Mostrando resultados por narrador "Dr. Bill Creasy" en Todas las categorías

Study through the entire Bible, Genesis through Revelation, in one year! This "flagship" Logos course grew out of Dr. Creasy's year-long UCLA program, "The English Bible as Literature." One of the most highly rated courses on campus, "The English Bible as Literature" placed Dr. Creasy among the top 2% of UCLA teaching faculty for over 20 years!

From Solomon’s reign to the prophetic call of Elijah, 1 Kings tells the story of the collapse of David’s united monarchy into a nearly 100-year civil war and the fracture of a nation into two kingdoms: Israel and Judah. Logos Bible Study’s Dr. Bill Creasy journeys deeply into the historical and cultural nuances that underlie this amazing and compelling story.

In this lecture we introduce the four foundational principles upon which our Logos Bible Study program is built. The Bible is: 1) rooted in geography; 2) it emerges from history; 3) it is—in its final, finished form—a unified literary work and 4) it is the Word of God.

Paul meets Timothy at the beginning of his second missionary journey. On the first missionary journey (A.D. 46 – 48), Paul visits Lystra, a city in central Asia Minor. It seems he had little success there, as in Lystra “they stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead” (Acts 14: 19). On his return to Lystra in A.D. 50, however, Paul meets Timothy, a young man whose grandmother Lois and mother Eunice had become believers, apparently during Paul’s first visit to Lystra.

Although Matthew may not be the first written Gospel, like Isaiah it is positioned first in its sequence of four Gospels. Opening with a 42-generation genealogy, Matthew reminds us of the linear nature of God’s plan, and Matthew forms a link—a swinging door—between the Old and New Testaments. Matthew is a Jew writing for a Jewish audience, and his Gospel provides our first perspective on the birth and public ministry of Jesus Christ. Join Logos Bible Study’s Dr. Bill Creasy as he leads us through this dazzling work.

Although the primary meaning of what a prophet says always emerges from the historical context in which he writes, what he says will sometimes foreshadow messianic or eschatological (“end time”) events. It is our responsibility as educated readers of Scripture to determine when such foreshadowing occurs and when it does not.

Notice that from Genesis through Judges, our story moves across a linear timeline: We move in a straight line from Genesis through Judges, from creation through roughly 1,000 B.C. Ruth is a recapitulation; it turns around and goes back to “the days when the Judges ruled” (Ruth 1: 1). Back in those awful days, there was Ruth, Naomi, Boaz—and the greatest love story in the Bible.

In Leviticus, God tells his people to “be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19: 2). Leviticus is a handbook of holiness. Here God prescribes the five great sacrifices that enable a sinful people to be brought into fellowship with a holy God: 1) the burnt offering; 2) the grain offering; 3) the peace offering; 4) the sin offering; and 5) the guilt offering. Four of these five are animal sacrifices.

If Isaiah is the Thundering Prophet and Jeremiah is the Weeping Prophet, Ezekiel is the Weird Prophet! Ezekiel is taken captive to Babylon after its second attack on Jerusalem, 597 B.C. Ezekiel’s book is set in Babylon and it consists of thirteen separate “visions” that span twenty years. And they are very strange visions, indeed!

With the conflict of sin fully resolved and “the great and dreadful day of the Lord” a memory, our linear narrative doubles back on itself: Revelation 20-22 bring us back to a new beginning. In Revelation 21: 1-5 we read: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband."

In this book Paul continues his discussion about the return of Jesus Christ that he introduced in 1 Thessalonians. Logos Bible Study’s Dr. Bill Creasy explains how this critical issue dominates much discussion during the first generation of the church and what answers Paul provides for those who expect the Lord to return in the very near future.

Both Isaiah and Hosea are writing at the same time, during the reigns of kings Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, 740-686 B.C. In Isaiah 1-35, Isaiah hauls Israel into court, charging her with unfaithfulness, calling out witnesses and finding her guilty. The theme of these chapters is judgment. In Hosea, God says: “You know what I think; now I want you to know how I feel.”

Although Romans is not the earliest of Paul’s writings, like Isaiah and Matthew, Romans sits at the head of the epistles and letters. Written as a formal argument and structured as a scholastic diatribe, Romans presents Paul’s great thesis that we are saved by grace through faith, not by works of Law. This is revolutionary! Romans, perhaps more than any other book ever written, has fundamentally changed Western civilization, and it is foundational to understanding all of Paul’s other epistles and letters.

The story of David continues in 2 Samuel. With the death of Saul and his three sons at Mt. Gilboa, the door opens for David to become king. But David has, in fact, no legitimate claim to the kingship; indeed, he has been working for a decade as a mercenary for Israel’s Philistine enemies. Listen as Dr. Bill Creasy follows David from the triumph of his kingship to his colossal fall and ultimate reconciliation with God.

Habakkuk is the prophet with a question mark for a brain! “Why,” he asks, does a God of justice allow injustice to flourish; why does violence prevail? And God provides an answer: “Look at the nations and watch and be utterly amazed, for I am going to do something in your day that you would not believe even if you were told. I am raising up the Babylonians!” Through Habakkuk God takes credit for using the Babylonians as his instrument of judgment on Judah and Jerusalem.

In Genesis the curtain rises on our story. Genesis introduces most of the major themes in the Bible. Listen closely as Logos Bible Study’s Dr. Bill Creasy takes you through the story of creation, the fall of man, grace, atonement, faith, justification, redemption and much more in this extraordinary story of beginnings.

Luke is a Gentile writing for a particular person, another Gentile named Theophilus. In his Gospel, Luke provides a detailed and orderly account of the life and ministry of Jesus. Although Matthew, Mark, and Luke draw from many of the same sources for their material, each Gospel writer adapts his material for his particular audience and purpose. Luke presents his material in a brilliant prose style, as he creates a specific voice for his narrator and specific, identifiable voices for his characters.

While Paul is in Corinth, A.D. 50 – 52, he writes three epistles, two to the church in Thessalonica and one to the churches in Galatia. Paul spends only “three Sabbath days” in Thessalonica (Acts 17: 2) and he encounters such opposition that “as soon as it was night, the brothers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea” (Acts 17: 16), lest they be stoned.

Revelation is the easiest book in the Bible to read and to teach—providing you have read all the books in the Bible that precede it! We noted at the very start of our study together that the Bible—in its final, finished form—is a unified literary work: The curtain rises in Genesis and it falls in Revelation. In between we have a linear narrative: God is the main character; sin is the conflict; redemption is the theme. Thus, reading Revelation is like reading the final chapter in a 2,000-page novel.

Paul and Titus had worked together for many years, but in this letter Paul calls Titus to task. Left by Paul in Crete sometime between A.D. 63-67 to finish up the work they had started there, Titus has failed to complete the job. Paul writes this letter to give Titus a swift kick in the butt, telling him to complete the work quickly and to join Paul in western Greece as soon as possible.