Tommy Mann

Let’s be honest: the idea of a devil can seem childish, like believing in the tooth fairy. Is there actually a devil, or is that just an invention of religious people to explain away things they don’t like? In Rob Bell’s book   What is the Bible?  He makes the case that the Jews developed the concept of a devil while they were exiled in Babylon—quite late in their history—as a way of coping with a God that would allow bad things to happen.     They blamed the devil to let God off the hook.    Pointing out that the first mention of Satan is in 1 Chronicles 21, written after the exile, Bell states: “The idea of Satan didn't emerge until the exile, until the Hebrews had experienced extraordinary evil and oppression and had found themselves in a foreign land miles from home in the midst of great alienation and suffering…You can see how the idea of an opposing, evil, destructive, force/spirit/god/goddess emerged as people became more sophisticated in their think...

  Do we know that we are saved now, or do we only hope we are? I frequently hear people say they hope they will go to heaven one day, but I know I am going.     But some like to point out that the New Testament uses the word hope in association with our salvation; Titus 3:7, for example, speaks of “the hope of eternal life.” It is important that we understand what hope means.   When believers speak of hope we are not using it as a verb (“I sure hope so!”). We are using it as a noun. Hope is not something we do, it is something we have. Hope is an intangible object we possess in our spirit, something in the future that we are so sure of now that it is thought of as a done deal.   Charles Spurgeon once said, “Unbelief begins weeping for the funeral before the man is dead; why should not faith commence piping before the dance of victory begins?”    Hope is like faith. For the child of God, the dance of victory has not yet begun, but that doesn’t mean we c...

  One of Jesus’ disciples gave us a great reason to show love. 1 Peter 4:8 says, “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.”   I have always liked that phrase, “Love covers a multitude of sins.” The Greek word means to hide or conceal something. But better than a dictionary definition is the graphic image another disciple gave us in his gospel. Describing the event where Jesus calmed the storm with just His words, Matthew 8:24 says, “And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but He was asleep.”   Matthew described the boat as being swamped by the storm.  Swamped  is the same Greek word translated as  covers  by Peter. The storm that threatened to claim the lives of the disciples violently covered their fishing boat. This was an aggressive covering.   Our love should have that same type of aggression. Greek scholar Kenneth Wuest wrote of this verb, “...