Buzz King: Grace & Joy thru Scripture

I once prayed with a man who was watching his grandmother pass away; she had largely raised him.  I prayed for a joyous eternity in the Kingdom.  He asked me if the story of Jesus in the New Testament was engineered to match Old Testament prophesy, and therefore, Jesus wasn't really the Messiah promised by the prophets.  We consider the classic passage in Micah that predicts a savior born in Bethlehem.  We look at the aspects of th...

I came upon a man at the San Francisco airport who was reading his Bible, studying a passage from the New Testament where Jesus speaks of himself as being a Temple.  The man at the airport had had a severe conflict with his brother, another Christian, over a Bible translation, and was wishing that we could, as people of faith, come together as true community.  We consider the view that as Christians, we are collectively, like Jesus...

I once walked into my L.A. apartment to discover a burglar leveling a cutdown pump action shotgun at me.  We consider the warnings that God sends our way from time to time, reminding us of our mortality.  We know that we will die - that this life is very temporary.  Are we ready?  We look at the issue not of dying, not of going to Heaven, but of the final End Times, what will happen - how this should change our behavior and our min...

I had a student in a class of mine once who had recently been treated for bone cancer in her spine.  She was using a cane.  She talked to me about faith and Heaven, and the fears she had when she was sick.  We discussed the issue of what it means to believe.  Today, we look at the Book of Joel, in particular at a passage referenced in Acts that says that all people will one day be able to accept God.  This serves as a critical moti...

I once visited a woman who was almost a hundred years old and was about to die.  She expressed some sadness that she had not given enough as a Christian.  We reflect on the Book of Acts and the common misunderstanding that the early church was somehow rigidly socialist.  We consider the real gift we are supposed to give, the gift that does not involve personal assets.  We also consider what it means to lose a loved one who is very ...

We look at the very dramatic Psalm 137.  It tells of the fall of Babylon and the longing that the exiles have for their holy city and destroyed Temple.  We consider two people I met who reacted in very different ways to the feeling they had been harmed by others.  We look at why the Babylonian invasion is such a major cornerstone in the history of the Israelites.  We consider its use as a metaphor in both the Old and New Testaments...

A student once asked me for advice on how he should react to his family, especially his father, who did not approve of him being baptized a Christian.  I gave him a lesson that I learned from Acts.  In this book, we see "the Way" spread to Jews in Jerusalem and then to Gentiles outward in the Roman Empire.  There is a turning point midway through Acts that is carefully engineered by God when the first Gentile, Cornelius the Centuri...

I was once toured around Jerusalem by a 12 year-old boy named Yaakov.  He showed me many sites, including a number of Christian sites, as he knew I was a Christian.  He also talked to me about the evolution from Temple to Rabbinic Judaism - something that is critical to understanding the theological underpinnings of the Book of Acts.  We consider this new movement that is called "the Way" in Acts, and we see what it has to do with ...

I once was asked to sit with a Buddhist patient who was passing away.  She asked me to recite a mantra with her.  We look at the Prophet named Habakkuk.  We see that he offers an unusual message for a Prophet.  He doesn't simply warn people that God will punish his people for their wayward means.  He offers us an upbeat message of hope no matter what happens.  We consider prayer, and the relationship between the practice of recitin...

We look at how the grammar school I went to long ago managed to ensure that all people, including the less well off, were given equal justice.  We consider Amos, the minor prophet, and the prophet who preached about justice and righteousness.  He was from the southern kingdom but preached in the north, all during a time of great prosperity.  The book is beautifully written in stunning poetry.  We consider the lessons it teaches by ...

I was once approached in a hospital parking lot to pray with the father and sister of a badly injured young man.  We look at the Book of Daniel, and at other Bible passages, where we are told to pray with others and to share our faith with others and to make spiritual decisions with other believers.  We see the power of doing this.  We learn that just as Daniel was able to do what seemed impossible, by praying with fellow faithful ...

In 2022, Vladimir Putin did what ancient kings in the Old Testament did: he invaded another nation - and he did it on his own.  We look at the Book of Daniel, and how it proports to be about the Babylonian exilic period, but perhaps was written hundreds of years later, when the Jews were fighting the Greek speaking Seleucids.  We look at this book and ask the question: Is Daniel simply a prophesy after the fact, or is it something ...

We look at a (very) non-canonical book called 1st Enoch, which tells us the story of the Prophet Enoch, who lived before Noah.  (But this was not written until just before the life of Jesus).  It tells us about the Watchers, evil angels who create a race of giants on Earth.  We see that there was apparently some influence of this book on the New Testament.  We consider what this means for us today - especially with respect to how w...

I once had a neighbor who kept me up all night with loud rock and roll.  Then one day, there was a massive car accident in front of our two buildings.  I discovered that just as we see in Obediah, my neighbor apparently had learned a lesson.  In Obediah, we see a people called the Edomites who assist the Babylonians in conquering the people of Israel - the neighbors and linguistic cousins of the Israelites.  We look at the typical,...

My mother believed in miracles - and when I was born very sick, she baptized me herself, because at the time, the Catholic Church taught that unbaptized babies that died went to Limbo.  We look at the miracles of Jesus, and how the Synoptic Gospels refer to them as "deeds of power", while John refers to them as "signs".  We see that there is a very deep reason why John does this - and we consider how this reveals the very theologic...

I once spend four hours in the middle of the night with a man who was dying from COPD.  A nurse had called me so that he would not die alone.  I heard his last words.  We look at the final words of Jesus as he was dying, which vary from Gospel to Gospel - significantly.  We consider this: Were some of the Gospel authors wrong about Jesus' last words on the cross?  Or were their goals something other than the obvious?  Were they try...

When I was an academic, I was exposed to a lot of anti-Christian diatribe.  Christians, I was told, are corrupt, selfish, and use their faith as a political weapon.  We look at the story of King Josiah in the Bible and how some think that he manipulated parts of Scripture, of our Old Testament, to suit his political purposes.  We then consider what would happen, what our planet would be like if all political leaders everywhere trul...