Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Truth Seekers podcast.

A Truth Seaker is someone who wants to know the truth.

They search for what's true and they won't rest until they find it.

I am a True Seaker and if you are too then you've

come to the right place where we will search for truth each week in the stories of

the Bible. We've been learning about the Israelites and their new home in the promised land.

We also learned that the new generation of Israelites that grew up in the land did not know God like their parents had.

They had not been taught in the ways of the Lord, and so instead of following his ways and

obeying him and worshiping him only, they began to worship the false gods of the people who had lived in the land before them.

As a consequence for their sin, the Lord allowed foreign nations to come into the land and invade the Israelites.

When the Israelites would realize what they had done, they would cry out to the Lord for forgiveness and deliverance.

God sent the Israelites judges who were men and women that God used to help deliver the Israelites from their foreign oppressors.

So far we have learned about two of the judges God sent to deliver the Israelites. We have learned about Deborah and we have learned about

Gideon. Today we are going to learn about one more judge that God used to help deliver the Israelites and his name was Sampson.

The Israelites had done evil again in the eyes of the Lord, so the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years. Can you say Philistines?

It was during this time that Sampson was born to a man named Manoa.

Manoa and his wife loved the Lord and followed him.

One day an angel appeared to Manoa's wife and said, you are going to have a son.

Your son is to be set apart as special unto God when he is born.

For he will begin the deliverance of Israel from the hands of the Philistines.

The angel told Manoa's wife,

no razor or scissors shall ever be used on his head.

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