Biblical Basis for Mediums

     I have always been interested in why Christians are so set against spiritual mediums. A lot of Christians don't really seem to believe in psychics or spiritual mediums anyway, but those who do believe in it are very much against it. Why? What does the Bible say against consulting someone who can link you to dead spirits? We see one such dealing with a spiritual medium in 1 Samuel Chapter 28:
"The king said to her, "Do not be afraid. What do you see?" And the woman said to Saul, "I see a god coming up out of the earth." 14 He said to her, "What is his appearance?" And she said, "An old man is coming up, and he is wrapped in a robe." And Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground and paid homage."
     It seems that, though outlawed by Saul himself at the time, it wasn't uncommon for people to seek out answers from a spiritual medium who consulted the dead. Samuel was quite easily able to seek out just the woman to do the job for him. He didn't know what to do next in his campaign; he was worried. He saw an opportunity to consult his old mentor, Samuel, and he took it.
     Immediately we see one of the reasons why such actions were considered wrong: the spirit of Samuel says, "Then Samuel said to Saul, "Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?" Apparently, spirits aren't too keen on being called back from whatever they were doing. The news and "advice" that Saul receives isn't really to his liking, though. Samuel tells him that, since he has turned away from obeying God in so many different things, that all of Saul's sons will shortly be dead and spending their time with Samuel in the near future.

     So I've established what the spirits seem to think of being called back to this world, but what about God? Why is it such a big no no? There's plenty of other scripture in the Bible that answers this. In Leviticus it says:"Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God." Furthermore: "Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord, and because of these detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you.You must be blameless before the LORD your God." Deuteronomy 18:10-13
     So it's quite clear that God is against these spiritual mediums and He considers it a sin. I think the reason for this is actually quite simple: they're looking to the dead for answers instead of their God. He's constantly pleading with them to turn to Him when they're seeking help and seeking answers and direction from the spirits of those that have already passed is just another example of them relying on man instead of God.

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070915213849AAe8RzB
http://www.openbible.info/topics/psychic
https://christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-occult.html

We Cheer for the Underdog

     I really like baseball. Because I'm from Georgia and I'm a glutton for punishment, I've always been a big Atlanta Braves fan. They won tonight. On a walk-off homerun, at that. That's beside the point...While reading some forum discussions online and hoping that someone else thinks the Braves have a chance at winning the division, I noticed that several baseball "experts" often referred to the Braves as the "David" of baseball. In sports, as well as many other areas of life, a big struggle between two seemingly mismatched sides is almost always called a "David and Goliath" showdown.

Most people, I think, have a general idea of the story of David and Goliath, but I'll summarize it briefly. The Philistines were squared off against the Israelites. For 40 days their greatest champion, a man said to be over nine feet tall, came out and heckled the Israelite camp. The Israelites, including King Saul himself, were terrified of the hulking man. No one dared venture out to accept his challenge. A young teenager, David, was sent out by his father Jesse to check on his older brothers who were with the Israeli encampment. David sees all of these men cowering before this enemy and is disgusted: "26 And David said to the men who stood by him, "What shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?" (1 Samuel 17:26). David will not be cowed.
     It takes him a little while to convince King Saul to allow him to do battle with the Philistine, but when he finally does, David kills him with a rock and a sling and then decapitates him with Goliath's own giant sword. He had faith that his peoples' God would see him through to victory, despite his very obvious disadvantages.
     Allusions to this story in 1 Samuel appear in so many different areas of life: a local hardware store trying to compete with a brand name department store; a team like Jacksonville State beating Ol' Miss in football; the outnumbered and outgunned 13 colonies banding together and facing down the British Empire. All of these things are sometimes talked about as "David and Goliath stories," where there's an underdog that just doesn't have a chance, yet somehow manages to win out against nearly insurmountable odds. We love the underdog. We love to see Goliath humbled and brought low. Thanks to the story of the unwavering faith of David, we have something to call it when the underdog wins.

http://christianity.about.com/od/biblestorysummaries/p/davidandgoliath.htm

Where in the World is Jacob (Israel) San Diego?

     I've been laboring through Leviticus and Numbers. As someone who focuses quite often on the books of the Old Testament, I find Leviticus particularly tough to trudge through again. To ease my mind some, I decided to take a look back through the last part of Genesis. There, something caught my attention that never had before: Stephen and the writer of Genesis seem to be at odds with what became of Jacob's body. I became very interested in why Stephen would, during a passionate attempt to defend himself in front of the Sanhedrin, make the statement that Jacob was buried over 50 miles away from where Genesis said he was.
     The writer of Genesis clearly records that, having prepared himself for his approaching death, Jacob tells his sons to bury him in the place that his ancestor, Abraham, had purchased and used as a burial site: "Then he commanded them and said to them, "I am to be gathered to my people; bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field at Machpelah, to the east of Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite to possess as a burying place" (Gen 49:29-30). Machpelah is a small area just outside of the city of Hebron.

