The Orant

"Follow me." With these words Jesus invited his earliest followers to leave the life and story that defined them, and to take up his. It is a call that has been given and responded to by countless others throughout history, some have said yes and others have said no, but for many the response has been "hold on a minute." There is something about Jesus' call that keeps people uneasy. The problem with Jesus' call is he doesn't explain fully how it will work. It demands … [Read more...]

Scholars recognize a shift in Luke's gospel with the phrase "When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem" (Luke 9:51 ESV). After this point Jesus seems to be always heading toward Jerusalem. Because of this many have called it "the travel narrative." The travel narrative here is not all that dissimilar to many of the travel narratives that gained popularity in the Twentieth Century. Like "Travels with Charley" by John Steinbeck, the trip was made because … [Read more...]

The first Day of advent is drawing to a close. Light the first candle and sing a song... This one's always a classic.Can you think of a time when you waited for something or someone? … [Read more...]

I would like to take a brief look at Luke as a whole. When I work on a puzzle I often find it useful to take a good look at the whole picture before I examine the individual pieces. By doing this I feel comfortable working on a small section; the larger picture helps me understand the smaller parts. Reading the bible is somewhat similar. If you want to understand a passage getting a good look at the context of the whole book is quite helpful, and it's something many of us don't take time to do. … [Read more...]

I have often heard the question asked "could God create a rock so heavy he himself could not lift it" or more recently "could God create a burrito so hot he could not eat it"... there are potentially millions of these examples.Today I would like to answer these questions for you.First: we should get our terminology right. I am a theist so what God means to me is a being which is outside of the universe, who created the universe. I don't mean a life force within the universe or anything like … [Read more...]

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!σήμερον εὐχαριστῶ διά ὑμῖν - I give thanks this day because of you!In greek the word for "give thanks" is εὐχαριστῶ (Eucharistéō ). It is from this word that we get the word Eucharist.You can see where we get it in the passages below:For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you,that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks (eucharistéō), He broke it and said, "This is My body, which is for you; do this in r … [Read more...]

This week we have been examining the Lord's Supper from a number of angles. In dealing with every Biblical text we must recognize that we do not have the original autographs of any of the books we have. What we have is a collection of manuscripts which never agree with one another 100%. Most of the variants are insignificant and deal primarily with simple scribal errors in the process of copying. However the "words of institution" do contain a variant that merits closer examination. In a … [Read more...]

Check out this documentary...What do you think??http://www.youtube.com/p/A8FE03DBB5F04CC0&hl=en_US&fs=1 … [Read more...]

You may have noticed that while we went through FOUR accounts of the words of institution we only covered THREE of the four Gospels! What is blue blazes is going on here!! Don't worry all ye who love John. Although the fourth Gospel does not include the "words of institution" it does include a passage very much worth talking about.Check out John 6:22-59. The passage is pretty long so I'm not going to post the whole thing here. But in it Jesus is met by a crowd that is looking for him so that … [Read more...]