Author: Phil Smith

We modern people live in an illusion. We believe we live in an orderly world over which we have immense control. Air conditioning, automobiles, electricity, and affluence deceive us into believing we control the world around us. The illusion bursts like a bubble when cancer, disease, violent weather, or broken relationships intrude. People in the […]

What is the first song you learned? Mine was “Jesus Loves Me.” “Jesus loves me, this I know – For the Bible tells me so; Little ones to him belong – They are weak, but he is strong.” These are the first lines of a poem written by Anna Bartlett Warner in 1859. They first […]

I just watched the Eyewitness Bible Series’ One-Hit Wonders Series #2 “How to Rule the World” for the tenth time. I still cry almost from start to finish. A little confession. I write the scripts for the videos and Andrea Jobe edits them. This time, she did more than a little editing. She took the […]

We are thrilled to announce the release of the One-Hit Wonders Series. It initially consists of fifteen videos and study guides, but we suspect it will grow in coming years. The preacher at our church, Mitch Wilburn, has been using the one-hit wonders concept for Wednesday night lessons for many years, and I shamelessly copied […]

A favorite Christian song is “Slow Fade” by Casting Crowns. It describes how people often slowly fade into sin instead of having a sudden fall. The Covid plague of 2019 has been the opposite. It came suddenly upon the entire world, and by the spring of 2022 has slowly faded out of daily consciousness for […]

One of my most favorite Bible verses is Esther 4:14. It is Mordecai’s response to Queen Esther’s hesitation to approach the king for relief for her people. “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And […]

Matthew 9:9 says that Jesus saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. He said, “Follow me,” and Matthew got up and followed him. When you read that verse, what comes to your mind? Do you think this is a complete description of their interaction? Do you think this was the first […]

I love talking to students of the Bible about their imaginative inferences. While writing a script for the upcoming Genesis & Job Series, I had the pleasure of lunching with Scott L. Johnson, a true scholar of the Old Testament book of Job. Scott is a master at pointing out interesting perspectives. For instance, many people […]

In “Thank you for Being Late,” author Thomas Friedman declares that 2007 was a hugely pivotal year for mankind. Why? The invention of the iPhone and all that it led to.

One of the scariest passages in the Bible is Revelation 22:18-19, where readers are warned not to add to or take away from the words of Revelation’s prophecy. I think it is reasonable to assume that the warning is good for all of the rest of Scripture, too.