WHETTING YOUR THEOLOGICAL APPETITE

(This assignment is a partial fulfilment for the module on Old Testament Survey. In all, there are three assignments that must be submitted) In Genesis 12:1-3, we see God's promise was made with Abram, and those who bless Abram will be blessed, and those who curse Abram will be cursed. I will show you why it is Abraham and not Israel. Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you; 2 And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; 3 And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”         Later, in Genesis 17:1-2, God reiterated again His covenant with Abram who was re-named Abraham: Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him,“I am God Almighty;Walk before Me, a...

A former seminary lecturer, Dr Philip Koh, upon reading this blog post , wrote me a short message on whatsapp:  Stephen, your essay insisting on a right understanding of the literary genre of Revelation is lucid in expression, succinct in form, and systematic in presentation. I too wrote a lot of theological essays... which led to the cultivation of the higher order thinking skills of Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive learning outcomes.        Dr Koh is right. In fact, after embarking on my pursuit of a theological  education in two seminaries (1) , this is one thing that I can testify to: it has helped me to crystallize my thinking as I put my thoughts in writing.           In a follow up message, he wrote: As l had to grapple with different and often dialectically opposite theological positions on the Second Coming of Jesus or the Millenial kingdom of Jesus on this earth.  Theological education not only trai...

By Stephen Ng 23  And it happened that He was passing through the grainfields on the Sabbath, and His disciples began to make their way along while picking the heads  of grain .   24  The Pharisees were saying to Him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”   25  And He said to them,  “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and he and his companions became hungry;   26  how he entered the house of God in the time of Abiathar  the  high priest, and ate the consecrated bread, which is not lawful for  anyone  to eat except the priests, and he also gave it to those who were with him?”   27  Jesus said to them,  “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.   28  So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” Text: Mark 2: 23-28 (NASB, Bible Gateway) Introduction The Decalogue was issued to guid...

A look at how literary genre affects the interpretation of Book of Revelations  By Stephen Ng Introduction   In the world of literature, genre simply means the ‘kind of writing’ (Keener 1993, 825) used in the literature. Gorman defines it as “a set of texts with common, distinctive feature” (Gorman 2001, 76) . It determines how a passage is to be interpreted   (Marshall, Travis and Paul 2002, 324) . Therefore, based on the conventions that an author uses, the genre can be broadly described as letter, narrative, historical, biography or poem. It is important that the genre is correctly identified as it would define how a particular passage or text is to be interpreted. Revelation is a book of hope. In the same manner that the Old Testament prophets spoke of a coming Messiah; in Revelation, we are looking forward to be with Christ in his full glory. When interpreting Revelation, it is important to have this overall context in mind. Revelation – A Brief Discuss...