FaithSearch Bible Learning Center

“Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth.” 2 Timothy 2:15

Dr Don Bierle

Ancient Israel: Faith or Fact?

A common accusation by some of Israel’s neighbors and protesters in the U.S. is that Israel today is guilty of occupying the Palestinians’ homeland. As recently as 2016, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) approved a resolution that Jerusalem is indeed significant – but only to Islam, not to Israel. According to the declaration, Palestinians are the only true indigenous people. UNESCO’s position is that the Old Testament is not historical, and that the Jews had no ancestral connection with the Holy Land or an ancient Israel. The resolution maintained that there never was a Jewish kingdom under a real king David a thousand years before Jesus Christ came. Thus, the Jews had no rights to Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, and Palestine. They were an “occupying power” – in other words “colonialists.”

Let Ancient Israel’s Stones Speak

Recent excavations in Jerusalem are dealing a fatal blow to the rampant propaganda and historical revisionism which denies that the Jewish people have been indigenous to the land for more than 3,800 years. These discoveries are also reaffirming the historicity of the Bible and a real ancient Israel.

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Jesus, our Mercy Seat

Nearly one thousand five hundred years before the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God established the construction of the Jewish Tabernacle, including the mercy seat, which is the cover on the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies:

And you shall make a mercy seat of pure gold… And you shall make two cherubim [angels] of gold… And make one cherub at one end one cherub at the other end… And the cherubim shall have their wings spread upward, covering the mercy seat with their wings and facing one another… And you shall put the mercy seat on top of the [Ark of the Covenant] …and there I will meet with you… (Exodus 25:17-22).

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Ancient Ephesus and the Gospel

The apostle Paul desired to take the Gospel to ancient Ephesus early in his missionary tours, but was forbidden by the Holy Spirit (Acts 16:6). At the end of the second tour, He still wanted to do so and expressed, “I will return to you again if God wills” (Acts 18:21).

Ancient Ephesus Map
The location of Ephesus among Paul’s “seven churches of Asia” in modern day southwest Turkey.

Evidently God did will it for he went straight to Ephesus in his third tour and after three years of teaching there, we read in Acts that “all who lived in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks” (19:10). Paul’s teaching assuredly resulted in the seven churches of Asia to be started (Revelation 2-3).

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Was Jesus Literate?

In the last issue of Happ-O-getics, I challenged the view held by some scholars that the illiteracy rate among people at the time of Jesus was at least 98% (they could neither read nor write). Based on the many libraries and volumes of written documents that existed even then, the statistic is quite unlikely. This leads us to ponder another question: was Jesus literate? 

I also quoted Helen Bond, a professor of Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh who said, “If Jesus was a carpenter/mason, as we generally suppose, then it’s not impossible that he had some rudimentary grasp of letters and/or numbers for the purposes of his trade, but I think it very unlikely that Jesus could read or write.” 

In this issue, I want to challenge the naivety or nonsense of this statement regarding Jesus. 

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