Biblical Lessons

Many may not recognize the Old Testament support for Jesus as the promised Messiah.  Called Messianic Prophecies, these Old Testament scriptures support the Christian belief that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah (some estimate there are hundreds of verses that support Jesus as the Savior but these verses in particular, are typically considered the most direct evidence).  As you can see from the list below, the set of prophecies from the Old Testament were indeed fulfilled by the events documented in the New Testament. Click the verse link to open the biblical text in a new page. Click the "study" link to read Bible Blender's analysis of the verses. Genesis Prophecy Fulfillment The Messiah would be born of a human woman (i.e. not a spiritual birth). Genesis 3:15 study Luke 1:34-35 The Messiah

How do we know the genealogical line of Jesus? The genealogy of Jesus is described in two different passages of the New Testament – one in the Gospel of Luke and the other in the Gospel of Matthew.  Matthew's attempt at recording the genealogy of Jesus commences with Abraham and then begins again from King David and his son Solomon through the legal line of the kings via Jeconiah to Joseph.  Luke’s attempt gives a different genealogy, going back to Adam, through Nathan, a minor son of David, and again to Joseph.  The lists are identical between Abraham and David, but differ from that point onward.  Traditional Christian scholars have put forward various theories that seek to explain why the lineages are so different with the

What is the Masoretic Text? Important because it is widely used as the basis for modern-day translations of the Old Testament, the phrase “Masoretic Text” refers to the ancient authoritative Hebrew text of the Old Testament (i.e. “Jewish Bible”).  Masoretic Text includes not only the Hebrew text of the Old Testament but also pronunciation and grammatical guides using diacritic markings known as “mesorah” as well as translation notes regarding the meaning of the texts placed in the margins. The language used in the Masoretic Texts was primarily Aramaic (a family of ancient languages widely used in the Near East) but also contained some Hebrew language.  An example of Masoretic Text appears below.  In the Hebrew text below, the blue diacritic marks indicate the accentuation put on the

Many Christians remain confused regarding the significance of the Dome of the Rock – what its purpose is, why it is so important to four major religions (Judaism, Christianity, Roman religion, and Islam), and how it came to be located in the middle of Jerusalem. To alleviate the confusion, it is best to begin with a quick history of the Temple Mount, also known as Mount Zion. Temple Mount (aka Mount Zion) and Solomon's Temple (aka the First Temple) Temple Mount, or Mount Zion (sometimes referred to as Mount Moriah), is a hill in Jerusalem just outside the walls of the Old City. Before King David’s conquest of Jerusalem around 1000 BC, the city was home to the Jebusites, the third Canaanite tribe listed in Genesis 10 (between the

Looking for some quick  facts about the Bible itself?  Check this list of interesting (and little-known) Bible historical facts and trivia. The Bible contains 66 books – 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament.  The 66 books of the Bible are divided into 1,189 chapters consisting of 31,173 verses. The Old Testament has 929 chapters, the New Testament 260. (King James version). The word “testament” means “covenant” or “contract”. The Bible was written by over 40 different authors including farmers, shepherds, doctors, fishermen,  ministers and priests, philosophers, and kings. Moses contributed the most books to the Old Testament.  He wrote the first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch). The Apostle Paul wrote the most books in the New Testament. 

The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (the doctrine that the Bible, in its original manuscripts, is accurate and totally free from error of any kind) was formulated in October 1978 by more than 200 evangelical leaders at a conference sponsored by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI), held in Chicago. The statement was designed to defend the position of Biblical inerrancy against a perceived trend toward liberal conceptions of Scripture. The undersigners came from a variety of evangelical Christian denominations, and include James Montgomery Boice, Carl F. H. Henry, Kenneth Kantzer, J. I. Packer, Francis Schaeffer, and R. C. Sproul. PREFACE The authority of Scripture is a key issue for the Christian Church in this and every age. Those who profess faith in Jesus Christ as

I have some news for you that may come as a surprise – the Bible Belt has been lost.  And it happened right under our noses. The belt, that once stretched from coast to coast, first shrank.  The erosion began on one end of the country (guess where) and continued to shrink, collapsing inward from the other end of the country (guess where), tightening the Bible Belt in a vice-like grip causing it to shrink smaller and smaller.  Fat with success and giddy with their newly available playtime, modern-America never even noticed that the belt was being lost.  We began to accept as the norm, more and more, what the Bible taught us not to do – substance abuse, lying, marital infidelity, sexual immorality.  Today the

The Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament give a rough estimate of the passage of time and thus allows us to create a general chronological calibration to biblical history by means of various genealogies, reign-periods, and other means.  The biblical chronology largely uses numbers which were significant to the authors: the basic numbers are 12, 40 (a "generation"), and 480 (12 generations of 40 years); other significant numbers include 10, 20, 60, and 100.  Other non-biblical historic dates are generally accepted dates but may be approximates or traditional.  This is particularly true of the events before Greece and Rome, but even with Greece and Rome, the early years may be in doubt.   Event Years after creation Year BCE * not biblical Creation of Adam 0 3924 BCE Seth, son of Adam and Eve,

How citizens fail to recognize a decline in society's moral standard Absolute consensus on societal issues will likely never exist.  There will always be disagreement and dissension over what constitutes right and wrong.  But general consensus, acceptable by the majority, can be manufactured by Man.  Laws, leaders, and societal groups assert great influence on citizens and can promote an issue to the point that the majority of the population will eventually embrace it.  In general, the promotion of an agenda, and acceptance by a civilization, occurs gradually, over time, and in small increments - barely recognizable by the citizens until the issue at hand has been fully integrated into the society. In the early 16th century, sodomy was punishable by death, a measure of punishment that continued until the late

How declining moral values cause civilizations to die Great civilizations are not timeless. During their lifespan, they produce great innovations, stunning technological advancements, and archive vast caches of knowledge, but inevitably – they will collapse and die. The reasons for civilizational decline are varied and hotly debated. In general though, there are but a small number of common requirements for a civilization to thrive and only a handful of reasons why they inevitably collapse. For some ancient civilizations, we have little or no historical records documenting the religious or moral state of the empire immediately preceding their collapse but even for those, there are clear clues that morality declined significantly before the nation’s collapse. For most dead civilizations however, we have sufficient documentation to demonstrate that religion and