Hey, Girls! Just a little something fun to get you flipping through your Bibles if you like this kind of thing! You can also check different Bible-search websites like Bible Gateway to do key word searches. Below you will find 10 questions. Answer each question in your own words AND, below it, write out the entire Bible verse where you found the answer. Needless to say, don’t read any of the comments before you search for your answers! Tickled. It would be a little unseemly to cheat at our Bible study game. Have fun!!!!

 

1. What king in the Old Testament saw the fingers of a human hand suddenly appear and inscribe to him a message on the wall? What were the four words written on the wall?

2. Who were Uz and Buz?

3. Who in Scripture uses the metaphor of daughters compared to pillars in a palace? What metaphor is used for sons?

4. What did Zechariah, the husband of Elizabeth, write on a tablet and what happened after he wrote it?

5. What verse talks about God’s “everlasting arms” and what is He called in the verse?

6. What extraordinary thing happened on the island of Malta in the New Testament?

7. In the same set of Scriptures you used for #6, what two erroneous assumptions did the islanders make about the Apostle Paul? (Hint: you’ll see that they changed their minds about their first conclusion.)

8. What Old Testament prophet was picked up by a lock of his hair and where was he suspended?

9. What was the context surrounding the man who testified to Jesus that he saw people who looked like trees walking around?

10. What interesting piece of relational information is tucked into a new Testament verse about the mother of a believer named Rufus?

 

Thanks for playing! I love stuff like this. But, of course, I realize not everybody does. I love you whether you do or not. Talk to you soon! It’s almost time for SSMT Verse 3!

 

“I’m starting my very first Bible study.” It doesn’t matter to me if it’s one of Priscilla Shirer’s, Kelly Minter’s, Jennie Allen’s, Kay Arthur’s, or any other Bible study author’s series. It moves me every time I hear it because nothing has brought me more fascination

and freedom

and wonder

and awe

and joy

and delight

and correction

and direction

and transformation

and liberation

and PURE GOD-BELIEVING FAITH than the Spirit of God stirring up my heart and mind through the pages of Scripture. I have had such a blast with Him there, ruined for less than a lifetime spent with Him in those glorious phrases. When I hear that somebody is just beginning to journey with Christ through a cracked-open Bible, my heart skips a beat and my memory stirs up a whirlwind. I remember my first in-depth journey so well and how a light came on in my soul and how I could hardly stand to shut my Bible at the end of the day or wait to open it the next morning. I’d put my kids on the school bus in the morning and dart back inside and pull out my Bible and the notes I’d taken the day before. I’d somehow stumbled across this thing called a “tabernacle” in the pages of Exodus during my Scripture reading one day and I could not get enough. I read and read, flipping back and forth from the Old Testament to the New. I bought my first Strong’s Concordance and looked up every place I could find the word “tabernacle.” That was all I knew to do but it was enough. Then I started getting commentaries and reading books theologians had written on it. When that journey was over, I fell into honest-to-goodness despair because I was certain I’d never experience anything like that again. I was wrong. Praise God.

 

“I just finished the last page of _____________________ Bible study.” (Often I’ll get a picture of that final page, complete with their own handwritten answers to questions on it. And don’t think I don’t enlarge them and read them either. I don’t have this nose because I’m not nosy.)

Listen, to finish an in-depth Bible study series is no small accomplishment in this increasingly attention-deficit culture. For people (like me!) who are becoming conditioned to sound bites and a sum total of 140 characters, getting through a Bible study course that demands anywhere from 6-10 weeks of 4-5 hours of homework a week is titanic. You are already an exception to the cultural rule by the time you finish the third week. Somebody needs to tell you what a stud you are for finishing one. So, today, I’m volunteering. You’re a stud.

