Luther Seminary's Bible Q & A

Podcast discussion with Eric Barreto, Cameron Howard and Rolf Jacobson. Article by Rolf Jacobson.

You have turned my mourning into dancing!
   You stripped off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy. -Psalm 30:11

One of my favorite teachers, Professor James Armstrong of Princeton Theological Seminary, used to say, “We teachers don’t have favorites ... and Dave Janzen is one of them.”

I feel the same way about the Bible. I was recently asked to blog about my favorite Bible …

Podcast discussion with Eric Barreto, Cameron Howard, and Rolf Jacobson. Article written by Rolf A. Jacobson.

Ask a Stupid Question...
Would Jesus shop on Black Friday? First of all, nobody knows. But -- in case you are the one person in North America who doesn’t know what Black Friday is -- Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving. Which makes it the first day of the Christmas shopping season.

The day when there are crazy, door-busting, jaw-dropping, loss-leader sale prices on …

Rolf Jacobson talks about praise psalms and their importance for our life today.

According to Jacobson, praise serves two functions in the psalms:

1. as a form of testimony, to show others how God has acted in the world (i.e., "We are called to praise God not for God's person, but for God's mission."); and
2. as a form of direct communication with God, as a part of our relationship with God. 

Jacobson concludes that praise is neither for transactional purposes nor for affirmation of God; rather, …

⁴First, a Little Exercise

⁵Think of a favorite Bible verse (for example, my theme verse is Psalm 94:8: Understand, O dullest of the people). ⁶Add the numbers together (example: 94+8=102). ⁷Multiply them by two, for the two testaments in the Bible (102x2 =204). ⁸Substract 66 for the number of books in the Bible (204-66=138). ⁹Take the square root, just because it is fun (11.74). ¹⁰You know what it means?

¹¹ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!

¹²This little exercise is, like my high-school attempts at romance, an …