opinions and musings

Here is a good exercise for my fellow followers of Jesus.  Can we summarize the message of the entire Bible in 200 words or less?  This is great to be able to do when sharing your faith with someone who is not a believer in Jesus.  The message of Jesus really doesn't make much sense when it is presented out of context.  We must present the saving work of Christ in the context of the overall story of Israel and in the context of the God who created the physical universe and has always loved humanity. Here is my attempt at this: "The Bible tells the story of God's journey with mankind as He reveals Himself as a Father who delights in his good creation and in humanity.   He called out a people to Himself called Israel - the descendants of a Jewish man named Jacob.  He revealed Himself in a special way to this group of people. They became His representatives in the earth.  The story reaches its climax when God Himself comes to earth in the form of the Jewish man Jesus w

Within evangelical Christian circles these days I often hear the statement that “time is short – we are in the last days you know!”    Some Christians spend a great deal of time studying “end time prophecy” and looking for “signs of the end” in current events and international politics.   I would like to present a refreshing, Biblical alternative to all of that.    Last Days                           My proposal is that the term “last days” as it was used by the New Testament writers referred to the last days of the Old Covenant age, and that age ended in 70 AD with the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem by the Roman legions.   If this is true then we do not need to worry about the great tribulation, the anti-christ, the “mark of the beast”, etc. because all of those prophetic elements were fulfilled nearly 2000 years ago.                           One of the favorite “end-times” passages for many Christians is Matthew 24 in which Jesus responds to so