reopening the gates

Archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority have unearthed the largest city gate ever discovered in the Holy Land at the Tel Lachish National Park. Lachish was one of the most important cities in Judea after the capital city of Jerusalem. The newly discovered city gate goes back to the time of King Hezekiah, one of the few good kings in Israel after the time of David and Solomon. The courts around the city gate is where much of the civic activity took place - complete with judges, officials, and governors who would sit on benches and conduct important business in the surrounding  chambers.

"Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise"   - Psalm 100

"Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates, behold the King of Glory waits ... "  - LSB 340

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rainbow at the sem

en gedi scroll

Just off the western shore of the Dead Sea, north of the rock fortress of Masada and south of the Essene community of Qumran, lies a small oasis in the midst of the Judean desert called En Gedi. This is where David hid out from King Saul's men who were seeking to take his life. This is the place Solomon writes about, "the vineyards of En Gedi", in the biblical love letter, the Song of Songs. And this is the location of an ancient desert community, where people seeking refuge lived and where a Jewish synagogue was located. It was here, along with the cloister of Qumran, where Essene scribes made copies of the Hebrew Old Testament for use in their synagogues.

The Jews would read from the Torah (the first five books of Moses) every time they would meet in the synagogue. They had a whole system of readings, like our lectionary system today, which would cover the entire Torah every year or every 3 years. The scrolls at En Gedi would have been used for these readings.



Fast forward to 1970 when a portion of a scroll from Leviticus, named the En Gedi Scroll, was found by archaeologists amid the ruins of an ancient synagogue. The scroll had been burned due to a fire in the synagogue, making it illegible and so fragile that it would disintegrate if touched. It was therefore unable to be studied, but thankfully was preserved for safe keeping.

This is the oldest scroll ever discovered in its original location in an ark in a synagogue. The synagogue fire was in the 6th century, but the scroll itself could be much older, even dating back to the 1st century or the the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Today the technology is finally here to allow researchers to read the ancient scroll. It's called micro-computed tomography, which is basically a micro CT scan that can read the location of the ink and then reconstruct the text of the document. Truly amazing.



And even more amazing is how God continues to keep and preserve His Word today through the church by the power of the Holy Spirit.

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and a happy 100th to missouri state parks as well ...

To celebrate the 100th birthday of Missouri State Parks, here are a few pics of my favorite park, Ha Ha Tonka.

happy 100th to our national parks

To celebrate the 100th birthday of our National Parks, here are a few pics of my favorite park (Glacier) along with some of my favorite people. 

prayer as gift

"Every time I try to turn my prayer life around on my own, I tend to run out of steam. But over the years I have learned a different story from the Scriptures. Little by little, God the Father has used the school of hard knocks to join me with Jesus in prayer and to rely on the Holy Spirit for my spiritual life rather than on my own resources. So now I no longer regard prayer as an obligation or as a duty that I must fulfill, but as something that is given to me, something that I receive as a gift from the triune God." - Dr. John Kleinig

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scripture interprets scripture

"The entire system of dispensational millenialism is designed in such a way that you can look at current events and then go to specific instances in Scripture to try and find fulfillment. The very fact that you're looking at the Bible in this way means that you're majoring on the minors. You begin thinking more like Nostradamus than a historical reformation Christian, as you look up all these verses to prove that what's going on in the news everyday is actually predicted in Scripture. You end up doing your Bible interpretation totally bass-ackwards - seeing something on the news that you can't explain and then going to some obscure passage in Ezekiel, Jeremiah, or one of the minor prophets to explain it. Instead, we should allow Scripture to interpret Scripture, and interpret the cloudy passages with the ones that are clear."  -  Dr. Kim Riddlebarger

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