425 Sermon Illustrations on Bible

Rev. J. David Hoke writes:

"The Bible is alive. Its truth pierces through all of the facade,

all of the plastic pretense of who we claim to be. It speaks

powerfully to who we really are. If you don't believe it, then read

it. Its truth will powerfully grip you. Your inner spirit will agree

with the words you read. And God, by His Spirit, will begin to open

your eyes to the truth."

Is the Bible true? Extraordinary insights from archaeology and history.

– In the beginning

– Age of the patriarchs

– Flight from Egypt

– The rule of David

– The days of Jesus

– The road ahead

The workday was nearly over for the team of archaeologists excavating the ruins of the ancient Israelite city of Dan in upper Galilee. Led by Avraham Biran of Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, the group had been toiling since early morning, sifting debris in a stone-paved plaza outside what had been the city's main gate.

Now the fierce afternoon sun was turning the stoneworks into a reflective oven. Gila Cook, the team's surveyor, was about to take a break when something caught her eye – an unusual shadow in a portion of recently exposed wall along the east side of the plaza. Moving closer, she discovered a flattened basalt stone protruding from the ground with what appeared to be Aramaic letters etched into its smooth surface. She called Biran over for a look. As the veteran archaeologist knelt to examine the stone, his eyes widened. "Oh, my God!" he exclaimed. "We have an inscription!"

In an instant, Biran knew that they had stumbled upon a rare treasure. The basalt stone was quickly identified as part of a shattered monument, or stele, from the ninth century B.C., apparently commemorating a military victory of the king of Damascus over two ancient enemies. One foe the fragment identified as the "king of Israel." The other was "the House of David."

The reference to David was a historical bombshell. Never before had the familiar name of Judah's ancient warrior king, a central figure of the Hebrew Bible and, according to Christian Scripture, an ancestor of Jesus, been found in the records of antiquity outside the pages of the Bible. Skeptics had long seized upon that fact to argue that David was a mere legend, invented by Hebrew scribes during or shortly after Israel's Babylonian exile, roughly 500 years before the birth of Christ. Now, at last, there was material evidence: an inscription written not by Hebrew scribes but by an enemy of the Israelites a little more than a century after David's presumptive lifetime. It seemed to be a clear corroboration of the existence of King David's dynasty and, by implication, of David himself.

Beyond its impact on the question of David's existence, however, the discovery provided a dramatic illustration of the promise and peril that come into play whenever the Bible is weighed on the scales of modern archaeology. In one moment, the unearthing of an inscription or artifact can shed new light or cast a shadow on a passage of Scripture and in the process shatter the presuppositions of biblical scholarship. One kind of truth is confirmed – or replaced – by another.

In extraordinary ways, modern archaeology has affirmed the historical core of the Old and New Testaments – corroborating key portions of the stories of Israel's patriarchs, the Exodus, the Davidic monarchy, and the life and times of Jesus. Where it has faced its toughest task has been in primordial history, where many scholars find the traces of human origins obscured in theological myth.

IN THE BEGINNING

Ever since Copernicus overturned the church-sanctioned view of Earth as the center of the universe and Charles Darwin posited random mutation and natural selection as the real creators of human life, the biblical view that "in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth" has found itself on the defensive in modern Western thought. Despite the dominance of Darwin's theory–that human beings evolved from lower life forms over millions of years–theologians have yielded relatively little ground on what for them is a fundamental doctrine of faith: that the universe is the handiwork of a divine creator who has given humanity a special place in his creation.

These apparently conflicting explanations have played a divisive role for centuries. In modern times, the supposed incompatibility of the scientific and religious views of creation have sparked bitter clashes in the nation's courtrooms and classrooms. Often the modern debate has amounted to little more than a shouting match between extremists on both sides–fundamentalists, who dismiss evolution as a satanic deception, and atheistic naturalists, who assert that science offers the only window on reality and who seek to discredit religious belief as ignorant superstition.

Listening to some of the rhetoric today, one might easily assume that the views espoused by creationists–that God created the universe in six 24-hour days, as a literal reading of Genesis 1 would suggest–represent the historic position of Christianity and of the Bible, and that it is only in modern times, with the rise of evolutionary theory, that creationism has come under siege. Yet this is hardly the case.

As early as the fifth century, the great Christian theologian Augustine warned against taking the six days of Genesis literally. Writing on The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Augustine argued that the days of creation were not successive, ordinary days – the sun, after all, according to Genesis, was not created until the fourth "day" – and had nothing to do with time. Rather, Augustine argued, God "made all things together, disposing them in an order based not on intervals of time but on causal connections." Sounding like an evolutionist, Augustine reasoned that some things were made in fully developed form and others were made in "potential form" that developed over time to the condition in which they are seen today.

Now, a growing number of conservative scholars embrace theistic evolution–a view that considers evolution, like all other physical processes known to science, to be divinely designed and governed. They understand Genesis as speaking more of the relationship between God and creation than as presenting a scientific or historical explanation of how and when creation occurred. "Creation and evolution are not contradictory," explains Howard Van Till, a professor of physics and astronomy at evangelical Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. "They provide different answers to a different set of questions."

Much the same may be said of disputes over the meaning and intent of the biblical story of the Flood. Those who take it as literal history believe that God unleashed a worldwide deluge that destroyed all air-breathing life on Earth except for those creatures taken aboard the ark in divine judgment against a creation gone bad. When God finally allowed the waters to recede, the ark was emptied and the world was repopulated by the creatures that disembarked. Based on biblical genealogies, all of this would have happened less than 10,000 years ago.

While most biblical scholars consider the story of the Flood a myth, many conservatives have little difficulty imagining that God could pull off precisely what the Genesis story describes. As with the Creation narrative, however, the evidence and arguments from science stack up overwhelmingly against a literal interpretation of the Flood story. Where, for example, would such a volume of water have come from, and where would it have gone afterward? How would mammalian life have re-emerged on isolated islands and landmasses that emerged from the receding flood waters? While some scholars allow the possibility that a catastrophic regional deluge may underlie the flood legends of the ancient Near East, conservatives argue that there is, indeed, geological evidence consistent with a universal deluge. But such arguments have found little support within the scientific mainstream.

