Peter KrolAs college sophomores, my three closest friends and I believed we were God’s gift to the small congregation we had decided to join. Sure, in addition to the many elderly congregants, there were a few young families in the membership. But we were...
Bible Study MagazineChristians pray for their enemies—but should they also pray against them? Consider two verses. Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44). But David says—of an enemy—“Let there be none who extend to him loyal...
Mark WardA group of European designers recently released something called Bible The. They took all the words of the King James Bible and rearranged them in alphabetical order. Bible The—get it? Bible The presents 18 pages of the word “shall,” one instance of...
Pastor H. B. Charles Jr. began ministry at age 17 when he inherited the pulpit at his father’s church. Now with more than 30 years of ministry experience, Charles has written books on prayer, preaching, and ministry. He is a popular conference...
Ashley LeBlancNancy Guthrie did what Christians are supposed to do: she read her Bible. And she noticed things, especially things that hinted at more connections between the Testaments than she had been aware of. There’s a second Adam? The blood of Abel gets...
Robert D. BellThe Lord Jesus told his disciples after his resurrection that the Psalms had spoken about him: “Everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44 ESV). It doesn’t take long to find him. In...
Josh YoungTen years ago, we traveled to the Holy Land. It’s a little humbling now to recognize how much of our precious trip has faded from our memory banks. But the 10-year mark is also a good time to reflect on the abiding value of our tour. What has stuck...
Murray J. HarrisA young child is trying valiantly to climb a tree on her own. Her father says, “without me you won’t be able to do that.” Instinctively, the child understands “without me” to mean “without my help”—not “without my physical presence here watching...
Eugene Peterson’s The Message elicits strong feelings on the internet. Quite a number of Christian YouTubers, for example, have insisted that it is fit only for the flames. When I posted a (basically positive) video about The Message, I soon...
In this excerpt from the May/June 2019 edition of Bible Study Magazine, Bronwyn Lea shares why author and Bible study teacher Jen Wilkin refuses to leave biblical literacy to the experts—and why she’s passionate about teaching others how to study...
Connie ChampeonMy parents were Bible translators for an unreached people group in northern Brazil, and I was therefore blessed to watch the Word of God radically transform not just individual lives but a whole culture. The families in our area were desperately...
Did you know God encourages righteous protest? If he didn’t want to encourage it, he wouldn’t have given his people the vocabulary of protest in their songs and prayers. In the following study of Psalm 80, we will take a close look at one of the...
Joshua JensenIf you’ve ever heard evangelicals discuss English Bible translations, you might think they’re talking about Israelite spies, of whom we sing, “Ten were bad and two were good.” I’m not here to tell you which are which, but instead to explain the...
William A. RossThe Septuagint is a collection of ancient Greek texts produced by Jews between the third century BC and the second century AD. Most of those texts are translations of the books of the Hebrew Bible. But there are also numerous others now known as the...
Our English word “judge,” like the Greek verb krinō, has two totally different senses. It can refer to passing a negative verdict on a person or thing (= “condemn”), or it may refer to exercising careful evaluation over persons or things (=...
A commenter on YouTube wrote to me: “I’d be interested in your thoughts on the NASB ‘star’ feature in the New Testament (indicating the present tense).” Did you ever notice this little asterisk in your New American Standard Bible? This is what the...
David SchreinerWhen studying Scripture, there are certain things that we must always consider, including history, language, culture, and literature. However, if you’ve traveled to Israel, you may have realized how geography can be another important consideration...
Brian CollinsWhat do you think of this approach to Bible study, expressed by Alexander Campbell in the 19th century? I have endeavored to read the scriptures as though no one had read them before me … , and I am as much on my guard against reading them to-day...
Who was Paul’s audience in Romans? Paul’s writings and the book of Acts give us more data about him than they do about the Roman church. We know nothing about its origins and only a little about its history. Some have claimed that Peter...
Randy A. BrownFollowing the pandemic in 2020, videochat has become a popular platform for group Bible study. Though we’re well into the videochat era by now, it’s not too late to pick up some tips that will help you have an effective small-group Bible study...
Luke wrote his Gospel so his reader could have certainty regarding the things he had been taught about Christianity (Luke 1:4). He opens with narratives to explain Jesus’s credentials (1:1–4:13) and fundamentals (4:14–9:50). The lengthy travel...
Just forgive and forget! Let bygones be bygones. Such is the all-too-common advice given to someone struggling with the hurt inflicted by another person’s heartless action. But is this always—or ever—the right advice to give to such a person? To...
Can we learn how to pray like Jesus? We know he prayed in the wilderness and in the garden of Gethsemane. We hear snippets of his conversation with the Father in John 11 when he raised Lazarus from the dead and in Luke 23 when he hung from the cross...
We can learn a lot from others about prayer, but often we forget to seek out the Bible and how others throughout biblical history prayed. Yet we can glean much from Old Testament prayers and those faithful few who prayed them and approached God...
John D. BarryContext is king, as they say. But when it comes to studying the Bible, context is far and wide. A verse is contextualized in a passage; a passage in a biblical book; a biblical book in a particular place and time; and each time and place is...
Hezekiah’s tunnel, where archaeologists found an inscription describing the completion of the tunnel (source: commons.wikimedia.org) The work of archaeologists often overlaps with places, people, and events we read about in the Bible. Some of...
Because Christianity is built upon certain historical events, discussions about Scripture’s historical truthfulness are constant. Regarding Genesis, such discussions revolve around several issues, including the flood and patriarchal narratives...
Dreams dominate the story of Joseph, but their importance in the narrative derives from the significance of dreams in the culture and theology of the ancient Near East.
In the Bible, dreams are sources of divine revelation that indicate what someone should do, reveal what is going to happen, or explain current events. The Bible uses different Hebrew and Greek words when it talks about dreams and visions...
Michael S. HeiserAre demons fallen angels? Is the Satan figure as the archnemesis of God foreign to the Old Testament? Did a third of the angels fall from heaven before humanity’s fall? The following excerpt from Demons by Michael S. Heiser is adapted from the...