Thinking Aloud

The hundreds of characters that walk through the pages of the Holy Bible are not all saints. Most of them are ordinary people like us. Referring to one of the greatest of the prophets, Elijah, James says he was an average man like us (James 5:17)! The Bible never touches up its heroes, but reports things as they happened, 100% objective reporting! One religious book says the David-Bathsheba affair never happened. A great Nabi like David would never stoop to adultery and murder, they claim! If there ever was a book in the Bible that was unlikely to be true, it is the book of Prophet Jonah. Yet its impossibilities have been proved factual Jonah son of Amittai might not hold an honorable position in the hearts of Christians as a prophet. In fact, they wonder if he was a prophet at all. Many are not aware God has used him before. See 2 Kings 14:25. Jonah is unique in many ways. He was the only prophet the Lord compared Himself to – not once but twice. He was the only proph...

THE INTER-TESTAMENTAL PERIOD The four centuries after Prophet Malachi until the birth of Christ -- spanning the ministry of Malachi  to the appearance of John the Baptist in the early first century -- have been referred to as “four hundred years of silence”, but on closer inspection, we find God working throughout this period to set the stage for the coming of His Son— a culmination of history that Paul called “the fullness of the times” (Gal. 4:4; Eph. 1:10).  Indeed, to fully appreciate the times in which Jesus lived, we need to consider the events that produced those times. At this time the Persians had been dominating the Middle East, since 536 B.C. The Book of Malachi closed the Old Testament canon in perhaps about 397 B.C.   (See Ezra 1:8). From the standpoint of Jewish history, this period between the Old and New Testaments—called the intertestamental period—can be divided into six segments. A synagogue ONE...

Jesus Christ is God. He is the omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent deity. He took no effort to conceal this truth during His human incarnation. Colossians 1:15 asserts Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation. Philippians 2:6 says He was in the very nature of God. In certain religious circles it is claimed that He Himself never made such a claim.   While they greatly reverence Jesus as a mighty messenger of God and the greatest of all the   prophets, attributing divine qualities to Him is blasphemous. I found about 120 occasions in the gospels where He had referred to His divinity—directly and indirectly. Out of them I picked out 60 of His statements (made in the first person) and published them below. If Jesus Christ were not God, He must be hopelessly insane or the most accomplished liar in world history. Or the Gospel is a lie. Decide for yourselves: Matthew 11:27   A...