Author: Skip Moen, Ph.D.

  • Detours

    He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.  Mark 12:27 ESV You are quite wrong – The central theme of the Bible is life!  Everything about God’s instructions, everything about the concern with sin, everything about deliverance and redemption is about living!  Perhaps we semi-unconsciously know this, but…

  • Eternal Security – Rewind

    Those who trust in the LORD are as Mount Zion, which cannot be moved but abides forever. Psalm 125:1 Trust – Trusting YHWH doesn’t matter until it matters.  When life is consumed by the routine, we don’t think much about trust.  If we think of it at all, we think about the expectation of its consistency.  I don’t have…

  • A Good Beginning

    Do not in any way forsake the commandments of the Lord; but keep what you have received, neither adding thereto nor taking away therefrom.  Didache, Chapter 5, Roberts-Donaldson translation Adding/ taking away – The Didache (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) is one of the earliest Christian documents, dating from the late 1st or early 2nd…

  • Salt in the Wound

    Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Matthew 28:19  ESV In the name of – In his book, Epidemic: Examining the Infected Roots of Judaism and Christianity, Russ Houck suggests that the phrase “baptizing them in the…

  • Truly Complicated

    Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, ‘Sacrifice and offering Thou hast not desired, but a body Thou hast prepared for Me;’”  Hebrews 10:5  NASB World – So now we know that the word “body” is substituted for “ear” by this author.  Why?  Guthrie provides the following explanation:  “the author appropriates the psalm…

  • Rearranging the Furniture

    Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, ‘Sacrifice and offering Thou hast not desired, but a body Thou hast prepared for Me;’”  Hebrews 10:5  NASB Body – New Testament authors often rearrange God’s word from the Tanakh in order to make some point in their own writings.  Sometimes they offer rather creative translations…

  • Calendar Questions

    “So I will establish my covenant with you, and you will know that I am the Lord. Then, when I make atonement for you for all you have done, you will remember and be ashamed and never again open your mouth because of your humiliation, declares the Sovereign Lord.”   Ezekiel 16:62-63  NIV Then – When did…