Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1080. Have we lost books of the Bible? I get asked this more often than you might expect, usually by someone who has just read a footnote mentioning the Book of Jashar, or heard a documentary claim that whole gospels were suppressed by a jealous church hierarchy centuries ago. It is a fair question,…
Reading Time: 7 minutesQuestion 1051. The Samaritan Pentateuch sounds like the kind of obscure manuscript detail that only specialists need worry about, but it raises a question worth answering plainly: if the Samaritans have their own version of the first five books of the Bible, and it differs here and there from the Hebrew text we use, how…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1046. When I open my Old Testament, I am reading a translation of ancient Hebrew manuscripts, and the Masoretic Text is the specific textual tradition standing behind almost every English version on my shelf, including the ESV. But it is not the only ancient witness to the Old Testament, and understanding how it relates…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1045. Biblical archaeology occupies an unusual place in my ministry, because it sits right at the boundary between faith and physical evidence, and I find that boundary endlessly interesting rather than threatening. In 1868 a German missionary named Frederick Klein discovered a black basalt stone in Jordan bearing an inscription from Mesha, king of…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4092. Elijah’s journey to Horeb is one of the most emotionally honest passages in the entire Old Testament, and I think that is exactly why so many believers find themselves drawn back to it. Here is a prophet who had just called down fire from heaven on Carmel, who had watched the prophets of…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4069. The Spirit before Pentecost operated on a genuinely different basis from His ministry today, and understanding that difference clears up a great deal of confusion about how Old Testament believers related to God’s Spirit. The Holy Spirit was active throughout the Old Testament, not absent until Acts chapter 2. What changed at Pentecost…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 1015. Biblical contradictions get raised in nearly every conversation I have with sceptical friends, and honestly, they deserve a serious answer rather than a defensive one. The Old Testament prescribes animal sacrifices, and the New Testament says Jesus has rendered such offerings obsolete. The Old Testament records God commanding the destruction of entire peoples,…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 2110. The Angel of the LORD is the most intriguing figure in the Old Testament, and the question of his identity is one of the most rewarding studies a believer can undertake. He steps into the story unannounced, speaks as God in the first person, accepts worship that no created angel would dare accept,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2108. A theophany is a visible appearance of God to human beings, and once you know the word you will start spotting them all over your Old Testament. The term comes from two Greek words: theos, “God”, and phaino, “to appear” or “to show”. Put them together and you have “an appearing of God”…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 4030. When I trace the Spirit’s work from the opening chapter of Genesis through to the book of Acts, I find one and the same Person at work throughout, and yet a real and glorious change in the way He works once Jesus is glorified. The Spirit’s work did not begin at Pentecost. He…