What to Do When the Bible Bothers You

I recently read a biblical passage that has always bothered me. Not bothered me like a slap in the face but bothered me like a painting that is hanging crooked on someone else’s wall. I cannot straighten it, but I sure wish someone would.

Some form of the passage is included in all four Gospels, which suggests it is particularly important. Jesus is asked why he teaches in parables (instead of in propositional truth statements). He answers: “This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.”

He goes on to quote the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, through whom God said, “You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.”

Why has this bothered me? Because it sounds as if Isaiah – and worse, Jesus – is saying that God doesn’t want people to hear or to see and so to turn to him and be healed. Such a calloused deity seems incompatible with the God I have known in Jesus, who loves even messy people and offers them his blessing. Nor does it fit with other passages in the Bible that unambiguously state that God wants all people to come to repentance and to be saved.

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What should a person do who, coming to passages like this in the Bible, experiences a kind of cognitive dissonance, accompanied by questions they cannot answer? I have found it best to acknowledge the discomfort and admit that I don’t have the answers. It is equally important to remember that my lack of answers does not mean there are no answers.

When a biblical text seems to suggest that God is unloving, unmerciful, or heartless, it helps to remember that the rest of the Bible portrays a God who is “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.” Clearly, this troubling passage is not the entire story. It may seem to contradict other biblical passages, but this is because I cannot yet see how it all fits together.

Once I’ve acknowledged my discomfort, admitted my ignorance, and remembered the larger picture, I can without worry wait for more light on the subject. It is wise to pray for such light.

I did that this past week with the passage above. When I then read the text in the original language, I discovered some things I had missed in English translations. For example, the NIV (quoted above) leaves untranslated the key conjunction “because.” Jesus explains that he teaches in parables “because hearing, they will hear and not understand.” Apparently, parables are more effective than propositional truth with people who hear but do not understand.

Further, the reason people cannot hear and understand or see and perceive is clearly stated: “For the heart of this people has grown fat” (literal translation). That is, they have grown comfortable and lazy. Listening is a burden. They have closed their eyes because they don’t want to see.

So, God has not withheld truth from people. Rather, they have put themselves in a place where they can barely hear truth. Parables were Jesus’s way of waking them up.

It seems clear to me now that the problem is not a God who does not want to reveal himself and his ways, but a people who would rather not be bothered. Jesus does not speak in parables to hide the truth, but to reveal it to people who would rather not know it.

I can’t agree with Mark Twain, who wrote, “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.” The parts I can’t understand do bother me. Yet I am confident that their true meaning will not in any way detract from the fact, revealed in Jesus Christ, that God is love.  

Meanwhile, what I do understand keeps me plenty busy.

(First published by Gannett.)

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Wide Angle: Presenting God as a “Cosmic Spoilsport”

As Genesis three opens, we find man, male and female, living in perfect harmony with one another, with creation, and with God. But remember that man, sub-creator and ruler – the image of God – has been endowed with the ability to choose his own path. And in today’s text, the path forks, and man must choose which way he will take.

Consider verse 1: “Now the serpent was more crafty [the Hebrew word does not connote malice like the English word, though there is malice aplenty in this story] than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?””

We are not told where this serpent came from, why it could talk, or why it was tempting the woman to do what God commanded her not to do. The text doesn’t even take up those questions. But later in the Bible, we find that “serpent” is another name for the satan, a spiritual being, who previously chose to reject God’s way.

I have always assumed, when I read this passage, that the entire temptation took place in a day, even in a few moments. But the text does not really say this, and I suspect that it is not so. Perhaps this temptation continued at intervals for days, or weeks, or even months.

The serpent began by asking a question—not that he cared how the woman answered the question. It was not an answer he was after. He only asked the question to prepare the ground of her mind for the seed of doubt he intended to plant. By prefacing his question with the words, “Did God really say,” he introduced uncertainty into the situation and into her mind.

