Nehemiah came in to a dispirited land and brought about a seemingly unanimous decision to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Even Jews as far away as Gibeon and Mizpah came to assist in the rebuilding, though some were more dedicated than others. Even what little some may do is made more difficult by a famine in the land. Sanballat, a Samaritan, prepares to launch an attack on the Jews who are rebuilding the temple, but the plan is discovered. The rebuilding is interrupted, and Nehemiah sets up a p...
Mar 17, 2012•38 min
Nehemiah comes to Jerusalem and evaluates the work to be done but does not immediately tell anyone of his plans. When confronted about the rebuilding of the temple, Nehemiah tells his critics that God will restore the Jews to Jerusalem. It is when Nehemiah begins this rebuilding that Daniel's messianic prophecy of seventy weeks of years begins. Nehemiah is known for his intercession, an important facet of leadership.
Mar 10, 2012•28 min
Nehemiah came to prominence as a leader of the Jews 13 years after Ezra's time. Powerful men had taken issue with Ezra rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, which had contributed to a decline of Ezra's influence. Nehemiah, cup bearer to Artaxerxes, pleads to the king to rebuild Jerusalem, since Judah's neighbors were exploiting the unprotected nature of the city. Artaxerxes agrees, perhaps believing that having a friendly leader in Judah would protect him from his enemies.
Mar 03, 2012•53 min
Ezra has a meeting with some of the leaders of the group returning to Israel where they discuss the plans for the return and take a tally of some of the gifts they are bringing with them. It is with this group that Ezra would later meet and discuss the fact that many of the people had returned married to people who were practicing a pagan worship. Ezra declared that these marriages with people who were actively worshiping foreign gods could not stand.
Feb 25, 2012•37 min
Ezra was a priestly scribe of some import in the Jewish community in exile who was moved to bring his people back to the law. He comes to Israel in the seventh year in the reign of Artaxerxes I, 60 years after the completion of the temple. The Persian empire makes special provisions for the Jewish faith and for Ezra in particular. As God's people, the Jews are called to be consecrated and separated, not adulterated by people of other religions. As such, no foreign wives may be taken by the Jews,...
Feb 18, 2012•45 min
Zec 4:6-10 tells Zerubbabel that he will restore the temple, but by God's power, not by his own. The people of the lands around Israel attempted to frustrate or co-opt this building of the temple for the with their own worship. This harassment would go on in some form for around 70 years. Playing on the fears of the Persians, they were able to halt construction on occasion, but God shepherded the rebuilding of His temple and it was eventually completed.
Feb 11, 2012•46 min
Paramount importance was placed on creating an altar to God, as Moses had commanded of the original altar. This is appropriate, since sacrifice is the Old Testament way that sinful men can approach a holy God. These sacrifices are ways that men would pray that God would remember the covenant.
Feb 04, 2012•35 min
The book of Ezra continues with the story of the people separated (or set aside) for God, starting with a census. Some were not able to prove their lineage, and were given a separate designation. Professed priests who fell into this category were excluded as unclean until the Urim and Thummim could be consulted. These people came back to a dry, desolate land with high ideals and many gifts for the restoration of the land, but they would be called to a greater purity than many were prepared to un...
Jan 28, 2012•27 min
The books of Ezra and Nehemiah mark the greatest reform of God's people in the Old Testament. God gave the law to Moses, a temple and kingdom to the Israelites, and prophets to proclaim that the people would be carried into captivity if they were not faithful. The people remained lukewarm, and were carried off to Babylon. In the Babylonian captivity, we see the Israelites become the Jewish people, and they restore the land starting in 538 with the great decree of the Persian king Cyrus that the ...
Jan 21, 2012•53 min
Central to the incarnation is the fact that it is a great act of humbling God's self. The God of the universe exists outside of time and space, and knows the incarnation, the passion, and even the fall of Adam before creation. It is humbling in the extreme to know that we were created even knowing the fall would come.
