Love Truth Blog

Today is December 21, 2012. My guess is if you can read this the whole global meltdown has not happened and…well…this is one more false prediction of the worlds end that never panned out. It really can cone to no surprise in that such prognostications are wrong 100% of the time. All the hype surrounded speculations made about the Mayan Long Count calendar, which ends a “Great Cycle” lasting 5125.36 years, which was one of several ways those ancient Mesoamericans reckoned time, the others being the Haab , the Lords of the Night, and the Tzolk’in [1]. Did the ancient Mayan culture that flourished in Central America between AD250 and AD800 really have anything to say about the twenty-first century? Unlikely! The equating of the completion of the “Great Cycle” with the end of the world is a “modern invention” and whatever the Maya believed about the future, they expected life to go on pretty much the same forever [2]. Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the ...

December 8 to December 16, according to Jewish reckoning, marks to eight day timeframe of Hanukkah for the year 2012, which is also called the Feast of Dedication. It is a festival of lights for each day a candle is lit upon a menorah the cleansing of the temple after it had been defiled by Antiochus IV “Epiphanes” in the second century BC. According to Jewish tradition, while the temple was being restored, only a single day’s worth of sacred oil was found to keep the menorah burning, and none would be available for another eight days, but miraculously the sacred oil kept the flames burning for eight days. Hanukkah is above all things a time of remembering Yahweh’s faithfulness to His people. How did all of this come about? Solomon built the first temple to the Lord (1 Kings 6:1-38; 7:13-9:9, the glory of the Lord filled the place (2 Chron. 7:1-3), but in time the people sinned, the glory of the Lord departed (Ezek. 10:1-22), and in 586 BC Solomon’s temple was des...

Joel’s statement “rend your heart not your garment” (Joel 2:13) is to be understood within the larger context of prophet’s call to repentance. It is an exhortation to turn from sin and recommit oneself to the worship of Yahweh. The tearing of one’s own garment served to be an outward sign of repentance; however, Joel conveys that Yahweh was looking to the heart. The external symbol meant nothing without a genuinely contrite heart. The urgency of the call to repentance could not be understated by the prophet, for all had been spoken in view of a coming terrible visitation of the Lord, which would bring about a divine judgment liken to the desolation of a swarm of locust. Joel says, “What the gnawing locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten; And what the swarming locust has left, the creeping locust has eaten; And what the creeping locust has left, the stripping locust has eaten” (Joel 1:4). The prophet then warns: “Blow a trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm on My holy mount...