Truth For Life

Have Your Gift Doubled To Defend Dying Christians.

Fwd: Abducted and Tortured

This is unthinkable genocide. 5 million Christians have been forced from their homes.

90% of the Christians who were murdered for their faith last year were in the same country – Nigeria.

1,100 Christians were ruthlessly slaughtered by jihadist groups in the span of just one month. Christians are abducted and murdered, churches are burned, worshipers are gunned down, and pastors are summarily executed in the most barbaric ways.

No Christian is safe.

The suffering is unimaginable. But Biden has turned his back on them, removing Nigeria from the critical persecution watchlist our own Mike Pompeo had established when he was Secretary of State. If Biden won't defend dying Christians, it's up to you and me.

We JUST held a MAJOR meeting with key U.N. officials and submitted 14 legal filings on persecution and human rights at the U.N. – including an absolutely vital one defending Christians in Nigeria. We're also battling the Biden Administration in federal court over its abandonment of Christians.

Time is running out. The genocide is spreading.

As we file at the U.N., have your gift DOUBLED to defend dying Christians TODAY. Our Matching Challenge deadline is in JUST DAYS, and we're short of our goal. $25 becomes $50; $50 becomes $100.

Take urgent action with us NOW before it's too late.

Sign Our Petition: Stop the Genocide of Christians.

Jay Sekulow
ACLJ Chief Counsel

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The ACLJ is an organization dedicated to the defense of constitutional liberties secured by law.

American Center for Law and Justice is a d/b/a for Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism, Inc., a tax-exempt, not-for-profit, religious corporation as defined under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, specifically dedicated to the ideal that religious freedom and freedom of speech are inalienable, God-given rights. The Center's purpose is to engage legal, legislative and cultural issues by implementing an effective strategy of advocacy, education and litigation to ensure that those rights are protected under the law. The organization has participated in numerous cases before the Supreme Court, Federal Court of Appeals, Federal District Courts, and various state courts regarding freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Your gift is very much appreciated and fully deductible as a charitable contribution. A copy of our latest financial report may be obtained by writing to us at P.O. Box 90555, Washington, DC 20090-0555.

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Tuesday, July 25, 2023

TLOT as an embed

The above item is linked with "Embed" to this address: https://fbcclassroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Theological-Lexicon-of-the-Old-Testament-3-Vol.-Set-by-Ernst-Jenni-Claus-Westermann-Mark-E.-Biddle-translator_compressed.pdf

Augustine’s Two Steps for Interpreting Complex Texts

Blake Adams

Exegetical ambiguity occurs when a word or passage from Scripture can support more than one interpretation. Exegetical ambiguity can spur a deeper engagement with the text, but it can also frustrate or even cause despair. But it may relieve us to know the problem is nothing new. It is a constituent element of language as God has given it to us. And when it comes to problems of such a universal nature, the ancients can speak as our contemporaries. Though Augustine was a stranger to many modern exegetical methods, he was nonetheless one of the most formidable exegetes of the early period, and, as will be seen, his pastoral approach has ageless appeal.

Who was Augustine of Hippo?

Augustine was a North African bishop who died in the early fifth century. Excepting the apostle Paul, perhaps no theologian has left a greater mark on Western theology. Augustine was many things—a philosopher, a bishop, an apologist—but what he longed most to be was an exegete. For Augustine, exegesis was not, as we tend to think, merely a scholarly skillset. Exegesis was a way of life. Augustine said that an exegete lived in Scripture the way a deer lived in an expansive forest:

Not in vain have you [God] willed so many pages to be written … , not in vain do harts and hinds seek shelter in those woods, to hide and venture forth, roam and browse, lie down and ruminate. (Conf. XI.2, 3)

Being an exegete was like being a lover: it involved the whole of one’s life and identity. Understanding Scripture was an enterprise worthy of one’s entire existence, education, and energy. Augustine lamented that his ecclesial duties diverted him from enjoying the exegetical life to the fullest. Shortly after his (forced) ordination to the priesthood in 391, he asked his bishop for a temporary leave just to study the Scriptures to fortify himself for his new vocation (Ep. 21). Four years later, he was made bishop, and he complained that time for exegetical work became even more difficult to find (Conf. XI.2, 2; many a modern minister can relate). Despite the demands placed on him, Augustine spent every spare moment “exercising myself in the Holy Scriptures” (Ep. 213, I) and managed to produce an abundance of commentaries, homilies, and treatises that put his prodigious acumen on display. For Augustine, exegesis was neither a scholarly enterprise nor a mere resourcing for next Sunday’s sermon, but the reward of his labors. Augustine was well acquainted with the problem of scriptural ambiguity. The church in Hippo was diverse and intellectually active. Interpretations abounded, and not all of them were put forward by heretics or simpletons. In fact, it was the variety of valid interpretations that most interested Augustine, for these would appear the most difficult to resolve exclusively along the lines of Scripture and reason.1

