This Week's Focus Passage: Romans 16:1 'Phoebe our sister, who is a servant of the church that is at Cenchreae.' William Hendriksen's legacy is a very popular series of commentaries on a large number of the books of the New Testament. We may read from the end flap of a jacket from one of his commentaries, that which serves as a biographical sketch: "William Hendriks...

This Week's Focus Passage: Romans 10:13 'Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.' The above verse from the epistle of Paul to the church at Rome, is one of the key verses for the Arminian propagation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is not to say that it is a verse which would not be included as an important feature of the glorious Gospel of J...

This Week's Focus Passage: Numbers 20:10 'Hear now, ye rebels, shall we bring you forth water out of this rock?' This is a more than an interesting account of the repetition of 'murmuring,' by the people whom Jehovah had brought out of Egypt through the instrumentality of His servant, Moses. There were constant murmurings and complaints, even to the point of virtual ins...

This Week's Focus Passage: Romans 1:2 'The Gospel of God which he promised afore through his prophets.' It seems that the apostle Paul is almost echoing the words of our Lord Jesus Christ of which we read in Luke's relating of the encounter on the road to Emmaus between 'the two of them that were going that very day to a village named Emmaus,' and our risen Savior. Reca...

This Week's Focus Passage: Acts 27:21 'Sirs, ye should have hearkened unto me, and not have set sail from Crete.' This involves Luke's record of the voyage of himself and Paul, along with, as we are informed in the first verses of this twenty-seventh chapter of the book of Acts, Aristarchus, a Macedonian of Thessalonica. The beginning of this voyage, recorded by Luke i...

This Week's Focus Passage: Matthew 17:2 'And He was transfigured before them; and His face did shine as the sun.' The Transfiguration of Jesus, is recorded by each of the three evangelists, in their Gospel accounts, which have become denominated as 'the Synoptic Gospels.' Synoptic, in simple terms, merely means, as an encyclopedia informs us, when it has declared that, ...

This Week's Focus Passage: Psalm 37:1 'Fret not thyself because of evil-doers.' The American Standard Version-1901, (ASV-1901), is one of the many English versions of the Holy Bible, of which we are aware, that contains the word, 'fret' and it contains it in seven places; and three of those seven are found in our Psalm. Here as a negative action verb,Fret not.In Levitic...

This Week's Focus Passage: Psalm 27:13 'I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of Jehovah.' A Methodist theologian, preacher, and commentator, has left on record his thoughts upon this verse of David, the thirteenth of his twenty-seventh psalm, when he wrote, very interestingly: '"I had fainted."The words in italics are supplied by our translators; ...

This Week's Focus Passage: Psalm 23 'Jehovah is my Shepherd, I shall not want.' It may well be the case that the 23rdPsalm is the best-known 'passage,' or 'chapter,' in the Bible. It is extremely likely that, even the historical usage of this psalm over many years, as a 'comfort' or 'eulogistic' portion of Scripture by families and funeral directors with, probably, as ...

This week's Focus Passage: Genesis 49:10 'The sceptre shall not depart from Judah.....until Shiloh come. Judah, thee shall thy brethren praise: Thy hand shall be on the neck of thine enemies; Thy father's sons shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion's whelp; from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: He stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as a lioness, who shall ...