AGE OF THE PATRIARCHS

The book of Genesis traces Israel's ancestry to Abraham, a monotheistic nomad who God promises will be "ancestor of a multitude of nations" and whose children will inherit the land of Canaan as "a perpetual holding." God's promise and Israel's ethnic identity are passed from generation to generation – from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob. Then Jacob and his sons – the progenitors of Israel's 12 ancient tribes – are forced by famine to leave Canaan and migrate to Egypt, where the Israelite people emerge over a period of some 400 years.

Modern archaeology has found no direct evidence from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 B.C.) – roughly the period many scholars believe to be the patriarchal era – to corroborate the biblical account. No inscriptions or artifacts relating to Israel's first biblical ancestors have been recovered. Nor are there references in other ancient records to the early battles and conflicts reported in Genesis.

Moreover, some scholars contend that the patriarch stories contain anachronisms that suggest they were written many centuries after the events they portray. Abraham, for example, is described in the 11th and 15th chapters of Genesis as coming from "Ur of the Chaldeans" – a city in southern Mesopotamia, or modern-day Iraq. But the Chaldeans settled in that area "not earlier than the ninth or eighth centuries" B.C., according to Niels Peter Lemche, a professor at the University of Copenhagen and a leading biblical skeptic. That, he says, is more than 1,000 years after Abraham's time and at least 400 years after the time of Moses, who tradition says wrote the book of Genesis.

Yet other scholars, like Barry Beitzel, professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Ill., are neither surprised nor troubled by the apparent lack of direct archaeological evidence for Abraham's existence. Why, they argue, should one expect to find the names of an obscure nomad and his descendants in the official archives of the rulers of Mesopotamia? These are "family stories," says Beitzel, not geopolitical history of the type one might expect to find preserved in the annals of kings.

While there may, indeed, be no direct material evidence relating to the biblical patriarchs, archaeology has not been altogether silent on the subject. Kenneth A. Kitchen, an Egyptologist now retired from the University of Liverpool in England, argues that archaeology and the Bible "match remarkably well" in depicting the historical context of the patriarch narratives. In Genesis 37:28, for example, Joseph, a son of Jacob, is sold by his brothers into slavery for 20 silver shekels. That, notes Kitchen, matches precisely the going price of slaves in the region during the 19th and 18th centuries B.C., as affirmed by documents recovered from the region that is now modern Syria. By the eighth century B.C., the price of slaves, as attested in ancient Assyrian records, had risen steadily to 50 or 60 shekels, and to 90 to 120 shekels during the Persian Empire in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. If the story of Joseph had been dreamed up by a Jewish scribe in the sixth century, as some skeptics have suggested, argues Kitchen, "why isn't the price in Exodus also 90 to 100 shekels? It's more reasonable to assume that the biblical data reflect reality."

FLIGHT FROM EGYPT

The dramatic story of the Exodus–of God delivering Moses and the Israelite people from Egyptian bondage and leading them to the Promised Land of Canaan–has been called the "central proclamation of the Hebrew Bible." Yet archaeologists have found no direct evidence to corroborate the biblical story. Inscriptions from ancient Egypt contain no mention of Hebrew slaves, of the plagues that the Bible says preceded their release, or of the destruction of the pharaoh's army during the Israelites' miraculous crossing of the Red Sea. No physical trace has been found of the Israelites' 40-year nomadic sojourn in the Sinai wilderness. There is not even any indication, outside of the Bible, that Moses existed.

Still, as with the patriarch narratives, many scholars argue that a lack of direct evidence is insufficient reason to deny that the Exodus actually happened. Nahum Sarna, professor emeritus of biblical studies at Brandeis University, argues that the Exodus story – tracing, as it does, a nation's origins to slavery and oppression – "cannot possibly be fictional. No nation would be likely to invent for itself . . . an inglorious and inconvenient tradition of this nature," unless it had an authentic core. "If you're making up history," adds Richard Elliott Friedman, professor at the University of California-San Diego, "it's that you were descended from gods or kings, not from slaves."

Indeed, the absence of direct material evidence of an Israelite sojourn in Egypt is not as surprising, or as damaging to the Bible's credibility, as it first might seem. What type of material evidence, after all, would one expect to find that could corroborate the biblical story? "Slaves, serfs, and nomads leave few traces in the archaeological record," notes University of Arizona archaeologist William Dever.

The dating of the Exodus also has long been a source of controversy. The book of 1 Kings 6:1 gives what appears to be a clear historical marker for the end of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt: "In the 480th year after the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, he began to build the house of the Lord." Biblical historians generally agree that Solomon, the son and successor of David (and the builder of Israel's first great temple) came to the throne in about 962 B.C. If so, then the Exodus would have occurred in about 1438 B.C., based on the chronology of the 1 Kings passage.

That date does not fit with other biblical texts or with what is known of ancient Egyptian history. But the flaw is far from fatal. Sarna and others argue that the time span cited in 1 Kings – 480 years – should not be taken literally. "It is 12 generations of 40 years each," notes Sarna; 40 being "a rather conventional figure in the Bible," frequently used to connote a long period of time. Viewing the 1 Kings chronology in that light – as primarily a theological statement rather than as "pure" history in the modern sense – the Exodus can be placed in the 13th century, in the days of Ramses II, where it finds strong circumstantial support in the archaeological record.

THE RULE OF DAVID

The reigns of King David and his son Solomon over a united monarchy mark the glory years of ancient Israel. That period (roughly 1000 B.C. to 920 B.C.)–described in detail in the books of 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles–marks the beginning of an era of stronger links between biblical history and modern archaeological evidence.

Before the discovery of the "House of David" inscription at Dan in 1993, it had become fashionable in some academic circles to dismiss the David stories as an invention of priestly propagandists who were trying to dignify Israel's past after the Babylonian exile. But as Tel Aviv University archaeologist Israel Finkelstein observes, "Biblical nihilism collapsed overnight with the discovery of the David inscription."

In the aftermath, another famous ancient inscription found more than a century ago has attracted renewed scholarly interest. The so-called Mesha Stele, like the stele on which the Dan inscription is etched, is a basalt monument from the ninth century B.C. that commemorates a military victory over Israel – this one by the Moabite king Mesha. The lengthy Tyrian text describes how the kingdom of Moab, a land east of the Jordan River, had been oppressed by "Omri, king of Israel" (whose reign is summarized in 1 Kings 16:21-27) and by Omri's successors, and how Mesha threw off the Israelites in a glorious military campaign.

