They Were Afraid Shortly after moving here, someone asked me in Bible class about the so-called Longer Ending of Mark (Mk 16:9-20). I took a deep breath before noting that most of the ancient and most reliable Greek manuscripts lack Mark 16:9-20; plus, there are significant stylistic differences in those verses with the rest of […]

Who Influences You? We live in a wickedly sinful society—I really don’t know any other way of putting it. Open the newspaper, and you can read about how people’s lives have been completely consumed by hate and greed and racism. When you flip on the television and settle in for an evening of entertainment, you’ll […]

Get Up! The Israelites conquered Jericho easily, thus the people of Ai should have been no match for the Israelites. After all, the spies Joshua sent to scout out the land told him there wasn’t even a reason to send the whole army against such a small city. Joshua listened to his spies, and about […]

Pray for Me In the South, we know houseflies; we keep flyswatters, and we shoo them away from our plates at picnics. However, what if those flies were everywhere, and I mean everywhere. That, of course, was the experience of the Egyptians when God brought the plagues upon them: “There came great swarms of flies […]

The Hot Tub or the Sauna? Over the past couple of years, I’ve watched a handful of regulars at the gym. They come every morning, but they only get in the sauna and/or the hot tub and then go home. There’s no swimming of laps, there’s no visiting the weight room to pump iron, and […]