Did Jesus Exist Before He was Born?

The book of John can be divided into several major parts. It begins with the pre-existence of Jesus. Let’s look at chapter 1, verses 1 – 5:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

“In the beginning” is an allusion to Genesis 1:1. Now the interesting thing here is that 1st century Christians with a Jewish background would get this right away but

Do You Swear?

Photo by Gabriel Matula on Unsplash

My mother never swore. Almost never. I heard her say “damn” once, but that was it. I remember one time when I was in the back seat of the car and she was driving. A nice conversation was underway between me and someone else in the car (I no longer remember who) when in response to something incredible that the other person said (probably my sister) I expressed amazement by saying "gees" instead of my usual "gee!"

Faster than a whip came my mother’s hand across my mouth. “You don’t talk like that!” she simply said, not yelling.

What did I do? What did I say? She went on to explain that “gees” was just too close to Jesus’ name. I was maybe nine or ten and I understood the Ten Commandments, especially the one about not taking the Lord’s name in vain.

Pretty rough, you’re thinking, to strike a child for that, but

Solving Biblical Puzzles (This is an amazing find!)

I wrote this short story and hid my own coded message within as well. After you read how Danny solves his mystery go back and look for my message. Comment below with your solution.

Danny’s Puzzle

Grabbing his pencil Danny set to work again practicing the letters from the workbook his friend, Arnie, had lent him. It was so strange to make the weird symbols and to go from right to left across the page, but he had watched Arnie do it with ease and, though he knew his friend had been in Hebrew school for years, Danny felt that mastering the twenty-two letters within the month was a reasonable goal for himself. Arnie’s bar mitzvah was Danny’s target date and he was the type of kid whose competitiveness would keep him focused. He wasn’t trying to actually learn the difficult ancient language; he just wanted to be able to recognize the letters and maybe a few words.