But the name of another of Mesha's conquered foes may lie hidden in a partially obliterated line of text that, transliterated, reads b[–]wd; the remainder of the inscription is missing. The French scholar André LeMaire, after carefully re-examining the inscription, has suggested that the line should be filled in to read bt dwd – "beit David," or "house of David" – a reference to the kingdom of Judah. "No doubt," says LeMaire, "the missing part of the inscription described how Mesha also threw off the yoke of Judah and conquered the territory southeast of the Dead Sea controlled by the House of David."

As significant as they are, these two inscriptions–both still contested – remain for now the only extrabiblical references to David's dynasty. And both were written more than a century after the reigns of David and Solomon. Given the grandeur of the Israelite monarchy under the two kings as described in the Bible, how could such an influential and popular regime have attracted so little notice in ancient Near Eastern documents from the time?

The answer, suggests Carol Meyers, professor of biblical studies and archaeology at Duke University, may lie in the political climate in the region at the time, when, she says, "a power vacuum existed in the eastern Mediterranean." The collapse of Egypt's 20th dynasty around 1069 B.C. led to a lengthy period of economic and political decline for a nation that had exerted powerful influence over the city-states of Palestine during the Late Bronze Age. This period of Egyptian weakness, which lasted for over a century (until around 945 B.C.), saw a "relative paucity of monumental inscriptions," says Meyers. "The kings had nothing to boast about."

Similarly, the Assyrian empire to the east was unusually silent from the late 11th to the early ninth century B.C. regarding the western lands it once had dominated. Assyria was preoccupied, says Meyers, with internal turmoil following the death of one of the greatest of its early kings. Another major power in the region, Babylonia, also was uncharacteristically quiet. For centuries following a raid on Assyria in 1081 B.C., it seldom ventured beyond its own borders, says Meyers, "and thus its records would hardly have mentioned a new dynastic state to the west."

The reign of David was a time of territorial expansion for the united Israelite kingdom and was marked, according to the Bible, by a series of military victories. Twice the Israelite armies repulsed invasions by the Philistines, a belligerent horde of pagan marauders who occupied Canaan's Mediterranean coastal plains. While the Bible depicts the Philistines as a frequent nemesis of the Israelites, their name does not appear in ancient nonbiblical sources before 1200 B.C. Some minimalist scholars have suggested that the biblical stories of run-ins with the dreaded Philistines were invented by priestly scribes in the middle of the first millennium B.C. to dramatize the military prowess of the mythical Davidic dynasty.

But modern archaeology has uncovered a wealth of information regarding the Philistine "sea people" thoroughly consistent with their portrayal in the Bible. For example, sources including numerous Egyptian inscriptions indicate that the Philistines most likely originated in the Aegean area, probably on the island of Crete. That fits with biblical passages (Jeremiah 47:4 and Deuteronomy 2:23, for example) linking them with Caphtor, a location most scholars identify with Crete.

Additionally, the Bible depicts the Philistines as expert metallurgists, and archaeologists have found material evidence that the Philistines were, indeed, expert metalworkers. Trude Dothan, a Hebrew University archaeologist who has excavated many of the Philistine sites, says this superior knowledge no doubt gave them a military advantage in their early battles with the Israelites. She notes that in the famous story of the duel between David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 17, the giant Philistine warrior is described as wearing a bronze helmet and bronze body armor and carrying a spear with a shaft "like a weaver's beam" and with a head of iron. "The Bible compares Goliath's spear to a weaver's beam," Dothan says, "because this type of weapon was new to Canaan and had no Hebrew name." Once again, the Bible and archaeology are in agreement.

THE DAYS OF JESUS

Compared with the earlier eras of Old Testament history, the days of Jesus are a fleeting moment. A life span of just three decades and a public career of only a few years leave a dauntingly narrow target for archaeological exploration. Yet during the past four decades, spectacular discoveries have produced a wealth of data illuminating the story of Jesus and the birth of Christianity. The picture that has emerged overall closely matches the historical backdrop of the Gospels.

In 1968, for example, explorers found the skeletal remains of a crucified man in a burial cave at Giva'at ha-Mitvar, near the Nablus road outside of Jerusalem. It was a momentous discovery: While the Romans were known to have crucified thousands of alleged traitors, rebels, robbers, and deserters in the two centuries straddling the turn of the era, never before had the remains of a crucifixion victim been recovered. An initial analysis of the remains found that their condition dramatically corroborated the Bible's description of the Roman method of execution.

The bones were preserved in a stone burial box called an ossuary and appeared to be those of a man about 5 feet, 5 inches tall and 24 to 28 years old. His open arms had been nailed to the crossbar, in the manner similar to that shown in crucifixion paintings. The knees had been doubled up and turned sideways, and a single large iron nail had been driven through both heels. The nail – still lodged in the heel bone of one foot, though the executioners had removed the body from the cross after death – was found bent, apparently having hit a knot in the wood. The shin bones seem to have been broken, corroborating what the Gospel of John suggests was normal practice in Roman crucifixions: "Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs" (19:32-33). While one later analysis drew some different conclusions about how the man died, similarities to the biblical account were affirmed.

The discovery also posed a powerful counterargument to objections some scholars have raised against the Gospels' description of Jesus's burial. It has been argued that the common practice of Roman executioners was to toss corpses of crucified criminals into a common grave or to leave them on the cross to be devoured by scavenging animals. So it hardly seems feasible, the argument goes, that Roman authorities would have allowed Jesus to undergo the burial described in the Gospels. But with the remains of a crucified contemporary of Jesus found in a family grave, it is clear that at least on some occasions the Romans permitted proper interment consistent with the biblical account.

A find at another Jerusalem site added to the list of Gospel figures whose existence has been verified by archaeology. Workers building a water park 2 miles south of the Temple Mount in 1990 inadvertently broke through the ceiling of a hidden burial chamber dating to the first century A.D. Inside, archaeologists found 12 limestone ossuaries. One contained the bones of a 60-year-old man and bore the inscription Yehosef bar Qayafa – "Joseph, son of Caiaphas." Experts believe these remains are probably those of Caiaphas the high priest of Jerusalem, who according to the Gospels ordered the arrest of Jesus, interrogated him, and handed him over to Pontius Pilate for execution.

