I am a Christian. I am married to my lovely wife, Kay, for over 50 years. I have enjoyed growing old with her, and look forward to a few more years, if our Lord permits.
I am also a father of two daughters, both are married to two wonderful men. My eldest daughter has two children-a girl and a boy, so I am also a grandfather! God has been so kind to let me see both of my daughters fulfilling their dreams while they follow Jesus.
I retired from a telecommunications company in 2002, and have never looked back. I have found retirement much more fulfilling than living by another man's schedule. I enjoy studying the scriptures, reading a good book, blogging, and discussing my faith with folks over the Internet who like to discuss matters concerning Jesus. I had been a Sunday school teacher for about 30 years (including about 12 years teaching junior and senior high youths), but recently I asked to be excused of this responsibility (January 2019).
By the way, some folks have said my photo looks younger than my 76 years. That's because it is. It was taken by my wife on a fall trip in 2012. I was nearly 67 years old then. I look and feel much older now. :-)
As we conclude our study of the Book of Job and consider how the Lord restored Job to his former prosperity, we need to keep in mind that all Job and the friends knew about God prior to Job’s calamities was what was handed down through oral tradition. In fact, there is no ancient evidence of an alphabet prior to Israel’s coming down to Egypt about the time of Joseph’s reign as second in command to Pharaoh.[1] So, knowledge of such things revealed in the New Covenant scriptures, like God forgiving us is dependent upon our willingness to forgive others (Matthew 6:14-15; cp. Ephesians 4:32), simply wasn’t known or understood in the ancient world. Even if such things were known from the beginning, Paul shows us that that kind of knowledge of God would have been lost to mankind by the time of Job (Romans 1:18-25). Read the rest of this entry »
In the final chapter of the Book of Job, the Lord addresses his rebuke to the friends, especially Eliphaz, the wisest of the three. They had defended the oral tradition that had come down to them from generation to generation. This tradition was held by the ancients and incorporated what they believed about God (cp. Job 8:8-9). However, no thought was given to the idea that such a tradition had become corrupted over the centuries (cp. Romans 1:18-25). They held that God is just, and he judges men, according to their deeds, and during their lifetime spent on earth. “What a man sows is what he reaps” (cp. Galatians 6:7) was a doctrine, which they held to absolutely and without question, even when Job proved the doctrine was obviously in error. Yet, not only wouldn’t they admit error, but they used a false doctrine to accuse Job of wickedness. Read the rest of this entry »
No matter how many times one would read the Book of Job, one glaring paradox would consistently appear, and that is, the Lord never directly replies to Job’s desire to know why he suffered. Instead, the Lord merely showed Job that someone wise enough and powerful enough to create this universe and place such a variety of life forms upon the earth, must know what he’s doing. In the end, however, this was enough for Job. Nevertheless, this isn’t enough for many other folks who have to endure suffering every day. People, today, still question why bad things happen to good people. However, God doesn’t answer that question directly, probably because the question is too simple, and suffering is a complex matter having many reasons for its occurrence. The word of God does, however, provide us with a kind of window, which provides partial answers (1Corinthians 13:12). Read the rest of this entry »
When the dialogue between Job and the friends began, Job expressed his ignorance over what the Lord was doing in his life, as well as his depression over the fact that his worldview had disintegrated before his very eyes, vis-à-vis for all intents and purposes, he faced nothing but chaos for the remainder of his life. Nothing made any sense anymore. How should Job live? In other words, Job felt lost, because everything that he built his life upon was like a foundation of sand that the great storm had taken away (cp. Matthew 7:26-27). Read the rest of this entry »
Let’s return to the prologue, vis-à-vis to chapters one and two of the Book of Job once more. Here we find that God addresses a being called the satan. Meaning ‘the enemy’ or ‘the adversary.’ Folks can believe whatever they wish about this being, but I do not recognize him as a spirit being who rebelled against God either before or after the creation of mankind. None of the references to satan, the devil or the serpent show that he is an evil angel. That said, and for the purpose of this study, I’ll hereafter refer to him as the adversary. So, let’s look at what took place between him and the Lord. God spoke with the adversary and pointed to Job, asking if he had considered how Job behaved. God claimed Job was the Lord’s servant, and said he was the most righteous man on earth (Job 1:8). That, in itself, says a great deal about Job, and what we’ve studied about him thus far. Nevertheless, the adversary painted a different picture. Read the rest of this entry »
In the very first chapter of the Book of Job, our hero loses everything he has. He loses all his wealth through murderous attacks upon him by his enemies, and then he loses his family through an apparent act of God (Job 1:13-19). Job’s reaction was to accept it all as from the Lord. After he was destroyed, Job said: “Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:20-21)! While folks who heard Job’s reaction might think he was a holy and religious man, we need to consider the fact that the text really doesn’t say Job spoke to God, but only about him. He never addressed the Lord over what was done, only that the Lord had done all those things, but he (Job) would accept it all, just as he had accepted all the good things, the Lord had given him over the years (cp. Job 2:10). Read the rest of this entry »
46576809 – what’s wrong question handwritten on vintage school slate board isolated on white
