Study Desk

So he left the land of the Kasdim and lived in Haran. After his father died, God made him move to this land where you are living now.

What God said to him was, ‘ Your descendants will be aliens in a foreign land, where they will be in slavery and oppressed for four hundred years .

But I will judge the nation that enslaves them,' God said, ‘and afterwards they will leave and worship me in this place.'

"As the time drew near for the fulfillment of the promise God had made to Avraham, the number of our people in Egypt increased greatly,

He supposed his brothers would understand that God was using him to rescue them, but they didn't understand.

‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Avraham, Yitz'chak and Ya‘akov.' But Moshe trembled with fear and didn't dare to look.

"This Moshe, whom they rejected, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge?' is the very one whom God sent as both ruler and ransomer by means of the angel that appeared to him in the thorn bush.

This is the Moshe who said to the people of Isra'el, ‘God will raise up a prophet like me from among your brothers'

So God turned away from them and gave them over to worship the stars — as has been written in the book of the prophets, ‘People of Isra'el, it was not to me that you offered slaughtered animals and sacrifices for forty years in the wilderness!

No, you carried the tent of Molekh and the star of your god Reifan, the idols you made so that you could worship them. Therefore, I will send you into exile beyond Bavel .'

"Our fathers had the Tent of Witness in the wilderness. It had been made just as God, who spoke to Moshe, had ordered it made, according to the pattern Moshe had seen.

Later on, our fathers who had received it brought it in with Y'hoshua when they took the Land away from the nations that God drove out before them. "So it was until the days of David.

He enjoyed God's favor and asked if he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Ya‘akov

But he, full of the Ruach HaKodesh, looked up to heaven and saw God's Sh'khinah, with Yeshua standing at the right hand of God .

"Look!" he exclaimed, "I see heaven opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God! "

As they were stoning him, Stephen called out to God, "Lord Yeshua! Receive my spirit!"

Everyone gave heed to him, from the lowest to the highest, saying, "This man is the power of God called ‘The Great Power'."

But when they came to believe Philip, as he announced the Good News concerning the Kingdom of God and the name of Yeshua the Messiah, they were immersed, both men and women.

When the emissaries in Yerushalayim heard that Shomron had received the Word of God, they sent them Kefa and Yochanan,

But Kefa said to him, "Your silver go to ruin — and you with it, for thinking the free gift of God can be bought!