The Binding of Isaac (Gen. 22)

The High Place at Petra

One of the strangest events recorded in the Bible is when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.  How can we understand this strange and shocking event?  I hope, if you ever feel that God is leading you to sacrifice your child, that you will say “No!” and will quickly identify the source of this thought as the devil and not God!  But yet this is what the Bible says God commanded Abraham to do:  to kill his son.  How do we make sense of that?  How could the God of the Bible even think of such a thing, let alone command it; and how could Abraham accept that this was from God?

Abraham and the Three Men (Gen. 18)

A Bedouin Tent in Israel

Why do Christians believe that Jesus is God?  Is it because he healed people?  Other great men of Israel also healed people.  Is it because he raised Lazarus from the dead?  The bones of Elijah also raised a man from the dead.  Is it because he ascended into heaven?  Enoch and Elijah were also taken up by God into heaven.  What makes Jesus different than all these others?