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American Politics

Obama as Fool

It is clear now that Barack Obama is a fool. This was clear to anyone with Biblical wisdom during the campaign, but it is now becoming clear to everyone. The following analysis of this narcissist is invaluable: http://www.globalpolitician.com/25109-barack-obama-elections These rather radical comments are also worth considering: http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/print.asp?ID=9668 What is telling…

by James B. JordanMarch 4, 2009
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Biblical Studies

Rainbow Coalition

I was asked to provide comments on the rainbow in the Bible. Here are some for starters: 1. God puts his warbow in the sky for HIM to see and remember the covenant. 2. In Revelation 4-5, this warbow is around His throne, so He sees it all the time.…

by James B. JordanMarch 3, 2009
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Biblical Horizons

Marriage By Faith

We are about to enter a new era of world history. How will it come? The last time it came, it came by means of God conquering the impossible and overcoming barriers that were superhuman. That is how God does it every time He does a new thing. The last…

by Richard BledsoeFebruary 15, 2009
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Biblical Horizons

What Happens if the Church Does Not Sing the Imprecatory Psalms?

What happens if the church doesn’t sing the Imprecatory Psalms? We don’t like them. They are mean and nasty, and the one outstanding virtue inculcated in our public schools and universities (as Allan Bloom noted more than twenty years ago in his observations of American college students) is “niceness.” But…

by Richard BledsoeFebruary 10, 2009
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Biblical Horizons

Objectivity and Schizophrenia

The whole of the modern world is still an outworking of Augsburg and Westphalia. It is now a world incapable of marriage, intimacy, and relationship. The whole of the modern world is terribly, terribly wounded. It gives rise to children who have a variety of dysfunctions. Some of them are…

by Richard BledsoeJanuary 21, 2009
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Anxiety

Marriage and Betrayal

Perhaps the most fearful of all possibilities in the world is the possibility of betrayal on the part of someone who is in a “position of trust.” This, unfortunately, is the first block in what ought to be the foundation of every marriage in the world. Every woman has a…

by Richard BledsoeJanuary 15, 2009

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Noahroma

After the flood, Noah builds an altar ( mizbeach ) offers ascension offerings ( ya’al ‘oloth ). It’s the first altar and the first ascension offering in biblical history (Genesis 8:20). Noah is the first king, the first to be given authority to shed human blood, the first to drink…

June 2, 2014

How Sacrifices Stack Up

Leviticus 1:7-9 describes the arrangement of animal parts for an ‘olah , an “ascension” offering. It’s a double or triple layering of the animal: head, suet, and entrails-and-legs; or, as a double structure with the entrails and legs set off from head and suet by the water barrier. Mary Douglas…

June 2, 2014

Fat

The peace offering is the one offering that a worshiper eats from. It is the offering of the marriage feast. But that’s not the thing that gets emphasized in chapter 3. What gets emphasized instead is the fat . The word is used 12 times in the chapter. These are…

June 2, 2014

Inner man, Inner sanctuary

Mary Douglas ( Leviticus as Literature ) explains the connections between the qereb , the inner parts of the animal, and the inner sanctuary of the tabernacle: “The Bible locates the emotions and thought in the innermost parts of the body; the loins are wrung with remorse or grief; the…

June 2, 2014

Sacrifice and imitatio Dei

David Janzen ( Social Meanings of Sacrifice ) follows other scholars in bringing attention to “the relation between sacrifice and the importance of order.” He cites Jon Levenson’s comment that God “acts like an Israelite priest in the act of separation ( hbdyl ) of the various categories of created…

June 2, 2014

Salvation and Mission

In a recent issue of Review of Biblical Literature, Lars Kierspel offers this commend on Pentecostal theologian William Atkinson’s Baptism in the Spirit , a monograph on the debate about James Dunn’s Baptism in the Holy Spirit . He argues that Atkinson errs in detaching the gift of the Spirit…

June 2, 2014

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