Award-Winning, Bestselling Christian Author
DANCING IS SIN, according to what preachers told me during what could have been my breakout years as a child prodigy. It could have been Fred Astaire, John Travolta, and then Stephen M. Miller. Instead, when it came time to learn square-dancing in …
I’VE GOT RAIN ON THE BRAIN. And in pools in my backyard. It has been raining so much here in the heartland that we have little choice but to mow the yard when the grass is wet. I wondered if the Bible has any laments I could sing about that. But …
There is no Battle of Armageddon in the Bible. “Demonic spirits gathered all the rulers and their armies to a place with the Hebrew name Armageddon” (Revelation 16:16 NLT). End of story. There’s no report of a battle getting fought. Some students …
WRITING BOOKS about the Bible has gotten complicated. It used to be I’d write books about the Bible and get paid a decent royalty by most Christian publishers. But today, the business of writing now requires so much more than writing. I can’t just …
A FRIEND SURPRISED ME at supper this week. He’s going through a divorce, so I met him at his preferred pizza place, to give him a little company for at least one meal this week. “Before I forget it,” he said as we parked ourselves in the booth, “you …
THERE ARE TIMES when the Bible gets it wrong. It’s not that the writers got it wrong, as far as we can tell. It’s that the Bible translators can’t figure it out. They have to guess. Sometimes translating the Bible into English is a bit like betting …
Walking, it normally took about two weeks to make the trip from Egypt to what is now Israel. It took Moses and the Israelites 40 years. They bypassed the coastal route to avoid Egyptian outposts. Then God sentenced them to 40 years in the Badlands …
THE GUY WHO BUILT MY HOUSE said he was a Christian. I probably should have felt badly about chasing him off my property. But I didn’t. And I don’t. I’d do it again if he came back. The crook. When his painters outside painted over the mud boards and …
I FEEL BUMMED. I could stop reading the news. That wouldn’t fix it. I’m living the problem. There’s so much wrong. From big to small. In my country we have a representative form of government that no longer represents us. They represent their …
THIS IS ONE OF THE STRANGEST STORIES I have to tell. Back in 1988 I was editing a magazine that Bible study teachers in several denominations used in their church Sunday School classes. At the beginning of the magazine, on the inside front cover, I …
Jacob, father of the 12 sons who produced the 12 tribes of Israel, got the Hebrew name Ya ‘aqov, which sounds like the Hebrew word for heel: ‘aqev (Genesis 25:26). It’s because he was born second, and came out holding onto the heel of his brother …
A SEMINARY PROF I know had one trick for shutting up his two little boys when they wouldn’t stop chattering. Especially in the morning, when he and his wife were trying to get them ready for school. He’d lay a hand on their head and bless them. He …
