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David’s Prophecy Regarding Judas

In that period following the ascension of Jesus back to heaven, yet before the day of Pentecost arrived ten days later (cf. Acts 1:3), Peter explained to the 120 brethren assembled in an upper room (Acts 1:13, 15) that a new apostle must be chosen to take Judas’ place (Acts …

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The Gwen Shamblin Controversy

Gwen Shamblin is a weight-loss instructor who operates out of Nashville, Tennessee. In a span of eight years (from 1992 to the present) she has taken her weight-control program from an in-home operation to a multimillion-dollar enterprise. Her book, The Weigh Down Diet, has sold more than a million copies …

RECENT ARTICLES

The Divine View of Death

In a psalm that is designed to emphasize the love of God for his children, an inspired writer declares: “Precious in the sight of Jehovah is the death of his saints” (116:15). The word “precious” is of considerable interest. The Hebrew expression (yakar) is used to depict a variety of …

My Cup Runs Over

Psalm 23 has been called the “Nightingale” song, because it sings the sweetest at the midnight hour. The “title” suggests it is a “Psalm of David.” These superscriptions (116 of them) are not a part of the original text, but they are very ancient, going back at least to the …

Voting: Option or Obligation?

“To vote, or not to vote? That is the question,”—if one may paraphrase a renowned English writer. This is a serious question for many people as the election season approaches. It is one of those issues, I respectfully suggest, upon which good people may disagree without dissension. A recent article …

When Love Grows Cold: A Church Profile

Near the end of his second missionary campaign (ca. A.D. 52), Paul, in company with his working companions, Aquila and Priscilla, came to the city of Ephesus. This magnificent metropolis of some two hundred to three hundred thousand souls was the capital of provincial Asia, located in west Asia Minor, …

Stranger? Or Family and Friend?

“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19). The foregoing are words that Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus, a congregation with which he worked for three years (Acts 20:31). Some …

Church Controversies

One of the saddest situations that a spiritual person can contemplate is a brotherhood engaged in a “non-civil war,” particularly in a time when it ought to be united against the growing forces of evil that threaten the stability of society and the welfare of our families. The grim reality …

Salvation Is from the Jews

No Christian can be anti-Semitic toward the Jews. Christ was a Jew, and that by divine intent. In a conversation with a Samaritan woman, Jesus declared: “[S]alvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22). The focus, of course, was upon his personal identity as the Messiah (vv. 25-26). All people are …

Jesus Christ and the “I Am” Expression

When Christ declared: “Before Abraham was born, I am” (John 8:58), was he referring to the statement in Exodus 3:14, “I am that I am,” and therefore identifying himself with the “Jehovah” of that context? This is the question we will explore in this article. In John, chapter eight, there …

Messianic Previews in the Book of Zechariah

The kingdom of Judah continued to dredge itself into apostasy until a day of calamity was inevitable. In a series of three invasions by the Babylonians (606 B.C., 597 B.C., and 586 B.C.) the nation was devastated. The land was ravaged, Jerusalem was destroyed, and some seventy thousand Hebrews were …

Lessons from the Grand Canyon

The Colorado River is approximately 1,400 miles long. It begins in Wyoming and ultimately spills into the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of California (Mexico). As it meanders toward its goal, the river passes through one of the most spectacular places on earth, the Grand Canyon. This yawning chasm is …