When the Jews returned from Babylonian captivity, they immediately began to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem that Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed, and they had a major problem. In one of the three times Satan is mentioned in the Old Testament, he magnified this problem. There was no high priest who was holy to offer the sacrifices for sin and atonement. Read about this…

Jeremiah chapter twenty-three gives a vivid picture of what was happening just before Nebuchadnezzar came to bring God’s judgment on the Jewish nation. The land was filled with many prophets, but Jeremiah stands in marked contrast with those false prophets found throughout the land. There are so many lessons to be learned from reading this chapter. First, there is the reaction of…

Surely there are those moments in the lives of every person where he thinks about why he is on this earth and if there is a deeper meaning to life. Every day our calendars are filled with activities from early morning to late evening, but in those moments, what is the answer when you ask, “Why am I doing this or why…

Church history shows there was a great rebellion against the Catholic Church in Europe in the 16th century. Who has not heard of Martin Luther and how he sowed the seeds for other Protestant churches who openly departed from the catholic (worldwide) church centered around the Vatican? At that same time, John Calvin, who was born in France but fled to Switzerland,…

Corinth was located in the midst of the Grecian world characterized by orators and philosophers. Rome had conquered the Grecian world, but its culture in some ways had not changed at all. This magnifies the importance of what Paul said in his first letter to this city. “I was determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified”…

Is there any way that you can really know that God exists?  Is believing there is a God like a wish? A wish is something we would like to happen, but there is little chance that it will. Is faith more like a dream that has nothing to do with reality? Or is faith more than an idle dream but there is…

I distinctly remember a conversation I had with a young man I had just baptized years ago in Birmingham. He was on fire for the Lord and told me that he was spending a lot of time reading the Bible. I wanted him to have a better study Bible than the one he had, so I explained the concept of translation from…

As discussed last week, the estimated value for the cost of all materials in the temple Solomon built is $240,381,000,000. King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed that “Eighth Wonder of the Ancient World,” and we tend to lose sight of worship in the temple. When Babylon fell, the Jews returned to Jerusalem under the leadership of Zerubbabel and built a new temple. They even brought…