“In the beginning, GOD …”  In our last study, we noted that the story of the beginning of all things started with a RIGHTeous GOD.  Like Hebrew reads from RIGHT to left, our life story would do well to be read from the perspective of “RIGHT FIRST.”  In everything we do, it’s RIGHT to put GOD in the beginning—to consider His Ways, His Word, His Will … FIRST. Over one hundred years ago, Charles M. Sheldon, through the characters in his fictional story, “In His Steps,” posed a similar challenge that, before making any decisions, of first asking “What would Jesus do?” The particular social reforms that Sheldon sought to promote in his early 20th-century novel may since have morphed to our current times, but the suggestion to always ask “WWJD?” is still powerful and RIGHT. Modern technology and the ongoing “enlightenment” of Man’s thinking can never—and WILL NEVER—make the Word of God obsolete. It speaks and should guide us in every decision we make—and it WILL if we seek God FIRST.  Start RIGHT. Anything worth doing is worth starting RIGHT. To be truthful, a sense of RIGHT or “righteousness” did not even really exist in the beginning since there…

Hebrew text is written from right to left. Why is that? The way language is written and read, or its “directionality,” was apparently established when those languages began to be inscribed and the first alphabets were created. Languages originating in the Middle East, such as Hebrew and Arabic, were first written where people used stone and clay tablets. Presumably, a right-to-left directionality made more sense for this method, assuming most people are right-handed (an estimated 90% of the world’s population). For stone, those early writers would have held the mallet with their left hand while chiseling letters with their right in a right-to-left direction. This same directionality would eventually carry over to clay and later to pen and ink on vellum and parchment. It made good sense back then to start at the RIGHT. In modern times since the development of the printing press, books written in Hebrew and Arabic may look odd to the readers of Latin-based languages (like English, French, and Spanish). They are bound on the RIGHT side—the back of the book in English is the front of the book in Hebrew.  In fact, people who READ from right to left often have a right-to-left sense of…

God’s appointments cannot be cancelled—only postponed. The book of Nehemiah provides a beautiful chronicle of the reconstruction of the nation of Israel after the exile—the rebuilding of the walls and the people. We read in Chapter 9 that the Levites led the reformed citizens of Israel, cloaked in sackcloth and ashes, as they together repented and recalled the faithfulness of God. The first fifteen verses of that chapter are a prayer of thanksgiving as they praised God with a loud voice, reciting the awesome accounts of Creation, their forefathers’ Exodus out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, and God’s miraculous provision and protection in the wilderness. However, at verse 16, the wind changes, and the once-fluttering banners of praise fall in a dead stillness of penitence. The Levites’ words turned to humble confession: “But our ancestors were arrogant; they stiffened their necks and ignored Your commandments. They paid no attention to the wonders You had done among them. But because You are a God of forgiveness, merciful, and full of compassion, You did not abandon them. You led them by day and night, You gave Your good Spirit to teach them, You did not withhold manna or water, You sustained…

We all love the story of “The Good Samaritan” … the uber-compassionate “certain Samaritan” in the parable of Jesus, found in Luke 10—on Page 1095 of my Thompson Chain Reference KJV. There he was, traveling along, minding his own business, when he—BY CHANCE—saw another poor traveler who had been stripped, robbed, wounded, and left laying half dead by the side of The Jericho Road. He alone stopped and tended to the man’s dire plight, unlike the proud Priest and the lazy Levite who had just walked on by. The GOOD Samaritan bandaged, medicated, and ambulanced the man on his own donkey to the nearest hostel to recuperate—sparing no expense for his recovery. What a good neighbor he was! Jesus ended the story, as if to shame the Jews for their ethnic prejudice by saying, “Go and be just like that SAMARITAN” … a real stand-out stand-up kind of guy! But what’s the deal about him being a “Samaritan?”  Was he the only “good” one out of the lot? Who were the Samaritans anyway? And why did the Jews hate them? When King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon was conquering most of the Middle Eastern world, he used a method of “homogenizing” the…