The new school year is only two weeks away. Hopefully, the summer has been a good recharge for our kids. But you can’t be on break forever. At some point, you need to get back to work. There is work that God expects young people to do. Sometimes, we think about going to school, paying attention to classes, and doing homework as…

It is amazing how often a passage is misunderstood and misused, and yet equally amazing how simple that same passage really is.  Such is the case with 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.  These verses are often used to teach that Jesus will return and the church will be “caught up” (or “raptured”) to Him, and then either 1,000 years later or 1,007 years later,…

We continue our look at the seven churches of Asia which received John’s message from the island of Patmos. There were far more congregations than these seven for Paul’s work resulted in the spread of the gospel throughout all of Asia (Acts 19:10). God specifically chose these seven churches to help all other individuals and churches to profit from these messages (Rev.…

In your imagination right now, visualize a rubber duck.  What does it look like?  Certainly its head is distinct from its body, sitting erect on the front edge of the body.  It has an orange beak and two eyes.  It likely has a tail-like feather sticking up in the back and even a wing-like protrusion on each side.  It is molded to…

We continue looking at the New Testament church, seeing what good things they were doing but also looking at that which needed to be improved and then looking to the future to see what “ugly” and what “beautiful” things lay before them. By now you may have guessed we are looking at the seven churches of Asia mentioned in the book of…

There is a popular argument some try to make against the necessity of baptism for salvation. They present a hypothetical situation in which someone has come to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, but on the way to get baptized, they die in a car accident. The person will then ask, “Do you really think God will send them to…

One of the things that makes Bible study so enjoyable is reading about faithful brothers or sisters in Christ for whom there is very little information given.  Why is that enjoyable?  First, it rejoices the heart that God saw fit to introduce them to us, even if they were not “a big name in the church” (from our perspective).  Second, it refreshes…

In our culture, we sometimes use the expression the good, the bad and the ugly. This is the third time we have used this phrase to describe various congregations in the first century. We have looked at Ephesus and Smyrna, and this week we turn our attention to the church at Pergamum. The church at Pergamum, a city devoted to paganism.  We…