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King David knew that God loved him, even after he had sinned gravely—with Bathsheba and then by taking a census of the people against God’s will. God still loved him and forgave him, promising to build David a house—a house of descendants—who would rule his people forever (2 Sam. 7).   First in that line would be Solomon.   Solomon married Naamah when he became king. Their courtship and marriage are eloquently described in Psalm 45 and again in the So …

Having finished a full draft of this work, I began seeing other themes surfacing in the Book of Revelation—elements of war and weapon imagery, especially between the angelic armies and Satan’s. Then I looked through the Psalms and saw the same. Certainly one expects war elements in the Old Testament, as God’s people struggle to free themselves of pagan peoples who conquer and enslave them when they sin and disobey the Law. But what I was not expecting was to see worship associ …

Spiritual or Religious?  Challenge: I consider myself spiritual rather than religious. Why isn’t that enough?  Defense: Because God loves you and wants even better things for you.  When people say they are spiritual rather than religious, they frequently mean that, although they don’t practice a specific religion, they recognize there is more to the world than matter, that it has a spiritual dimension. This is good! But it doesn’t go very far. Wouldn’t it …

The Catholic Bible contains the deuterocanonical books because they were part of the biblical tradition that Jesus and the apostles were familiar with and made reference to. Called the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament that contained these books was widely used in the early Church because Greek (like English today) was a universal language of commerce. Some Protestants say we should not include the deuterocanonical books in the canon because Jesus and the apostles …

The canon of the New Testament slowly took shape over the first 300 years of Christianity. Some books, like the four Gospels, were widely accepted early on, whereas others were doubted by many for a long time. But by the fifth century, the New Testament canon of twenty-seven books was firmly settled. In spite of this, over a thousand years later, Martin Luther dismissed four of those books when he translated the New Testament into German.Four on the Chopping Block?Martin Luther was excommunicat …