Blog (Page 11)

Writing about Session: 6 Inspiration, Larry Meiners shares his thoughts on the inspiration of Scripture. What does it mean that the Bible is inspired? How did inspiration occur? How does one’s view of inspiration affect their interpretation? These are all good questions about how scripture was written. That is one of many reasons why I decided to take the Theology class. To answer questions like these about the Bible and the information it contains. What is inspiration? The best biblical…

Writing about Session: 6 Inspiration, Gary Presnall shares his thoughts on the inspiration of Scripture. The lesson for session 6 of my theology class I am taking was Inspiration of scripture. The key points that had an impact on me in the lesson were that there is only one interpretation of scripture, but many applications. I was always under the impression there were many interpretations and many applications. I appreciated how God reveals Himself to us in different ways, and…

Writing about Session: 5 Canonization of Scripture (NT), Bryan Carlton shares his thoughts on the canonization of the New Testament. Growing up, I didn’t put a lot of thought into where the Bible came from. I sure didn’t think that people might disagree on some of the writings or how much went into deciding what should be included. The Old Testament was easy for the early church to agree on – it was the collected Jewish Holy works that had…

Writing about Session: 4 Canonization of Scripture (OT), Andy Johnson shares his thoughts on the canonization of the Old Testament. Have you ever wondered: how exactly did the Bible come to be? Was it put together by committee? Did one man write the entire thing? How do we know we have everything that is supposed to be in there? Are we missing anything? “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for…

Writing about Session 3 Transmission of Scripture, Grant Etherington shares his thoughts on having confidence in the Bible. Here is a question to ponder: How do we know that the Bible is the same today as it was when it was written? Let’s start with the Old Testament, it was written in two languages Hebrew and Aramaic, and was written over a period of time from 1500 to 400BC. Now the New Testament was written in Koine Greek(basically how they talked…

Writing about Session 3 Transmission of Scripture, Anna Lee shares her thoughts on having confidence in the Bible. As Christians, it is imperative that we are confident in the Word of God we have in our hands. But few of us understand how the Bible has been transmitted from when it was originally written to the copy that exists in 2014. Transmission is defined as “to send something, pass something on, or cause something to spread, from one person thing or…

Writing about Session 2 Sola Scriptura, Brady Warrick shares his thoughts on tradition. The focus of Session 2 of our study was on Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura is the belief that Scripture is the final and only infallible authority for the Christian in all matters of faith and practice. Not included in the definition is the word ONLY. It does NOT say scripture is the ONLY source of truth. Solo Scriptura (not Sola) is the belief that Scripture is the…

Our church is going to publish a series of blog posts from written by the first class of students in our theology program. They are now in the second 10 week course of the program entitled Bibliology & Hermeneutics. Each student has been tasked with writing a blog post about their impression and thoughts of one session from the course. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and…

For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. ~Romans 12:4,5 The Apostle Paul had earlier been speaking about no longer living for oneself but rather living for God as a spiritual sacrifice; we are to die to self and live our lives for Him. We are also to live humbly and not to think…

And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” ~Luke 24:5-7 I love Easter Sunday! It is a wondrous time of anticipation,…

And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it behind Jesus. ~Luke 23:26 When Pastor called on us to read through the crucifixion account in the Gospel of Luke this week I could not help but spend time thinking on this verse. Pastor’s message this last Sunday was to focus our attention not only on the events of Jesus’ arrest, trial,…

Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.” ~Matthew 26:36 On the night of his betrayal and arrest, Jesus went to a familiar place and committed Himself to an even more familiar task… prayer. The hour had grown late and Jesus gave Himself to spend what little time He had left communing with God the Father in prayer, but this time it was…

The words of Nehemiah the son of Hac-aliah. Now it happened in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Susa the capital, that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem. ~Nehemiah 1:1,2 Pastor began a new sermon series this past Sunday and it is built on the book of Nehemiah. It is entitled “Nehemiah’s…

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; ~2 Corinthians 5:18 When Paul begins verse 18 with “All this is from God,” he is referring to those things he had just been talking about, the renewing of the human heart, his own desire to forsake all and give his life for the furthering of the Gospel. He says all this to make the point that even though he may…