 

“I’m doing Breaking Free.” I don’t care who it is, those words get to me every time. That series nearly killed me to write – the warfare was hellacious – but the study also means the most to me personally. I’ll tell you when those words get to me most: when they’re coming from a young woman – college age – who has not yet walked down the aisle with a man carrying more baggage than a 10-armed bellhop. It’s NEVER too late to find liberty in Christ. Never! I don’t care if you’ve been married half a dozen times or you’re on the cusp of your eighty-fourth birthday. But facing and dealing with some bondage prior to decisions that change a whole life-trajectory is less painful by a long shot. Of course, we’ve got to do more than finish a study. We’ve got to actually enter into full fellowship with Christ in those pages and receive His words down into our bones as doers of the Word and not hearers only. In the words of James, “humbly welcome the message implanted within you, which is able to save your souls.” (James 1:21 The NET)

 

“God got me through cancer treatment with His Word.” I have no greater respect for a sister in Bible study than the one who sticks to it and keeps her face to the page and her heart open to the heavens when her prayers have been answered differently than she hoped and no one would blame her if she shut her Bible. Nothing has moved me more through the years than hearing from a small Bible study group that one of their own who was battling terminal cancer literally studied the Word of God until she could no longer hold her eyes open and God carried her Home. They’ll often send me pictures of her and tell me how they miss her and how she challenged them to be faithful to the very last breath. Flabbergasts me every time and makes me hope and pray to be faithful under such strain and able to say with that sister, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7)

 

“I caught the Bible study bug. I’ll study the Scriptures for the rest of my life.” That’s it right there. It doesn’t get better than that. No book is like the Bible because no other book is gorgeously laced with living, breathing words of God. I love Christ’s claim in John 6:63 – “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you — they are full of the Spirit and life.” A lifetime is not long enough to get to the bottom of the immense, unimaginable riches that can be found in Christ “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (Colossians 2:3) You’ll just never waste a second in the Scriptures. That’s the long and short of it.

 

“I’m teaching my first Bible study class.” To see God raise up young teachers is one of the greatest highs of my entire life. To see them study hard and start practicing the disciplines that Bible teaching demands and not just seeking a platform is incredibly thrilling to me. There is no short cut to it. Teaching still takes the same kinds of things it took in the first century: spiritual gifting, perseverance, diligent study, the work of the Holy Spirit, profuse prayer and enough people skills for people to be able to stand us. And, on top of that, it subjects us to stricter judgment just like James 3:1 says but, if we’re called, we’ve got to get out there and do it anyway and receive the difficulties as discipline. A fiery passion alone cannot sustain us. We must also have obedience and follow-through and the capacity to get back up especially after we’ve been harshly criticized. And we will be. That’s part of the growing process. That’s part of God testing our mettle. Proving us genuine.

 

My man needs me so I’m going to have to close. I’ve rambled enough anyway. I meant for this to be about a paragraph long but, of course, y’all know me. That’ll be the day. All this came from one little tweet I got today from a woman who said she’d just finished a Bible study. And I thought to myself,

I never get over hearing that. 

 

Good grief, I love y’all so much. Stay in the Scriptures.

 

 

 

Not long ago I saw something on social media that had a particularly troubling effect on me as a fellow follower of Jesus. Of course, we see deeply disturbing things on social media everyday. Things that trouble us not only as Christians but, for crying out loud, as fellow humans. Things much more troubling than what I’m about to share with you today. I may comment on those things and cry out to God about those things but I’d less likely write a blog post about them. Other voices are more qualified. My concerns and the kinds of things I write about are more inclined toward matters involving the community of believers in Christ. I love the community of faith so much. Called to discipleship, it is the focus of my life passion and has been for thirty years. I only have one small desk from which to watch our world so I miss a lot but, among the things in my eyeshot, I see so much cause for praise. So much good. I see stirrings of revival. Outbreaks of evangelism. Demands for justice. I don’t know how anybody truly awake in the believing world could claim that nothing good is happening in Christianity.

