What’s Paul got against sinners?
Paul said God pre-picked people to get saved. Really?
God picked who to get saved?
Paul said God pre-picked people to get saved. Really?
Pick the true statement
Q ONLY ONE STATEMENT IS TRUE. Which one? At least one of the four Gospel writers said Jesus was nailed to the cross. An Olympic champion swimmer can beat a Nile crocodile in a 50-meter race. Apostle Paul, who told Timothy not to let women speak in …
Explain it. Why did Jesus have to die?
Q LIFE APPLICATION. Here’s one main teaching of Christianity that doesn’t seem to make much sense to people outside the faith: “Our sins are a capital offense, but God sent Jesus to take our punishment. Jesus bled and died for the sins we committed” …
Can Paul have it both ways?
Q First Paul tells Timothy to keep women quiet in the church that Timothy pastors in the city of Ephesus. “The ladies need to keep quiet” (1 Timothy 2:12). Then he sends greetings to a woman in Rome who some scholars say he regarded as an …
Recycling crucified corpses
Q What happened to most people who got crucified in Roman times? If they got lucky, a friend sweet-talked someone into freeing them. They got a proper burial. They got thrown into a mass grave or nearby pit. Crows, dogs, and wild critters recycled …
Traits of a fine church leader
Q Paul creates a thoughtful and sometimes entertaining list of traits he wants to see or not see in church leaders (Titus 1:5-9). Just for fun, how about trying to put them in order of importance—as you would rate them? Or just pick out some of the …
Did Paul make an oops on the Second Coming?
Q Paul wrote as though he believed Jesus was coming back any minute. He said he expected that the people in Thessalonica, like himself, would be relieved of their troubles “when Jesus returns from heaven, with his entourage of mighty angels” (2 …
God’s flair for the dramatic
Q The first birth announcement on record about Jesus went to shepherds working the night shift, “keeping an eye on their sheep” (Luke 2:8). If God has a flair for the dramatic and a taste for metaphor, what do you think the value was in an angelic …
Was Gabriel fair to Zechariah?
Q The angel Gabriel struck Zechariah mute, and possibly deaf, some experts say, merely because Zechariah asked how it would be possible for him and his wife to have a child: “I’m an old man, and my wife is up there in years, too” (Luke 1:18). Gabriel …
Is a sermon “God’s word”?
Q Paul complimented the people of Thessalonica for accepting his message “for what it is: God’s word” (1 Thessalonians 2:13). Christians typically reserve the Bible for that tag: God’s Word. Many preachers, however, describe their sermons as God’s …
A church worth talking about
Q LIFE APPLICATION. Writing from Corinth, a 300-mile walk (483 km) south of Thessalonica (400 miles/645 km by sea), Paul says everyone in what is now Greece seems to have heard about the people of Thessalonica getting religion: “You have managed to …