Skip to main content

"....I will build my church."

Submitted by Sunset Alumni on Thu, 11/17/2011 - 00:32 from Omar and Tana Palafox, View Original Posting
 La Libertad Church and their fellowship time

If we could imagine hearing this: "God bless you, Simon, son of Jonah! You didn't get that answer out of books or from teachers. My Father in heaven, God himself, let you in on this secret of who I really am. And now I'm going to tell you who you are, really are. You are Peter, a rock. This is the rock on which I will put together my church, a church so expansive with energy that not even the gates of hell will be able to keep it out" 

This article is from reprinted Omar and Tana Palafox. Please see original for comments.

Popular Topics
more tags

Faculty Articles

January 19 – Day One – Jaffa

Submitted by Sunset Alumni on Sat, 01/14/2012 - 15:42 from Lanny Partain, View Original Posting

After spending the night in the lovely Dan Panorama Hotel in Tel Aviv, we will begin our day in near-by Jaffa, the modern location of the ancient Biblical city of Joppa.

Key Biblical events:

1. The entry point for the Cedars of Lebanon that were floated down the Mediterranean for both the first and second Temple. 2 Chronicles 2:16 and Ezra 3:7

2. The place Jonah went to board a ship headed for Tarshish when God asked him to go in the opposite direction to Nineveh. Jonah 1:3

This article is from reprinted Lanny Partain. Please see original for comments.

January 19 - Day One Stop 2 - Caesarea Maritima (Caesarea by the Sea)

Submitted by Sunset Alumni on Sat, 01/14/2012 - 15:41 from Lanny Partain, View Original Posting

Lanny’s Pictures

Herod the (not so) Great, a descendent of Esau, was appointed by the Roman Senate to be King of Judea. His number one job was to keep Caesar happy and to that end he built Caesarea Maritima, naming it in honor of his benefactor Augustus. He started building it about 22 BC and completed it around 9 BC.

The city was a center for Roman administration and offered Roman amenities such as a theatre, a sea wall, harbor, hippodrome, bath houses, a palace for Herod, and a governor’s palace. The city was built with underground sewer systems.

There was very little fresh water since there was little to no rainfall. Therefore, Herod erected a raised aqueduct (which we will see) that ran for 8 miles transporting fresh water from the natural springs on Mt. Carmel to the city.

This article is from reprinted Lanny Partain. Please see original for comments.

January 19 - Day One Stop 3 – Carmel el-Machraqah

Submitted by Sunset Alumni on Sat, 01/14/2012 - 15:40 from Lanny Partain, View Original Posting

Before leaving Caesarea, here is an interesting video of a reconstruction of what the city looked like when Herod completed building it.

And now we are off to Carmel to confront the false prophets of Baal.

Lanny’s Pictures of Carmel

Carmel is a mountain range. The name is from two Hebrew words: El for God and karm for vineyard, thus “God’s Vineyard.”

I Samuel 15:12 – Samuel went to find Saul and was told that he had gone to Carmel to set up a monument to himself.

I Samuel 25:40 – Abigail, who talked David out of killing her ill-tempered husband after Nabal insulted David, and later became David’s wife after Nabal died, lived at Carmel.

This article is from reprinted Lanny Partain. Please see original for comments.

January 20 – Day 2 - stop 2 – Megiddo

Submitted by Sunset Alumni on Sat, 01/14/2012 - 15:37 from Lanny Partain, View Original Posting

Lanny’s pictures

Tour Guide describing a scale model of Megiddo

Wikipedia article on Megiddo

We gather now on a hill (“har”) named Migiddo (Har-Magedon; Armageddon) that seems to be the place John envisioned in Revelation 16:12-16 as the site of the final conflict. It is certainly a fitting symbol of such an event since it is the scene of over 100 significant battles.

Originally occupied by the Canaanites 5,000 years ago, it has been the battle ground of Pharaoh Thutmose III of Egypt, Joshua, Jehu, Deborah, Solomon, Shishak of Egypt, Pharaoh Neco, Christian Crusaders, Napoleon Bonaparte, and, in this century, General Allenby as he drove out the Turks, to name a few.

This article is from reprinted Lanny Partain. Please see original for comments.

January 20 – Day 2 - stop 1 - Bet She’an (Greek name = Scythopolis)

Submitted by Sunset Alumni on Sat, 01/14/2012 - 15:37 from Lanny Partain, View Original Posting

Lanny’s Pictures

Scythopolis (Bet She’an) was one of the 10 cities that formed the Greek Decapolis. They were grouped together because of their language, culture, location, and political status. The Decapolis cities in Jesus’ time were centers of Greek and Roman culture in a region that was otherwise Semitic. The original city may be as much as 7,000 years old. It has been conquered and re-conquered many times.

Matthew 4:25, Mark 5:20, and Mark 7:31 make reference to the Decapolis region in relation to Jesus’ ministry. Jesus probably had more contact with Gentiles in these areas than anywhere He went. This would account for the herd of pigs being present that Jesus sent the evil spirit Legion into (Mark 5) since Jews would not have been raising them.

Joshua 17:26 Bet She’an was inhabited by the Canaanites that Manasseh failed to drive out.

