Bible podcasts, videos, blogs, printables, and more to help you know, trust, and apply the Bible.
from Yvon Prehn to help you know, trust, and apply the Bible
A struggle for most of us who follow Jesus is that we know we should be better than we are. We know God called us to live lives that reflect our Savior, but far too often our lives reflect our world instead.
As we learn in reading Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, this struggle is nothing new. We can grow and become all God wants us to be, and these books and this lesson about them will help us do that. [Read more…]
As we learned in our previous lesson on Acts and Hebrews, when Paul first began preaching this new message of salvation in Jesus, he began by showing how Jesus was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.
As he moves further away from Jerusalem and begins to preach to people who aren’t as familiar with the Bible, he runs into both new questions and new challenges.
Many of these are specific to the particular location he writes to and these letters to the Thessalonians are a good example of this as he confronts a new source of persecution that is political, not simply a religious disagreement. [Read more…]
Typology, the teaching that the Old Testament prefigured events in the New Testament is an important concept to understand as you read your Bible. It’s important because when we see how God has worked out the same plan for salvation history over thousands of years it can give us hope and confidence in our faith and trust in the future God has prepared for us. He did that by showing a type (a preview) of an important truth in the past, that was later fulfilled in reality in the future.
For example, one of the most well-known examples of typology is that in the Old Testament, they sacrificed lambs because of people’s sins. But offering them only covered up their sin until Jesus came to be the final sacrifice and eternally took away our sins. The video that follows will help explain this in more detail.
Hebrews has a reputation for being a difficult book to understand and it is if you simply pull it out of context and without at least some knowledge of the Old Testament that it is based on, it is difficult to figure out what it is talking about.
This is sad because Hebrews was intended to be a book of explanation—of how Jesus fulfilled all that was pictured in the Old Testament, how His life was the reality of what was promised before. [Read more…]
Following are two illustrations of the Trinity that you have permission to download and share.
The first is an explanation from the church father, Tertullian, who coined the word, “Trinity” and defined it as “una substantia; tres personae” or One Substance; Three Persons.
The second is the classical illustration of the Trinity in contrast with the incorrect, heretical views of Modalism and Arianism. Click on each image to download a PDF of it. [Read more…]
It’s common to hear, even from those who seem very knowledgeable about the Christian faith and the Bible that “the Trinity is very hard to understand” or that “the Trinity is a mystery,” or a similar statement.
I STRONGLY disagree! Our God wants us to know Him and understand Him and I don’t believe the essential doctrine of the Trinity is difficult when it is explained correctly and supported from what the Bible clearly teaches. That’s what this lesson attempts to do, using clear explanations and infographics, available as free downloads. Many people have found it helpful and I trust you will also.