Mark WardWrenching a Bible verse out of context isn’t the only bad Bible-quoting habit out there. There is a more subtle set of unfortunate customs we use in evangelical churches when we quote the Bible. Here’s an example: a relative of mine was reading to...
John D. BarryContext is king, as they say. But when it comes to studying the Bible, context is far and wide. A verse is contextualized in a passage; a passage in a biblical book; a biblical book in a particular place and time; and each time and place is...
I have lots of biblical commentaries. Which one do I look at first, and which one do I look at when I’m just quickly checking a cross-reference and want to make sure I’m not missing something? It used to be that I would just check the top-rated...
If you can’t use the Bible, you don’t really understand it. It may sound backwards to speak of “using” the Bible: we don’t stand over the Bible, twisting it to our ends; the Bible stands over us and is one major means by which God uses us. That’s...
Jake MailhotIn The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Peter Jackson devotes the first seven minutes to the story of the creation of the One Ring and the war against Sauron. Without this historical perspective, the audience would have no background...