 

But the reason I’m writing today is that I’m seeing a burgeoning trend out there that is toxic, dangerous, and slanderous. Nothing about it carries the scent of Christ.

 

It’s a witch hunt. Only, instead of witches, it’s heretics and false teachers.

 

I’ve been watching the witch hunt for several years and seen the usual targets and been one of the usual targets. The lists are growing by leaps and bounds and list-makers are proudly joining ranks. This is part of our brave, new world. And everybody’s game, especially anybody vaguely outspoken. An addition was made to the list here recently that was so absurd that it would have been laughable had it not said so much about where this whole trend is heading.

 

I’ll leave out the names of other targets and speak firsthand from my own experience. After all, the thing that troubled me on social media recently was personal. It was an attack not made behind my back. It was said where I would see it.

 

The tweet referred to me on my feed as “false teacher @BethMooreLPM.”

 

Nothing was new about seeing that. I also regularly get called a heretic.

 

 

As unpleasant and bewildering as it is, that’s not the part that particularly disturbed me. The part that got me is that it came from 22 year-old young woman.

 

Twenty-two.

 

Maybe she started young and really had done enough of the Bibles studies or read enough of the books to support a doctrinal evaluation like that.

 

What is more likely is that she believes it because it’s what she’s heard from someone she respects.

 

Or maybe she’s seen evidence with her own eyes through segments of video-teaching taken out of their original context and strung together in such a way to suggest a representation of an entire thrust of ministry.

 

I don’t know exactly how she came up so confidently with that label so early in her adult Christian life but somehow she did.

 

The tweet didn’t make me mad. It made me sad. I wanted to ground her and give her a homework assignment. Lest you go looking for her, I deleted the comment from my feed when I knew I was going to write this post. We’re not going to respond to unkindness with more unkindness. That’s not God’s way. Anyway, the odd thing of it is, I loved her immediately. My calling is discipleship and my focus is women. I want women plugged into churches. I want them continually sitting under pastors, shepherds, and teachers. I love to hear that women are studying in group environments but I also want them to study for themselves. Not just get spoon-fed what to think and not only about the Scriptures and the local church but also about the larger community of faith and those who serve within it. About the responsible use of voice. About what qualifies as a heretic. About mutual respect for their own brothers and sisters in Christ. About fair evaluations. Due diligence.

 

 

I’m still very much on my journey, too. Such a long shot from arriving. I’ve woefully regretted things I’ve said and some things I’ve taught. All of us are on a learning curve in this culture entrusted to our care. But, as we learn and as we operate in these public forums where everybody has a voice, come, let us reason together.

 

There is a mighty wide pond between “I line up with him/her” and “He/she is a false teacher.” Let’s think about wading through it. That’s all I’m saying.

 

In a massive cross section of Christian voices on social media, the bottom has dropped out of an entire line of reasoning and way of relating to one another.

 

We’ve jumped straight to terms like “false teachers” and “heretics” instead of expressions that very likely represent the differences more accurately. Such as…

 

I strongly disagree with _________________________ about _______________________________.

 

Or even,

 

I believe __________________________________ is unsound about ____________________________.

 

Disagreement is not a qualification for declaring someone a heretic. Even vehement disagreement.

 

As well, getting something wrong doesn’t automatically make a person a false teacher. If that were so, we’d all qualify at one time or another. There are vital elements that need to be considered, taught, and discussed among us in our Christian environments like what constitutes proper criteria for making claims of heresy and false teaching and what is orthodoxy? How do we wisely oppose and confront? How does Jesus say to handle it? What really are the deal-breakers?

 

Of course there are false teachers! Of course there are heretics! Of course they must be questioned! Of course, people should be warned! Of course teachers of the Scriptures must be held accountable for what they’re teaching!

 

My concern today is the disturbing trend of throwing dangerous labels around because of what we’ve heard and not what we’ve investigated fairly and properly. I realized several years ago that one of my most outspoken critics has never even cracked open one of the Bible studies. Not one. Doesn’t want to either. All there is to the entire ministry from his perspective is this: “she claims special revelation from God.” And, based on his summation, I equate these “special revelations” with the Word of God.