Notice also the little word any. God, of course, did tell Adam and Eve not to eat from one special tree, the one known as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But by inserting the word any, the tempter slyly implies that God is, as Vaughan Roberts put it, “a cosmic spoilsport.”[1]

The woman, coming to God’s defense, hardly noticed the effect those words were having on her thinking. She said (verse 2), “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden [to this point, the woman was exactly right, but notice what she says next], and you must not touch it, or you will [or, lest you] die.’”

I think the insinuation that God was a spoilsport had already begun working on the woman’s thinking: something caused her to add the words, “You must not touch it.” That was not something God had said. She was distorting his words. She also changed something else. God told Adam and Eve that if they ate the fruit of this tree, on that day they would surely die. But when the woman repeated that, she says merely “you will die” or, as other translations have, “lest you die.” The reality of God’s word had given away to uncertainty.

By misstating what God said, the woman made herself vulnerable to what the tempter was about to say. At first, he only dared to question God’s word, but after his initial success he was able to flatly contradict it (verse 4): “You will not surely die.”

At this point the soil had been plowed, and it was time to plant the seed. The tempter bluntly called God’s character into question (verse five): “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

At this point the soil had been plowed, and it was time to plant the seed.  The tempter bluntly called God’s character into question (verse five): “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Look at that verse again. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened [this part was true], and you will be like God [this part was not], knowing good and evil.” That last part was true and false. Yes, they would know evil: They would know it as their children have known it ever since: in fear, hiding, blaming, lying, hating, longing, and despair. But they would not know evil and good as God does. Their choice to disobey made that impossible.


[1] Vaughn Roberts, God’s Big Picture, Downers Grove: IVP, 202.  p. 38

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Wide Angle: The Story’s Told that Adam Jumped (But I’m Thinking that He Fell)

In a previous Wide Angle Post, we saw dazzling nebulae and listened to the ravishing symphony of streams and winds and waterfalls. We saw the pinnacle of creation – not a towering Mount Everest, not even a vast, trillion-starred galaxy – but man, male and female. Man, the sub-creator, the commissioned ruler, the caretaker and love-giver of creation. And we heard, like a refrain reaching its crescendo, “It was good, it was good, it was very good.”

And it is good: The beauty, the freshness, the fertility of the earth; the love and heroism and passion of mankind. It is very good.

And it is very bad. Nature revolts. Tsunamis wipe out tens of thousands of people. Earthquakes crush and destroy. Hurricanes sweep away entire cities. Draught and disease kill untold millions.

But the harm caused by nature pales before the harm caused by her supposed caretaker and love-giver. It is man who crashes jet airplanes into buildings filled with other men. Man, who packs his fellow-man into cattle cars and ships them off to gas chambers. Man, who tortures and controls and hates; who brutalizes, degrades and destroys.

Listen to how Dostoevski’s character, Ivan, in The Brother’s Karamazov, described it over a century ago: “A Bulgarian I met. . . was telling me all about the atrocities being committed. . . they set fire to homes and property, they cut people’s throats, they rape women and children, they nail prisoners to the palisades by their ears and leave them there till the morning and then hang them, and so on; it really defies the imagination. We often talk of man’s ‘bestial’ cruelty, but that is. . . insulting to beasts. . .”1

What Ivan was describing in the 1870s has happened countless times before and since. He could have been talking about Germany in the 1940s, or Cambodia in the 1970s or Rwanda in the 1990s or Liberia and Sierra Leone at the millennium or Syria today, or some other place tomorrow. It goes on and on and on.

We have beauty and cruelty, hand in hand; wisdom and insanity, side by side. We have the glory of Bach coming out of Weimar, and the barbarity of Hitler coming out of the Weimar Republic. There is a little Bach in Hitler, and a little Hitler in Bach, and a little of both of them in all of us.

