Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
(continued from previous issue) Between 30 and 50 What did the Levites do between age 30 and 50? Numbers 4 shows us that they carried the house of God on their shoulders. Lifting up the Lord is an image of worship in the Bible, and David’s restructuring of the Levites…
When God created the world, He created two lands: the Throne-land of Eden (entered through the sanctuary-garden, the Garden of Eden), and the Outlying Lands, such as the lands of Havilah and Cush. This essentially bi-polar world is the world of the Old Creation, and it continued to exist until…
Color is inescapable, except for those who are color blind. In our church architecture, we either employ color schemes that are helpful to worship, or we employ color schemes that are not helpful. Of course, this assertion merely begs the question: What color schemes are most helpful. God showed interest…
As I noted in an earlier article in Rite Reasons , the Church Fathers Tertullian, Ambrose, and Augustine all claimed that baptism inducts the baptized person into membership in the royal priesthood of the church, and Thomas Aquinas said that baptism, by imprinting an indelible “character” on the soul, confers…
When the Aaronic priests were ordained, the blood of the ram of "filling” was placed on the lobe of the right ear, the right thumb, and the right big toe (Lev. 8:22-24). Similarly, the cleansing rite for a leper included smearing the right ear lobe, thumb, and big toe with…
In my Preliminary Commentary on Daniel , which many of you have obtained, I argued in chapter 13 that the four monsters called up from the sea by the evangelistic work of the four winds (the saints) represented the deep hatred of God that evangelistic work brings to the fore…
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I magine, Peter Harrison suggests at the beginning of The Territories of Science and Religion , a historian who claimed to have discovered evidence of a war between Israel and Egypt that took place in 1600 AD. We’d be justifiably skeptical, and the evidence could be refuted with a swipe…
I t’s a truism of Old Testament studies that “poverty” in the Bible isn’t merely an economic condition. To be poor is not only to lack property and tangible wealth. It connotes deprivation in a wider sense. Psalm 10 illustrates the point. The wicked who does not believe in God…
B efore Joshua begins the battle at Jericho, he encounters “a man” with a sword who identifies himself as “the captain of the host of Yahweh” (Joshua 5:13-15). It’s a familiar scene, echoing the moment when Abraham encountered three men at his tent (Genesis 18:2). Abraham “lifted up his eyes…
A llison Benedikt doesn’t know me, but she thinks I’m a bad person. Not “ murderer bad,” mind you. Just “ruining-one-of-our-nation’s-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what’s-best-for-your-kid” bad. That kind of bad, which is “pretty bad.” I’m a bad person because I’ve never sent my kids to public school. My wife and I home-schooled all of…
S ince at least the early 20th century, commentators have claimed that the messages to the seven churches in Revelation 2–3 are packed with local allusions that the recipients would have recognized (see, for instance, W.M. Ramsay, The Letters to the Seven Churches ). Craig Koester ( Revelation ) doesn’t…
I n The Clash of Gods (6-8), Thomas Mathewes describes the “staggering” revolution that took place in late antiquity when Christianity overthrew pagan art: In effect, a highly nuanced visual language that had been developed over the course of a thousand years to express man's sense of cosmic order, to…
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