Mark Morgan was born in Australia and has been deeply involved in religion all of his life, working as a lay preacher, Sunday School teacher and missionary – trying to balance the many demands of spiritual life with those of family and paid employment, first as an engineer and later as a software developer. Happily married and blessed with eight children, he has spent many years reading the Bible and learning to teach its lessons. Writing Bible-based novels now fills much of his time.
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
Israel is home to many species of birds. In the Old Testament, the law of Moses devotes space to lists of which types of birds are unclean (e.g., Leviticus 11:13-19 and Deuteronomy 14:11-18).
The law forbade eating of unclean birds, and a quick look at the list of unclean birds shows that all the birds included eat meat or fish.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
The cycle of the year in Israel was guided by “feasts” – annual religious events. The name “feast” can be a little misleading as it may lead us to think of celebrations with party food, but these feasts were not like that at all. One “feast” – the Day of Atonement – required all the people to “deny themselves” (Leviticus 23:27), which seems to refer to fasting.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
For those of us who live in cities, particularly western cities, the cycle of the year does not effect us much. Our weather may change, but ploughing, sowing, threshing and reaping have little impact on us. Western supermarkets are stocked with a vast array of foods throughout the year, and the immediate connection between the fertile earth and the food on our tables is not very clear. Foods can be imported from countries all over the earth and land on supermarket shelves within days of being picked in some remote corner of the world. For us, the early and latter rains don’t really matter much.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
Last year I started to write out sections of scripture, and today, reading over what I had written, I came across a mistake that highlighted one sort of error that can very easily be made by copyists.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
In the times before computers and smartphones became so common, a Bible concordance was a wonderful tool for finding words in the Bible. Furthermore, if you could find words, you could also find expressions, although it could be quite a lot of work. The very first expression I remember looking up in a concordance was “terror on every side”. As a teenager, it seemed to me that I came across it on every second page when we were reading through Jeremiah as a family. So I pulled out my copy of Strong’s Concordance – the one with a gaudy purple cover which I still have – and began the search.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
In the time of King Josiah, the book of the law was found in the temple of Yahweh. It was read to Josiah and the words he heard caused him to tear his clothes and weep (2 Chronicles 34:19-21, 27; 2 Kings 22:11, 19) because the nation had not obeyed the laws it contained. Josiah expected that the punishments promised in the book of the law would follow.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
In Australia, we use the Gregorian calendar (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar), which was first introduced in various Roman Catholic countries in 1582 and gradually spread over the rest of the world over the next 350 years. Although there are still many different calendars in local use around the world, the Gregorian calendar is by far the most common one used for international dates. According to this calendar, the average year contains 365.2425 days, due to the careful inclusion of leap days added according to a defined plan.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
As far as we can tell, the majority of people in the Bible never heard directly from God. Nevertheless, God has spoken to humans on many occasions in many different ways throughout history. Men and women, young and old, kings and slaves, rich and poor, righteous and evil. God has also communicated or interacted in other ways: blessings, curses, riches, poverty, rewards, punishments, sickness, health, barrenness and having children. We are even told that in some situations he took control of people and made them do what he wanted. So what does the Bible tell us about God’s communication with people?
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By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
In many parts of the world, rainfall is not consistent or predictable, so water must be collected and stored to make sure there will be enough water when there is no rain for some time. Australia, where I live, is a very dry continent and in most areas, it would not be possible to live without storing large volumes of water.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
Jerusalem had many different gates and a few are mentioned in the prophecy of Jeremiah. Mostly they are referred to during his work as a prophet where at times he was required to go to a particular gate and do something at God’s command.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
Nowadays we read text on screens or if we are old-fashioned like me, we use books. Also called a codex, the book as we know it combined the advantages of two different earlier methods of collecting written records. Pages in a book are a convenient rectangular shape. This was the main advantage of the clay tablets that were used for recording information in many ancient nations. Paper has the added benefit of being flexible, and this was the main advantage of scrolls.
In this background article, we look at scrolls, their characteristics, advantages and drawbacks.Continue reading
By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah
Nowadays in western countries, we use pottery much less than it was used in Bible times. This is mostly because of the easy availability of plastic, glass and metal. However, this was not always the case and in Israel, the most common artefacts found in archaeological excavations are pieces of broken pottery.Continue reading