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)

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

1. PowerPoint overview of the Pastoral Epistles

1. Schools of Interpretation in Revelation
2. Overview of the Last Things

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.

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!

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.

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