Gilbert House Fellowship

THERE IS a chapter in the Book of Isaiah that is so clearly about the suffering servant, the Messiah, that have tended to avoid it for centuries. Continue reading →

ISAIAH'S PROPHECY of Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, about 150 years before he conquered Babylon is one of the remarkable sections of the Bible that proves its authenticity. Continue reading →

THE SCENE shifts from Isaiah's prophecies of imminent invasion by Assyria to looking ahead to the Medo-Persian conquest of Babylon. At the heart of it all is God's plan to restore the fortunes of His people, Israel. Continue reading →

GOD CAN deliver us in the face of overwhelming odds. We discuss two examples of this from the book of Isaiah this week--the miraculous healing of Hezekiah, marked by the backwards movement of the sundial's shadow, and the deliverance of Jerusalem from the unstoppable might of the Assyrian army. Continue reading →

This week, we read Hosea's prophecy against the northern kingdom of Israel, a final warning that was fulfilled when Assyria destroyed Samaria in 722 B.C. Continue reading →

HISTORY, PROPHECY, and a glimpse of a future war in heaven -- what more could we pack into this week's Bible study? Continue reading →

WHY DID God link the return of Israel from Egypt to "the iniquity of the Amorites"? Continue reading →

THE LONG rebellion by the small-G gods is all about getting control of God's mount of assembly, the Temple Mount. Continue reading →

GOD INSPIRED the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel to use the image of Israel as an unfaithful wife. He called Hosea to take it a step farther, directing the prophet to actually marry an adulterous woman to serve as an image of Israel's unfaithfulness to God. Continue reading →

HEZEKIAH WAS a better king than any since David, and better than all those who followed. He repaired and restored the Temple, reinstituted the worship of Yahweh, and tore down the high places devoted to Baal and Astarte (not just in Judah, but in Israel, too). Continue reading →

ISAIAH PROPHESIED the fall of Babylon before it had risen. At the time of the prophesies we read this week, Assyria was still the dominant power in the ancient Near East, but the phrase, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon," was revealed to … Continue reading →

THE FUTURES of Damascus, Moab, Egypt, and a mysterious foreign superpower -- possibly the USA -- are the meat of our Old Testament study this week. Continue reading →

WE REACH the end of the New Testament this week. The Revelation of John concludes with final judgments against Satan, the Beast, Death, Hades, and all whose names are not written in the Book of Life. We also discuss the thousand-year imprisonment of Satan, whether the war led by Gog of Magog in Revelation 20 is the same one prophesied by Ezekiel, and speculate on the shape of the new Jerusalem --...

ALREADY BUT not yet. That's a phrase we use often when discussing Bible prophecy, and it's appropriate again this week. We discuss the destruction of the northern kingdom, Israel, by the Assyrians as punishment for abandoning the LORD. Then we look at two chapters of the fascinating Book of Isaiah. Continue reading →

FALLEN, FALLEN is Babylon the Great! Who or what is Babylon the Great? After 2,000 years that's still a mystery. We discuss the seven plagues and the seven bowls of God's wrath, the mark of the Beast, the spirit behind the Great Prostitute, and the nature of the terrifying seven-headed, ten-horned Beast. Click here  for the complete archive of our New Testament Bible studies to date, and  click he...

GOD'S JUDGMENT on Israel and Judah was not going to be pleasant, but it was not to last forever. This week, we read prophecies of Isaiah and Micah on the coming destruction of the northern kingdom by Assyria and the southern kingdom by Babylon. Continue reading →

TIMES WILL be hard during the seven-year period called the Great Tribulation. You don't want to be here for it. This week, we discuss the two witnesses, the dragon and the rumble in the parking lot of heaven, and the beast that emerges from the sea in Revelation 13. The identity of the Beast has been the subject of speculation for two millennia, so we're not going to solve it here. The takeaway fr...

HE HADN'T intended to be a prophet, but that's the work to which the Lord called him. Amos, a contemporary of Isaiah, was a shepherd from south of Jerusalem in the kingdom of Judah. However, he devoted most of the nine chapters of his book to warning the northern kingdom of Israel about its imminent doom -- a judgment decreed by God. Continue reading →

GOD'S JUDGMENT on an unrepentant world is the focus of this week's New Testament study. John was shown terrifying imagery of disasters so catastrophic that the earth is literally shaken to its core. But take heart -- the church of Jesus Christ is not appointed to wrath, so if you have accepted Christ as your Savior, you won't be here for it. We discuss the first six trumpet judgments, speculate on...

PROPHESYING DURING a time just before a calamity has to be one of the worst jobs ever. Isaiah was called to be a prophet during a visit to the throne room of God, but his orders were to make sure the people of Judah didn't listen to God. Continue reading →

THE FIRST six seals are opened in our study of Revelation this week. Bearing in mind that the meaning of these seals has been debated for 2,000 years, we offer our best understanding of the images and prophecies recorded by John the Revelator. We discuss the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, speculating that the first rider, often interpreted as the spirit of Antichrist (although some incorrectly b...

PRIDE AND repentance are the themes of this week's Old Testament study. Continue reading →

NOW WE get to the prophetic stuff! The Book of Revelation was written by John, either in the mid-60s A.D. or around 95 A.D. Most scholars believe it was the later date, during the reign of Domitian, although some believe it was thirty years earlier, during the reign of Nero. Either way, Revelation is a deep and fascinating prophecy given to John by Jesus himself. This week, we discuss the introduc...

IRON AGE history is a bloody business, and the history of the kings of Israel and Judah is no different. This week's Old Testament study looks at transfers of power -- somewhat less than peaceful -- in the generation following Ahab and Jehoshaphat. Continue reading →

THE EARLY church had to deal with a number of heretical teachings. The idea that Jesus was not fully God and fully man was one of them. The apostle John addressed this in his first epistle. In his gentle style, John counseled believers to love one another, to recognize false teachings, and to test the spirits, because not everything that manifests from the supernatural realm is from God. Click her...