned completely in favor of a less egalitarian faith. What else did we lose in the interim between Jesus and the recordings? And will we ever get it back?

A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

This first edition of A Tome of Idioms has been published as a comprehensive, concise, compact, and efficient guide to the meanings and origins of Idioms, Proverbs, and Sayings. Each inclusion is written in a clear and uncomplicated style. First published in 2019 this book contains over 900 easily readable entries in systematic order augmented by an extensive Bibliography. This book will be of general interest to everyone who has a curious, inquisitive, questioning, or enquiring intellect. Sometimes, without knowing, we quote idiomatical expressions in our everyday conversations. An idiom is used to communicate something that other words do not convey as clearly or as meaningfully. Idioms tend to be colloquial and are more effective when used in spoken rather than written English. The origins of idioms are sometimes difficult to trace which means that finding a precise date a particular idiom came into existence is never easy. A number of idioms, proverbs, and sayings originate in well-known literature and Holy texts such as, William Shakespeare (60 entries), the Bible (47 entries), John Heywood (27 entries), Aesop (15 entries), and Geoffrey Chaucer (12 entries), to name but a few. Some of these have evolved in many different forms over several years into the expressions we use today. Extract from @A Tome of Idioms

My disease,” she said, speaking fast, “dates back to Bible days. Leah had it, in the book of Genesis. It is wallfloweritis.” “Huh?” broke in Harding, dazedly curious. “Wallfloweritis,” she repeated stoutly. “An acute and chronic case of being a perennial wallflower. Oh, please don’t be polite and silly and deny it!

...the fear of being alone crashing into the fear of being in a relationship, creating a tsunami of panic.

You’ll finally get his attention, and you’ll start unpacking a very real and very serious problem and he’s just going to kind of stare at you, drooling and blinking. Which is when you’ll think, I don’t think he understands me. Let me just tell you now: he doesn’t. Which means you’re going to have to figure out how to live with a huge, hairy, confused person

You may retire from your profession, but you never retire from your mission.

We want to be right in the center of what God is doing until the day he calls us home. This may mean you invest faithfully in the town you live in now for forty more years. It may mean you cross oceans to be a part of what God is doing in a far-off place. But marriages on mission know that death is the finish line for those in the service of God.

On the Coming American Religious Civil War (ARCW) (August 1995) War is hell. Little understood aphorism. THIS MAY BE YOUR FIRST NOTICE OF THE COMING AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CIVIL WAR (ARCW). If so, you should date and preserve this warning. Then your distant descendants (maybe the “Daughters of the ARCW”) can have something to be smug about—in the unlikely event that they, and this notice, survive the fires, and anybody can still read. The ARCW has already been started by the superstitious. They call it a “civil war of values.” The shooting has already started. They call that “protecting innocent life.” The purpose of the war is to overthrow science and constitutional democracy and to replace them with the Bronze Age myths and laws of ancient Iraq that became preserved in a collection of writings known, in translation, as The Holy Bible. They regard this undertaking as “bringing America back to God.” Loyal Americans should regard it as treason.

Interesting light is shed on the agricultural year by the ‘Gezer Calendar’, dating from about the 10th century BCE, so-called because it was found at Gezer and listed farming activities for successive months (or two-month periods) of the year.

The Codex Sinaiticus, dating from the 4th century CE, was so-called because it was found at the Monastery of St Catharine in the Sinai peninsula in 1844. It was written on parchment in Greek uncial (capital) letters. The codex originally contained the text of the Septuagint, the New Testament, and a number of Deutero-canonical works, though now some 300 pages are missing from the Septuagint section. It has made an important contribution to the study of the text of the Bible.

Traditional Jews trace history according to the Bible back to Adam and Eve. That gives a date of 3760 bce for the creation of Adam, which is why the ‘Jewish year’, still used for religious purposes, is that many years ahead of ce (=ad). For instance, 1998 is am 5758, and 2000 is 5760 (am stands for anno mundi, or years of the world since Creation).

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

date is too early for the

One of the most crushing indictments of Protestantism is that it has rejected the idea of the necessity of penance, and by doing so has out-dated and made meaningless large sections of the Bible. Probably no virtue is more insisted on in the Bible than the virtue of penance. "Unless you shall do penance, you shall all likewise perish." His Cross does not dispense us from the obligation of taking up our cross: "Unless a man take up his cross and follow Me, he cannot be My disciple." If Christ's sacrifice made further sacrifice unnecessary, the continuance of pain in the world presents more than a problem, in fact a contradiction.

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.

If you attempt to explain away fulfilled bible prophecy as nothing more than back-dated history lessons, how do you account for the mountains of archaeological evidence showing that the Old Testament texts pre-date the historical events they chronicle?

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]

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.)

