Category: Bible Reading & Meditation

Jesus “entered the temple and began ejecting the traders.” –Luke 19:45 Jesus has made it clear that He wants His temple purified (see 1 Mc 4:36). Jesus commands us to be pure, even “as He is pure” (1 Jn 3:3). Jesus is purifying His Church “in the bath of water by the power of the word, to present to Himself a glorious church, holy and immaculate, without stain or wrinkle or anything of that sort” (Eph 5:26-27). “By obedience to the truth,” we can purify ourselves “for a genuine love” of our brothers and sisters (1 Pt 1:22). The Lord...

“The officers of the king in charge of enforcing the apostasy came to the city.” –1 Maccabees 2:15 The Seleucid king tried to enforce an apostasy on the Jews. Roman emperors repeatedly tried to enforce apostasies on the early Christians. This continues to happen as Chinese Communists oppress Christians, terrorists brutalize Christians in several other nations, and secular humanists express their intolerance of Christians in the Western world. These many attempts to enforce apostasies will culminate in the mass apostasy led by the antichrist at the end of the world (2 Thes 2:3ff). We will not deny Christ if we...

“The mother…saw her seven sons perish in a single day, yet bore it courageously because of her hope in the Lord.” –2 Maccabees 7:20 The Seleucids who persecuted the Jewish people at the time of the Maccabean revolt were terrorists. They did not just kill their enemies but did it in such a way as to try to intimidate them. For example, they did not just kill seven Jewish brothers but scalped, dismembered, and fried them one by one, while forcing the remaining brothers and their mother to watch every brutal act. The Seleucids planned that the mother’s anguish would...

“I will leave to the young a noble example of how to die willingly and generously for the revered and holy laws.” –2 Maccabees 6:28 Jesus said: “Whoever loses His life for My sake will save it” (Lk 9:24). “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it produces much fruit” (Jn 12:24). Eleazar gave a fabulous example to young people of how to live and die for the Lord (2 Mc 6:31). In the very next chapter of 2 Maccabees, seven young men were brutally...

“A blind man sat at the side of the road begging. Hearing a crowd go by the man asked, ‘What is that?’ The answer came that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by.” –Luke 18:35-37 Imagine if you were color-blind and nearsighted with impaired peripheral vision. Could you see? Yes. Would you need healing of your vision? Absolutely. Likewise, we can see spiritually but “we see indistinctly, as in a mirror” (1 Cor 13:12). We should not let the fact that we have some vision keep us from crying out to Jesus for vision good enough to live His abundant life....