Blog

03
Mar
2018

What is the Gospel?

Christians use the word “gospel” a great deal in conversations. It’s not an everyday sort of word and therefore we may not intuitively know what it means. The English word gospel is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word “godspell.” It is a compound word from god (good) and spell (news). Over time, the spelling morphed into the modern word gospel. This is the English word that scholars have chosen to translate the Greek word euaggelion (εὐαγγέλιον, Strongs G2098) which simply means “good news.”

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Posted by Eddie Lawrence in Gospel
03
Mar
2018

Bible Enigmas

The Bible sometimes leaves us with as many questions as answers. Some passages make statements that are not clearly explained and arouses our curiosity. Let’s look at a couple of very well known stories in Genesis.

Talking snake

With little in the way introduction, a talking snake appears in Genesis 3 who successfully deceives Eve. We aren’t told how he got into the garden. There is no mention of how bizarre it is that a snake can speak. We aren’t explicitly told who the snake is. In fact, nowhere else in the entire Bible are we clearly told who the snake was. There are hints that it was Satan (there is little doubt it could have been anyone else), but nowhere is the snake’s identity spelled out for us. Why would the text leave us hanging like this?

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Posted by Eddie Lawrence in Hermeneutics
02
Mar
2018

What is Church?

When we think of church we often form a mental image of an expensive, elaborate building, or we may associate it with some kind of organization or institution. Would you be surprised to learn it is neither of these?

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Posted by Eddie Lawrence in Church
11
Oct
2017

What does it really mean to have faith?

To a lot of people, having faith in God means nothing more than to believe that He exists. Obviously believing in God is a big part of having faith in Him, but that’s not all faith is.

How does the Bible define faith?

The words our Bibles translate into English as “believe”, “faith”, “faithful”, “faithfulness”, etc. are from the Greek words “pistis” (πίστις, G4102, noun) and “pisteuo” (πιστεύω G4100, verb). These words link to three related ideas: belief, trust and faithfulness. In English, we don’t have just one word to convey all three of these concepts together. The Bible translators had to select the “most correct” English word to fit the context in our English Bibles. Let’s look at some passages which demonstrate that the word faith includes all three of these concepts.

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Posted by Eddie Lawrence in Faith
28
Aug
2017

What Does the Holy Spirit Do?

Jesus promised that once He had returned to His Father, He would send the Spirit (also referred to as the Helper, Comforter or Advocate) to His disciples.

It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you. (Jn. 16:7 NKJV)

What does He do? Below are just a few of the works done by the Holy Spirit.

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Posted by Eddie Lawrence in Holy Spirit