Jesus did not arrive safely, comfortably, or legally secure. He fled by night, crossed borders, and lived in fear of returning home—because a politician wanted him dead. The Gospel doesn’t leave us room to sanitize this reality. If how we treat refugees is how we treat Jesus, then the question isn’t whether Christ was a…
In Ephesians 5, Paul talks about light, darkness, and our place in it. Jamin dives into this theme on both a scientific and spiritual level.
Many view God as an angry and wrathful entity that’s doing everything he can to hold himself back from killing us all for our sin and disobedience. The Bible, however, has a very different perspective. He didn’t bring about the flood until the whole world had turned their hearts toward evil except for one man.…
If you condense all existence into a one-year calendar, every day would be about 40 million years and every month would be about 1 billion years. On this scale, all recorded history has only been happening in the last seconds of that calendar. God is patient. He often moves slower than we want. He fulfills…
Scholars say that the concept of resurrection is hardly found in the Old Testament, but Jesus seemed to feel differently. For example, the Sadducees didn’t believe in resurrection and only held the first five books of the Bible as sacred, yet Jesus thought they still had reason to believe in resurrection from those books alone.…
Of all the marks someone might make on their body to remember a promise God made to them, circumcision sure seems like a weird one. But then again, when God’s promise is that you will have many descendants, what better place to put a mark than on your descendant-maker? This tradition was a big deal…
Just as Eve “took” the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and “gave” it to “her husband,” so Sarah “took” her servant Hagar and “gave” her to “her husband” as a wife. The Bible wants you to know that this decision is the Garden of Eden all over again and…
Melchizedek is a mysterious figure in the Bible. We know little about him, but after Abraham won a war to save his nephew, this king blessed him on behalf of his god, just like a priest would. After that, the story is over and we don’t expect to see his name again. Except we do.…
If you wanted to prove your strength in the ancient world of the Bible, you might start by taking out some giants. Perhaps that’s what King Chedorlaomer thought when he rose up and defeated several giant clans. After all, several kings and kingdoms that had long served him started rebelling against him, so such a…
God told Abraham that he would give his offspring the land of Canaan, but a drought forced him to leave that land and go to Egypt. At that time, he must have been wondering if he’d ever return. He would, of course, and it would be a family situation that would thrust him back into…
Because Abraham is the chosen one of God, we tend to think he can do no wrong, and we remember him fondly. But his story is one of misstep after misstep. For example, sometime after God told Abraham he would give him many children, his family took refuge in Egypt during a drought. It was…
Jamin Bradley 