The Scarlet Thread

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Garamond} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; font: 12.0px Garamond; min-height: 13.0px} Eons ago, when God created the universe, He proclaimed it good. The first perfect couple, created in His image lived in a perfect world until sin crept in through Satan, a fallen angel disguised as a serpent. Adam and Eve believed his lies rather than God's promises and refused to obey His conditions. Estrangement followed with their connection to God's Spirit severed. Intimacy with Him was lost. However, God was not finished with men. Throughout the centuries, He initiated covenants with the men and women who trusted Him. Those covenants became the 'scarlet thread' woven into His tapestry of world history, to lead ultimately to the redemption of God's creation. Those whom God used were not perfect people; the sinful world affected them too. The difference was they trusted God, and, with the introduction of the Old Covenant or the Law, they began to learn how to please Him. Through trials and suffering, they acquired obedience and trust in things unseen. The second book in The Covenant Series takes the children of Israel from bondage in Egypt to freedom and access to the land God promised Abraham four hundred years earlier. They loved freedom but did not understand their release required allegiance to a holy God before they could grasp His blessings. This book tells their stories. We also eagerly appropriate His grace, but fail to realize our lives must change. Through the stories of these ancient men and women it is my hope that readers will see God as not only loving and kind, but also sovereign and holy-a God that demands our faithfulness.

As a Precept Bible Study leader for 40 years, it has been my experience to realize that most people do not relate to Bible stories because a) They are not familiar with the historical context, so cannot make application in their own lives, b)They have been told that they cannot understand the doctrinal relationships in the stories, and finally c) They believe the characters in the stories are super human and special. That is why I wrote the first two books in The Covenant Series. I wanted people to see and understand that these characters are just like them, only in a different setting. They had failures, doubts, and misunderstandings just like we do. Trusting God is not confined to one historical period.