Passages From Bible Quotes

A sort of good-bye without saying good-bye," he said. "It is a reference to a passage in the Bible. 'And Mizpah, for he said, the Lord watch between me and thee when we are absent one from another.

Mizpah," he said. She blinked at him, a little dazed. "What?" "A sort of good-bye without saying good-bye," he said. "It is a reference to a passage in the Bible. 'And Mizpah, for he said, the Lord watch between me and thee when we are absent one from another.

You can have everything in the world, but if you don't have love, none of it means crap," he said promptly. "Love is patient. Love is kind. Love always forgives, trusts, supports, and endures. Love never fails. When every star in the heavens grows cold, and when silence lies once more on the face of the deep, three things will endure: faith, hope, and love." And the greatest of these is love," I finished. "That's from the Bible." First Corinthians, chapter thirteen," Thomas confirmed. "I paraphrased. Father makes all of us memorize that passage. Like when parents put those green yucky-face stickers on the poisonous cleaning products under the kitchen sink.

The books I liked became a Bible from which I drew advice and support; I copied out long passages from them; I memorized new canticles and new litanies, psalms, proverbs, and prophecies, and I sanctified every incident in my life by the recital of these sacred texts. My emotions, my tears, and my hopes were no less sincere on account of that; the words and the cadences, the lines and the verses were not aids to make believe: but they rescued from silent oblivion all those intimate adventures of the spirit that I couldn’t speak to anyone about; they created a kind of communion between myself and those twin souls which existed somewhere out of reach; instead of living out my small private existence, I was participating in a great spiritual epic.

You belong to the biblical race of Nephilim. Your real father was an angel who fell from heaven. You're half mortal." The boy's dark eyes lifted, meeting Chauncey's. "Half fallen angel." Chauncey's tutor's voice drifted up from the recesses of his mind, reading passages from the Bible, telling of a deviant race created when angels cast from heaven mated with mortal women. A fearsome and powerful race. A chill that wasn't entirely revulsion crept through Chauncey. "Who are you?

It had been a good day, all things considered. I had managed rather well on my own. I opened Grandfather's Bible. This is what it would be like when I had my own shop, or when I traveled abroad. I would always read before sleeping. One day, I'd be so rich I would have a library full of novel to choose from. But I would always end the evening with a Bible passage.

The soul, in its loneliness, hopes only for "salvation." And yet what is the burden of the Bible if not a sense of the mutuality of influence, rising out of an essential unity, among soul and body and community and world? These are all the works of God, and it is therefore the work of virtue to make or restore harmony among them. The world is certainly thought of as a place of spiritual trial, but it is also the confluence of soul and body, word and flesh, where thoughts must become deeds, where goodness must be enacted. This is the great meeting place, the narrow passage where spirit and flesh, word and world, pass into each other. The Bible's aim, as I read it, is not the freeing of the spirit from the world. It is the handbook of their interaction. It says that they cannot be divided; that their mutuality, their unity, is inescapable; that they are not reconciled in division, but in harmony. What else can be meant by the resurrection of the body? The body should be "filled with light," perfected in understanding. And so everywhere there is the sense of consequence, fear and desire, grief and joy. What is desirable is repeatedly defined in the tensions of the sense of consequence.

The Bible offers a beautiful passage from the heart of one who knew much, suffered much, endured much, and wrote much: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceivedwhat God has prepared for those who love him.” 1 CORINTHIANS 2:9

You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativistic and "nonjudgmental" that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles Manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion.

If the Bible says something once, notice it but don’t count it as a fundamental principle. If it says it twice, think about it twice. If it is repeated many times, then dwell on it and seek to understand it. What you want to believe from the Bible is its message on the whole and use it as a standard for interpreting the peripheral passages.

Being truly biblical means that my counsel reflects what the entire Bible is about. The Bible is a narrative, a story of redemption, and its chief character is Jesus Christ. He is the main theme of the narrative, and he is revealed in every passage in the book. This story reveals how God harnessed nature and controlled history to send his Son to rescue rebellious, foolish, and self-focused men and women. He freed them from bondage to themselves, enabled them to live for his glory, and gifted them with an eternity in his presence, far from the harsh realities of the Fall.

It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the Bible, and of all Christian priests and preachers, to impose the Bible on the world as a mass of truth, and as the word of God; they have disputed and wrangled, and have anathematized each other about the supposable meaning of particular parts and passages therein; one has said and insisted that such a passage meant such a thing, another that it meant directly the contrary, and a third, that it meant neither one nor the other, but something different from both; and this they have called understanding the Bible. It has happened, that all the answers that I have seen to the former part of 'The Age of Reason' have been written by priests: and these pious men, like their predecessors, contend and wrangle, and understand the Bible; each understands it differently, but each understands it best; and they have agreed in nothing but in telling their readers that Thomas Paine understands it not.

So even very young she saw slavery as an ancient practice arising because rich people would rather not do hard work, and also from the tendency of people to clench hard to advantageous passages in the Bible and dismiss the rest.

The author extols the power of having significant portions of God's Word read in public worship with the following analogy. He says that by reading a few short verses, we are like someone glimpsing nature through window from across the room. But by taking in more lengthy passages of Scripture, we are like someone who, intrigue, gets right next to the window to take in more of the view that it offers, basking in more of the arc of the whole the whole narrative.

In Hebrew, the Lord’s language, the word for time is ZeMaN, which is linked to the word for invitation. This serves to remind us that the passage of time is an invitation to make the most of it, to manage it effectively, and to integrate our understanding of how the world works with a true and accurate perception of the reality of time.

To see God as primarily loving, a person must embrace a liberal interpretation of the Bible, ignoring or rejecting the vindictive passages.

Another way to say this is that the most powerful cultural values are those that go without being said. It is very hard to know what goes without being said in another culture. But often we are not even aware of what goes without being said in our own culture. This is why misunderstanding and misinterpretation happen. When a passage of Scripture appears to leave out a piece of the puzzle because something went without being said, we instinctively fill in the gap with a piece from our own culture-usually a piece that goes without being said.

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10 – 11)

she read a couple of passages from the Bible, which I know is the done thing. I’ve been to many funerals now, and an awful lot of people have walked through the valley of the shadow of death.

The saints are the true interpreters of Holy Scripture. The meaning of a given passage of the Bible becomes most intelligible in those human beings who have been totally transfixed by it and have lived it out.

In the great Bible passage on spiritual warfare, the word stand appears four times, while the word translated wrestle, battle, fight, or struggle appears only once. In essence, God is asking you to spend the majority of your time in warfare standing!

In an age of religious violence like ours, people care much less about what you believe, and much more about whether you will kill for what you believe. So if you haven’t figured out what you’re going to do with passages like Deuteronomy 7 and 1 Samuel 15 and Psalms 137:9, you still have some important work to do.3 If you haven’t grappled with these passages and others like them, your Bible is like a loaded gun and your theology is like a license to kill. You have to find a way to disarm your faith as a potential instrument of hate and convert it into an instrument of love.4 You have to convert Christianity from a warrior religion to a reconciling religion. Otherwise, your neighbors around this seminary will tolerate you the way they might tolerate a chemical plant that could at any moment blow up and kill them all.

The idea that Wisdom could be a divine hypostasis—an aspect of God that is a distinct being from God that nonetheless is itself God—is rooted in a fascinating passage of the Hebrew Bible, Proverbs 8. ... God made all things in his wisdom, so much so that Wisdom is seen as a co-creator of sorts.

I suppose you wish to know what I am going to say to President Roosevelt on my return,” he said. This was an understatement. Churchill was desperate to know how well his courtship of Hopkins was progressing, and what indeed he would tell the president. “Well,” Hopkins said, “I’m going to quote you one verse from that Book of Books in the truth of which Mr. Johnston’s mother and my own Scottish mother were brought up—” Hopkins dropped his voice to a near whisper and recited a passage from the Bible’s Book of Ruth: “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” Then, softly, he added: “Even to the end.

For a moment or two before the spell took effect, he was aware of all the sounds around him: rain splashing on metal and leather, and running down canvas; horses shuffling and snorting; Englishmen singing and Scotsmen playing bagpipes; two Welsh soldiers arguing over the proper interpretation of a Bible passage; the Scottish captain, John Kincaid, entertaining the American savages and teaching them to drink tea (presumably with the idea that once a man had learnt to drink tea, the other habits and qualities that make up a Briton would naturally follow). Then silence. Men and horses began to disappear, few by few at first, and then more quickly – hundreds, thousands of them vanishing from sight. Great gaps appeared among the close-packed soldiers. A little further to the east an entire regiment was gone, leaving a hole the size of Hanover-square. Where, moments before, all had been life, conversation and activity, there was now nothing but the rain and the twilight and the waving stalks of rye. Strange wiped his mouth because he felt sick.

In Europe, however, a great awakening was beginning. Trade brought in fresh, revolutionary ideas, accelerated by Gutenberg’s printing press. The power of the Church began to weaken after a millennium of domination. The universities slowly turned their attention away from interpreting obscure passages of the Bible to applying the physics of Newton and the chemistry of Dalton and others.