The two stages of Augustine’s exegesis

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The Best Is Yet to Be Part 1 of 2

Truth For Life

Alistair Begg

A BRIEF BIBLE HISTORY JAMES OSCAR BOYD, Ph.D., D.D. and JOHN GRESHAM MACHEN, D.D.

A BRIEF BIBLE HISTORY A SURVEY OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS JAMES OSCAR BOYD, Ph.D., D.D. and JOHN GRESHAM MACHEN, D.D. PHILADELPHIA THE WESTMINSTER PRESS 1922

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43533/43533-h/43533-h.htm

A Heart Message about the New Covenant

A Heart Message about the New Covenant BY THE HAND, BY THE HEART Imagine finding an official letter in your mailbox, with the return address from a legal firm. At first it’s scary. But since it’s marked urgent, you open it immediately at the curb. Soon your fear turns to joy because it turns out you’re not being sued, but rather, you’re being informed that you’ve been left a huge sum of money, properties and a host of other considerations by a relative who recently passed away that you didn’t even know. Fear turns to gratefulness and wonder. A sense of unworthiness begins to rise. Soon you are telling others about what you’ve received because the joy is hard to contain. All you need to do is appear at the legal firm, and sign for your inheritance. This analogy captures something, though not all, of the New Testament or Covenant. We do not know this rich relative of ours, God, but He knows us, and has provided for us riches beyond belief. This last will and testament of Jesus Christ is an activated inheritance given by God to all who simply accept it. Jesus Christ provided this inheritance through his death on the cross. Now He is risen from the dead, and He is making sure His wishes are carried out! His inheritance has two parts. What we are saved from, and what we are saved to. We are saved from Divine justice because of our sins. They are washed away in the blood of Jesus. We are saved to an abundant life of fellowship with the Lord, where He continues to forgive our sins everyday, and lead us into a life of adventure, learning, growing, changing, and sharing the joy that we find as each part of our inheritance manifests. God pictured the Law through Moses in the Old Testament, as one where He took Israel “by the hand”. God led Israel from the outside, by signs and wonders, by His commandments, and decrees, by His prophets, priests and teachers demanding that they “know the Lord”. He knew that their nature was fallen, and that their many fallen needs and desires would constantly pull against His hand, until they would break away into other directions. Thankfully God doesn’t give up on us, because He loves us beyond our dreams, and so wants us to walk in that inheritance. The New Testament provides something much more than the demands to obey in the Old Testament. It provides a changed heart that wants God and cries out Abba, daddy! Instead of being dragged by the hand where we loathe to go we can be led by our changed desires, and the leading of the Holy Spirit who lives inside. Because God has provided His Spirit to indwell us, we can begin to know Him very intimately. Of course, this is a process, relationships take time, but each new revelation of the one we love is a delight to discover. If we were an old Hotel in need of renovation, when Christ enters our life, it’s as if He came into our main lobby. After a glorious transformation, the public is in awe of the changes. But those closer to us know that there are many rooms and hallways in our lives, filled with all of the hurts, sins and ruins that still need the transformation of God. (2 Cor. 3:18) This process goes as fast or slow as we can bear. God will never give up on causing us to “will and work” His good pleasure. (Phil 2:13) Also, we’re not the only ones getting an inheritance, He gets one as well. It’s us! We are His reward. And He’s watching over us as an anxious lover waiting to get married. Yes, in the New Testament it’s all an inside job, and as we stick with it, the joy is certain to manifest. When it does, we cannot help but tell others about the inheritance we are receiving. “Behold, days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them," declares the LORD. "But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. "They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, `Know the LORD,' for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the LORD, "for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more." (Jeremiah 31:31-34) But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises. (Heb. 8:6) “Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power” (Ephesians 1:15-19)

Bibliography

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