This article is from reprinted Lanny Partain. Please see original for comments.

All Faculty Articles

Alumni Articles

His Glory is revealed in us

Submitted by Sunset Alumni on Thu, 01/26/2012 - 01:59 from Omar and Tana Palafox, View Original Posting
"Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed."
1 Peter 4:12-13

This article is from reprinted Omar and Tana Palafox. Please see original for comments.

Major Themes in the Minor Prophets, part next.

Submitted by Sunset Alumni on Wed, 01/25/2012 - 15:14 from Zack Blaisdell, View Original Posting

Greetings one and all! I figured I better get back to my blog series I’ve been working on.

I am now considering The Missional Church series closed now. We’ll continue with the others.

In Major Themes in the Minor Prophets, we’ll next look at Jonah. I have blogged about the book of Jonah in the past.  So what I’m about to say may or may not have been said before.

Jonah was a prophet. God comes to him and commands him to go to Nineveh and speak against them. Nineveh??!! Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria, the chief enemy of Israel. Jonah didn’t want to go there.

So he boards a ship going in the opposite direction. He got on a ship going to Tarshish to try to escape from Jehovah (as if that was ever possible).

As they were going, Jonah goes to the bottom of the ship and goes to sleep. In the mean time, Jehovah sends a serious storm. The other men sailing with Jonah begin calling on their deities to deliver them from this storm. They go and get Jonah to call upon his deity. Nothing is working.

This article is from reprinted Zack Blaisdell. Please see original for comments.

About Joe Paterno

Submitted by Sunset Alumni on Tue, 01/24/2012 - 22:21 from Zack Blaisdell, View Original Posting

Greetings everyone!

One of the biggest news items from the sports world is the passing of Joe Paterno, the fired long time coach at Penn State. A lot of people on ESPN have been debating on what Paterno’s legacy will be. He coached at the school for forty-six years. But no doubt the child sex abuse scandal that was going on during Paterno’s coaching tenure will be there too. And that’s all so sad to me.

I would hope that people will remember his long tenure, that he won the right way, he made sure his players graduated, and more. But this scandal will be a cloud over his legacy.

I’ve said this before, but will say it again. I think Paterno should have been fired when he did, because all of that happened during his watch. But all the other things that were done to him and said of him is, in my opinion, completely unwarranted.

This article is from reprinted Zack Blaisdell. Please see original for comments.

Punch at the Potluck

Submitted by Sunset Alumni on Mon, 01/23/2012 - 20:43 from Nick Perez, View Original Posting

People fight all the time. Turn on the TV and one will hear about the latest fight between a celebrity couple. Tune into the news and one will hear about violence all over. When people get upset they usually settle it with hostility. What happens when that hostility finds its way into the church? Although it is difficult to pinpoint all the details, it seems evident that the saints to whom James wrote were coming to blows regularly. Imagine that – here are people who are to pursue peace and reap a “harvest of righteousness” that is “sown in peace by those who make peace” (3.18). Yet among these brethren who should have been peaceable, “fights” and “quarrels” were breaking out, possibly in the assembly (2.2). Two thousand down the stream of time we might look down upon our brethren. But how many church league softball fistfights have broken out or, worse, were instigated by our hands? Into this calamity, quarreling, and fisticuffs, James speaks a better word, indeed, the Word of God

James 4:1–12 (ESV)

1What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you?

This article is from reprinted Nick Perez. Please see original for comments.

Missionary/Actor

Submitted by Sunset Alumni on Mon, 01/23/2012 - 20:31 from Brandon and Katie Price, View Original Posting

My teammates and I share a lot of emails from day to day. Most of the time they’re work-related, but sometimes they’re offers for acting jobs:

Hey I just got a phone call from a representative of a company who is trying to do a professional advertisement. They need someone to play the part of a foreign CEO or business manager for their ad. The shoot will only take one hour, next Wednesday the 25th at 3pm. They will even pay you $50 for your time.

Apparently this Kharkov-based company had found David’s number online from one of our English events. They gave him a call and offered him the part, but since he had plans he couldn’t change he gave them my number and forwarded the rest of us the email. Though it’s illegal for us to earn money with the visas we have, I went ahead and called to find out more information just to see what this whole thing was about.

The lady told me they were shooting a video testimony to put on their business’ website which specializes in search engine optimization. I would come in and play the part of a foreign CEO by reading some dialogue about how happy I was that I chose to go with this company.

This article is from reprinted Brandon and Katie Price. Please see original for comments.

Donate

Email Alerts

If you would like to receive email notices regarding the content on this site, you can see the links at the bottom of any article or you can manage your subscriptions at My Account. Just click on the tab at the top called "Subscriptions".

Most of the content on the site is of the content type Feed Item and Blog. You can also subscribe to specific authors or categories.

Chapel Podcast

Subscribe using any podcast client:
Podcast (general)

Subscribe using iTunes:
Podcast (iTunes)
Watch Chapel Live 8:35am


Lifeline

Lifeline

Sign-up to receive Lifeline over the internet, instead of by postal mail. Also, choose to receive a monthly update via Lifeline Online

Facebook