We struggle to find the space between avoiding all biblical arguments and identifying one policy as the only Christian one, but such space exists! Citing biblical passages about caring for the poor and vulnerable in support of tax policy that is intended to serve those people can be a faithful way of engaging in public life. Claiming that your tax policy is the only Christian option is not.

The third moment of silence is in front of Herod and his band of mockers. They wanted a show. The Bible says this: When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased, because for a long time he had been wanting to see him. From what he had heard about him, he hoped to see him perform some miracle. He plied him with many questions, but Jesus gave him no answer. . . . Then Herod and his soldiers ridiculed and mocked him. Dressing him in an elegant robe, they sent him back to Pilate. That day Herod and Pilate became friends—before this they had been enemies. (Luke 23:8–9, 11–12) This passage tells a fearsome tale. There are many who want Jesus to be nothing more than a miracle worker or an entertainer. And how ironic it is that enemies became friends out of a common desire to be rid of Him. Has anything changed since then? The fourth time Jesus was silent was when Pilate became fearful, hearing that He claimed to be the Son of God. “Where do You come from?” he asked. But Jesus remained silent. He had already told Pilate where He came from. But Pilate did not have the courage to deal with His answer. In the mix of these silent responses, there is a wealth of thought from God to us. A

I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany. I make no claims to have a life in Christ, or with Christ—and certainly not for Christ, which I’ve heard some zealots claim. I’m not very sophisticated in my knowledge of the Old Testament, and I’ve not read the New Testament since my Sunday school days, except for those passages that I hear read aloud to me when I go to church. I’m somewhat more familiar with the passages from the Bible that appear in The Book of Common Prayer; I read my prayer book often, and my Bible only on holy days—the prayer book is so much more orderly. I’ve

Thirdly, a collection of passages, both prose and verse, from books other than the Bible. There is not perhaps much, in what is called ‘un-inspired’ literature (a misnomer, I hold: if Shakespeare was not inspired, one may well doubt if any man ever was), that will bear the process of being pondered over, a hundred times: still there are such passages — enough, I think, to make a goodly store for the memory.

I began to picture my children’s hearts as treasure chests of a different sort, and I vowed to fill them with intrinsic treasures: the best stories, memorized Scripture, priceless images of classical art, excellent books, memories from great feasts enjoyed together and special days celebrated, great Bible stories and wisdom passages, plus heart photographs of love given, holidays cherished, lessons learned.

I could see how you might let yourself get addicted to that kind of discipline, or denial; how it might seem like, if you kept doing it, over and over, that you were somehow living more cleanly or more righteously than other people. It was the same thing as following all those rules Lydia stuck to, and when that got old, making up even more rules to follow and then justifying them with some passage from the Bible.

As I write, I am reminded of that passage from the Bible—the one that is read at every wedding: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.” Now, I understand as an adult. Maybe for the first time in my life. This article would break my mother’s heart, and perhaps even worse, her spirit. That didn’t matter to me a week ago; in fact, I wanted to hurt her then. My only excuse: then I was a child.

The moral vacuum we now feel ourselves to be in has always been there, even if we haven’t recognized it Religious people are already entirely accustomed to picking and choosing which texts from holy book they obey and which they reject. There are passages of the Judeo-Christian Bible which no modern Christian or Jew would wish to follow. The story of Isaac’s narrowly averted sacrifice by his father Abraham strikes us moderns as a shocking piece of child abuse, whether we read it literally or symbolically.

Sleepily Alice reached down and picked up a Bible, the blank side of a menu, and a Sunday School book from the floor beside the bed. She rustled through the tissue pages of the Bible until she reached a certain passage and began reading, pronouncing the words aloud with painful concentration. It was Sunday, and she was preparing the weekly lesson for her class of boys in the Junior Department of her church. ‘Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea:

Well,” Hopkins said, “I’m going to quote you one verse from that Book of Books in the truth of which Mr. Johnston’s mother and my own Scottish mother were brought up—” Hopkins dropped his voice to a near whisper and recited a passage from the Bible’s Book of Ruth: “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” Then, softly, he added: “Even to the end.” This was his own addition, and with it a wave of gratitude and relief seemed to engulf the room. Churchill wept.

I still feel some type of way when people who weren’t forced to sit in stiff ruffles and too-tight patent leather mary janes for four hours every Sunday morning get to just, you know, buy an Easter basket without having done any of the work. Those jelly beans and Cadbury eggs were my annual reward for memorizing the Twenty-third Psalm and not falling asleep during Sunday school, and yet somehow there are kids who get to sleep in every weekend and have never had to identify Bible passages from memory who get the same number of jelly beans I do?!

Oh, no!” Kennedy shrieked. “I hate this thing.” She was about to rip up her card, but I grabbed it out of her hand. It was full of patches of different writing. There were a few “Happy Birthday”s. But mostly the card was covered with things like “Jesus is our savior. Remember our Lord Jesus died for our sins.” Plus passages from the Bible. I started laughing. And then Kennedy started crying, which she does sometimes. Really, the thing to do is just let it pass. Mom snatched the card. “Don’t worry, Kennedy,” she said. “I’m going to go hunt down those Jesus freaks.

For many in the Arminian tradition, who emphasize the believer’s free will and responsibility, texts like Romans 8:30; 9:18 – 24; Galatians 1:15; and Ephesians 1:4 – 5 are something of an embarrassment. Likewise many Calvinists have their own ways of getting around what is said quite plainly in passages like 1 Corinthians 10:1 – 13; 2 Peter 2:20 – 22; and Hebrews 6:4 – 6. Indeed our experience as teachers is that students from these traditions seldom ask what these texts mean; they want only to know “how to get around” what these various passages seem clearly to affirm!

So, once more, the question is: Does the Bible forbid homosexual behavior? Well, I’ve already said that it does. The Bible is so realistic! You might not expect it to mention a topic like homosexual behavior, but in fact there are six places in the Bible—three in the Old Testament and three in the New Testament—where this issue is directly addressed—not to mention all the passages dealing with marriage and sexuality which have implications for this issue. In all six of these passages homosexual acts are unequivocally condemned. In Leviticus 18.22 it says that it is an abomination for a man to lie with another man as with a woman. In Lev. 20.13 the death penalty is prescribed in Israel for such an act, along with adultery, incest, and bestiality. Now sometimes homosexual advocates make light of these prohibitions by comparing them to prohibitions in the Old Testament against having contact with unclean animals like pigs. Just as Christians today don’t obey all of the Old Testament ceremonial laws, so, they say, we don’t have to obey the prohibitions of homosexual actions. But the problem with this argument is that the New Testament reaffirms the validity of the Old Testament prohibitions of homosexual behavior, as we’ll see below. This shows they were not just part of the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament, which were done away with, but were part of God’s everlasting moral law. Homosexual behavior is in God’s sight a serious sin. The third place where homosexual acts are mentioned in the Old Testament is the horrifying story in Genesis 19 of the attempted gang rape of Lot’s visitors by the men of Sodom, from which our word sodomy derives. God destroyed the city of Sodom because of their wickedness. Now if this weren’t enough, the New Testament also forbids homosexual behavior.

Of the many, many thousands of serious students of the Bible throughout Christian history who pored over every word—from leading early Christian scholars such as Irenaeus in the second century; to Tertullian and Origen in the third; to Augustine in the fifth; to all the biblical scholars of the Middle Ages up to Aquinas; to the Reformation greats Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin; on to, well, everyone who studied or simply read or even just heard passages from the Bible—this idea of the rapture occurred to no one until John Nelson Darby came up with the idea in the early 1800s (as we will discuss in chapter 3).

Hear that again: Flesh and blood, skin and bones—those aren’t the places where your real struggles lie. The identity of your real enemy, once the Bible has weighed in, is clear as day. It’s him. It’s all him. It’s always been him. But in the rough-and-tumble of life’s exhausting pace, we can quickly lose touch with a passage like Ephesians 6. Even in knowing the truth, we can lose sight of where these attacks are originating from . . . from back there, behind the curtain. And by failing to take notice and remember, it’s not hard then to lose our cool, our temper, and most of our self-control before we ever find our way back to ultimate reality.

