From mankind’s perspective, is God more predictable or more unpredictable?  On the one hand, God never changes. He’s all knowing. He’s all powerful. He’s all loving, and is everywhere. “I am the Lord,” he says, “I change not” (Malachi 3:6). Something or someone who never changes must be predictable.  On the other hand, God is…

We’re talking about the end of time and the parables of Jesus found in Matthew 25 that speak to the end of time.  These parables tell us about how we should wait for the second coming—the Parousia. Last week we derived from the parable of the talents the idea that while we wait, we are…

We are studying about the time of the end—the signs of the end, the parables, the expectations, the anticipation. The Olivet Discourse of Matthew 24 and 25 contains four parables about the end of time as part of Jesus’s answer to the disciples’ question: “What shall be the sign of Your coming and the end…

What does it mean to be ready for the Last Days? How do we get ready? How must we be ready?  In 1962, Pastor Hamill, then President of the Pakistan Union of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, came to my school in the foothills of the Himalayas to give a week of prayer. He told…

Today we’re going to talk about oil and its meaning and message in the scriptures. Oil is central to the parable of the Ten Virgins (the second of a series of four) which, as we’ve discussed, is more about the wait for the bridegroom than it is about his arrival, which we usually emphasize and…

We’re studying the Olivet Discourse, where Jesus answers the question of his disciples: “What shall be the sign of Your coming and the end of the age?” (Matthew 24:3). In that context, Jesus tells four parables. It’s the second one—the parable of the 10 Virgins—that we’ve been focusing on for the last couple of weeks. …