Then I will gather my flock out of all the lands, and I will bring them back totheir fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply, and they shall not fear anylonger, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord.In this passage from Jeremiah (23:3-4), the Lord God, through the prophet,assures his […]

In today’s OT lesson (Ezekiel 2:1-5), we hear from the prophet Ezekiel.  God’s people are in Babylonian captivity in what is now Iraq, in about 600 BC. The people are disoriented and confused and lost. They are suffering. The Lord God gives Ezekiel a message for his people. That is, people, your trouble is because […]

We did not read as our OT lesson today the Wisdom of Solomon passage, for two reasons. One, its message is jarring: – “the forces of the world are wholesome, and there is no poison in them, and the dominion of Hades is not on earth.” The suffering of billions of people down through the […]

The Bible might be described as one long, epic attempt to picture to worldly man the nature of the otherworldly. It is an effort made in many different voices to surround the nature of God and convey the kingdom of heaven. Since this is an obvious impossibility, the effort relies on poetry and prophecy and […]