The sovereignty of God empowered Him to chosen individuals, groups or nations to accomplish His plan. When the Jews left Egypt, God said to them, “For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth”…

When Paul was discussing the resurrection, he used a contrast he between the first Adam and the second Adam, Jesus (1 Cor. 15:45-46). As Moses was departing, he said, “The Lord your God will raise up for you like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him shall you hear” (Deut. 18:15). The Jews understood this as a Messianic prophecy and were…

We conclude this series of looking at the seven churches of Asia, which were presented using a phrase from a movie several years ago. This phrase, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” seems to fit most of these churches. However, when we come to the church in Laodicea, we changed the title and created new “words” to describe it. There was…

The title of this series on New Testament churches is based upon the movie from years ago entitled, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”This approach does not fit the church in Philadelphia, for there was nothing bad or ugly known about this church. What a joy it would have been to have been part of the body of Christ in this…

We continue our look at the seven churches of Asia which received John’s message from the island of Patmos. There were far more congregations than these seven for Paul’s work resulted in the spread of the gospel throughout all of Asia (Acts 19:10). God specifically chose these seven churches to help all other individuals and churches to profit from these messages (Rev.…

We continue looking at the New Testament church, seeing what good things they were doing but also looking at that which needed to be improved and then looking to the future to see what “ugly” and what “beautiful” things lay before them. By now you may have guessed we are looking at the seven churches of Asia mentioned in the book of…

In our culture, we sometimes use the expression the good, the bad and the ugly. This is the third time we have used this phrase to describe various congregations in the first century. We have looked at Ephesus and Smyrna, and this week we turn our attention to the church at Pergamum. The church at Pergamum, a city devoted to paganism.  We…

Last week we began a brief series of articles based on the character of three main characters. The movie was entitled “The Good, the Bad, the Ugly.” We have taken this phrase to use to describe the condition, both the good and the bad, of the churches we study. We use the last part of the phrase, the ugly, to describe the…