In Acts 7, however, Stephen seems to mention almost offhandedly that Jacob is buried in Shechem, not Hebron. While obviouly not the best quality in the world, this picture up above shows the distance from Hebron in the south, to Shechem in the north. I wondered to myself, "Is 50 miles really that big a difference when we're dealing with parts of the Bible written thousands of years apart?" Because of the specificity in which Jacob's death and burial are recorded in the Old Testament, I tend to see it as a glaring difference. I managed to find a couple different ideas of why Stephen would have made this "error."
     Stephen was an extremely learned man. He knew his Genesis, just as the members of the Sanhedrin knew theirs. Perhaps the most important aspect of this entire conundrum is that the Sanhedrin, a group of men who had brought charges against Stephen and were looking for a chance to find him in the wrong, didn't raise a single objection when Stephen got the burial site of one of the most important patriarchs of their society wrong by over 50 miles. Why? Everyone at this hearing was intimately knowledgeable of what Genesis had to say on the matter of Jacob's tomb, yet they said nothing. I agree with Kyle Butt in thinking that this only leaves us with two real options: either Stephen was right and his statements only seem to be mistakes to us, or Stephen was right and his statements were copied and handed down to us incorrectly.
     What follows next in my research is a lot of very complicated analysis of the original text in ancient Greek that I, who can't even manage my own English correctly most of the time, don't begin to fully understand. Luckily, I found some places that rather simplified the details. What's important is that there's a chance that the verbs used in the correct connotation meant that Stephen was referring to the loss of some of the other Israelite patriarchs and their burials in Shechem. It is, apparently, a known fact that Joseph was buried in Shechem, so this argument seems to hold some water. Some people even believe that the Jews in Stephen's day were so disgusted that the Samaritans (some of their most bitter rivals) had captured Shechem that they even went to the trouble of falsifying the text of the Old Testament to hide their shame; they didn't want to admit that some of their patriarchs were buried in what had become enemy territory.
     Butt's (and yes I laugh a little every time I write that word) description of what may have happened to the land that the tomb rested in is written better than I could possibly manage:

"We know that Abraham lived for a  time in the land of Shechem, even building an altar there (Genesis  12:5-6). We also know that Jacob went to Shechem and set up his tent  there about 185 years later (Genesis 33:18). Perhaps in the intervening  time period, the native people had taken back the land, and, rather than  fighting to reclaim what already was his, Jacob simply bought the land  back peaceably. Thus, the land would have been purchased twice—first  by Abraham, and then, almost two centuries later, by Jacob. This, too,  appears to be a logical reconciliation of the facts."

This would explain how Stephen's statement just seems to us to be in contradiction to Genesis, but isn't necessarily. As Mrs. Foster said in class, if the framers of the Bible had decided to include EVERY SINGLE detail about the events contained in the Bible, there wouldn't even be a way to bind that book together.

http://www.quora.com/Is-there-an-inconsistency-in-the-New-Testament-regarding-where-Abraham-was-buried
http://www.faithfirstmedia.com/apps/blog/show/2080305-jacob-s-family-tomb-a-contradiction-in-the-bible-
http://jewsforjudaism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=83:which-version-of-stephenss-acts-7-speech-is-correct&catid=53:disciples&Itemid=491

    

Why Miriam's Song is Important

A Woman's Touch: Why Miriam's Song is Important

 

 

    I confess that I have surprised myself with this particular blog. I read and re-read Exodus, wracking my brain for something to blog about. I asked other people, including my campus minister. What my brain eventually fell upon was something it must have overlooked some few dozen times: Miriam. Was I guilty of skipping over her just because she's a woman who, at first glance, seems to have little impact on the overall story of Moses and his people's subsequent mass exodus? I think, truthfully, the answer to that question is a reluctant "yes." Moreover, I'm going to go ahead and make the assumption that many others have been guilty of doing exactly the same thing. Why? What have we been missing by skipping over this woman's song and the dance she led?

     My first point is about as simple as it gets: the verses about Miriam's song exists: "Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing. And Miriam sang to them:
 “Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously;
 the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.”
(Exodus 15:20-21 ESV)

The simple fact that these two verses appear in Exodus gives us a reason to appreciate Miriam's import. In a book where it seems the only women who are discussed are those of great renown or infamy, the writer of Exodus takes the time to tell us of one woman, Aaron's sister, who picked up an instrument and led the other women in a triumphant dance.

    

 

     The reason, I believe, that many people skip over Miriam altogether, is that she makes many "conservative" Christians sort of uncomfortable; they're made uncomfortable because she's referred to as "a prophetess." Rather than look more closely at this passage, I think it's pretty common for them to skip over it, thus avoiding the possible "sticky" questions it could lead to.

