A Walk in the Land
Deepens Your Walk with the Lord
Our Mission
To teach and encourage those who love the Bible, the land of the Bible and the people of the land and to lead educational tours to Israel that forever change the way you read your Bible and worship the Lord
Our Prayer
“The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”
Numbers 6:24-26
Our Three Featured Posts
Scripture Study
Guardian Angels
Who is Clarence Odbody who holds the rank of AS2? Well, of course, it’s George Bailey’s guardian angel in the classic Christmas movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. Clarence, Angel Second Class, has lived in heaven for over two hundred years and still hasn’t earned his wings. However, if he can successfully guide George through his financial troubles at the Bailey Bros. Building and Loan Association, then he’ll finally earn them.
Do each of us have our own “Clarence” angel? Catholicism formally teaches that every human has one guardian angel beside him. Islam teaches that every human has multiple guardian angels as well as two recording angels assigned to him—one on the right who writes down the good he does and one on the left who writes down all the bad. But what exactly does the Bible say about guardian angels?
Psalm 91:11-12 reads, “For He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. They shall bear you up in their hands lest you dash your foot against a stone.” Hebrews 1:14 adds, “Are [the angels] not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation?”—that’s us! So, we can say definitively that angels serve and guard Christians.
But do each of us have a specific angel who guards us? Matthew 18:10 reads, “Do not despise one of these little ones, for … in heaven their angels always see the face of My Father.” It’s the word “their” that people point to here in support of guardian angels.
Then there’s Acts 12:13-15, “Peter knocked at the door of the gate … Rhoda came to answer … and announced that Peter stood before the gate… [But] they said, ‘It is his angel.’” In this story Herod has imprisoned Peter, but then an angel escorts Peter out of the prison through several layers of security. The angel soon disappears, so Peter walks to Mark’s mom’s house where the church has gathered to pray. Despite praying for this very thing, the people respond, “It is his angel.” The pronoun “his” suggests to many that Peter had a guardian angel and that by inference, so do we. Why those gathered to pray in Acts 12 would think that Peter’s angel was knocking at their door rather than attending Peter inside the prison (where they wrongfully thought he still languished) is another question entirely? Some therefore take the expression, “It is his angel,” to mean that it must be Peter’s spirit or ghost. In any event biblical support for guardian angels rests primarily upon these verses.
Now let me propose one last question. Given that Michael the archangel (Jude 1:9), also called “the great prince” (Daniel 12:1), is said to be assigned to the affairs of the nation of Israel and given too that the kingdoms of Greece and Persia have assigned angels (likewise called princes in Daniel 10:13, 20), is it unreasonable to conclude that individual Christians also have guardian angels? What do you think?
Daniel McCabe
History
George and the Dragon
The story is told of a medieval Christian knight named George who came upon a town being terrorized by a fearsome dragon that demanded from the townspeople one human sacrifice each day for food. The next sacrifice was to be the king’s daughter, but George bravely intervened. He hunted down the dragon, wounded it with his lance and subdued it using a sash belonging to the princess. Then George led the creature back to town and promised to kill it if the people would convert to Christianity. They agreed, so George slew the dragon and saved the people—an heroic allegory of the triumph of good over evil.
The roots of this story date back to 303 A.D. during the reign of Emperor Diocletian when a Roman soldier was executed for refusing to renounce his faith in Christ. The account given by the fourth-century historian Eusebius mentions no knight, no dragon and no damsel in despair, only a lone martyr named George. Soon after his death, however, the people began to venerate him as a saint and his bravery later came to embody the ideals of knightbood who adopted and adapted his story as their own, for like St. George they stood against paganism and evil, which is pictured by the dragon, a biblical metaphor for Satan found in the Bible (Rev. 12:9).
During later periods of Muslim rule over the Holy Land, particularly under the Mamluks (1250–1517) and Ottomans (1517–1917), Christian churches at times faced restrictions on the public display of religious symbols, particularly crosses. In response, some churches and Christian communities adopted the image of St. George as a more discreet expression of their faith and identity. Today there is a beautiful display of St. George and the Dragon as you leave the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and there is even a church by his name in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.
Daniel McCabe
Scripture Study
The Tears of Jesus
Let’s talk about the shortest verse in the English Bible, John 11:35, “Jesus wept.” Jesus’ friend Lazarus had died four days earlier, and now Jesus stood at Lazarus’ tomb ready to raise him from the dead. But this begs the question, “Why exactly did Jesus weep at the tomb?”
Certainly Jesus would have been sad about Lazarus’ death, for in His humanity Jesus felt the emotion of losing His friend. Perhaps the reason for Jesus’ tears is as simple as that. However, it is interesting to consider that Jesus knew exactly what He was going to do within minutes of those tears. We may get emotional at the funeral of a loved one as we recall the suffering that led up to his death, but mostly our tears flow out of the thought that we’ll never get to be with him again. Thankfully, believers do not have to grieve like others as the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 4 because we will one day be reunited with our redeemed loved ones and spend eternity together.
Now you’ll recall that Jesus had deliberately delayed His coming to Lazarus after hearing of his sickness, and during His delay Lazarus died. When Jesus did finally arrive four days later, Martha said in John 11:21, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Jesus had purposefully waited to go to Bethany so that Lazarus would die, so that He would bring him back to life and so that many people could witness the power of God and subsequently spread the amazing testimony about Lazarus far and wide, which ultimately resulted in a great crowd that received Jesus into Jerusalem at His triumphal entry.
So, why did Jesus weep? Well, I think that Jesus was probably saddened by the fact that Lazarus had to die in the first place. Sadly, the wages of sin result in death, for when Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, their action brought sin into the created order and humanity subsequently fell into death. Adam and Eve died spiritually that day, for God had warned them that in the day they ate of the fruit they would surely die. But their actions also resulted in physical death as well, which they would eventually experience and from which they could not escape. The payment that we too earn for sinning is physical death as well as spiritual death. Even redeemed believers experience physical death as a consequence of sin. At least that is the norm. We know, of course, of Enoch and Elijah who were spared that fate, signaling hope to all people that they too can be saved. It was also a foretaste of the eventual rapture of the church.
But Lazarus died like everyone else has and will, and I suspect that Jesus was overcome by the gravity of thought that all humanity must suffer death as a result of sin. Was Jesus sad that His friend was in the tomb that day? Sure. But He might have mourned even more that day over the presence of sin and death in the world, which oppose the very image of God.
People often say that death is just a natural part of life. But you know what? It is not. Death was not the design for God’s image when He created Adam. Death is not natural. It is a horrible consequence of our rebellion against God. I know what people mean when they say that death will come for us all, and it’s true enough, but may we never lose sight of how awful and serious death is and how awful and serious our sin is before a holy and righteous God. But as the example of Lazarus illustrates, our Lord has power over life and death, and He offers eternal life for anyone who believes.
Having discussed the shortest verse in the Gospel of John, let’s conclude with his most famous verse, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Adam Keim