What can explain these extremes: goodness and depravity, love and hatred, stunning beauty and appalling ugliness? Western man often tells the story of humanity in terms of progression, evolution, and growth. The plot follows crude and simple man as he plods, and occasionally jumps, forward. From stone to iron, from iron to refined metals, and from metals to polymers. He goes from fingers to abacus to supercomputer. Up he goes, always up.

But part of the story is left out. It is not just from stone to iron, but from stone-headed axe to iron-tipped spear, from iron-tipped spear to lead bullet, from lead bullet to atom bomb. We jump, but we usually land further down, not further up. The story of man’s progress has been one of technological advance and spiritual decline. As the songwriter Jackson Browne once put it: “Now the story’s told that Adam jumped, but I’m thinking that he fell.”


1             Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Karamazov Brothers. Oxford University Press, 1994

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Wide Angle Series: It Was [Not] So

In ancient times leaders would place images of themselves throughout their kingdoms. (And they do it today, too – one need only think of Kim Il Jong, the North Korean head of state or, previously, Saddam Hussein.) Such images served to remind their subjects of their ruler.

When God made the earth, he intended to place his image everywhere, a constant reminder that he rules the world.  Humans were intended to be the living image of God, ruling creation (Genesis 1: 28) as God’s representatives, with his love and wisdom flowing through them to all creation.  Everywhere one looked, or so it was intended, one would find the image of the gracious and benevolent king acting with grace and benevolence towards his creation.

When God created stars that manufacture nuclear energy on levels that we cannot even imagine, he was running no risk.  When he made dinosaurs the size of buildings, they posed no threat.  When he sent the earth spinning at nineteen thousand miles per hour and flicked it with his finger so that it sailed through space at 67,000 miles per hour, it was safer than a Sunday afternoon drive.  But when he made man, he created the potential for catastrophe—and he knew it.

Do you remember?  When God created the universe, everything he said happened just as he said.  Remember the refrain: “He said . . . and it was so.”  What could resist his will?  When God said, “Let there be light,” it was so.  When he said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water … it was so.” When he said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear … it was so.”

But man, made in God’s image, was given his own will.  When God said to man, “you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,”8 it was not so.

Man was the X-factor; he was (from our perspective) creation’s biggest risk, and its biggest reward.  No one can fault God for thinking small.  He had great plans for humans – for us – and he still does.  The story is still unfolding, and we have a part to play.  Because people bear the image of God, they are tremendously valuable.  The potential for humans –whether newborn child, world’s oldest man, or inmate serving a life sentence – is inestimable.  Every person you know is priceless: the phone solicitor who calls at dinner time, the dentist, the restaurant server, the genius and the mentally handicapped, all are infinitely worthwhile.  Worthwhile, however, is not the same thing as worthy. But that is another part of the picture, and it will have to wait for another time.

For now, learn this: God, who made everything by speaking it into existence; who holds all things – the four universal forces – together by his word; who holds you together by his word; is creative, remarkable, glorious, joyful, powerful and loving.  He is someone you really should get to know.


     8 Genesis 2:17

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No Vacancy: A Halloween Message

Viewing Time: Approximate 25 minutes

Enjoy this timely message. The central text is Matthew 12:43-45: “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. 44 Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. 45 Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”

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A Halloween Lesson on The Giving God

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Halloween began as a Christian holiday, the eve of the Feast of All Saints (or “All Hallows”) Day, on which the church celebrates and thanks God for her saints. Halloween was long ago given over to ghouls, goblins, and devils. More recently big business has haunted it—Americans are expected to spend over ten billion dollars on Halloween this year. Perhaps I shouldn’t draw too fine a line between ghouls and big business.

But Halloween is the eve and vigil of a Christian holy day, and it once helped me learn an important Christian truth. I was probably nine or ten-years-old. For the first and last time, I went trick-or-treating on the east side – the nice side – of our city. My cousin was from the east side, which is where the more affluent folks lived.

