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Give Us A KingYou may have learned somewhere that God did not want Israel to have a king. Most Christian churches teach this to youngsters early in Sunday school. But it is wrong. God did want Israel to have a king; he just had a certain kind of k...
MOREJesus commanded his followers to "go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation?" (Mark 16:15; Acts 1:8). It took his followers a while to understand the good news and what all the world meant, but as the Holy Spirit ope...
MOREHades, originally the Greek god of the underworld, is the namesake for the place where departed spirits live. It was frequently used in the Bible as a synonym for hell or the grave (Psalm 9:17; 55:15; 116:3).As Jesus used it in Matthew 16:18, Hade...
MORECity of PagansCaesarea Philippi, which stood in a lush area near the foot of Mount Hermon, was a city dominated by immoral activities and pagan worship.Caesarea Philippi stood only twenty-five miles from the religious communities of Galilee. But t...
MOREA Picture of HellGehenna A sewer channel commonly ran under the streets of ancient cities. It traveled through the city gate and emptied into a nearby valley. Though the channels were probably used to drain rainwater from the towns, people also us...
MOREThis olive press is in the Capernaum, Jesus' home-base (Matt. 4:13), near the synagogue. The crushed olive pulp was placed in baskets (about four inches thick and two feet in diameter), which were then stacked several high. These baskets are barel...
MOREThe word gethsemane is derived from two Hebrew words: gat, which means "a place for pressing oil (or wine)" and shemanim, which means "oils."During Jesus' time, heavy stone slabs were lowered onto olives that had already been c...
MOREThis press was located in a building, not a cave. The pulp from the crusher was put in baskets and placed on the stone base under the large limestone pillar. Note the groove around the outside, which channeled the oil into the pit just to the left...
MOREThe Text includes stories, poems, and arguments about a variety of topics. But more than anything else, it's a story about God and his relationship with humans.Biblical writers often used word pictures to describe God and his power in the world. A...
MOREMany parts of Israel are extremely rocky, especially in the wilderness. This geographical condition, combined with the Hebrews practice of using concrete images of the world around them to describe spiritual reality, led to the Jews frequent use o...
MOREThe city of AradAs far back as 3,000 BC, a large Canaanite city stood in the Negev, where the small town of Arad sits today. This city probably existed when Abraham and his family lived in Beersheba, a nearby desert region.Arad was eventually dest...
MOREMeans "nations." A Gentile is any one who is not a Jew. God's plan of salvation begins with the chosen nation of Israel, and then moves to include all the nations of the earth.
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