God talk

    Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel. Isaiah 7:14   When I think of the above verse I cannot think of anyone more suited to show us that Jesus is the Immanu-El (God is with us).   He quotes: “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel. Isaiah 7:14” The only difference in the Greek and Hebrew is that Matthew uses the LXX (Septuagint- the Greek translation of the TANACH (Old Testament for Christian readers)).   The only dispute which to my mind is not a dispute at all is; Does almah in the Hebrew mean Maiden or Virgin? The truth is that in this context the maiden for cultural reasons would be a virgin as other wise she would probably be stoned to death.   The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament also says: “Definition     virgin,...

  Nathaniel asked the question; “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”    Just a tree from the local forest Let’s look at the context:  The next day He purposed to go into Galilee, and He *found Philip. And Jesus *said to him, “Follow Me.” 44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, of the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip *found Nathanael and *said to him, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Philip *said to him, “Come and see.” 47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and *said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” 48 Nathanael *said to Him, “How do You know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” 49 Nathanael answered Him, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel.” 50 Jesus answered and said to him, “Because ...

 Have we been deceived by the commerce of the Christmas tree and the use of tinsel and bling that makes us like magpies running to and thro building our castles on snow? The real meaning of Christmas is very deep, if we could only see beyond the lights of our Christmas fairy tale.   The Christmas story is no Cinderella theme.   Christmas is about God becoming a person like you and me.   The question is why would God give up his heaven and be willing to be born in a barn?   If you were God, would you do that? Anyhow let us get started and look at John the Apostles World which was full of death and destruction.    Taken from Pexels I believe that John the Apostle wrote the Gospel, letters, and the Apocalypse.   During his life, he lived through the time of: ·          some cruel Roman rulers, ·          earthquakes such as Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii and Heracleu...

  In the ancestry of Jesus, we find some really interesting women of faith: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and Mary the mother of our Lord One will notice that in a conventional genealogy we have such and ‘such begat’ or ‘the father of’...   In Matthews genealogy there is a twist and the reason there is a twist is that sometimes God works in unconventional ways. All these women have a story to tell, and they all faced some type of persecution in their lives.    taken from wikipedia; the address is at the bottom of this blog   Tamar and Judah Tamar was married to one of Judah’s sons and he died.   According to the law (levir practice) she was to have a surrogate husband.   She got a surrogate husband, but he wasted his seed on the ground so that she wouldn’t get pregnant.   God judged him and he died.   Judah decided that Tamar was not going to get the youngest son but lied to her… that when he grew up, he would perform by making her pre...