Tag Archives: Setting

Bible Teaching, GSM, Jesus

Setting

The following is another excerpt of a book which we have recently completed about teaching the Bible which focuses on some techniques that may be little known and are certainly seldom practiced today.  Here we present the all important element which we call the “Setting,” which, as you can imagine, is not what it seems.  Enjoy!

Taken from “Hosea: A teacher’s guide for those who are lead to teach the book of Hosea”

Setting

As we alluded to earlier, there is a power that is unleashed by simply reading the Word of God as if you have never read it before.  A key to this power being released is the teacher’s ability to bring the class into the setting of the Biblical text.

An 18th century Russian icon of the prophet Hosea located in the Iconostasis of Transfiguration church, Kizhi monastery, Karelia, Northern Russia, painted by an unidentified artist during the first quarter of the 18th century.

Setting, in this sense, is more than historical facts and data. It is more than an understanding of the people, places, economic, religious, and geopolitical circumstances which are present at the time the text is taking place in.  All of these are important elements of setting and can be aids to the class’s understanding of the text, however, for the Power of The Living God to be released into the room, something more is required.

The class must miraculously be transported to the time and place of Biblical account to be transformed.  The teacher guides the class to this place by humble submission to the power of God at work in the room.  In this place, all of the class’s previously formed conclusions about the Biblical text are shattered as they are transported to the place and time where the Biblical text takes place.  It is no longer a story or lesson, the room is alive as each person through supernatural selection assumes their place in the Biblical account as it is actually taking place around them.

Each person in the class is healed as the Spirit of The Living God teaches through each one of us as we experience the text as is written, not as it is interpreted by the teacher, but as it is spoken aloud to the class.

The teacher must balance elements of timing, relationship, and content as the healing presence of the Holy Spirit moves through the room.  The setting is given by The Lord and communicated through the teacher to bring healing as we open the Bible as if we have never opened it before.

Stay tuned for more teaching tips and purchase a copy of the book itself here.  Trust Jesus and stay fresh!

GSM, Jesus

The death of Isaiah

The following is a brief narrative loosely based on the “Ascension of Isaiah”, an early Christian text:

“You are around a campfire on a mountain after fleeing Bethlehem, which you had fled to after you’d fled Jerusalem.  You are with Isaiah and other prophets who have come under persecution by Manasseh, and you are overjoyed.  Not because of your current circumstances, but by what the Lord has spoken to you and your brethren who are sitting around the fire with you this cold night.

Isaiah has just told you and your brethren about his ascension to the seventh heaven, where he was permitted to see the Son of Man descend, undetected, through the heavens and down to earth to come to his own as a babe in a manger.  He then tells how he saw the Son of Man nailed to a tree and then descending into Sheol, only to return victoriously to the seventh heaven in unimaginable glory to sit at the right hand of the Eternal One.

Indeed, it is a terrible and wonderful time.

As you are rejoicing with your brethren over the promised Messiah and the Lord’s final victory over death, you see torches and hear shouts coming from the valley below, you and your brethren quickly extinguish the flames and run to hide wherever you can.  As you crouch behind a rock, out of the corner of your eye you watch Isaiah slip into a hollowed out tree. 

The men in torches appear and begin to search the area around the smoldering campfire.  You see that they are led by none other than Manasseh, the king of Judah.  You then recall that Isaiah had prophesied that indeed he would die by Manasseh’s hand.  As you are piecing this together in your mind, one of Manasseh’s men passes the by the rock which is your cover and strides up next to the tree in which Isaiah is hiding.  As he searches the branches above, he notices a light emanating from within the trunk of the tree.

It is Isaiah. 

You fix upon Isaiah’s face and watch as a holy calm and radiance comes over him.  A radiance that would later be recognized on the face of Stephen, the first Jew to be martyred for giving testimony to the messiah that Isaiah foresaw some 700 years earlier.

Then the unthinkable happens…

{Editor’s Note:  For those unfamiliar with the story, it is widely believed that Isaiah was sawn in two by Manasseh’s men while hiding in the tree.  This is testified to in the Jerusalem Talmud, the Babylonian Talmud, and the early Christian psuedepigrapha “The Ascension of Isaiah,”}