Jan 14, 2012•29 min
Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, united in something called a hypostatic union. Some have called into doubt just how much He knew about His divinity at different points in His life on Earth, but it is clear that Jesus knew from earliest times that He is God. He knew that He should be about His father's business in the temple, He proclaimed Himself as the Son of God, not as an adopted sonship, but as a natural son. His opponents used the very same statements to condemn Him, stating that H...
Jan 07, 2012•51 min
Melchizedek is an impressive priest. He blesses Abraham, which implies that even father Abraham is inferior to him. This is an order that would be described as hieros, rather than the usual term used in the New Testament, presbuteros, and coms not by descent from Levi, but is an order that allows sacrifice to be offered from the rising of the sun to its setting.
Dec 31, 2011•35 min
All of the Bible leads to the conclusion that God will come to be with us, but sin separates us from God. Sometimes we are tempted to downplay our sin, but that downplays God's holiness. We see God's holiness overpower many people in the Bible. We also see that the Messiah is prophesied to have a priestly role, who will finally end sin by sacrifice of Himself, and that He would come in what we call now the first century AD. The Messiah, however, need not be a Levitical priest, but as we know, is...
Dec 24, 2011•46 min
We can be confident that God will save us if we call on His name, but salvation is a process, and is not a magical proclamation that assures us Heaven no matter how wicked we are in this life. We must rejoice in our hope and in our sufferings, and know that to the extent that we cooperate with God's grace, we are rewarded in the next life.
Dec 17, 2011•46 min
Throughout all of biblical history, God has rewarded those who hope in Him. There are those who will deny the action of God in their lives, even as the Hebrews ignored the explicit miracles they saw in the times of the Exodus, but those who have a fear of the Lord or who have an expectation the Lord's grace in the world are praised in the Bible.
Dec 10, 2011•29 min
In 2 Sam 7, David seeks to make a house for the Lord, but God declares that He will establish a house for Israel, a promise fulfilled in Christ. Isaiah 7-12 concerns a prophecy to King Ahaz. A virgin or young woman will bear a son, and call him Immanuel, or God with us. This may have been a double prophecy, with multiple meanings, but it is clear that by the time of the translation of the Septuagint, the woman was considered to be a virgin. This is a promised heir to the throne of David.
Dec 03, 2011•40 min
On Jacob's deathbed, he declares that Judah is the tribe from which a king will come. Similarly, Balaam prophesies that a king would come out of Jacob. Jer 31:31 prophesies a new covenant, and Isaiah prophesies a suffering servant whose life points to Christ. There are several covenants, those of creation, conscience, Noah, Abraham, the law, David, and the new covenant of Christ, each building on the other. God has been willing to come to man and be intimately with us, as the word immanuel, God ...
Nov 26, 2011•28 min
God promises to Abraham that through him, all the nations will bless themselves. God is so involved with man that He will even send an angel to wrestle with man, as Jacob does. We are told to not be unclean, and God will welcome us. Through this time, we can see many Christophanies in the Old Testament: Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, his chosen son, Melchizedek, the priest who offers sacrifice of bread and wine, the 3000 who died at the giving of the law prefiguring the 3000 saved at Pentecost. I...
Nov 19, 2011•41 min
Here begins a sweeping overview of salvation history.God created man because of love. God wants a relation with man, and man gropes after God. Prov 8:17 says that those who seek God diligently find Him, and Hebrews says something very similar. Sin clouds our minds, but even in Genesis 3, God promises an end to this state. In the very next chapter, the sin of eating the fruit has become murder.
Nov 12, 2011•37 min
From the Rochester NY Chesterton Society's 8th Annual Conference, Dale Ahlquist (President, American Chesterton Society) talks about the end of the world and how it factors into the world that God has created, a world of justice and peace, and a world that will undergo a revolution to conform it to God's plan. We must use our free will to be a part of this plan. Whether or not you agree with every point touched on here, you will find this talk timely, provocative, and stimulating. Visit the Roch...
