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…

The expression “The good, the bad, the ugly” is widely used in our culture. It originated from a movie by this title released in 1966. There were three characters starring in it with each having one of the distinct personality traits found in the title. Over the next few weeks, we will use this approach to look at churches in the first…

The apostles knew that Jesus had to be the Messiah because they had seen and heard what He had said and done. Yet, they had a wrong view about the coming King and His kingdom. They were preaching that the kingdom was coming but had no comprehension of its nature. This is so vividly seen in the event found in Matthew chapter…

As promised, this is a continuation of last week’s article which laid the background of how I can teach my little child about God. We said, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was a book entitled, ‘Seven Steps to Raising Godly Children,’ that would give us all answers with easy rules to just follow?” As the article continued, it said, “There is…

What parent is there who has not thought about how to shape the spiritual life of a child to be spiritual? When we first hold that child, how can we not see just how precious they are? It is far more than any physical beauty that we see, and how can we ever forget deeper thoughts? They are so pure, so innocent…