But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
Then Yeshua entered the Temple and drove out all those selling and buying in the Temple. He overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those selling doves. And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of thieves’!” The blind and lame came to Him in the Temple, and He healed them. But when the ruling kohanim and Torah scholars saw the wonders He performed, and the children crying out in the Temple and saying, “Hoshia-na to Ben-David,” they became indignant.
From the Middle Ages onwards, deadly epidemics swept through portions of Spain repeatedly, but the Castilian Plague at the end of the sixteenth century was especially terrible. In late 1596, a ship carrying the plague docked in Santander, and over the next five years the disease killed some 500,000 people in Castile, around 10 percent of the population. Plague is traditionally understood to have triggered chaos and madness.
many — The office is a noble one; but few are fit for it. Few govern the tongue well (Jas_3:2), and only such as can govern it are fit for the office; therefore, “teachers” ought not to be many.
Ask yourself the question, what makes you comfortable? The next question to follow this one, what are you most afraid of? While these are two separate questions, when compared to what is common among all humanity, we often use the two questions together.
As we are brought up in a fallen world, many of us carry things; opinions, thoughts, beliefs, that have been influenced by the culture we grew up in. In our story we find one of the greatest biblical characters in the history of the world, Moses.
Isaiah 61 is a powerful chapter in Scripture. Jesus makes direct reference to it in his hometown of Nazareth, but he stops short of reading the entire passage. Why?
The verses for today’s message are about those despised Samaritans. Looked down on by all full-blooded Jews, excluded from worship, if you saw one coming you would cross the street so you would pass them with the farthest distance possible. Why were they so hated?
Sometimes the truth in statements get lost in translation. For instance, our Protestant Bible is a translation of a translation, ancient and Coptic Hebrew in the Old Testament and Greek in the New Testament. The Catholic Bible is a translation of a translation of a translation, meaning the ancient and Coptic Hebrew to Latin, then Latin to English. The Greek to Latin, then Latin to English in the New Testament.
Last week’s message focused on the oppressive culture that was present during the life of Jesus. Under the brutal leaderships of Octavian, better known as Caesar Augustus, and Caesar Tiberius, those under their rule were taxed heavily and put under heavy requirements by the Herod’s and the governors of each province. Not only that, the Jews had Temple requirements, which put an even heavier burden upon them. Now look at Jesus’ statement in Luke 20:20-26: