A joyous Christmas to all!1Every year the number of our Finest of the Wheat Christmas-related posts grows. Here, all in one place, is a quick list of what is available on our site at the moment.
Our resources consist primarily of Bible studies focused on various aspects of the story of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, as well as poems, hymns, and carols celebrating Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.
Copyright © 2021
from the manuscript of
The Curious Corners of Christmas
by
Jim Kerwin
Would you have done as well as Matthew?1Who in their right mind thought it was a good idea to introduce readers to the glorious Christmas Incarnation story (never mind starting the entire New Testament!) with a genealogy? A genealogy! Really? It’s like putting a pre-converted, bah-humbugging Ebenezer Scrooge in charge of Christmas party activities, like putting the Grinch, still pinched with “a heart two sizes too small,” in charge of gift distribution.
Who thought it was a good idea to start with a genealogy? Well, the Apostle Matthew did, for one. And he did so under the Divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit, so God thought [continue reading…]
Public Domain (with exceptions)1
Unto You will I cry, O Lord my rock;
be not silent to me:
lest, if You be silent to me,
I become like them that go down into the pit.
—Psalm 28:1 kjv—
Isaiah ReidHave you not gone oftentimes to the post office or waited anxiously for the postman, and failed to get the letter you anticipated? Your heart could not quit its sighing for hours. Perhaps this has lengthened out into weeks, till hope dropped exhausted, and the heart grew dazed and dead. Unexpected, undesired silence is awful. We can bear many other grievances better than silence where we expected speech. “She would not speak to me!” My! How the very thought wrenches the heart strings! How the very feet drag along the way, and the hands forget their skill2—so quickly does the physical respond to the spiritual.
The cold lips in [continue reading…]
Copyright © 20071
chapter 10 from the book
Boyhood Memories & Lessons
by
Isaiah Reid
A Mother’s Day Tribute2Mother had a catechism which was called The Child’s Catechism. She used it for teaching us before we could read. She asked questions, and answered them either according to the book or with her own “Notes” and personal explanations and illustrations. The first question in the book was “Who created you?” The answer was in a monosyllable, “God.”
I have never been able to get away from that teaching. It was in harmony with the Lord’s Prayer she taught me a little later, beginning with the same Person, only the name was changed to “Our Father.” From that day I always believed that God was my Father in the creation sense, and that He was the Creator of all souls, and ruler of this world. I could never believe that I was a “child of the devil.” In sin I acted like a child of the devil, and was on his side, but all this while I was a prodigal from home. While in sin, and I read from the Bible, “All souls [continue reading…]
Copyright © 20211
As Christians, we are facing a great and glorious future. But it is a future in which the enemy will try to entangle our minds and confuse us, so that we shall not be ready when the Bridegroom comes. We need guidance from the Lord and His Book so that we may understand and be able to read the signs of the times, to be “men who know what Israel ought to do.”
To that end, God the Father intends that you should have in your mind a divine calendar of events leading up to [continue reading…]
28 February 2021
For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. 9This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance. 10For to this end we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe.
1 Timothy 4:8-10 nkjv
Dear Friend,
Prepping for a new teaching season!1My next-door neighbor, despite being Virginia born and bred, is a lifelong New York Yankees baseball fan. This morning he and his family left for Florida so that he can fulfill a long-held dream of watching the Yankees during their Spring-training camp. (Of course, there’s also the small matter of visiting a Florida-based great-grandchild — their first!)
My neighbor’s neighbors (that would be Denise and me) are in “spring training,” too, but it’s not nearly so glamorous as swinging bats, snagging line drives, and signing autographs for fans. Yes, assuming we can [continue reading…]
Copyright © 20211
by
Jim Kerwin
When you found that Old Testament quotationOkay, I’ll be the first to admit that mnemonic3 isn’t an adjective that rolls off the tongue or that comes up in casual conversation. Neither is its related noun, mnemonics, which means a technique of improving memory. But I think I can promise that if we can understand these unfamiliar words, the concept of a “mnemonic trigger” will become a useful and powerful tool in our Scripture reading and Bible study.
