1 John (Program #5) – The Fellowship of the Divine Life

We all should realize by now that John the apostle had a particular emphasis in all of his writings.  That emphasis was that what God desires for men above all else  is that men would receive Him as life.  “I have come that they may have life”, he writes in his gospel and “he that has the Son has the life“, he says in his epistle.  But we should also realize that this divine, eternal, uncreated life has an issue or an outflow, which John calls “the fellowship of life”.  If we want to know Him as life and experience the greatest of all divine gifts, we should pay our full attention to the “fellowship” or “flow of life” from the One who is life.

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1 & 2 Kings (Program #16) – The Reign of Hoshea over Israel

As the kings of both houses of Israel slid further and further into degradation and failure, the Old Testament provides us with a parallel account of the prophets that God had raised up during the same period to carry on the line of His testimony and of His economy.  Often the prophecies of these ones touch the very center and focus of God’s New Testament economy in His eternal purpose which was embodied and manifested in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.  The prophet Isaiah particularly is rich with references to both Christ’s incarnation, His marvelous and all-effective redemption.Yet the challenge for us as believers today is not to stop with Christ’s wonderful redemption but rather to take it by faith as God intends as a starting point for our Christian life and walk.  This is what we hope to touch in today’s life study.

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1 John (Program #4) – The Divine Life (2)

In all of the writings of the apostle John we see a continual emphasis on the divine life.  One of the aspects of the divine life that John stresses again and again is that it is eternal, even calling it the eternal life.  Many readers of the Bible and even many translators of the Bible equate the term “eternal life” with everlasting life.  Though this thought is not altogether wrong, it is incomplete at best and it can lead us to a shallow realization of all that we received in Christ at the moment of our salvation.  The eternal life is our subject today as we continue our life study in the book of 1 John.

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1 John (Program #3) – The Divine Life (1)

The apostle John was one of the primary contributors to the New Testament.   Of course, best known was his gospel which was rightly called the gospel of life.  But he also give us 3 epistles and a concluding word to the entire canon of scripture, the book of Revelation.  They all have their unique place and function in the Bible but they bear a common thread or emphasis and that is the divine life which is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.  Listen to his marvelous opening to his first epistle, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life.”  Stay with us today as we enjoy this tasty appetizer and see how it typifies the focus and burden of all of John’s crucial writings.

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1 John (Program #2) – A Word Concerning the Writings of John (2)

Here is a question to ponder that may not be as simple as it first sounds – what is a Christian?  Well, may be you may a Christian is a good person or a Christian is a kind person or a humble person. But if you look carefully at the Bible and especially the writings of the apostle John, you have to conclude firstly that a Christian is altogether a mysterious person. Why mysterious you ask. Mysterious because a genuine Christian like Jesus Christ Himself is both human and divine.

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1 John (Program #1) – A Word Concerning the Writings of John (1)

In all of the New Testament the writings of the apostle John are perhaps the most striking.  They are also the most mysterious because more than any of the other New Testament books, John’s gospel, epistles and his concluding book Revelation unveiled to us many of the divine and mystical things. His books are mysterious because they focus not on historical facts or on doctrines or on teachings but rather on the divine and mystical realm revealing Christ as the very divine life available for us to receive and experience day by day.

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2 Peter (Program #12) – The Divine Government (5)

The apostle Peter’s writings are short but they are packed with God’s economy.   Today we come to the last life study program from Peter.

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2 Peter (Program #11) – The Divine Government (4)

The apostle Peter tells us in chapter 3 of his second epistle that the day of the Lord will come as a thief  and that we should expect and hasten the day of God.  The apostle Paul on the other hand refer to today as “man’s day” in 1 Corinthians 4:3, where man is put in the place of judgment.  But the day is coming where the Lord will judge and that day is called the day of the Lord or the day of God in 2 Peter chapter 3.

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2 Peter (Program #10) – The Divine Government (3)

No doubt we have all heard and said that one day to the Lord is like a thousand years.   Actually, this is a rough quotation from 2 Peter 3, a chapter that speaks both of the Lord’s second coming and the righteous and just judgment that will occur at the time of His coming.  Of course, to us it seems as if the Lord has delayed His coming already for two thousand years, but to Him, it’s just a couple of days.  Actually Peter tells us that this delay is not motivated by the Lord’s indifference or because He is arbitrary about the timing, but rather because He is long-suffering  towards us.  That means He is mercifully granting us more time, more time to be mature and to be prepared for His coming so that none will unnecessarily perish.

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2 Peter (Program #9) – The Divine Government (2)

2 Peter chapter one is one of the most profound chapters in the New Testament.  It is full of solid, nourishing words conveying the central thought of the entire New Testament teaching.  In this chapter, Peter touches both life and truth as he speaks concerning the precious faith that we all have received.  He also strongly points us to the sure word of the Scripture.  But then in chapter two, he turned dramatically back to God’s governmental judgment, a major theme of his first epistle.  But here the righteous judgment of God that Peter described in great details is not general or vague but rather it is intensely focused on the false teachers who had begun to permeate the church and lead God’s people away from the very item that Peter had poured out in chapter one.

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