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Tag: Scripture

Scripture is the word commonly used for the Written Word of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible.

TalkofJESUS.com would like to hear from you via your comments and questions on a NEW Series of brief posts in A.D. 2022.

Short Takes on Scripture – Tell us your thoughts about this brief quote from the Bible.

ONLY Scripture

A Brief Glance at Paradise
Where can I Find Paradise?

We all know the story of Eden as a former place of paradise on earth from where Adam and Eve were evicted by God because of sin. But where can we find paradise in the Bible now that mankind has lost it?

Today’s short take from Scripture will take us on a brief journey we find in the New Testament.

The real question of DEATH is ‘What then?’

We have just witnessed an brief scene of Stephen at the point of his death in Acts 7.

55 But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed steadily into heaven and saw the glory of God, and he saw Jesus standing in the place of honor at God’s right hand.

“Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”
Acts 7:56b NASB – a final witness of Stephen before the Sanhedrin

Jesus also gives us several glances at life after death in the Gospel. And we could be taken up into John’s vision of heaven in Revelation.

But today’s Short Take on Paradise comes from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians.

What is Paradise?

I know a man in Christ, who fourteen years ago— .. was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak.
2 Corinthians 12:2a,4 NASB20

Could this have been at the moment when Jesus met this man on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus? Paul later writes about his own imminent death as if he prefers it!

What does Paul mean by παράδεισος: Paradise?

And what’s your short take on this definition?

παράδεισος :: Strong’s G3857 – paradeisos

Outline of Biblical Usage
1. among the Persians a grand enclosure or preserve, hunting ground, park, shady and well watered, in which wild animals, were kept for the hunt; it was enclosed by walls and furnished with towers for the hunters
2. a garden, pleasure ground
3. grove, park
4. the part of Hades which was thought by the later Jews to be the abode of the souls of pious until the resurrection: but some understand this to be a heavenly paradise
5. the upper regions of the heavens. According to the early church Fathers, the paradise in which our first parents dwelt before the fall still exists, neither on the earth or in the heavens, but above and beyond the world
6. heaven
Let’s Talk of Jesus and our possibility in Paradise

Want to know my opinion from Scripture and experience?

COMMENT or ask your questions on this post.
January 27, 2022
σκληροτράχηλος – a stiff-necked people
I must confess that one of my favorite phrases of conviction today comes from one of several sermons which was not well-received by its audience: Stiff-necked!

“You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.
Acts 7:51 ESV – from Stephen preaching to the jews

σκληροτράχηλος – stiff-necked

Strong’s G4644 – sklērotrachēlos –

Pronunciation
sklay-rot-rakh’-ay-los

(Has a rather guttural insulting tone to it, don’t you think?)

We might easily dismiss this insulting word from Stephen in the New Testament of Jesus Christ.

But not so fast; for Luke tells us in Acts that Stephen is full of the Holy Spirit.

(If you or I were to say that to someone they might think us full of something other than the Holy Spirit, wouldn’t they?)

To accuse another of being ‘stiff-necked,’ while making our ‘religion‘ an idol, may look like hypocrisy.

Stephen: Witness and Martyr

“This is that Moses who said to the children of Israel,
‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your brethren. Him you shall hear.’
- σκληροτράχηλος, σκληροτράχηλόν (σκληρός and τράχηλος), properly, stiff-necked;
  - tropically, stubborn, headstrong, obstinate:
  - Acts 7:51; the Sept. for עֹרֶף קְשֵׁה, Exodus 33:3, 5; Exodus 34:9; (etc.)
Stephen’s single use of ‘stiffnecked‘ people in the New Testament points to those who CLAIM the Old Covenant of the LAW of Moses.
Roger@TalkofJESUS.COM