The Bible is full of evidence that God’s attention is indeed fixed on the little things. But this is not because God is a Great Cosmic Cop, eager to catch us in minor transgressions, but simply because God loves us—loves us so much that the divine presence is revealed even in the meaningless workings of daily life. It is in the ordinary, the here—and—now, that God asks us to recognize that the creation is indeed refreshed like dew—laden grass that is “renewed in the morning” (Ps 90:5), or to put it in more personal and also theological terms, “our inner nature is being renewed every day” (2 Cor 4:16). Seen in this light, what strikes many modern readers as the ludicrous attention to detail in the book of Leviticus, involving God in the minutiae of daily life—all the cooking and cleaning of a people’s domestic life—might be revisioned as the very love of God. A God who cares so much as to desire to be present to us in everything we do. It is this God who speaks to us through the psalmist as he wakes from sleep, amazed, to declare, “I will bless you, Lord, you give me counsel, and even at night direct my heart” (Ps 16:7, GR). It is this God who speaks to us through the prophets, reminding us that by meeting the daily needs of the poor and vulnerable, characterized in the scriptures as the widows and orphans, we prepare the way of the Lord and make our own hearts ready for the day of salvation. When it comes to the nitty—gritty, what ties these threads of biblical narrative together into a revelation of God’s love is that God has commanded us to refrain from grumbling about the dailiness of life. Instead we are meant to accept it gratefully, as a reality that humbles us even as it gives us cause for praise. The rhythm of sunrise and sunset marks a passage of time that makes each day rich with the possibility of salvation, a concept that is beautifully summed up in an ancient saying from the monastic tradition: “Abba Poeman said concerning Abba Pior that every day he made a new beginning.

She does not read it the way she and Kat used to read books - devouring them with the speed of two people famished for words, ideas, and beautiful sentences that make you feel everything. No, she reads Endurance the way a person might read the Bible - in small passages, repeated again and again, to help her stay grounded. To help her persevere, and understand her place in the world. She has missed books, but she's been afraid of them, same as music. Books make you feel things hard. They hit the tender spots. Books remind her of her and Kat, but also of her old self, too, the mostly carefree self. The girl who was just so happy to come home from the library with a big stack of new stuff to read. Books were dangerous.

If you have the impression that I am minimizing the place of the Bible in the life of the Christian, you are missing my point. I know the Bible speaks about the importance of feeding from God’s Word daily. However when a person’s goal is simply to read the Bible, he isn’t seeing the big picture. We should read the Bible because we want to know Christ in a more intimate way, not just to fulfill a religious duty. Nobody in the New Testament was more committed to studying the Bible than the Pharisees. They could quote long passages from memory. They knew the content of their Bible because they pored over it daily. But Jesus had a word to say about their kind of Bible study: “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal

What is the meaning of the phrase “shall be bound in heaven... shall be loosed in heaven?” Williams, the Bible translator, points out for us that the verb form is the perfect passive participle, so the reference is to things in a state of having been already forbidden (or permitted). This tells us that whatever is bound or loosed by the believer is done on the basis that it has already been done “in heaven,” i.e. by the Lord himself. What is it, then, that the Lord has already bound and which he has given us power to bind again? Jesus teaches us: Or else how can one enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house. Matt. 12:29 The context of this passage finds Jesus casting out demons. His authority for thus doing is challenged by the religious authorities. They accuse him of doing it by the power of the devil himself. Jesus is explaining that he is able to control demon spirits and make them obey him because he has already bound the strong man — Satan. The fact that the demons obey Him is evidence of Satan being bound. Satan is already bound “in heaven” — by heaven’s power. His power is broken. The key is given to us. We have power over him, too. Amen! The Greek word for “bind” in the passage before us is deo. It means to fasten or tie — as with chains, as an animal tied to keep it from straying. This is glorious! When Satan is bound he is made inoperable. He loses his ability to act against us.

Early on I realized the people I most mirrored in the Bible were those blasted Pharisees, the ones who tried so hard their entire lives to be good, to work hard, to correct the thinking of others. They too were probably grimly proud of the way they memorized passages of scripture, how they could out-argue anyone, how they kept their society neat and clean of any moral gray. And so when I was in Bible college, when I read and read and read the words of Jesus, when I saw how his life was a continuous announcement of some mysterious amorphous thing called the kingdom of God, I became very scared indeed— because I didn’t understand what the good news of the kingdom was, or how to bring it to earth, or how to be a Christian in a world that doesn’t value taking care of others.

The glorious truth is that the Bible does not teach that all men are separated and cut off from God because of sin.  It is a mythical conclusion, arrived at by men philosophizing in accordance with the fallen mind; men who, in their scramble for proof texts, read their preconceived ideas into passages that are irrelevant to their argument.  What the Bible actually teaches is that it was us who separated ourselves from God.  The guilt, shame and fear that accompanied sin caused us to run and hide, but God was right where He’d always been. Remember, man’s mind had become corrupted by the knowledge of good and evil, rendering him incapable of perceiving God rightly.  Over the years, people born with this same inability began viewing their loving Father as someone to be terrified of. 

But sound Bible study is rooted in a celebration of delayed gratification. Gaining Bible literacy requires allowing our study to have a cumulative effect—across weeks, months, years—so that the interrelation of one part of Scripture to another reveals itself slowly and gracefully, like a dust cloth slipping inch by inch from the face of a masterpiece. The Bible does not want to be neatly packaged into three-hundred-and-sixty-five-day increments. It does not want to be reduced to truisms and action points. It wants to introduce dissonance into your thinking, to stretch your understanding. It wants to reveal a mosaic of the majesty of God one passage at a time, one day at a time, across a lifetime. By all means, bring eagerness to your study time. Yes, bring hunger. But certainly bring patience—come ready to study for the long term.

There comes a time in most of our lives in which we no longer have the strength to lift ourselves out or to pretend ourselves strong. Sometimes our minds want to break because life stomped on us and God didn’t stop it. Like a family who watches their loved one slip and fall onto the rocks on a mountainside vacation when all was supposed to be beautiful and fun; or like a parent whose child was mistreated or shot while at school. Charles and those who lost their loved ones that terrible day had to come to terms with suffering in a house of God while the word was preached and a prankster cackled. Questions fill our lungs. We mentally wheeze. We go numb. When on vacation or at school or at church, that kind of thing is not supposed to happen there. Even the knees of a Jesus-follower will buckle. Charles’ wife, Susannah, said of Charles at that time, “My beloved’s anguish was so deep and violent, that reason seemed to totter in her throne, and we sometimes feared that he would never preach again.”5 Though it cannot be said for all of us or for every person that we have loved, it remains true that, in this cherished case, Charles Spurgeon did preach again. But sorrows of many kinds haunted and hounded him for the rest of his life. His depression came, not only from circumstances, or from questions about whether or not he was consecrated to God, but also from the chemistry of his body. God gave to us a preacher who knew firsthand what it felt like for his reason to totter, not just once, but many times during his life and ministry. And somehow this fellow sufferer named Charles and his dear wife Susannah (who also suffered physically most of her adult life) still made a go of it, insisting to each other and to their generation that the sorrowing have a Savior. On that November morning, in weakness, Charles did what some of us are not yet able to do in our sorrows; he read the Bible. Perhaps it will comfort you to learn that for a while “the very sight of the Bible” made Charles cry.6 Many of us know what this feels like. But this Scripture passage, Philippians 2:9-11, “had such a power of comfort upon [his] distressed spirit.” And being found in human form, he [Jesus] humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name (Phil. 2:8-9). From this Scripture, Charles set the larger story of his hope before us. The same Heavenly Father who picked up His son out of the muck, misery and mistreatment can do the same for us.

Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried." When she had finished, Rides the Wind demanded that she repeat it.Three times he asked her to repeat the passage. Then, setting the Bible aside, he took her hands in his own and said, never taking his eyes from hers, Where Walks the Fire goes,there will I go. Where Walks the Fire lodges, there will I lodge. Her people shall be my people. Her God shall be my God. Looking up,he said, "God who created all things.I thank you for sending Walks the Fire.I take her as my wife. I ask you to be pleased. You make all things.You make her heart sing for me.You make my heart answer back. You give your Son to die for us.We have no min-is-ter,but you know us.We are Lakota. We are husband and wife.We are yours.

Bible Passage: Proverbs 27:1-3   "Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips. A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty; but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both."   ------------------------------------------------ People many times are inclined to boast about what they will or will not do and even to boast about when they will or will not do it.  But Solomon had warned about falling into that trap.  The simple fact as he pointed out is that no one knows for certain any part of the future.  One moment before having a devastating medical emergency, the individual that will have it probably has no clue about what will soon happen.  Similarly a serious automobile accident or some other kind of serious accident might be just a few moments away.  But the person or people that will suffer through that experience do not have any idea about that either.  As everyone knows, the unknown is simply a very big part of this life.

He did it for us. He took the form of man, took all our sins upon Himself, and died on a Roman cross two thousand years ago.” Sally examined the passage again. “So tell me: did it work?” Bernice leaned forward and said, “You be the judge. The Bible says that the penalty for sin is death, but after Jesus paid that penalty He rose from the dead on the third day, so something was different. He conquered sin, so He was able to conquer sin’s penalty. Sure, it worked. It always works. Jesus satisfied divine justice on that Cross. He bore the punishment in full, and God never had to bend the rules. That’s why we call Jesus our Savior. He shed His own blood in our place, and died, and then rose from the grave to prove He’d won over sin and could set us free.” Now Bernice started getting excited. “And you know what thrills me about that? It means we’re special to Him; He really does love us, and we . . . we mean something, we’re here for a reason! And you know what else? No matter what our sins are, no matter where we are or what condition we’re in, we can be forgiven, free and clear, a clean slate!

