Thursday, May 9, 2013

The Bible Challenge: Day 124

The scriptures read are 1 Kings 16-18, Psalm 103 and Acts 18.

1 Kings 16. It's too bad the recent Bible TV program was a mini-series. If they dramatized this stuff, they would rival Game of Thrones or even the Sopranos. We have palace coups and a king who dies by self-immolation. And now we get to Ahab and his wife Jezebel, who sacrifice their children to Baal.

1 Kings 17. Finally a good guy: the prophet Elijah. He predicts a drought and is fed by ravens. He stays with a widow and foreshadows Jesus' multiplying food (in an albeit less spectacular way) and his raising of a dead child.

1 Kings 18. Elijah shows up the prophets of Baal when God sends fire from heaven. And then rain, ending a 3 year drought.

Psalm 103. "Bless the Lord, O my soul." And a beautiful list of how God blesses us follows.

Acts 18. In Corinth, Paul meets the husband and wife ministry team of Aquila and Priscilla, who are never mentioned separately. They are also in the tentmaking trade like Paul. Paul finally concentrates his ministry on the Gentiles because his fellow Jews in Corinth are extremely resistant to his efforts.

Paul drops Aquilla and Priscilla off in Ephesus and there they set an eloquent preacher named Apollos straight on a few matters. If you know the rest of the New Testament, you know we are visiting lots of places to whose churches Paul would later write letters (Philippians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Ephesians). And Aquila and Priscilla later return to Rome and Paul greets them in his letter to the Romans. Things like this make me want to try reading the Bible in chronological order next year.

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