I don’t remember how long we’d been at it when we came to the house of an older woman. When she opened the door, we shouted, “Trick or Treat!” and held out our bags. She looked us over for a long time and somehow deduced that I was not from the neighborhood. “You don’t live in this neighborhood!” she said to me. Then she preceded to lecture me on the etiquette of Trick-or-Treat and told me I belonged in my own neighborhood, not in hers.

After all that, I didn’t expect to get anything. But once she had reproached and lectured me, she reached into her bag and took out two pennies, one for my cousin and one for me. That was the last time I ever went Trick-or-Treating on the east side. I had learned my lesson. I was never again going to ask those people for anything.

All of us have experienced similar situations. We ask a parent for something, and they give us what we ask for, but not until they lecture us on being more responsible, tell us to keep our room clean, and remind us of how much worse they had it when they were our age.

You go to your boss for needed supplies and she okays them, but only after she lectures you on the realities of the department budget. You ask a friend for forgiveness and are told you are forgiven, but that doesn’t stop the person from giving you an unabridged list of all the wrongs you’ve ever done. You take your purchase back to the store for a refund and, a half-hour, three clerks, and one manager later, get your refund, but are informed they didn’t have to give it to you because you didn’t have a receipt and were warned that next time you wouldn’t get one.

I once assumed that God was like the old east side woman I met on Halloween: he doesn’t really want to give us anything. He needs to be coaxed into it and, even then, will only help after he lets us know how disappointed he is in us. But that is not the God of the Bible, the God to whom Jesus introduces us. He is – as a literal translation of James 1:5 puts it– “the giving God.”

This is the God Jesus knew. He is a giver. He loves to give, and he gives because he loves. He so loved that he gave. He knows what people need before they ask, and he is ready to give when they ask. If you know how to give good gifts, Jesus once said to people, “how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11). He is the God who “graciously” – not grudgingly – will “give us all things” (Romans 8:32). He is the Father who is “pleased to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12: 32). This is good news about God!

Returning to the letter from St. James, this God gives generously to all people. The word modern translations render “generously” can also mean “simply.” In other words, God does not give with ulterior motives.  He does not give in order to get. He doesn’t give so that he can later say, “You owe me one.” He gives to people because he loves them.

(First published by Gannett.)

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Wide Angle: The Speaking God

It is hard for us to grasp how God’s word, his communicated thought, can bring matter into being and manipulate it into whatever shape he chooses. But consider a simple analogy: God’s realm covers the vast universe, but you have a realm, too. It extends through your body. All you need to do is think, “Raise right hand” and your hand raises. Your word – whether spoken or merely thought – has incredible power in your realm! You don’t know how your hand raises; it just does. In your small realm, you have absolute power.2

Similarly, as your hand responds to you, the universe responds to God. He needs only intend something, and it happens. “He spoke,” wrote the psalmist, “and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.”3 The author of Hebrews tells us that he sustains “all things by his powerful word.”4 God created, and rules, and redeems by his word.

Just as any artist’s work tells us something about the artist, God’s creation tells us something about him. That is why King David could write, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”5 As with any other artist, we can learn something about him just by looking at his art. If you look at the twisted paintings of Picasso, you will be able to guess some truth about his character. It might not surprise you to learn that Picasso once said, “Every time I change wives, I should bury the last one. That way I’d be rid of them . . .” Though Picasso claimed that God was dead, he was also heard repeating the words, “I am God, I am God.”6 The art reveals the artist.

What can we learn about God from looking at his art – at Creation? We can learn that his wisdom is fathomless and his power unimaginable (Job 28:23–27; Proverbs 3:19). We can get a feel for his glory (Psalm 19:1). We can deduce his love for humans (Psalm 8:3–9). We can get a sense of how deeply he cares for his creation (Isaiah 40:12ff). We can learn that when he does something, he does it well and he does it right. After the refrain, “He said. . . and it was so,” we find repeated the line: “It was good,” “It was good,” and “It was very good.”

