Do you have the patience?
God reaches down and selects a man named Abraham, to whom He gives some extraordinary promises. He promises that Abraham's descendants will some day become as numerous as sand on a beach, and that they will grow to become a mighty nation with their own land. Thus God focuses in on one particular set of people, the Jews.
From Genesis on, most of the Old Testament concerns the Jews. Have you ever wondered why our Bible contains so much meticulous detail on the history and culture of the Jews? They have always been a key part of God's plan to prepare the world for the coming of Christ! God has a special role for the Jewish race to play in history, and so He carefully works with them.
Within several generations Abraham's descendants begin to proliferate. Soon there are twelve tribes of Israel, and God leads them out of slavery in the remarkable drama of Exodus. Forty years of wandering in the desert occur before the disgruntled tribes can be molded into a group with the unity and spirit God needs.
In these first five books, God gathers hundreds of thousands of freed Israelis and gives them a culture. He intends far more than simply creating a nation as a world curiosity. He wants to set apart a nation He can call His people -- so that all over the world when the word Israelite is mentioned, everyone would know "they belong to Jehovah, the Lord God." In creating that culture, God outlines rules concerning health, food, dress, and behavior. These rules and the early Jewish history occupy the first five books of the Bible.
How should we study the first five books of the Bible? Are they merely an interesting history lesson? They must be more because Jesus and Paul and the disciples constantly refer back to God's Word in these books. There are several effective ways of studying this material.
There is more to it than you think.....
Ever read it to your children?
This is a debate seed, and was last edited on 8 April 2008.
As a fan of debate, I've often railed at the absence of actual debate in the debate spot. Therefore I present a question for debate:
Are mechanical pencils or wooden pencils better?
Cinders has done a marvelous job of initiating a number of formal limited debates, so I propose a different type of debate format for this one. For this, the Great Pencil Debate, the following debate attributes will apply:
Non-judged
Open-ended
Participatory
Moderated
What these mean:
Non-judged is a debate format wherein there are no judges...
continue reading...
As a fan of debate, I've often railed at the absence of actual debate in the debate spot. Therefore I present a question for debate:
Are mechanical pencils or wooden pencils better?
Cinders has done a marvelous job of initiating a number of formal limited debates, so I propose a different type of debate format for this one. For this, the Great Pencil Debate, the following debate attributes will apply:
What these mean:
Non-judged is a debate format wherein there are no judges...