It might help us fix these two unusual words in memory if we take a quick trip down Memory Lane to visit the name which gave birth to both words. The ancient [continue reading…]
30 January 2021
If “speed kills,” then VW bug owners should live a long time!1Denise and I celebrated our 49th wedding anniversary yesterday, and I am reminded that when we got married we owned a high-mileage black 1965 VW “bug” as our first car. Though loved by economy-minded VW owners, that model more than deserved its nickname of “gutless wonder.” Did you ever get stuck on an uphill freeway on-ramp behind a “bug” that was reciting “I think I can, I think I can” as it strained up the incline? If you did, you probably got close enough to read the bumper sticker that only a VW bug owner could fully appreciate:
DON’T HONK!
I’M [continue reading…]
Copyright © 2020, 20211
by
Jim Kerwin
Several times a year I drive down a long stretch of highway in my home state of Virginia. While traveling westward on this road, I pass a church which hardly ever changes the message on its marquee. It nearly always proclaims that congregation’s motto:
Training for Reigning
Even though that probably doesn’t leave much to the imagination as to the typical content of their preaching and teaching (I’m guessing topics like prosperity, positive confession, and “living like a king’s kid”), it always makes me wonder if they teach anything about God’s minimum [continue reading…]
19 December 2020
Dear Friend,
On December 25th we celebrate missions. Missions!? You probably thought I’d say, “Christmas” or “Jesus’ birth” or even “the Incarnation.” All of those are valid answers, of course. But have you ever thought about all of those as very important sub-topics under the topic of missions, specifically the Great Commission?
The One who said, “Go” was sent.1The Great Commission? Isn’t that the mandate Jesus gave His disciples in Matthew 28:18-20? That’s when they became full-fledged apostles, right? “Apostle” — apóstolos in Greek — is just the noun form of the Greek verb apostéllō,2 to send someone out, to send a message. So the word apostle means nothing more — and nothing less! — than [continue reading…]
3 September 2020
Dear Friend,
I know for certain, because I performed a “random gravity check!”1I appeal to your imagination: Tell yourself, “This is the August newsletter, and it’s late because of gravity.” Yes, really! I had a bad fall four weeks ago, and the incident reminded me of a story Denise tells about her childhood friend, who, after a bad day of repeatedly dropping things, exclaimed, “Gravity is extra heavy today!” That’s my alibi.
Was anything broken in my fall? Well, yes — my pride, and over three weeks’ worth of meaningful productivity. Besides about eight hours in the emergency room, it has taken me considerable time to get back to normal in terms of daily routine, early-morning writing, our publishing schedule, and so forth. So my quick personal report is: “I fell down, got up, got patched up, and now I’m finally better.” (Oh, and the doctor tells me that there’s no miracle cure for [continue reading…]
Copyright © 20201
What is being taught nowadays about the Word of God is of great concern to me. There is so much misunderstanding of what it is. It helps us to understand things better if we know that there are two Greek words for “word” in the New Testament. Let me share them here in a chart.
| #1 | #2 | |
| Greek Word | λόγος | ῥῆμα |
| Transliteration2 | logos | rhēma |
| Pronunciation | lŏ-gŏs | hray-mah |
As you can see in column #1, the first Greek New Testament word often translated word is logos, which you may know very well. The word in column #2 you may also know, but perhaps not quite [continue reading…]
Derechos de autor © 20201
por
Percy Gutteridge
traducido por
Pastor Jorge L. Watanabe S.
con
Inés María González Valdés
¿Qué es el evangelio de la gloria? Aún no hemos descubierto la gloria de Dios. Y sólo por la revelación de Dios se nos puede dar a conocer. Muchas veces me han exhortado otras personas a predicar el evangelio. Dicen: “Ahora, hagas lo que hagas, predica el evangelio”. Pero hasta ahora nadie me ha dicho qué es realmente el evangelio.
El evangelio no es sólo una simple declaración de que [Sigue leyendo…]
Public Domain1
by
Isaiah Reid
The word for the closing and opening years should be “Up to Date.” We need not sit down in tears over the past which is gone. We had better be on our feet for a move forward. We must some way bring our past up to date, settled, canceled, cleared up to the present, or we will not have a fair start for the New Year. The sooner we actually get our whole past under the blood, certainly, and surely, and have witness to the same, the sooner we will be ready for our tomorrow. We need to be paid up to date and prayed up, and forgiven up, and cleansed up to date, and consecrated up to the [continue reading…]
Nadie puede representar la gloria de Dios,
If you want a happy New Year,
