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The Last Weeks

It was a long journey, but we stuck with it! I wasn’t sure if this was going to happen, to be honest. We began 2008 with about a dozen people, and I thought that probably only 8-10 of us would be meeting together on this last Wednesday night of the year. You blew me away! Our last class session had nearly 35 people in it! If my records are right, about 18 of you completed your reading, and it was the first time for  about ten of you! Congratulations!

We’re moving on from this class to begin a new one on January 14th. In it we’ll overview the Gospel of John for 20 weeks. I hope that you’ll join us.

Here are our last few weeks of materials. It is my hope and prayer that they will be beneficial to you as you continue your study of God’s word.

  1. Week 49: The Early Work of the Church
  1. Early Work of the Church PowerPoint Presentation
  2. Catch-up Handout Covering Weeks 47-49 (Crucifixion through Acts)
  • Week 50: Answering Hard Questions
    1. Many of you asked some doozies in the past few weeks as we’ve studied the epistles. These are Matthew’s thoughts on answering them fairly in the light of scripture.
    2. Hard Questions PDF
    3. PowerPoint overview of Romans
  • Week 51: Charlie Dauphin taught in Matthew’s absence: no files.
  • Week 52: Timothy, Titus, and Jude
    1. PowerPoint overview of the Pastoral Epistles
  • Week 53: Revelation and Peter
    1. Schools of Interpretation in Revelation
    2. Overview of the Last Things
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    Week 47: The Death of Jesus

    We didn’t get to meet as a class this week because of the presentation from Arnold about the work in Haiti, but I’ve prepared materials anyway, and I hope you can benefit from them.

    Also, if you didn’t get to hear Arnold’s presentation, I hope you’ll go over to the Burns Website. You can view his powerpoint and listen to his lesson there.

    This week’s PowerPoint Presentation

    Journal of the American Medical Association: On the Physical Death of Jesus

    New: This week, I took the PowerPoint and “lecture” portion of class and combined them. Even if you’re on dial-up, you should be able to listen to the class notes and view the slides in sync. Give this a try and let me know! :) Class Presentation on the Death of Jesus.

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    Week 46: The Parables of Jesus

    Parables, you know, those “earthly stories with a heavenly meaning.” Sometimes they’re simple; sometimes they aren’t.

    This week, we attempted to go through every parable of Jesus and extract a simple meaning. Good luck to you!

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    Week 45: What did Jesus teach?

    It’s interesting the broad-level knowledge that people have — or don’t have — about the teachings of Jesus. I asked each member of the class to rank the top three emphases of Jesus’ teachings — and no two people described the same things.

    Enjoy a powerpoint and handout from the teachings of Jesus.

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    Week 44: The ministry of Jesus

    It’s hard to narrow down a week of reading like we just shared. We covered the birth of Jesus, his temptation, the calling of the apostles, his first miracles, the sermon on the mount, and his first encounters with serious opposition.

    Two handouts this week:

     

    High Points of the Ministry of Jesus PowerPoint

    Jesus Ministry Begins Word Document

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    Week 43: Beginning of the New Testament

    This week’s study introduces the New Testament, the apocrypha (deuterocanonical writings) and the inter-testamental period.

    When Jesus arrives — it’s a big deal!

    This week’s files are zipped to include several links for further study as well as the powerpoint introduction to the new testament and a handout offering some possibilities for understanding the genealogies in Matthew and Luke.

    Enjoy!

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    Week 42: The end of an era

    This is our final week of Old Testament studies. I hope you’ve found this to be as encouraging and enlightening as I have! We crack open the door to information about the intertestamental period this week, and look at the last words of the prophets.

    (Aside: Does anyone else get really annoyed that Microsoft Word’s built-in spelling dictionary doesn’t have the books of the Bible? Would that be so hard???)

    Week 42 PowerPoint Presentation

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    Week 41: Esther and Malachi

    This week’s material covered Esther and Malachi. Esther is (in)famous for it’s avoidance of the Divine name and references to luck (lots). It’s no surprise that aporcyphal writings include a little extra material to “sanitize” the book!

    Malachi is one of the great questioners of all time–and his retelling of God’s questions for man and man’s questions for God serves as an excellent spiritual check-up list for any of us.

    Here’s this week’s PowerPoint.

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    Week 40 Files

    Week 40 files from our discussion.

    Apocalypse Now, an essay by N.T. Wright about apocalyptic literature in the Bible.

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    Week 39: Little Big Horn — and Other Visions of Daniel

    Admittedly, this is not my favorite portion of scripture. To compensate for my lack of knowledge in the nuances of different interpretations of Daniel’s (crazy) visions, this week’s lesson PowerPoint is a compilation of links to sites — some of which I agree with, some of which I don’t, that offer explanations and clarifications of these prophecies. I hope that you’ll continue to study–and if you come up with a coherent interpretation of these passages–will you share them with me in the comments?

    Week 39 PowerPoint: Visions of Daniel and the end of Job