These Lively Oracles

What an eventful weekend that had been all those years ago. On the Friday, the day before the Sabbath... Darkness was over the land for three hours – Matthew 27:45, Mark 15:33, Luke 23:44-45, There was an earthquake – Matthew 27:51,  The Veil in the Holy Temple was torn in two – Matthew 27:51, Mark 15:38, Luke 23:45 Jesus was now dead. Joseph of Arimathea had went to Pilate and secured the release of Jesus’ body. Nichodemus had gone to get the spices and materials needed for a ritual burial. Pilate had posted Roman guards to stand watch over the tomb, and possibly to keep a watch on those mourners who had come to the tomb to weep over the body during the time of mourning. This was a custom kept by the Hebrew people since ancient times… Job Ch21 (32) Yet he shall be brought to the grave, And a vigil kept over the tomb. And on the Sunday, the day after the Sabbath... Angels appeared again – Matthew 28:2, Mark 16:5, Luke 24:4-6. There was another earthquake - Matthew 28:2 The stone...

The foot of the Cross on that hillside outside Jerusalem was a messy place. Golgotha, as it was known, was a place of execution. A grissly place. Roman soldiers where everywhere. Condemned prisoners. Families and friends of the prisoners lamenting their executions. Victims of the prisoners gloating and wanting to see revenge. Street gamblers. Sightseers. It was a hustling, bustling, messy place. At the centre of it all on that Friday morning was a man. He was beaten up. Bloodied. Exhausted. And in agony. His back, arms and legs were a criss-cross of whip marks and lashes. The rough wood of the cross against these open wounds would have been sheer agony. He was innocent. And His name was Jesus. He was so weak that He wasn't able to carry His own cross to the site of execution. At some point along the way Jesus stumbled and fell. He was so weak, tired and in pain that He was unable to lift the cross again. The task was given to Simon of Cyrene to carry the cross behind Jesus.And so t...

I have been listening to audio sermons for many years. It started many years ago with listening to old recordings of the American Radio Bible Broadcasts. Then the cassette tape came along and all church sermons were able to be recorded and passed around with ease. Nowadays we have internet audio and video streaming we can have all the sermons we want on our smartphone, tablet or computer. But I want to share some thoughts about old preachers who were in the middle of the gospel spotlight but then fell from grace at the end. You see, I am thinking of two preachers in particular whose audio sermons were spread quite widely. I listened to a lot of the preaching and teaching and learned a lot from these men. I’m referring to a preacher from Northern Ireland called Willie Mullan and an American preacher who came from India, Ravi Zacharias. These men were great speakers in their respective days. I learned a lot from listening to their ministries both on audio cassette and internet streaming ...

I knew a guy once. He was one of the guys I looked up to when I was very young in the faith. He was smartly dressed, clean cut, and had a zeal for his church life, his Bible, his faith and for his God. He had a big bible which he read often and cross referenced with colours, markings and annotations.  He and his chum were inseparable when it came to church life and services. They were a great team to watch. I always loved going up to them and saying Hi and sharing a laugh. I always truly believed that there was a calling for them both to move into full time ministry within God’s church. Then one day he vanished. Not vanished in the sense that he went missing from society. But he wasn’t seen at that church ever again. I was in a transition phase between churches of my own and so I never gave it much attention of him being missing. But as time went on I began to wonder about him. What happened? Why did it happen? How could it happen? Surely there was a call on his life? Did I get it ...

Many years ago I was sent out to fix an electrical fault in a small sports pavilion. Apparently they had extended the outside lighting around the carpark area and now the circuit fuse protection had started failing. I immediately went out and started to look for the obvious electrical problems.  Was the fuse rating too small for the load capacity? etc. But everything looked ok. However, the fuse kept on failing. After a few hours of inspecting, testing and looking around I managed to isolate the fault to one particular section of cable. Unfortunately it ran underground from the building to the carpark. I suspected that some groundwork had been done to the grassy area and the cable damaged during the process. But the staff assured me that no one had been working around that area. Still, I started to dig a small trench close to the building to see if I could see anything. Lo and behold I quickly found a damaged section of cable. After some testing I decided that this was the cause o...

Remember when we were children and we used to play those little card games? I don’t mean the traditional playing cards that we regularly see everywhere. I mean the children’s card games. Snap. Donkey. Old Maid. Happy Families, etc. There used to be one that I liked. Happy Faces. It was also known by several other names. Compare. Pair-A-Pair. Match-Up. Basically there was two of every type of card picture. There could be as little as twelve cards or as many as forty cards used in the game. All the cards were laid face down and we had to turn them over two at a time. If the cards didn’t match we laid them down again. But if we got two that matched then we “won” them to add to our score. The winner was the person who had won the most amounts of matched pairs. It was a very good game for children to play as it helped to develop memory skills and the game has now made its way onto television in the form of game shows, etc. But the game got me thinking about matching up Bible passages that w...