Old News

Technology has its down side (witness all the ads for Viagra and body-part enlargers that show up in my spam box) but it really has some great stuff too. Recently I have been enjoying Inter-Varsity Press’s Quiet Time Study page. It works its way through the Bible over a couple years with questions and links to the Bible Gateway page for that passage. I read the introductory paragraph, click on the link to Bible Gateway, read the passage, then line up the two windows side-by-side on my screen, read the questions one at a time and find the answers in the passage.

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Recently the Quiet Time Study page had me in Malachi, probably not a book I would have searched out on my own. How relevant can a 2500-year-old, pre-Christian sermon be? In Malachi 3:5 I read:

“So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against 
sorcerers, 
adulterers 
and perjurers, 
against those who defraud laborers of their wages, 
who oppress the widows and the fatherless, 
and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, 
but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty.

I wondered if Malachi had had a peak at some of the current news sites. 

God judges:
those who make use of occult powers instead of trusting God; 
those who are unfaithful in their marriages,
or lack integrity;
big companies with unjust labor practices;
those who don’t give single mothers and their children a chance;
those who think someone doesn’t deserve the protection of the law just because they were born outside our borders.

Kind of sad that in 2500 years we haven’t learned much.