A few decades earlier, the name of another key figure in the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus turned up in the archaeological record: During excavations in 1961 at the seaside ruins of Caesarea Maritima, the ancient seat of Roman government in Judea, a first-century inscription was uncovered confirming that Pilate had been the Roman ruler of the region at the time of Jesus's crucifixion. Italian archaeologists working at the city's magnificent Herodian theater found the inscribed stone slab in use in the theater's steps. Experts say it originally was a first-century plaque at a nearby temple honoring the emperor Tiberius. The badly damaged Latin inscription reads in part, Tiberieum . . . [Pon]tius Pilatus . . . [Praef]ectus Juda[ea]e. According to experts, the complete inscription would have read, "Pontius Pilate, the Prefect of Judea, has dedicated to the people of Caesarea a temple in honor of Tiberius." The discovery of the so-called Pilate Stone has been widely acclaimed as a significant affirmation of biblical history because, in short, it confirms that the man depicted in the Gospels as Judea's Roman governor had precisely the responsibilities and authority that the Gospel writers ascribed to him.

THE ROAD AHEAD

Modern archaeology may not have removed all doubt about the historical accuracy of the Bible. But thanks to archaeology, the Bible "no longer appears as an absolutely isolated monument of the past, as a phenomenon without relation to its environment," as the great American archaeologist William Albright wrote at midcentury. Instead, it has been firmly fixed in a context of knowable history, linked to the present by footprints across the archaeological record.

Just as archaeology has shed new light on the Bible, the Bible in turn has often proved a useful tool for archaeologists. Yigael Yadin, the Israeli archaeologist who excavated at Hazor in the 1950s, relied heavily on its guidance in finding the great gate of Solomon at the famous upper Galilee site: "We went about discovering [the gate] with Bible in one hand and spade in the other." And Trude Dothan notes that "without the Bible, we wouldn't even have known there were Philistines."

Much work remains for the archaeological explorers of the next century, and many more mysteries of the Bible wait to be solved. Where, for example, are the lost "Annals of the Kings" of Israel and Judah cited as literary sources in the Old Testament book of 1 Kings, and the five books of Papias mentioned in early church writings as a collection of the sayings of Jesus? Will further discoveries of hidden scrolls from the Dead Sea reveal new insights into the birth of Christianity? Scholars are convinced there is much more out there waiting to be found. It's just a matter of time.

____________________

From Is the Bible True? by Jeffery L. Sheler © 1999 by Jeffery L. Sheler. HarperSanFrancisco, a division of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

[see #4919 for Chuck Colson's adaptation]

*

THE LORD JESUS CHRIST

(as portrayed from cover to cover)

In Genesis - Jesus Christ is the Creator God and seed of the woman!

In Exodus - He the Lamb of God for sinners slain!

In Leviticus - He is our High Priest!

In Numbers - He is the Smitten Rock and He is lifted high!

In Deuteronomy - He is our True Prophet!

In Joshua - He is the Captain of our salvation!

In Judges - He is the Judge who Deliverers!

In Ruth - He is our Kinsman Redeemer!

In 1 & 2 Samuel - He is our King, Prophet and Priest!

In 1 & 2 Kings - He is Lord of heaven and earth!

In 1 & 2 Chronicles - He is the true Historian!

In Ezra - He is our Restorer!

In Nehemiah - He Rebuilds our walls!

In Esther - He is our Advocate!

In Job - He is our living Redeemer Liveth!

In the Psalms - He is the Crucified and our Great Shepherd!

In Proverbs - He gives us wisdom; He is the Friend that sticketh closer

than a brother!

In Ecclesiastes - He is the One to whom all living will return!

In the Song of Solomon - Our Beloved is the Lover of souls!

In Isaiah - He is our Suffering Substitute!

In Jeremiah - He is the LORD our Righteousness!

In Lamentations - He is the Man of Sorrows!

In Ezekiel - He is the Son of Man!

In Daniel - He is the Smiting Stone cut without hands!

In Hosea - He is the Healer of backsliders!

In Joel - He is the Restorer!

In Amos - He is the Heavenly Husbandman!

In Obadiah - He is our Savior!

In Jonah - He is our Buried and Risen Savior!

In Micah - He is the Everlasting God!

In Nahum - He is a Stronghold in the day of trouble!

In Habakkuk - He is the Anchor of our faith!

In Zephaniah - He is in the midst for Judgment and Cleansing!

In Haggai - He is the Smitten Shepherd!

In Zechariah - He is the Righteous Branch!

In Malachi - He is the Sun of Righteousness!

In Matthew - He is the Promised Messiah and Coming King!

In Mark - He is the Servant of God!

In Luke - He is the perfect Son of Man!

In John - He is the Eternal Son of God!

In Acts - He is the Ascended Lord!

In Romans - He is our righteousness!

In 1 Corinthians - He is the One who died for our sins, was buried and

rose again!

In 2 Corinthians - He is our Sufficiency!

In Galatians - He is the End of the Law!

In Ephesians - He is the Head of the Church!

In Philippians - He is the Supplier of every need!

In Colossians - He is the Preeminent One!

In 1 Thessalonians - He is our Blessed Hope!

In 2 Thessalonians - He is the world's Returning Judge!

In 1 Timothy - He is our Mediator!

In 2 Timothy - He is the Giver of Crowns!

In Titus - He is our Great God and Savior!

In Philemon - He is our Lord and Master!

In Hebrews - He is Greater than angels and Intercedes for His own!

In James - He is the Lord of Sabaoth!

In 1 Peter - He is the Cornerstone of our Faith and the Rock of Ages

cleft for me!

In 2 Peter - He is our Strength!

In 1 John - He is the Word of Life, the Assurance of our salvation!

In 2 John - He is the Truth who exposes the lie!

In 3 John - He is the Way!

In Jude - He is the One who keeps us from falling!

In Revelation - He is the One who was and the One who is to Come!

He is Heaven's Wonder and Hell's Dread!

He the Lord God Omnipotent Reigneth!

He is Faithful and True, the Word of God!

He is KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS!

He the Triumphant Sovereign is coming back

on a great white horse and He will reign!

"Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus!"

