Abundant Life: July 2010

To download this issue in PDF format click here.

Trivializing Our Talents

Some Christians possess incredible talents. They can do it all! Serve as an elder? Done! Lead singing? No problem! Teach the little ones? Certainly! Comfort the bereaved? With true compassion! Strengthen those weak in the faith? Yes, with exactly the right words and actions!

What Happens in Baptism?

“Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Corinthians 10:11).

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians that the events recorded in the Old Testament, the history of Israel, has a particularly powerful meaning to them as believers in Jesus Christ. This statement parallels what Paul told the Romans in Romans 15:4, in that “whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.”

Rabshakeh's Psychological Warfare

“Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: ‘What confidence is this in which you trust?’” (Isaiah 36:4)

God’s people faced war. Isaiah had prophesied that the king of Assyria and his armies would come into their land like flood waters and reach up to the neck of Judah-Jerusalem. The time for fulfillment had come, and Assyria was invading. Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, swept through Judah just as the prophet had predicted, taking fortified city after fortified city, and Jerusalem was next on the list.