Whereas the Mosaic Law recognized only the reality of deeds, Jesus recognized the reality of inner psychic states. For example: You have heard that it was said to the men of old, "You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment." But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment ...(Matt. 5:21-22, RSV) And again: You have heard that it was said, "You shall not commit adultery." But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Ibid. 5:27-28) These passages have a major psychological import. They represent a transition from a kind of crude behavioristic psychology to one which is aware of the reality of the psyche as such without concrete actions. The gospel accounts abound in many other major psychological discoveries. Jesus formulated the conception of psychological projection two thousand years before depth psychology: Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your bother's eye with never a thought for the great plank in your own eye? (Matt. 7:3, New English Bible)

It is my contention that the popular misuse of “do not judge” reveals just how far the discipline of sound biblical study has slipped in recent years. More than that, it sheds light on the state of our culture, a culture that seeks to avoid accountability and responsibility for personal actions. This current trend and mentality runs counter to the teachings of Scripture. For the collective teaching of the Bible insists that those who are created in the image of God are morally responsible to God and to one another. So to use “do not judge” as a means of dismissing oneself from moral responsibility would be to interpret it in a way that pits it against the rest of Scripture. We should remember that “all Scripture is God-breathed,” or inspired by the Holy Spirit, and as such it is without error and never contradicts itself (because God never contradicts himself). Therefore, it is always wise to interpret a given passage of Scripture by comparing it with the principles and teachings found elsewhere in Scripture. This provides a healthy check and balance and helps us avoid misinterpretations, logical inconsistencies, and inappropriate applications.

Every church became a theatre, where orators, instead of church teachers, harangued, caring not to instruct the people, but striving to attract admiration, to bring opponents to public scorn, and to preach only novelties and paradoxes, such as would tickle the ears of their congregation. This state of things necessarily stirred up an amount of controversy, envy, and hatred, which no lapse of time could appease; so that we can scarcely wonder that of the old religion nothing survives but its outward forms (even these, in the mouth of the multitude, seem rather adulation than adoration of the Deity), and that faith has become a mere compound of credulity and prejudices—aye, prejudices too, which degrade man from rational being to beast, which completely stifle the power of judgment between true and false, which seem, in fact, carefully fostered for the purpose of extinguishing the last spark of reason! Piety, great God! and religion are become a tissue of ridiculous mysteries; men, who flatly despise reason, who reject and turn away from understanding as naturally corrupt, these, I say, these of all men, are thought, O lie most horrible! to possess light from on High. Verily, if they had but one spark of light from on High, they would not insolently rave, but would learn to worship God more wisely, and would be as marked among their fellows for mercy as they now are for malice; if they were concerned for their opponents’ souls, instead of for their own reputations, they would no longer fiercely persecute, but rather be filled with pity and compassion. Furthermore, if any Divine light were in them, it would appear from their doctrine. I grant that they are never tired of professing their wonder at the profound mysteries of Holy Writ; still I cannot discover that they teach anything but speculations of Platonists and Aristotelians, to which (in order to save their credit for Christianity) they have made Holy Writ conform; not content to rave with the Greeks themselves, they want to make the prophets rave also; showing conclusively, that never even in sleep have they caught a glimpse of Scripture’s Divine nature. The very vehemence of their admiration for the mysteries plainly attests, that their belief in the Bible is a formal assent rather than a living faith: and the fact is made still more apparent by their laying down beforehand, as a foundation for the study and true interpretation of Scripture, the principle that it is in every passage true and divine.

I decide that candor is probably best, that I will never see this woman again after this month. “I’m honestly not sure why I’m here, other than I feel like I could use some spiritual direction in my life.” This is the truth. “Why do you feel that way?” Nora asks. I sit for a few seconds, because this is a good question. I’m not terribly sure, other than my soul is weary, my usual recipe of prayer and reflecting on passages from the Bible isn’t inspiring me, and I sense a gaping, run-ragged hole in my soul where mature wisdom should be. Also, I don’t know where my home is, where I might really belong. Years have passed since I last felt poured-into, I tell her, and I have not bothered to seek it out. I have embarked on this year of travel, at age thirty-seven, feeling less confident than I did a decade ago about what I believe to be true, and how that truth intersects with who I am. I am weary from game playing and formulaic answers, and the evangelical-Christian hat that I have worn daily with every outfit since I was fourteen feels too small, headache inducing. I fidget daily in its discomfort, but I don’t know how to exchange it, how it should be resized. Perhaps I can stitch a new hat from scraps I find scattered around the globe, I suggest. Perhaps she could be my milliner, maybe help me find the first scrap, floating somewhere along the sidewalks of old Chiang

Shortly after I returned home from the Ukraine, I became severely ill with what doctors believed was a parasite. I couldn’t hold my food down and lost a lot of weight. Different doctors kept prescribing me antibiotics, but none of them seemed to help. For a couple of months, I was poked and tested in a variety of ways, only to have more questions surface than answers. Then I was sent to an ear, nose, and throat doctor for an evaluation. I was sitting in a waiting room with a bunch of toddlers, when my name was called. By the time I got into the examination room I knew I’d had enough. “Hey, I’m outta here,” I told the doctor. “I’ll take my chance with the resurrection.” Well, a couple of weeks later, my insurance agent called me. He was one of my lifelong friends and sounded concerned. “Hey, Jase,” he said. “Your insurance company wants you to see a psychiatrist.” Apparently, the ear, nose, and throat doctor recommended I undergo a full psychiatric evaluation based on my refusal to be examined, along with my speech on the resurrection! Apparently, he thought I was crazy. I convinced my buddy that I didn’t need a psychiatrist and eventually got over my illness. I would later read a passage of scripture in the Bible that caused me to smile in reflection on the entire ordeal. Second Corinthians 5:13 says: “If we are out of our mind, as some say, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.

THE “ROSEBUD” OR “EMBRYO” OF FAITH By itself what was said above does not suffice to explain precisely how a rudimentary faith can be substantially the same as explicit Christian faith. The answer lies in St. Thomas's exegesis of Heb 11:6. The verse reads: “Whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” For St. Thomas, this verse already contains the whole “substance of the faith” that is mentioned in Heb 11:1: All the articles are contained implicitly in certain primary matters of faith, [namely] God's existence and His providence over the salvation of man, according to Hebrews 11: “He that cometh to God, must believe that He is, and is a rewarder to them that seek Him.” For the existence of God includes all that we believe to exist in God eternally, and in these our happiness consists; while belief in His providence includes all those things which God dispenses in time, for man's salvation, and which are the way to that happiness: and in this way, again, some of those articles which follow from these are contained in others: thus faith in the Redemption of mankind includes belief in the Incarnation of Christ, His Passion and so forth.7 For St. Thomas, all that is essential to the Christian faith (the Resurrection, the triune nature of God, the moral law, etc.) is rooted in the two primary “matters” (credibilia) of faith mentioned Heb 11:6, namely, God's existence and his providence. In his insightful reflection on this passage from St. Thomas, Charles Journet explains that the Trinity is already involved in the more fundamental revelation of God's existence and is contained therein as a rose in its bud.

Americans struggle with silence.  It seems we must have the radio blaring in the car or a TV on in the house, even if no one is watching.  We can't handle solitude very well.  Yet, solitude is the one thing a deer hunter craves and anticipates.  There are a few times when the woods get so quiet you feel like you are the only living creature around.  It's life-changing!  People are most like themselves in nature.  You can get down to the real you—no veneer, no facade, no masquerade— and it is there that God can do wonders on us.  I like thinking of it as an anesthetic that puts everything to sleep so that surgery can take place. Jesus knew the power of time alone with God, and we also need to know it — by experience.  He would often slip away (Luke 5:16).  The disciples would awaken, look around, and discover that Jesus was gone.  He loved the early morning moments before the world came alive and began buzzing with activity (Mark 1:35-39).  He knew that soon everyone would wipe the sleep out of their eyes, and He would be in high demand.  So, He placed high priority on those private, devoted moments, in order to escape and be alone with His Father.  He didn’t just squeeze in prayer and meditation between all His preaching and miracles.  Someone once said, “Jesus went from place of prayer to place of prayer with teaching and miracles in between.”  I like that.               Those who hunt know the adrenaline rush caused by the crunching leaves as a whitetail slowly approaches.  There is also such a surge when the word of God is read.  I hope you will enjoy both as you read this book.  My greatest satisfaction would be to know that you have found yourself a quiet place to read this book and contemplate the spiritual lessons in it.  When you have even more time, get your Bible and turn to the passages cited and read them more fully.  It will deepen your understanding.

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.