_______________________________________________

Another version from Hosanna Music:

In Genesis Jesus is the Ram at Abraham's altar

In Exodus He's the Passover Lamb

In Leviticus He's the High Priest

In Numbers He's the Cloud by day and Pillar of Fire by night

In Deuteronomy He's the City of our refuge

In Joshua He's the Scarlet Thread out Rehab's window

In Judges He is our Judge

In Ruth He is our Kinsman-Redeemer

In 1 and 2 Samuel He's our Trusted Prophet and

In Kings and Chronicles He's our Reigning King

In Ezra He is our Faithful Scribe

In Nehemiah He's the Rebuilder of everything that is broken

In Esther He is the Mordecai sitting faithfully at the gate

In Job He's our Redeemer that ever liveth

In Psalms He is my Shepherd and I shall not want

In Proverbs and Ecclesiastes He's our Wisdom

In the Song of Solomon He's the Beautiful Bridegroom

In Isaiah He's the Suffering Servant

In Jeremiah and Lamentations it is Jesus that is the Weeping Prophet

In Ezekiel He's the Wonderful Four-Faced Man

In Daniel He is the Fourth Man in the midst of a fiery furnace

In Hosea He is my Love that is forever faithful

In Joel He baptizes us with the Holy Spirit

In Amos He's our Burden Bearer

In Obadiah our Savior

In Jonah He is the Great Foreign Missionary that takes the

Word of God into all the world

In Micah He is the Messenger with beautiful feet

In Nahum He is the Avenger

In Habakkuk He is the Watchman that is ever praying for revival

In Zephaniah He is the Lord mighty to save

In Haggai He is the Restorer of our lost heritage

In Zechariah He is our Fountain

In Malachi He is the Son of Righteousness with healing in His wings

In Matthew Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God

In Mark He is the Miracle Worker

In Luke He's the Son of Man

In John He is the Door by which every one of us must enter

In Acts He is the Shining Light that appears to Saul on the road

to Damascus

In Romans He is our Justifier

In 1 Corinthians Our Resurrection

In 2 Corinthians our Sin Bearer

In Galatians He redeems us from the law

In Ephesians He is our Unsearchable Riches

In Philippians He supplies our every need

In Colossians He's the Fullness of the Godhead Bodily

In 1 and 2 Thessalonians He is our Soon Coming King

In 1 and 2 Timothy He is the Mediator between God and man

In Titus He is our Blessed Hope

In Philemon He is a Friend that sticks closer than a brother

In Hebrews He's the Blood of the everlasting covenant

In James it is the Lord that heals the sick

In 1 and 2 Peter He is the Chief Shepherd

In 1, 2, and 3 John it is Jesus who has the tenderness of love

In Jude He is the Lord coming with 10,000 saints

In Revelation, lift up your eyes, Church, for your redemption

draweth nigh, He is King of kings and Lord of lords!

- Integrity's Hosanna Music, 1993

#5511

*

This came in Jan 11 from the United Methodist News Service. You may find

some helpful points to interface with what the Bible says.

Churches must use outreach to combat 'biblical illiteracy'

By Joshua Lewis*

NEW ORLEANS (UMNS) -- At a time when 60 percent of Americans can't name

half of the Ten Commandments, churches need to develop new methods of

outreach to increase their ranks, according to a market researcher and

Christian author.

"No wonder people break the Ten Commandments all the time. They don't

know what they are," said George Barna, president of Barna Research

Group. Barna is the author of more than 20 titles such as Evangelism

That Works and, most recently, The Second Coming of the Church.

"Increasingly, America is biblically illiterate," he said.

Barna spoke at the United Methodist Congress on Evangelism, held Jan.

5-8. Nearly 1,000 people from around the country attended the event.

Barna illustrated his point with scores of research data throughout a

day of presentations such as "Understanding the Unchurched" and "Trends

Affecting Your Ministry."

One of his survey questions asked: Who preached the Sermon on the Mount?

Only about four out of 10 people knew that Jesus was the correct answer,

he said.

"One of the things that we discovered is that, yes, Jesus is the most

frequently given answer. But interestingly, what we found is that Billy

Graham is a very close second," he said, as the crowd broke into

laughter. "And just as interesting is that, over the last 10 years,

Billy is closing the gap."

Among other statistics:

* Sixty-three percent of Americans can't name the four Gospels of the

New Testament.

* Eighty-two percent believe that "God helps those who help

themselves" is a direct quote from the Bible.

* Eighty-one percent of born-again Christians hold the same belief.

* Only one out of five or six people even know that the United

Methodist Church exists.

"That represents a huge opportunity for growth," Barna said, again

drawing laughter from the crowd. Ignorance of the United Methodist

Church reflects an overall ignorance of denominational differences, as

well as the irrelevance of denominations in the minds of the American

public, he said.

These were just a few on Barna's laundry list of challenges facing the

church in America. But he offered potential solutions as well.

The churches that have been most effective in combating biblical

illiteracy are those that offer "systematic theological education" and

not "random bits of biblical truth" that go in one ear and out the

other, he said.

Churches need to provide a context, an overall framework for the

information members receive about their faith, he said.

Barna also offered what he called "The Ten Commandments of Reaching the

Unchurched." These are ways for churches to connect with the 60-65

million Americans who do not attend worship services:

1. Pray for them. Barna emphasized that general prayers are not

good enough, that they should be made by name according to the specific

needs of the persons being prayed for.

2. Let them maintain control of the relationship. Once a visitor

has come to your church, "allow them to do what works for them in our

environment," he said.

3. Your church must really want to grow.

4. Love them into your church. Programs alone won't keep newcomers

at your church, he said. A feeling that they are truly cared for will.

5. Provide quality ministry. "Excellence sells in our culture,"

Barna said.

6. Provide them with tangible value. Barna said churches must ask

the question, "What made this (the church experience) a worthwhile

investment of their most precious resource -- their time?"

7. Establish multiple entry points. The Sunday worship service is

not the only event with which to draw newcomers. Try other activities,

such as small group meetings and workshops on personal finance and other

topics.

8. Confront their religious baggage with them. Four out of five

"unchurched" people were formerly involved with a church and were, in

their words "driven away" by some negative experience they had, Barna's

research showed.

9. Treat them like people, not numbers. "The reason that they're

coming (to church) is that they want to be known." Barna noted that 60

percent said they would prefer a church of 200 people or less.

10. Contextualize your ministry without compromising biblical

"non-negotiables." Church leaders must make the Gospel relevant in

today's rapidly changing society, but "we have to be the keepers of

God's Word," he said.

Nearly half of all unchurched people say they want a close, personal

relationship with God, Barna said. And two-thirds still refer to

themselves as Christians.

"These are not people who are anti-religion," he said. "These are people

who believe for the most part in some kind of god or deity. They simply

haven't been able to figure out, 'How do I make it real, how do I make

it beneficial in my life?' They're not opposed to God."

Lewis is a free-lance writer and communication consultant based in Baton

Rouge, La. He can be reached at jglewis@premier.net .

