My favorite person in the Bible (aside from the Persons of the Trinity)? Now THAT'S a tough thing to decide! I cannot decide upon a single favorite. But if I may propose a brief list:
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The Blessed Virgin Mary (for the same reasons Seeker stated)
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Peter (for the same reasons Melody stated).
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John the Baptist for his unwavering commitment to preach the truth. I really like Michael York's portrayal of him in "Jesus of Nazareth". I also like a scene from another movie (I think it was "The Greatest Story Ever Told") in which Jesus went into the desert to fast for 40 days and at night he could hear John's shouting/preaching in the distance.
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The Prophet Elijah for being such a no-nonsense larger-than-life figure. As one of my seminary profressors put it, "Elijah was no namby-pansy!"
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Joshua, who led a rag-tag band of nomads to conquer professionally equipt armies and walled cities. To me, this is strong historical evidence for the power of the Holy Spirit, as I do not see how such a military campaign could have succeeded otherwise.
My favorite book? Another tough thing for me to decide. But I will go with the
Gospel of Luke because it holds a special place in my heart. Several years ago there was a time that I desired to be "better read" concerning the bible. I realized that I had never sat down and read any gospel straight through from beginning to end, and wanted to correct this. The big question was, of course, which gospel to choose? I did not know much about the distinctions between them, but I settled on Luke. I chose Luke because I knew that he also wrote Acts, so I figured that I could read his gospel and then read Acts as a follow-up. I expected this project to be slow and monotonous, a kind of "labor of love."
But the opposite happened! The Gospel of Luke turned into a book that I could not put down.
I was struck by the gentleness and prayerfulness of Jesus. Luke really stresses how Jesus prayed all the time, and this inspired me to make my life more prayerful. I felt that Luke was writing in such a way that had unprayerful heathens like me in mind.
Since studying the
Gospel of John in seminary, that has also become one of my favorite books. My instructor was a Benedictine monk, Fr. Demetrius Dumm, and he really shed the light on a ton of things in John that I never realized before. He has written a book on this, The Mystical Portrait of Jesus, which I highly recommend. And hat's off to the people who gave us the movie "Gospel of John"! Imagine such an undertaking in today's society: a three-hour movie on the entire Gospel of John being shown in mainstream theaters! I saw it last month and I can't wait to get it on DVD.
God bless,
-Rev. Eric
The Glorify God Community
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