Harmony of Bible records of Jesus’ Prophecy on the Mount of Olives

By Mark Morgan | Harmonies , Jesus

Jesus’ prophecy on the Mount of Olives

There were only two days left before Jesus was to be betrayed and crucified when his disciples commented on the glorious construction of the temple in Jerusalem.

Jesus surprised them by telling them that the temple they were admiring would be completely destroyed.

Naturally, the disciples wanted to know when this disaster would take place, and asked if it was linked to his return and the end of the age.

Jesus’ answer gave details of events that would take place in years that stretched far beyond their lifetimes – in fact we are still waiting today for some of this prophecy to come to pass. These prophecies give details of Jesus’ return from heaven to earth, so they are vitally important to all followers of Jesus.

The Bible passages which record the prophecies are as follows:

• Matthew 24:1-51 [and probably the parables of Matthew 25:1-46]
• Mark 13:1-37
• Luke 21:5-36

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Harmony of Bible records of Paul’s conversion

By Mark Morgan | Harmonies , Paul

The conversion of Paul

Paul, the apostle of Jesus originally known as Saul, was converted from Judaism to Christianity by unexpectedly meeting Jesus. Luke describes the events in Acts 9 and also reports two occasions on which Paul himself described his conversion in Acts 22 and Acts 26. Paul also comments on the surrounding events in Galatians 1 & 2. The goal of this article is to put together these four records in chronological order. In this article, we present a harmony of Bible records of Paul’s conversion and the basis for the order chosen.

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Timeline of Isaac’s life

By Mark Morgan | Timelines

The life of Isaac

Sandwiched in between the more famous Abraham and Jacob is Isaac, the longest-lived of the patriarchs.

Isaac is probably best known for being tricked into blessing his younger son Jacob when he intended to bless Esau. The result of this deception was Isaac gave a blessing to Jacob that fulfilled what God had promised before the birth of the twins: the older (Esau) would serve the younger (Jacob).

There are some other details in Isaac’s life that may be well-known so let’s go through a few below.
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Timelines of Abraham’s and Jacob’s lives

By Mark Morgan | Timelines

Timelines can help us get a sense of the order and duration of events in people’s lives. Timelines of Abraham and Jacob are presented below.
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Simple timeline of the Bible

By Mark Morgan | Timelines

Here is a simple timeline of the entire Bible, beginning at creation and ending at about 100AD. It won’t give you exact dates, but it might help you to get a sense of scale and order in Biblical events.

Timeline

Showing more than 4,000 years on one line makes it impossible to show much detail in short periods of time like the life of Jesus or his disciples. This timeline is, therefore, a broad-brush presentation of the events in the Bible.
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The End of Babylon

By Mark Morgan | Daniel

Babylon is handed over to the Medes and Persians

The empire of Babylon (the Neo-Babylonian empire) was built almost entirely around around one man – Nebuchadnezzar II. God used it to punish many nations – including Judah – but after seventy years, the time came for the end of Babylon.

This article has taken a very long time to write because of the uncertainty in archaeology, history and Bible interpretation.  I take the Bible as my first basis for evidence, but often the Bible gives very little historical detail.  This should be no surprise.  After all, recording historical detail is just a side effect of the Bible’s goals of offering salvation and truth.

Many’s the time, however, that Bible believers have rejected discoveries of science, not because they were wrong, but because our understanding of the Bible was simplistic.  The interface between science and the Bible can be difficult at times.  Sometimes scientists and Christians can each jump to unwarranted conclusions about the other.  I’ve been trying hard to avoid doing this regarding the historical setting of the book of Daniel.

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Kings in the time of Daniel

By Mark Morgan | Daniel , Jeremiah , Timelines

While writing a story about Daniel over the last five years, I knew that I would finally get to the stage where I needed to make decisions about the later kings of Babylon in the time of Daniel.  The history in the early parts of Daniel’s life is fairly much agreed upon and fits well with the Bible.  However, the agreement fades away as we consider the following fifty years of history.  After a lot of study of the Bible’s records – which I consider to be the inspired word of God – I cannot embrace the generally-accepted lists of kings of Babylon, Media and Persia during the sixth century BC (eg. List of Kings of Babylon (Wikipedia) or List of Kings of Babylon (Jatland).

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Follow Me!

By Mark Morgan | Jesus

Have you ever done anything completely unexpected, unplanned, sudden, extreme?  Something that others would think crazy or irrational – and perhaps your husband, your wife or your parents might agree with those others!  Let’s look at some people who did that sort of thing because Jesus called them to follow him.

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How to greet a king

By Mark Morgan | Daniel

In Australia, where I live, there are many common greetings, including “G’day”, a greeting made internationally famous by the film Crocodile Dundee.

However, we all know that our greetings vary.  Family and friends may receive one type of greeting while new acquaintances may warrant another.

We may greet employers, teachers, government officials, doctors, academics, religious leaders or army officers in various other ways.

If, however, we met the leader of our country, we might think very carefully about how address them. And if you live in the British Commonwealth, do you know how to greet a king?

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Harmony of Bible records of appearances of the resurrected Jesus

By Mark Morgan | Harmonies , Jesus

Several books and letters in the Bible report Jesus’ interaction with many different people after his resurrection. However, since no one record includes all of the information, we need a harmony of Bible records of appearances of the resurrected Jesus.

The Bible passages which record events surrounding the resurrection of Jesus, the subsequent 40 days during which he met with his disciples and his ascension are as follows:

• Matthew 28:1-20
• Mark 16:1-20
• Luke 24:1-53
• John 20:1-21:25
• Acts 1:1-12
• 1 Corinthians 15:4-7

Jesus’ appearances after his resurrection are discussed in another article (Jesus’ appearances after his resurrection), but the current article tries to put the records of the appearances before Jesus ascension in chronological order.

Parallel records from Matthew, Mark, Luke, John (and Acts)

The gospel records can be interleaved with some effort and many have attempted to do so. Here is another attempt. Determining exactly when some of the events took place during the 40 days in which Jesus met with them is impossible. Some of the gospel records summarise these events or some of these events, in a paragraph or two, so the harmonisation of these passages is simply guesswork.

The harmonisation is most easily shown in a table format and is best viewed on a screen that is wider than it is high.

The Bible text in this harmony of Bible records of appearances of the resurrected Jesus is taken from the World English Bible (WEB) which has been released into the public domain.

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Jesus’ appearances after his resurrection

By Mark Morgan | Jesus

Early on the Sunday morning following his crucifixion, Jesus rose from the dead – to the dismay of his enemies and the complete surprise of his friends! Each of the four gospels records different details of that morning and the forty days that followed, leading finally to his ascension. Putting those records together into one coherent narrative is not easy, but I hope to present a harmony of the gospels for this time in another newsletter. For the time being, we’ll just look at the appearances of Jesus after his resurrection.

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The Land of Pathros

By Mark Morgan | Jeremiah , Maps

After the flood, Noah’s descendants spread across the world.  Noah’s youngest son, Ham, had a son called Egypt, some of whose descendants were called the Pathrusim (Genesis 10:14).  Many believe them to be connected with the Land of Pathros, a part of Upper Egypt (see map below).

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