bible805

Amos, prophet of Justice for then and now

July 14, 2019 by bible805

In Dallas Willard’s book, Hearing God, he says that one of most frequently asked questions of Christians is “What is God’s will for my life?” It’s a question I’m sure many of us have asked.

In this lesson, we’ll be looking at the book of Amos, one of the Old Testament prophets for help in answering this question.

This is a challenging lesson as many of the issues Amos deals with in this book are so relevant to our world today including how we should address the extremes of wealth and poverty, how to live in times of political turmoil, how should we treat aliens and immigrants? God’s view of these issues are often uncomfortably clear as this book shows us.

To download the timeline chart of prophets and kings, click on the following link: Old Testament Prophets Timeline

To download a copy of the PDF of the notes, click here:

The notes are also available below:Continue Reading

Chart of Old Testament Prophets and Kings—where they fit in history

July 14, 2019 by bible805

One of the most important things to keep in mind when you read through the Old Testament Prophets is that that all of these stories took place in real lives in actual history. I’ll talk about that in the individual lessons, but to help you place them, I created a chart that will help you see what prophets preached when. I based it on the work of others, but none of them that I found and that were copyright-free presented the material in a way I thought was as useful as it could be. I trust this makes sense.

The nation of Israel divided into two parts, Israel and Judah after the reign of Solomon. Both as nations deteriorated in their faithfulness to God, though Judah had some periods of revival. Ultimately Israel was conquered by Assyria and went into captivity never to return in 721 BC. Judah was conquered by Babylon in 586 BC and returned to the land after 70-year captivity. During all of these times, God sent his prophets to challenge and encourage his people.

I organized the chart so that the prophets to Israel are grouped together; as are the prophets to Judah, those who spoke to the captivity, and the books to other nations.

Following is a PDF of the chart—you can use it however you want.

Jonah, about so much more than a fish

July 6, 2019 by bible805

Most people have heard about the story of Jonah and the whale, but did you know that the book also answers some big questions about the Christian life?

Some of the questions Jonah answers include:

What about people who haven’t heard the gospel if Jesus is the only way to God?
What is the consequence of sin in the life of a believer?
What do we do about bad people, or when people treat us badly? What does God expect from us as His people?

For answers to these questions and other scattered applications, let’s look at Jonah because it’s about so much more than a fish!

The notes are in this blog below the podcast link, but to download a PDF copy of the notes for this podcast, click the following link: NOTES on JONAH, about so much more than a fish!

Prophets & Kings Extraordinary lessons, seldom read

June 29, 2019 by bible805

Would you like to know God better?

Not just about God—but learning about the One with whom you will walk throughout eternity?

One of the best ways to get to know someone is to find out about their past—who were their friends, what was important to them, what moves them to tears or gives them joy.

Our God shows us all these things in the history of the kings after Solomon and in the messages of the prophets who preached during that time. But sadly few, even many committed Christians, take the time to read these books in the Bible, and even more to read the prophets in the historical times that they spoke—but during our next 14 podcasts that’s exactly what we are going to do!

Join us as we learn more about our God as revealed in these stories of Prophets and Kings!…extraordinary lessons, seldom read!

To download a PDF of the notes, click the following link: NOTES Prophet and Kings, extraordinary lessons, seldom readContinue Reading

Intro to the Prophets–much more than a bunch of angry old men

June 22, 2019 by bible805

When you hear the term prophecy, what do you think of?

For many people, we think of dire warnings of an end-time apocalypse, with images of our favorite sci-fi movie dancing in our heads.

But is that what prophecy, specifically prophecy in the Bible is all about?
In our podcast today we’ll see that that the books of the Bible after the poetic books we just studied, that we call the Prophetic books and that make up a major part of our Old Testament are about so much more and that they have surprising applications to ups, not just in the future, but for how we live our lives today.

This section of the Bible can be confusing as the parts that go together historically with the preaching of the prophets are scattered in different places in the Old Testament. The history is told from differing viewpoints in both Kings and Chronicles and then the prophetic books that were written during specific historical times. All of these parts are grouped at the end of our Bibles and not precisely in order of when the prophetic messages were delivered.

This makes it extremely challenging to try to make sense of it all, particularly of the prophets who at first reading appear to be simply ranting against evil interspersed with cryptic warnings about future calamities.

However, when the prophets are read IN the proper places where their messages were spoken in historical contexts and when we understand how to correctly read and interpret prophetic messages, the Old Testament and what the Lord wants us to learn from it will open up to you in new and exciting ways.

The notes are printed following, and for a copy of the PDF notes that go along with the podcast, CLICK the following link: Notes for an Intro to the Prophets

Proverbs, part 2: Practical advice for a post-Christian, post-Biblical world

June 15, 2019 by bible805

If someone insults you how do you answer?

Does the way people treat us determine how we should treat them?

In our podcast today we’ll look at Proverbs and get some advice on how we can respond no matter how difficult people might be in ways that please God and ultimately help us live a more peaceful and productive life.

We laid the philosophical groundwork for this podcast in the last one. Please listen to it first if you haven’t already.

In this podcast we get practical on how we can apply Proverbs to our daily lives.