Studies on History

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Bit Actors in a Drama Produced by Another

Author

Keywords

One of the most fascinating features of the Bible is that it tells what is ahead for our world. Both Old and New Testaments contend that history is moving to a climax and that the sovereign God is in ...

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Finding Lost Treasure

Author

A. J. Swoboda

Keywords

In 1991, a yet-to-be-identified flea market enthusiast discovered a simple picture frame to his liking. Securing the purchase, the shopper returned home only to discover an ancient document hiding inc...

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The Drama of Humanity & Nations

Author

Thomas Kelly

Keywords

Scripture

2 Corinthians 4:16, Philippians 1:6, Romans 8:26-27, Ezekiel 36:26, Revelation 3:20, Psalm 139:7-10, Luke 15:20

In his excellent little book, A Testament of Devotion , Thomas Kelly describes the inward reality that governs the course of history: Out in front of us is the drama of men and of nations, seethi...

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The Cross is the Pivot of History

Author

Samuel M. Zwemer

Keywords

If the Cross of Christ is anything to the mind, it is surely everything – the most profound reality and the sublimest mystery. One comes to realize that literally all the wealth and glory of the gospe...

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A Short History of World Religions in America (other than Christianity)

Author

Barbara Brown Taylor

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 56:6-7, Ruth 1:16-17, 1 Kings 8:41-43, Acts 2:5-6, Ephesians 2:14-15, Psalm 22:27

By many accounts the first Muslim in America was Estevancio of Azamor, a Moroccan guide for a Spanish expedition in 1528 that landed in Florida. A couple of centuries later, as many as a third of the ...

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Dying for His Subjects

Author

Charles Colson

Keywords

Scripture

John 15:13, Isaiah 53:5, Philippians 2:8-11, Romans 5:8, Hebrews 12:28, Revelation 17:14, Revelation 19:16

When I was in Moscow in 1990 preaching at the Moscow Baptist Church, just blocks from the Kremlin, I told a packed crowd of worshipers that all through human history, as far back as recorded time and ...

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What’s in a Name?

Author

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

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What’s in a name? The history of the human race is in names. Our objective friends do not understand that, since they move in a world of objects which can be counted and numbered. They reduce the grea...

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Atheism from a Historical Perspective

Author

Os Guinness

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 55:8-9, Colossians 1:16-17, Acts 17:24-25, 2 Corinthians 4:6

From a historical perspective it is atheism that was old and the Christian faith and its good news that burst on the world as new. Once commonly called “atomism,” the genealogy of atheism can be trace...

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Gaining Scholars but Losing Jesus

Author

N. T. Wright

Keywords

Scripture

Deuteronomy 18:15 , Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah 11:1–4, John 14:6–9 , Philippians 3:8–10, Psalm 34:8

A friend of mine, lecturing in a theological college in Kenya, introduced his students to “The Quest for the Historical Jesus.” This, he said, was a movement of thought and scholarship that in its ear...

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What Did Jesus Leave to Grow?

Author

H. G. Wells

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 9:6-7, Philippians 2:9-11, Mark 1:16-20, Matthew 11:28-30, John 10:10

H.G. Wells, himself an atheist, makes this point about the nature of greatness as it relates to Jesus: A historian like myself, who doesn’t even call himself a Christian, finds the picture centering...

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The Holy Spirit’s Literary Genre Of Choice

Author

Eugene H. Peterson

Keywords

Story is the primary way in which the revelation of God is given to us. The Holy Spirit’s literary genre of choice is story. Story isn’t a simple or naive form of speech from which we graduate to the ...

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The Challenge of the Old Testament

Author

Phillip Yancey

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 137:9, 1 Corinthians 26:18, Exodus 3:1-12 , Jonah 1:4, Matthew 14:22-33, Acts 9:1-19

My brother, who attended a Bible College during a smart-alecky phase in his life, enjoyed shocking groups of believers by sharing his “life verse.” After listening to others quote pious phrases from P...

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St. Matthew’s Passion: Not Theater But Prayer

Author

N. T. Wright

Keywords

Scripture

Philippians 2:8, John 12:32, Isaiah 53:4-6, Luke 23:39-43, Hebrews 12:2

Another example struck me forcibly during the 2014 season of Promenade Concerts in the Albert Hall in London. (The “Proms,” as they are known, make up a major annual festival, offering world-class mus...

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The End of Human History

Author

G. K. Chesterton

Keywords

Jesus

Scripture

Matthew 27:57-60, John 19:41-42, Luke 23:50-56, Romans 6:4, Colossians 2:14-15, Isaiah 53:9-11, 1 Corinthians 15:20-22

They took the body down from the cross and one of the few rich men among the first Christians obtained permission to bury it in a rock tomb in his garden the Romans setting a military guard lest there...

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MKL’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail-a Short History

Author

Esau McCaulley

Keywords

On April 12, 1963, eight clergy—two Methodist bishops, two Episcopal bishops, one Roman Catholic Bishop, a Rabbi, a Presbyterian, and a Baptist—wrote a letter addressed to the citizens of Alabama. Thi...