Nov 05, 2011•44 min
In this recording from the 2011 Rochester NY Chesterton Conference, Hilaire Belloc (played by Kevin O'Brien) takes a sweeping overview of Christian history with a look at what he conceptualized as the five major heresies. Arianism, one of the earliest great heresies, claims that Jesus was not God but a creature. St. Athanasius and some military victories dealt a blow to the heresy, but so did the rise of Islam. Mohammedanism began as a heresy, as an oversimplified version of Catholicism, which d...
Oct 29, 2011•52 min
The Church can be divided into three parts: the Church Militant on Earth, the Church Triumphant in Heaven, and the Church Suffering in Purgatory. All parts of the Church are ceaselessly praying for each other, and it is through this prayer that God has chosen to place the vitality of the Church.
Oct 22, 2011•40 min
Through the saving power of Jesus Christ, death has been turned from a curse into a blessing. It is important to emphasize that this is indeed a blessing and not simply a lack of curse. In Christ, we will have communion with all others who are in Christ. We must therefore pray for our brethren and pray for those who are in Purgatory. Never fear to pray for a lost cause, as no prayer is ever wasted. Likewise, we must share the gifts that God has given us one with another, for what charity we give...
Oct 15, 2011•41 min
The majority of the church fathers are of the opinion that more people, indeed more people claiming to be Christian, will be damned than saved. There is a minority who hold an opposing opinion. As overly-optimistic visions of Hell are not particularly helpful, so too are hellfire speeches which luridly describe the punishments of Hell are not useful. Prayer, however, is never wasted.
Oct 08, 2011•31 min
There was a theory expounded by Origen, among others, that all would be saved, in some theories extending even to the Devil. While the Church has never officially ruled out the more moderate versions of this theory, the clear language of the Bible is very difficult to square with this belief. Still, we do not know what God knows, and there is no reason not to pray that we might have hope for salvation for any particular soul, or for souls in general.
Oct 01, 2011•31 min
Hell is not a pleasant subject, and some religions try to explain it away or ignore it entirely. How could a loving God commit any of his creation to unquenchable fire? The answer is that we choose it ourselves. The damned have physical bodies, because the body helped commit the sins that damned the soul, so should the body participate in the punishment. Thus, we must take care to instruct our bodies to be virtuous, not corrupted by sin.
Sep 24, 2011•49 min
God cannot be seen as He is unless He allows Himself to be seen, which is termed the beatific vision. This is an unapproachable light (1 Tim 6:16), but we expect to see face to face in Heaven (1 Cor 13:12, Ps 17:15). The Catechism also tells us that we will reign in heaven, though obviously not over God, and this implies that Heaven is not a static place. Rev 22, even taken literally, tells us that Heaven will be an immense place, a place that cannot be on Earth as it is, and Rev 21 tells us tha...
Sep 17, 2011•47 min
Despite the physicality of Heaven, we cannot expect carnality or a fleshliness there. 1 Cor 13:12 tells us that we will be face to face with God, and there cannot be any attachment to anything else when we are. Rev 22 tells us that we will have His name inscribed on our foreheads, such will be the communion with the Trinity in Heaven. Section 1024f of the Catechism tells us that there will be many in Heaven, but it will not be to lose our identity to a corporate body. This does not means that th...
Sep 10, 2011•25 min
Benedict XII tells us that those who have died and have been purified or are not in need of purification are in Heaven, even before the resurrection. This is a place of surpassing beauty and where we will be in a union of love with God without any mediation. We must still be resurrected on the last day, since we were created to be a union of body and spirit, but Heaven is still a timeless part of our progress into our eternal reward. We know that there is some bodily component to Heaven, as some...
Sep 03, 2011•29 min
Rev 21:27 says that nothing unclean shall enter Heaven, which is why it is necessary that there be a place where we are purified before we enter Heaven. 2 Maccabees explains that there must be a place, as there would be no sense in offering prayers for the dead otherwise. The Catechism, in section 1030ff, explains much about the doctrine of Purgatory. In Matt 12:31f, Jesus states that some things may be forgiven in the age to come, again providing evidence of forgiveness in the next life. Again,...
Aug 27, 2011•45 min
