The first three Gospel accounts (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are called SYNOPTICS (see), because they view the life of Christ from roughly the same vantagepoint. John’s account is different. His recor...

The fourth book of the Pentateuch, Numbers, derives its title from the fact that a census of the Israelite people was taken after they had departed from Egypt. There were some 603,550 men, above th...

The term “sovereign” denotes the right that God has to rule the Universe. Note that the word “reign” is contained within “sovereign.”

Jehovah has this “right” because he is the Creator, and theref...

This is one of the titles of a church official who oversees a local congregation of Christ’s church in the company of fellow bishops (always a plurality of men).

“Bishop” translates the Greek ter...

The Greeks had several words that reflected various concepts of “love.” Forms of three of these are found in the N.T. (a) The noun storge had a variety of uses in the ancient world, but it most com...

Jesus once prayed that the “will” of God might be done on earth, just as it is in heaven (Mt. 6:10). Jehovah’s will is that which is best for humanity, and which he requires that we implement in ou...

While the term “unity” is rare in the English Bible (Psa. 133:1; Eph. 4:3; 4:13), the idea prevails profusely in a variety of contexts. (a) Unity is that oneness that obtains perfectly among the me...

The book of Judges narrates the administrations of fifteen national leaders (judges, deliverers) during that era when the land of Canaan was being settled by the Hebrew people. It covers a period o...

“Fellowship” translates the Greek koinonia, meaning “participation, association, sharing.” Fellowship exists on two levels — the vertical (the Christian’s relationship with God) and the horizontal...

The idea of “intercession” is expressed in both Testaments of the Bible. The Greek verb entunchano suggests the concept of making an appeal to someone with reference to another person. It can mean ...

There are three basic words in the Greek N.T. that convey the idea of “ministering” in one way or another. (a) Diakonos, occurs about thirty times in the N.T. Generally it simply means “to serve.” ...

Biblical chronology has to do with the relationship of the events recorded in Scripture to specific dates. Some events are a bit ambiguous in terms of date. Others are more precise. 

While the Bib...

The ancient Greeks taught a rudimentary form of the theory of evolution. It was popularized in modern times by the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859).

The evolutionary th...

This English term is related to the Latin conscientia, literally, “to know together” or “joint knowledge.” It corresponds to the Greek suneidesis (found thirty times in the New Testament), which es...

The word “dogma” is not found in the English Bible, but it is in the Greek New Testament. 
• In classical Greek, the term had a range of meanings from opinion to a legal edict. Luke refers to a cen...

Though this word is not found in most English translations of the New Testament, the thought is there in the Greek text. It is an anglicized form of the original term antitupos. The term is rendere...

“Heresy” takes its rise from the Greek, hairesis (nine times in the N.T.). Originally, the term meant simply “to choose” (Lev. 22:18, 21 — LXX). Then it came to signify a choice, i.e., an opinion ...

Infallibility means “without error.”

In theology, it signifies the belief that the Scriptures, in their original form (the autographs), were without error. Furthermore, the divine documents were ...

The Book of Galatians was one of Paul’s letters to several churches in Galatia, written about A.D. 48. A Jewish element in these churches taught that one must be obedient to the law of Moses and th...

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 ...