For your steadfast love is great to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Psalm 57:10 ESV Heavens/ Clouds – shamayim and shehaqim describe David’s new perspective. But considering the circumstances, this is quite a shock. David is sitting in a cave! Is he viewing the clouds, enjoying the sun, gazing at the heavens? No. …
And Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you, Today you will be with Me in Paradise.” Luke 23:43 J. Green translation Today – When do we get to heaven? While the question certainly isn’t on the top shelf from a biblical point of view, evangelical Christianity seems to suggest that the answer to…
“And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” Matthew 25:46 NASB Eternal life – There is no doubt that Christianity embraces a robust doctrine of the afterlife. In fact, I suspect that if you asked the common believer or non-believer about the most important teaching of the Church, it…
Who knows that the breath of man ascends upward and the breath of the beast descends downward to the earth? Ecclesiastes 3:21 NASB Ascends upward – “Ecclesiastes, alone in the Bible, is aware of the belief that at death the soul goes upward to the heavens, rather than down to Sheol. This idea is not…
He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8 NASB Require – “OK, God, OK! What do you want from me?” When we finally understand that life isn’t ours to do…
Today I received a newsletter from a rather famous Christian author. The centerpiece was an except from one of Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s sermons. The title, “Making Certain of Heaven” left little doubt about its content. As Randy Alcorn remarked, “Can we really know in advance where we’re going when we die? The apostle John, the…
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. Revelation 21:1 NASB Passed – Things aren’t always what they seem. If we’ve learned anything from the last decade of New Testament scholarship, we’ve learned that the previous…
for our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Philippians 3:20 NASB In heaven – You don’t belong here! But this is where you are today. Your home is where your heart is, and that’s not here, but this is where you are today. If…
“Let Your kingdom come, let Your will be done, as it is in heaven, also on earth.” Matthew 6:10 Earth – When we follow the pattern of prayer taught by our Lord, we endorse the Hebrew view of deliverance. Praying “Your kingdom come on earth” focuses our attention of the Hebrew verb yasa’. Of course,…
on earth, as it is in heaven Matthew 6:10 Earth/ Heaven – Startling! Uncomfortable! Of course, it isn’t for us because we are not saturated in the Hebrew Scriptures. But the disciples were. They would have expected “heaven and earth” not “earth and heaven.” Glance through the Old Testament and you will find the phrase…
