Starting in the first century AD, Gnosticism grew from within Christianity and deceived Christians to follow an alternate “religion.” Gnostics believed that all people have an inner spark of the spirit within them that, if awakened, connects them to God. Gnostics claim that God told them that Jesus was just a good man and teacher in whom the “spirit” of Christ dwelt. Gnostics taught that matter is inherently evil and that humans should seek salvation from the material world through true “gnosis” or knowledge. Salvation from sin was a foreign idea to Gnosticism. Rather, Gnostics unleashed their passions and lived ...
A Moment with the Bible Articles
After Abraham’s brother Haran died, his son Lot followed Abraham wherever he went. They were together from Ur of the Chaldeans to the land of Haran to the land of Canaan to the land of Egypt and then back to the land of Canaan again. But we are told that Abraham was so rich with all of his livestock that he and Lot could no longer be together. Good land for hungry livestock was too scarce for two rich families to dwell together. Abraham could no longer ignore the tension, and so he pointed out that they must part ways, ...
Our text tells the intriguing story and Abraham and Sarah going into Egypt to escape a famine in the land of Canaan. Sarah was so beautiful that Abraham feared that the Egyptians would kill him in order to take her. So he asks Sarah to hide the fact that they were married and only say that they are brother and sister. Of course, the result of this decision was disastrous. While Pharaoh rewarded Abraham handsomely, Pharaoh also took Sarah to be his wife. There are some interesting and compelling lessons from this incident. ...
This is one of the most well known parables Jesus ever told. It is so well known that it would be easy just to pass over it and go to some text that we might consider more challenging. But that would be a mistake because few teachings of Jesus are more challenging than the one taught in Luke 15. This parable has commonly been called “the Parable of the Prodigal Son.” It is not hard to see why. We are all somewhat amazed and comforted by the love a father who receives back his son who had wasted his possessions on ...
Have you ever spent much time with Stephen’s sermon to the Council in Jerusalem in Acts 7? The theme of the lesson is the unfaithfulness of Israel. Once the story gets past Jacob, there is very little that is commendable about the nation. And as Stephen recites one unfaithful period of time after another, he eventually brings the hammer down on the first century Jews who had committed the ultimate rebellion in murdering God’s messiah. His message is clear – generation after generation rebelled against the Lord. So why did God choose Israel? It certainly wasn’t because of their goodness. God ...
The story of the tower of Babel is one of the most well known childhood stories. But its significance is far greater than often supposed. Let’s start with some of the points of interest about the story. First, we see that the whole earth had one language and the same words (indicating that not only was the language the same but no dialects had developed). Having one language created a unifying effect and a desire to be dominant in the world. Notice they believed that building the tower would give them a reputation in the earth and would be a rallying ...
While chapter 11 of Genesis gives us the reason for the dispersion of the peoples following the Flood, chapter 10 records where the descendants of Noah’s three sons dispersed and the nations that came from them. This chapter, though often overlooked by Bible students, is valuable because we learn the origin of the nations as well as the names of each nation’s “father.” This in turn is needful in a study of the prophets. In prophetic literature the Lord typically refers to a nation by the original father of that nation. “Cush,” for example, is the father of the Ethiopians, but ...
God destroyed every human being on the face of the earth in the Flood except for Noah and his family, eight souls. Our hope would have been that the world had been cleansed of filth and wickedness. But it seems that as soon as these eight came out of the ark, Satan again was able to have his way and sin arose out of those that were considered righteous. Noah planted a vineyard, drank of the wine and lay naked, passed out drunk his tent. Suddenly his sin was compounded when his youngest son, Ham saw his nakedness and told ...
The post-Flood world was entirely different than the world prior to the Flood. Peter specifically states that the world prior to the Flood perished in the deluge (2 Peter 3:6). Our text indicates a number of these changes.
- In verses 2-3, God places the fear of man in the animals. Apparently, in the ante-diluvian world the animals did not fear man because God had not yet given the animals to man as food. With the different world, God saw the importance of changing man’s diet from exclusively vegetarian to allow man to also eat meat. We can only guess at the ...
In order to see the significance of New Testament applications to the Flood, let’s first look at some of the notable facts revealed in Genesis about the Flood:
- Noah and his family were in the ark one year and 17 days including the seven days they were in the ark prior to the rains coming.
- The water to flood the earth did not just come from the atmosphere, “all the fountains of the great deep were broken up” (Gen. 6:11). Therefore, water spewed from underground in great water/steam eruptions that caused the oceans to breach their shores and cover the continents.
- It rained ...