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In my lifelong study of the Bible I have looked for an overarching theme, a summary statement of what the whole sprawling book is about. I have settled on this: “God gets his family back.” From the first book to the last the Bible tells of wayward children and the tortuous lengths to which God will go to bring them home. Indeed, the entire biblical drama ends with a huge family reunion in the book of Revelation.
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Philip Yancey (Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened to the Good News?)
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There were minutes of silence then and in them I thought about the only truth that mattered, the only morality that mattered, the only sin, the only crime. When Lily de Seitas had told me her version of it at the end of our meeting at the museum I had taken it as a retrospective thing, a comment on my past and on my anecdote about the butcher. But I saw now it had been about my future.
History has superseded the ten commandments of the Bible; for me they had never had any real meaning, that is, any other than a conformitant influence. But sitting in that bedroom, staring at the glow of the fire on the jamb of the door through to the sitting room, I knew that at last I began to feel the force of this super-commandment, summary of them all; somewhere I knew I had to choose it, and every day afresh, even though I went on failing to keep it. Conchis had talked of points of fulcrum, moments when one met one's future. I also knew it was all bound up with Alison, with choosing Alison, and having to go on choosing her every day. Adulthood was like a mountain, and I stood at the foot of this cliff of ice, this impossible and unclimbable: Thou shalt not inflict unnecessary pain.
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John Fowles (The Magus)
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Saturday, May 22d.---It is now Saturday night, and I must prepare for the holy Sabbath. My Bible and Confession of Faith are my traveling companions, and precious friends have they been to me. I bless God for that glorious summary of Christian doctrine contained in our noble standards. It has cheered my soul in many a dark hour, and sustained me in many a desponding moment. I love to read it, and ponder carefully each proof text as I pass along.
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James Henley Thornwell (The Life and Letters of James Henley Thornwell, D.D., LL.D; Ex-President of the South Carolina College, Late Professor of Theology in the Theological)
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The Heidelberg Catechism, Question and Answer 22: Q. “What, then, must a Christian believe? A. All that is promised us in the gospel, a summary of which is taught us in the articles of the Apostles’ Creed, our universally acknowledged confession of faith.
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Jack Rogers (Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality, Revised and Expanded Edition: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church)
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The date of creation was calculated by using the Bible. Bishop Ussher (1581-1656 A.D.) was a highly regarded scholar of his day, and his date of 4004 B.C. is the generally accepted date for creation by most Bible scholars. Appendix A contains a summary of the dates Ussher derived from the Bible.
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Earl Bristow (The Date of the Rapture How and When the World Ends (End of World #3))
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Option 3: Confirming signs related to the promise of what will be done to the nations. In incantations seeking to rid a person of the consequences of offense, the torch and oven are two in a series of objects that can serve as confirmatory signs. This same incantation series also occasionally speaks of the person who is swearing an oath in connection with their participation in the incantation as holding an implement of light and/or heat. The strength of this option is that it fits best the context of land promise. The problem is that it offers little connection to the cutting up of the animals. The parts of the animals would refer to the nations to be dispossessed. The only example of ritual participants passing between the pieces of several cut-up animals occurs in a Hittite military ritual. In response to their army’s defeat, several animals are cut in half (goat, puppy, piglet—as well as a human), and the army passes through the parts on their way to sprinkling themselves with water from the river to purify themselves; the idea is that this will ensure a better outcome next time. As with Achan’s story in Jos 7, they fear that some offense of the soldiers has caused them to be defeated. The obvious problem is that the context of the Hittite ritual has no similarity to the context in Ge 15. In summary, the torch and censer figure frequently in a variety of Mesopotamian ritual contexts, and multiple examples can be found of rituals that involve passing through the pieces of a single animal—but these two elements never occur together. There are plenty of examples of oaths with division of animals, but never passing through the pieces. There are plenty of examples with self-curse, but never by a deity. It is therefore difficult to combine all of the elements from the context of Ge 15 into a bona fide ritual assemblage. The context refers to a “covenant” (15:18), and therefore an oath (by Yahweh) could easily be involved. If there is purification, it would have to be purification of the ritual or its setting, for neither Abram nor Yahweh require purification. Since the pieces cannot represent self-curse, the only other ready option is that they represent the nations, but it is hard to imagine in that case what the force of the ritual is. ◆
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Anonymous (NIV, Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible: Bringing to Life the Ancient World of Scripture)
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May Christ, indeed, be the theme of your song. CONCLUSION If you are like me, this may be the first thing in the book you are reading. We expect a conclusion to tell us something about the premise, scope, and plan of the book. Recognizing this tendency, I will, therefore, offer a brief synopsis of what I have done. After that I will make some concluding remarks that are corollary to this study. Summary The theme of this book is simply finding Christ in the Old Testament, and the purpose is to establish and illustrate the necessary principles of interpretation for discovering what the Old Testament reveals about Christ. Recognizing that not every student of the Bible has the same level
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Michael P.V. Barrett (Beginning at Moses: A Guide to Finding Christ in the Old Testament)
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The ziggurat was the most dominant building of the temple complex, so it is no surprise that it draws the attention of the author of Genesis. In summary, the project is a temple complex featuring a ziggurat, which was designed to make it convenient for the god to come down to his temple, bless his people, and receive their worship. This understanding of ziggurats makes an important point drawn from the ancient Near Eastern context to clarify the biblical text: the tower of Babel was not built for people to go up, but for the god to come down.