     So why is it important that we're told Miriam and the other women band together and sing a song consisting of nearly the exact same words found in Moses' song earlier in the chapter? Robert Van Kooten has, in my opinion, an excellent answer for that question: the Israelites have just truly earned their freedom! Though their suffering has been great and, we learn a little later, is by no means over, they are slaves no more. The protagonist has set the events in motion that would lead them out. All of these events can sort of be tracked by the life of Miriam herself. Years before, she had stood on the banks of the Nile watched Moses floating off in his tiny basket. She has then had to live through her people's extreme oppression then, with overflowing joy, once again stands on a bank beside water, but this time it's the banks of the Red Sea and she is exalting her God for leading His people out of Egypt. The Israelites' plight, hope, and salvation, as it were, can all by mirrored by Miriam's own life.

     Miriam's very name means "bitterness." She has suffered through some of the worst times in the Israelites' enslavement. It's partly through her keeping an eye on Moses and taking a stake in what would become of him that hope for her people even exists and eventually is realized.

     It's also through Miriam that we are reminded that the men were not alone in their sufferings, their endeavors, or their redemption in breaking out of their bondage. An entire nation of women were present for all these things too and, if we're being honest, the reason they're not mentioned as often in Exodus is likely that they didn't complain nearly as much.


http://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/2744/jewish/Miriams-Song.htm
http://www.kerux.com/documents/keruxv16n3a4.htm
http://www.jewishgiftplace.com/Miriams-Cup.html

    

Why Did God Limit Our Days to 43,830?

     I've read through the Old Testament several times. In fact, I'm one of the few people I know that's my age that doesn't almost always skip over it and go straight to the "good stuff." Several times I've noticed that God is so fed up with humans and their shenanigans that He decides to tighten up the reins on their mortality. The Census Bureau projects that the average lifespan of an American born in 2010 will be 78.3 years. Since 1970, that number has increased by nearly 8. As we make leaps in medicine, technology, and our understanding of total nutrition, we can see marked increases in our longevity. The Bible tells us, however, that our years on Earth are paltry when compared to those during the infancy of the world. Methuselah lived to the ripe old age of 969. Heck, he was 187 before he had his first son, Lamech. That leaves us all with a very obvious question: what happened? Why did God choose to so drastically shorten the lifespan of humankind?
     We are told of God's decision to cut our years short in Genesis 6:3:"Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.”
     Interestingly, there is some debate as to what God really meant by these words. Some scholars seem to think that God was actually letting mankind know how long it was going to be until He unleashed His wrath on them by flooding the Earth. The theory is that He was basically saying, "Hey, guys. None of y'all are going to live more than 120 more years. Not unless you're lucky enough to be on this huge boat I've got in mind."
     From what I can gather, there seems to be a pretty good argument for refuting this theory: we are told that Noah was 500 when God made the decision to limit man's days. We are also informed that Noah was 600 years old when the Earth was covered in water: "Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth" (Genesis 7:6 ESV). Since this gives us only 100 years to work with and not 120, it seems pretty plausible that God was referring to man's actual lifespan.
     It seems to take a little while for the limitations to take effect. After the flood, the patriarchs of Genesis slowly begin to live shorter and shorter lives. Jacob, the father of what would come to be known as Israel, is the last person that we are told lives to be 120:

     I think part of the reasoning for shortening the time of each person on the Earth was pretty simple. Man had shown God that he was capable of much wrongdoing over the course of 800 or so years; if you decrease the amount of time he's on the Earth, you decrease how much time he has to do bad things. Murder, while perhaps not being "rampant" yet, had already been committed at least twice that we are told of, once by Cain and once by Lamech. Lamech's justification might even have been weaker when compared to Cain's jealousy of Abel and the favor Abel's sacrifice has found in God's eyes: " Lamech said to his wives:
 “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
  you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
 I have killed a man for wounding me,
  a young man for striking me"
(Genesis 4:23 ESV).
A man hit Lamech, so Lamech kills him. Done. God says that one basic theme was running through the heart of nearly everyone on Earth: evil. The Father is apparently so grieved that He says He is sorry He ever made man in the first place.
     It is very interesting to note that this part of the Bible was written down millenia ago; science was virtually non-existent then, yet take a look at the oldest recorded people. With the possibility of only one exception, Jeanne Calment (who died at age 122), the longest people manage to live only hovers just shy of 120. If nothing else about God's pronouncement of limiting our days piques your interest, that should.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people
http://www.biblestudy.org/maps/life-span-of-bible-patriarchs-before-after-the-flood.html
http://www.totalhormonegenetherapy.com/downloads/OurMission.pdf
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0104.pdf