Let me give you an example from creation that covers all the truths in the paragraph above: that God cares for us, that he gets it right, that he possesses unimaginable power, and that he is really, really, smart. All the matter God created is composed of four elemental forces – gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force. Those four forces are the material universe; they combine in an endless variety of ways to form everything we see. You – at least the physical part of you – are a complex arrangement of the four forces. So is the chair you are sitting in. So is the 70,000 light-year-wide Eagle Nebula.

Now consider the wisdom and power of God. The respective strengths of the four forces have to be precisely balanced for life to exist. For illustration purposes, we can assign a baseline figure for the strength of each of these forces. The weakest of the forces, gravity, is the most familiar to us. We will assign it a relative strength of 1. The next strongest of the four forces is the weak nuclear force. It holds neutrons together in an atom. To it we assign a relative strength of 1,034. It is that many times stronger than gravity. Then we come to electromagnetism, which is a thousand times stronger than the weak nuclear force. Finally we come to the strong nuclear force, which is a hundred times stronger still, and holds protons together. So, we have gravity, which holds the planets in place, then, at a thousand times stronger, the weak nuclear force, which holds neutrons together. Then there is electromagnetism, which holds your phone or computer together (not to mention you) as you read this. And finally, there is the strong nuclear force, which is a hundred million times stronger than gravity.

The precise balance that exists between the strengths of these forces is crucial to the existence of the universe. If God had made the strength of gravity evenslightly different, a tiny fraction stronger or weaker, stars, planets and people wouldn’t exist. If the weak nuclear force was different by the smallest percentage, the universe would be composed entirely of hydrogen. If electromagnetism was weaker or stronger, chemical bonds could not form; there would be no life as we know it. And we know of at least 25 other perfect balances in creation – ratios that had to be extraordinarily fine-tuned for life to exist. No wonder the great astronomer Fred Hoyle, an atheist himself, said the universe looks suspiciously like a put-up job. And God spoke all this into perfect balance as easily as you think, “Raise my hand,” and it is raised.7

(If you think this will encourage someone, please share it!)


   2 For more on this, see Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy (San Francisco: Harper Book, 1998)

   3 Psalm 33:9

   4 Hebrews 1:3

   5 Psalm 19:1

   6 Os Guiness, The Call (Nashville: Word, 1998)

   7 See Charles Edward White, “God by the Numbers,” Christianity Today (March 2006). See also, Paul Davies, The Accidental Universe (Cambridge University Press)

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Wide Angle: Creator

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God is not merely a creator; he is the Creator. This is a major theme in the Scriptures. Over sixty times, God is either said to have created or is referred to as the Creator. The biblical writers clearly thought that God’s role as creator should be kept in mind. He is sculptor, painter and composer, and the universe is his block of marble, his canvas, and his staff paper.

His “Creation Symphony” is the archetype for every form of musical expression, from Bach to Dylan to Justin Bieber. Every composer since has merely drawn from his material. Every composition since has been a “Variation on a Theme.” He made birds and streams sing, waves and waterfalls crash. The wind croons; the oceans roar; the leaves on a billion trees dance, and all his creatures keep time to the music.

God is the most daring, most imaginative artist in the universe. He has filled the seas with creatures of every shape and size and brilliant color. He paints his birds and fish and sunsets with hues so vivid and lines so bold that our most avant garde painters seem tame by comparison.

On my shelf is a book titled, “Galaxies,” by the science writer, Timothy Ferris. It includes photos taken from observatories around the world, and they are stunning. There is the Horsehead Nebula, draped like a king’s charger in royal reddish-purple, raring up at the stars forever. The Orion nebula looks as if it exploded a moment ago, when our heads were turned. Then there is the reddish orange Eagle Nebula, blazing like an astronomical forest fire, and measuring 70 light years in diameter. Since one light year is approximately 6 trillion miles, the Eagle Nebula measures about 420 trillion miles from side to side. God paints on a big canvas. Our own average-sized galaxy is bigger yet, and it is only one of an estimated 350 billion such galaxies in the universe. That is a big, big canvas.

