Colossae was a city about 100 miles east of Ephesus. Paul wrote a letter to the church in this city. It was one of his four epistles from Rome (Acts 28), while he was in prison. 

The letter of Col...

Paul wrote this epistle to a church he had established on his second missionary campaign (Acts 18:1-11). It deals with problems within that local congregation, such as division (1:10ff), carnality ...

The expression “Great Commission” is commonly used to refer to a special directive Christ gave in a post-resurrection appearance before he ascended back into heaven. 

The “commission” is found in ...

The Book of Daniel records the life and prophetic visions of the prophet Daniel. 

As a young man, he was taken into Babylonian captivity in 605 B.C., during the first deportation under King Nebuch...

Paul commended Timothy for making “the good confession” before many witnesses (1 Tim. 6:12). 
The word “confession” comes from the Greek homologia, which means “to say the same thing.” It implies a...

The Greek word diakonos comes into the English language as “deacon.”

The term basically means to serve. It is used of ordinary servants in a secular sense (Jn. 2:5, 9) or of those who serve gener...

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...

Death is a term that, in one sense or another, suggests the idea of separation.

Physical death is that state of the body which is separated from the “spirit” or “soul” (Gen. 25:8; 35:18; Jas. 2:2...

Deism is a religious and philosophical theory that acknowledges the existence of a Supreme Being responsible for creating the universe. However, this philosophy asserts that the transcendent Being ...

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...

Divorce may be defined as the legal dissolution of a marriage covenant.

Under the Mosaic regime, divorce could be obtained for a variety of reasons (Dt. 24:1; Mt. 19:8). But this looseness was me...

The word “exegesis” means “to lead out.” It is a part of the larger science of interpretation known as “hermeneutics.”

A form of the original word appears in John 1:18, where the apostle affirmed...

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...

Gambling may be defined as the willingness to take a risk (a wager) motivated by the desire to get something for nothing. 

Gambling, an ancient vice condemned in virtually all societies, is driven...

Existentialism is the name of a philosophical movement that began in Germany just before World War II. It attempts to probe the meaning of “human existence” apart from divine revelation and its res...

The book of Ezra documents Israel’s first two returns from Babylonian captivity. The narrative covers approximately eighty years, from Cyrus’s edict to Ezra’s arrival in Jerusalem. 

Zerubbabel led...

Faithfulness conveys integrity, steadfastness, truth, and dependability, among other qualities. Two important emphases of this quality are highlighted in the Bible. 
• God is faithful in all things...

This expression generally refers to the apostasy of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, which introduced the human family to heartache, disease, and ultimately death (Gen. 2:17; 3:16ff; Rom. 5:12)....

“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...

Form Criticism is a modern approach to the Bible that originated in a liberal theological context. It holds, for example, that the Gospel accounts are mythological. The “scholarly critic,” therefor...