February 15-16, 2024

David Johnson, M.T.S., Ph.D., Hebrew Union College (in progress) has invited me to present a paper at the upcoming Urshan Symposium of Apostolic Pentecostal Scholars, scheduled for February 15-16, 2024 on the campus of Urshan College and Urshan Graduate School of Theology located at 155 Urshan Way, Wentzville, Missouri 63385. David Johnson is the academic dean at U.G.S.T. For more information, see https://ugst.edu/events/ugst-symposium.

I am happy to accept this invitation. Some of you may know that my ability to travel and speak, and even to do much teaching at our home church, The Sanctuary UPC in Hazelwood, Missouri, has been limited for about two years due to health challenges. But I am so thankful to God and for all who have prayed for me that my health has improved dramatically, enabling me to be more active during the past three months. I was able to teach the adult Bible class each Sunday during August. My topic was “First Century Jewish Christology.” The videos of each of the four lessons and the 120 slides I prepared to accompany the lessons are posted here on my blog.

The tentative title for the paper I will present at the symposium is “Aramaic and LXX Influences on the Messianic Psalms.” The paper will reflect the work I have been doing for volume two of my commentary on the Psalter.

Shortly before His ascent, Jesus said to His disciples, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me” (Luke 24:44). With these words, Jesus “opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45).

One of my prayers is that God would help me to comprehend how the Scriptures testify of Jesus. I hope you can join us at the symposium. I look forward to sharing some of the insights I believe Scripture offers us about the Messiah from the Aramaic Targums and the Greek Septuagint.