In 1786, Jefferson, then the American ambassador to France, and Adams, then the American ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the ambassador to Britain. The Americans wanted to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress’ vote to appease. During the meeting Jefferson and Adams asked the ambassador why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts. In a later meeting with the American Congress, the two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam “was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Qur’an that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.” For the following 15 years, the American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. Most Americans do not know that the payments in ransom and Jizyah tribute amounted to 20 percent of United States government annual revenues in 1800. Not long after Jefferson’s inauguration as president in 1801, he dispatched a group of frigates to defend American interests in the Mediterranean, and informed Congress. Declaring that America was going to spend “millions for defense but not one cent for tribute,” Jefferson pressed the issue by deploying American Marines and many of America’s best warships to the Muslim Barbary Coast. The USS Constitution, USS Constellation, USS Philadelphia, USS Chesapeake, USS Argus, USS Syren and USS Intrepid all fought. In 1805, American Marines marched across the dessert from Egypt into Tripolitania, forcing the surrender of Tripoli and the freeing of all American slaves. During the Jefferson administration, the Muslim Barbary States, crumbled as a result of intense American naval bombardment and on shore raids by Marines. They finally agreed officially to abandon slavery and piracy. Jefferson’s victory over the Muslims lives on today in the Marine Hymn with the line “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we will fight our country’s battles on the land as on the sea.” It wasn’t until 1815 that the problem was fully settled by the total defeat of all the Muslim slave trading pirates.

1. Divine Writing: The Bible, down to the details of its words, consists of and is identical with God’s very own words written inerrantly in human language. 2. Total Representation: The Bible represents the totality of God’s communication to and will for humanity, both in containing all that God has to say to humans and in being the exclusive mode of God’s true communication.[11] 3. Complete Coverage: The divine will about all of the issues relevant to Christian belief and life are contained in the Bible.[12] 4. Democratic Perspicuity: Any reasonably intelligent person can read the Bible in his or her own language and correctly understand the plain meaning of the text.[13] 5. Commonsense Hermeneutics: The best way to understand biblical texts is by reading them in their explicit, plain, most obvious, literal sense, as the author intended them at face value, which may or may not involve taking into account their literary, cultural, and historical contexts. 6. Solo Scriptura:[14] The significance of any given biblical text can be understood without reliance on creeds, confessions, historical church traditions, or other forms of larger theological hermeneutical frameworks, such that theological formulations can be built up directly out of the Bible from scratch. 7. Internal Harmony: All related passages of the Bible on any given subject fit together almost like puzzle pieces into single, unified, internally consistent bodies of instruction about right and wrong beliefs and behaviors. 8. Universal Applicability: What the biblical authors taught God’s people at any point in history remains universally valid for all Christians at every other time, unless explicitly revoked by subsequent scriptural teaching. 9. Inductive Method: All matters of Christian belief and practice can be learned by sitting down with the Bible and piecing together through careful study the clear “biblical” truths that it teaches. The prior nine assumptions and beliefs generate a tenth viewpoint that—although often not stated in explications of biblicist principles and beliefs by its advocates—also commonly characterizes the general biblicist outlook, particularly as it is received and practiced in popular circles: 10. Handbook Model: The Bible teaches doctrine and morals with every affirmation that it makes, so that together those affirmations comprise something like a handbook or textbook for Christian belief and living, a compendium of divine and therefore inerrant teachings on a full array of subjects—including science, economics, health, politics, and romance.[15]

In Romans 12:4-8, Paul writes about gifts: “For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.” “Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them.” Recognize that the gifts inside you are not only for you; just as the gifts inside other people around you are not only for them. We are meant to help each other. God designed us this way on purpose! All being members of one body, our successes are shared — there is no need to be threatened by another person’s gift. Use your gifts, and encourage the people in your life to use their gifts as well. You will be blessed as a result! Unfortunately, one thing that keeps us from asking for help or taking advantage of the talents in people around us is pride. Never allow pride to keep you from asking for counsel when it is needed! 1 Corinthians 12:20 is another passage about gifts: “now indeed there are many members, yet one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’; nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ ” We need each other, and joining our gifts together will result in a much stronger body. If you have time, read 1 Corinthians 12:4-20. Reflect on how there can be unity in the diversity of gifts if we use our different gifts properly. Determine that you will not be threatened by anyone else’s gifts! Esther was not afraid of the gifts in the people around her. Let’s see how she responds to the wisdom of others today. And every day Mordecai paced in front of the court of the women’s quarters, to learn of Esther’s welfare and what was happening to her. Esther 2:11 Every day, Mordecai goes to the palace gates to inquire after Esther and learn of what was happening to her. He goes to the palace gates with purpose. He paces in front of the women’s court until he has learns the day’s news about Esther. Even though she is no longer under his roof, he stills feels a strong responsibility toward her, and acts accordingly. He is a faithful man, and has set a great example before Esther. The news that he hears concerning Esther daily must be good: her inward beauty and submission to authority are two of the many wonderful traits that God placed in her so that she will be effective in Persia. Even though Esther is in an unfamiliar place and experiencing “firsts” every day in the palace, God is making sure she has what she needs. Esther did not need to feel nervous! She needed wise counsel; it has been provided for her in Mordecai and Hegai. She needs a pleasant and patient personality; that has been being developed in her by the Lord for many years. In your own life, you are constantly undergoing change and growth as you are submitting to the Lord. Whether or not you can see it, God is continually preparing you for what lies ahead so that you will have what you need when you need it. The God who loves you so much knows your future, and He is preparing you today for what you will experience tomorrow. Esther is receiving what she needs as well. She is in the palace undergoing her beauty preparations — a twelve month process! Even through this extended period of time, Mordecai is still at the palace gates every day (the Bible does not say that he stopped his concern for her at any point). It is an entire

it would have been absurd in the Evangelist to say that the   Speech was always with God, if he had not some kind of subsistence   peculiar to himself in God. This passage serves, therefore, to refute   the error of Sabellius; for it shows that the Son is distinct from the   Father.

The truth model held that the truth would set you free. If you were not “free,” if some area of your life were not working, it must be because you lacked “truth” in your life. So the helper’s role was to urge you to learn more verses, memorize more Scripture, and learn more doctrine (particularly your “position in Christ”), and then all of this truth would make its way from your head to your heart and ultimately into your behavior and emotions. Passages that emphasize knowing truth, renewing your mind, and how you “think in your heart” became a new theology of “thinking truth to gain emotional health.

I think that the problem that Catholics have, then, is not a lack of familiarity with the Bible so much as an indifference toward it from repeated exposure to the same passages.

Many OT passages speak of similar hardness of heart (e.g., Dt 29:4; Isa 42:19–20; 43:8; 44:18; Jer 5:21; Eze 12:2), but Jesus condenses a text in Isaiah in this parable. In Isaiah 6:9–10, God calls Isaiah to reveal truth to Israel that Israel will not receive, until the impending judgment (Isa 6:11). Their spiritual blindness increased as punishment for their refusal to heed what they had already heard from God (Isa 29:9–10).

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.

Not only does Jesus reject these narratives, he attributes them to the way of the devil, rather than the way of God. Consider for example the story of Elijah calling down fire from heaven as proof that he was on God's side. Elijah declares, “If I am a man of God, may fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty men!” Then fire fell from heaven and consumed the captain and his men (2 Kings 1: 10). Hoping to follow Elijah’s example, James and John ask Jesus in response to opposition they were experiencing, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” (Luke 9: 54–55). Perhaps that was why they got their nickname “the sons of thunder.” Luke tells us that the response of Jesus was not to affirm this narrative, but to sternly rebuke his disciples. In that rebuke of Jesus is an implicit yet clear rejection of the way of Elijah as well. Later manuscripts include the response of Jesus, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of, for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them” (Luke 9: 55–56). 22 In other words, Jesus is essentially saying that the way of Elijah is not of God, but instead belongs to the spirit of the one who seeks to destroy, that is, of the devil. While Elijah claimed that his actions proved he was a “man of God,” this passage in Luke’s Gospel makes the opposite claim: The true “man of God” incarnate had not come to obliterate life, but to save, heal, and restore it (Luke 19: 10 & John 3: 17). Jesus not only recognizes this himself as the Son of God, but rebukes James and John for not having come to this conclusion on their own. In other words, Jesus expects his disciples—expects you and me—to be making these same calls of knowing what to embrace in the Bible and what to reject.

Why didn’t you go after her?” His father’s deep voice confronted his cowardice. Michael stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, slumping his shoulders in the process as a child being scolded. He could not look at his father, he knew all too well the disapproving glare that was bound to chastise him. “Love isn’t easy, Son.” His father’s hand on his shoulder offered understanding and friendship, far from the reprove he expected. “But it is for you and mom.” “No, Son, it isn’t.” His father admitted. “I think we need to talk. How about ordering us a pizza, while I settle in.” Guiding his son back to the house, Joseph felt the prick of thorns from the guilt of past mistakes. “I can’t believe you and mom almost divorced.” Michael shook his head in disbelief at the story his father had shared with him. “We came very close. Thankfully, my father, your grandfather, sat me down and shared his own marital struggles with me. None of us are exempt from them. I know you and Abigail are not talking marriage yet, but I see the way you look at her and I know, that it is just a matter of time. Love is a commitment, Michael, not a contract.” Joseph sat his empty coffee cup down on the table and spoke honestly with his son. “Either you love her enough to fight for her, or you don’t love her at all.” “I do love her.” “Then fight for her, Michael. That includes forgiving her, not just once, but each time she messes up.” Standing, Joseph handed Michael his Bible. “I have marked two passages I want you to read. Start with Isaiah 53 and end with 1 Corinthians 13. I think you will find your answers there.” Reaching his hand down to his boy, Joseph pulled him up into his embrace. “Sleep well, Son. Your mom and I are praying for you.

