Wedding — Lorena and Renan

On the 11th of July, Elen and I gave away our eldest daughter Lorena in marriage to Renan. Both are believers in fellowship in the assembly here in Pirassununga, and we pray that they may live for the glory of God. Some photos of the wedding:

Differences between Ezra's and Nehemiah's lists

The table at the end of this post presents, side by side, two lists of the Jews who returned form the Captivity in Babylon during the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, but many discrepancies between the two lists have been pointed out in the past. I have no illusions about explaining authoritatively the reason for these discrepancies, but I intend to:

Simplified Time-line of the Old Testament

The historical narrative of the Old Testament is not uniform — sometimes the narrative flies over centuries in a few verses, sometimes it slows down and takes up a whole book to tell us about a period of thirty days. We will reap great benefits in our study of the OT if we understand this fact, and try and perceive the speed of the narrative.

The graphic below presents a global vision of the historical books of the OT (Genesis to Esther) plotted along a time-line that stretches from the Creation of the world to the birth of Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. Some key events (the Flood, the Exodus, etc.) are marked in the time-line, but the main purpose of the graphic is to show the period of time occupied by each book, and the chronological relation between the books.

What is God's testimony of me?

If we examine the occurrences of the Greek word martureo (“testify”; Strong’s nº 3140), we will notice that the Holy Spirit presents to us a very interesting picture of God testimony of His servants. The word is used 79 times in the Bible describing men testifying of other men, God testifying of His Son, etc. But only three times is it used in relation to God testifying of a human being. And these three occurrences present to us God’s servants in relation to the past, the present and the future.