Posts from 2020

Aren’t you glad to see the end of this year? I suspect most people will be happy to put 2020 in the rearview mirror! We have learned new words (pandemic, coronavirus, etc.), new habits (social distancing, masking, compulsive hand sanitizing), and in some cases, new attitudes (“mask-shaming”). This year brought a lot of unfamiliar stresses into our lives –quarantining, hospitalizations, working from home, even the deaths of friends and loved ones. Social and political tensions have been “through the roof”…

Not much is known about the prophet Joel. It appears that he prophesied to the southern kingdom of Judah, since his prophecy is directed toward the “elders” and priests. Neither is there any mention of either Israel (the northern kingdom) or the Assyrian Empire, which was the dominant nation during Joel’s lifetime. Joel’s prophecy begins with the warning of a coming plague of locusts; this plague is destined to destroy the nation’s crops and plunge the people into famine and…

The very last of God’s prophets to speak to the apostate northern kingdom of Israel, Hosea is sometimes called the “death-bed prophet of Israel.” As the ten idolatrous northern tribes neared their rendezvous with Divine punishment at the hands of king Sennacherib and his Assyrian Empire, Hosea warned of the destruction coming upon them because of their faithlessness. His message was vividly illustrated by the behavior of his own wife – Gomer was as shamelessly unfaithful to him as Israel…

The last chapters of Daniel’s inspired writing present some of the most exciting information anywhere in the bible! Here the Holy Spirit lays out a “panorama” of the events and empires that would exist between Daniel’s time and the coming of the Messiah. These chapters show the rise of Alexander the Great (chapter 8), the division of his empire after his death (chapters 10-11), a “window” of Jewish freedom under the Maccabees (chapter 11), and the eventual rise of the…

For children who grow up attending Bible classes, “Daniel in the lions’ den” may be THE best-known “story” in the entire bible; and the best part is that it’s true– it really happened! We can draw many practical lessons from Daniel’s experience, but surely the primary lesson to learn is that God’s faithful saints are safe even when we are being persecuted. Even though he faithfully served several Babylonian rulers, when the Medo-Persian empire conquered Babylon the new ruler –…

One of the most fascinating events in Daniel is what God does to show king Nebuchadnezzar that he is NOT the greatest, most powerful being in the world! Chapter 4 is actually the king’s own record of what God did to him! As in chapter 2, the king had been troubled by a dream and sent for Daniel to interpret it. The dream – of a mighty tree being cut down to a stump – represents God humbling Nebuchadnezzar because…

The book of Daniel presents some of the most memorable events and tests of human faith in all of the bible. Daniel recalls and interprets king Nebuchadnezzar’s forgotten dream in chapter 2, and ends up being elevated to a position of great power in the kingdom. The king awoke troubled and upset by the vividness of dream he could not recall. When his counselors could not tell him what he had dreamed, and insisted that “only the gods can show…

The prophet Daniel was a member of the tribe of Judah, and was descended from one of the most prominent families of that tribe (Daniel 1:3 suggests that he was actually a member of the royal family). His name means “God is my Judge.” We meet Daniel when he is taken to Babylon as a captive/ hostage after king Nebuchadnezzar first conquered Judah, around 606 B.C. It is clear that he was thoroughly educated in the scriptures, and in Babylon…

In Ezekiel 25-32 God presents a series of declarations of impending judgement against the various heathen neighbors of His people (the Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites, Philistines, the Phoenicians/city of Tyre, the Sidonians, and the Egyptians). There are many important points and valuable lessons we should learn from these chapters; here are two that should “stand out” among them: First, the fact that God declares His judgement against these pagan, idolatrous peoples shows that even though they did not worship or acknowledge…

The prophet Ezekiel was a contemporary of both Jeremiah and Daniel, as well as Habakkuk and Zephaniah. He was a priest as well as a prophet, and the focus of his “ministry” was mainly among the common people of Judah. Like Daniel, he was taken into captivity in Babylon, where he lived by the river Chebar among the “middle class” captives (unlike Daniel, who served in king Nebuchadnezzar’s palace). Some biblical scholars identify the Chebar as one of the large…

The book of Lamentations is sometimes described as a five-stanza dirge (a funeral song) over the death of a city (Jerusalem) and a nation (Judah). In the original Hebrew language, there are mnemonic (memory) aids in each chapter: In chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5, each verse begins with a letter of the alphabet (thus, 22 verses in each chapter because there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet). In chapter 3, each group of three verses begins with a…

One of the truly vivid lessons presented by Jeremiah comes in chapter 35, and it concerns the descendants of a man named Rechab. Rechab was the father of Jehonadab, who participated with Jehu in slaughtering the worshipers of Baal after the death of king Ahab (2 Kings 10:15-28). Rechab’s “claim to fame” was his decree that none of his descendants should ever live in a house, nor plant a field or vine- yard, nor drink grape juice/wine in any form…