Oleh Ronald L. Dart

Sitting here, watching an impending moral collapse, one is led to wonder what’s going on—what is the proximate cause of all this? I can tell you where I think we went wrong; but to do so, I need something to stand on. And I always try to stand on the Bible to look at issues like this. That’s my worldview. And when you come to an issue like this fro…

The road out of Egypt is not a pleasant drive. It boggles my mind to think about walking it with a million refugees. I set out one morning in a borrowed Volkswagen to drive from Cairo to the Suez Canal. My wife was with me, as was a lady we intended to baptize in, of all places, the Red Sea. It is a desolate wilderness across there. Once you leave …

The story of the Exodus is a tremendous story: a wonderful story of liberty, freedom, and an end to slavery for an entire people. It is a story of triumph—and it is also a story of great tragedy. Yes, it involves the birth of a great nation, but it also involves the destruction of a great nation and of one of the world’s most powerful rulers. And b…

Nearly everyone knows the story of the Exodus. Between Charlton Heston playing Moses in the movie The Ten Commandments and the animated Prince of Egypt the story has been thoroughly told to the masses. But there is an aspect of it that continues to trouble a lot of people who read the Bible. Pharaoh had no choice. God hardened his heart again and a…

The world can be a very confusing place, can’t it? It isn’t always easy to know the right thing to do, the right road to take, or the right decision to make. And most of us, most of the time, want to do the right thing. At least we want to think we want to do the right thing. But it seems that, in the modern world, the right thing to do keeps shift…

Oleh Ronald L. Dart

Oleh webmaster@borntowin.net (Sermon by Ronald L. Dart)

What would happen to you if you were down and out and there was no one to help? Where would you be if you were sick and broke in a strange city with no place to sleep and nothing to eat; no money, no credit cards, no checks; no one to accept a collect call, no one to send you bus fare home, no one to send you money for a meal, and no home to go to;…

In all of the Bible, who is the greatest example of leadership (apart from Jesus, of course)? Without a doubt, it’s David. When you speak of David in a Biblical context, the name needs no modifier. You don’t have to call him King David for a Bible reader to know exactly who you are talking about. His name occurs more than 1,000 times in the Old Tes…

There was a time when we knew what terrorists wanted. When they blew up something, they identified themselves and made their demands. We knew what they wanted and why they wanted it. All that has changed. Now terrorists don't identify their cause, nor do they make demands. What do they want? At the time, I concluded that what they wanted was Americ…

We need to talk about Haiti. I know you’ve probably had more Haiti on your television than you’d like to see for some time; you’ve had enough. My question, though, is, “What more could Christians have done for that poor land?” Haiti is actually a largely Christian country, with Roman Catholicism professed by 80% of the Haitians. Protestants made up…

Oleh Ronald L. Dart

Oleh webmaster@borntowin.net (Sermon by Ronald L. Dart)

Does anyone know where we went wrong? It is impossible to deny that we have gone wrong somewhere. I hear voices on every side telling the government what to do, but I am left with the sinking feeling that no one knows what to do. We have been sailing happily on our way, looking for all the world like the richest nation the anyone has ever seen. And…

Oleh webmaster@borntowin.net (Sermon by Ronald L. Dart)

Oleh webmaster@borntowin.net (Sermon by Ronald L. Dart)

Oleh Ronald L. Dart

Oleh webmaster@borntowin.net (Sermon by Ronald L. Dart)

Years ago a friend told me what I was. Most of us have had that experience at one time or another. (If not who we are, at least where we can go.) My friend told me that I was an apologist. I would have been flattered if I’d known what that meant. It was somewhat later I encountered one of the greatest of Christian apologists, C. S. Lewis. And then …

Oleh webmaster@borntowin.net (Sermon by Ronald L. Dart)

Oleh webmaster@borntowin.net (Sermon by Ronald L. Dart)

Oleh webmaster@borntowin.net (Sermon by Ronald L. Dart)

Oleh webmaster@borntowin.net (Sermon by Ronald L. Dart)

Before I get too involved in the study, there’s something I want us all to think about. The technical discussions about the Passover will never have an end. What’s important is that we do not let them distract from what is important. When we come to partake of the symbols of Jesus’ shed blood and broken body, it’s important that our hearts and mind…

I don’t suppose there has ever been a man on the face of the earth who had the power at his beck and call that Jesus had. But there was never a time when he abused it. He tried to make this lesson clear at the last supper when he got up, took a towel, laid aside his outer garment, got a basin of water, and began to wash his disciples feet. He said,…

It seems like it’s very hard for the servants of God to keep their act together. The worst thing that can happen to us is good times. For the Israelites who returned to Jerusalem from exile, the times had indeed been very hard for a while. They had started rebuilding the temple, then they had to stop because of political pressure. Then, under the p…

When you begin pondering the last days (as the Bible presents them) and you read what the prophets have to say about that time, you’re inevitably drawn to the Book of Revelation. And what I find fascinating is how commonly the Old Testament prophets are cited in Revelation. If you have one of those Bibles that have marginal references in it you can…

There is really no question that when you read an Old Testament prophet you should ask how he was understood at the time, and how the prophecy would apply in his own lifetime. But if you stop there you may miss something very important. What a prophet like Zechariah was seeing and hearing from God would tend to repeat in successive generations; lik…

And he said unto them, Behold, when you are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you, bearing a pitcher of water; follow him into the house where he enters in. And you shall say unto the owner of the house, The Master says unto you, Where is the guest room, where I shall eat the passover with my disciples? And he shall show you a large upp…

Two things came my way yesterday which, at first blush, seem unrelated. But, in fact, they have a common, underlying philosophy which needs to be challenged every time it raises its ugly head. It may even be called a hidden agenda, because it is an agenda, and no one ever talks about it. The first was an editorial in one of the popular news magazin…

When you are reading the Old Testament prophets, there’s a particular challenge you run into again and again: What time period is the prophecy aimed at? Now, I have long since explained that in order to understand a prophet you need to know where he was and how his prophecy would be understood by the people who heard it. Some of the prophecies are …

I find myself constantly fascinated at the way the prophets in the Bible interlace with one another. You wouldn’t know this on a single read. You wouldn’t know it by reading a chapter here a chapter there or by reading somebody’s argument that has proof-texts drawn in from everywhere. You have to read the Bible—all of it—again and again and sooner …

It seems odd, in a way, that Satan is not mention more than he is in the Old Testament—at least by name. There may be other references, but the word Satan appears only once in all the historical books of the Bible, once in the Psalms, 11 times mentioned in the book of Job (but he’s a major player there in the whole drama), and in all of the prophet…

The next-to-the-last book in the Old Testament—the next-to-the-last of the Minor Prophets—is a man named Zechariah. In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, came the word of the Lord unto Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the prophet, saying, The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers. Therefore say thou unto them…

And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, he said unto his disciples, You know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified. Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders of the people, unto the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, …

Several years ago, I was driving through an area the weekend after a tragic mass shooting had occurred there. I listened on the radio to the people who lived nearby as they responded to being put in a goldfish bowl for the whole country to watch. I couldn’t help but reflect along with them about how unfair the whole thing was. Every special interes…

Most readers of the Bible are a little vague about the time of the later prophets. They may know that Jerusalem fell and the temple was destroyed in 586 BC. More likely, though, they will have little idea of the timeline. They may know from Daniel and Jeremiah that there was to be a 70-year exile, and indeed the second temple was completed 70 years…

It’s no picnic being a prophet. Of all the jobs God hands down to men, the job of the prophet may be the toughest of the lot. And it may come as a surprise to learn that some of them (maybe even most of them) were poets and musicians. I guess there’s something about that which, maybe, suits prophecy better. I feel sorry for the many self-appointed …

The Old Testament book of Obadiah is the shortest of all the Minor Prophets and, strangely, it doesn’t really seem to say a lot to modern man. I can understand why people reading the Bible kind of brush by it. But as I have said before, trying to understand the biblical prophets solely in terms of events in the far-distant future or solely in terms…

There is a terrible irony in the prophet Zephaniah. Actually, he did his prophecy in the days of Josiah; and Josiah was one of the best of the kings of Judah but the prophecy that came down in his days were among the most dire ever handed down by any prophet. Here is how Zephaniah starts: The word of the Lord which came unto Zephaniah the son of Cu…

And the Lord spoke unto Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying, Let the children of Israel also keep the Passover at his appointed season. In the fourteenth day of this month at evening ye shall keep it in his appointed season. According to all the rites of it and…

When you read the Old Testament prophets, a pattern begins to emerge. And if you know what to look for it begins to clear the air somewhat in trying to understand what they’re about. As long as society is behaving itself—people are living good lives, they’re being moral, they don’t start trouble—you don’t even hear from the prophets. God never send…

Living as we do in an age of plenty, it’s hard for us to understand famine. What we do know about it is a long way off and kind of unreal. We see picture of mothers with little babies with their bellies distended and being told they’re starving to death. You would believe it looking at those little twiggy limbs. We might even sit down and write a c…

Once upon a time there was a man named Jonah. I am sure you heard of him. He was the son of a man named Amittai and we know he was an active prophet during the reign of Jeroboam II, king of Israel. In those years Israel was riding high—at their height in prosperity and in military power. But so was Assyria in the east with its great city, Nineveh.…

We don’t know a lot about Nahum. He describes himself as an Elkoshite but no one knows where Elkosh is to date him. The date of his prophecy can be placed between 700 to 600 BC. He mentions in the book two particular dates. One is the destruction of the Egyptian capital No-Amon (Thebes) in about 636 to 630 BC and he is speaking of the future destru…

And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them: Concerning the feasts of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are My feasts. Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of rest, a holy convocation. Ye shall do no work therein; it is the Sabbath of the L…

I’m sure you’ve heard the old axiom: Once bitten, twice shy. Or maybe you heard it another way: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I think that old saw may lie behind my skepticism of prophets. More than once, I have declared that I have never encountered anyone whom I considered a genuine prophet, in the biblical sense. I have…

Reading the biblical prophets—with understanding—is no easy task, at best. But when you try to do it without knowledge of the history behind it becomes hopeless. For one thing, there are parts of prophesies that have to do with the distant future—and then an even more distant. Other parts deal with the prophet’s own day. How can you tell which is w…

The words of the prophet Micah could just as easily be said and written today. Micah wrote in chapter 2: Lately my people have risen up like an enemy. You strip off the rich robe from those who pass by without a care, like men returning from battle. You drive the women of my people from their pleasant homes. You take away my blessing from their chi…