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Has Religion been a Force for Evil in Human History

Author

Francis S. Collins

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 3:7-10, Isaiah 58:6-10, Micah 6:6-8, Matthew 23:27-28 , James 1:26-27, Psalm 146:7-9

A major stumbling block for many earnest seekers is the compelling evidence throughout history that terrible things have been done in the name of religion. This applies to virtually all faiths at some...

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Pursuing the Common Good Throughout History

Author

Don Everts

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 22:39, Philippians 2:3-4, 1 Corinthians 10:24, Romans 15:1-2, Galatians 6:10, Romans 12:10, Acts 20:35, Matthew 25:35-40, Isaiah 58:6-7, Proverbs 19:17, Luke 10:30-37, James 2:15-16, 1 John 3:17, Proverbs 31:8-9, Matthew 25:40, Acts 11:29-30, 2 Corinthians 8:13-15, Acts 2:44-45, Acts 4:32-35, 1 Corinthians 12:25-26

Pursuing the common good has been a strong marker of the Christian church from the very beginning. The early church had many habits that they became known for, of course—including meeting frequently, ...

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The Supreme Political Event of World History

Author

R. C. Sproul

Keywords

Scripture

Acts 1:9-11, Luke 24:51, Ephesians 1:20-21, Philippians 2:8-11, Hebrews 10:12-13

The ascension of Jesus was the supreme political event of world history. He ascended not so much to a place as to an office. He departed from the arena of humiliation and suffering to enter into his g...

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The Greatest Promise in History

Author

Nancy Guthrie

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 3:15, Genesis 22:18, 2 Samuel 7:12-13, Isaiah 9:6-7, Isaiah 7:14, Micah 5:2, Habakkuk 2:3, Isaiah 40:31

When someone promises us something wonderful, we can hardly wait for that promise to be fulfilled. If the promise is something good, we want it now! We really don’t like to wait. And yet the very best...

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A Short History of Repentance and Confession

Author

Annemarie S. Kidder

Keywords

The history of repentance is as old as humankind. We each carry the remembrance of wrongdoing in burdensome satchels, hoping that eventually someone will ease them off our back. We each know the feeli...

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Challenge: Sum up Every Aspect of Theology & Church History

Author

Joshua Brooks

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 23:1-4, John 10:11-18, Luke 19:1-10, Luke 15:11-32, Ephesians 3:17-19, 1 John 4:10-11, Romans 8:38-39

Karl Barth arguably was the greatest theologian of the twentieth century. His twelve-volume Church Dogmatics, alone, consists of over ten thousand pages of systematic theology. Toward the end of his l...

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Every Disease Has a Story

Author

Uche Anizor

Keywords

There is a branch of medicine known as etiology , which studies the causes of diseases. One college describes it as the study of the “backstory” of an illness. Etiology tries to figure out why a ...

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A Short History of Political Parties in the U.S.

Author

Denise Grace Gitsham

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 1:10-13, Mark 3:24-25, Philippians 2:3-4, James 3:16, Ephesians 4:3-6, Romans 12:8

Our first president, George Washington, refused to run as a member of any political party. He wanted to be a president to all Americans. Washington firmly believed that political parties would divide ...

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A Short History of Alcohol

Author

Cynthia Kuhn

Keywords

The use of chemicals to alter thinking and feeling is as old as humanity itself, and alcohol was probably one of the first substances used. Even the earliest historical writings make note of alcohol d...

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The Greatest Subject in Human History

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 22:36-38, Deuteronomy 6:4-5

Have you ever heard of the Greatest Books of the Western World collection? Published by Encyclopedia Britannica in 1954, this comprehensive series was edited by Robert Hutchins and Mortimer J. A...

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A Short History of Christian’s Fighting for Justice

Author

Justin Giboney

Keywords

Scripture

Micah 6:8, Exodus 3:7–10, Isaiah 58:6–7, Luke 4:18–19, Romans 13:1–4, Psalm 72:12–14

There are also many historical examples of Christians faithfully using political means to fight for justice and righteousness. William Wilberforce: Politician and Abolitionist William Wilber...

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A Short History of Niceness

Author

Sharon Hodde Miller

Keywords

I don’t think it is an overstatement to say that niceness has a hold on us, but in order to understand why that is, it helps to understand how it came to be. Like many words, nice has meant different ...

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A History of “Boredom”

Author

Manoush Zomorodi

Keywords

Boredom

Scripture

Hebrews 10:24-25, Psalm 19:1, Isaiah 30:15, Psalm 46:10, Colossians 3:23, Romans 12:11

Teenagers whine about it constantly. Office mates step out multiple times a day to Starbucks to escape it. Parents die of it every night as they try to get small children to fall asleep. We use the wo...

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A Christian Alzheimer’s Disease

Author

Sandra L. Richter

Keywords

Two-thirds of the story of redemption is known to Christians as the Old Testament. Yet in the decades that I have been teaching Bible, I have found that most Christians, if allowed to answer honestly,...

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Mistakes More Valuable than Discoveries

Author

Benjamin Franklin

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Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not se...

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