Looking back to Moses – Stiff-necked Hebrews

קָשֶׁה

אֶל־אֶרֶץ זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבָשׁ כִּי לֹא אֶעֱלֶה בְּקִרְבְּךָ כִּי עַם־קְשֵׁה־עֹרֶף אַתָּה פֶּן־אֲכֶלְךָ בַּדָּרֶךְ׃
Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way,
for you are a stiff-necked people.”
Exodus 33:3 WLC, ESV
- Strong’s H7186 – qāšê
  - KJV Translation Count — Total: 36x from the LAW, History and the Prophets
קָשֶׁה adjective hard, severe; — absolute ק׳ Exodus 18:26 +; construct Exodus 32:9 +; feminine singular קָשָׁה Deuteronomy 26:6 +; construct קְשַׁת 1 Samuel 1:15; masculine plural קָשִׁים 2 Samuel 3:39; construct קְשֵׁי Ezekiel 2:4; Ezekiel 3:7; feminine plural קָשׁוֺת Genesis 42:7, 30; —
1. hard, difficult, of a legal question (דָּבָר) Exodus 18:26
Stephen has proposed a legal question to you. Are YOU also a stiff-neck worshiper who will NOT listen to any, even the LORD your God?
Roger@TalkofJESUS.com

Stiff-necked?

Now that I’ve shared MY Short Take on these Scriptures, WHAT’S YOUR SHORT TAKE on them?
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Hammurabi praying - source article from cover photo
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January 25, 2022
Wailing in all the Public Squares (Social Media?)
Therefore this is what the LORD, the God of Hosts, the Lord, says:

“There will be wailing in all the public squares
and cries of ‘Alas! Alas!’ in all the streets.
Amos 5:16a – Berean Study Bible

and cries of ‘Alas! Alas!’ in all the streets.

The Public Square and our Platforms of Wailing

WE THE PEOPLE do NOT like to be told what WE have done wrong.

You may claim in the public square that your ‘ONE NATION’ is ‘under god,’ but what if its leaders never listen to the Lord God, let alone obey?

Prophets, false prophets, anti-Christs and demagogues all deliberate in the public square. Yet like nations before, WE THE PEOPLE will wail at our destruction while stopping up our ears to Truth.
Roger@TalkofJESUS.COM

WE tend to avoid the PROPHETIC BOOKS of the #Bible, God’s Holy Word.

The prophets were extremely nationalistic. They rebuked sin in high as well as low places. They warned the nation. They pleaded with a proud people to humble themselves and return to God.
J. Vernon McGee

Amos
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Amos’ name means “burden” or “burden-bearer.” 
A “sheepbreeder” (1:1; cf. 2 Kin. 3:4) and a “tender of sycamore fruit” .. Politically, it was a time of prosperity
Amos addresses Israel’s two primary sins: 1) an absence of true worship, and 2) a lack of justice.
Source: Commentary of John Macarthur
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Amos – Not immune from judgment

(As you can see, I shared a brief series from Amos as recently as March 2020.) Did you Comment on it in the ‘public square’ of your Social Media?

Stephen commented on Amos in the public square of his trial in Jerusalem eight centuries later!

ACTS of a first century Martyr (who also quotes Amos)

Did you have any thoughts to SHARE your witness for the Lord in the public square of #twitter or Facebook for any Scripture from this series in ACTS of the Apostles?

The Testimony of Christ by Stephen

Today’s Short Take from Amos 5:
- A Lamentation against Israel
- A Call to Repentance
  - “Seek Me and live!
There are those who hate the one who reproves in the gate and despise him who speaks with integrity.
Amos 5:10 BSB
- Woe to Rebellious Israel
  - Also from Stephen’s speech in (Acts 7:39–43)
The farmer will be summoned to mourn, and the mourners to wail.

There will be wailing in all the vineyards,

for I will pass through your midst,”

5:23 הָסֵר מֵעָלַי הֲמוֹן שִׁרֶיךָ וְזִמְרַת נְבָלֶיךָ לֹא אֶשְׁמָֽע׃

But let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

From the footstool of one shot on 15 April, 1865, to the steps of a Nation yet divided seven score and sixteen years hence, WE neither remember nor proclaim the Lord WE claim.
Roger@TalkofJESUS.com

But let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Amos 5:24 BSB

What’s your Short Take in the ‘public square?’
January 20, 2022