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John H. Walton (Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible)
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Psalms 18
The LORD is my rock. I called and he thundered from heaven. He rescued me from my enemy. I will praise you among the nations, O LORD!
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Chris Juby (Bible Summary: Every Chapter in 140 Characters or Less)
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Psalms 32
Blessed are those whose sins are forgiven. When I kept silent, my bones wasted away. You surround me with glad cries of deliverance!
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Chris Juby (Bible Summary: Every Chapter in 140 Characters or Less)
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Psalms 34
O magnify the LORD with me! I sought him and he answered. Taste and see that the LORD is good. He is close to the brokenhearted.
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Chris Juby (Bible Summary: Every Chapter in 140 Characters or Less)
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Psalms 71
In you, O LORD, I take refuge. Do not forsake me when my strength fails. I will tell of your righteousness. I will praise you, O God.
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Chris Juby (Bible Summary: Every Chapter in 140 Characters or Less)
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Psalms 91
I will say of the LORD, "My refuge and my fortress." His faithfulness will be your shield. He will command his angels to guard you.
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Chris Juby (Bible Summary: Every Chapter in 140 Characters or Less)
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There is no money and no one to protect her except God, and her faith deepens as she navigates the challenges of her new life—evidence of The Will to Believe. As she sees it, “the Bible shows her that there is order beneath” (5). That is, this arrangement has been sanctioned by God; it aligns with the order of the universe.
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SuperSummary (Study Guide: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (SuperSummary))
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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.
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Richard French (The Opinionists)
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That’s right. The Bible, at its heart, is an account of the “life and times” of God. In fact, if we were to write a one-sentence summary of the biblical drama, it would read something like this: The Bible tells the story of God and His relationship with His creation — most particularly, humankind — which He initiates through a series of covenants.
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Jeffrey Geoghegan (The Bible For Dummies®, Mini Edition)
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Organic inspiration. The proper conception of inspiration holds that the Holy Spirit acted on the writers of the Bible in an organic way, in harmony with the laws of their own inner being, using them just as they were, with their character and temperament, their gifts and talents, their education and culture, their vocabulary and style. The Holy Spirit illumined their minds, aided their memory, prompted them to write, repressed the influence of sin on their writings, and guided them in the expression of their thoughts even to the choice of their words.
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Louis Berkhof (Summary of Christian Doctrine)
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The Bible says that love is a summary of God's law (Romans 13:9). It is a summary of what God tells us about how we are to treat people.
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Vincent Cheung (Sermonettes, Volume 1)
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My Research Bible Routine At some point during my quest, I started what I came to call my research bible, which is, in reality, a document I keep on my computer. Here’s the routine: Once a week I require myself to summarize in my “bible” a paper I think might be relevant to my research. This summary must include a description of the result, how it compares to previous work, and the main strategies used to obtain it. These summaries are less involved than the step-by-step deconstruction I did on my original test-case paper—which is what allows me to do them on a weekly basis—but they still induce the strain of deliberate practice. My
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Cal Newport (So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love)
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Summary Let us recap the five steps at this time. 1) Step One After a long stressful day it can be difficult to memorize. In this step we are resting our minds in the Lord. Although some good tips for long-term health benefits were stated for memorizing we will briefly summarize the short-term. It is good however to apply the long-term things as well seeing that meditating on the word of God is a lifelong commitment. But in the first step we are seeking to bring our minds to a place of peace. 2) Step Two Although having a peaceful mind may help us with our goal, if we do not have a peaceful place to seek the Lord, we can easily be distracted. Therefore it is good to choose a secret place and hide away with the Lord. A place that is free of distractions, and not associated with work of any kind. In this step we are making our way to hide away with God one-on-one and put out all distractions around us. 3) Step Three In this step we are meditating on the presence of God while in the secret place. We will continue to rest our minds in Christ as we forget about everything else. Then as we meditate on His presence we prepare for step four.
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Adam Houge (How To Memorize The Bible Quick And Easy In 5 Simple Steps)
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Among the unique features of Acts are the frequent summaries, where Luke provides a broad generalization about the life of the church at a particular time or place, such as the common life after Pentecost (2:42–47), the early Christian sharing of goods (4:32–35), and the apostolic miracles (5:12–16). Sometimes the summaries are much briefer, such as the single verse that sums up Paul’s ministry of more than two years in Ephesus (19:10).