In a court case the trustworthiness of a witness in even minor details is crucial. A good attorney will go to great lengths to discredit the witness of the opposing side. The lawyer will try his best to trap the witness by making him/her say things that contradict each other. Why? To show that his/her testimony is not reliable. The same is true for the Bible. Either it is all true or it is not reliable at all.

Can You Find Sixteen Books of the Bible

>

>I once made a reMARK about the hidden books of the bible. It was a luLU,

>KEpt people looKING So hard for fACTS and for others it was a REVELATION.

>Some were in a JAM, ESpecially since the names of the books were not

>capitalized. But the tRUTH finally struck home to NUMBERS of readers. To

>others, it was a real JOB. We want it to be A MOSt fascinating few moments

>for you. YES, THERe will be some really easy ones to spot. Others may

>reguire JUDGES to help them. I will quickly admiT IT USually takes a

>minister to find one of them, and there will be loud LAMENTATIONS when it is

>found. A little lady says sHE BREWS a cup of tea so she can concentrate

>better. See how well you can comPETE. Relax now for there are really

>sixteen names of the books in the bible in this story (one preacher found

>fifteen books in 20 minutes--but it took him three weeks to find the

>sixteenth one).

There is a camera aboard the Tiros XII satellite that takes pictures of ships drilling for oil in the North Atlantic. If the ships move more than 10 feet from their pre-programmed positions, the satellite will send a signal back to a computer that automatically activates the ship's propellers to correct the drift and keep the ship over the oil-drilling hole. The Bible functions the same way for those who believe it is true.

The Barna Institute reports that reading the King James Version requires a 12th grade reading level. However, 49% of all adults cannot read at an eighth-grade level. A million high school graduates last year lacked a 2nd-grade reading ability. (CHRISTIAN CHRONICLE, Sept. 1994)

Is there a perfect original? Some say it doesn't matter. Does it matter whether or not there is a perfect measure for a "pound" or "foot?" Try taking your own interpretation of those units of measure with you when you go to the grocery store or to buy a piece of property! But we've never seen a precise measurement--always off to some degree. In the Bureau of Standards in Washington D.C. there are models of the standard weights and measures used by U.S. citizens. They are as accurate as humanly possible. The vast majority of us have never seen them, but they govern our lives and give meaning to everyday exchanges. One doesn't need to see the inerrant original manuscripts to affirm that there is such a thing as an inerrant Bible!

The book of Hebrews is difficult to translate because so much of the content concerns the Jewish culture and religious rituals that are totally foreign to the Agta people, who live in the northern Philippines. However, some parts of it really make sense to them, like the verse in Hebrews 4:12, "The Word of God is living and potent."

Depending upon the context, the Agta word madagat can mean stinging, venomous or potent. A poisonous snake is madagat, but so are some medicines that can heal. My translation assistant, Amboy, explained his understanding of how the Word of God is potent: "It depends upon how we approach it. If we disregard it, it's like the poisonous snake. But if we live by it, its potency is like medicine." "It's like the samrid," he said. "What's that?" I asked. He went on to describe a small caterpillar that infests various trees and plants at certain times of the year. You should try to avoid them like the plague, because if your skin comes in contact with its fuzzy hairs, it leaves a burning welt.

If you are an Agta, however, you know the most immediate and effective remedy -- the samrid itself. You pick off a nearby leaf and scoop the caterpillar onto it in order to avoid touching it again. Then you fold the leaf and squash it inside the leaf. Next you remove the flattened body of the samrid with a stick, leaving only the body fluids on the leaf. Then you rub these fluids on the burning welt and experience immediate and lasting relief.

"That's how the Word of God is," Amboy says. "If you don't open it, and read it, and believe it, it holds nothing but judgment for you, like the samrid. But if you open it up, there is medicine inside that removes the judgment like nothing else will."

________

Adapted from IN OTHER WORDS, Wycliffe, Dec, 1986. Submitted by Robert Burris, Hayfork, California.

The Bible contains the mind of God, the state of man, the way of salvation, the doom of sinners, the happiness of believers. Its doctrines are holy, its precepts are binding, its decisions are immutable. Read it to believe, believe it to be safe, practice it to be holy. It contains light to direct you, food to support you, and comfort to cheer you. It is the traveler's guide, the pilgrim's staff, the pilot's compass, the soldier's sword, the Christian's character. Here paradise is restored, heaven opened, and the gates of hell disclosed. Christ is its grand subject, our good its design, and the glory of God its end. It should fill the memory, rule the heart, and guide the feet. Read it slowly, daily, prayerfully. It is a mine of wealth, a paradise of glory, and a river of pleasure. It is given you in life, will be opened at the judgment, and will be remembered forever. It involves the highest responsibility, will reward the greatest labor, and condemns all who trifle with its contents. - Herald of Holiness (Dec 1, 1982)

"In 1963...65 percent of Americans said they believed in the absolute

truth of all words in the Bible. Within 15 years, by 1978, the

proportion of the population holding this belief had declined to 38

percent. The current figure of 32 percent represents a new low in

literal belief in the Bible" (PRRC Emerging Trends (January 1992):1). The same thing has happened in England. The proportion of people who

believe in a personal God has declined from 36 percent in 1981 to 31

percent today. Those who believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God

has fallen from 52 percent in 1981 to 48 percent today. (International Christian Digest (July/August 1992)). The Body, Charles

W. Colson, 1992, Word Publishing, Page 336

A poor woman in one of Mr. Whittle's meetings in Glasgow was

brought into the light by a little verse in the fifth chapter of John.

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and

believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not

come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life."

The evangelist gave her the verse, written on a little card, and

sent her home, rejoicing, with her little son. They both went to bed

that night, happy as angels. But in the morning she came down to

breakfast as gloomy as ever, her face clouded and her heart utterly

discouraged. She had had a night of conflicts, doubts and fears. When

her little boy asked what the matter was, she could only burst into

tears and say, "Oh, it is all gone. I thought I was saved, but I feel

just as bad as ever."

The little fellow looked bewildered and said, "why, Mother, has

your verse changed? I will go and see." He ran to the table and got

her Bible with the little card in it and read, "Verily, verily, I say

unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me,

hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is

passed from death unto life."

