The election of Ariel Sharon as prime minister of Israel has left everyone involved in Middle Eastern politics wondering what the future will bring - many fear that his very election will precipitate a war. It is no wonder that people are not sure what to expect;  Sharon himself is a man who projects conflicting images.

Presidential Election 2000 was unique in a number of ways: it was the closest presidential election in America's history; it was more than a month after the election before a winner was determined; and, the outcome rested in the hands of the judiciary rather than just those of the voters - all firsts.

Job was a wealthy person, and an inventory of his holdings is provided at the beginning of the book:

Over the last several months we have been exploring the dark night of the soul, and how God wants us to surrender everything in our lives that is unholy or unrighteous - anything that we put first other than Christ.

This tiny four-chapter romance has been venerated in college classes for its elegance as literature, but it also reveals a craftsmanship of prophetic anticipation unrivaled anywhere in Scripture.

The famed foiling of the wicked plot of Haman to blot out the Jews is, of course, one of the more dramatic narratives in the Bible. In addition to the many twists in the plot, there are also some surprises hidden behind the text itself. It is significant that the name of the book itself, Esther, means "something hidden"!

When we suffer unjustly at the hands of others, it's hard to forgive. God's Love (Agape) is the only thing that will enable you to unconditionally forgive and forget what was done to you. You can't do this naturally. Your negative thoughts and emotions won't go away on their own.

The Book of Joshua is a book of adventure and conquest - even the days were not long enough for his battles! His name is the same as Jesus, but in Hebrew rather than Greek: Yeho-Shua, or Joshua.

Our goal as Christians should be to become Christ-like - to be instruments of God's Love. The Bible says we are ambassadors of Jesus Christ and that God personally makes His appeal to the world through us. The only way we can ever properly represent Jesus Christ to the world is to let His character show through our attitudes and actions.

Selah does connect the end of one strophe with the beginning of the next; and, in four cases it connects the end of one Psalm with the beginning of the next, thus uniting the two Psalms (Ps 3 with 4; 9 with 10; 24 with 25; and 46 with 47).

While there continue to be many serious hurdles yet to be overcome, after over 60 years of research on animals such as sea urchins, frogs and mice, the cloning of commercially relevant mammals finally seems feasible.

Have you ever been puzzled by the inscriptions that are attached to some of the Psalms? This has puzzled scholars for centuries, and yet the key may have been in the Biblical text all along.

God tells us in the Bible that we are to glorify Him, not only outwardly in our bodies, but also inwardly in our spirits. (1 Corinthians 6:20) It's impossible to do this, however, if we don't really understand what our spirit is. So, last month we tried to define our spirit, how it differs from our soul and the critical importance of separating the two.

Jesus had some hard things to say to the hypocrites and pretenders. He told them they were like dishes that were clean on the outside but on the inside they were full of greed and self-indulgence (Mt 23:25). In other words, they put on a good show for people.

Here is a book of the Bible which is among the least studied and the most emotionally controversial. It's a book with only 117 verses and 470 Hebrew words, yet it is among the most difficult and mysterious books in the entire Bible. It's a book about lovemaking from an author who had 700 wives and 300 concubines (women who took his heart away from the Lord).

The twentieth century has been marked by a rapid growth in knowledge, and the twenty-first will be stranger than we can possibly imagine.  The explosive advances in science and technology have already gone far beyond what even science fiction writers once thought possible.

Two thousand years ago, a governor in an obscure eastern province of the Roman Empire asked a condemned prisoner what his definition of truth was. At the time it was a sarcastic response to his prisoner's absurd claim that he was the way, the truth and the life.

Over the past year or so, we have been exploring "night seasons" - what they are, why God allows them, and what we are to do to get through them.

The Epistle to the Hebrews is one of the two greatest theological treatises of the New Testament.1 This letter is, in a real sense, the "Leviticus" of the New Testament, detailing how the Lord Jesus Christ is both the fulfillment and the successor to all that had gone on before.

A very Merry Christmas to you and to all your family. My prayer is that God will bless you with His presence this Christmas more than you've ever experienced before.