Tour of the Bible, part 5: the Minor Prophets — from Bible Gateway.com
Excerpt:
Last month we revived our Tour of the Bible series to examine the Major Prophets. Today, we’ll take a look at the so-called Minor Prophets—and we’ll conclude our tour of the Old Testament while we’re at it. In case you missed them, here are the previous installments of our Tour of the Bible:
Holy Week Timeline Visualization — from BibleGateway.com
A Reflection of Christ –– from Insight for Today by Charles R. Swindoll
Excerpt regarding the commentary on Genesis 43:33-34
Joseph’s life offers us a magnificent portrayal of the grace of God as He came to our rescue in the Person of His Son, Jesus. So many come to Him, like Joseph’s guilty brothers, feeling the distance and fearing the worst from God, only to have Him demonstrate incredible generosity and mercy. Instead of being blamed, we are forgiven. Instead of feeling guilty, we are freed. And instead of experiencing punishment, which we certainly deserve, we are seated at His table and served more than we can ever take in.
For some, it’s too unreal. So we desperately plead our case, only to have Him speak kindly to us—promising us peace in our own language. We then try to fend off His anger by bargaining with Him, thinking our hard work and sincere efforts will pay Him back for all those evil past deeds we’re guilty of. But to our astonishment, He never even considered our attempts important enough to mention. What we had in mind was earning just enough to silence our guilt, but what He had in mind was overwhelming us with such an abundance we’d realize we can never, ever repay.
What a beautiful picture of Christ at the cross, bearing the sins we committed, forgiving us in the process. Isn’t such grace amazing? The One who was rejected is the same One who goes the limit to get us reunited with Him.
From DSC:
I “happened to see” this book at Barnes & Nobles the other day, and I started to read it. Immediately, it got my attention and I ended up buying it. It has brought tears to my eyes on several occasions and for different reasons. I highly recommend that you check this book out. Nothing in it surprised me — but rather, it confirmed/affirmed many of my beliefs.
Description from http://heavenisforreal.com/:
Heaven Is for Real is the true story of the four-year old son of a small town Nebraska pastor who during emergency surgery slips from consciousness and enters heaven. He survives and begins talking about being able to look down and see the doctor operating and his dad praying in the waiting room. The family didn’t know what to believe but soon the evidence was clear.
Colton said he met his miscarried sister, whom no one had told him about, and his great grandfather who died 30 years before Colton was born, then shared impossible-to-know details about each. He describes the horse that only Jesus could ride, about how “reaaally big” God and his chair are, and how the Holy Spirit “shoots down power” from heaven to help us.
Told by the father, but often in Colton’s own words, the disarmingly simple message is heaven is a real place, Jesus really loves children, and be ready, there is a coming last battle.
More church websites invite posting of prayers — from USAToday.com by Cathy Lynn Grossman
Need prayer power? Try the World Wide Web. More than four in 10 Protestant churches with websites now invite people to post pleas to the Lord on the main church site so volunteers and staff can chime in on the soulful call, according to a new survey.
Year in review: 2010 at Bible Gateway — from Bible Gateway by Rachel Barach
Excerpt:
The New Year is well underway now, and all of us at Bible Gateway hope it’s off to a great start for you and yours! Looking back, we are happy to say that 2010 was a good year for us at Bible Gateway. We are blessed to be part of an extraordinary community of people—people who visit Bible Gateway to undergo the life-changing experience of reading God’s Word.
You might be interested to know that, in 2010:
It is clear that Bible Gateway continues to be a favorite online destination for people who want to read God’s Word, and more people than ever are finding Bible Gateway on their mobile devices or from countries around the globe, some of which offer only restricted access to the Bible, if any at all. Praise the Lord!
From DSC:
I’m interested in trying to take pulse checks on a variety of constantly moving bulls-eyes out there — one of which is new business models within the world of teaching and learning (in higher education, K-12, and the corporate world). I have no idea whether the courses that this site/service offers are truly great or not. To me, it doesn’t matter right now. What matters is whether this model — or this type of business model — takes off. The costs of obtaining an education could be positively impacted here, as competition continues to heat up and the landscapes continue to morph.
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The YouVersion Bible: 2 years, 10 million downloads, 0 advertising. — from thenextweb.com by Brad McCarty
It isn’t often that we’ll talk about religion, politics or things that can otherwise start arguments that don’t count as fanboyism. However, when a service gains 10 million downloads without ever advertising, that’s a pretty strong social media story in our book.
YouVersion is a simple thing – a bible. It can be downloaded to a number of different platforms, it’s available in a myriad of translations and has a community that surrounds the application and the website. Presently, the app gets downloaded at the rate of over 1 million new users every month and has kept itself in the top 5 download apps for the Reference category of the App Store.
So how does YouVersion manage things? The power of people, it seems. The company credits its success greatly to the social sharing of the YouVersion community…
Isaiah 1:18 — from Bible Gateway’s Verse of the Day