The problem with my casual friend was that we didn't have any real relationship. He's a sweet guy and a true lover of Jesus, but we were never close enough to speak meaningfully into each other's lives. He hadn't gotten to know Constantino and had never spent time with us to see the fruit borne of our relationship. So when he wrote me with his Scripture-spattered disapproval, my heart had little generosity to listen. Furthermore, his message consisted of nothing more than the same tired clobber passages from the Bible with which I was all too well acquainted. I had wrestled with the issue of homosexuality for twenty years — through agonizing therapy, scholarly books, thoughtful discussion, Bible study, and endless prayer. I doubt he had been so diligent about the issue. So when he asserted my wrongness with so much confidence, it felt to me like an insolent kindergartner criticizing a PhD's solution to a calculus problem.

Circumcision is well-known in the ancient Near East from as early as the fourth millennium BC, though the details of its practice and its significance vary from culture to culture. Circumcision was practiced in the ancient Near East by many peoples. The Egyptians practiced circumcision as early as the third millennium BC. West Semitic peoples, Israelites, Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites performed circumcision. Eastern Semitic peoples did not (e.g., Assyrians, Babylonians, Akkadians)—nor did the Philistines, an Aegean or Greek people. Anthropological studies have suggested that the rite always has to do with at least one of four basic themes: fertility, virility, maturity and genealogy. Study of Egyptian mummies demonstrates that the surgical technique in Egypt differed from that used by the Israelites; while the Hebrews amputated the prepuce of the penis, the Egyptians merely incised the foreskin and so exposed the glans penis. Egyptians were not circumcised as children, but in either prenuptial or puberty rites. The common denominator, however, is that it appears to be a rite of passage, giving new identity to the one circumcised and incorporating him into a particular group. Evidence from the Levant comes as early as bronze figurines from the Amuq Valley (Tell el-Judeideh) from the early third millennium BC. An ivory figurine from Megiddo from the mid-second millennium BC shows Canaanite prisoners who are circumcised. Southern Mesopotamia shows no evidence of the practice, nor is any Akkadian term known for the practice. The absence of such evidence is significant since Assyrian and Babylonian medical texts are available in abundance. Abraham is therefore aware of the practice from living in Canaan and visiting Egypt rather than from his roots in Mesopotamia. Since Ishmael is 13 years old at this time, Abraham may even have been wondering whether it was a practice that would characterize this new family of his. In Ge 17 circumcision is retained as a rite of passage, but one associated with identity in the covenant. In light of today’s concerns with gender issues, some have wondered why the sign of the covenant should be something that marks only males. Two cultural issues may offer an explanation: patrilineal descent and identity in the community. (1) The concept of patrilineal descent resulted in males being considered the representatives of the clan and the ones through whom clan identity was preserved (as, e.g., the wife took on the tribal and clan identity of her husband). (2) Individuals found their identity more in the clan and the community than in a concept of self. Decisions and commitments were made by the family and clan more than by the individual. The rite of passage represented in circumcision marked each male as entering a clan committed to the covenant, a commitment that he would then have the responsibility to maintain. If this logic holds, circumcision would not focus on individual participation in the covenant as much as on continuing communal participation. The community is structured around patrilineal descent, so the sign on the males marks the corporate commitment of the clan from generation to generation. ◆

Mistakes to Avoid This is one passage from which we might contend that the text does indeed want the readers to “be like Joseph.” His resistance to temptation is highly commendable, and the author develops the situation to reveal his reasoning, not just his action (39:8–9). Having said this, however, God’s work through Joseph is more important in the text than the character of Joseph. We do well to imitate Joseph in this regard, but the narrator is not holding up the character of Joseph as a model. We also must not generalize from Joseph’s experience to everyone else’s. God worked a certain way in Joseph’s experience, but he may not work in everyone’s experiences as visibly. The story helps us to understand that God cares for his people and that he is able to do all things. Our responsibility is to be faithful in hard times, whether or not God delivers us from them. It is best to treat the attempted seduction of Joseph by Potiphar’s wife with discretion with the younger ages.

Thus the demand for signs becomes the prototype of every condition human beings raise as a barrier to being open to God. I will devote myself to this God if he heals my child. I will follow this Jesus if I can maintain my independence. I will happily become a Christian if God proves himself to me. I will turn from my sin and read the Bible if my marriage gets sorted out to my satisfaction. I will acknowledge Jesus as Lord if he performs the kind of miracle, on demand, that removes all doubt. In every case, I am assessing him; he is not assessing me. I am not coming to him on his terms; rather, I am stipulating terms that he must accept if he wants the privilege of my company. “Jews demand miraculous signs.

...If Jesus came to bring abundant life to all who follow him, that means that transgender Christians should be able to stop spending every single bit of their energy defending themselves against those 'clobber passages,' in order to concentrate instead on becoming better disciples. We should be able to move from survival practices to thriving faith. Jesus didn't come to make things marginally more bearable. He came to give us abundant and eternal life.

parallel to all other ages, not a chronological series of events. Indeed, one of the great marvels of God’s gracious activity toward us is that it occurs in real time without being prejudiced in favor of any particular age. Just because we are the latest does not mean we are the best. The effects of sin prevent any age—including ours—from being “golden,” at least in the spiritual sense. Every Christian generation learns equally the lessons of Revelation—that God is in control, that the powers of the world are minuscule when compared with God, that God is as likely to work through apparent weakness and failure as through strength and success, and that in the end God’s people will prevail. Revelation is the last book of the Bible. It reveals important truths about the end times. But it is also last in another important sense—it calls on all the hermeneutical courage, wisdom, and maturity one can muster in order to be understood properly. In many ways it serves as a graduation exercise for the NIV Application Commentary Series, an opportunity to fully apply the many lessons we have learned in the Bridging Contexts sections of previous volumes. God’s time is his, not ours. The story of God’s gracious activity on our behalf will be fulfilled in a great and glorious conclusion. But all Christians, everywhere and at all times, have equal access to the time. That access has been and is made possible by God’s message in the book of Revelation. Terry C. Muck Author’s Preface AS A NEW CHRISTIAN recently converted from atheism, I eagerly hurried through Paul’s letters, reaching Revelation as soon as possible. Once I reached it, however, I could hardly understand a word of it. I listened attentively to the first few “prophecy teachers” I heard, but even if they had not contradicted one another, over the years I watched as most of their detailed predictions failed to materialize. Perhaps six years after my conversion, as I began to read Revelation in Greek for the first time, the book came alive to me. Because I was now moving through the text more carefully, I noticed the transitions and the structure, and I realized it was probably addressing something much different from what I had first supposed. At the same time, I catalogued parallels I found between Revelation and biblical prophets like Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah. I also began reading an apocalypse contemporary with Revelation, 4 Ezra (2 Esdras in the Apocrypha), to learn more about the way Revelation’s original, first-century audience may have heard its claims. Yet even in my first two years as a Christian, Revelation and other end-time passages proved a turning point for me. As a young Christian, I was immediately schooled in a particular, popular end-time view, which I respectfully swallowed (the

...men are capable of perceiving the Pyramid in an astonishing number of ways. Some have thought the Pyramid was an astronomic and astrological observatory. Some have thought it functioned as the equivalent of a theodolite for surveyors in ancient times... Some think it performed as a giant sundial... Some think it records the mathematics and science of a civilization which vanished... Some think it is a huge water pump. Others have thought it was filled with fabulous treasures... One early investigator came away convinced it was the remains of a huge volcano. Another thought the pyramids were Joseph's granaries. Some thought they were heathen idols which should be destroyed. Some believe the Pyramid captures powerful cosmic energies... Some think it is a tomb. Some think it is a Bible in stone with prophecies built into the scheme of its internal passages... Some think it was a mammoth public works project which consolidated the position of the pharaoh and the unity of the nation. Some think it was built by beings from outer space. Some say it was a temple of initiation. Some hold that it was an instrument of science. Some believe it is an altar of Guild built through direct Divine Revelation. And today, judging by the uses to which it has been put, some apparently think it is an outhouse.

I’ve been a bit constipated lately, you see, and the Virgin Mary calendar hangs in the bathroom. It has passages from the Bible but also recipes, quotations, and jokes.

