The season of Dire Straits comes around every year in the Jewish calendar, but this time we have a perfect illustration of the concept with the now familiar image of the Strait of Hormuz. Forced to make their way through perilous narrow waters, the global shipping industry has had to
There’s a famous encounter with a character the Bible describes as the Commander of the Lord’s Army in Joshua chapter 5. His message to Joshua was profound, and his identity even more so. However, there is another extremely important aspect which often gets missed, and that’s what happened next. This
Why did God employ a fish to deliver Jonah? What’s with all the fish in the New Testament? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there are a lot of fish in the Bible, and it’s worth pondering their symbolism. Fish feature prominently in the stories of Jesus, but appear
Kabbalat Shabbat means welcoming the Shabbat on Friday night. It makes Friday evening very special for Jewish people – especially Jewish families. The family meal together on Friday is almost a no-excuses obligation. Even for many secular families who have long given up on following God’s laws – getting home
The biblical season of “Counting the Omer” happens between Passover and Pentecost. Pentecost in the Bible is known as the Feast of Weeks, Shavuot in Hebrew, but it all means the same thing: 50 (pente) days, or the equivalent seven weeks (shavuot) if you’re counting in weeks. Many ears are pricking
Have we lost the meaning of Shabbat? God sanctified the seventh day and made it holy, and continues to insist that we should keep the Shabbat many times throughout Scripture. But why is it so special? And what should it mean to us who are living in the New Covenant?
There’s a famous encounter with a character the Bible describes as the Commander of the Lord’s Army in Joshua chapter 5. His message to Joshua was profound, and his identity even more so. However, there is another extremely important aspect which often gets missed, and that’s what happened next. This
Why did God employ a fish to deliver Jonah? What’s with all the fish in the New Testament? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there are a lot of fish in the Bible, and it’s worth pondering their symbolism. Fish feature prominently in the stories of Jesus, but appear
When God spoke to Gideon (which means “hewer”) he was hewing wheat, separating the wheat from the chaff which is pretty remarkable when we think of what he went on to do with God. Through Gideon God weeded out the “wheat” from the “chaff” in his army through different tests
How did Israel get the name Israel? And what does it mean? The answer is not so simple. The word “Israel” is mentioned 2362 times in the Bible, 2284 times in the Hebrew Scriptures and 78 times in the New Testament as well. Where does the word come from and
You might have thought the word “hope” would appear in the Bible all over the place. Hundreds of times. But if you’re looking to find hope, the word itself is mentioned just over 80 in the 39 books of the Hebrew Scriptures, and just under 80 in the 27 books
After outlining all the desperate straits that he and his countrymen are in, the book of the prophet Habakkuk ends on an extremely interesting and unusual note. The last verse says this: “God, the Lord, is my strength, and He makes my feet like hinds’ feet, and He makes me to
Well over 100 Arabic-speaking Christians aged 18-35 from all over the north of Israel came for a conference held by the Arabic ministry of ONE FOR ISRAEL. The conference was entitled “Useful to the Master of the House”, with the focus on becoming useful vessels for God based on a
There are some wild ideas of what life looks like for Israeli Jewish and Arab believers in Jesus, but what’s the reality? It’s not easy that’s for sure, but some viral videos give a completely misleading idea of what happens to the believers here in Israel… And there are some
ONE FOR ISRAEL’s Arabic ministry team, though just three people in number, are seeing some wonderful fruit from their labor. “We saw the work of God, there have been some big challenges, and we needed miracles,” Carlos Damianos relayed. They needed miracles and they got them. But there’s more to
Jesus’ genealogies are frequently said to be irreconcilable. They are not. They are an invitation to delve deeply into the history of both Israel and her Messiah, intended not to mystify but to edify. Guest blog by James Bejon The New Testament attributes two different genealogies to Jesus. One is
Capital punishment by stoning!? By hanging!? By burning at the stake!? Sometimes to the modern reader the maximum penalties in the Old Testament may seem cruel, barbaric or primitive. On the other hand, our system of punishment in modern day western society would be regarded as weak, too soft and ridiculous in
God created an escape from eternal death through his Word, which became flesh. He is the Messiah, Yeshua, who was born of the virgin Mary (Isaiah 7:14), in fact, all the Old Testament prophets pointed to him for thousands of years. In the Holy Scriptures we learn that God has
