Viral Faith

A spirit of prostitution leads them astray;  they are unfaithful to their God.  Hosea 4:12 Then the angel said to me, "The waters you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages Revelation 17:15 The book of Revelation has to be the most misunderstood book in the entire Bible.  With its incredible images of judgements, bowls of wrath, trumpets, scrolls, beasts, scorpions, armies, cosmic war and worship, it is often difficult to understand the message.  The book of Revelation is written in a style of literature described as apocalyptic.  Other books of the Bible like that are the book of Daniel and the book of Zechariah.  Apocalyptic literature uses symbols and metaphors to instill hope regarding the current and future interventions of God. Now, what in the world does the book of Revelation have to do with Christmas?  Christmas on one hand seems to be so joyful (I can hear a chorus singing "Joy to World" in my ...

"Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful." I Corinthians 4:2 According to New Testament scholar, Kenneth Bailey, in the Biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, there is no word for honesty.  Honesty is fidelity to an impersonal truth.  It is sharing something that is objectively true.  The ancient Biblical cultures did not understand truth apart from the divine.  In their understanding, truth was personified, and to live truthfully was to live in relationship with the divine. The concept for honesty is a Roman terms, which was indicative of western thought, that although virtuous, was not well understood in the Judaic worldview. This difference is relevant because the Bible continually rewards faithfulness above what we would objectively describe as "successs".  In a parable of Jesus,  (Luke 19:12-27), Jesus describes a rich man who gives several men the same amount of money and then checks on them aft...