Blameless and upright, a fearer of God
A man truly righteous, no pious façade

One about whom God was accustomed to boast
And so one whom Satan desired the most

One day the accuser came breathing out lies
"It's Your holy handouts, his faithfulness buys"

 In one desperate day his possessions were lost
 His children all killed in one raw holocaust

         – Michael Card, lyrics, Job Suite

*This piece corresponds to Chapter 2 in my latest book, The Reason of Job, with additional new material by Dr. C.J. Wiliams and James B. Jordan. Available on Wipf and Stock and Amazon. 

Job and his story are highly memorable, though perhaps they are being forgotten. We learn about Job in the Hebrew Tanakh, the Old Testament of the Bible, where there is a book by his name. It is mostly a long poem. I have been surprised by some Christians and Muslims who are more familiar with Job than I’d expected, and by others who said they know little to nothing about him. Part of my goal is to rectify that. But it’s also to begin developing his motif. What is a motif? ...Read on.&

This riveting and thought-provoking piece sheds fresh perspective on a Christian belief that has been fiercely opposed by Muslims for 1400 years. Like every good mystery, this story traces a series of clues spanning the entire Bible and concludes with 1 Timothy 3:16:

“Without question, this is the great mystery of our faith: Christ was revealed in a human body and vindicated by the Spirit. He was seen by angels and announced to the nations. He was believed in throughout the world and taken to heaven in glory.”

Greece is a country that boasts of its Christian culture today—even though many of its tourists would tell you that the country, as a whole, does not act like it. Near the very beginning of its constitution, you can read “The prevailing religion in Greece is that of the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ,” making Greece more rigid about its national religion than most of its Muslim neighbors.

And yet, being Greek, at one time, used to be the antithesis of being a believer in the God of Abraham. Jewish people religiously resisted Hellenization, which was a synonym for degeneracy and immorality. The whole nonbelieving world was called “Greek” at some point, as in “Jews and Greeks.”

So what was the turning point?

Although Paul would often introduce Jesus to his audience as the fulfillment of God’s promises in the scriptures and the conclusion to the history of Israel, the apostle knew very well that his Athenian audience was neither familiar with the Old Testament nor did they care about Israel. In Acts 17, Paul was speaking to an audience of mostly philosophers who had believed in the necessity of the existence of the Higher Power, or higher powers, for centuries. Paul shared that belief—except that he said that only one God has actually proven to exist. That God, according to Paul, “commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all BY RAISING HIM FROM THE DEAD.” Acts 17:30-31.

The Athenian audience was not enthusiastic about the newly discovered One God; nevertheless, the resurrection of Jesus—which we are commemorating this season—would soon turn Athens, and the rest of the world, upside down.