Radio messages from J. Vernon McGee delighted and enthralled listeners for years with simple, straightforward language and clear understanding of the Scripture. Now enjoy his personable, yet scholarly, style in a sixty-volume set of commentaries that takes you from Genesis to Revelation with new understanding and insight. This volume on Zephaniah/Haggai includes introductory sections, detailed outlines and a thorough, paragraph-by-paragraph discussion of the text. A great choice for pastors—and even better choice for the average Bible reader and student!
“The historian Gibbon concluded that there were five reasons for the decline and fall of Rome. Gibbon was not a Christian, but here is why he says Rome fell: (1) The undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home, which is the basis of human society. (2) Higher and higher taxes; the spending of public money for free bread and circuses for the populace. (3) The mad craze for pleasure; sports becoming every year more exciting, more brutal, more immoral. (4) The building of great armaments when the great enemy was within; the decay of individual responsibility. (5) The decay of religion, fading into mere form, losing touch with life, losing power to guide the people.” (Pages 21–22)
“Book of Judges, teach a philosophy of human government, which you will find was true of God’s people and which has been true of every nation. The first step in a nation’s decline is religious apostasy, a turning from the living and true God. The second step downward for a nation is moral awfulness. The third step downward is political anarchy.” (Pages 20–21)
“Idolatry is where every great nation has gone off the track. When a nation departs from the living and true God or when it gives up great moral principles which were based on religion, when it goes into idolatry, these factors eventually lead it into gross immorality and into political anarchy.” (Page 22)
“Zephaniah was the last of the prophets before the Captivity. He was contemporary with Jeremiah and perhaps with Micah, although I doubt that. His was the swan song of the Davidic kingdom, and he is credited with giving impetus to the revival during the reign of Josiah.” (Page ix)