"Why, Mother," he said, "it is not changed a bit. It is just the

same as it was last night; it is all right." And the mother looked

with a smile at the little preacher whose simple trust was used of God

to save her; and taking him in her arms, she thanked God that her

precious verse was still the same, and, her peace as unchanged as is

the everlasting Word of God. Is this what the apostle means? We are

justified, so let us have and hold fast to the peace. It is not merely

forgiveness, but it is an everlasting decree. Let us walk in the

strength of it, and never allow the shadow of a doubt or fear to cross

the sunlit sky of our heaven. -- Weekly Alliance

-- Chuck Swindoll who said, in his book, Improving Your Serve:

“To make the value of obedience just a practical as possible, let’s play ‘Let’s Pretend.’ Let’s pretend that you work for me. In fact, you are my executive assistant in a company that is growing rapidly. I’m the owner and I’m interested in expanding overseas. To pull this off, I make plans to travel abroad and stay there until a new branch office gets established. I make all the arrangements to take my family and move to Europe for six to eight months. And I leave you in charge of the busy stateside organization. I tell you that I will write you regularly and give you directions and instructions. I leave and you stay.

Months pass. A flow of letters are mailed from Europe and received by you at the national headquarters. I spell out all my expectations.

Finally, I return. Soon after my arrival, I drive down to the office and I am stunned. Grass and weeds have grown up high. A few windows along the street are broken. I walk into the Receptionist’s room. She is doing her nails, chewing gum and listening to her favorite disco station. I look around and notice the wastebaskets are overflowing. The carpet hasn’t been vacuumed for weeks, and nobody seems concerned that the owner has returned. I asked about your whereabouts and someone in the crowded lounge area points down the hall and yells, “I think he’s down there.” Disturbed, I move in that direction and bump into you as you are finishing a chess game with our sales manager. I ask you to step into my office, which has been temporarily turned into a television room for watching afternoon soap operas.

“What in the world is going on, man?”

“What do you mean, Chuck?”

“Well, look at this place! Didn’t you get any of my letters?”

“Letters? Oh yes! Sure! I got every one of them. As a matter of fact, Chuck, we have had a letter study every Friday night since you left. We have even divided the personnel into small groups to discuss many of the things you wrote. Some of the things were really interesting. You will be pleased to know that a few of us have actually committed to memory some of your sentences and paragraphs. One or two memorized an entire letter or two - Great stuff in those letters.”

“OK. You got my letters. You studied them and meditated on them; discussed and even memorized them. But what did you do about them?”

“Do? We didn’t do anything about them.”

In his book Up from Slavery, Booker T. Washington explained that in the period following the Civil War, many people became teachers thinking it would be an easy way to make a living. One such fellow went from village to village, teaching for awhile and receiving pay for it. As he entered one town, the people asked if he taught that the earth is round or flat. He replied that he was prepared to teach either way, based on the preference of a majority of his patrons!

Subject: A Good Puzzle

God made Adam out of the dust,

But thought it best to make me first;

So I was made before the man,

According to God's Holy plan.

My whole body God made complete,

Without arms or hands or feet.

My ways and acts did God control,

But in my body he placed no soul.

A living being I became,

And Adam gave to me a name.

Then from his presence I withdrew,

For this man Adam I never knew.

All my Maker's laws I do obey,

And from these laws I never stray.

Thousands of me go in fear,

But seldom on the earth appear.

Later, for a purpose God did see,

He placed a living soul in me.

But that soul of mine God had to claim,

And from me took it back again.

And when this soul from me had fled,

I was the same as when first made;

Without arms, legs, feet, or soul,

I travel on from pole to pole.

My labors are from day to night,

And to men I once furnished light.

Thousands of people young and old,

Did by my death bright lights behold.

No right or wrong can I conceive;

The Bible and its teachings I can't believe.

The fear of death doesn't trouble me;

Pure happiness I will never see.

And up in Heaven I can never go,

Nor in the grave or Hell below.

So get your Bible and read with care;

You'll find my name recorded there.

This puzzle was written by a lady in California in 1890 in response to a

gentleman in Philadelphia, who said that he would pay $241,000.00 to anyone

who could write a puzzle that he could not solve. He failed to do so, and

paid the lady $241,000.00 (a great sum of money at that time).

The answer is one word, five letters long, and appears only four times in

the King James version of the Bible. An eight-year-old boy figured out the

puzzle. Can you? Good hunting, friends! :-)

An older preacher was teaching a Bible class and made the statement that one

could prove anything by the Bible. He explained, "If one misuses verses--by

pulling them out of context--by twisting what they are saying, and so forth, he

could teach anything he desired." One of the students stated that he didn't

believe that one could prove anything by the Bible. The preacher affirmed that

it could be done. The student then said, "OK, prove to me that it is wrong to

split wood." The preacher, with no more that a moments hesitation, replied,

"Whatsoever God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."

A $2,800 Bible?!

The shaky conditions of his economy led the Roman Emperor Diocletian to declare an all-out price-fixing in history's first attempt to curtail inflation. The edict, proclaimed in AD 300, set the price of beer, soap, food, and even the Bible. To afford a complete Bible at the emperor's price, the average American would probably have to mortgage his house. Under the edict, you were charged for a Bible on this basis: A script's work was price-fixed at $2.80 per 100 "stychoi" (one "stychos" equals one line of Homeric 16-syllable verse). For carefully copying 18,302 stychoi-- the complete New Testament-- he would receive the fixed figure of $512.45 (in today's currency) and not a drachma more or less. For copying the complete Bible he would receive $2,800.00. You paid, in addition, the cost of the papyri (a type of paper), which was in short production and price-fixed under the luxuries category. Just think, for $3.00 you can now buy a Bible with full-color maps-- at a savings of $2,797.00! How many Bibles would you have at $2,800.00 each? How much would you read the Bible if you paid $2,800.00 for it? It's the same book either way.