The first verse of the Bible tells us that in the beginning, God created (that word is always and only used of God) the heavens and the earth, and he created it, the author of Hebrews tells us, simply by commanding it to be. We see this again and again in the first chapter of Genesis. Like a leitmotif in a symphony, the words “And God said” repeat, with the subsequent refrain, “and it was so.”

Verse 3: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” Verse 6: “And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.’” Verse 7: “And it was so.” Verse 9: “And God said, ‘Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.’ And it was so.” God did not paint Orion’s fireworks with a brush, but with a word. He creates by speaking.

That is a theme we see repeated in the Scriptures: God’s word is powerful. He creates photons and fish and birds and rivers and mountains and suns and nebulae and galaxies just by speaking them into being. When he speaks, things happen. His word – the expression of his thought – brings worlds into being. He “calls things that are not as though they were.”1

The whole of creation is his realm, and his entire realm responds to his voice, and it does not matter whether we are talking about our home (this solar system) or our neighborhood (the spiral arm of our galaxy) or our town (the Milky Way) or the furthest reaches of the universe. God speaks, and it is so.


     1 Romans 4:17

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The Bible as Panorama

I have a picture from 1917 or ’18 of my grandfather’s army company. It is one of those panoramic pictures that a photographer took in numerous shots and then seamlessly joined together. Because of the way the picture was taken, it was possible for a man on one end of that long row of soldiers to sprint to the other end and have his picture taken a second time. So, in some of these old photos, you will find the same soldier on both ends of the same row at what seems like the same time! I suppose it would be possible to find the same soldier in one of these panoramic pictures on both ends and in the middle.

It is like that when we take a panoramic look at the Scriptures. We look in the beginning, at the creation, and then we turn our gaze to the end, to the judgment, and beyond. And at both the beginning and the end, we find the same figure. We look in the middle, and there he is again! And there, and there! Wherever we look, we find Jesus Christ. He is “the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.”

God’s story is as seamless as one of those old panoramic pictures, and everywhere we look we find him. Sometimes we get the idea that God’s story has been interrupted, started and stopped, or that the theme has occasionally changed. It is not so. It is one story from beginning to end. God is both the author and the actor. The Bible is, in that sense, autobiographical. It is the story of what God has done and is doing to right what has been wronged in his creation. It is the story of his love and faithfulness or, as the Scripture often puts it, his righteousness.

When I first came into possession of the panoramic picture of Company A (or whichever company it was), I went over it with a magnifying glass, trying to pick out my grandfather. Often, we do something similar with the biblical story. We focus on one detail, to the exclusion of everything else.

Now that is not wrong; in fact it is a good thing. Every detail deserves our scrutiny and rewards our effort. But sometimes it is necessary to back up and scan the whole picture, to get a wide-angle view.

On the plains of Peru there is a network of strange lines made by the ancient people, the Nazea. Some of these lines cover as many as ten square miles. For years archeologists assumed that the lines were what remained of ancient irrigation ditches.

Then in 1939, Dr. Paul Kosok of Long Island University, discovered what they really were. He flew over those plains and, from an aerial view he could see that the ancient lines that seemed so random at ground level were in fact enormous drawings – like pictographs – of birds and animals and insects.

Just so, from one perspective, the stories of the Bible seem detached and unrelated. But as we survey them from a wider angle, we suddenly see how one line leads to another to form one great picture of God’s redemptive purpose – from Genesis to the Revelation. And while there are many great men and women in the Bible, we discover that there really is only one protagonist, the lead actor throughout, and that is the Lord God himself. A wide angle view of the Bible can help us see with greater clarity (or, perhaps, see for the first time) what God is up to, and how we fit into it.

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The Restorer of Lost Things

Viewing time: 29 minutes

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