The Book of Job opens by describing Job’s character. He is a very good, moral person (Job 1:1). In other words, Job faithfully followed God, and for all intents and purposes, there was absolutely no reason for God to punish him. However, is that what God was doing? Keep in mind that the story of Job takes place in ancient times, probably during the time of Abraham. If Abraham had to be taught what God was like, certainly other folks at that time were ignorant too. Therefore, if they were to learn deep truths about the Lord, God had to break into their lives in some way and bring them to the point, where they would understand him better, and, in doing so, correct their then current, but false, worldview. Read the rest of this entry »
When the Lord previously described the animals that he wanted Job to consider, he didn’t go into much detail in his descriptions of them. Not so here! In fact, the Lord says he doesn’t intend to be silent with respect to leviathan. He fully intended to describe how he was made, his power and his beauty, vis-à-vis not in appearance, for he was a fierce looking creature, but beauty according to the attributes of his great strength, his power of offense and defense (Job 41:12). Read the rest of this entry »
Just as it is difficult to claim with authority what Behemoth is, so it is equally difficult to identify with certain authority what Leviathan is. He has been variously thought to be a great serpent, a mythical sea monster, a water dinosaur, a whale, a dolphin or some other fish, but most commonly he is identified as a crocodile. Leviathan’s description is the longest of the animal kingdom in the Book of Job. As such, it is probably a fitting conclusion to the Lord’s remarks to Job. It is interesting how the author of the Book of Job brings out a vivid picture of the Almighty through “the things that are made” (Romans 1:20), which, according to Paul, is adequate to appreciate even the great eternal power of God. Therefore, the Lord’s remarks to Job are an adequate reply to his arguments, because Job should have been able to discern these things, so that, although he was the most righteous man on earth (Job 1:8), he was without an excuse for mystifying the friends and otherwise making the Almighty’s power and wisdom an enigma before his listeners in an effort to defend his own righteousness. Read the rest of this entry »
Previously, the Lord had described certain land animals and birds to teach Job what he wished him to understand about God and man’s obligation to express his respect to his Creator. In like manner the Lord concludes his remarks to Job by describing two more creatures, the Behemoth (Job 40:15) and the Leviathan (Job 41:1). Moreover, by no means are Biblical scholars agreed upon what these creatures are, whether among those we know roam our planet today, or whether they are extinct creatures. Nevertheless, according to the context, Job knew about the animals, which the Lord mentioned. The Lord’s description of them would have been meaningless, if Job didn’t know them. Read the rest of this entry »
Job had been humbled by the Lord’s first reply. Moreover, although he once believed he would desire to speak to God and declare his innocence and make his righteousness known before him, so the Lord would vindicate him in the presence of the friends and others who believed him to have been secretly wicked (Job 13:18-19, 22; 23:10), Job, now, declared he had spoken foolishly and no longer claimed any right to present his defense before God (Job 40:3-5). Therefore, the Lord resumed speaking out of the whirlwind (Job 40:6), telling Job to prepare himself in his Presence, because he would demand an answer from him by reason of what he was about to say (Job 40:7). Read the rest of this entry »
Nowhere in the Lord’s first discourse in the previous two chapters of the Book of Job does he accuse Job of sinning or rebelling against him, as did the friends and Elihu. Moreover, neither has the Lord explained why he had caused Job’s calamities to fall upon him. Instead, the Lord approached Job and answered him out of the whirlwind, and in doing so he used judicial terms, which recalls Job’s desire that the Lord would justify him. In other words, the Lord answered Job according to his request to appear before the Lord, as though he were in a courtroom. Read the rest of this entry »
To conclude this portion of his interrogation of Job, the Lord asks him, if it were by his (Job’s) wisdom that the hawk takes flight (Job 39:26). The hawk is a very swift bird of prey, and, as a carnivore was considered unclean in the Mosaic Law (Leviticus 11:13, 16). However, the ancients celebrated its swiftness. Men stood in awe of the hawk’s great ability to move effortlessly and so speedily across the sky up to our modern day, when our engineered vehicles began to exceed the hawk’s great speed. Then the Lord mentioned the hawk’s flight to the south, its sense to migrate to a warmer climate during the winter months, and he asked Job, if it were by Job’s wisdom that the hawk did so (Job 39:26). Read the rest of this entry »
In the Lord’s previous address about the ostrich, the Lord seemed to put the horse in a bad light in order to express his special gift to the ostrich, but, as though he would say: ‘Speaking of the horse…’ God went on and immediately asked Job, if it were he (Job) who had given the horse his strength. However, the Lord wasn’t merely pointing to how strong the horse is, but, rather, to all those things about the horse that is considered his strength: his courage, his ability to serve man in the field, as man’s vehicle of transport, as a special servant on the field of battle, etc. Thus, it has to do with those things one normally remembers about the horse, when one considers his worth. Moreover, the Lord asked Job, if he (Job) was the one who “clothed his neck with thunder” (Job 39:19). Many Biblical critics balk at this, believing it simply doesn’t fit the context, nor does it describe the horse. What in the horse’s neck would remind one of thunder? Read the rest of this entry »
One of my earliest memories as a child is that my grandfather raised chickens in his yard, and so did one of his neighbors, who lived up the street, or about 50 yards away. As I think of that scene, I remember that the cock bird had a habit of flapping its wings just before he crowed in the morning. I am told, but I’ve never seen the sight, that if two cock birds fight, the victor will flap its wings. It seems as though the act of a bird flapping its wings, but not in flight seems to have a proud or glorious connotation. I don’t wish to go too far here and attribute human feelings to birds, but I do suggest that God often uses the habits of his creatures to point to one of man’s attributes, whether for good or for evil.[1]Read the rest of this entry »
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