"How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!" (Psalm 139:17)

--BLACK CREEK COURIER, Middleburg, FL

From: "Mark L. Harris"

A while back I did a bit of research into various English Bible versions,

and created a helpful reference list of abbreviations and terms. It helped

me to clarify multiple references to the same Bible as well as provide a

nice overview. Your comments, corrections, and additions are definitely

welcome!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

AB Amplified Bible

Barclay The New Testament: A New Translation (William Barclay)

Beck The New Testament in the Language of Today - William F. Beck

BBE Bible in Basic English

CEV Contemporary English Version

Chicago Bible: (SEE GSP, The Complete Bible: An American Translation)

CJB Complete Jewish Bible

Cofraternity Version: revision of Douay Version (Catholic)

Darby Darby's Translation

Douay Douay-Rheims Bible (or Douay Bible) (Catholic)

Gideon's Bible: KJV Bible placed in many hotels

Geneva Geneva Bible (predates KJV)

GNB Good News Bible

GSP Smith-Goodspeed New Testament, (Also The Complete Bible: An American Translation)

JB Jerusalem Bible (Catholic) (revised - NJB)

JNT Jewish New Testament - David Stern (see also JNT)

JPS Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures, The New JPS Translation

KJ21 - 21st Century King James Version of The Holy Bible

KJV King James Version

KJB King James Bible (various revisions of KJV)

Knox The Knox Translation (Catholic)

ICB International Children's Bible

LB (TLB) The Living Bible

LXX Septuagint (Greek)

MLB Modern Language Bible (also New Berkeley Version)

Mof The Moffatt Bible

NAB New American Bible (Catholic)

NASB New American Standard Bible

NASU New American Standard, 1995 Updated Version

NCV New Century Version

NEB New English Bible (revised - REB)

NET New English Translation (Internet Bible - http://www.bible.org)

NKJV New King James Version

NJB The New Jerusalem Bible (Catholic) (from JB)

NRSV New Revised Standard Version (from RSV)

NIV New International Version

NWT New World Translation

Oxford Bible: (SEE NEB)

Phillips: The New Testament in Modern English by J. B. Phillips

RDB Reader's Digest Bible

REB Revised English Bible (from NEB)

RSV Revised Standard Version (Revised - NRSV)

RV Revised Version (1901 KJV)

SEB Simple English Bible

Schonfield: The Authentic New Testament by Hugh Schonfield (non-Christian)

Scofield: Scofield Reference Bible

Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures, The New JPS Translation (Jewish slant)

TEV Today?s English Version

TLB (LB) The Living Bible (Revised and retranslated - TNLB)

TM The Message

TNLB The New Living Bible

The Twentieth Century New Testament

Webster Noah Webster's Holy Bible

Vulgate Latin Bible

WE The Bible in World English (Annie Cressman)

Weymouth: Weymouth's Translation

Williams: The New Testament in the Language of the People by Charles B. Williams

Wuest: Expanded Translation of the Greek New Testament (Kenneth Wuest)

YLT: Young's Literal Translation

I have heard it said that reinterpreting the gospel in the context of modern culture is enlightened and progressive. Maybe some find that so, but Joseph Sobran better expresses my feelings: "It can be exalting to belong to a church that is five hundred years behind the times and sublimely indifferent to fashion; it is mortifying to belong to a church that is five minutes behind the times, huffing and puffing to catch up."

________

Charles Carlson, "Kingdoms In Conflict," 1990, p. 373.

The Wicked Bible

In 1623, Baker and Lukas published a Bible in England since called

"The Wicked Bible," because the little word "not" was omitted in the

seventh commandment: "Thou shalt not commit adultry." The printers

were heavily fined by the High Commission and the whole edition was

destroyed.

- Signs of the Times

There was once a caravan

crossing the north of India, and numbering in its

company a godly missionary. As the caravan passed along, a poor old

man was

overcome by the heat and labor of the journey, and sinking down, was

left to

perish on the road. The missionary saw him; and when the others had

passed

along, he knelt down by his side and whispered in his ear, "Brother,

what is

your hope?" The dying man raised himself a little to reply, and with

great

effort, answered. . . "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all

sin," and

soon expired. As the missionary was meditating on this, he observed a

piece of

paper grasped tightly in the hand of the dead man. He found that it

was a

single leaf of the Bible, containing the first chapter of the First

Epistle of

John, in which these words are found. On that one page the man had

found the

gospel of salvation. Only a few words, but what a testimony the man

could give

in his last moments. Gary Bowell p. 241

An ancient fable tells of three merchants crossing the Arabian Desert. Traveling in darkness to avoid the intense heat one starless night, they were passing over a dry creek bed when a voice form the blackness commanded them to halt. They were then ordered to stoop, pick up pebbles from the creek bed, and put them in their pockets. After obeying the strange command, they were told to leave that place, camping nowhere near. The mysterious voice then told them that in the morning they would b e both happy and sad. Shaken and confused, and obeying the mysterious intruder, they traveled through the night. When morning came, the men anxiously looked into their pockets, and rather than finding the pebbles as expected, there were precious jewels. They, indeed, were happy and sad. They were happy they had picked up the jewels, but sad because while they had the opportunity they had not picked up many more.

This legend beautifully expresses how many feel about the unsearchable riches of God's Word. We are thrilled we have absorbed as much as we have, but sad because we have not absorbed much more. Specifically, I feel this way about two dynamic verses in Galatians, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control: against such there is no law" (Galatians 5:22-23).

Professor W. G. Moorhead of Xenia Theological Seminary told me that one day that he was returning to his home from one of his journeys, and wanted to take with him some present for his children. He decided at last that the present should be a dissected map. When he gave it to his two girls he said, “Now if you can put this together you will know more of geography than if you studied a book.”

They worked very patiently, but at last one of them rose to her feet, saying, “I cannot put it together,” and said the great Bible teacher, “it was an awful jumble.” They had a part of North America in South America, and other mistakes quite as serious were made.

Suddenly, however, the larger one who was still on her knees, discovered that the other side of one piece of the map was a man’s hand. Curiosity prompted her to turn over the other piece and there was a part of his face, and then her fingers working rapidly she turned over every piece of the man, and called to her sister saying, “Come back, there is a man on the other side, let us put the man together first.”

Almost instantly, said the father, the figure of the man was completed, and when the map was turned over every river and lake, every mountain and plain was in the proper place.

And this said Dr. Moorhead, is the secret of Bible study. Put the man, Christ Jesus, together first. Jesus in Genesis is the same as Jesus in the Revelation. The fact is there is one name that binds the book together. Learn the meaning of that name, and you have gotten hold of the power of the Bible.

________

From “Present Day Parables” by J. Wilbur Chapman

The Spirit brightens the Word until it glows with the glory of God.

In an old castle a king of England sought entertainment. It had stood

for years silent and gloomy. On the night of the king's arrival the

owner of the mansion illuminated it in his sovereign's honor. The

golden light streamed from every window far out over the moor, and men

came to admire the beauty of the castle. The Bible without the Holy

Spirit seems dark and unlovely. He irradiates it and there streams

from every one of the sixty-six books a glory which is the wonder and

joy of many.