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Anonymous (ESV Study Bible)
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Not trusting the Bible literally led him into 3 steps of disobedience that the Devil wanted Nida to take on as his life’s purpose: Selective belief – believing only what he agrees with in the Bible Paraphrasing – willing to change and rewrite anything he doesn’t agree with Selective obedience – obeying what he decides to obey, since we can never know for sure what God said in a paraphrase, because you can never know where God left off and man’s opinions began. But look how specific God is about obeying His words to the letter: “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.” (Deuteronomy 4:2) In summary, please keep in mind two points: You cannot believe God’s words, if you don’t know which words are God’s and which words are man’s. And you cannot keep God’s commandments, if you don’t know what He literally said.
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David W. Daniels (Why They Changed The Bible: One World Bible For One World Religion)
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Here’s the routine: Once a week I require myself to summarize in my “bible” a paper I think might be relevant to my research. This summary must include a description of the result, how it compares to previous work, and the main strategies used to obtain it. These summaries are less involved than the step-by-step deconstruction I did on my original test-case paper—which is what allows me to do them on a weekly basis—but they still induce the strain of deliberate practice.
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Cal Newport (So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love)
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Every week, I expose myself to something new about my field. I can read a paper, attend a talk, or schedule a meeting. To ensure that I really understand the new idea, I require myself to add a summary, in my own words, to my growing “research bible
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Cal Newport (So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love)
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Psalms 10
O LORD, why do you stand far off? The wicked man hunts the weak. He says, "God will never see." O God, break the arm of the wicked!
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Chris Juby (Bible Summary: Every Chapter in 140 Characters or Less)
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In summary, the self-contained discourse that Paul utilized in Romans 1:18–32 was representative of the typical posture of Jews toward Gentiles. Paul argued that this sort of posture worked against the gospel, and he insisted that if the Jewish Christians in Rome resonated with the posture of the discourse, then they were the problem. They were just as guilty of suppressing God’s truth, via their judgmental beliefs, as they maintained the Gentiles were in their supposed unrighteous living.
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Colby Martin (UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality)
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Luke mentioned that he wrote to Theophilus previously about Jesus and all that he did (the Gospel of Luke). After his resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples for forty days, convincing the people he was alive. He told them to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit and that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth. After that, Jesus ascended into heaven. An angel asked the disciples why they were standing around. Jesus would be back. So the apostles casted lots to replace Judas, who had died in a field, and Matthias was chosen.
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Troy Schmidt (Summary: Chapter by Chapter: An Easy to Use Guide of the Entire Bible)
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This was a time when the wealthy landowners were growing richer by bribing corrupt judges to fix land deeds in their favour, thereby putting the smaller landowners out of business. The peasants and the landless of course suffered the most during this time.
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James Paris (12 Minor Prophets Of The Bible Commentary: An Introduction To And Summary Of The Twelve Minor Prophets Of The Old Testament)
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early “official” summary remained the gold standard: the Messiah “died for our sins in accordance with the Bible.
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N.T. Wright (The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus's Crucifixion)
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But Genesis adds one very significant extra element in its summary of civilization’s Mesopotamian dawn. The mark of Cain becomes the mark of civilization.
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John Dominic Crossan (How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Struggling with Divine Violence from Genesis Through Revelation)
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw instead a list of renunciations:18 the call of Jesus leads to a life of renunciation (v. 3), and this leads to renunciation of happiness and peace (v. 4), rights (v. 5), our own righteousness (v. 6), our own dignity (v. 7), our own good and evil (v. 8), and violence and strife (v. 9); and they finish with a renunciation summary (v. 10).
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Scot McKnight (Sermon on the Mount (The Story of God Bible Commentary Book 21))
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First, not all the proponents of limited election seem to regard these texts as particularly important. Louis Berkhof, for example, managed to write an entire systematic theology without citing either of the texts in question;129 and though John Calvin did comment upon them briefly in his commentary on 1 John, he evidently did not regard them as important enough even to mention in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. When one thinks about it, this is truly astonishing. Calvin’s Institutes is a monumental work of over 1500 pages; in it he sought to provide an exhaustive summary of Christian doctrine, as he understood it, along with the biblical support for it. In the Westminster Press edition, the index of Bible references alone is thirty-nine pages of small print with three columns per page. And yet, in this entire work, as massive and thorough as it is, Calvin never once found the Johannine declaration that God is love important enough to discuss.
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Thomas Talbott (The Inescapable Love of God)
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In summary, the passages considered depict an understanding of exaltation as a characteristic of the one God, which may also become a characteristic of humans who are open to God through humility of spirit and who embrace the way of YHWH through living with integrity (practicing “justice and righteousness” [33:5–6]). But the humans who try to exalt themselves on their own terms (money, power, oppression of others) thereby encounter the opposition of YHWH and will, sooner or later, be abased by him.
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R.W.L. Moberly (Old Testament Theology: Reading the Hebrew Bible as Christian Scripture)