The Bible and History

One a scale of 1-10 where would you place your involvement in world events if you were God and could control everything, considering total lack of interference at 1 and total control at 10?

The Past and the Future

1.       Is there really a present? How long does it last between the future and the past (one year, one month, one week, one day, one second)?

2.       What is the difference between a prediction and a prophecy? 

3.       What do we [really] mean when we say “history repeats itself?”

4.       Does God bother to know every single decision I will make?

The Prophets as Historians

1.       If God is all-powerful and in control, and absolutely good at the same time how can there be so much suffering and injustice?

2.       Is God interested in all nations or only those which support or oppose divine purposes?

Daniel 2 and the Providence of God in History

1.       Why do you think God hid the dream from the king?  What were the chances that the king’s wise men could have come up with the right meaning if they had been told the dream?

2.       How can one tell if a dream is special and needs to be interpreted?  Does God speak to ordinary people through dreams?

3.       Why would God want to reveal the future?

The Great Controversy and History

1.       Can one be neutral in the conflict between God and Satan, or does one have to take sides?

2.       Why would humans want to join Satan’s side?  Do people ever want to be on the losing side?

3.       How certain are we that good will triumph?

The Cross and History

1.       Considering that there have been many godly men, many rabbis and many who have been martyred, how come the whole world follows a calendar that starts with Jesus? 

2.       What does the cross mean for my past and my future?

Creation Care

What work would Adam and Eve have had in a perfect Garden of Eden?

The Lobster Liberation Movement

1.       Are we to just do our own part in preserving the environment, or should we correct others, becoming tree huggers and Greenpeace activists?

2.       Knowing that Jesus is coming very soon shouldn’t we use up as much of the earth’s resources as we can rather than waste it unused?

A Statement on Creation Care

1.       The Adventist statement on care of the environment advocates a simple wholesome lifestyle: should we return to the rural Indian way of life which makes little demand on the earth’s resources and where waste returns straight to the earth?

2.       What is the use of me, one person, saving a few drops of water when everyone else is wasting it by the bucketfuls?

Creation Care

1.       In what ways can misuse of the environment be against the spirit of loving God and fellow-humans?

2.       Gen 2:15 makes humans “servants” and “keepers” of the land: What is the difference from being owners and rulers, in terms of responsibility.

Sabbath and the Environment

1.       How much is enough?  At what point should a person stop accumulating?

2.       How does Sabbath-keeping control our desires to abuse the environment?

Humankind’s Dominion

1.       Is the dominion of humans over creation incomplete because women are scared of mice and frogs (leave alone tigers and lions)?

2.       Have we accomplished God’s first command to humans – “replenish and fill the earth?”  What does “fill” mean?

Lord of the Sabbath

Which would you rather have in established in your memory, a monument or a holiday?

The Sabbath in Genesis

1.       What other explanation could a person give for the presence of the seven-day week, other than the institution of a Sabbath rest?

2.       When God blessed animals and humans he empowered/commanded them to increase: What could He have intended by blessing the Sabbath beyond hallowing it?

3.       The Sabbath starts and ends a 48 hour journey around the world at the dateline: Should the days actually start and end in the Ancient Near East?

The Sabbath in Exodus

1.       Why do you think the fourth commandment does not begin with “Thou shalt not break the Sabbath day?”

2.       Why do you think the fourth commandment has the most clarification of the ten?

3.       Why is not breaking the fourth commandment to follow a four or five day week when the commandment says to work six days?

4.       Why does the fourth commandment prohibit one’s servants and children from working on the Sabbath, but not one’s spouse?

The Sabbath in Deuteronomy

1.       Is it wrong to give a tailor or other worker something to do on Friday and ask for it to be completed by Sunday when he is working on his/her own premises and not yours?

2.       God often reminds the Israelites of their bondage in Egypt and uses that as reason for their obligations to Him: Is that like blackmail?

Jesus and the Sabbath

1.       Does Jesus ever give any advice on how to keep the Sabbath?

2.       Is Jesus to be our example for Sabbath keeping?

3.       For what categories of employees in hospitals is it okay to work on Sabbath?

4.       Why do we have to explain more and more when we start clarifying a principle?

5.       How does worship enhance the restoration, recharging, and renewing of one’s self?

God the Lawgiver

The Law at Sinai

1.       Why would God frighten the Israelites at the giving of the law on Sinai?

2.       Could thunder and lightning be valuable for revealing aspects of God that gentle breeze, a faint drizzle, and warm sunshine cannot?  Do we need drums and cymbals to reveal aspects of God that violins and harps cannot?

The Law Before Sinai

1.       Did Adam and Eve break any of the Ten Commandments? If so which one?

2.       How can we account for the fact that non Judeo-Christians have the same laws of society as the Bible?

The Sabbath Before Sinai

1.       What could we argue from the silence of the Biblical record, that the patriarchs such as Noah and Abraham must have kept the Sabbath, or that they must not have?

2.       What does the miracle of manna tell us about how much the Israelites knew about the Sabbath?

3.       How would you like to keep the Sabbath as instructed to the Israelites in the desert—stay indoors and not venture out?

The Law and the Prophets

1.       How could the psalmists (Ps 19, 119) love the law so much –sweeter than honey, etc?

2.       How would you like for humans to be allowed to live anyhow they wished and still be taken to heaven where also anyone could do whatever they wished?

The Law in the New Covenant

1.       Why are people so reluctant to accept grace, wanting instead to do something to merit what they receive?

2.       Were Israelites under the Old Covenant saved by works or grace?  Is this a bad question or not?

3.       Is grace opposed to the law?

4.       Can you have law keeping without love?  Can you have love without law keeping?