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The southern kingdom of Judah had sunk deep into apostasy. The prophet Jeremiah was raised up to offer them God's final invitation for repentance. When that failed, the prophet was commissioned to foretell the coming Babylonian conquest and to admonish the nation that it must submit to the punish...
The book of Lamentations was written by the prophet Jeremiah. It actually is a funeral song designed to commemorate the destruction of Jerusalem by the invading Babylonians (586 B.C.). The song is a sad reminder of the sins that led to the fall of the holy city, and the seventy-year long period o...
Ezekiel was a prophet during the Babylonian captivity; his ministry lasted more than twenty years. Jeremiah had foretold that the captivity would last seventy years (Jer. 25:11), but false prophets among the captives promised an early return to the homeland. Ezekiel's task was to solemnly warn th...
This is an expression used frequently in the Old Testament to describe those who forsook their loyalty to God and began to serve Satan again. No fewer than thirteen times, the prophet Jeremiah rebuked ancient Israel for her backsliding ways (Jer. 2:19; 3:6; cf. Hos. 4:16 KJV; 11:7). It is useless...
The doctrine of hereditary total depravity is also known as "original sin" in Roman Catholicism. This concept asserts that all children come into the world with both the effects and guilt of Adam's original sin. By "heredity," therefore, they are totally (completely) depraved (evil). Proponents o...
The idea of being born in sin or inheriting ancestral sin at birth is not a biblical concept. The most commonly misapplied passage relating to the notion that children are "born in sin" is Psalm 51:5. For several reasons, this text cannot be teaching that infants are born sinful; such a view woul...
Isaiah was a prophet who lived in Judah in the eighth century before Christ. He foretold coming judgments from God to be visited upon Israel, Judah, and several heathen nations, because of their sins. Out of that dark background, however, he also predicted a future "comfort" (18 times) from the L...
The most common word in the Greek New Testament that conveys the idea of "forgiveness" is aphesis, a compound term meaning "to send away from." Forgiveness is a divine response to human sin, flowing from the loving and merciful disposition of God (Jn. 3:16; Eph. 2:4). Forgiveness is possible beca...
"Prophecy" is a message from God; the act of bringing forth that message is "prophesying." "Prophecy" derives from a compound Greek term consisting of pro ("forth") and phemi, "to speak," hence, "to speak forth." (a) Most frequently in the Bible, prophecy, when used of righteous people, reflected...
The English word "atonement" derives from an Anglo-Saxon term that practically signifies "a making at one." Though the English term "atonement" is common to the Old Testament, it is found only once in the New Testament (Rom. 5:11 KJV). There, the original term (katallage) is better rendered as "r...
Several Hebrew words are rendered by the English "wine," the most common of which are yayin (134 times) and tirosh (33 times). The basic term for "wine" in the Greek New Testament is oinos (33 times). In both Hebrew and Greek, wine is a generic term for the liquid produced from squeezed grapes. S...
Contrary to the denominational claim that infants are born in sin, the Bible teaches otherwise. • Children do not inherit evil from their parents (Ezekiel 18:20). • The practice of sin begins in "youth" (Genesis 9:21), not at birth. • Both Jesus and Paul used little children as models to emulate ...
This word comes directly from Greek into English, letter-for-letter: hades. W.E. Vine noted that some derive the term from the negative prefix a ("not") and eido ("seen"), hence "the unseen," though he considered it more likely that it comes from hado, signifying "all receiving." In the King Jame...
A "mediator" is a "go-between" (from mesos, "middle" and eimi "to go"). Ideally, the role of a mediator is to work for the reconciliation of parties that have become estranged. (a) Moses was a mediator between God and Israel. He delivered the law to the nation on behalf of Jehovah (Jn. 1:17; Gal....
In his second letter to Timothy, Paul stated that the Scriptures are "inspired of God" (2 Tim. 3:16-17). The Greek is one word, theopneustos, literally "God breathed." It is an affirmation that God is the ultimate author of the Bible. Inspiration cannot be explained precisely in a way that human ...
Dispensationalism is a system that divides history into seven dispensations, each corresponding to one day of creation week. C.I. Scofield popularized the theory in his Reference Bible (1909). These dispensations are alleged to be: • Innocence • Conscience • Human Government • Promise • Law • Gra...
The imagery of a "lamb" is taken from the Old Testament to convey certain thoughts about the Messiah. John the Baptizer introduced Jesus as the "lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). The Passover lamb of the Old Testament was clearly a "type" (see) of Christ (1 Corinthians...
Justice may be viewed from two vantage points. Divine justice is that which is between God and man. Human justice exists between men. Divine Justice Divine justice has to do with the harmony between the absolutely holy nature of God, and his dealings with sinful creatures. God is a being of utter...
By virtue of man's transgression, death and all its attendant evils, including illness, have become a part of the human experience. It is not surprising, therefore, that "healing" is a biblical theme. Healing is spoken of in several senses in Scripture. In the inspired Scriptures, many regulation...
More than a dozen words are used in the Greek N.T. to represent various aspects of "sin" (e.g., bad, evil, transgression, iniquity, trespass, godless, unrighteous, etc.). The most frequently employed word is hamartia (173 times), which provides the picture of "missing the mark." The word is used ...