According to UNICEF, if ninety school buses filled with preschoolers crashed every day with no survivors, the world would notice. Yet that’s how many young children perish daily from impure water and inadequate sanitation.3 One

Inductive Bible Study Guide Jesus always lived with a view to the end of his earthly ministry. The preparation of a few who would carry on his ministry after he ascended to the Father was ever before him. This Bible study focuses on the training and transference of ministry to his selected disciples. Read Luke 6:12-16; 9:1-6, 10. What do you suppose Jesus included in his all-night prayer? (See the reading on page 20 for some ideas.) What can you learn about Jesus’ strategic purpose for the selection of the Twelve from 9:1-6? What power and authority was given to the disciples? What power and authority can we expect to receive from Jesus today? What was Jesus’ role with the disciples after their return (9:10)? What questions do these passages raise for you? What verse or verses have particularly impacted you? Rewrite key verses in your own words. Reading: A Biblical

One of the problems in the entire debate over baptism has been the natural mistake of deriving the doctrine of the covenant from our doctrine of baptism, instead of beginning with the doctrine of the covenant, and then proceeding to discuss baptism. Many Christians have come to baptistic conclusions because they simply took a Bible and a concordance, and then looked up every incident of baptism in the New Testament. This is objectionable, not because they studied the passages concerned with baptism, but because they did not look up all the passages that addressed parents, children, generations, descendants, promises, covenants, circumcision, Gentiles, Jews, olive trees, and countless other important areas. In other words, the subject is bigger than it looks.

... It strikes me that if I'm in such a febrile and imaginative mood I ought to take advantage of it with some serious writing exercises or at least a few ideas for stories, if only to demonstrate that I'm not treating this here commonplace book solely as a journal to record my most recent attacks of jitters! Maybe I should roll my sleeves up and attempt as least an opening practice paragraph or two of this confounded novel I'm pretending to be writing. Let's see how it looks. Marblehead: An American Undertow By Robert D. Black Iron green, the grand machinery of the Atlantic grates foam gears against New England with the rhythmic thunder of industrial percussion. A fine dust of other lands and foreign histories is carried in suspension on its lurching, slopping mechanism: shards of bright green glass from Ireland scoured blunt and opaque by brine, or sodden splinters of armada out of Spain. The debris of an older world, a driftwood of ideas and people often changed beyond all recognition by their passage, clatters on the tideline pebbles to deposit unintelligible grudges, madnesses and visions in a rank high-water mark, a silt of fetid dreams that further decompose amid the stranded kelp or bladder-wrack and pose risk of infection. Puritans escaping England's murderous civil war cast broad-brimmed shadows onto rocks where centuries of moss obscured the primitive horned figures etched by vanished tribes, and after them came the displaced political idealists of many nations, the religious outcasts, cults and criminals, to cling with grim determination to a damp and verdant landscape until crushed by drink or the insufferable weight of their accumulated expectations. Royalist cavaliers that fled from Cromwell's savage interregnum and then, where their puritanical opponents settled the green territories to the east, elected instead to establish themselves deep in a more temperate South, bestowing their equestrian concerns, their courtly mannerisms and their hairstyles upon an adopted homeland. Heretics and conjurors who sought new climes past the long shadow of the stake; transported killers and procurers with their slates wiped clean in pastures where nobody knew them; sour-faced visionaries clutching Bunyan's chapbook to their bosoms as a newer and more speculative bible, come to these shores searching for a literal New Jerusalem and finding only different wilderness in which to lose themselves and different game or adversaries for the killing. All of these and more, bearing concealed agendas and a hundred diverse afterlives, crashed as a human surf of Plymouth Rock to fling their mortal spray across the unsuspecting country, individuals incendiary in the having lost their ancestral homelands they were without further longings to relinquish. Their remains, ancient and sinister, impregnate and inform the factory-whistle furrows of oblivious America.

... It strikes me that if I'm in such a febrile and imaginative mood I ought to take advantage of it with some serious writing exercises or at least a few ideas for stories, if only to demonstrate that I'm not treating this here commonplace book solely as a journal to record my most recent attacks of jitters! Maybe I should roll my sleeves up and attempt as least an opening practice paragraph or two of this confounded novel I'm pretending to be writing. Let's see how it looks. Marblehead: An American Undertow By Robert D. Black Iron green, the grand machinery of the Atlantic grates foam gears against New England with the rhythmic thunder of industrial percussion. A fine dust of other lands and foreign histories is carried in suspension on its lurching, slopping mechanism: shards of bright green glass from Ireland scoured blunt and opaque by brine, or sodden splinters of armada out of Spain. The debris of an older world, a driftwood of ideas and people often changed beyond all recognition by their passage, clatters on the tideline pebbles to deposit unintelligible grudges, madnesses and visions in a rank high-water mark, a silt of fetid dreams that further decompose amid the stranded kelp or bladder-wrack and pose risk of infection. Puritans escaping England's murderous civil war cast broad-brimmed shadows onto rocks where centuries of moss obscured the primitive horned figures etched by vanished tribes, and after them came the displaced political idealists of many nations, the religious outcasts, cults and criminals, to cling with grim determination to a damp and verdant landscape until crushed by drink or the insufferable weight of their accumulated expectations. Royalist cavaliers that fled from Cromwell's savage interregnum and then, where their puritanical opponents settled the green territories to the east, elected instead to establish themselves deep in a more temperate South, bestowing their equestrian concerns, their courtly mannerisms and their hairstyles upon an adopted homeland. Heretics and conjurors who sought new climes past the long shadow of the stake; transported killers and procurers with their slates wiped clean in pastures where nobody knew them; sour-faced visionaries clutching Bunyan's chapbook to their bosoms as a newer and more speculative bible, come to these shores searching for a literal New Jerusalem and finding only different wilderness in which to lose themselves and different game or adversaries for the killing. All of these and more, bearing concealed agendas and a hundred diverse afterlives, crashed as a human surf on Plymouth Rock to fling their mortal spray across the unsuspecting country, individuals incendiary in that having lost their ancestral homelands they were without further longings to relinquish. Their remains, ancient and sinister, impregnate and inform the factory-whistle furrows of oblivious America.

UnClobber is my attempt to say, in one word, that I do not believe that God stands opposed to those who are attracted to the same sex, or that God withholds divine blessing from a same-sex relationship. UnClobber came out of my desire to reverse the damage of the so-called “Clobber Passages.

Hence it appears, that the spiritual understanding of the Scripture, does not consist in opening to the mind the mystical meaning of the Scripture, in its parables, types, and allegories; for this is only a doctrinal explication of the Scripture. He that explains what is meant by the stony ground, and the seed's springing up suddenly, and quickly withering away, only explains what propositions or doctrines are taught in it. So he that explains what is typified by Jacob's ladder, and the angels of God ascending and descending on it, or what was typified by Joshua's leading Israel through Jordan , only shows what propositions are hid in these passages. And many men can explain these types who have no spiritual knowledge. It is possible that a man might know how to interpret all the types, parables, enigmas, and allegories in the Bible, and not have one beam of spiritual light in his mind; because he may not have the least degree of that spiritual sense of the holy beauty of divine things which has been spoken of, and may see nothing of this kind of glory in anything contained in any of these mysteries, or any other part of the Scripture. It is plain, by what the apostle says, that a man might understand all such mysteries, and have no saving grace, 1 Cor. 13:2: "And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." They therefore are very foolish, who are exalted in an opinion of their own spiritual attainments, from notions that come into their minds, of the mystical meaning of these and those passages of Scripture, as though it was a spiritual understanding of these passages, immediately given them by the Spirit of God, and hence have their affections highly raised; and what has been said shows the vanity of such affections.

Most slaves achieved status within the black community by winning the respect of their fellow slaves, not their owners. Indeed, slave leaders generally secured their high standing by virtue of opposing their owners, not collaborating with them. Many were connected with the new religiosity in the quarter, as preachers, shamen, and conjurers - men and women who could join the natural and unnatural worlds together, whether through African folk rituals or biblical injunctions. Others were healers and midwives, and still others earned the respect of their peers in the field or workshop. A few secured a bit of book learning and were able to read the Bible. All were enmeshed in the expanding web of kinship and spirituality - connections of blood, marriage, and belief - that bound slaves together. While they may have exhibited some personal quality, such as courage, intelligence, honesty, or piety, that their compatriots found attractive, it was kinship - a sense of belonging to a common family, on this earth or in heaven hereafter - that carried them to the top of black society and provided the basis for solidarity. Whether their social position rested on knowledge of the cosmos or the key to the corn crib, whether their authority derived from the Big House or the quarter, it was to these men and women - not their owners - that slaves turned first in moments of distress. And few crises shook slave society as deeply as the transfer from the seaboard to the interior. Annealed in the furnace of the Second Middle Passage and the cotton and sugar revolutions, a new generation of leaders struggled to express the collective aspirations of a people who were often divided by their multiple origins, diverse expectations, and increasingly differential wealth.

If we do not labour to establish justice in the gate, we shall be accused from this passage in Amos of a one-sided morality stopping short of the biblical concern for society, we shall be exposed, according to Amos 3:9-4:5, of playing around with a useless religion while society rots, and we shall find, according to Amos 6:3, that, while we have been unconcerned, other and sinister forces have been at work to enthrone violence and disorder.