Meantime, other “feminist bibles”had appeared, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex being the best. Which brings me to something no one believes. When I wrote The Golden Notebook it never occurred to me I was writing “a feminist bible.”The sixties feminists were not the first in the arena. “The Woman Question”dated from the fifteenth century. In communist circles in the forties and fifties feminist issues were much discussed. But the second sentence of The Golden Notebook is: “‘The point is,’said Anna, ‘as far as I can see, everything is cracking up.’“This is what I thought The Golden Notebook was about, as its “structure”said. Everything was cracking up, and by now it is easily seen that we live in a fast-fragmenting culture. So I became “a feminist icon.”But what had I said in The Golden Notebook? That any kind of singlemindedness, narrowness, obsession, was bound to lead to mental disorder, if not madness. (This may be observed most easily in religion and politics.)

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.

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.

Since the dates are referenced to Noah’s age, it makes the most sense that Moses kept the dating system that was utilized on the ark while penning Genesis 7–8. Keep in mind that the later Israelite calendar (i.e., the Babylonian calendar) was lunar.12 The months alternated with 29 or 30 days. In the Bible, we find that 150 days was equivalent to 5 months based on the context in the Flood account (Genesis 7:24–8:413). This would yield month-lengths of 30 days each, not 29 and 30 days alternating for 5 months (as in a lunar calendar).

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.

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]

some of its natives worshipped the birth of "Krishna" on December 25th. When critics claim that this idea is erroneous because this date is not found in any "original" ancient texts, in return we would ask where is the evidence of the December 25th birthday of Christ in the "original" Christian texts? It is not in the Bible-if future archaeologists were to rely on such texts for proof that Christians celebrated the birth of Christ on December 25th, they would certainly come up empty-handed.

The Bible reveals love as a choice that is based not entirely on a feeling but on the commitment of one person to another. Love is a giving of self with no expectation to receive, a decision made every moment of every day. It is the reality of unconditional love.

I cannot agree with the gentleman in the magenta coat that Potter’s Pond is only a wretched little hamlet. But it is certainly a very remote and secluded village; so that it seems quite outlandish, like a village of a hundred years ago. The spinsters are really spinsters — damn it, you could almost imagine you saw them spin. The ladies are not just ladies. They are gentlewomen; and their chemist is not a chemist, but an apothecary; pronounced potecary. They do just admit the existence of an ordinary doctor like myself to assist the apothecary. But I am considered rather a juvenile innovation, because I am only fifty-seven years old and have only been in the county for twenty-eight years. The solicitor looks as if he had known it for twenty-eight thousand years. Then there is the old Admiral, who is just like a Dickens illustration; with a house full of cutlasses and cuttle-fish and equipped with a telescope.’ ‘I suppose,’ said Father Brown, ‘there are always a certain number of Admirals washed up on the shore. But I never understood why they get stranded so far inland.’ ‘Certainly no dead-alive place in the depths of the country is complete without one of these little creatures,’ said the doctor. ‘And then, of course, there is the proper sort of clergyman; Tory and High Church in a dusty fashion dating from Archbishop Laud; more of an old woman than any of the old women. He’s a white-haired studious old bird, more easily shocked than the spinsters. Indeed, the gentlewomen, though Puritan in their principles, are sometimes pretty plain in their speech; as the real Puritans were. Once or twice I have known old Miss Carstairs-Carew use expressions as lively as anything in the Bible. The dear old clergyman is assiduous in reading the Bible; but I almost fancy he shuts his eyes when he comes to those words.

Location of the tomb. The rationale for Joseph’s taking the body is that he had a usable tomb in the vicinity. That tomb cannot be what is today referred to as the Garden Tomb, since Joseph’s tomb was new, and the Garden Tomb dates back to the eighth century BC. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher meets many of the requirements. There are quarries under the site that offered opportunities for tombs in the first century. According to burial customs of the day, bodies were laid out until only bones remained, then they were placed in an ossuary (bone box) for final burial.

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

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.

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.

MY DAILY WALK There is no medicine like hope—the expectation that tomorrow will be better than today. And for the Christian, that hope is no idle dream. Your future can brim with expectation because of Jesus’ promise, “I will come and get you” (John 14:3). But in the meantime, you need the daily reminder and encouragement that your waiting is not in vain. In Jesus’ response to his disciples’ questions, he offers several principles to help them—and you—pass the time until his return:     1. Don’t get sidetracked (Matthew 24:4). False christs will abound, but there will be no doubt when Jesus returns (24:24-31).     2. Don’t become a date-setter (24:36). Only the Father knows when that great event will happen.     3. Be a wise steward of your time and opportunities (24:14, 45-46). God wants you to plant seed, not scan the horizon.     On your appointment calendar, pick a date later this month and add this memo: “It’s later than it’s ever been before. Am I more prepared than I’ve ever been before?” THERE IS NO TRIAL SO BIG THAT IT CANNOT BE CONQUERED BY CHRISTIAN HOPE.

The doctrine of sola Scriptura, in a nutshell, asserts that Scripture is our sole source of normative, infallible apostolic revelation, and that “all things necessary for salvation and concerning faith and life are taught in the Bible with enough clarity that the ordinary believer can find them there and understand.”6 Truths that are not found in the Bible (e.g. the date of your birth, the structure of protein molecules) are not necessary for salvation.

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.