Leadership in the church is not entrusted to successful fund raisers, brilliant biblical scholars, administrative geniuses, or spellbinding preachers. . . but to those who have been laid waste by a consuming passion for Christ - passionate men and women for whom privilege and power are trivial compared to knowing and loving Jesus.
I became one of [Moses Mendelssohn] defenders. But then I heard the words "Biblical criticism" again. And, of course, afterward, I studied it more closely.
Get-rich-quick thinking leads to three basic errors: (1) Getting involved with things you cannot understand; (2) Risking funds you cannot afford to lose, that is, borrowed funds; and (3) Making hasty decisions. Each of these actions violates one or more biblical principles. . . Together they constitute a sin called greed.
It is possible to avoid Jesus as Savior as much by keeping all the Biblical rules as by breaking them.
According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U. S. government believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.
One of the many divine qualities of the Bible is that it does not yield its secrets to the irreverent and the censorious.
For Christians ultimate reality is and can only be a personal, sovereign, holy, and loving God. But even some Christians, under extra-biblical and even anti-Christian cultural influences read the Bible as pointing to something not ultimate, such as material wealth, health, happiness, power, etc.
I am going to put the Bible out of business.
The stars associated with the solar system, such as the planets and asteroids (and it should be remembered that the term star in Biblical usage applies to any heavenly body other than the sun and moon) would be particularly likely to be involved, in the view of the heavy concentration of angels, both bad and evil, around the planet Earth.
In Judaism, there are 613 biblical commandments, and the Talmud says that the chief commandment of all is study.
What does it take to get you to the point where you have to kill your brother? It's biblical, it's huge. It's so personal.
We're remembering each other's heroes, too. We are learning each other's songs. We are reminding ourselves that we are a global family praying together. We're all trying to live in the light of the history that shines through the biblical narrative.
When my works are being translated, I always get this question from my translators: Up or down? Which means, should it sound biblical and highbrow, or should we take it all down to sound colloquial? In Hebrew, it's both all the time. People in Israel would write in a high register, they wouldn't write colloquial speech. I do a special take on colloquial speech.
Faith that is not evidenced by a life of integrity is not biblical faith at all.
The church was always very adept at incorporating all the different artistic disciplines. What we call the church is actually an assemblage of different artistic forms, whether in its Biblical literature, or sculpture, painting, music.
Biblical social scientists have an advantage because they know truths about human nature. Those who dismiss the Bible and create surveys that don't measure crucial factors are the ones who have closed minds. Sometimes the Bible gives us clear answers and sometimes it doesn't, but it always helps us to ask the right questions.
Those issues are biblical issues: to care for the sick, to feed the hungry, to stand up for the oppressed. I contend that if the evangelical community became more biblical, everything would change.
"Am I my brother's keeper?" There you have the whole Biblical understanding that you are your brother's keeper. You also have a whole other understanding in which you are not your brother's keeper. And I've heard some extremely bright people take this position.
The biblical picture is not one of an upward, linear progress or a precipitous, downward decline. It is a more complicated picture of a fallen world in which there is a gospel of power.
It's astonishing how quickly cultural references change. Each new generation of parents grows up with a new slate of cultural understanding, television shows, and unique parental issues. The biblical principles remain the same, however, so this was a slight reworking, not a major overhaul.