Blogs

Father Abraham.  I remember a children’s tune called just that; “Father Abraham.”  Certainly in the Jewish mind this man is supremely important.  Even though the Jewish people were called Israelites in ancient times, they still thought of themselves in terms of their origin in the seed of Abraham. But who was this man?  That is a central question in the new book, “Birth of The Holy Nation” coming out in early 2015.  Of course, we cannot know everything about Abraham, separated as we are from him by thousands of years of history.  But we can know a lot about him by a careful examination of his life and legacy in scripture.  Usually our discussions of Abraham and his life are fairly superficial.  In “Birth of The Holy Nation” we will take a much more careful look.  In particular we will examine his life as a son of God as the starting point to his life as the father of the nation of God’s own choosing. But, he was a bloody man.  The shedding of blood marked his life.  Not only did it mark his life, it was a prominent feature of his relationship with God – even to the point that shedding his own blood by circumcision was a major hallmark of that life-determining relationship.  Abraham did not shrink [...]

The function performed by “Elijah’s ravens” was to take food to him while he was in hiding in the Cherith Ravine.  This was a regular activity.  They brought to Elijah bread and meat twice a day every day for a prolonged period of time.  Somewhere these ravens had a source of food.  Wherever that source was, the ravens were able to go to the source twice a day for the allotment of food for Elijah.  Assuming the meat was cooked that means the ravens “took” it from humans who probably knew nothing about what was going on.  The ravens, under the influence of some guiding power, went to various places and took adequate portions of bread and meat from those places to Elijah to keep him fed.  The loss of bread and meat in those places was not so significant as to be noticed by the people there as far as we can tell.  Otherwise, they would have taken precautions to avoid the thefts by the pesky ravens.  Therefore there must have been quite a few of these sources but the single destination. What a remarkable thing!  These birds are noteworthy for their intelligence but it is not likely they understood who Elijah was or why they were providing for him.  They just did what the Spirit of [...]

In the life of Elijah the prophet, there came a time when he was forced to flee and hide in the wilderness on the east side of the Jordan River (1 Kings 17:1-6). This occurred at the very beginning of the period in which Elijah figured so prominently in the story of Israel, the northern kingdom. The Lord sent Elijah to speak to King Ahab about his wickedness in the mode of a drought. Elijah, having accomplished that task, was then instructed by the Lord to go into hiding. Specifically, he was to go into hiding in the valley of the brook, or ravine, called Kerith. During his time in hiding, the Lord instructed him, he was to remain completely secreted. God would send ravens to feed him and he was to drink from the water in that valley. Elijah complied with the instructions of the Lord and headed for the ravine to hide. During the time Elijah hid in the ravine, the ravens brought him bread and meat twice a day and he drank water from the brook. Eventually, the water in the brook dried up due to the drought. Only then did Elijah move on to live among the Sidonians, who were a Phoenician group that lived north of the boundary of the kingdom. As long as [...]