Research for this book has made me aware of aspects of Christianity I find disturbing. During the past several years, rereading the gospels, I was struck by how their vision of supernatural struggle both expresses conflict and raises it to cosmic dimensions. This research, then, reveals certain fault lines in Christian tradition that have allowed for the demonizing of others throughout Christian history—fault lines that go back nearly two thousand years to the origins of the Christian movement. While writing this book I often recalled a saying of Søren Kierkegaard: "An unconscious relationship is more powerful than a conscious one." For nearly two thousand years, for example, many Christians have taken for granted that Jews killed Jesus and the Romans were merely their reluctant agents, and that this implicates not only the perpetrators but (as Matthew insists) all their progeny in evil. Throughout the centuries, countless Christians listening to the gospels absorbed, along with the quite contrary sayings of Jesus, the association between the forces of evil and Jesus’ Jewish enemies. Whether illiterate or sophisticated, those who heard the gospel stories, or saw them illustrated in their churches, generally assumed both their historical accuracy and their religious validity. Especially since the nineteenth century, however, increasing numbers of scholars have applied literary and historical analysis to the gospels—the so-called higher criticism. Their critical analysis indicated that the authors of Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source from which to construct their amplified gospels. Many scholars assumed that Mark was the most historically reliable because it was the simplest in style and was written closer to the time of Jesus than the others were. But historical accuracy may not have been the gospel writers’ first consideration. Further analysis demonstrated how passages from the prophetic writings and the psalms of the Hebrew Bible were woven into the gospel narratives. Barnabas Lindars and others suggested that Christian writers often expanded biblical passages into whole episodes that “proved,” to the satisfaction of many believers, that events predicted by the prophets found their fulfillment in Jesus’ coming.

Philippians 4:6–7 (NKJV), the scriptures on which this book is based, is one of my favorite Bible passages: Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

I’m not terribly sure, other than my soul is weary, my usual recipe of prayer and reflecting on passages from the Bible isn’t inspiring me, and I sense a gaping, run-ragged hole in my soul where mature wisdom should be. Also, I don’t know where my home is, where I might really belong.

Nana was the wisest woman anyone knew. She did the crossword puzzle every day and knew about words my father didn’t. She knew how to keep all of her flowers fully bloomed through October, and whenever I fought with my mother over the last grocery bag in the car, Nana would recite a Bible passage from memory. We’d be silenced by the immediacy of God standing before us in a knit sweater, burgundy heels.

Maybe it was the aftermath of a dream that he couldn’t remember – so he told me – but Theophilus Baxter woke up one morning in the middle of October 1658, with an unpleasant sensation of trouble. The second session of the General Court of Sagadac Bay would begin its final meeting later in the day. Although the discussions had been uproarious, Theophilus believed that his presentiment related to matters beyond the court’s jurisdiction He shook his head vigorously and walked barefoot across the cold floor to a water basin on a small table in the corner. A splash of water on his face drove away tiny fragments of sleep. While still in his nightshirt, he took his leather-bound Bible – one Elizabeth gave when they were married – from its shelf next to the door and brought it to the edge of his bed, where he sat down to say a short prayer and to read a passage from Paul’s writings. He then dressed and went down the narrow pine stairs to the kitchen, where Elizabeth was setting the table for breakfast. During a pause in their talk about the needs of the day, his premonition of eventfulness returned. Elizabeth noticed the look in his eyes, a look of happiness cut short. (You’ll find scholarly summaries of our controversy in other places. I want to tell the personal side now, so I’ll add and subtract, embroider and elaborate. I’ll invent conversations. Some will complain about the liberties I’m taking, but our colony, an experiment in living, invites adventures that work to create understanding.) “What is it now?” Elizabeth brought a tray of biscuits from the hearth to the table. “We’ve had too much talk lately about God and the Bible,” Theophilus said. “I don’t understand much of the chatter, and I doubt anyone else does either. It’s bad for the country. I had a dream last night about Lydia Bowstreet.” “What would you want to dream about that troublemaker for?” “Things stick in our minds sometimes in the strangest way.

Of course no one argues that we Christians are tasked with building the new heavens and the new earth from bottom to top. That would be as impossible as it is ridiculous. But there are a number of people who have argued that we as Christians at least have a hand in the creation of the new heavens and new earth—that we partner with God in his mission to restore the cosmos. As energizing as that may sound, though, it simply doesn’t ring true with the way the Bible talks about the new heavens and new earth. There’s the clear testimony of the passages we’ve just considered, but there’s also the fact that the land in which God’s people dwell—whether the Promised Land or the new earth—is always said to be a gift from God to his people.

AMAZING GRACE IS A SWEET SOUND Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers over all wrongs. Proverbs 10:12 Wherever you look, Christians are being abused—whether it’s the ridicule, marginalization, and stigmatization that Christians receive from the media and liberal elites here, or the torture, imprisonment, beheadings, and slaughter Christians suffer abroad. So-called progressives in the West treat Christians with snobbish contempt. Radical Islamists kill us. In both cases, morality has been turned upside-down. The Bible warns of such crumbling morality in 2 Timothy 3:2. It’s all been prophesized. This passage reveals that people will be lovers of themselves, arrogant, abusive, and wicked. The line separating right from wrong has been blurred by the worldly influences of humanism, secularism, and religious doctrines not based on the Word of God. The outcry of the age is for “tolerance,” yet how tolerant is it for people to attack Christians who simply want to live their lives by biblical principles? The very heart of Christianity is to love our enemies, as tough as that may be. What does that love look like now that so many are labeling us “intolerant”? Our example is found in Jesus. If He showed such amazing strength and mercy in the face of horrendous treatment coming at Him, how can we, being recipients of His mercy, refuse to exercise whatever strength we can muster? We can’t refuse it. The daunting nature of required mercy and grace makes it seem impossible to implement, especially when we see hatred around us. All the more reason to tap into God’s amazing grace and ask Him to show us how. He’ll be delighted to teach us. SWEET FREEDOM IN Action Pray to God for strength and understanding, and for the grace to endure.

And what will happen to churches and organizations who allow these approaches to stand as acceptable options? As evangelicals accept the validity of these claims one after the other, and as evangelical pastors preach sermons adopting the methods found in these claims, evangelicals are quietly and unsuspectingly being trained to reject this verse of Scripture and that command of Scripture, and this passage, and that teaching, here and there throughout the Bible. As this procedure goes on, we will begin to have whole churches who no longer “tremble” at the Word of God (Isa. 66:2), and who no longer live by “every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4), but who pick and choose the things they like and the things they don’t like in the Bible, using the very same methods they have been taught by these egalitarian writers. The church will thus be led step by step, often without knowing what is happening, to a new liberalism for the twenty-first century. And in this way the authority of God’s Word, and the ultimate authority of God himself over our lives, will be diminished and increasingly rejected.

Apart from a few sectarian movements, the entire Christian church from the first century until the 1850s agreed that only men could be pastors and elders, and the vast majority agreed that only men could do public Bible teaching of both men and women.20 From the 1850s until the 1950s in the United States, women pastors were a tiny minority, but over 98 percent of evangelical churches (over 99 percent of the broader Christian church if Roman Catholic and Orthodox groups are included) had only men as pastors.21 Allowing women to be ordained in significant numbers began with some liberal Protestant denominations in the 1950s and spread to a number of evangelical groups under the influence of evangelical feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. Before the advent of evangelical feminist writings in the 1970s, today’s “disputed passages” on women in ministry were not thought to be unclear. Therefore this matter is much different from disputes over the end times or baptism or Calvinism and Arminianism.

God is sometimes visible in the details. Sometimes while reading a familiar Bible story from an ancient era, we can miss significant details that a reader from that time would have caught. Help your congregation or class learn the practice of looking for God in the details of a text. In this passage, the Hebrew names of the four Judean youths capture aspects of God’s person and work essential to the larger narrative of Daniel 1–6. God is just (Daniel) and incomparable (Mishael); indeed, Yahweh is gracious (Hananiah) and rescues in times of need (Azariah).

This is further underscored by Jesus' disciples' comment in Matt 16:14 that some think Jesus is John the Baptist (presumably raised from the dead; see Matt 14:1; see Mark 6:14) and is made even more clear by Jesus' clarification that “Elijah has already come, and they didn't recognize him. On the contrary, they did whatever they pleased to him. In the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.” (Matt 17:12). The teachers of the Law insisted that Elijah had to come first (presumably on the basis of passages such as Mal 3:1–2), so that the time had not yet come

It is important to recognize what this kind of response does in this debate on the role of women in the church. It effectively prevents 1 Corinthians 14, 1 Timothy 2, 1 Timothy 3, and Titus 1 from speaking to this question. If someone says, “I’m not going to base my decision on these verses because nobody can figure out what they mean anyway,” then he has essentially said that those passages cannot play a role in his decision about this question. And that means that the passages that most directly speak to the question of women teaching and governing in the church are silenced and excluded from discussion on that very question. In essence, this approach guarantees that a decision about women teaching and governing in the church will be made without reference to the passages in the Bible that speak most directly to the topic. It is hard to think of an approach more likely to lead to a wrong decision.