The Choice
Bible scholars have long recognized that Genesis 1 & 2 offer two complementary creation narratives. Genesis 1:1-2:3 contains a comprehensive account of how God formed the entire cosmos by bringing…
Life Insurance
How can a Christian know that they'll be saved? On the day of God's final judgment, can we be certain that we shall be vindicated and welcomed into God's glorious…
Salvation and the Spirit
It's not at all unusual to hear Christians talk about the time when they were "saved" in the past tense. Perhaps this salvation event occurred when they were a child…
Pulling Things Together
In evangelical circles, Ephesians 2:8-9 is perhaps the most frequently quoted text in the entire Bible: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves,…
Elucidating Ephesians
In the evangelical world, perhaps no passage of scripture is cited more often than Ephesians 2:8-9: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this…
Who Is the Beast?
The two witnesses of Revelation 11 represent the church, who've been given the crucial task of prophesying to the nations. God's people must warn humanity that if they persist in…
Breathing Fire
In his beloved novel The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien created some of the most memorable scenes in all of literature. My personal favorite is the mesmerizing conversation between the diminutive hobbit…
Translation of the Seventy
The last few weeks we've been tracing the formation of the Old Testament. Let's summarize what we've learned so far. The key criterion for inclusion in the sacred writings was…
The Other Joseph
The book of Genesis describes the dramatic story of Joseph, son of Jacob. Sold into slavery by his own brothers, he eventually rose to power in Egypt. But there is…
The Hebrew Canon
Here are the closing words of the Torah: "Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face, who did all those miraculous…