This week we continued our detour exploring questions about the purpose and origin of the temple. We did a cursory overview of temple history and discussed a number of Scripture passages for the purpose of better understanding whether the temple was something God desired or not. We have been looking into the possibility that God…
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Have you ever wondered why Stephen reviewed Israel’s history with the experts in the Law? Did he not realize they already knew these stories? Probably by memory? Or was he doing something else? This week we read through Stephen’s entire speech, his murder, and what happened as a result of it. Because this was an…
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This week, we finished up the study of Ananias and Sapphira by comparing and contrasting their experience in Acts 5 to the story of Achan in Joshua 7. It seems as though each of these events took place at the beginning of the founding of a faith community. If the stories are indeed parallel, then,…
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This week we spent the first half of class discussing the so-called “400 Years of Silence” between the Old and New Testaments (a.k.a. “intertestamental time”). We briefly discussed the difference between the Catholic Bible and the Protestant Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the origins of the Sadducees. Upon turning our attention to the passage, we…
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This week we examined the first sign that Jesus’ prophecy regarding the persecution of His followers would be fulfilled in the near future. The conflict began when the Sadducees interrupted Peter: Not only did they stop him from finishing his speech, they also took him, John, AND the formerly lame man into custody—holding them until…
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This week we dove a little deeper into Peter’s second sermon going verse-by-verse through Acts 3:11-16. The stage for this scene was within Solomon’s Colonnade of the Temple in Jerusalem. As the healed man (no longer lame) held onto Peter and John, the crowd rushed over in amazement to better understand what they were witnessing….
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