 

Are you kidding me? He can say that from a distance but I do not believe he can make that claim close up. If he can, I’m the one that needs grounding.

 

We are the Body of Christ. We are brothers and sisters. Even when we are utterly convinced the other person is wrong and we have doctrinal ducks in a row to prove it, we are never to treat one another “as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.” (2 Thessalonians 3:15) Yes, we must hold one another accountable and hold ourselves accountable. We question one another. We by all means keep discussing and debating and entering into healthy disagreements.

 

But we stop short of labeling one another things like false teacher and heretic until we’ve done our homework.

 

 

This isn’t a polished post. No time this particular day to make it so. But I offer it to you with one simple hope: that we’d be among those who take pause. Among those who consider ethics of speech to have an important place on our Christian platforms. Among those who think before we speak.

 

It’s hunting season out there. Let’s be careful how we hunt.

 

 

Addendum: 

Brothers and Sisters, I wrote this in a comment as I closed that portion of the post but it could easily get lost in well over 300 entries. I thought I would add it here as well:

 

Hey, Everybody. I so appreciate you stopping by. You guys have really kept me busy this weekend moderating all these comments and entering into discussions both here and elsewhere. I have a taping this coming weekend and need to prepare four different teaching sessions toward it. It will keep my hands full every single day. We also have our big Scripture memory post coming up later this week here on the blog so we will be very occupied with those things. For that reason, I am going to need to close the comments at this point on this post. I’m the only one moderating this post and I am out of time. My attentions must now turn to preparation for the taping.

I do want to tell you something though. This comment line has had value in my life and ministry. I want you to know that and I want to thank you. I am a thinker and you have caused me to think and to pray and to worship and to read and to reflect and to remember and to reconsider. Those are always good things. I love to learn and I promise you that as long as I live and breathe, I will seek to keep learning.

It is doubtful that I will ever satisfy my harshest critics but I want to be a loving fellow-follower of Christ. Just as they do not line up with me, there are distances that I cannot go with them. I believe God can be more willing to reveal Himself in our day than some of my brothers and sisters do. I believe the New Testament well supports such a stand. It is easier and more controllable and comfortable just to say that He does not and it cuts out so much of the risk but I don’t believe we can control the Holy Spirit like that without ultimately quenching Him.

We must test everything and hold fast to what is good. We all must stay in God’s Word, study it hard, pray, fast, memorize. The God-breathed Word recorded on the pages of Scripture is our Truth, our authority, our standard by which all else is measured. Nothing equates with the Scriptures: no word of knowledge, no prophetic message, no insight, no revelation, no dream, no vision. Nothing. That doesn’t mean they can’t be valid. The New Testament says they can. But they must never supplant or be placed on the same level with the Scriptures. The Word of God is how we test everything else. We also must keep subjecting ourselves to accountability and stay attached and approachable to a sound body of believers in a local church.

And as we do, may God pour His Holy Spirit upon us. Profusely. Extraordinarily. Miraculously. We need Him and want Him desperately. May He renew wonders in our day. May He anoint us powerfully and shield us protectively.

In John 5:39-42 Jesus confronted a group of leaders with words that have long since made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. He told them that they “diligently study the Scriptures” but went on to say, “you do not have the love of God in you.” It is possible to be a diligent, devoted student of the Word of God without having an ounce of His love in our hearts. Brothers and Sisters, let that be far from us. How we treat one another matters. Let’s not grow cold to one another even in our disagreements. Faith, hope, and love. These are the things that remain.

I am honored to serve you and it has been my honor to host you this weekend here at the blog. Stay the course, everybody. Don’t grow weary. Jesus is so worthy. And it won’t be long until we see that glorious face.

In the bonds of His love,
Beth